This is a big week for politicos living with and promoting delusions.
Lanny Davis and the Clintonistas continue to insist Hillary will win the nomination with help from Florida and Michigan (whose delegations they believe will be seated with full voting power), the lead in the popular vote, and help from the superdelegates who will flock to Hill because Gallup says she will do better than Obama in the general election.
The Bush White House, with an assist from retired press secretaries, insists they are "puzzled" and "shocked" by Scott McClellan's book in which he reveals what thinking people already knew: the Bush White House lied to the people. These robotic spokespersons continue to insist that Bush did not lie or mislead the people, because he was given flawed intellligence, which he believed.
The RNC is saying Barack Obama is not qualified to be commander in chief because he spoke of his "uncle" being part of the army team that liberated Auschwitz, when it was actually his great uncle liberating Buchenwald, which the RNC says was not a "concentration camp" but a "labor camp."
It isn't that hard to expose and refute these delusions:
Hillary is not going to win the nomination. At this moment, with three contests left, including Puerto Rico which cannot vote in the general election, she is behind in elected delegates, with no possibility of catching up, behind in superdelegates, many of whom are secretly pledged to Obama and will declare after Tuesday, and behind in the popular vote. The only possible way Hillary can overtake Obama in the popular vote is with Hill-math (you have no idea how tempting it is to call it "Hill-Billy-math"). Hill-math counts all the votes for Hillary in Michigan and gives none to Obama because his name was not on the ballot. Hill-math does not count the popular vote in four caucus states, three of which Obama won. Hill-math counts the popular vote in Puerto Rico, which cannot vote in November.
As for the Gallup poll giving the advantage to Hillary in the blue states and the head to head matchup with McCain, every day there are polls that show Obama leading McCain, Obama leading in those same blue states, and Obama leading in many red or purple states that would give him the victory over McCain even if he lost some of those blue states. Lanny Davis wants us to believe that one poll (Gallup) taken today are perfect predictors of who would win in November, but polls vary, and polls from previous years have been notoriously wrong this early in the season. Barack Obama has consistently shown that when he campaigns vigorously in a state over an extended time period, he wins.
As for the White House's "puzzlement" over Scott McClellan ratting them out, the only way they could be puzzled is if they truly believed in all the propaganda this W.H. has spewed out over eight years. Some probably do, and they are delusional, just as McClellan apparently was while press secretary, but others know better and are just reciting the talking points. Scott McClellan isn't telling well informed Americans anything new, except that it is possible for one Bushie to be cured of his delusion and write about it. Furthermore, if the White House still thinks the American people believe the Iraq War was all about weapons of mass destruction, and the president can be forgiven for waging this "preventative" war because he was given false intelligence, then the White House remains in the grip of the biggest delusion of all time. The American people have turned against this war not just because it is too costly, which it is, but also because they know the president went to war for reasons other than weapons of mass destruction, delusional reasons having to do with remaking the map of the Middle East, securing access to oil, and ushering in the neoconservative dream of the "New American Century."
In light of all the "misstatements" and falsehoods perpetrated by the White House and exposed in McClellan's book, and keeping in mind all the confusion John McCain shows as he runs around the country talking about Shia when he means Sunni, and al Qaeda when he means Iran (and vice versa), it is amusing to see the RNC jumping on Obama's words. First of all, many people call a great uncle simply "uncle" so there's no big deal there, and Obama saying Auschwitz rather than Buchenwald does not seem that big a deal either. Both were death camps, in spite of the RNC trying to downplay the horrors of Buchenwald by calling it "only a work camp." Both imprisoned Jews during World War II. That Obama was a little confused about history seems not nearly as disastrous a mistake as McCain being confused about the present.
Gosh it will be wonderful to be rid of the delusionists!
