Or, rather, Mark Penn supposedly isn’t allowed to say it:

Penn: Pennsylvania Will Show That Obama “Really Can’t Win The General Election“

Over at TPM, Greg Sargent seems a little taken aback:

This stops about a milllionth of an inch short of an out-and-out declaration that Obama can’t win a general. He seems to be saying that Obama’s expected loss in Pennsylvania, and the scale of it, will show that he can’t win a general election.

This is in keeping with earlier remarks by Hillary and her surrogates to the effect that he has not passed the “commander in chief test” sufficiently to win a general. Ben Smith is right to observer that this is a pretty strong thing to say. And later on the call, the Hillary people backtracked from the remark.

Apart from the fact that it’s Mark Penn saying it, why is this statement controversial? It is obviously what the Clintons believe—and have believed—for a long time. It is (to me, anyway) obviously why they are pushing so damn hard to win every vote then can in this race: because they think Obama cannot win the general. That was the reason for the 3 a.m. ad: it drew a contrast between them on Obama’s biggest weakness (national security), whcih will be a huge (even if subterranean) issue in the general.

I happen to agree that Obama cannot win the general: he is way too vague, for starters. (I’ve been writing about that for at least 3 months.) And when he’s not being vague, on foreign policy he sounds like Mr. Kumbaya. It is therefore beyond obvious that he is too liberal for a nation that is fighting two wars. He is almost entirely focused on the domestic front, where he offers many words about hope and overcoming hardship and transcending partisanship. These campaign promises do not in any way address the issues of working Joes and Janes, who comprise a huge portion of the American electorate. He appeals primarily to elites, and to young people—idealists, every last one of them.

It is possible that if he won the nomination in time to choose a veep like, say John Edwards, he’d have time to get right with the lunch-bucket crowd and might make a more solid candidate. But I think it’s still unlikely.

To me, it seems pretty obvious that Obama is Adlai Stevenson, though with a much more appealing persona and image, and of course with tons and tons of charisma.

But you’re no longer allowed to say that you think it’s obvious he’ll lose in the general, because people will call you a racist (even if, like me, you think that his race has nothing to do with his poor chances).

Or, rather, you can—but you may not get very far. That’s the gist of this piece from Politico, which analyzes the findings of a Pew poll from late February that a lot of people have overlooked (though not me—see below):

American public support for the military effort in Iraq has reached a high point unseen since the summer of 2006, a development that promises to reshape the political landscape.

According to late February polling conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 53 percent of Americans — a slim majority — now believe “the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals” in Iraq. That figure is up from 42 percent in September 2007.

I don’t put a whole lot of stock in polls, but I do pay some attention to them from time to time. I happen to have seen these poll results, released in late February, before the Ohio and Texas primaries. As Lanny Davis wrote in the HuffPo, the poll clearly indicated Barack Obama’s obvious weakness in the area of national security. It was, I believe, this poll that prompted Hillary Clinton to run the 3 a.m. ad, which was aimed straight at Obama’s Achilles heel as revealed by the poll, as I also wrote at the time.

This Pew poll looks to me to be a leading indicator of where the country is on the issue of Iraq: most people have learned to live with it as a reality, and the urgent insistence that we withdraw our troops and leave the Iraqis to fight “their civil war” has been quelled.

My gut tells me that with the war no longer featured on our TV screens (it doesn’t bleed, so it doesn’t lead—but, as I’ve been saying for months, the American media is obsessed with Campaign ‘08 and impervious to other news), with American casualties way, way down; with suicide bombings and other similar horrors fewer and farther in between; with reports like the ones from CNN reporter Kyra Phillips (about the Iraqi National Theater and an Iraqi women’s sports college and an Iraqi school for the blind), which show normal life in Iraq resuming (on a very minor scale, but still resuming somewhat), Americans are getting the idea that we may indeed have a chance of “winning” in Iraq.

Michael O’Hanlon certainly agrees.

“How could Democrats possibly hand McCain a better issue than to let him run on his record of advocating a robust U.S. presence in Iraq with all the positive battlefield news that is filtering out of that country?” asked Michael O’Hanlon, a national security adviser at the Brookings Institution who has been at the center of the Iraq debate since the war’s outset.

“Thinking about where we were at the time of the congressional elections, it’s ironic that the Iraq issue could actually be the one that most favors the Republican and most other issues — including most foreign policy issues — could most favor the Democrats,” O’Hanlon added. “Yet Democrats keep wanting to fight the Iraq debate.”

I don’t know that Clinton wants to fight the debate, but Obama sure does: it’s the central theme of his candidacy—his supposedly great judgment in deciding that Iraq would be a disaster and so we shouldn’t go in. (In my view, everyone understood—or should have understood—that it would be a disaster; to think otherwise when embarking on a war is the height of ignorance, foolishness, and stupidity. All wars are a disaster. And yet some still need to be fought, to stave off worse disasters down the road.)

I understand that O’Hanlon is deeply unpopular in the leftosphere and among antiwar types—precisely because he dared project a scenario of “success” in Iraq when it was very, very unpopular to do so in Democratic circles.

But, really, the Democrats should listen to him—particularly the candidates. Because they’re behind the times. Also: those who participated in the poll like McCain much, much, much better than either Clinton or Obama for commander in chief:

McCain is betting, however, that the public will view the war through a forward-looking lens. For months, he has argued that Democrats intend to “retreat” in Iraq and ensure failure.

The public may soon come to view that as “a correct narrative,” said O’Hanlon, a Democrat whose views on the war have made him the bête noire of many in the anti-war liberal base.

Perhaps as a result of the uptick in support for the war or his own military record, McCain is well-positioned to retake the party’s traditional advantage on national security issues.

Almost half of registered voters now believe it is “very likely” that McCain would be an “effective commander in chief,” according to CBS polling. Less than one-quarter said the same of Obama and Clinton.

Slate’s Christopher Beam awards coolness points to Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton because Obama has a way cooler late-night show behind him:

In a campaign full of bizarre, vaguely defensible analogies—Obama is a Mac, Clinton is a PC! Obama is Starbucks, Clinton is Dunkin Donuts!—here’s a new one to consider: Obama is The Colbert Report, Hillary is Saturday Night Live.

It’s worth reading the whole thing to see how deeply into our culture this year’s political campaign has spread.

The celebrity magazines have gotten in on the act too (or, more precisely, the candidates have both reached out to the vast market of people who follow the ups and downs of celebrities), as was noted in the New Yorker last week:

Back in 2005—the era of Britney’s marriage to Kevin Federline and Lindsay’s turn in “Herbie Fully Loaded”—Janice Min, the editor of Us Weekly, argued that even smart, well-informed people need a “safe place,” free from hard news. But in 2008—as Lindsay emerges from rehab, and Britney from the psych ward—Min has had a change of heart. For the past month, Us Weekly has been breaking political stories …

Min, a longtime political junkie, has started to cover the political candidates in her magazine [e.a.].

“I’d noticed that there’s an incredible interest in what’s going on with the Democratic nomination,” she said. “You look back to when Kerry was running—it was hard to get much enthusiasm mustered up. But it became pretty clear to me that the Us audience is also following these two candidates, who have a lot of star power. You go to dinner with friends and the conversation goes from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to Britney. They are a legitimate part of—for better or worse—the celebrity orbit.”

A longtime and celebrity watcher, Min understands something that few people get—that politics is like showbiz:

“I’ve always said that celebrities are like politicians, in that they need the public to support them to stay in office,” Min said the other day. “An unloved celebrity is no longer a celebrity.”

And an unloved politician is no longer a politician:

But a loved politician is definitely still a politician:

Though, in my opinion, that wasn’t a very swift move.

But what do I know about image creation and management?