“Yes, sir, I understand you asked that no one talk trash to you about your NCAA tournament picks, but you know how enlisted men are…”
(President Obama in Afghanistan this morning, via the White House.)
“You win some, you lose some. And then there’s that little-known third category…”
– Al Gore, on the 2000 U.S. presidential election
A couple of days ago, while awaiting the final results from Iraq’s parliamentary elections, Marc Lynch (a/k/a Abu Aardvark) wrote that the country “faces a double-edged test”:
If al-Maliki triumphs in a narrow election and assembles a coalition that largely reproduces the outgoing government, many Iraqis may feel that the election was a sham, and that democracy is not capable of producing true change. If al-Maliki loses, he may not surrender power without a fight…
Or, you know, both could happen. From the New York Times this morning:
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s party lost the Iraqi election, but a day after the results were announced it became clear that he would fight to hold on to his post — even before the outcome was declared.
On Thursday, a day before the results were announced, he quietly persuaded the Iraqi supreme court to issue a ruling that potentially allows him to choose the new government instead of awarding that right to the winner of the election, the former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi.
On another front, officials in charge of purging the government of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party said Saturday that they still expected to disqualify 50 political candidates, many of them members of Mr. Allawi’s Iraqiya Party. That could strip Mr. Allawi of his narrow plurality, 91 parliamentary seats compared with 89 for Mr. Maliki’s State of Law party.
And if all that does not work, the prime minister still is clamoring for a recount. . . . Ultimately, the same Supreme Federal Court, which is nominally independent but has proved friendly to Mr. Maliki in the past, will decide the recount issue.
Yes, it’s always nice to have a friendly Supreme Court in your back pocket in case of a close election, isn’t it?
The relevance of the court’s decision is that under the Iraqi constitution, the electoral coalition with the largest number of seats in parliament gets the first chance to form a government, including choosing a prime minister. But because although Allawi’s slate came in first in the voting, the court ruled that a coalition formed after the election would be eligible — meaning that Maliki’s party and the bloc of Shiite religious parties (who came in second and third, respectively) could unite and thereby “win” the right to stay in power.
As a result, a coalition like the one I predicted two weeks ago is still the most likely outcome: Maliki’s “State of Law” bloc (unfortunate acronym and all), his off-and-on Shiite allies (including those loyal to U.S. bogeyman-cleric Moqtada as-Sadr), and the largest Kurdish parties, creating a near-reunion of the 2005 government.
Why? Because despite ordinary Iraqis’ unhappiness with the incumbent regime’s corruption and ineptitude, the high-level fault lines that brought about the Shiite-Kurdish alliance — in particular, the desire to remove any trace of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated Baath party from the government and especially the military — still exist.
In 2005, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani oversaw the creation of a nearly all-Shiite electoral slate in order to ensure that Iraq’s majority sect would control the country’s post-Saddam future. Even if just enough voters in Iraq’s predominantly Shiite regions rejected that sectarian strategy (either by staying home or defecting to Allawi’s coalition) to tip this month’s election results, Sistani is not likely to accept such a swift unraveling of his master plan — and his will is unlikely to be defied by the politicians he brought to power, especially for the sake of a minority role in an Allawi-led regime.
Similarly, as Juan Cole notes this morning, an alliance between Allawi and the Kurdish factions is implausible because of the battles for influence between Kurds and the Sunni Arabs who make up Allawi’s political base in Kirkuk and other parts of northern Iraq. As Cole concludes, “Allawi may therefore have a plurality that is incapable of growing into a majority.”
The primary impact of Prime Minister al-Maliki’s surprising (if narrow) second-place finish, if anything, is likely to be felt by Maliki himself. Even if Team Shiite reunites as I’ve been predicting, Maliki’s rivals in the religious parties may demand his scalp as the price for patching up the assorted feuds of the last four years. But that would put all of the factions in the troublesome position of having to agree on a successor, meaning even more wrangling before a government can be formed.
But then, given the congested and inconclusive results of the election, I suppose that would be fitting.
(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)
I don’t know if I wrote about it when he became pontiff (and our relevant archives have, sadly, not yet been restored), but the first moment I saw pictures of Pope Ratz I thought to myself, “He looks like the perfect stereotype of a movie villain who’s getting away with some evil scheme.”
Now I know why. Though my gut hunch can’t top that of Michael Signorile:
Suddenly, I jumped up on one of the marble platforms and, looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted:
“He is no man of God!”
The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued:
“He is no man of God — he is the Devil!”
I had no idea where that came from.
Also, from the adjacent Department of Looking Good in Retrospect: Sinead O’Connor.
Carter has built countless homes and negotiated numerous ceasefires after his Presidential term. Clinton has negotiated the release of innocent hostages and worked to help the victims of natural disasters.
Shrubya doesn’t roll that way. Watch as Shrubya wipes his hand on Bill Clinton’s shirt after shaking the hand of a Haitian:
Thanks to Matt Yglesias yesterday for making the argument that my modest donations to John Edwards’ presidential campaign weren’t a total loss:
Repeatedly throughout his campaign, Edwards served as a useful progressive foil. He was never really up there with Clinton and Obama, but he was always close enough that they couldn’t simply ignore the possibility that his efforts to appeal to the base would work. So when Edwards unveiled his four point plan for achieving universal coverage—a plan based on exactly the pillars of ObamaCare—it made a huge difference and swiftly became the benchmark by which Clinton and Obama were judged. . . .
. . . The see-saw of the political expectations game is such that by the Spring of 2010 many people had convinced themselves that this approach to health care was a disappointing sellout. But back in the Spring of 2007, it was considered radical—a left-wing idea by the standards of a Democratic presidential primary. . . .
. . . Three years ago, few thought it was politically realistic. Tomorrow, it will be signed into law. But the whole thing easily could have never been taken up if not for the pressure Edwards put on others to shift in his direction.
Good thing Obama got the Health Care Reform passed when he did! Unfortunately, today also marks another very disturbing development – the opening of the floodgates of unlimited corporate election funding.
Can you imagine what’s going to happen now when they resume debating climate change legislation? Bush really fucked us with Alito and Roberts.
Has this ever happened before – a public US Corporation willingly forsaking revenue and profits in order to do the right thing? What is the world coming to?
(From the White House, via TPM.)
Lisa of All Hat No Cattle observes:
Does anybody notice that guys called Dick usually turn out to be ‘Dicks’. Tricky Dicky Nixon, Dick Armey, Dick Cheney, Dick Dawkins, Dick Armitage etc etc?
Never thought of that, but obvious on reflection! Somebody should update Dickipedia!
