I admire Bacevich and appreciate his point. Obama is the best of the three contenders but that’s not saying much. I agree more with Daniel Larison at AmConMag/Eunomia: that Obama’s still an interventionist in principle is far more important than whether he opposes this or that war. The 2006 election, in which I did what Bacevich seems to favour and voted mostly Democratic for the first time, was the great referendum on/repudiation of the war on Iraq. It didn’t change anything.

As I like to put it Obama like Kerry in 2004 gets my honk but not my vote.

I’d love to see him clobber McCain in November (not that it would make any difference) but doubt if that would happen.

Just like John Edwards and Michael Dukakis, Obama hasn’t expanded beyond his base: blacks and upper-middle-class self-consciously liberal whites.

Rank-and-file RCs (the lapsed and semi-practising masses, not the self-consciously orthodox who ignore the Pope on the war and are with McCain and the Protestant right) are going for Clinton. Race is probably a factor sad to say (of course it shouldn’t be) but I think not the deciding one.

Obama’s gaffe about ‘bitter’ people in Pennsylvania showed what that’s about. He doesn’t like them; they don’t like him.

Without those working-class and/or ethnic-white votes the Dems can’t win. These voters hate the war so they won’t cross over and vote Republican like they did for Reagan and they may mistakenly think Clinton’s for peace. So the superdelegates just might give the nomination to her.

Lesson from history: I’m reading Carl Bernstein’s bio of her and I find she’s not the monster from Pat Buchanan’s 1992 speech. I have a lot more respect for her now (her social-gospel Methodist faith is not put on) but still disagree with her on some essentials. My point here is 40 years ago she like Obama opposed a war but like him believed/s in the state as a means of social change including by force, which is far more important than a position against a certain war.