March 20, 2008

3/20: Concentrated Fire

For the first time in months, liberal bloggers are mounting a sustained attack on John McCain. After McCain made false statements about Iran training Al Qaeda in Iraq, liberal bloggers joined Barack Obama in hammering McCain for his remarks. Some bloggers claim that McCain's "gaffe" reflects his fundamental misunderstanding of the Iraq situation, while others argue that McCain is deliberately pushing a false link between Iran and Al Qaeda in Iraq in order to further his hawkish agenda. Either way, the fact that so many lefty bloggers are collectively criticizing the GOP candidate is a notable departure from the Obama-Hillary Clinton war that has consumed the liberal blogosphere for the past few months. Is this a turning point in the netroots' coverage of the race, or merely a blip? We'll have to wait and see.

MCCAIN: Johnny Be Wrong

Liberal bloggers continue to criticize McCain for falsely asserting that Iran is training Al Qaeda in Iraq:

• AMERICAblog's A.J. Rossmiller: "It's increasingly clear that despite having somehow gained a reputation for foreign policy expertise, Senator McCain doesn't have a grasp on the most basic -- and important! -- details of Iraq or even the greater Middle East. [...] He recently claimed, multiple times, that Iran is training al Qaeda elements from Iraq. Iran, of course, is a Shia theocracy, and al Qaeda a Sunni terrorist group. This is like claiming that the RNC is training Democratic congressional candidates. Seriously -- this is a HUGE error. Not a single other government official or expert has claimed anything like this. It wasn't a momentary gaffe or slip; again, he said it multiple times. It's increasingly clear that he truly doesn't understand the situation...five years into the war."
• Firedoglake's Blue Texan: "It's almost impossible to imagine the wingnut/media outrage circus if Obama or Clinton had claimed Iran was training al Qaeda. I see Sludge Report headlines like, HOW CAN WE TRUST OBAMA TO FIGHT THE WAR IF HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THE ENEMY?, a series of passive-aggressive NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME posts from Glenn Reynolds, declarations by [Chris Matthews] that the race is already over, grim-faced former generals expressing their disapproval on MSNBC, Fixed News playing the clip over and over and over...Truly delicious. Commander-in-chief threshold my ass."
• Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "There are only two plausible possibilities which could account for McCain's false statements: (1) he was engaged in the standard tactic of war advocates -- perpetrated ever since 9/11 -- of just asserting that disparate (and even warring) Muslim factions are allies with one another in the Endless War without there being any evidence that this is so (Saddam loves Al Qaeda which loves Hezbollah which loves the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood which loves Iran which loves the Taliban which loves Hamas which loves Osama bin Laden, etc. etc.), or (2) McCain is just completely ignorant of the most elementary facts about the region and the war in which the media has decreed him to be a Great Expert."

MCCAIN II: Was This A Gaffe, Or...?

The Huffington Post's Sam Stein prompted a fresh round of anti-McCain posts when he noted that the GOP candidate continued to push this Iran-Al Qaeda link in a campaign statement released yesterday: "Sen. John McCain has done it again. For the third time in two days, the Arizona Republican has pushed the definitively false statement that the terrorist group Al-Qaeda was getting assistance from Iran, even though he was publicly ridiculed for the same false assertion on Tuesday."

• Firedoglake's Phoenix Woman: "McCain -- Lying, Stupid, or Both?"
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "We're heading into senility territory here, or at best serial lying."
• Daily Kos' Hunter: "Why do people keep calling it a 'gaffe'? If he's stating something that's flatly wrong three times in two days, it's not a gaffe, it's a talking point. All recent evidence has indicated that McCain has simply internalized the central Bush lesson of his war: if the facts are against your desired policy, make up new facts and continue on your way."
• dday: "Equating enemies and scaring the public is in [McCain's] best interest. It plays into his stupid and shortsighted sense of 'honor' that stipulates we can never leave Iraq. Furthermore, McCain is at the least belligerent toward Iran, and it serves his interests to believe they are in league with Al Qaeda. Whether McCain is confused, believes what he wants to believe, or is actually deviously conflating various enemies to create a sense of the 'Other' is immaterial. The consequence is the same; more intractable conflicts and a catastrophic foreign policy."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "[McCain's] record actually shows he's one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years -- not just because he's a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing."
• Atrios: "Increasingly I think McCain is genuinely clueless about pretty much everything, and the press just gives him pass after pass. Unlike most of us, they've apparently enjoyed the last 8 years and the fruits of the last time they gave the clueless fantasyland idiot a pass."

Even The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, who views McCain quite favorably, is critical of the AZ senator's remarks: "Is McCain ready on day one? These repeated gaffes about al Qaeda being helped by Iran are beginning to make me wonder. I assumed he was more cognizant of the complex realities of Iraq than our current president. And it's staggering to me that it hasn't even occurred to McCain that exploiting some of the divisions between Shiite and Sunni Islam might actually be a tactic worth considering in our increasingly complex battle over there. Was this more Bush-Rove dumbing-down for the American public? Or is he really that ignorant?"

MCCAIN III: Craving A Big Mac

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers are growing increasingly antsy to take on McCain:

• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "It's common knowledge in the Senate that, aside from work he's done in the Armed Services Committee, McCain doesn't know anything about anything. He's basically an ignorant old man that understands the military and nothing else, including diplomacy, economics, or any other aspect of national security. He is announcing that he wants to stay 100 years in Iraq, and his cabinet choices will reveal that he is intent on a war with Iran. A lot of savvy unaligned progressives who aren't backing either nominee are beginning to get really scared about McCain's capacity to get into office as a moderate. I don't mean to pull the panic button...but this guy is an extremist and it's about time people focus a little less on Clinton-Obama and more on McCain. Frankly, there's little most of us can do about the primary contest, so it's better to focus downticket and on McCain anyway."
• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "I think it's hard not to look at John McCain's surge to a 67 percent favorable rating and conclude that Democrats are paying a pretty steep price for the never-ending nature of the Obama-Clinton race. It's just impossible for attacks on McCain to gain any real traction without McCain having an official opponent who can press those attacks."
• MyDD's Jerome Armstrong thinks Dems need to focus on issues other than Iraq in order to beat McCain: "It wouldn't be a stretch of an assumption to believe that if the vote were tomorrow, McCain might win, and riding in on experience and leadership. The biggest problem with McCain for Democrats, is that Iraq is falling off the charts in terms of being an issue of concern to voters. [...] What's the effective narrative being formed against McCain that's not simply over Iraq? We might be fighting the last election over that issue, missing the best way to beat McCain."

OBAMA: Step In The Arena

Several liberal bloggers are praising Obama for his Iraq speech yesterday, in which the IL senator criticized both Clinton and McCain:

• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "Good. I get [Obama's] criticism of Clinton, mainly in response to Clinton's criticism of him earlier this week, but as I've said umpteen times, the more these two go after McCain, the better. This is all the more important when McCain gives them a golden opportunity -- such as repeatedly screwing up the basics of Iraq, Iran, and al Qaeda."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "Overall, not a bad speech. There wasn't too much new in it, and I wish he had taken on some broader themes, but overall it helped his cause. Not only was he firm about wanting to leave Iraq (thus addressing Hillary's exploitation of Samantha Power's remarks that Obama would 'revisit' withdrawal when be became president), but he gave good reasons for wanting to leave. On a scale of 1-10, I'd give it a 7."

Meanwhile, McCain's false claims about Iran and Al-Qaeda prompted several liberal bloggers to (once again) criticize Clinton for boosting McCain's credibility on national security issues:

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "Compare these two messages coming out of the Clinton and Obama campaigns just one day after McCain all but admitted he has no idea what's going on in Iraq. [...] Notice how [Obama's] campaign goes directly after McCain and [Clinton's] goes and directly backs up McCain on the issue of national security at the very time when McCain's credentials on national security are being called into question. Remind me again which campaign is supposed to be the one that understands how to run an extended hardened effort against the GOP? Don't think for a second that the comments from the Clinton campaign -- from the former President and the candidate herself -- suggesting that McCain is strong on national security, conceding the issue to him, aren't going to hamper Democratic efforts up and down the ballot come November. It's at times like these that you really have to ask, is it really worth it?"
• Ezra Klein: "One problem with Hillary Clinton's strategy of praising John McCain's national security experience to diminish Barack Obama's credentials is that, if she ends up facing McCain, her ability to attack will be much constrained. [...] If she attacks him in a debate, he can just give a Reaganesque chuckle and say, 'well Senator Clinton, a few months ago, when you were running against Senator Obama, you were praising my experience and judgment. Now you're attacking it. But I haven't changed.' [...] How can you blame the media for accepting McCain's aura of experience if even Hillary Clinton is granting him that advantage?"

OBAMA II: The Blame Game

Several liberal bloggers are blaming Obama's campaign (and/or Obama's supporters in the MI legislature) for preventing a re-vote in MI:

• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "With every Obama blog whining that Hillary Clinton should drop out, it is worth remembering this key point -- the reason the Democratic contest will not be decided by the Convention is because Barack Obama did everything in his power to remove certainty from the contest by acting to block revotes in Florida and Michigan."
• TAPPED's Paul Starr: "The burden for the failure falls clearly on Senator Obama's supporters, who, perhaps understandably, didn't want to risk the psychological impact of a defeat in Michigan at the end of the primary season. But having prevented any new vote in Michigan, Obama's campaign may well have given up any moral claim to oppose seating of the delegates elected in January. As of now, the Democrats are planning to hold a national convention without what would have been the third and fifth largest state delegations. [...] I can't think of a recent case in which a political party has inflicted on itself such severe and unnecessary damage."

This criticism didn't stop John Aravosis from going after Clinton: "If we lose the election in the fall, it will be all Hillary's fault. It's time for Howard Dean and the party leaders to step in and stop Hillary before she starts a civil war (and one is coming) and destroys our party."

OBAMA III: Damaged Goods?

Several liberal bloggers are noting that the Wright controversy has dealt a significant blow to Obama's poll numbers:

• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Obama has definitely taken a pretty big hit over Jeremiah Wright, as demonstrated by his declining position in national polls against both Clinton and McCain. Now, this isn't the first time Obama has taken a hit, and it is entirely possible that this current downturn is yet another in a series of entirely temporary negative stretches for his campaign. However, in this particular case, I think it is more likely that Obama has suffered some lasting electoral damage. [...] Widespread broadcast of excerpts from Wright's sermons has, in one formulation, damaged Obama's ability to offer a 'dignified climbdown' to white voters who are still uncomfortable, but not outright opposed, with an African-American as President."
• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas links to SurveyUSA polls showing Obama dropping in both OH and MO: "All in all, a pretty solid hit on Obama. We'll see how resiliently he can bounce back."
• Josh Marshall: "There does seem to be some real evidence now that something is allowing John McCain to draw even with the Democratic candidates in hypothetical national match ups and that Clinton is moving ahead against Obama in nationwide matchups between the two of them. On top of this there's a poll out of North Carolina showing a neck and neck race between Obama and Clinton, a state that has been expected to be a strong one for Obama. [...] These come after a string of days where the major campaign coverage has focused either on Obama's problems (mainly Wright) or his efforts to deal with those problems. And neither is good news for him in the short run."

Meanwhile, Armstrong takes his fellow liberal bloggers to task for not sufficiently denouncing Wright's comments: "There's little doubt that most of the blogosphere or online progressives or whatever you'd like to call it, back Obama. It was over 70 percent for those that attended the Take Back America conference. [...] I was disgusted by what Wright said, and didn't mind saying so. I said that Obama needed to throw Wright under the bus and run him over a few times, to move on from this fiasco. But unfortunately, Obama didn't, or couldn't, do it. That's too bad, and will be costly for his chances. But it's even worse that, caught up in a presidential contest in which denouncing Wright has been seen only through the prism of supporting Obama, progressives have been silent about Wright's wrong and divisive words. That's a terrible precedent to have set."

OBAMA IV: Wheeeeee!

Conservative bloggers are delighting in Obama's slide in the polls and buzzing about Clinton's momentum:

• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "Obama's numbers are dipping hard and it's starting to become possible to imagine that the bleeding will get so bad that the Democratic Super Delegates may break hard towards Hillary to prevent a general election disaster."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Because of the Clintons' effective deployment of the race card within the Democratic Primary, super delegates are getting nervous. They know they were put in place to avoid the party going far left. And they are worried that Obama, the unknown quantity, could be painted as far left by the GOP. [...] The Democrats want to win. If the super delegates can't get to the White House with Obama, they will throw him under the bus faster than he threw his grandmother under the bus -- damn the popular vote in the primaries."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Are Hillary's advisors right that Wright will doom [Obama] in the general? I'm still skeptical, but...dude. Note the Ohio numbers in particular. Think any superdels will be seeing that on their fax machines this morning? All signs point to yes!"
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Obama's not toast, but polls show the toaster getting warmer. [...] I think it's entirely possible that the superdelegates will bet that enough African-Americans get over it and vote Democrat in November, rather than give up the entire white working class vote (and, arguably, Latinos and the elderly)."

Townhall's Hugh Hewitt, on the other hand, thinks Obama will still be the nominee: "It is very difficult to imagine how African Americans or the young Obama vote could be reconciled to [superdelegates giving the nomination to Clinton]...I have to conclude that wiser heads will prevail and that Obama, bruised as he is by the Wright controversy and tainted as he is by the latest goings-on in the Rezko trial, will be the nominee. The risk of a shattered party base and of a nominee with very high and fixed negative ratings is too great, and the possibility of repairing the damage to Obama's image too high to see other than the nomination of the candidate with the most votes and delegates."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Why We Went Into Iraq

Peter D. Feaver, writing in The Weekly Standard:

"In these times, political leaders are asking voters two questions: Will you vote for me, and do you have the stomach for continuing this costly war? [...] Public opinion on both those questions is a function of two underlying attitudes: the retrospective opinion of whether the war was a mistake, and the prospective opinion of whether the war can ultimately be won. [...]

In 2004, the prospective attitude (will we win) was the long pole in the tent for supporting the continuation of the war, but the retrospective attitude (was it the right thing) was the long pole in the tent in determining presidential choice. Put simply, President [George W.] Bush beat Senator [John] Kerry in part because, at that time, a majority of Americans said they still supported the original decision to invade. To win voters, McCain may have to address their concerns about the original decision to invade Iraq."

LEST WE FORGET: The Downside Of March Madness

Cracked lists "6 Characters Who Ruin Every NCAA Office Pool." Here's our favorite:

The Guy Who's Winning In His Other Pool

This guy just clearly doesn't know what he's doing. He's got all the one seeds losing the Sweet 16 and has American in the Final Four. Rather than just keeping his mouth shut while everyone else talks about their still-alive bracket, this guy will try to convince everyone that he's picked every single game correctly in his dad's office pool. 'See this was just my upset bracket. I wasn't even trying on this one. In my dad's office pool I haven't lost a single game in the last three years. Whenever I drop by the old man's office, they call me "the kid" and carry me around on their shoulders.' In all likelihood, this guy's father doesn't love him or is dead...

Posted by Ian Faerstein at March 20, 2008 12:45 PM