February 29, 2008

2/29: The Counterattack

We observed yesterday that liberal bloggers are circling their wagons around Barack Obama in order to push back against what they perceive to be GOP smears. However, we should note that the netroots aren't just playing defense; they're also going on offense against John McCain. First, liberal bloggers are accusing McCain of hypocrisy for attacking Obama over his prior statements about public financing when McCain himself is having problems with the FEC. Second, liberal bloggers are slamming McCain for declaring that he was "very proud" to receive the endorsement of TX pastor John Hagee, who has repeatedly bashed the Catholic Church. Liberal bloggers are accusing the media of having a double standard when it comes to controversial endorsements, noting that Obama has repeatedly been asked to distance himself from Louis Farrakhan's endorsement.

Overshadowed by all of this Obama-McCain skirmishing is Hillary Clinton, who's still fighting hard in TX and OH. Will HRC pull out some big wins on 3/4 and force GOPers to start paying attention to her?

CLINTON: Testing Out McCain's Themes?

Conservative bloggers love HRC's ominous new TV ad, in which the narrator intones, "It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Something's happening in the world...Who do you want answering the phone?" Righty bloggers think McCain will be able to make this same anti-Obama argument to even greater effect in the general election:

Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "Hillary Clinton's newest ad is the latest in the tradition of LBJ's 'Daisy' ad and Ronald Reagan's 'Bear in the Woods' spot. The problem is that the answer to the question it poses is...John McCain. After all, are Hillary's national security credentials and expertise that much greater than Barack Obama's?"

NRO's Jim Geraghty: "It is awfully nice of Hillary to test out John McCain's key theme against Obama. Too bad it's only running in Texas; McCain could use the 'Obama's not ready to be commander in chief' message spread through Ohio, too."

Townhall's Jonathan Garthwaite: "It's an excellent point to make against Obama during the primary. Thanks Hillary for framing the issue perfectly for John McCain."

OBAMA: You Can't Please Everyone...

Although most liberal bloggers prefer Obama to HRC, a few dispute the notion that Obama is a true progressive:

TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "I don't trust or like the 'change' meme. It's not really change, it's amporphous and vague. Obama has two core groups supporting him on his merits and message: African Americans and youth...[His] other core group is white males who hate Hillary. They aren't voting for Obama in my opinion, they are voting against Hillary. My beef with Obama is he is not the progressive the media is making him out to be. Nor will he really be an agent of change."

Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Don't tell me [Obama] is the next Russ Feingold or Paul Wellstone. [...] Will he be a hundred times better than [George W.] Bush? Absolutely. Will be ninety times better than McCain? Oh yeah. Is better than Hillary Clinton? I don't know, but I'm willing to take that chance at this point. What I just can't swallow is hearing, on a reasonably frequent basis, Obama reinforce conservative talking points, falsehoods and stereotypes in one ear, and that Obama is a progressive savior in the other ear."

OBAMA II: The Challenge And The Opportunity

Several liberal bloggers are discussing the unique aspects of an Obama-McCain general election match-up:

The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "It's been pretty widely observed that Barack Obama's relatively brief career in elective office hasn't actually included any tough races against Democrats. Less noted, but also true, is that John McCain's rather long career in electoral politics hasn't included any tough races either. Like Obama, McCain's toughest fights have come in primaries -- specifically his successful 1982 congressional primary, his unsuccessful 2000 primary, and his successful 2008 primary. In part as a consequence of these realities, and in part as a consequence of the particular dynamics of the 2008 primaries, very few people have heard McCain criticized from the left or heard Obama criticized from the right. That's an unusual situation, and it means that public perceptions of both men could prove quite fragile and prone to shifting once the battle is joined in earnest."

Bowers agrees with Yglesias: "I have to wonder if the ability of both McCain and Obama to win over significant defectors from their respective parties is largely due to this lack of serious general election challenges. They can sound bi-partisan because no one from the other party has ever really gone after them, at least yet, anyway. When they match up against each other in a general election, surrogates from both sides will blast away with partisan attacks, no matter how conciliatory Obama and McCain might or might not be to each other. As such, it could be that their respective appeal to independents and partisans from the other side is entirely temporary and bound to disappear before long. In a fluid campaign, which Obama vs. McCain absolutely will be, a huge upper hand will go to the candidate who can lock down his partisan base the fastest."

MCCAIN: A Double Standard?

Liberal bloggers are angry that McCain can say that he's "very proud" to have the endorsement of controversial TX pastor John Hagee, whereas Obama was pressured to distance himself from Louis Farrakhan's endorsement:

Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "Why is Louis Farrakhan deemed by our political establishment to be so radioactive as to not be fit for good company -- black candidates are required to repudiate his support even when they haven't sought it and denounce his views even when they've never advocated anything close to those views -- but John Hagee is a perfectly acceptable figure whom mainstream GOP politicians are free to court without any consequences or media objections?"

TPM's Eric Kleefeld: "Hagee's comments about world affairs can make Farrakhan seem pedestrian at times: He eagerly awaits the Armageddon, considers the Catholic Church to be the Anti-Christ, and has said that Jews brought their own persecution upon themselves. [...] So here's the question: Will the same media outlets who have hammered Barack Obama about Louis Farrakhan's uninvited endorsement now ask John McCain to denounce and reject the support of John Hagee, which was actually sought and publicly accepted?"

Firedoglake's David Neiwert: "Just how far out on the fringe is Hagee? He's so deeply enmeshed in the Apocalypse Now! contingent that even other right-wing xenophobes are calling him out -- specifically, Catholic League president Bill Donohue, who earlier today blasted McCain for embracing Hagee's endorsement."

MyDD's Todd Beeton: "This episode does point to the difficult tightrope McCain has to walk between sending signals to the right to assure them he's one of them and not alienating independents who are suspicious of the right, especially the religious variety. Luckily for McCain, it's a balancing act that's made easier by the extraordinary continued kid gloves with which the media handles him and the double standard they have for Democrats and Republicans. I'd love to see Barack Obama call John McCain out on this, maybe then the media will cover it."

MCCAIN II: What Happened To Reform?

Leading netroots bloggers are criticizing Democracy 21, a non-profit organization that promotes campaign finance reform, for pressuring Obama to use the public financing system while (in the netroots' view) giving McCain a free pass:

• Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher: "Democracy 21 had no trouble interpreting Barack Obama's statement -- 'If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election' -- to mean that he was opting into the public financing system for the general election. They sit around and parse this stuff all day, set themselves up as judge and jury about what the law is and how it should be interpreted. And now they want to shrug their shoulders because it's their good buddy John McCain and say that because there's no quarum at the FEC, he can do whatever the hell he wants? If that's the case they just ought to shut their doors now, because they've just admitted they're completely useless and serve no purpose whatsoever other than to needle people when it's of no consequence."
• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "The 'reformer' groups betrayed their idiocy during their efforts to regulate blogs, and now confirm that early prognosis by putting pressure on Obama's law-adhering behavior while continuing to ignore McCain's blatant lawbreaking. The Common Causes and Democracy 21s and Public Citizens like to rail about 'compromised' politicians, but they're proving in vivid color that they, themselves, are not immune to being compromised. And having invested too much in John McCain this past decade, they are incapable of calling him for his breaking the laws they supposedly champion."

This dust-up between liberal bloggers and Democracy 21 comes days after a similar dust-up between liberal bloggers and Common Cause, a non-profit organization "committed to honest, open and accountable government":

• Earlier this week, Open Left's Matt Stoller blasted Common Cause for not denouncing McCain's efforts to circumvent campaign finance law: "If you want to point to one single rationale for Common Cause's existence, it's the removal of the improper influence of money from the political system. So that group's failure to do anything about McCain's open lawbreaking around public financing is a symbolic measure of just how badly this group has failed."
• Common Cause Comm. Dir. Mary Boyle responded angrily: "After reading your rant about what you describe as Common Cause's 'remarkable legacy of failure,' my first reaction is to suggest that you might want to talk to your doctor about upping your meds. Most of your post seems to reflect a basic disagreement over whether Common Cause should be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, or of the progressive movement, or of the lefty blogosphere."

MCCAIN III: Reachin' Out To The Rightroots

McCain held another conference call with conservative bloggers yesterday:

The American Mind's Sean Hackbarth: "When he wins the nomination McCain will continue the campaign activities that have got him here. There will be more townhalls and continued media access to his campaign bus. He again invited webloggers to join him. A question came up about being more aggressive towards the Democratic nominee. McCain said he would engage in 'respectful debate' while highlighting 'stark contrasts.'"

Jim Geraghty quotes McCain's response to a question about contrasting himself with Obama: "I will portray stark differences in our positions. By the way, I would not count senator Clinton out. Anybody who has counted the Clintons out in the past has seen otherwise. If it is Senator Obama, I will be expressing my experience, background and knowledge. We'll be arguing higher lower taxes vs. higher taxes, bigger government vs. smaller government, a government run health care system or a system based on consumer choice. He said he would sit down, without conditions, with Raul Castro. People know Raul Castro was the executioner. He's the bad guy. I will discuss my qualifications but I will not talk down his qualifications."

Geraghty also reports: "[McCain] used an old joke to sign off, but it still makes me chuckle: 'Thank you bloggers. If we don't have another one of these calls in a week, please complain to my incompetent staff, which is made up mostly of folks we got through a prison work-release program.'"

Meanwhile, Frank J is annoyed that he wasn't invited to participate in the conference call: "I thought Fred Thompson established you're supposed to invite me to these things. I'm like Helen Thomas: I may be an idiot, but it's tradition to include me."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Better Late Than Never?

Slate's Mickey Kaus:

"Should later primaries count more than early primaries? If Hillary wins Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, that's what she's going to claim. It's not a bogus argument. Voters in late primaries have more information than voters in early primaries. Superdelegates should be able to take note. That's different from arguing that Hillary should be able to pull strings and get superdelegates even if she keeps losing."

LEST WE FORGET: Advice For Job Seekers

Radar's Todd Levin, Jason Roeder, Mike Sacks, and Ted Travelstead list "100 Things Not To Say In A Job Interview." Here are a few of the highlights:

• "Sorry I'm late. I could have sworn you said 'San Francisco.'"
• "Where I come from, that kind of question will get you shot."
• "I don't like to brag about competitive offers -- let's just say I've had some interest from a company that rhymes with Flurger Cling."
• "Funny, everyone who reads my résumé always homes right in on the manslaughter."
• "Why, yes, it is a fake beard."
• "What has two thumbs and totally loves commodities trading? This guy!"
• "I'm just looking to make one last big score before I get out of the game. And I'd love to do that right here at Applebee's."
• "That would be an anklet tracking device, as stipulated by the conditions of my parole."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at February 29, 2008 12:56 PM