April 28, 2008

4/28: Barack-ed On All Sides

Barack Obama has had a rough weekend in the political blogosphere. First, the netroots are criticizing him for appearing on FOX News Sunday and "legitimizing" FOX, which they consider "a Republican propaganda outlet". Matt Stoller was particularly incensed by Obama's appearance on the show, and complained, "You can't trust the Obama campaign, they will lie to you to promote right-wing institutions." Meanwhile, Jeremiah Wright's media blitz has prompted a fresh round of outraged denunciations from conservative bloggers. Righty bloggers think Obama gave John McCain a huge opening by calling his relationship with Wright "a legitimate political issue" during his FOX interview, and they're pleased that McCain is starting to go after Wright himself. With about a week to go before the NC and IN primaries, Obama can't be pleased that Wright is back in the spotlight.

OBAMA: Legitimizing Fox News?

Several liberal bloggers are upset that Obama (a.) agreed to appear on FOX News Sunday in the first place, and (b.) didn't use the interview as an opportunity to criticize Fox News more strongly:

• Daily Kos' smintheus: "Fox is a Republican propaganda outlet that aspires to be granted a respectability it refuses to earn. More to the point, Fox has been down in the dirt spreading malicious and false rumors about Obama for well over a year...for example, the ridiculous and anyway irrelevant 'information' that the presidential candidate is a Muslim. The right approach to an interview on Fox, if Obama really thought it acceptable to reward rumor-mongerers, would have been to use the appearance to denounce the network's lack of integrity, enumerate the lies it has propagated, and demand that Chris Wallace acknowledge that they're false. That's how one deals with bullying, by publicly humiliating the perpetrators -- and [Rupert] Murdoch's network is nothing if not a Republican bully-boy. Trying to persuade a Fox 'News' personality that he's reasonable and moderate is just about the last thing Barack Obama should have been doing on that of all networks."
• TPM's Greg Sargent: "Obama didn't take on Fox at all in any meaningful sense. [...] Obama definitely pushed back hard on some of Chris Wallace's questions, but at no point did he draw attention to Fox's spreading of lies about him or critique the network in a general sense. Obama had a perfect opening to do this, too. Wallace pressed him repeatedly about Jeremiah Wright and the bogus 'flag pin' nonsense -- a perfect set-up for Obama to point out that Fox had obsessed about both these issues to an obscene degree and that Fox had been at the forefront of spreading the Obama-is-a-Muslim lies."
• Open Left's Stoller: "You can't trust the Obama campaign, they will lie to you to promote right-wing institutions."
• In a separate post, Stoller complains that the netroots "don't believe in standing up for ourselves": "I think lost in all this nonsense is just how weakened we have become in all this. When we accept lies from our leaders and openly dismissive knocks from them, it destroys our core argument that Democrats need to have integrity and to stand up for themselves. [...] If you don't like that Obama steps on you, speak out. [Hillary] Clinton at least has a reason to step on us since many of us have openly called her a Republican. It's a fight, and we didn't back her. Instead we back someone that openly lies to us and thinks nothing of it. [...] It was a mistake for us to endorse Obama, just as it was a mistake for us to do nothing against Clinton after she accused Moveon of intimidating her supporters at caucuses. We should be stuffing ads discussing her Bosnia sniper fire in Indiana. But we don't believe in standing up for ourselves."

Unsurprisingly, pro-Clinton bloggers also criticized Obama:

• MyDD's Jerome Armstrong: "This is basically Obama kicking the 'dailykos-americablog-moveon-thenation' secular warrior partisans out of the way to make room for the pivot to 'the center' (and recapture the image of a part of his base he previously held). Its the anti-thesis of the belief that we are in such a partisan-age that base politics is what wins a GE, not Obama (nor McCain, for that matter) believe it. [...] I doubt there are that many hardcore partisans, the ones that keep dreaming Obama's movement has anything to do with a fighting partisan position, will abandon him over this anytime soon, they've still got Clinton around to hate on."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "The Obama camp probably was thinking 'do we need another Media camp to join Lou Dobbs in an all out attack on Barack Obama?' and they apparently convinced Obama to play it safe. After all, he is still in the driver's seat for the nomination. Besides, if it is not clear by now, it should be, Obama is NOT a fighter. Period. It is time to stop expecting him to be one. I wanted him to become one. He never did. And he never will. If you want a fighter, then Obama is not your man."

OBAMA II: Enough With The Faux Outrage!

Several of Obama's online supporters are defending the IL senator:

• BooMan: "Going on FOX News says nothing about Obama's ideas and proposals for dealing with mass communications. It's just a violation of the the blogosphere's 'strategy' for delegitimizing FOX News. I don't disagree with the underlying strateg[y]. But that's all [it is]. It's takes a tremendous amount of self-important chutzpah to decide you are going to reject a candidate for using a different political strategy than the one you advocate. If a candidate's political strategy involves pandering to fear and xenophobia, or racism, or misogyny and homophobia, then I can understand why their strategy might, in itself, cause a person to foreswear any support. But an appearance on FOX News Sunday...? [...] We should have learned by now that the Obama campaign is better at strategy than we are at giving strategic advice. If Obama had followed the blogopshere's advice he would have been marginalized long ago as a fringe candidate of the far left. Let them do the strategizing. They seem to know what they're doing."
• Oliver Willis: "A few months ago I wrote about how I really really want the president of the United States to be someone who is the national leader of the country and not just a party chairman. I feel the need to point this out again in the middle of some of the typical blogosphere whining over Sen. Obama's appearance Sunday on Fox News. There are certain things I demand out of a Democratic candidate, but I don't labor under the pretense that the person is going to check, check, check down the line for the progressive movement. Do I want them to sound like a Republican and echo conservative phrasing? No. But to act as if a deviation from the line will cause the universe to collapse on itself? Come on."
• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "One of the most striking things I discovered about Obama last year was how many conservatives and Republicans who have encountered or met or engaged him over the years think highly of him. When the partisan right tries to swift-boat him with any number of polarizing clips, smears and half-truths, his best bet is to counter them directly, in the lion's den. He should do more of these interviews. He should go on [Bill] O'Reilly and [Sean] Hannity. His ability to talk to and engage those on the other side of the aisle is real. It's an asset he shouldn't hide."

OBAMA III: Giving Credit Where Credit's Due

To say that conservative bloggers fiercely oppose Obama would be an understatement. Nevertheless, some were (mildly) impressed by his performance on FOX News Sunday:

• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "Obama showed, once again, that he is a rare political talent. In contrast with his uncharacteristically poor performance in the Pennsylvania debate, Obama handled questions about Wright, [Bill] Ayers, flag lapel pins -- all the hot button topics he would rather avoid -- deftly. Rather than showing resentment at being asked about such things, Obama acknowledged that voters want to know who he is, and that these topics are therefore fair game. He skillfully deflected questions on these as well as more substantive issues. [...] I've said that I think John McCain is the early favorite to beat either Obama or Hillary Clinton, but Obama's performance today was a reminder of how formidable he will be in the fall, assuming that he gets the nomination -- and that's apart from the fact that he is the greatest money-machine in the history of American politics.""
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "Make no mistake. If Barack is the nominee, he will be a formidable opponent. Not because of his policies -- if anything, they are his weak point. But he comes across as good humored, reasonable, likable. He is able to express pretty left wing ideas in ways that go far in making them sound sensible. [...] The challenge for Republicans will be finding a way to make sure that the American people look past the 'willingness to listen' (i.e. Barack's genuinely likable demeanor) and understand that he subscribes to the kind of doctrinaire left-wing liberalism that guarantees that, after the 'listening' is over, the decisions will be uniformly left-wing."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Give Barack Obama this: he performed a lot better on Fox News Sunday today than he did in the debate on April 16th. He stammered less when challenged, allowed his considerable personal warmth to surface, and kept his annoyance and anger in check. On the other hand, he offered about the same level of commitment to his answers as he did in Philadelphia, and gave at least a couple of whoppers."

OBAMA IV: How Does That Albatross Feel, Barack?

Rev. Jeremiah Wright's media blitz has prompted conservative bloggers to step up their criticism of the controversial pastor -- and, by extension, Obama:

• Michelle Malkin: "What a weekend it was for Jeremiah 'AmeriKKKa' Wright. The jet-setting race-monger has now been proclaimed 'hottest brother in America.' [...] In Dallas, he lamented his 'public crucixion' before an audience of 4,000 supporters at Friendship-West Baptist Church. In Detroit tonight at the NAACP's Church of the Racial Hustle, Wright patted himself on the back for his 'descriptive' powers of an America that he believes deserved 9/11. It's not 'divisive,' you see, to shout 'God damn America' with your veins popping at the pulpit. That's just 'descriptive.' And anyone who says otherwise is a God-damned racist!"
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Reverend Wright, by the way, says he is not running for the White House, he's running 'for Jesus.' That must be the black Jesus who was killed by the Romans, who were Italians, who were Europeans, who were white people, not actually the Jewish guy Reverend Wright's friends Calypso Louis Farrakhan and Moammar Kadafi would denounce for being a Jew."
• Platt Liebau: "Reading and listening to the Wright material makes it hard not to feel sorry for the minister, who obviously is trapped under a load of bitterness and resentment for America and so many of its people. His insistence that hatred is being directed toward African-Americans seems uncomfortably like projection. [...] Most troubling of all, Wright's statement about Barack 'do[ing] what politicians do' raises again some uncomfortable questions about the candidate. One has to wonder: In his comfortable certainty that Barack is distancing himself for political reasons alone, what does Rev. Wright know about him that we don't know?"
• Hinderaker: "[Wright] is a despicable human being, and the fact that has been ordained, apparently, is a disgrace. [...] I don't know anyone who would sit still for a minister who persistently abused the pulpit to preach hate instead of the Gospel. As a Christian, I am outraged that 'Reverend' Wright has hijacked my faith to preach hate and to sow falsehood. How Barack Obama could have participated in this charade for twenty years, and then held himself out as someone fit to lead this nation, is inexplicable."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Permit me to propose a new rule: If your mentor of 20 years has ever declared the United States to be 'the same as al-Qaeda, under a different color flag, calling on the name a different God to sanction and approve our murder and our mayhem!' you are ineligible for the Presidency."

MCCAIN: 'Cause Nothing Says "Working Class" Like A Private Jet

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about Barry Meier's and Margot Williams' article in yesterday's New York Times, which describes how McCain used his wife's corporate jet at a reduced rate for seven months:

• MyDD's Josh Orton: "The New York Times just posted a blockbuster online (set to print Sunday) that exposes two more broken McCain pledges: to not to fly on corporate jets, and to not exploit his wife's wealth for campaign advantage. First, the campaign finance side -- by exploiting a loophole left open by the non-functioning FEC, McCain flew for months on a corporate jet owned by his wife's company, but only paid a fraction of the cost. [...] Not only is he exploiting a loophole to save millions, he's actually going back on an earlier pledge. In early 2007, McCain's campaign swore off the practice of using corporate jets."
• Firedoglake's Attaturk: "As the fact that he's married to a woman with her own private jet demonstrates, John McCain has a nine-figure lifestyle. Naturally, this puts him in the ideal position for a Republican in that he can say things about his likely Democratic opponent, the mixed-race child of a single mother, who worked as a community organizer on the Southside of Chicago [...]: 'Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Sunday called Democratic rival Barack Obama insensitive to poor people and out of touch on economic issues.' I'm sure the media will get around to pointing out this rather bizarre and laughable statement as soon as they get done snipping Jeremiah Wright quotes out of entire sentences and other such non-barbecue related matters."
• Singer: "While we're on the subject of elitism and insensitivity to hardworking Americans by presidential candidates, perhaps it would be worth it to look directly at McCain himself. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee tapped into his wife's immense wealth -- estimated at $100 million -- to enable him to traipse around the country in an opulent corporate jet, at the same time as refusing to disclose information on his spouse's income (as did every other presidential candidate in the race). Not only has McCain relied on his heiress wife to finance his campaign's travel expenses, the Arizona Republican has also raided the public till in a way not clearly allowed by Senate ethics regulations to help pay for his trip to a campaign fundraiser in London, of all places. What's more, McCain reaped the benefits of the public financing system, which he had opted into, only to unilaterally pull out of the program in a way, again, not clearly allowed by federal campaign finance law -- a body of law he helped shape. Remind me again which candidate is elitist? Which one looks down on the hardworking American man and woman paying their fair share in taxes?"
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Cindy McCain has a private jet. That's interesting enough. But, John McCain used his wife's private jet to campaign around the country. And, she gave him a sweetheart deal -- but the McCain campaign says her money doesn't help his campaign. They're lying. Cindy McCain has been footing the bill for her husband's political career from the very beginning -- right after McCain dumped his first wife to marry Cindy. She needs to release her tax returns."

Atrios wonders why this story didn't break earlier: "Regarding the NYT story about McCain using his wife's plane for campaign purposes, what took so long? I mean, all of the members of the press's sycophant express have been following him around like needy puppies for months, as commonly repeated reports about McCain 'flying coach' floated around."

MCCAIN II: What Happened To Your Sense Of Honor, Senator?

Liberal bloggers are accusing McCain of hypocrisy for explicitly linking Obama to Hamas on a conference call with conservative bloggers:

"'...I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States,' said McCain. 'So apparently has [Sandanista leader] Danny Ortega and several others. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare...If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas I think people can make judgments accordingly.'"

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "The common wisdom among many is that in the case that Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, the GOP hit machine will work as follows: A Republican crosses the line in attacking Obama, the media repeats the attacks over and over and over again in questioning whether it is right for the attacks to be put forward, John McCain quasi-denounces the attack, then a subsequent round of discussion (and replaying the attacks) goes on in the media. In such a situation, the attacks get out without McCain looking bad. Indeed, we've seen such a game play out surrounding an attack ad revolving on Reverend Wright that the North Carolina Republican Party is attempting to put on the air. [...] Problems arise, however, when the candidate himself takes a dive in the mud. And that's exactly what McCain does here, suggesting implausibly and laughably that Obama is the candidate of dictators and terrorists. For a politician who has hung his hat on the term 'honor' for so long, this isn't exactly an honorable campaign tactic. And it's a tactic that will likely backfire."
• Daily Kos' georgia10: "We saw the same tactic used by Bush-Cheney '04 against John Kerry, when the right-wing noise machine claimed that al-Qaeda wanted Kerry to win the White House. McCain claimed last week that he wanted to run a campaign 'that is worthy of the people we seek to serve.' It's apparent from McCain's cheap fear-mongering and distortions that he doesn't think much of the people he seeks to serve at all."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "There are plenty of John McCains. And Obama's got to figure out how to respond to this 'my opponent is the terrorist candidate' stuff. But that's his problem. And it'll be a test of him to see how he responds because there will always be McCain types in the political arena and being able to stand up to them and put them in their place is a test of political canniness and stamina. But the key here is McCain himself. The truth is that the guy doesn't actually have any real convictions -- or to put it more precisely, no real consistent convictions. That's evidenced in part by the kind of campaign the guy's running now. And at least a few of his press admirers are starting to sense that."

Liberal bloggers are also criticizing McCain for failing to compel the NC GOP to take down its controversial anti-Obama ad:

• Firedoglake's TeddySanFran: "Can [McCain] really not get the ad pulled? Or does he relish the controversy, sailing above the argument on the media-defined high-road? [Is he] impotent? Or a sleazebag? Or both?"
• Sudbay: "If McCain says he'll do everything in his power to stop it, and it isn't stopped, clearly, McCain has no power. That's very telling. [...] While this episode demonstrates the GOP gutter politics, it also really says something about McCain's leadership abilities -- or lack thereof. He is the head of the Republican party and can't get some two-bit political hack in the Republican party to heed his words. How is McCain ever going to handle Congress? Even worse, how is McCain ever going to handle our enemies? If people in McCain's own party don't listen to him, why would anyone else?"

MCCAIN III: Wright Is Off The Table, Conservatives

Many conservative bloggers were initially confused by McCain's standards regarding which of Obama's associates (Wright = yes; Ayers = no) are subject to scrutiny and which aren't:

• Malkin: "[McCain] didn't bother to watch the 41-second video before his campaign leaned on the NC GOP to withdraw it. He doesn't want to see it, lest he sully his delicate eyes. Yet, he's so indignantly sure 'that there's no place for that kind of campaigning.' And then he has the gall to turn around and knock Obama's elitism. Congratulations, Sen. McCain: You've out-snobbed Snobama. [...] Meanwhile, McCain continues to give himself special dispensation to challenge Obama's relationship with Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers. Because, you see, raising questions about a Radical of Color is 'not appropriate and unhelpful', but raising questions about a Radical of Pallor is McCain-tested and RNC-approved."
• Hinderaker: "I'm fine with calling Obama Hamas's man in Washington (and Danny Ortega's too), but I am at a loss to understand why it is OK to pin Hamas's endorsement on Obama, but, in McCain's world, 'unacceptable' to tie Obama to another supporter, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, to whom he is obviously far closer."
• NRO's Andy McCarthy agrees with Hinderaker: "The Hamas endorsement of Obama, while understandable, was unsolicited; Wright, on the other hand, is someone with whom Obama was tight for two decades and who Obama chose to incorporate in his campaign as an advisor. Why does McCain figure the former is fit for criticism but focus on the latter is an occasion for smug condemnation of conservatives?"

MCCAIN IV: Scratch That, Wright Is On The Table!

Conservative bloggers were pleased when McCain publicly criticized Wright after Obama called his pastor "a legitimate political issue" during his FOX News Sunday interview:

• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "Perhaps looking for an excuse to get out of his political predicament (i.e. he can't talk about a critical issue his likely opponent admits is a problem), McCain now seems to have walked through Obama's open door. [...] Apparently all now agree: this is not an illegitimate issue."
• Morrissey: "This turned into a thing of beauty, politically speaking. McCain had made high-profile arguments against using Wright as a campaign issue, which had annoyed people on the Right but played well with the centrists and independents McCain hopes to woo away from Democrats in the fall. After Obama made the mistake of calling the issue legitimate, McCain had the opening he needed, provided by a neophyte politician who failed to grasp the advantage he had until that moment."
• NRO's Byron York: "I think the bottom line here is that McCain, who personally doesn't want to push the Wright issue, thinks he has found a way to get himself out of the position of fighting every other Republican and third-party group that wants to bring it up. If Obama is the nominee, we'll see if that policy can withstand the pressures of a general-election campaign."
• see-dubya: "McCain could have saved the party a lot of frustration had he just said this a couple days ago, and he wouldn't have looked indecisive. He may hurt Obama with this, but he hasn't done himself any favors."

On the left side of the blogosphere, The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen isn't surprised by McCain's shift: "Considering McCain’s career and temperament, none of this should surprise anyone. He is, after all, the Republican presidential candidate and he really wants to be president. So, he’s willing to break promises, get ugly, and take cheap shots? More than six months before the election? Of course he is. Campaign reporters and talking heads refuse to believe it, but McCain is not a man of high-minded principal. He’s an opportunistic conservative pol with an effective p.r. operation."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Foreign Policy As Spite

The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias criticizes McCain's boast that he will be "Hamas's worst nightmare":

"As well as being kind of scumbaggy, this way of looking at the world reveals a seriously flawed foreign policy outlook. Consider Saddam Hussein. He's a bad dude. And which American president is his worst nightmare? Well, it's George W. Bush. Thanks to Bush, Saddam got booted from power and killed. Compared to George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Dubya was a disaster for Saddam. But of course Dubya's Iraq policy has also been a disaster for the United States of America, whereas Clinton and Papa Bush ran policies that made us better off. International politics shouldn't be conceived of as some nutty zero-sum race to the bottom where our goal is to make Hamas cry -- the question is who are we trying to help and do we have ways to do it. Probably the worst thing that could happen to Hamas would be for it to be supplanted by some more radical group like al-Qaeda. But that wouldn't help Israel or the United States, any more than getting into a self-destructive conflict with Iran is a good idea just because it might make some bad Iranians suffer."

LEST WE FORGET: Another Gem From Chris Matthews

Hardball host Chris Matthews offers Obama some "advice" on how to get white Americans to vote for him:

"You got to talk like a firebrand because if you're carrying their fight for them, they're going to like you. You know, a lot of white people root for black athletes because they're winning for the home team. People are quite willing to pick up black heroes, if they'll win for their side."

Radar's Alex Balk:

"It's good advice for the Obama team: Remember how all the Caucasians in Chicago hated black person Michael Jordan until the Bulls started winning championships? Once that happened, it was almost as if he was as good as white people! Barack just needs to work on his perimeter shooting a bit and the race is over. Also, he should consider putting Scottie Pippen on the ticket."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at April 28, 2008 12:54 PM