Matthew Yglesias: Maliki's Walk Forward. Many Iraqi politicians, including Prime Minister Maliki, have been saying in vague terms how they want US military forces to quit Iraq. Polls indicate that most Iraqis are even more adamant on the point. Maliki crossed a line last week when he more/less endorsed Obama's 16-month pullout proposal, much to the chagrin of McCain (with his 100 year plan) and the Bush administration. Yglesias walks through this whole incident, including the denial that wasn't. Quote:

Conservatives like Bush and McCain used to acknowledge that if Iraq's leaders want us to leave, we have to leave. More recently, McCain's been singing a new tune, claiming to know what Maliki really wants irrespective of what he says, and suggesting that the only thing that really matters is what Gen. David Petraeus says.

This does a nice job of highlighting one of the most important unreported stories of the Iraq War: how the Bush administration has managed to prolong the war by dissuading Iraqi politicians from calling for a pullout. This has been done in lots of ways, like the scheme to arm Sunni tribal leaders, whom the Americans are able to keep in check. All this changes with Obama, who has no reason or desire to continue the subterfuge.

Meanwhile, back in the deep red plains states, this is Wichita Eagle editorial cartoonist Richard Crowson's take on the Maliki timetable affair:

I've continued to watch FiveThirtyEight almost obsessively, an activity not far removed from watching paint dry. Over the last couple of weeks, I've seen Obama's 3-point popular vote lead decline to 1.5 points, a slip that cost him slim edges in Indiana and Virginia. Presumably the big world tour will give him a bit of a boost, and indeed the margin inched up today to 1.8 points. In the electoral count, Obama is consistently running four states better than Kerry: Iowa, Ohio, Colorado, and New Mexico. This seems much closer than it should be, but there's a long time to go, and there's a good chance lots of people are enjoying the relative quiet between the primaries and the conventions. A lot of money is riding on the election, which will become painfully obvious soon enough.

My interest in grimey details of electoral politics predates my late-1960s-vintage embrace of the new left. I've colored in county-by-county vote results going back to the Civil War (much as Kevin Phillips did), so I have a lot of framework I can hook these new numbers onto, and enjoy using it. Obama is locked in right now as the officially designated lesser evil, but from a practical standpoint he also provides a measure of where the country is: if he can't win a majority, it's very unlikely that someone much better can. So tracking how he's doing has some relevance to tracking where we're at.