Friday, October 31, 2008

Call for Predictions!!

OK, I’m guessing that The World’s Most Dangerous Political Blog ™ , despite its dangerousness, is not pulling in thousands, or hundreds, or even dozens, of readers.

But for you proud few, here’s an opportunity to give your two cents.

I’m calling for Election Predictions. You can enter them into any comments at any time in the next few days, and I’ll compile them and put them on the main page. You should be able to comment anonymously, but give yourself some kind of moniker. Karl Rove, Joe the Plumber, Bob the Builder, anything.

What I’d like to see:

1) Your pick of who’s going win the Presidential election. Go into as much detail as you want. Predict the percentages. Call the states. Estimate the length of the concession/victory speech.

2) Your take on how the Senate/House races will turn out. How many seats with the Dems pick up? What are the big races in your state and how do you think they’ll turn out? And is America really ready for Senator Al Franken??

3) What else? Oh, we could discuss What It All Means. If the Dems have a big night, how will they govern? What’s next for the R party? And listen, I really expect my conservative readers to come through for me, allright? I want to hear—in detail!—about how the results prove that the Democratic Party is a fractured, dysfunctional mess that is on the verge of collapse. Don’t let me down, people.

So that’s it. Tell me what choice we’re going to make on Tuesday night. In as much or as little detail as you want.

I’ll post your thoughts, and mine, on Monday.

Obama is questioned – from the Left




This is a long video—11 minutes. However, I think it’s worth watching.

Overall, I think journalists should actually try to be fair and balanced, not advocates for a party or candidate. But if we do have to have political pundits and partisan talk show hosts—and it seems today’s cable industry is determined to give us those—it’s great to see someone with the charm, wit, and smarts of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in a prominent time slot. After years of Hannity, O’Reilly, Beck, Scarborough, on and on and on, it’s really refreshing to see someone who’s not a white male conservative talking politics. (I know MSNBC also has Olbermann, whom I’m much less fond of, but who did break ground as a truly liberal perspective in the Center-Right world of cable news networks.)

And the discussion with Obama, on why he hasn’t been tougher on Republicans, is just terrific. It’s something that hasn’t been discussed much, how Obama’s restraint, discipline, and bipartisan message—his “slow and steady wins the race” strategy—has angered Dem. partisans at times but proven to be an effective and winning approach.

It’s a smart, wonkish, thoughtful discussion. No stereotypes, no gratuitous attacks, no clichés. Who told this guy he could compete in an American presidential election??

McCain’s fickle mind

I know that distorting your opponent’s views is a part of any campaign. Obama, for instance, has muddied the waters on McCain’s proposed tax of health care benefits, but that’s a very complicated subject with lots of room for interpretation.

But as we hit the last days of this long campaign, McCain's attacks against Obama have become inconsistent and incoherent. Look at what McCain said Wednesday on CNN about the “socialist” tag he’s been putting on Obama.



Larry King: You don't believe Barack Obama is a socialist do you?

McCain: "No, but I do believe that he has been in the far left of American politics and stated time after time that he believes in spreading the wealth around. He has talked about courts that redistribute the wealth. He has a record of voting against tax cuts. And for tax increases."



So after suggesting over and over again that Obama's a socialist, McCain, when asked directly, backpedals. And look at that next quote: “He has talked about courts that redistribute wealth.”

Yeah, he’s talked about how they don’t want to, and the context of his remarks is that he agrees it’s not a good idea for the courts to take on that role. So the bottom line is that Obama’s position is the opposite of what McCain is suggesting.

McCain also has a record of voting against tax cuts—he voted against Bush’s original tax cuts, the ones he now supports and wants to expand.

So: Obama’s a socialist, he’s not a socialist. Progressive income tax good, progressive income tax bad. Against big government, for big government bailouts of banks. Bush tax cuts bad, Bush tax cuts good.

This inability to get his story straight is just one of the reasons that McCain simply does not have a strong argument for taking control of our economic future.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Joe jumps ship




Update: as it turns out, Joe showed up a later campaign stops. I guess there was just a mix-up. Kind of sums up this campaign, doesn't it?

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Better to redistribute wealth to the wealthy, right?

I was talking recently with a conservative, and although we didn't agree on much, we did agree that cable news is incredibly annoying at times. There are a lot of "pundits" trying to fill time by talking about trivial stuff, or just endlessly blathering on about stuff that's been beaten to death already.

One of the few cable news pundits I really admire is David Gergen, who is always smart and even-handed. The following discussion does spend too much time on Sarah Palin's clothes -- but as they note, the McCain campaign keeps bringing it up-- but the really good stuff is toward the end, when Gergen notes that Reagan started a big wealth redistribution program, the earned income tax credit. I got a little cranky yesterday discussing McCain's "socialist" smears, but Gergen here does a pretty good job of calmly demolishing that completely dishonest line of attack.



(found at crooksandliars.com)

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The latest smear: Socialist!!!

How mind-numbingly desperate has the McCain campaign become? They’ve found an interview from 7 years ago, in which Obama wades into some technical points of the Supreme Courts’ civil rights rulings, pulled out the term “redistribution of wealth,” completely out of context, and held up it, screaming “SOCIALIST!”

From what I can tell, and it is a very technical and academic discussion, Obama is saying that the Supreme Court didn’t want to get into the redistribution of wealth, but that other social forces, including community organizing, could bring about “redistributive change.”

Here’s the quote (taken from a conservative newsletter, but I believe it’s fairly accurate):

“But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of the wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break us free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution … And the Warren Court interpreted, in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties … I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.”

In other words, African Americans, traditionally among the poorest and least powerful in our society, could grab a bigger piece of the pie by organizing themselves and gaining more political power.

WHAT A RADICAL STATEMENT! OH MY GOD, IT”S LIKE HE’S JOSEPH STALIN OR GROUCHO MARX OR SOMETHING!!

How stupid do you have to be to fall for this stuff? What is wrong with people that they are so quick to jump to totally unjustified conclusions based on such thin evidence?

Let’s put it another way: Yes, Obama wants to “redistribute wealth.” He wants to change our tax policies that have been favoring the extremely wealthy and make them more favorable to the middle class.

That's socialist?

Lots of presidents have changed tax policy; raising taxes for some, lowering them for others. These include Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. This was also redistribution of wealth. None of these folks were called socialists by anybody with a brain.

McCain supporters have said a lot of less-than-honest things. But this descent into caveman-like stupidity is really hard to watch.

Sorry to rant; I guess the long election season is finally getting to me.

Here’s a WP fact-checker comment on this.

Here’s a very good analysis of the "Obama is a socialist" claim,by Politifact.com.

Monday, October 27, 2008

... Said the man who made the mountain...

"Former White House adviser Karl Rove, credited with winning two elections for President Bush, on Sunday said GOP nominee John McCain has a “very steep hill to climb” in his quest for the presidency.

Rove, who often puts a positive spin on things for the GOP, on “Fox News Sunday” offered a bleaker assessment of the state of the race from a Republican point of view. In his own electoral map, Rove has Democratic nominee Barack Obama ahead with 317 electoral votes after moving Ohio, Indiana, Colorado and Virginia to the Illinois senator’s column."

-- from The Hill


I love the understatement about Karl "I have the real math" Rove. Yes, on occasion he has been known to spin things...

Friday, October 24, 2008

All the News from Lake Tinklenberg

Michele Bachmann (apologies for the misspelling in earlier posts) continues to be big news, garnering a video entry at Talking Points Memo. Quite entertaining. By the way, a new poll puts Elwyn Tinklenberg (of the Fightin' Tinklenbergs!!!) up 47 to 44 over Bachmann. A new poll is due out today. I still have my doubts, but go El!!




In other Minnesota news: Hilllary Clinton appeared with Al Franken recently and a new TV ad features her talking up Franken. A bunch of Minnesota politicians (Coleman, Klobuchar, Bachmann, Ellison) had their homes vandalized by spray-pointed graffiti that featured nasty words and reference to Psalm 2. Huh? Former Repub. Gov. Arne Carlson endorsed Obama, who is way ahead in the latest MN polls (yawn).

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Shop 'til you drop

Is it ridiculous that the media is obsessing over where Sarah Palin buys her clothes? Or how much she paid for them?

I find the media is ridiculous in a lot of ways, but although I wish they would spend less time on this, one of the reasons that they spend so much time on it is that people want to talk about it.

Hey, we had to have our 796 hours of talk about John Edward’s haircuts and Al Gore’s earth tones. What’s good for the goose, you know what I’m sayin’?

The media overplays this stuff, but they know people eat it up. Because it does seem hypocritical to claim to be a man or woman of the people and then live a lifestyle completely beyond the reach of most people.

Sure, it’s unrealistic and unfair to expect a candidate seeking to lead the most powerful nation on earth to be an average Joe (six pack, plumber, or otherwise). But who said Americans are ever realistic about their expectations of their leaders?

Speaking of media and ridiculous, this Daily Show clip is pretty hilarious:


Wednesday, October 22, 2008

It Could Yet Get Worse

I'm noticing from multiple Left blog sites that there is a consensus that McCain will finally start talking about Rev. Wright soon... simply because there's nothing else left to hit Obama with, and he knows he's losing. I guess that will signal that we've finally hit bottom.

This could turn out not to be true. But more than a few insiders are expecting it.

It Could Have Been Worse

Great inside baseball story in Politico today.

Basically says that a “Swiftboat” campaign against Obama, independent of the McCain camp or the RNC and financed by shadowy billionaires, never materialized because of McCain’s erratic performances and the fact that they didn’t trust him. Seems they thought McCain might still have enough decency and honor to publicly rebuke them if they ran those kinds of attack ads.

Plus the sinking stock market made them want to hold on to their money.

That says something about our political system. We have all these wealthy people willing sink to any depths for political gain. But this time, they just didn’t see enough margin in it. Ah well, there’s always 2012.

Kos and effect

I understand why some don’t like Markos Moulitsas Zuniga—Kos, of Daily Kos. He’s very partisan, and a pretty harsh critic of those he doesn’t agree with. And as with any political site that has free and open forum, there are some zealots who post some pretty extreme things on his site.

But he’s also a very astute political analyst, and he doesn’t fall for the partisan spin and wishful thinking that permeates both sides of the blogosphere.

A post from today really illustrates this. Kos notes that despite all the character attacks on Obama, all the questioning of his character and patriotism, he is actually remarkably well-liked by the American people. Which is part of why he is not only ahead in the polls, but seems to be opening a bit more of lead in the last few days.

Kos notes that a new Time/CBS poll finds that Obama’s favorability is the highest for a presidential candidate running for a first term in the last 28 years.

Kos says:


“Think about what's happened in the last year -- a bruising primary, Jeremiah Wright, bittergate, Tony Rezko, PUMA b.s., hateful emails, months of non-stop Republican smears regarding Ayers, the spreading of rumors that he's a terrorist and Muslim.

… hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of smear emails later, and the best Republicans have been able to do is inch up his negatives?

Republicans tried to sell a patently false story -- that Obama was a secret Muslim Marxist terrorist -- and the public proved too smart for the GOP.

McCain didn't fare as well, but his numbers have still held up quite well. What we have here is an election that won't be decided on the worst smears, but on substance. And in such an environment, the GOP is ill-equipped to compete.

So as we see Jeremiah Wright make his comeback in the next 10 days, realize that Obama has weathered this guy and much more already. The American people are just not willing to believe the crap that Republicans say about Barack.”


I am disappointed that McCain still seems to think he has no choice but to try to drive Obama’s negatives up by using these smear tactics. But I have always felt that Obama is an unusually strong candidate; anyone with an open mind who watches the guy for five minutes is going to like him—even if they don’t agree with him. It’s just that some on the R side can’t stop themselves from grabbing a bucket of mud when confronted with someone they disagree with. This year, it looks like that’s not going to work.

(oh, here's the link!)

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

At least they're not trying to divide us

Minnesota 6th District Rep. Michelle Bachmann recently questioned whether Barack Obama and other members of Congress are anti-American.

I think she’s come to regret that.

The comments have created a firestorm nationally and raised a ton of money for her overmatched challenger, El Tinklenberg. I say overmatched because ET (heh) is a good candidate who’s been running hard but has not made a lot of headway in this relatively red district.

Until now.

In Minnesota, Bachmann is generally seen by those on the left as a crazyperson. She’s done and said some goofy things, and her personality and politics just drive some people a little nuts. I get a little tired of the namecalling (moonbat, wingnut) that is common on political blogs. Let’s just say Bachmann is a real character. I will say that she’s been very effective as a politician: she’s articulate, projects a warm if somewhat intense personality, and generally plays to her base very well. Not unlike Gov. Palin.

But like Gov. Palin, she’s going to have a little trouble with this “I’m a better American than you” attitude. This thing that we’re seeing during the current election, the idea that if you’re from a conservative area you’re more patriotic, is actually the opposite of patriotic. I hate to bring up the D word again, but it smacks of desperation. As Jon Stewart pointed out on the Daily Show last night, it was liberal New York City and Washington DC that were attacked by terrorists. So it’s a little galling to hear people suggest that somehow those big East Coast cities are not part of “real America.”

We’re all in this together; we’re all Americans.

True of False?

Monday, October 20, 2008

Powell endorsement

If this election were about sober, thoughtful political decision-making, the speech Colin Powell made on Meet the Press Sunday should have effectively closed the case for Barack Obama.

And it was a speech, in my opinion the best we’ve seen since the conventions, laying out a compelling case—from a moderate Republican point of view—on why Obama has proven he’s the best candidate for the job.



He also made some good comments off the cuff later, including some remarks on Michelle Bachmann, "We have got to stop this kind of nonsense and pull ourselves together..." Also some good comments on taxes (Which that big Socialist Ronald Reagan also raised, more than once...)

Friday, October 17, 2008

Voter Fraud: Another Fake Controversy

There are a few voices of sanity out there about the supposed fraud that ACORN is using to "destroy the fabric of democracy" (John McCain at the last debate).

One of them is Dahlia Lithwick:

"Large-scale, coordinated vote stealing doesn't happen. The incentives—unlike the incentives for registration fraud—just aren't there.

In an interview this week with Salon, Lorraine Minnite of Barnard College, who has studied vote fraud systematically, noted that "between 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty others were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five were guilty of voting more than once. That's 26 criminal voters."

Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that U.S. attorneys, like David Iglesias in New Mexico, were fired for searching high and low for vote-fraud cases to prosecute and coming up empty. Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that five days before the 2006 election, then-interim U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman exuberantly (and futilely) indicted four ACORN workers, even when Justice Department policy barred such prosecutions in the days before elections.

RNC General Counsel Sean Cairncross has said he is unaware of a single improper vote cast because of bad cards submitted in the course of a voter-registration effort. Republican campaign consultant Royal Masset says, "[I]n-person voter fraud is nonexistent. It doesn't happen, and ... makes no sense because who's going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?"

There is no such thing as vote fraud."

Boy, someone should get Fox News the memo. Not to mention John McCain.

I highly recommend reading the entire article.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

It ain't so, Joe

Hey, I don't want to pick on Joe the Plumber. He seems like your average guy who just wants to make up a grievance with a presidential candidate in order to give himself a better excuse for voting against that candidate.

I mean, his whole beef was that Obama was going to raise his taxes when Joe buys the plumbing company he's been working for.

Except that he's not really buying it. He's just talked about buying it at some point. And if he did buy it, he would still probably not make the $250K per year that would bump up his taxes slightly. The most likely scenario, whether he buys the firm or not, is that he'll get a tax break under Obama's plan.

Also, if he did buy it, he might want to actually get a plumber's license. He doesn't have one at present.

There are other things to pick on Joe about, including his attitudes toward Social Security and Sammy Davis Jr. But again, I don't want to pile on. He didn't know that his manufactured, unrealistic gripe was going to become prime time debate fodder. I just think it's ironic that McCain is holding this guy up as an average voter who's going to get the shaft under Obama's plan. Because he's not. The entire premise is false.

Of course, that's never stopped a political attack before.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The final debate

A strong debate for McCain, just on the arguments he made. But his visuals are just brutal. Grimacing, weird expressions, looking so uptight and uncomfortable. Obama was relaxed and direct, he seemed intent on bringing it back to the economic issues that voters care about.

Seemed to me the pundits, some of them, wanted to really drag McCain back into contention in this race by saying he won the debate. The polls, one after another, shot that down. People think Obama does a better job at these debates. Maybe because he does.

Side by side, face to face. One candidate is cool, calm, thoughtful, in control. The other seems about to burst out of his skin. I don't mean to be unkind to John McCain. But he is not as strong a candidate as Barack Obama. Political campaigns are all about communication. There really is no doubt who's doing a better job of that in this race.

Monday, October 13, 2008

By all means, do anything Bill Kristol says...

I'm amused to see that Bill Kristol, a legendary conservative pundit (part of his legend is for being extremely right wing. The other part is that he's nearly always wrong in his predictions and advice) is using the "Happy Warrior" phrase in suggesting
what McCain should do next ... (for those of us who are not old, the original Happy Warrior was Hubert Humphrey. He ran for President, too.)

"What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free."

Sing it, Bill! If you LOOOOVE somebody, set them free. Free free, set them free.

Sorry. Bill Kristol channeling Sting is just too wonderful a vision to pass up.

It is a very odd campaign season when I end up agreeing, even if just a little bit, with BK.

"My friends, we've got 'em right where we want 'em"

Well, give Sen. John McCain this much: he's still got a sense of humor.

The ramshackle, erratic, lurching campaign of the Republican nominee took what might be a final twist today when it scrapped the major economic proposals that its surrogates were talking about yesterday and decided to go the Happy Warrior route.

McCain today is casting himself (again) as the underdog, a fighter. He hasn't yet called himself the Comeback Kid, but just wait a couple ... no, on second thought, he's not going to use that one. The Comeback Curmudgeon? That might work.

What seems to be happening is that the McCain camp, after flirting last week with a scorched earth, go-to-any-depths attempt to inflame hatred and distrust of Obama approach, has realized that it's just not going to work. It's pretty bad for your message when the networks are talking about how your supporters are bringing torches and pitchforks to the rallies.

I think here in Minnesota we might have seen the turning point, in more ways than one. In the presidential campaign, McCain seemed to dial back some of the raw emotions that have been seen at his rallies. At a town hall meeting in Lakeville, McCain had to rebuke one supporter who called Obama an "Arab," by saying, "No, he's a decent family man."

The crowd booed.

McCain also told a supporter that he did not have to fear for the future of his child if Obama was elected. This statement was also booed.

But I think this might've been a turning point. McCain finally seemed to realize things were getting out of hand, and it was good to see him speak out against some of the fear-mongering that lately his camp had seemed to encourage.

Another interesting event took place on Friday here in Minnesota. Sen Norm Coleman, after participating in one of the most remarkable political mudfests in memory, with both he and Al Franken just going after each other hammer and tongs, suddenly declared he was going to stop running negative ads.

How interesting. Wonder why? Also, why didn't he attend the McCain event? You'd think he'd be there.

There are a lot of folks out there saying, three weeks is a lifetime in a campaign. Anything can happen. That's true. There could be a major change in this narrative. Or it could be that the questions raised by this election have pretty much been answered.

Friday, October 10, 2008

ACORN: Explain it to me like I was five years old

Josh Marshall obliges

"ACORN registers lots of lower income and/or minority voters. They operate all across the country and do a lot of things beside voter registration. What's key to understand is their method. By and large they do not rely on volunteers to register voters. They hire people -- often people with low incomes or even the unemployed. This has the dual effect of not only registering
:people but also providing some work and income for people who are out of work. But because a lot of these people are doing it for the money, inevitably, a few of them cut corners or even cheat. So someone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN's own efforts to catch errors. (It's important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it's ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations.) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of 'thousands' of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.

I've always had questions about whether this is a good way to do voter registration. And Democratic campaigns usually keep their distance. But here's the key. This is fraud against ACORN. They end up paying people for registering more people then they actually signed up. If you register me three times to vote, the registrar will see two new registrations of an already registered person and the ones won't count. If I successfully register Mickey Mouse to vote, on election day, Mickey Mouse will still be a cartoon character who cannot go to the local voting station and vote. Logically speaking there's very little way a few phony names on the voting rolls could be used to commit actual vote fraud. And much more importantly, numerous studies and investigations have shown no evidence of anything more than a handful of isolated cases of actual instances of vote fraud."


I'm not at all putting down JM. As you probably know, that's my favorite site. I just really like the simple way he explains this. The fake outrage about ACORN is another case of lashing out, like Ayers, where Republicans just seem to need something to vent about. If you think about it for five minutes, it doesn't make any sense at all. But there it is.

The Harsh Light of Day

Here’s yet another story
about Republicans at a McCain rally, chomping at the bit, fighting mad, seething with rage, however you want to describe it. And they are not only yelling out nasty (and totally false) things about Obama. They are mad at McCain for not taking his campaign even further into the gutter.

What’s striking to me is how some of these folks seem bewildered with how we could possibly be where we are: with a Democrat poised to win an election.

“Why is Obama where he's at?” one man asks. “Everyone in this room is stunned.”*

Well, when you divorce yourself from reality for eight years, when you only watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh, when you’re so far down in the echo chamber that you don’t even hear alternative voices or views, then yes, I suppose it is shocking to find out the rest of the country has left you behind.

In 2000 and 2004, I had a number of heated discussions with conservatives. And what really got to me about those discussions was not that we disagreed about what was best for the country; it was that we often seemed to be living in different countries—different realities, really.

It’s hard to have an intelligent discussion if you can’t agree on the facts. And there are too many on both sides who are so caught up in their own political subcultures that they simply can’t hear or see things that don’t fit with their worldview.

It’s difficult to see how we’re going to really move this country forward as long as such a large portion of the citizenry want to engage in so much denial and willful ignorance. What’s even worse is the possibility that some of that is spilling over into rage and violence.


* - The exact quote was in an early version of the online Post story. It seems to have been cut in later versions. But similar expressions of disbelief were quoted.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

How DARE they ask what newspapers she's been reading!

This is funny: a Washington Post reporter, at a McCain/Palin rally, asking for hugs.



Conservatives have always attacked the messenger. It’s a great American political tradition. Nixon did it. Reagan did it. It plays great with the partisans.

But reality has a way of catching up with you.

Wars don’t go the way they were planned. Cities flood. Icecaps melt. Economies collapse.

Eventually, history passes judgment on political philosophies and movements. And it becomes harder and harder to complain that the facts are somehow conspiring against you.

Unless you’re on Fox News, of course.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

It Ain't Beanbag

News stories like this one are regularly noting that McCain campaign speeches are playing to crowds that are, for want of a better term, turning ugly.

"McCain's remarks about Obama were interrupted with shouts of "socialist," "terrorist," and "liar."

At least part of this is on the McCain camp, for abandoning any pretense of running a civil campaign. And this talk of Obama "palling around" with terrorists is really irresponsible--and in my personal opinion, it's just sad to see McCain stoop to such depths, even if he is using his VP candidate to do the actually smearing.

But whatever. McCain doesn't care what I think. He's in a very bad situation. He's behind in the polls. The debates are doing nothing for him. His Hail Mary pass of picking Sarah Palin has not swayed the vast majority of voters, and she is actually a liability, since she can't handle the media and can't speak to anyone but deeply conservative crowds. And he's carrying around this huge anchor called the Bush Presidency. I'd be grumpy too.

I remember seeing Michael Dukakis speak in Milwaukee in 1988, just a couple weeks before he was thoroughly trounced by George H.W. Bush. Everyone knew he was way behind in the polls. But he came into Milwaukee and gave a red-meat, take-no-prisoners speech to a cheering crowd of Democrats.

So I guess it's no surprise that McCain/Palin are going to stoke up their crowds as best they can, and that the crowds are going to be particularly rabid. The last hurrah, I guess.

The difference, of course, is that the partisanship of 1988 seems mild compared to today. And there's the racial factor as well. I can't contemplate the next four weeks without feeling a twinge of fear. All I can think is, if something horribly tragic does happen, what legacy will John McCain have left his party and his country?

I hate to think about it. But when people are screaming "terrorist," you really can't ignore it.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

"That one" won

For the record, I don't think it should be that big a deal that John McCain referred to Obama as "that one" in tonight's debate. As Howard Finneman just said, it's not a racial thing, it's an Old Guy thing.

And this comes down to the crux of this contest, as I've been thinking for a long time. When the American people see these two guys together on stage, they see one young, dynamic, obviously smart, talented, guy. And they see one old, veteran politician, who despite his long service to his country, is simply not the future.

Our country needs to turn a corner, to take a new direction. We all know this. Who is going to lead us?

That one.

Remember the good old days, when "soft" bigotry was all we had to worry about?

With McCain and Palin stoking the "not one of us" fires amongst their followers, we are now hearing reports from various media sources of near-lynch-mob mentality at some events.

Crowd members yelling "Terrorist!" when McCain asks "Who is Barack Obama!"

A Palin supporter shouting "Kill him!" at one of her rallies. Presumably not talking about McCain.

Also at a Palin event, media members get subjected to verbal abuse, an African American media tech gets shouted at: "Sit down, boy!"

Nice.

You'd think the McCain camp might want to tone it down a bit. Maybe take the opportunity of the debate tonight to remind supporters that we'll all Americans, all in this together, etc.

Then again, "classy" and "prudent" are not words we've been able to associate with the McCain campaign so far.

Monday, October 06, 2008

A Fist Fight in High Heels Does Not Sound Like a Good Idea

“The heels are on, the gloves are off,” Sarah Palin said recently, in reference to her new attack-dog role for the McCain campaign.

If that’s the metaphor that the McCain team wants to use, I would suggest that they’re going to spend a lot of time picking themselves up off the floor.

William Ayers. Rev. Wright. Tony Rezko.

Yawn.

In addition to the fact that we’ve been over these “scandalous” associations in the past and they’ve been found to be not a big deal, the McCain team opens up a different can of worms. If they’re going to play the guilt-by-association game, Obama supporters can, and will, point to McCain’s association with the Keating Five and Palin’s association with the America-hatin’ Alaskan Independence Party. Obama’s campaign is already out today with a video on the Keating Five.

But the bottom line is that that McCain has been going down in the polls. And now he starts up again with the character attacks, at a time when there are some really serious issues the country needs to deal with. We’ve seen this movie before, right? The American people are smarter than this, right? Fool me once …?

We’ll see. I think it’s a recipe for a landslide, and not the kind McCain wants to see.

SHOCKER: The New Yorker endorses Obama

But they make some pretty good points, including:

"The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceiving, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a “maverick” senator. But in a President they would be a menace.

By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness."

Friday, October 03, 2008

Is the McCain campaign conceding that their claims on the Bridge to Nowhere were lies?

I was just thinking about last night's debate, and it struck me that Palin dropped two of her signature claims to fame. The assertion that she said "no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere, and her anecdote about putting the state plane on eBay.

What gives? Were they perhaps concerned that Joe Biden might point out that the Bridge to Nowhere story is a complete lie, or that the eBay story is a huge piece of puffery?

Maybe they hope that no one noticed. I do think that if Palin begins making either two claims again someone should ask her why she was silent on these topics at the debate, or maybe just why she's lying. But of course, that would mean taking questions from a reporter, and that's something that Palin just doesn't do very often.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

VEEP debate

I don't think too many people will think Sarah Palin won the debate.

She did OK. I saw a lot of flat lines on the "voter dial," and that fit with my response. A lot of her answers kind of meandered around and didn't go anywhere. My opinion of course.

Biden was good, very good in a couple of places. I think there were a lot of landmines for him and he seemed to avoid them. But there was no Lloyd Bentsen moment where he just put the thing away. That's OK, probably not a good plan to try to hit a home run; just be steady and substantial. He was.

As a bottom line thing, I just can't see Sarah Palin as President. We've already had a folksy, chirpy, incurious idealogue who appeals to the Republican base. As has been said in comments, there's not politician that Palin recalls more than GWB. Maybe others see it differently, but I have had enough of that formula. (There's also been some comparison of her to Michelle Bachmann. Palin/Bachmann in 2012!)

I also like that Biden didn't cede any ground on Joe Sixpack or as a parent. Maybe the best part of the debate.

Palin's had two pretty good nights. The convention speech, and this debate. She prepared several days for one, at least a week for the other. Can she think at all on her feet? Can she handle a press conference? Can she really do what every other candidate has to do, go out and be held accountable by the press? We still don't know. The results that we have seen have been very mixed.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

The Palin/Biden Debate

This will be a pretty huge night in the presidential campaign. Since the initial debate between Obama and McCain, Obama has jumped ahead in the polls by a significant margin. We’ve also seen polls showing Obama leading (by as much as 8 points) in states like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. If Obama wins Florida on Election Night, he wins this by a landslide.

There’s plenty of time to go yet, but Obama’s position has never been stronger.

So the vice presidential debate, coming on the heels of some pretty bad press for Palin, is going to be huge. Palin’s pick has been unusually high-profile, which is exactly what McCain has hoping for. It was the campaign’s biggest gamble (so far), a high-risk, high-reward proposition. After the convention, it looked like high reward. Things have changed since then.

I expect one of two outcomes: Palin does reasonably well, holds her own, doesn’t seem overwhelmed. There’s also the possibility of a Biden gaffe; he has already said some pretty dumb things on the trail. If that’s the case, if Palin’s performance is seen as a draw or better, the media will explode with “Palin outperformed expectations!” And the doubts about McCain’s VP decision will recede. It could happen. And it could bump McCain’s numbers up a bit and make this a tight race again.

Or she could perform as she has in recent interviews and really look bad. In which case, I would expect the race to break wide open. McCain is vulnerable right now. A poor performance by his pick for VP could solidify opinion that the McCain/Palin ticket is just not the answer this year.