August 29, 2008

8/29: Rightroots Rejoice Over Palin

As expected, the news that John McCain had selected a running mate (AK Gov. Sarah Palin) knocked Barack Obama's acceptance speech out of the media spotlight. Simply put, conservative bloggers were thrilled by the pick. Unlike some of the other rumored VP candidates such as CT Sen. Joe Lieberman and ex-PA Gov. Tom Ridge, Palin is admired by both social conservatives and fiscal conservatives in the blogosphere. Furthermore, many righty bloggers believe that a McCain/Palin ticket creates significant political "headaches" for Barack Obama by co-opting his "change" message and by attracting some of Hillary Clinton's former supporters to the GOP.

A few conservative bloggers expressed reservations about Palin's lack of experience, but they are definitely in the minority. Most conservative bloggers are ecstatic about the pick.

In other news, Obama's acceptance speech drew praise from liberal bloggers and criticism from conservative bloggers. The netroots loved Obama's sharply-worded attacks on John McCain and are relieved that Obama is getting more aggressive. Daily Kos' mcjoan writes:

"As a highly partisan Dem who has been wishing and hoping and waiting for Obama to do what we in the blogosphere have been asking for for so long from our Dem leadership -- draw a sharp contrast with the Republicans and bring the fight to them -- I'm a satisfied customer tonight."

Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, are portraying Obama's speech as cliched, ultra-partisan, and lacking in specifics.

MCCAIN VEEPSTAKES: It's Palin!

Most conservative bloggers are thrilled that McCain has chosen Palin as his running mate:

• The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini: "Outstanding pick."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "An extraordinary choice. Pro-life conservatives across the country have to be thrilled with John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as the GOP nominee for Veep. Reformers have to be thrilled. Inside-baseball analysts have to be thrilled."
• NRO's Andy McCarthy: "Well done, Sen. McCain. [...] Gov. Palin is just a superb, superb pick -- and so deftly handled."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "A year ago, few would have predicted a Republican ticket that including maverick John McCain AND an attractive female conservative governor who has stood up to the Republicans in her state? [...] If you had to imagine a ticket that could possibly defeat Obama, you couldn't have scripted it any better than this..."
• NRO's Mark Levin: "A terrific choice. Palin is by all accounts a principled conservative and government reformer who can contribute mightily to the decision-making that occurs in the White House. She has more executive experience in her two years as governor than Obama, [Joe] Biden, and McCain combined. She is a mother of five in what appears to be a loving and functioning family. And she is someone Republicans, conservatives, and others can rally behind in the future. From a purely tactical aspect, Palin would knock the legs out from under Obama's monopoly hold on 'change.' And attacks on her 'inexperience' will only highlight one of Obama's greatest vulnerabilities -- and he's at the top of the Democrat ticket. And because Hillary Clinton spent months telling women voters that they are being dissed by Obama, some percentage of women who normally would not vote for McCain will take a second look if Palin's on the ticket. There is no question that a Palin selection would cause the Obama camp headaches."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "What an unbelievable head fake by McCain, perfectly executed to build suspense and knock The One off the front page this morning. Mind-blowing. [...] I'm woozy."
• NRO's David Freddoso: "She is everything Obama is not. A real reformer who took on her own party's corrupt establishment and won, defeating an incumbent governor, 80-20. Don't forget that she's also a mother who chose life for her Down Syndrome baby -- we can probably guess where she'd fall on the Born-Alive act. If this is the future of the GOP, they're in good shape."
• NRO's Jonathan Adler: "I've been very lukewarm on McCain, but I'll be very excited if [Palin]'s on the ticket. She [is] the sort of principled, limited-government conservative that's been in very short supply in Washington, D.C. of late, so she's just what the party needs."

MCCAIN VEEPSTAKES II: Ferraro Redux?

A few conservative bloggers expressed reservations about the pick:

• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "I'm worried about Palin. I'm afraid she may be the Geraldine Ferraro of 2008. If she really is the nominee, will it come across as a desperation move, a Hail Mary, as [Walter] Mondale's choice of Ferraro did in 1984? I'm afraid so. Her experience just doesn't justify a place on the ticket. If McCain really wanted to go radical, [LA Gov.] Bobby Jindal was the far sounder choice -- but maybe Jindal turned him down, on the theory that he needs to do his job as Governor of Louisiana before trying to go national. [...] The most important thing McCain has going for him in this race is the perception that he is the serious candidate. Choosing a running mate who will be widely perceived as unqualified would go a long way toward squandering that advantage."
• NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru lists the "cons" of McCain's pick: "Inexperience. Palin has been governor for about two minutes. Thanks to McCain's decision, Palin could be commander-in-chief next year. That may strike people as a reckless choice; it strikes me that way. And McCain's age raised the stakes on this issue. [...] Tokenism. Can anyone say with a straight face that Palin would have gotten picked if she were a man? Compatibility. It doesn't seem as though McCain knows Palin well. Do we have much reason to think they would work well together? Debates. Maybe, as Jonah [Goldberg] said the other day, Biden will look like a bully going up against her -- and maybe she'll shine. But I can think of a lot of other picks who would have been lower-risk."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "I really don't think someone with only 2 years of relevant experience (She was elected governor of Alaska in 2006) should be the Vice-President. I also think her selection would undercut McCain's 'not ready to lead' attacks on Obama although, in all fairness, I think someone who has been a governor for 2 years is more qualified to be President than someone who has been a senator for 4 years. The bottom line, however, is that neither of them is really qualified."

On the left side of the blogosphere, Markos Moulitsas ridicules McCain's pick: "The Sarah (Quayle) Palin pick is an abandonment of the 'Obama is not ready to lead' attack lines. Those are dead, and to be honest, while that line didn't work for Hillary and it had limited traction for McCain, it still had some traction. That attack line is gone. (Quayle) Palin is also a an ideologue, on choice, on the environment, on energy -- all the way down the line. This an ideological pick in an election where self-identified Republicans are a dying breed and Democratic self-identification is skyrocketing. McCain has abandoned any notion of playing for the center. He's looking to shore up his right flank and hoping that the Evangelical Right can somehow drag McCain over the line."

OBAMA: The Kossacks Approve

The Daily Kos front-page bloggers loved Obama's speech -- particularly its aggressive defense of liberal principles:

• Moulitsas: "When was the last time we saw a speech like tonight's -- a full-throated defense of progressive principles, devoid of mushy 'centrist' crap? It didn't avoid the tough social issues like abortion, guns, or gay marriage. It wasn't apologetic. Unlike Bill Clinton's and Biden's, it didn't unnecessarily praise John McCain. It drew sharp distinctions between Democrats and Republicans. It came from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. To be honest, this is the speech -- aggressive and unabashedly populist -- I expected Biden to give. I couldn't be more pleased to have gotten it instead from the standard bearer himself."
• mcjoan: "As a highly partisan Dem who has been wishing and hoping and waiting for Obama to do what we in the blogosphere have been asking for for so long from our Dem leadership -- draw a sharp contrast with the Republicans and bring the fight to them -- I'm a satisfied customer tonight. Barack Obama left behind some of the more squishy 'post-partisan' rhetoric and did what he had to do -- define McCain as Bush's third term. 'Eight is enough' might be a slightly cheesy tag line, but it works. You'll remember it and you'll say 'Yeah, eight IS enough,' and we can't afford Republican rule any more. This was the speech from someone who is ready to roll up his sleeves and get in the fight. Good show."
• Daily Kos' georgia10: "What I especially like about this speech is that it's a defense of liberalism, a full-throated rebuttal to the notion that government is bad and irreparably broken. The speech itself is stunning in how it wraps policy details around piercing rhetoric."
• Daily Kos' brownsox: "I have never seen Barack Obama give a better speech. I have never seen anyone give a better political speech."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Grand slam doesn't even describe this speech. Obama is kicking ass...mostly John McCain's ass."

OBAMA II: A Home Run

Other liberal bloggers also loved Obama's speech:

• Oliver Willis: "Our next president spoke tonight."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "That was a helluva speech, wasn't it? Damn. [...] The setting was perfect, the stage was perfect, Obama's cadences were perfect, and it was just about as good a political rallying cry as I've ever heard. John McCain looks very, very small right about now."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "I thought this was a very strong speech. About exactly what was needed. [...] He made the case for himself; he laid out clear policy goals; and he aggressively set forth the stakes of the campaign. He made the case against John McCain while not attacking his character -- which makes a clear contrast with McCain's aggressively personal, denigrating campaign strategy."
• BooMan: "[Obama] has probably given better speeches before, but never a better political speech. He's never blended so many parts into a seamless whole like this before. He gave red-meat at the beginning, and post-partisan inspiration at the end. He blasted McCain's record and judgment and then challenged us all not to question each other's character. He was personal, bringing his family and life experience into his policy discussion, but then he said this election is all about us. And, yet, none of this seemed to be contradictory or discordant. It was a masterpiece."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "It's tricky to go on the offensive while maintaining an optimistic and inspirational tone, but that's precisely what made Obama's speech so effective. He didn't just take the fight to McCain, he eviscerated McCain, his worldview, his party, and his record. Obama took McCain's claims and debunked them. He took McCain's talking points, and mocked them. Remember the questions about Obama's toughness? His willingness to mix it up? Neither do I. The speech was also strikingly self-aware. Obama knew exactly what detractors have been saying, and the areas of doubt for voters -- Does he have a clear agenda? Is he more talk than substance? Celebrity? Taxes? -- and methodically, almost surgically, made his case."
• The Huffington Post's Jacob Heilbrunn: "No, Barack Obama did not land a knockout blow tonight. But he showed that he fully understands that the best defense is a good offense. After weeks of absorbing punishment from John McCain, Obama went on the attack. Obama's decision to target McCain so closely was a risky strategy, but it paid off. The contrast with past Democratic candidates such as John Kerry and Michael Dukakis could not have been starker. Obama showed that he does not conform to the image of the Democrat as wussbag by directly assailing McCain's foreign policy credentials -- specifically, his claim that he would 'follow' Osama bin Laden to the 'gates of hell.' But why just follow? As Obama made clear, he needs to be taken out."

Open Left's Chris Bowers had one quibble: "Much of the end of the speech sounded defensive. From finding common ground, to defending patriotism, to decrying character attacks, to not being the typical candidate -- I didn't feel comfortable during that part of the speech. Answering attackers when the night is entirely focused on you both accepts the premise of their attacks and gives them free air time. [I] wish there had been quite a bit less of that."

OBAMA III: What Happened To The Old Obama?

Unsurprisingly, most conservative bloggers did not like Obama's speech:

• RedState's Directors: "This was not an uplifting, unifying, post-partisan speech. It was a typical Democrat speech, an act of attack to disguise a record thinner than that of any president. It was an act of religious prayer for the believers, not evangelism to the nonbelievers. When he declared he would engage in specifics, he continued to offer even more promises without explanation of how or why -- just that here was the thing wrong, and in electing him president, that alone would correct the wrong."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Obama made the same mistake that plagued the entire Democratic convention; he ran against George Bush. He railed about the previous eight years, which certainly is de rigeur for the party out of the White House, but failed to present any clear idea of what different policies he would apply. He did almost nothing to present any specific, positive plan for the American people beyond the sloganeering to which Obama has bitterly clung while his polling has dropped by double digits this summer."
• NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "A lot of people are emailing me to say that they have made their first McCain donation tonight. Maybe McCain shouldn't speak next week and replay [Obama's speech] instead?"
• McCarthy: "LAME. This is a very weak candidate."
• Hinderaker: "Was there a single sentence in Obama's speech that could not have come from Jimmy Carter?"
• Goldberg: "I think his shots at McCain were ill-advised. Who the hell is Obama to try to out-hawk McCain on Bin Laden? Please. Not plausible. What is Obama talking about when he tries to suggest there are more Republicans for Obama than there are Democrats for McCain? C'mon. The Clintonian false-choice b.s. was particularly grating (gay marriage: punt! Gay hospital visitation, hooray! AK-47S boo, 2nd amendment, wahoo!)."
• Hawkins: "The expectations for the speech were sky high and quite frankly, Obama didn't meet them. [...] It was definitely too long and he tried to do too many things in it without successfully accomplishing any of them. He attacked Bush weakly, attacked McCain weakly, talked about unity, gave a shallow run through of some of his policies, and trotted out a lot of tired, socialist rhetoric."
• AmSpec Blog's Jeremy Lott: "There was no innovative thinking in last night's speech. All of the problems of American boiled down to the fact that the government just hasn't spent enough, regulated enough, or mandated enough."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "This was an angry speech as these things go, and (like Joe Biden's) a dishonest one. If the McCain campaign wanted to provoke Obama, it succeeded. The political environment may be such that independent voters will have no problem with Obama's stridency, the kind typically associated with VP nominee. But if they are that upset, Obama need not have given a speech."

A few conservative bloggers thought the speech was effective, although they were critical of its content:

• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "I don't think it was as impressive as his 2004 convention speech, but it was serviceable and tough. It's going to come down to what the threshold question of this election is: If it hinges on whether people want to definitively turn the page on the Bush years, Obama knows how to make that argument and it's one Republicans will lose. If the electorate expects something from the candidates' resume to prove they can deliver on the change they promise, the Democrats have shown they can't really make that case. That's the Republicans' one opening."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "A very good, very eloquent, very powerful case for a cause I do not believe in. It was delivered well, The atmospherics were impressive, if more than a little bit imperial. But at the end of the day, we have to decide whether we are going to buy into a political ideology merely because it is dressed up in eloquent words."

MEDIA CRITICISM: Obama Gets No Love From The AP

Liberal bloggers are slamming the Associated Press (again) after Charles Babington wrote an analysis piece accusing Obama of offering few specifics in his speech:

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "The Associated Press decides to double down in its attacks on Barack Obama. Here's the headline from Charles Babington's 'analysis' of Obama's speech tonight: Analysis: Obama spares details, keeps up attacks. Amazingly, it actually gets worse, reading almost exactly like Republican talking points (and in fact parroting that exact spin). [...] It is not until after the lede that Babington admits that 35-minute speeches are rarely chock full of details -- particularly those that are enthralling to a crowd. (By the way, it is also below the lede that Babington admits that the Obama speech did actually include specifics.) [...] What a true journalist would do would be to analyze the speech without using the crutch of opposition talking points, without resorting to the easiest 'he said, she said' type of stenography. But apparently this is no longer the policy of the Associated Press under Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier -- a man, by the way, who spent months in talks with the McCain campaign about possibly accepting a senior level position. No, what we get out of Fournier's AP is pure and unadulterated talking points that are as non-germane as they are simply incorrect."
• TAPPED's Sam Boyd: "To summarize: Obama's critics say he doesn't talk about details. He gave a speech in which he mentioned some details but didn't get to others ('He said he would "cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families," but did not say how' -- does the guy want a bracket-by-bracket breakdown?). [...] The entire 'analysis' is completely nonsensical, but seems designed to leave a casual reader with an impression that Obama lacked substance. It admits he provided details, but then ignores its own admission. And, of course, this is only the latest in a long series of egregiously biased pieces of 'analysis' form the AP."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "As part of the AP's continuing descent into absurdity they covered Barack Obama's speech with this long, editorializing-heavy whine about an alleged lack of specifics. This in particular is bizarre: He said he would 'cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families,' but did not say how. How? His staff would have to work with the staffs of the relevant members of congress on writing a bill. Then the bill needs to get out of committee, pass the House and the Senate, maybe go through a conference committee process and then be signed into law. What does [Babington] mean how?"

Moulitsas: "Babington wrote [this] piece before Obama's speech was finished. Obama's speech ended just shy of 11 p.m. ET. Babington's attack piece was posted at: Aug 28, 11:26 PM EDT. The piece is 603 words. So we are to believe, that Babington watched the speech, gave it due consideration, wrote it, turned it in, had it go through editing, had it go through copyediting, and had it posted online -- all in 26 minutes?"

Liberal bloggers were pleased that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann slammed Babington an hour after Obama finished his speech: "Olbermann was outraged that the AP's Babington had written, in his analysis of the speech, just off the wire, that Obama had tried nothing new and that his speech was lacking in specifics. He read the first few paragraphs on the air, lamented that it would be printed in hundred of newspapers on Friday, and concluded, 'It is analysis that strikes me as having born no resemblance to the speech you and I just watched. None whatsoever. And for it to be distributed by the lone national news organization in terms of wire copy to newspapers around the country and web sites is a remarkable failure of that news organization. Charles Babington, find a new line of work.'"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Taking Character Out Of The Equation

TAPPED's Mark Schmitt is concerned about the Dems' chosen line of attack against McCain, but he sees a potential upside:

"The [Dems'] strategy against McCain...will one day seem either brilliant or stupid. Where the Republicans went directly at Kerry's character, and will do the same with Obama, the Democrats have decided to accept McCain's character as a given -- 'served this country honorably.' Even Kerry, whose speech was the toughest and most specific critique of McCain, drew the line between 'Senator McCain' -- still an honorable man -- and 'candidate McCain.' [...] Plainly, the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign have made the judgment, probably well-informed by polling, that McCain's wholly undeserved reputation for integrity, independence and personal decency is so firmly established that it's not worth the effort and money to dismantle it.

That requires a very nuanced message, separating 'Senator McCain' from the conservative Republican agenda that [he] has no choice but to accept as its candidate. If it works, it's briliant because it is the strategy that Greg Anrig has been urging for months: a full and unhesitating critique of conservatism as an ideology that has now been put to the test and failed absolutely."

LEST WE FORGET: Cheney To Speak At Republican Convention From Section 109, Row 56, Seat 3

From The Onion:

"WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney's office announced today that he will speak at the upcoming Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN, offering farewell wishes and personal observations about John McCain to anyone in the vicinity of his seat in the upper balcony. 'The vice president has prepared a number of remarks to mutter angrily during Sen. Tom Coburn's speech,' Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said. 'We cannot divulge the specifics of his address at this time, although I imagine it will begin shortly after he spots Lieberman.' Although no advance copy of the speech has been provided, Cheney is expected to cover a variety of hot-button issues, including the war in Iraq, Barack Obama, the conflict in Georgia, the idiots they have speaking at these things, legroom, the workers at the concession stand, the heat in this frigging place, and President Bush's tie.

Cheney may also indulge his surrounding audience by engaging in a brief but loud debate with his wife on the issue of why he had to come in the first place and delivering an inspiring set of closing remarks to convention security on the benefits of fucking yourself."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:46 PM

August 28, 2008

8/28: Watching And Waiting

Liberal bloggers were impressed by the speeches delivered last night by Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and (most surprisingly) John Kerry. Biden's and Kerry's combative speeches helped to reassure bloggers who were concerned about what they perceived to be the lack of harsh attacks on John McCain.

Still, it cannot be said that the netroots consider the first three days of the convention a total success. Matt Stoller complains that the convention has been "less...purposeful than I expected" while Chris Bowers worries that Barack Obama will receive little or no polling bounce. The netroots expect McCain's surrogates to savage Obama during next week's GOP convention, and they aren't convinced that Dems have done enough to "soften the impact of these attacks and themes or create a counternarrative for the media to cover". Will Obama reassure liberal bloggers by delivering a killer speech tonight? And, better yet, will he receive a post-convention polling bounce?

DEM CONVO: The Pit Of My Stomach

There is a lot of teeth-gnashing in the liberal blogosphere about the way the convention has gone so far:

• Open Left's Bowers: "I am feeling really frustrated today. I am sensing that something is wrong with this convention, and that there will be no bounce. I don't know exactly what we need to do to get a bounce, but I do know that we haven't done it yet. [...] Although I might be dangerously treading into 'I know it when I see it' territory, I knew after [Al] Gore's convention 2000 speech that he would get a bump, while I had a really bad feeling after the 2004 convention. The polling backed me up in both cases. The tracking polls today show Obama ahead by 1 (Gallup) and behind by 1 (Rasmussen). Remember that this is after more than three days where Democrats, from the VP pick to the convention, have completely dominated news coverage. We haven't gained any ground from last week, and have in fact lost some. That is not a good sign. Call me a hand-wringer or whatever, but I am nervous."
• Open Left's Stoller: "I find this convention much less, I don't know, purposeful than I expected. There are very few memorable speeches or lines, certainly nothing like [ex-TX Gov.] Ann Richards in 1992."
• publius: "I haven't been that crazy about the convention thus far. [...] Everything seems very meta. John McCain is more of the same -- we've heard that. But we haven't heard enough about what exactly makes him more of the same. Also, we've heard a lot about change, but too little that speaks to struggling middle class people. Interestingly enough, I thought Bill Clinton's speech was actually the best on this front. Don't get me wrong -- the speeches are good, and there haven't been any errors. It just seems a little blah and boring. And, frankly, I'd like to see a little more ridicule and spice -- because God knows it's coming next week."
• TAPPED's Adam Serwer: "This analysis of recent polling suggests that Obama's flagging numbers are due to the most conservative Democrats in the party defecting. The weak tea at this years' convention is unlikely to get anyone riled up, least likely those who are thinking very seriously about voting for John McCain."

Ezra Klein criticizes the first half of the convention: "Say what you will about the 2004 Convention, it had a theme. Conversely, the first night of the 2008 Democratic Convention had Michelle Obama bring the warm and fuzzies, Ted Kennedy calling forth tears and hankies, and Jim Leach speaking quietly and pedantically without any serious promotion from the Obama campaign. The second night of the 2004 Convention saw Barack Obama tearing apart the arena. In 2008, we had Mark Warner with a well-crafted speech that fell flat because it was an attack structure that refused to name the politician it was attacking. You had Hillary Cinton giving a powerful address, but it was an address that was broadly aimed at problems in the Democratic Party, not the problems with the Republican Party."

Klein continues: "The first two days of the convention were wasted, or seemed so from my vantage point. Tonight, Joe Biden will rip into McCain. And tomorrow, Obama will do whatever he does. Then on Friday, at noon, John McCain will announce his vice presidential nominee, strangling any convention bounce in the crib. Then the Republican Convention will begin, and you can be assured that they will remember Barack Obama's name. They will remember how to make fun of him, how to mock his celebrity and inexperience. And the media will not cover Ron Paul's protesters with the vigor or attention they gave to Hillary Clinton's diehards. Instead, they will cover four days of straight attacks on Barack Obama, culminating with a grave address about sacrifice and service from John McCain. And unless Obama's convention makes a sharp turn tonight and tomorrow, they will have done nothing to soften the impact of these attacks and themes or create a counternarrative for the media to cover."

DEM CONVO II: Get More Personal, Dems!

Several bloggers are complaining that Dem attacks on McCain have been insufficiently personal:

• The New Republic's Jonathan Chait: "What continues to be missing is a frame to explain why John McCain believes all these wrongheaded things he talks about. But it's very simple. McCain used to stand against the ideologues and moneyed interests of the GOP, but he decided that if he wanted to win the GOP nomination, he had to make himself their ally. I suspect Democrats will regret this when Republicans tear Barack Obama's character apart next week."
• Time's Amy Sullivan: "It's three nights into the Democratic Convention and a pattern is emerging. A number of speakers have made reference to their personal friendship with John McCain, carefully noting how much they admire him, before going on to criticize him. And that's effective to a point -- 'more in sorrow than in anger' plays differently than straight-on attacks. But Democrats might find it would be more effective if they explained why they're so disappointed with their friend John McCain. How did this great guy they admire so much became a candidate whose positions appall them? It wasn't a fluke, it wasn't like he had a personality transplant. And the answer would seem to fit perfectly into a powerful Democratic narrative. John McCain changed because that's what he had to do to win the Republican nomination. That's what the reigning conservative ideology and interests demanded of him. [...] Democrats may need to find a more direct way of describing McCain's transformation (flip-flops, if you will). Their current version leaves open the possibility that this good, decent man could revert to his old self -- and that's not something Democrats want undecided voters to believe."
• Drum: "McCain has had to prostrate himself to the neocons, the theocons, and the moneycons because that's what it takes to win the Republican nomination these days: you have to be a good soldier. And one way or another that's a story that the Democrats need to tell. A laundry list of flip-flops doesn't make an impression unless you explain what's behind it. [...Obama] needs to make people understand that all the stuff they don't like about the past eight years isn't just the fault of one guy's idiosyncrasies, it's the fault of an entire worldview. And if you elect McCain, you're electing that worldview too."
• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "While the McCain Republicans have launched brutal, personal and callow attacks on Obama's integrity, sincerity, and patriotism, the Obama Democrats have treated McCain with respect and deference -- more respect and deference than his nasty, petty, little campaign deserves. They are taking a risk."

DEM CONVO III: Dear Debbie Downers...

Other liberal bloggers feel more positively about the convention:

• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "Democrats sure are a bunch of nervous nellies, aren't they? And hey -- I admit that I've gotten up a couple of times this week with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach too. [...] But look. There's a reason I blog with my fingers, not with the pit of my stomach, and the fundamentals of the race really haven't changed that much. After four weeks of nonstop attacks from the McCain machine Obama is still a couple of points ahead in the polls with plenty of time left until election day. He hasn't raised as much money as he'd hoped, but he's still outraising McCain by a sizeable margin. Over the course of the campaign I think Joe Biden is going to be a surprisingly strong asset. [...] And call me a goggle-eyed optimist (no, really, go ahead), but I still think that at some point the press is going to tire of McCain's schtick. His slime is so patent, his pandering is so obvious, his lack of seriousness is so palpable, and his attacks are so transparent, that it just has to eventually get through to them. I'm well aware that history isn't on my side here, but still I hope. These folks have to have a little pride, don't they?"
• digby: "I haven't been able to discern any overarching theme and I'd have loved to see more Republican bashing, but overall I still think it's been a good convention for the Democrats and not because the so-called rift has been healed. [...] It's been a good convention because the 'civil war' storyline actually ended up revealing that the Democratic leadership, for all their faults, has far more firepower than the tired freakshow the Republicans are going to throw out next week. The young generation, from Obama to Beau [Biden] and the older generation from Bill and Hillary to Joe are all politicians of stature compared to the D-list of oddballs (even by Republican standards) who will be on the stage in Minneapolis -- [Rudy] Giuliani, [Mitt] Romney, McCain, [Mike] Huckabee, [Joe] Lieberman etc."

BIDEN: Joe Comes Out Swinging

Most liberal bloggers liked Biden's speech -- especially his attacks on McCain:

• Klein: "I thought [Biden's] speech was very well-aimed. Biden's oratory didn't soar; it lowered its shoulder and charged. Not a decisive piece of oratory, but a solid, grounded attack on McCain, and a confident restatement of the campaign's principles and loyalties. [...] Biden's speech tonight didn't bring anyone to tears, but it's the sort of message that carries you through an election. The Obama campaign isn't fighting the primary anymore. They don't need to be beautiful so much as they need to be effective."
• Bowers: "Joe Biden lacked poetry, but he really, really hammered McCain. Given that is what I have hoped to hear from Democrats for so long during this campaign, it was great to hear. He seems to be every bit of the attack dog that we had hoped for when the short list became clear."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "That was a great speech. Nicely delivered. And went to the key points -- pumped up Obama and made the case against John McCain. Exactly what was needed."
• Arianna Huffington: "[The second half of Biden's speech] was a powerful indictment of McCain -- a heaping, close-to-9-minute serving of the red meat that has been sorely missing from the convention menu this week -- and effectively made the case that national security is actually John McCain's weakness. That's a point Democrats need to relentlessly hammer home from now until Election Day. Even when it's not national security night."

CLINTON: The Big Dog Returns

Most liberal bloggers were impressed by Clinton's speech, although a few of them had minor quibbles:

• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "May I just observe that while Barack Obama relies on having well-written speeches to make his oratorical performances impressive, Bill Clinton is just relying on pure skills of awesomeness to make texts that are pretty disjointed on the page seem incredibly compelling."
• Obsidian Wings' publius: "God, I love Bill Clinton. I just can't not like him."
• Atrios: "Big Dog showed why he earned the name."
• Marshall: "Very solid speech. Classic Bill. Sort of reminds me of the weird anguish of last spring, thinking we'd never see this guy again. He did what he needed to do. And he got things moving in a direction the convention needs to go. [...] Also good that he said one thing -- John McCain's an 'extremist.' We need to hear that again and again, because it has the virtue of being true."
• Drum: "Overall it was, of course, a great speech. The guy's a natural. And that line about people the world over being 'more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power'? Pure Bill."
• The Huffington Post's RJ Eskow: "I did think he was too soft on McCain, overpraising his independence and failing to note the flip-flops and reversals that have marked McCain's campaign. But these are minor quibbles. Will this speech help Obama in the general election? Almost certainly, and Obama would be wise to draw on Bill extensively in the coming campaign. Will it help heal the Democratic Party? Definitely."

FiveThirtyEight's Sean wasn't thrilled by Clinton's speech: "Bill Clinton did ok. He beat the spread. But this was no home run. [...He did] what Hillary [Clinton] didn't last night, which [was] to explicitly address the experience question and say Obama is ready to be president. It was a good moment, but not much more than a declarative statement without what Bill typically does best in speeches, make an argument. Is the sound bite enough? 'Sound familiar?' Yeah, Bill, it sounds like January through early June, 2008."

Klein wished Clinton had directly attacked McCain: "It was striking that Bill Clinton never uttered the words 'John McCain.' Four years ago, that steady insistence on retaining the robes of the presidency, levitating an inch or two above the fray, made sense. It was Clinton choosing a particular, and honorable, path that forever defined him as an ex-president rather than an ex-candidate. But after heatedly involving himself in the Democratic primary, after often attacking Barack Obama by name, it seemed peculiar that he would hold that portion of himself in reserve. Four years ago, Clinton wasn't a campaigner. This year, he was."

Huffington wishes Clinton had spent more time talking about national security: "[Clinton] didn't even try to make the case about all the ways McCain would make us less safe -- giving him a virtual free pass on this vital question. Yes, the former president forcefully made the point that the charge of youth and inexperience being leveled at Obama was the same charge leveled at him in 1992. But he never made the case why Obama would be better at keeping us safe, beyond saying he would try diplomacy first. So while it was good to have Clinton unequivocally voice his support for Obama and lend his considerable authority to the case that Obama is ready to lead, his speech felt like a squandered opportunity. A squandered opportunity that reinforced the notion that Democrats either don't know how to talk about -- or don't have the stomach for talking about -- national security. It felt very pre-9/11."

KERRY: Lowering The Boom

Liberal bloggers were surprised and delighted by Kerry's speech, which included some sharp attacks on McCain:

• Marshall: "I think the speech I just saw John Kerry give is the best one I've heard at this convention. And I do not have any doubt that it's the best I've ever heard from him."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Kerry has more passion in his voice talking about Republican political tricks and questioning Democrats' patriotism than I've ever heard from him, even his own acceptance speech. Is this the best speech of John Kerry's life?"
• Bowers: "John Kerry actually, really, and completely kicked ass. He ripped into McCain, and was very clear in his attacks. Either he was a lot better as a speaker tonight than he was during the campaign four years ago, or we are not giving him credit for being a strong candidate. (The latter is actually quite possible, given that Kerry outperformed the national Democratic House vote in 2004.)"
• TAPPED's Dana Goldstein: "[Kerry] is offering up exactly what this convention has been missing. Strong linkages between McCain and [George W.] Bush. Humor. And a great refrain that has become a call and response with the audience. 'Who can we trust to keep America safe? Barack Obama!'"
• The Nation's John Nichols: "If Democrats are looking for a template to apply in the fall campaign, they could do no better than the one Kerry offered them Wednesday night. Indeed, had Kerry been as aggressive as this in 2004, this week's convention might well be nominating him for a second term."
• Crooks and Liars' SilentPatriot: "All I have to say is: Where was this guy in 2004?"

OBAMA: Such Hubris!

Conservative bloggers are mocking Obama after the Daily Mail reported that his acceptance speech "will be delivered from an elaborate columned platform resembling a miniature Greek temple":

• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "The jokes are starting already. The O-cropolis. Toga instructions from the McCain campaign. My Big Fat Greek Acceptance Speech. Obama's Oddessey. The Barackolis. Is it supposed to look like the Lincoln Memorial? The Brandenberg Gate? The Parthenon? The White House? The Isle of Lesbos? Maybe, just maybe, it will look a lot better on television. But it's hard to believe, based on what we've seen so far. The leading theory is that the Obama leadership is in a bubble, were completely blindsided by the 'Celebrity' ad, and they continue to see organizing a presidential campaign as akin to putting on the greatest Super Bowl halftime show in history."
• Michelle Malkin: "Fake Greek columns? Check. Will he be backlit with his famous glowing halo, too? Who designed the stage, anyway? The Chinese Olympic ceremony planners? And will the thousands of worshipers kneel before the temple and raise their hands dutifully in the Magical O?"
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "The only way Bambi could better fit into the caricature that the McCain campaign has painted of him would be if he wore a cape and had members of Code Pink throwing rose petals in his path as he walked to the podium."
• RedState's Moe Lane: "We've heard the pushback on Barackopolis 1.0, to the general gist that Bush's speech was in an area that more or less had columns. To which I note two things: (1.) President Bush did not attempt to recreate either the Parthenon -- or, now, apparently, the White House. (2.) Even if he had... George W. Bush is the President of the United States of America. Barack Obama is a first-term Senator who got the job because Jack Ryan couldn't help but show off to a bunch of sex-club enthusiasts that he had Seven of Nine warming his bed. Put another way: the hypothetical Bush would have merely been arrogant. The actual Obama is being hubristic."

OBAMA II: Pot, Meet Kettle

Liberal bloggers are pushing back against the criticism of Obama's Greek pillars by pointing out that Bush delivered his 2004 acceptance speech on a stage with Greek pillars:

"Republicans who are mocking Obama's appearance haven't mentioned it, but George W. Bush accepted his own nomination in 2004 on a set with a similar neoclassical theme, with columns rising on either side of him, as the pictures above and below show. Indeed, the Bush set and the Obama sets currently look strikingly similar, with the podium set well in front of the columns, and connected by a path. The attachment to kitsch, particularly at political conventions, is clearly bipartisan."

• Serwer: "Attention, Republicans everywhere who are scandalized by the stage decorations at Barack Obama's planned speech on Thursday: Your great and powerful leader did it first."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "What people fail to remember is that no matter what [the Obama camp] did, the wingnuts and their surrogates would have a field day no matter what. You really don't have to read folks like Tom Maguire for too long (and I have been reading him for years) to realize that no matter what the backdrop was, he and others would be mocking it. If it were nothing but American flags, Tom and others would claim he is really over-doing the patriotism because he knows he is weak on the issue. If it were just a normal stage with a few flags, Tom and others would claim it seems like he is afraid of overdoing the flags because the left-wing base hates America and would be turned off. Heads they win, tails you lose. So it is Greek columns in the background, and Tom and others are mocking it. I am shocked by this turn of events."

Marshall adds: "We do all know that virtually every American civic building is based on Greek Revival architecture, right? And that the Obama backdrop actually looks like -- whether intended or not, I don't know -- the Lincoln Memorial. (Remember, they're both Illinoisians.) Perhaps because Obama's speech is on the 45th anniversary of [Dr. Martin Luther] King's 'I Have A Dream' speech."

OBAMA III: Bully-Boy Tactics?

Conservative bloggers are criticizing Obama after his campaign launched an effort to disrupt a radio appearance by Stanley Kurtz, the National Review writer who has been writing about Obama's relationship with ex-Weather Underground member William Ayers:

• Malkin: "First, they came for TV stations daring to air an independent ad about Barack Obama and unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Next, they came for GOP donors. Now, they are shamelessly attacking National Review investigative journalist Stanley Kurtz -- one of conservatism's most thoughtful and penetrating writers on academic and educational affairs."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Team Obama has become so overwrought at the mere thought of criticism that they now overreact on a constant basis. It's a measure of the fear in the campaign that they have decided that they cannot abide any criticism at all, and instead of simply responding to it, they attempt to silence it instead."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "Barack Obama hates debate, but loves bully-boy tactics."
• NRO's Andy McCarthy: "The Obama campaign is giving us a frightening glimpse of how unfit they are to wield power."

MCCAIN VEEPSTAKES: Kay Bailey Hutchison, Dark Horse?

NRO's Larry Kudlow reports that TX Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is a finalist for the job of McCain's running mate: "Sources tell me that the two finalists for Mac's veep are Tim Pawlenty and Kay Bailey Hutchison. Obviously, with the Hillary women's revolt on the floor of the DNC and outside, McCain has a great opportunity if he nominates a woman. My favorite was Alaska governor Sarah Palin. But she has been compromised by a bogus Alaska legislative investigation. So now all eyes are turning to Senator Hutchison, who has a strong conservative record down through the years. She's a steady performer who will not be cowed by Joe Biden in the debates. I know her well and I have high respect for her. This doesn't mean Governor Pawlenty is out, it just means that Ms. Hutchison has moved high up on the list."

Geraghty finds this rumor "plausible": "The McCain campaign has been hammering Obama with Hillary-centric ads. They obviously think a lot of Hillary's supporters are in play. George H. W. Bush was surprised when Ronald Reagan asked him."

Many conservative bloggers are opposed to the idea of McCain choosing Hutchison:

• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Note to the McCain Camp: Romney is crashing in InTrade and Kay Bailey Hutchison is going up. I'll remind you all she is pro-choice and I'll tell you all I will puke on my keyboard if she is the pick and probably will cease being excited about your campaign. She'll be a good governor. She is not an inspiring Veep Pick. And I speak for a large, large number of Republicans. That is all."
• NRO's Lisa Schiffren: "What has she done in her terms in the Senate? She gets into pictures at bill signings. She is smart enough for the U.S. Senate (like Biden), but one has never heard her say anything thought provoking. Could she really hold her own against the glib Biden? Not clear. [...] In terms of her personality -- what used to be called 'Q-ratings' -- she doesn't strike me as much of an improvement on Romney -- who is current on the issues and has executive experience, and a recently honed asperity that works. I am certain that Hutchison is wonderful and charming in person. It's just not clear what her ability to connect, or make the sale with voters would be. Absent those qualities, the scent of tokenism pervades the air. Not the worst thing. But it's more like Geraldine Ferraro than Hillary Clinton."

Meanwhile, NRO's Byron York thinks it's Pawlenty: "From the calls I've made and the conversations I've had, I would say the person to watch is Pawlenty. No Romney, no Lieberman -- although the people I talk to still think (worry?) that there is a chance McCain has a surprise up his sleeve."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A Missed Opportunity?

The Atlantic's Ross Douthat echoes many liberal bloggers in his criticism of the Dem convention:

"The Democrats are holding their convention at a time when the GOP nominee is reasonably popular, his party is reasonably unpopular, and the current President, a Republican, is extremely unpopular. It's easy to say when you don't have to actually organize the damn thing, but I think that they could be doing a far better job than they are so far of using Denver as a four-day clinic on how John McCain will be just as bad as Bush, if not much, much worse. There's still time to make hay on this front, obviously, but so far I think the convention has been a big fat missed opportunity."

LEST WE FORGET: Obama Modifies 'Yes We Can' Message To Exclude Area Loser

From The Onion:

"COLUMBIA, SC -- In a nationally televised speech Friday, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama altered his vision of a unified America to exclude Dayton, OH loser Nate Walsh.

According to Obama, the 32-year-old Walsh, who has lived with his parents intermittently since receiving his associate's degree in 2001 and still does not have a credit card in his own name, no longer figures into the senator's long-term plan of rallying Americans from all walks of life around a common, higher purpose.

'People of South Carolina, people of the world, this is our time, this is our moment,' Obama said before 72,000 supporters at the University of South Carolina's Williams-Brice Stadium. 'That is, unless you live in apartment 3L at 1254 Holden St., you watched Money Train on TBS last night at 3 a.m., and your name is Nate Walsh.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:35 PM

August 27, 2008

8/27: Did Hillary's Speech Work?

It's interesting -- although perhaps not surprising -- that liberal and conservative bloggers had completely different reactions to Hillary Clinton's DNC speeech. The netroots had an overwhelmingly positive reaction to Clinton's speech. One liberal blogger writes that Clinton "nailed it" while another praises the speech as "a dagger through [John] McCain's political heart". Even Barack Obama partisans who criticized Clinton's tactics during the primary believe that she gave an excellent speech.

Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, believe that Clinton "did the bare minimum" for Obama in her speech. They're arguing that her words about Obama were "perfunctory" and that "she did not praise him at all". Righty bloggers are also noting -- with evident glee -- that Bill Clinton will not be attending Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field.

It's obviously in the interest of liberal bloggers for Clinton to have delivered an effective speech that will convince many of her disgruntled supporters to vote for Obama. Likewise, it's obviously in the interest of conservative bloggers for Clinton to have delivered a half-hearted endorsement of Obama that will do little to sway her diehard fans. So we'll probably have to wait for polling to tell us whether or not Clinton's speech was truly effective.

CLINTON: Bravo, Hillary!

Liberal bloggers loved Clinton's speech:

• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "Rising to the occasion, Hillary Clinton was perfect. I'm quite convinced she would've been our nominee had she voted against [George W.] Bush's war in Iraq, and she would've been a great nominee."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "It's hard to pick out the best quotes from Hillary's speech tonight because the whole damn thing was so good."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "I don't think 'hit it out of the park' begins to describe the speech."
• FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver: "I wish I had a more substantive, less rah-rah reaction for you, but I really think she just accomplished everything that she needed to, and did so in style."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Hillary was terrific...She just nailed the speech. Nailed it."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "If the idiots in the media keep playing up the Clinton/Obama rift after this, they are hopeless."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "That was quite a speech. It occurred to me as she built to the conclusion in the last few minutes, that the pre-2008 Hillary Clinton would not have been capable of that speech. That's not a dig. But she grew incredibly as a candidate over the course of this campaign. And this was an immensely powerful delivery, and a richly woven together speech. The beginning seemed fine but not remarkable. But it slowly built into something very powerful."
• Crooks and Liars' SilentPatriot: "Hillary did everything she came to do Tuesday night, and she did it with sincerity and style. She acknowledged her incredible, historic run and many supporters, while drawing a clear contrast between the policies of Obama/Clinton and those of Bush/McCain. She came to convincingly make the case to all her holdouts know that Obama is the only candidate in the race who will fight for their values. And she succeeded wildly. Bravo."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "What a speech! In that moment, at that time, just an unbelievable speech. [...] Here's my bottom line, after tonight, the Republicans hate Hillary again. It was a dagger through McCain's political heart."

TAPPED's Sam Boyd was initially critical of Clinton's speech: "Clinton's case against McCain [is] pretty strong, and that's good for Democrats. But without a strong pro-Obama message it reinforces the sense that Obama is the lesser of two evils that dominates her speech. Sure, that's probably what she thinks, but it hardly seems like the best job she could have done to convince her strongest supporters."

Later, Boyd seemed to rethink his view: "On second thought, maybe simply ignoring Obama and ripping McCain was the best approach. After all, her hardest core supporters probably aren't going to be convinced that Obama is awesome. And, as an anti-McCain speech, it was great. Plus on purely aesthetic grounds, it was the best speech I've ever seen her give."

CLINTON II: It's Not About Me...

Liberal bloggers particularly liked the following line from Clinton's speech:

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me, or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?"

• digby: "It's a very effective line and a generous one. She showed leadership there by explicitly challenging her most ardent followers to look beyond her. That's not easy for politicians to do."
• The Huffington Post's Cenk Uygur: "That is the winning line. That's the one that showed me that she genuinely did her best to actually convince her followers that they had to support Barack Obama. That's not a half-hearted effort. That's a line designed to win people over to her argument, not over to her personally."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "[This line] was a powerful reminder that Clinton's values and priorities are more important than one candidate or one campaign. It was an obvious argument that Clinton made eloquently -- it won't honor Clinton to betray her vision for a stronger nation. To support her is to support her agenda, and Obama shares her agenda."
• Obsidian Wings' publius: "[This] was by far her most intellectually interesting point. She was essentially calling on her supporters' better angels -- she was being their conscience and their voice of reason. [...] You know, these political speeches have a lot of BS -- and it's hard for a cynical audience to be moved by them either intellectually or emotionally. But I keep finding that line staying with me, lingering in my head. It was a powerful point -- and I hope it gets coverage. If Obama consolidates Democrats, he wins. And that line does more for that goal than the rest of Hillary's speech combined."

CLINTON III: The Bare Minimum

Most conservative bloggers believe that Clinton didn't praise Obama enough in her speech and that her speech did little to sell Obama to her disgruntled supporters:

• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "Hillary was passionate about the issues, but her talk of Obama and McCain was perfunctory. She endorsed Obama -- but she didn't embrace Obama..."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "There was no real praise for Barack Obama in that speech. [...] She did not praise him at all. It was pro forma rhetoric."
• NRO's Rich Lowry: "You can imagine Bill and Hillary, when the speech was being drafted, putting the stuff about Obama on a scale, and calibrating it word for word, syllable by syllable, until they had reached the perfect bare minimum about Obama. [...] What's so great about Barack Obama? He happens to be a member of the same party as Bill Clinton. Nothing she said tonight will be incompatible with what she'll want to say if Obama loses in November: 'Told you so.'"
• The Next Right's Soren Dayton: "She basically said that Democrats should vote for Barack Obama because they agree with him. [...] There is still no audio-visual rebutal to Hillary's 'Not Ready' statements that she made in debates that has become the Republican communications rallying cry. She and Bill did their duty as Democrats, but are leaving enough out that Republicans, Hillary supporters, and independents have something to chew on."
• The Weekly Standard's Dean Barnett: "At the risk of sowing discord in the Democratic ranks, allow me to offer that Hillary did not do all that she could have done for Barack Obama. Indeed, she did the bare minimum. The speech was only a success for Obama if you considered it a possibility that she would come out and explicitly endorse McCain. Think of it this way -- she and Obama have been senate colleagues for four years and spent 18 months together on the campaign trail. And she still couldn't manage to offer a single anecdote of why she liked him or thought he should be president? Every time she said 'Barack Obama,' you could have slid in 'Our Generic Nominee' and the speech would have worked just as well. If she really was into all this team player stuff, she would have told America why she now appreciates the error of her ways and knows that Barack Obama should be taking that 3-in-the-morning phone call."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "As far as I can tell, Hillary continued to play the game that's she played brilliantly, so far. She said she supports Barack, and told everyone to vote for him...without offering any real reasons why they should, reasons that might inadvertantly convince someone actually to do it. Her words of support, of course, allow her to ask anyone who doubts her commitment, Well, what else was I supposed to say? But as a shrewd politician -- and the wife of a very shrewd politician -- she knows the objectives of a political convention: To give the country a comfort level with a candidate on a personal level, along with good, solid reasons that he is not just the better choice -- but the best one for the country at this particular time. Her speech advanced neither objective for Obama."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "This will serve as a good launch pad for her 2012 presidential run if John McCain wins. I'm also sure it will help with party unity. But while it was a good night for her, it's hard to see what it will do to convince undecided voters that Barack Obama should be president."

A few conservative bloggers thought the speech was somewhat effective:

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Will [the speech] be effective? Time will tell, but I believe this speech will go at least a significant way towards convincing her supporters to remain in the tent. It may take a few days for that to become apparent, but I'd expect a slow drift of Hillary dead-enders to return to Barack Obama."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "I think she did as much for Obama as he could have hoped for. Clinton's core feminist supports (the 'sisterhood of the traveling pants suits,' as she called them tonight) will very likely fall into line, barring some major misstep by Obama (my guess is that they would have eventually gotten behind Obama even with a lesser speech, they really have no place else to go). The folks who voted for Clinton because they don't like Obama will continue to consider their options, but not because there was anything Clinton could have said, but didn't say, to win them over."

CLINTON IV: Ah, Smell The Disunity!

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about the following remarks made yesterday by Bill Clinton (which some have interpreted as a shot at Obama):

"The former president, speaking in Denver, posed a hypothetical question in which he seemed to suggest that that the Democratic Party was making a mistake in choosing Obama as its presidential nominee.

He said: 'Suppose for example you're a voter. And you've got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don't think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom would you vote?'

Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: 'This has nothing to do with what's going on now.'"

• Michelle Malkin: "Bill Clinton twists the knife in Barack's back. Yowch. Chicago thug mafia, meet Arkansas thug mafia. Long live Democrat party unity!"
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Tell me again that Bill Clinton's on board. [...] Oh, did Obama cause himself some headaches when he didn't even go through the motions of vetting [Hillary]..."

Conservative bloggers are also buzzing about reports that Clinton will not attend Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field:

• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "I don't believe it for a minute; it's simply too petulant, even for him, and too dangerous a signal to the PUMAs for party bigwigs to let him get away with it. But how unspeakably awesome is it that this is what the top of Drudge looks like as Her Majesty is taking the stage at the convention? [...] We owe him one, don't we?"
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "However rousing Hillary Clinton's speech sought to be in praising Barack Obama, the fact remains that you can judge the Clintons better by looking at their actions rather than listening to their words. Again, it bears repeating: Bill Clinton would not be throwing a fit if Hillary Clinton told him not to and told him that throwing a fit would hurt her politically by making her look less than loyal."

OBAMA: Ayers, Ayers, Ayers

Conservative bloggers are keeping up a steady stream of buzz about Obama's relationship with the ex-Weather Underground member, William Ayers:

• Malkin: "The Chicago bully tactics aren't going to work. While Obama sics his lawyers and Kossack minions on TV stations that dare to air an independent ad about his close relationship with Weather Underground terrorist-turned-academic Bill Ayers, the truth is seeping out. [...] Obama can wrap himself in the flag and attempt to gag his critics, but his false portrayal of Ayers as just a guy in the neighborhood is not going to fly. Obama's friend is America's enemy. And America deserves to know."
• RedState's Leon H. Wolf: "Barack Obama really, really does not like it when you point out that his political career was launched in the home of unrepentant (although incompetent) terrorist Bill Ayers. He dislikes it so much, he wants to have the people who are doing it thrown in jail. Seriously."
• Mirengoff: "By defending Ayers, Obama made his connection to Ayers a legitimate, though still tangential, issue. He thus finds himself the subject of an ad about the connection. The ad is powerful, but Obama's reaction to it -- calling on the government to curtail the right of citizens to air the ad -- seems over-the-top."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Obama's dodge -- that Ayers' crimes were done when he was a boy -- doesn't begin to address his close working relationship and friendship with the terrorist whose views on America are deeply repulsive to the vast majority of Americans. Like he did with [Jeremiah] Wright, Obama will now try and persuade the public that this isn't the Ayers that he knew, but the voters aren't fools. The Rosen interview and the SDS Reunion Tapes from November 2007 tell us that Ayers has never hidden who he is or what he believes. Obama knew. And as with Jeremiah Wright, Obama didn't care. Until the voters noticed."

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION: Race, Gender, And All That Good Stuff

DENVER -- Yesterday we attended a fascinating panel discussion hosted by The Hispanic Institute and The Common Good. The discussion was titled "Culture Wars: the role of Race, Gender, Ethnicity, Religion and values in the Fall Campaign" and was moderated by NBC's Dan Abrams. The nine panelists included several current and former Dem office-holders, one conservative pundit (MSNBC's Tucker Carlson), and the netroots' own Markos Moulitsas (who describes the experience here). We don't have enough space to describe the entire discussion, but we'd like to briefly summarize two key exchanges concerning the disgruntled Clinton supporters who are receiving so much media attention this week.

Midway through the discussion, Abrams asked the panelists about the disaffected Clinton supporters who call themselves PUMAs (an acronym which stands for "Party Unity My Ass"). Moulitsas responded by questioning whether PUMAs are truly Democrats: "These PUMAs are tooling around in Hummers. A lot of them voted for George Bush twice. And we're supposed to believe that they're 'disgruntled Democrats'?"

Moulitsas also questioned whether PUMAs can truly be considered supporters of Hillary Clinton, since they're working against her stated goal of electing Obama president. Moulitsas said: "These people who purport to be fighting in her name aren't following her wishes, so maybe they're not actually supporters of Hillary Clinton."

During the Q&A following the discussion, one of the questioners asked the panelists why they had spent so much time dwelling on the Dem primary when the general election was already in full swing. Abrams defended his decision to ask so many Clinton-related questions on the grounds that McCain had made Clinton an issue in the campaign by using her in his ads.

At this point Moulitsas interjected that McCain's Clinton-themed ads are rarely broadcast and that they're intended to be played and re-played by cable news pundits, who therefore play a crucial role in amplifying the ads' message. Moulitsas told Abrams (paraphrasing): "There are three of those McCain ads [featuring Clinton]. Two of them have only aired on the networks. So you guys are doing McCain's work for him." Moulitsas' remarks drew vigorous applause from the audience.

DLC Chair Harold Ford, Jr. responded to Moulitsas by pointing out that polls indicate that roughly 25% of Clinton supporters currently support McCain -- which, he argued, could cost Obama the election. Ford also noted that Obama has fallen two points behind McCain in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll, which marks the first time that Obama has trailed McCain since early June.

"Those numbers are real," Ford said, arguing that Obama's inability to win over certain Clinton supporters is a legitimate topic that's worthy of discussion.

It should be noted that many liberal bloggers agree with Moulitsas that the McCain camp is manipulating the media by creating Hillary-themed ads with tiny or non-existent TV buys:

• The New Republic's Jason Zengerle: "Eve [Fairbanks] asks whether the McCain campaign will release a new Hillary ad every day this week. Of course it will -- so long as we in the media keep linking to the ads and doing news segments about them on TV. I'd love to know from our readers in these 'key battleground states' where the ads are supposed to air whether they've actually seen any of them on TV, other than the times they've seen reports about them on CNN and Fox and MSNBC."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "The majority of these 'YouTube ads' are designed solely to get media attention, not to be seriously used as part of the campaign. If they were podcasts, or blog posts, or flyers, or email blasts, the media would ignore them if their purpose were so transparent. I mean, who cares about a flyer produced in small quantities and handed out only to the media? But if it's video, it's news! [...] So I'd say this: cable news stations need to stop being played for suckers. Unless a campaign says it's committed to a serious ad buy for the video in question, it's time to quit playing the game. Wise up and treat 'em the same way you treat attack email blasts."

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder is one reporter who seems to agree with Drum: "This is why I've stopped reporting on the new McCain-Hillary ads: They're almost video press releases...running on fumes..."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Never Saw This Coming

The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates:

"Spike Lee On MSNBC was hilarious. One thing that I was reminded of. Spike was asked if he ever thought he'd see this day. He responded 'Never.' That is the difference between black men/women and white women. I think a large number of Hillary supporters believe that a white woman could actually be nominated, and Hillary seemed perfectly set up for it. She's also been known among feminists since her college days.

But, as much as Barack came out of nowhere for the country, he completely snuck up on black folks. We never saw this coming. I think that explains a lot of the bitterness. It's not like we've been waiting 30 years for this. A 'black president' was the sort of thing you used as a punchline, or as like a cultural symbol of something. But we didn't really think about it as a literal reality. I would not have been surprised -- or particularly upset -- if I had died without their ever being a black president. But that's the trouble with expectations. I may be now."

LEST WE FORGET: Well, We Did Invent American Cheese...

From Overheard in the Office:

Boss: "Whoever invented cheese is a great American."
Employee: "Cheese wasn't invented by an American."
Boss: "Well, whoever did invent it should be made an American."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:12 PM

August 26, 2008

8/26: Netroots To Dems: Get Nastier!

Liberal bloggers are giving Michelle Obama positive reviews for her speech at the DNC. Arianna Huffington calls the speech "a home run" while Steve Benen predicts that it will "eras[e] any doubts about her love of country." Conservative bloggers, naturally, are less kind. While most righty bloggers are praising Michelle's delivery, they're also calling the speech "a bit phony" and arguing that it obscured the fact that Michelle is really "a radical, elitist, liberal with a dislike for her own country".

Although liberal bloggers liked Michelle's speech (as well as Ted Kennedy's), many were critical of the night overall. Liberal bloggers were particularly frustrated by the paucity of attacks on John McCain and George W. Bush. The netroots are concerned that Dems are repeating the mistakes of 2004, when the DNC organizers took it easy on Bush and focused on building up John Kerry, only to have Kerry torn apart weeks later at the RNC. While the netroots recognize the importance of making a positive case for Barack Obama and introducing him and his family to the broader electorate, they believe that it's crucial to put McCain on the defensive. They also believe that making a strong case against McCain is the most effective way to get disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters fully on board. Josh Marshall writes:

"If this [convention] is about the Hillary forces and Obama forces each analyzing each other's actions, endlessly ad infinitum, there's no chance the Democrats are going to do better than just get along. Where these two sides are really going to come together is over making the case against John McCain. He's the clear and present danger."

OBAMA: A Home Run For Michelle?

Liberal bloggers praised Michelle Obama's speech:

• Arianna Huffington: "Michelle's speech was a home run. Emotional, heartfelt, and very authentic."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Amazing speech, delivery was even better."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "[Michelle's] speech was good. The family exchange at the end was fan-friggin'-tastic. That was really awesome. More like that."
• The Washington Monthly's Benen: "I suspect the original goal of Michelle's speech was to help humanize her husband, but she ended up going much further, telling an amazing American story, and one hopes, erasing any doubts about her love of country. She wasn't just good, and she didn't just exceed expectations, Michelle Obama couldn't have been any better. Remember the image of the scary, machine-gun toting woman on the cover of the New Yorker? Yeah, that's gone now."
• Mark Kleiman: "I'm about the least sentimental person I know, but I choked up listening to Michelle Obama's speech. Even the Republican talking heads can't find a bad word to say about her. Bill Schneider is talking about this as the first speech of Michelle's future political career. And the shout-out to Hillary was inspired. All the folks who have been slagging her for the past four months are now looking like a bunch of liars. The hostile, 'entitled' black nationalist they've been describing was simply not in evidence."
• Ezra Klein: "Michelle Obama is giving a beautifully delivered, and smartly crafted, speech. [...] She's also coming off as wholesome and, frankly, familiar. She just brought the crowd to its feet with an emotionally delivered 'and that is why I love this country.' Her inflection is soft and steady. The end of every sentence drops in volume, robbing it of aggression, giving it a empathic, almost quavering, cadence. She's really knocking it out of the park."

Daily Kos' georgia10: "The ads that McCain is running throughout the country attempt to paint Barack Obama is an ulta-radical, dangerous liberal who's secretly a commie/Muslim/babykiller/insertyoursmearhere. Tonight, from Michelle's rousing speech to the Obama children say[ing] hi to their dad to the countless anecdotes in between -- they all serve to introduce this family to America. There's no better rebuttal to the McCain smears than to have the Obamas speak directly to voters, showing in their simplest of gestures, like a smile to daddy on the big screen, to the most stirring of speeches that this is an all-American family that loves this country as much as they love each other."

OBAMA II: That Wasn't The Michelle We Know...

While conservative bloggers praised Michelle Obama's delivery of her speech, they believe that the content of the speech obscured her true character:

• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "Michelle's speech was her attempt to trick people into believing she's not a radical, elitist, liberal with a dislike for her own country and it was good for what it was."
• NRO's Lisa Schiffren: "Michelle hit the ball out of the park, I could not help thinking. The speechwriter did a brilliant job, given the task at hand, which was to make a somewhat unpleasant, maybe angry woman seem like a nicer version of the mom next door -- wherever you live. If one did not know all that one knows about her, her thoughts about the country, her religious choices, etc...why you'd want her to be your BFF. I would."
• NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru: "Michelle Obama did not seem aggrieved, entitled, whiny, extreme, unpatriotic, or even particularly liberal. She didn't sound anything like the off-the-cuff Michelle Obama we have come to know. The speech was well-crafted to achieve its goals, and she delivered it well."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "Ms. Obama's make-over was more extreme when it came to her account of her life. We saw her growing up on the South Side of Chicago with her family (including Princeton basketball legend 'Super Craig' Robinson, now the basketball coach at Oregon State); we saw her fleeing corporate America to 'serve her community;' and we saw her and Barack with their small children. We did not see her at the Ivy League institutions where she spent seven years of her life (four at Princeton and three at Harvard Law School). In tonight's account, she was merely 'able to go on to college.' Nor, of course, do we learn just how well Ms. Obama is doing financially by 'doing good' in her community. Plainly, Ms. Obama wishes to be viewed as an 'ordinary' American. To the extent that her real biography is known, or emerges over the course of the campaign, some voters may conclude she was a bit phony tonight."
• RedState's Mark Impomeni: "[Michelle] Obama came out to thunderous applause and proceeded to begin talking about: herself, her family, her mother, her father, her kids, her job, her leaving her job, her hopes for the future, her policy proposals, her love for the country, her, her, her. Sen. Obama, the nominee, was almost nowhere present in this speech, except for when his wife was making it quite clear that he has a lot to live up to in her dad, or when she was dragging him along for the ride on her litany of beliefs. There were a lot of 'I's' and not nearly enough 'he's.' Halfway through the speech, one wondered just who is running for president, Michelle or Barack."

NRO's Jim Geraghty issues a warning to Dems: "There was little to object to in last night's speech. She looked stunning, her speech was sunny mush, and her children were the cutest brood this side of the Huxtables. [...] But sooner or later, Michelle is very likely to return to her 'traditional' rhetoric on the campaign trail. She's going to start painting a dire, gloomy picture of an America where the working class is squashed and dreams are crushed by the powerful on a daily basis. And when it does, it will provide an opportunity for Obama opponents to argue, 'That nice woman you saw in Denver is the mask. The real Michelle is the woman who is only now proud of her country, and who thinks it is usually "just downright mean."'"

OBAMA III: Why Aren't We Hitting McCain?

Many liberal bloggers were concerned about the paucity of attacks on McCain and Bush during the first night of the DNC:

• Bowers: "Other than Pelosi's less than convincing 'John McCain is wrong' call and response, do we have any plans to attack John McCain during this convention? I haven't heard any of it so far. It would be a massive waste of an opportunity if we don't really open up on him in this election."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "If a glove was laid upon McCain and the Republicans [last night], I did not see it."
• TPM's Marshall: "Thought we had some great speeches tonight. But I did not hear much about President Bush or John McCain. Maybe this wasn't the night for it. Maybe this was Kennedy and Michelle Obama. But they need to go there. [...] I just need to know it's coming and that -- even if mainly in the hands of surrogates -- it won't stop until election day. Listen to [Paul] Begala. It's not about responding quickly to the attacks. It's about making McCain respond to Democrats' attacks."

Along that same vein, many liberal bloggers praised MO Sen. Claire McCaskill for attacking McCain in her speech:

• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "Somewhat incredibly, I've been watching the Democratic Convention for something like three hours now and I think Claire McCaskill who just finished was the first speaker who actually took some time to make an argument against John McCain. I understand that the theory of the day is that Democrats want to introduce people to Barack Obama, but it seems to me that viable political parties figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time -- it's hardly impossible to work a few digs at the other guy into a talk that's mostly about the virtues of your candidate."
• TAPPED's Sam Boyd: "From my perspective Claire McCaskill is knocking this out of the park. Rather than vague statements about how Obama is, like, totally awesome, she's saying McCain would be a bad president. Doesn't sound like much, but no one else is doing it. 'Change' as a message is meaningless without any argument about, you know, why we need it. McCaskill, unlike so many other people out there tonight, is making that argument and arguing that McCain represents part of the problem not the solution. It's not an artful speech or particularly well-delivered, but it actually makes sense logically, and that makes up for a lot."

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan doesn't believe that the Dems erred by not attacking Bush and McCain last night: "The notion that tonight should have been about ripping the bark off the president seems to me misplaced. No one needs to be persuaded that the country is on the wrong track. We have endured one of the worst presidencies in American history, a stalling economy, and a war that was as deceptively packaged as it was poorly executed. The wrong track number is at 80 percent. What was necessary tonight was rebutting the only real weapon the Republicans have: dragging Obama into the mud, throwing every extremist attack they can at him, painting him as a commie, alien, anti-American freak. For good measure, they had tried to paint Michelle as an angry black radical. They failed. There was nothing more American than the way the Obamas spoke of their story. It made them more appealing to the white working class and the black working class. It defused the smears."

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas agrees with Sullivan: "For those of us who were born in the combative blogosphere, we're pretty much happy with how the first night panned out. Why? Perhaps because being close to the ground, we understand that the problem the Obamas have is not that the country thinks things are peachy. 80 percent of Americans think the country is headed the wrong direction, and Bush and Congressional Republicans are getting the lion's share of the blame. It's true that McCain is trying to use his 'maverick' status to distance himself from his party, but piercing that fabrication isn't the Obamas biggest problem. No, the biggest problem they face is the b.s. about them not being real Americans -- that he is foreign and muslim, that she is an angry black radical, that they don't 'look' how a First Family should look. And so Obama's team set out to diffuse those fears on the first night. [...] There are three more days of convention. We don't have to beat up on Republicans all four nights. The anti-GOP case has already been made by Bush and his enablers over the past eight years. There are two tasks left -- to show American the Obamas are, well, real Americans, and to tie McCain to the GOP. The former has now been accomplished. I suspect today and tomorrow will handle the latter."

OBAMA IV: You Wanna Unite The Party? Attack McCain!

Several liberal bloggers are arguing that the best way to bring together Clinton supporters and Obama supporters isn't to dwell on their respective grievances, but to make a strong case against McCain:

• Marshall: "If this is about the Hillary forces and Obama forces each analyzing each others actions, endlessly ad infinitum, there's no chance the Democrats are going to do better than just get along. Where these two sides are really going to come together is over making the case against John McCain. He's the clear and present danger."
• Yglesias: "As you may recall, several months ago it looked as if one of America's two major political parties was going to have a serious 'party unity' problem. Their nominating contest produced a winner who'd prevailed against divided opposition without ever proving himself to be a clear majority choice anywhere. What's more, the party's base was divided between a substantial element that strongly approved of the party's unpopular incumbent president, and another substantial element that joined the majority of the public in disapproving of his job performance. What's more, the winner had a long history of personal and professional tensions with key stakeholders in his party's political movement and with leading party politicians."
• Yglesias continues: "And yet, these tensions were overcome! And not overcome, primarily, by endless hand-holding sessions in which the various aggrieved parties recited their complaints from one side of their mouth while talking of their admiration for each other out of the other side. And they certainly weren't overcome by speaking in more detail about a policy agenda. Rather, though there was of course some hand-holding, unity was primarily achieved by shifting attention off the internally controversial [subject] of their nominee and his relationship to other party figures and on to the internally uncontroversial subject of how awful the other political party is. Whether there may be any lessons in this for any other political parties is something I'll leave to readers to judge."

OBAMA V: A Missed Opportunity?

Conservative bloggers weren't particularly impressed by the programming during the first night of the DNC:

• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "It strikes me that Republicans have every reason to feel good about the first night of the Democrat convention. It's hard to tell what, if anything, was achieved in furtherance of making the case for Barack Obama -- who, incidentally, told the assemblage that he was in St. Louis, when he was really in Kansas City (imagine if Dan Quayle or George W. had made such a gaffe!)."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "[Dem strategist James] Carville says the Dems wasted a quarter of their convention last night. I tend to agree...It was fine, but it was not magical."
• Hawkins: "Overall, this was a poorly organized bomb. It gets a D- grade and only Michelle Obama and Ted Kennedy saved it from being a complete and utter failure. You want to know how bad it was? Even James Carville and [CNN's] David Gergen were panning it. Why was it so bad? Let us count the ways, my friends. It was poorly organized, had a lame group of speakers, didn't hit any overriding themes, didn't build Barack up very much, didn't fire up liberals, didn't attack the GOP -- it just did very little for the Dems in any way, shape, or form beyond perhaps improving Michelle Obama's image a tad."

OBAMA VI: A Total Meltdown?

Conservative bloggers are also buzzing about rumors of tensions between the Clinton camp and the Obama camp:

• RedState's Soren Dayton: "The word on the street is total meltdown. The Clintons and their advisors aren't even staying for the final speech. Bill Clinton is openly whining about his speaking assignment. And that's before Joe Biden stuffs most of his leg in his mouth."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "The intensely political city is being wracked by sectarian conflict that appears ready to devolve into out and out civil war, with partisans on each side looking to destroy the other as they work to ensure the political supremacy of their respective leaders. Baghdad? No, Denver. [...] I am sure that we will have the show of unity at the end of all of this. But the question of whether a disgruntled group of Clintonites decides to hold back and ultimately serves to deny Barack Obama the Presidency is not a closed one."
• The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini: "The Clinton chatter is dominant. The Clintons will get two nights in Denver -- Hillary Tuesday, and Bill Wednesday. The coverage on the cables so far this morning has been all about the Clintons. High-profile Clinton surrogates complaining about the lack of VP vetting with the RNC/McCain capitalizing, Bill being upset about his speech topic, Hillary jerking her delegates around, effectively telling them 'Nevermind' after making a show about the 'catharsis' of the roll call a couple of weeks ago. If the Clintons really wanted to screw with Obama's chances, setting up Hillary 2012, this would be the week to do it. And this is what they seem to be doing."
• Lewis: "Seriously, I don't know how Obama should handle [the Clintons]...you can't roll over for them, but you can't stand up to them, either. This could get very interesting..."

MEDIA CRITICISM: Stop Obsessing About The Friggin' PUMAs!

Liberal bloggers are frustrated with the media's preoccupation with Clinton supporters who plan to vote for McCain:

• TAPPED's Dana Goldstein: "Sitting inside the Pepsi Center, watching delegates dancing to the sounds of a funk band and screaming their heads off each time Barack Obama's name is mentioned, it's hard to believe that outside, the cable news networks are talking obsessively about tensions between the Obama and Clinton camps. It's one thing to train your camera on the spectacle of 'PUMA' protesters wearing Clinton tee-shirts adorned with McCain stickers, many of whom are registered and lifelong Republicans. It's another to imply that these folks somehow represent Democratic delegates, or are the theme of the convention itself."
• georgia10: "Here on the ground in Denver, you would be hard pressed to find someone who is willing to vote for John McCain in the fall. Sure, the place is teeming with people who voted for Hillary, but the general consenus here is that we need to get a Democrat into the White House. Period. That won't stop television reporters from flocking to the rare PUMA in the streets wearing a Hillary or Bust t-shirt. But the force of these individuals here at the convention isn't as compelling as the media make it out to be. While PUMAs may think they're here to roar for Hillary only, in the midst of all of this energy for Obama and the Democratic Party, PUMA whining is nothing more than a barely audible meow."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "I've been wandering around Denver for a couple days now and haven't seen any sign of the PUMAs -- the diehards who purport to support Hillary, but are really just a bunch of media hogs and losers. From my vantage point here in Denver, it feels like the hype has been overblown. (Via Jed, [NBC Political Director] Chuck Todd thinks so, too.) The folks I know who supported Hillary -- and a lot of them are here -- want a Democrat to win in November."
• Yglesias: "Is there any chance that NBC News or CBS News or ABC News or CNN or MSNBC or Fox News will give one tenth as much airtime to [NARAL President] Nancy Keenan's speech (ongoing as I blog) on the differences between the candidates on reproductive rights as they gave today to vague meta-talk about 'what Obama needs to do' to win over Hillary Clinton's supporters? No. And yet Keenan's speech if full of actual information, noting that 'the Supreme Court is at an ideological tipping point...and the next president will decide Roe's fate.' I think well-informed liberals and conservatives alike would basically agree with that, but many voters don't seem to realize this. Watching Keenan would leave viewers better informed than they were previously. Watching talking heads ponder the PUMA phenomenon accomplishes, well, I couldn't quite say what."

Bowers urges the netroots not to worry so much about the PUMAs: "PUMA's act like idiots, and that is also a good thing. Self-identified Democratic concern trolls who are willing to trash the Democratic Party are a dime a dozen, and the media will pick up on them whoever they are. It is much better that our major concern trolls right now are idiotic PUMA's who have no idea who to influence voters, then media savvy, corporate funded pundits who could do real damage. Even the McCain campaign knows this, because they aren't throwing any money behind their ad featuring a PUMA. These are the sorts of concern trolls that we want. It's the [The New Republic]'s of the world that are actually dangerous to progressives."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Huckabee As VP?

NRO's Rich Lowry floats the possibility:

"There's no indication that [Mike] Huckabee is being considered, so consider this idle speculation like the Hillary chatter prior to Obama's pick. But wouldn't Huckabee make a lot of sense given the things we've learned the last two weeks? 1) McCain might have a 'wealth problem,' and certainly Democrats are going to try to hit his wealth for all its worth in their play for working-class voters; Huckabee doesn't have a problem on this front, and has lots of working-class cred. 2) The pro-choice trial balloon hasn't been well received, and it's clear that a pro-choice nominee would create a major disruption; Huckabee is pro-life. 3) Obama picked Biden who is going to a vivid presence (for better or worse) on the stump and could be formidable in debate; Huckabee is a great campaigner and might be just the guy to puncture Biden in a debate. 4) (This is a less important point.) The McCain folks have made a huge deal about differences between Obama and Biden during the primaries; McCain and Huckabee didn't have much in the way of differences and went out of their way to praise each other. The other upsides are the press likes Huckabee (for now), he's a different kind of Republican, and his selection would be such a shock, it might even be considered bold. The downsides are -- as I've noted many times before -- he doesn't have much in the way of national security credentials and has a big seriousness gap, obviously not trifling matters. But if McCain can't do [CT Sen. Joe] Lieberman, and isn't thrilled by [MN Gov. Tim] Pawlenty or [Mitt] Romney, Huckabee might be worth a last-minute second look."

LEST WE FORGET: Apparently, Giraffes Can Only Duck At Low Speeds

From Overheard in the Office:

Cube dweller #1: You've worked with giraffes?
Cube dweller #2: Yeah, transporting them is a real pain. They go in an open trailer, and every time you get to an overpass, you have to either let air out of all the tires to fit under it, or you have to stop, back them out of the trailer, walk them around the overpass, get them back in the trailer...It takes forever to get anywhere.
Cube dweller #1: Can't you just teach them to duck?
Cube dweller #2: (long pause) Not at those speeds.

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:58 PM

August 25, 2008

8/25: Reactions To Biden

The liberal blogosphere had a mostly lukewarm reaction to the news that Barack Obama had chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. While the netroots have been very critical of Biden's votes for the Iraq War resolution and the 2005 bankruptcy bill, they still find him ideologically preferable to the other candidates rumored to be on Obama's VP short list (specifically IN Sen. Evan Bayh). So there was a palpable sense of relief in the liberal blogosphere when Obama ultimately chose Biden instead of Bayh.

Liberal bloggers also believe that Biden has his good qualities. The netroots love Biden's willingness to attack the GOP, and they're convinced that the Obama camp will benefit from his aggressive style. Even Markos Moulitsas, who was generally not a fan of the pick, wrote: "Given Obama's reluctance to play the partisan card, it should be fun having a real pit bull in the number two position to do some of the necessary dirty work."

The vast majority of conservative bloggers consider Biden a terrible choice for Obama's running mate. Many righty bloggers are buzzing about Biden's propensity for verbal gaffes, which they expect (and hope) will create problems for Obama during the fall campaign. Many conservative bloggers are pushing the idea that an Obama/Biden ticket represents all talk and no action. Jay Nordlinger calls it "the verbiage ticket" while Jonah Goldberg writes: "There's more than a small risk that Biden will reinforce the sense that this ticket is all about hearing itself talk."

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES: Biden? Well, It Could Have Been Worse...

The liberal blogosphere's reaction to the Biden announcement was one of relief rather than excitement:

• Atrios: "I'm not a big fan of [Biden] for a variety of reasons, but for a variety of other reasons I think he's a pretty good VP choice. Not my fantasy VP choice or close to it, but nonetheless pretty good. Better than many of the other floated names."
• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "I think this is a decent choice, especially given the alternatives (Bayh, shudder.)"
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "All things being equal, Obama could have done a whole lot worse."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "He's a good pick for the campaign. Biden's got a certain appeal to older white voters and working class voters that we in the new progressive movement don't really get. He's not from our world, he was wrong on Iraq and the Bankruptcy Bill, and he's kind of a blowhard and dislikes the blogs (he blames us for the 'clean, articulate' controversy). He's bad on the war on drugs, he subscribes to the 'antiwar left = not serious' concept, and he wants to keep residual troops in Iraq. In other words, he's perfect for the Obama campaign, reinforcing their key frame of 'change, but not scary liberal change'. [...] Biden's not a horrific pick, he's fine considering the choices."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "[Biden] wasn't my favorite choice for the gig, but he was far from my least-favorite choice either. The major pro is that this signals as desire to take the argument to John McCain on national security policy which is a wise decision -- the American people deserve to hear a full-spectrum debate about the issues facing the country rather than a positional battle in which one party talks about the economy and the other talks about national security. [...] Biden also has the lowest net worth of any U.S. Senator. Combined with Barack Obama whose prosperity is a very recent consequence of book sales, it's definitely a ticket that can argue they have more personal acquaintance with the struggles of middle class American life than John McCain or George Bush or recent Democratic nominees like John Kerry and Al Gore."
• digby: "[Biden] is undisciplined and unpredictable --- but I have to tell you, I think the Obama campaign could use a little bit of that at this point. [...] Maybe it will shake things up. It's a good sign that they picked someone who wasn't completely 'safe.' They could have done a lot worse --- and if Biden can speak the language of the working class Dems (even if his record speaks to the typical beltway fealty to big business) then he is an asset."
• BooMan: "Ideologically, I disagree with Biden on a number of issues. But I can fully support this pick. And I actually really like Joe Biden."

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES II: The Fighter Obama Needs?

While the netroots have some ideological differences with Biden (they're particularly critical of his votes for the Iraq War resolution and the 2005 bankruptcy bill), they believe that the Obama camp will benefit from his aggressive style:

• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Joe Biden: the fighter we've been waiting for."
• Firedoglake's Blue Texan: "The thing I like most about Obama picking Biden is he's got sharp elbows and he's not afraid to throw them."
• Daily Kos' Moulitsas: "Biden can be a partisan pit bull when so warranted. Given Obama's reluctance to play the partisan card, it should be fun having a real pit bull in the number two position to do some of the necessary dirty work."
• Open Left's Mike Lux: "Say what you will about Biden, but he is one tough son-of-a-bitch. He doesn't back down from a fight, and he won't put up with the Republicans' bullshit. He says exactly what he thinks, which sometimes gets him into trouble with the traditional media and sometimes with the blogosphere, but I admire the bluntness even when I think he's full of shit. I think Obama needs that toughness by his side."

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES III: A Terrible Decision?

Most conservative bloggers ridiculed Obama's decision to choose Biden as his running mate:

• Goldberg: "I think it is an outright terrible decision on Obama's part to pick Biden. Yes, he helps balance Obama's inexperience on foreign policy, but he also reminds people of it. Yes, Biden could conceivably be effective as an attack dog. But Biden is such a gasbag he makes the Hindenburg look like a sack of rocks. Obama doesn't need to increase his lip-flapping quotient. Biden is a gaffe machine and Obama is bad explaining faults, and his VP's faults will inevitably become Obama's in the Fall campaign. [...] There's more than a small risk that Biden will reinforce the sense that this ticket is all about hearing itself talk."
• Nordlinger: "I am quite surprised -- nearly shocked -- at the pick of Biden. I believe Obama has made an error -- not just hope so, believe. [...] I don't see what Biden gains him. Biden is a slightly risible figure, what with his hair plugs (or whatever) and his many, many examples of public obnoxiousness. [...] The verbiage ticket, this is, and the arrogance ticket, and the emptiness ticket. McCain and his running-mate-to-be should really take them. Don't you think?"
• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "I breathed a sigh of relief that Obama chose Biden. Like Jay Nordlinger, I find that at best Biden adds nothing to the Democratic ticket. Rather than adding to Obama's attractions or neutralizing Obama's liabilities, if he does anything, Biden subtracts from Obama's strengths and contributes to his liabilities. [...] Biden's selection undercuts Obama's 'change' mantra, tending to reveal it as the kind of gasbaggery in which Biden coincidentally has distinguished himself in the course of a long and otherwise undistinguished career."
• The Weekly Standard's Jaime Sneider: "Every Republican operative I've talked to for the last week thought Biden was the weakest pick. He's a loose cannon who has already made several gaffes in the Hall of Fame of political screw-ups that will now be rehashed for the next week. Obama needed somebody that was reliable and could potentially deliver a red state. Biden is neither. Obama may think Biden shores up his own weakness on foreign policy, but it just emphasizes it. And given that most Americans think economic issues are more important, it's less clear what Biden delivers."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Not only has Biden not helped Obama, it looks like he's actually damaging the ticket with his addition. He certainly hasn't added any enthusiasm to the Democratic offering. Did Team Obama do any serious research on Biden and his effect before making this selection?"
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "With the addition of Slow Joe Biden to the ticket, Obama has added to his unsteady candidacy an epic amount Beltway cluelessness and arrogance unsupported by anything except frequent flier miles and Delaware's love for a chuckle-headed fellow with a big smile."
• The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini: "Instead of reinforcing Obama's message, Biden muddles it. Biden is the ultimate Washington insider, having been in the Senate for 36 years. [...] He has hardly held a real job, having been elected to the Senate as a young attorney fresh out of law school. In all likelihood, the Democratic ticket of Obama-Biden will have more years in Washington (38) than the McCain-led Republican ticket. So much for hope and change."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "The blogger in me is happy to see someone Biden get the nod, because he is sure to say some controversial things in the weeks to come. Let's be honest, the guy is a gaffe machine. He has already driven two presidential campaigns into the ground with his mouth. Will this be the third?"

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES IV: Biden? Ho-Hum

Other conservative bloggers were slightly less critical of the pick:

• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "All in all, Biden is probably an inferior pick to someone like [ex-GA Sen.] Sam Nunn or Hillary Clinton (who would have delivered a lot more votes), but he will help balance out Obama's inexperience, naivete, and lack of competence, which is what Barack desperately needs right now."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "The view that the Biden selection was poor because it undercuts Obama's message as the agent of change is questionable. Obama, I think, has recognized that what worked when he was seeking the Democratic nomination may not serve him well in the general election. This is standard political calculation and very probably correct in this instance. The presence of Good Ol' Joe of the ticket should be seen as an effort to reassure some of Hillary's supporters as well as moderate voters that Obama will not be the agent of radical change, just the kind of mainstream liberal change the Democrats traditionally advocate. [...] It's an effort worth making. Whether Biden proves to be the best vehicle for this undertaking is another matter."
• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "The difficulty for an Obama-Biden ticket will be leveraging Joe Biden's assets without them turning into liabilities. (No, that's not a dirty joke.) One of the benefits of choosing Biden is that he is charismatic, funny, and can come across as a normal guy on the stump -- all problem areas for Obama. But the same shoot-from-the-hip tendency has produced a long list of Biden gaffes. Let Biden be a loose canon and the Obama camp will run into trouble. Rein him in too tightly and you might as well have picked ultra-boring [KS Gov.] Kathleen Sebelius."

MCCAIN: How You Livin', John McCain? In Mansions And Benz's...

Liberal bloggers believe that McCain made an enormous error when he admitted that he doesn't know how many houses he owns:

• Moulitsas: "Republicans just spent months building up their 'Obama is elitist' narrative, only to see it come crashing down under the weight of four? seven? eight? who the heck knows how many houses. And when I say 'who the heck knows', I mean 'who the heck knows'. Not even McCain knows. [...] And this is just getting started. John McCain life and lifestyle keeps getting in the way of his campaign's best zingers. They mock Obama's visit to his grandmother in Hawaii? Turns out McCain and Cindy met in Hawaii, and then they honeymooned in Hawaii. Exotic! Elitist! Blah blah blah. It's one big long season of the pot calling the kettle black."
• Daily Kos' DarkSyde: "At the risk of jeopardizing a long, long overdue media awakening and subsequent pile-on, given the material the press has had to work with it's just a little weird that the number of houses, fucking houses, is what it took to even begin to reverse the ongoing media cranial-rectal inversion on all matters McCain. The right was scared and they should be. For one fleeting instant, the media reacted with a show of objectivity laced with deadly accuracy, and the McCain mythos unraveled faster than a cheap ball of yarn in a room full of hyperactive kittens. No doubt the press will soon revert to their old, comfortable pattern where all news is good news for the McCain campaign."

Liberal bloggers are also pleased that the Obama camp made an issue of McCain's remarks:

• Stoller: "The way that McCain has been undermined by his own words on how he can't remember how many houses he owns was organized by the Obama campaign and the new and enlarged DNC. They pushed it out, kept it going, and managed the media cycle well. Importantly, they moved away from their standard negative attack -- big oil -- to seize an opportunity to define McCain's character. The campaign did not do this on Phil Gramm's 'nation of whiners' comment, for instance, but they did here, and that's a very good sign."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "The Houses gaffe exposes two of McCain's biggest vulnerabilities -- 1) the contrast between his old soldier pseudo-mystique and the pampered life he's led for almost 40 years and 2) the age-related wobbliness which has his campaign aides keeping him largely off limits to the traveling press. These dovetail with his loose-cannon approach to critical foreign policy questions. These issues -- particularly 2 and 3 -- are substantively critical issues. 1 is to the extent that it sheds light on McCain's general ignorance and indifference to bread-n-butter economic issues and his willingness to flip between progressive and Bushite tax policy over the course of a couple years. But the tempo of this election and the fall out from the 'celeb' attacks will be determined in large part not by factual particulars but by whether Obama can show that when someone hits him hard he hits back twice as hard. Not cowering, ignoring or complaining. This is about the score and not the libretto."

MEDIA CRITICISM: Fournier Strikes Again

As we've noted on previous occasions (and as The Politico's Michael Calderone describes here), liberal bloggers have been highly critical of the AP's Washington Bureau Chief, Ron Fournier. The netroots believe that Fournier is biased against Dems, and their criticism only grew louder after it was revealed that (a.) Fournier urged Karl Rove to "keep up the fight" in a 2005 email, and (b.) Fournier spoke with several of McCain's top aides about joining the AZ senator's presidential campaign in October 2006.

This past weekend, Fournier further angered the netroots by writing an AP "analysis" piece arguing that Obama's decision to choose Joe Biden as his running mate "shows [a] lack of confidence":

"The candidate of change went with the status quo. In picking Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, Barack Obama sought to shore up his weakness -- inexperience in office and on foreign policy -- rather than underscore his strength as a new-generation candidate defying political conventions."

Unsurprisingly, the McCain camp is reportedly "jazzed" about Fournier's piece, whereas liberal bloggers are furious:

• Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher: "As recently as last year, Ron Fournier considered working for the McCain campaign. Instead he took a job as Washington bureau chief for the AP, but it looks like he's still working for McCain. Fournier say in a new AP piece that the Biden choice demonstrates that Obama 'lacks confidence,' that Biden is the 'ultimate insider,' and that it threatens to undermine Obama's message of 'change.' It could've come straight off the fax machine of the McCain press shop, with no need for editing (indeed, the McCain campaign says it loves the Fournier piece). [...] It's simply not acceptable that the head of the AP's Washington bureau, in charge of presidential campaign coverage, sees the AP as little more than an extension of the McCain Campaign's message. [...] Ron Fournier must be taken off the Presidential beat. He's got an obvious conflict-of-interest."
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "It's going to be an awfully long fall campaign if the AP Washington bureau under Ron Fournier insists on shoddy journalistic techniques and merely regurgitating the spin from the McCain campaign."
• dday: "Ron Fournier has to go. The 'straight reporter' who actively sought a job in the McCain press operation is commenting on the Presidential race? I think The John McCain Show figured Fournier would be more valuable on the outside."
• Firedoglake's TBogg: "It didn't really matter who Obama selected, Fournier was going to make a case against them. So, while everyone else was waiting for their Obama VP text, Fournier was receiving one from from Karl Rove: 'Keep up the fight.' That's his job."
• Mark Kleiman: "It seems to me that, just as a matter of appearances, allowing someone who negotiated for a job with one of the candidates to drive AP's election coverage is imprudent. The sycophantic emails from Fournier to Karl Rove -- at the moment when, as we now know, Rove was engaged in an especially ghoulish act of deception with the press as his instrument -- make things worse. Those suspicions might have slept if Fournier and his colleagues had provided even reasonably even-handed treatment of the candidates. But the actual slant of AP's Presidential campaign coverage -- culminating in this morning's hit-piece aimed at Joe Biden and at Barack Obama for choosing him -- is now too obvious to ignore."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "After their top presidential reporter, Ron Fournier, interviewed for a job with the McCain presidential campaign, it's simply abominable that AP would keep him on the presidential beat. Does anyone doubt that a McCain presidency will try to hire Fournier for press secretary? Please, it's a given. Fournier will always have his next job in the back of his mind. You simply don't even entertain a job offer from someone you cover if you intend to continue covering them. We are far beyond the appearance of impropriety."

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan also criticizes Fournier: "Ron Fournier's dramatic use of opinion in the first paragraph of the Biden story going out on all the wires is an aggressive Republican spin. Fournier has already weakened the AP's rep for pretty straight-up reportage. It just got a lot weaker. Last spring, by the way, Fournier was lambasting Obama for arrogance. Now, apparently, it's a lack of confidence. Whatever works, I guess. But please, get a blog."

Meanwhile, MoveOn.org has launched an campaign urging its members to email the AP and "tell them that the public's faith in the 160-year-old AP will be gone if Ron Fournier is allowed to continue his slanted articles against Democrats and for McCain."

MEDIA CRITICISM II: McCain's House Gaffe Is Bad For...Obama?

Liberal bloggers are harshly criticizing Time's Mark Halperin for arguing that McCain's admission that he doesn't know how many houses he owns will go down as "one of the worst moments in the entire campaign for...Barack Obama":

"My hunch is this is going to end up being one of the worst moments in the entire campaign for one of the candidates but it's Barack Obama. [...] I believe that this opened the door to not just Tony Rezko in that ad, but to bring up Reverend [Jeremiah] Wright, to bring up his relationship with Bill Ayers."

• Marshall: "It's a very tough standard, but I think this may be the stupidest thing Halperin has ever said. (Yes, I know, I know...) The McCain folks must be both loving and laughing at the guy at the same time. [...] Shorter Halperin: If you're a Democrat, you really just better take it. Because the more you fight back, the worse it's gonna be for you."
• Yglesias: "Not only is this silly in a first-order sense, the underlying premises that a door needs to be opened for McCain to deploy those kind of attacks is bizarre. Nothing was stopping the McCain campaign from 'going there' with misleading Rezko- or Ayers-related arguments before this happened. They just weren't doing it because they didn't think it was the correct time, strategically, to raise those issues. But you'd have to be extraordinarily naive to believe that the McCain campaign was genuinely just not going to mention any of this stuff until Mean Ol' Barack came along to make fun of the idea of being so rich that you can't keep track of your mansions. And whatever you may say about Halperin, he's not a naive guy."
• Blue Texan: "McSame gets caught admitting he doesn't know how many freaking houses he owns -- a gaffe that's so monumental and politically damaging in an election when the economy will likely be the central issue, it makes Poppy's grocery store moment seem mild in comparison. And yet, because Obama mocked him for it, Obama's the one who's in trouble, because, darn it, those oh-so-civil and respectful Republicans that are notoriously hesitant to engage in negative political attacks -- finally get to play dirty. Unfuckingbelievable."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "Mark Halperin has outdone himself today, claiming that the McCain housing gaffe is bad for Obama. No. Seriously. [...] For service to the cause, it is with much pride that I award [Halperin] the Second Golden McPenis, for meritorious service to McCain's scrotum. Well done, Mark. You earned it."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Biden In 2016?

Matthew Yglesias thinks people shouldn't discount the possibility:

"I'm kind of surprised by the number of people I'm reading who seem convinced that Joe Biden would be too old to run for President in 2016 at the age of 74. John McCain is running for president right now at the age of 72, and though voters do seem to have some concerns about his age it's hardly a crippling disadvantage. What's more, to the best of my knowledge Biden, unlike McCain, doesn't have a history of cancer or physical ailments stemming from years of captivity and torture. From an actuarial point of view, Biden-at-74 will almost certainly have a longer life expectancy than McCain-at-72. What's more, given population trends the country as a whole will be older in 2016 than it is in 2008. Obviously, a million things could happen that prevent Bidenmania from sweeping the country in 2016, but if Obama wins two elections and Biden stays in reasonable health (big ifs!) I don't see what's stopping him from running."

LEST WE FORGET: Another McSweeney's List

McSweeney's Laura Registrato makes a list of "T-Shirts My Ex-Boyfriends Would Wear in a More Honest World":

• "Ask Me About How It's Not My Fault"
• "If You Lived Here I'd Be Uncomfortable and Squirrelly by Now"
• "If You Can Read This You Can Also See My Crippling Self-Doubt"
• "I Survived a Traumatic Childhood...and Am Prepared to Take It Out on You"
• "You're With Stupid"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:01 PM

August 21, 2008

8/21: Turning A Corner?

While liberal bloggers remain frustrated by what they perceive to be the Barack Obama campaign's lack of aggressiveness, their mood has noticeably improved during the past 24 hours. Why? Well, first the Obama camp released a hard-hitting ad linking John McCain to Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff. Next, the Obama camp launched a sharp attack on McCain's approach to foreign policy, calling the GOP nominee "reckless" and "trigger-happy". Liberal bloggers were delighted by these attacks, which they see as a sign that the Obama camp is beginning to go on the offensive against McCain.

The second reason for the netroots' improved mood is that McCain made two remarks which liberal bloggers consider significant gaffes. First, McCain had an exchange with a questioner in which he appeared to implicitly endorse the idea of reinstituting a military draft. Liberal bloggers are calling this "a shocking admission from John McCain" and are urging the Obama camp to use it in an ad. Next, McCain told Politico that he doesn't know how many houses he owns -- an admission that the Obama camp has already turned into an ad. Liberal bloggers believe that McCain's ignorance of the number of houses he owns raises unflattering questions about both his wealth and his memory (i.e., age).

MCCAIN: You Really Don't Want This Guy's Finger On The Trigger...

Liberal bloggers were delighted (and somewhat relieved) when the Obama camp launched a sharp attack on McCain's approach to foreign policy, calling him "reckless" and "trigger-happy":

• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Obama launches [a] character attack against McCain...finally."
• Mark Kleiman: "John McCain is reckless, hot-headed, and trigger-happy."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "Will the McCain as trigger-happy hothead work? I suggest a different calculus. Is it true? I would suggest that it definitely is, both in personal temperament and policy prescriptions. And I believe that is the better metric, both practically speaking and morally."

Liberal bloggers were also pleased by the Obama camp's new hard-hitting ad linking McCain to Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff (although some wish the ad was running in more places than Atlanta, GA):

• Atrios: "POW! More like this."
• TPM's David Kurtz: "If you want harder hitting stuff from Obama, you might like this new TV ad tying John McCain to Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff. But the ad is running in Atlanta only."

MCCAIN II: Hysteria-Based Foreign Policy?

Echoing the Obama camp's new narrative about McCain's reckless approach to foreign policy, Democracy Arsenal's Max Bergmann argues that "McCain's foreign policy approach...is rooted in hyperbolic rhetoric mixed with hysterical over reaction":

"The big concern with a McCain presidency -- a concern which I am surprised has not been vocalized more fully -- is that the U.S. will lurch from crisis to crisis, confrontation to confrontation, whether it be with Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. The danger is that McCain's pundit-like rhetoric will entrap the U.S. in descending spiral of foreign policy brinksmanship. Just think about the very likely scenario of McCain giving Iran/Russia a rhetorical ultimatum and Iran/Russia ignoring it. Now we are stuck -- either we lose face by not following through on our threats or we follow through and go to war. We can't afford such a reckless approach after the last eight years. For the next eight we need a president not a pundit."

Liberal bloggers are praising Bergmann's post and adding their own thoughts:

• Marshall: "For anyone who had eyes to see, Georgia was a perfect illustration of this. [McCain] totally flew off the handle, ramping the situation up dramatically with his unstable rhetoric."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "Max Bergmann had the excellent insight that perhaps the key to understanding John McCain's hysteria-based foreign policy is that it reflects the mindset of a television pundit. [...McCain] spends a ton of time going on television and talking. Max mentions that 'one of the first things McCain did after 9-11 was go on just about every TV program -- where he incidentally called for attacking about four countries' and consistently over the years gone on TV and 'sounded the alarm, ratcheted up the rhetoric and often called for military action -- with almost no regards to the practical implications of such an approach.' Thus he can, for example, go on TV and call casually for a land invasion of Serbia knowing he'll never be held accountable for any problems since the Clinton administration won't do it, and then just forget about the whole thing in later years when the more responsible approach turns out to have been okay."

MCCAIN III: Did He Just Endorse A Draft?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about an exchange that McCain had with a questioner yesterday, in which he appeared to implicitly endorse the idea of reinstituting a military draft:

"Today at a townhall meeting, an audience member praised Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for his vow to 'follow bin Laden to the gates of hell.' After a long question about veterans' care, the questioner said she believed we needed to reinstate the draft, to which McCain seemed to readily agree:

QUESTIONER: 'If we don't reenact the draft, I don't think we'll have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.'

[Applause]

MCCAIN: 'Ma'am, let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said.'"

Liberal bloggers were surprised by McCain's response, and they want to use video footage of this exchange in ads against McCain:

• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "This is a shocking admission from John McCain."
• VoteVets' Brandon Friedman: "This is absolutely amazing. A woman told John McCain today that we might need a draft to accomplish all his foreign policy goals. And he said he didn't disagree. So there you have it: McCain = Draft."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Anyone of draft age should watch this video. Anyone with kids who are draft age -- or approaching draft age -- should watch this video. As John wrote last night, McCain's instinct is to go to war. Today, McCain exposed how he'll have the forces to do it. The draft is part of his equation."
• dday: "This kind of talk was on the 'Internets' in 2004, but wasn't completely pushed by Democrats, and there wasn't actual video of the GOP candidate basically agreeing that we need a draft."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "[This] is bound to cause some headaches for the McCain campaign."

MCCAIN IV: Who's Out Of Touch?

Liberal bloggers are mocking McCain for telling Politico that he doesn't know how many houses he owns:

"Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

'I think -- I'll have my staff get to you,' McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. 'It's condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you.'

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties."

• Atrios: "Like many Americans, John McCain has a hard time remembering just how many homes he owns."
• Marshall: "In these hard economic times, a lot of people have house problems. John McCain's is that he doesn't know how many he owns."
• MyDD's Josh Orton: "I'm not sure what McCain's definition of rich is, but in my book you instantly qualify if you can't remember how many #&^#@%* houses you own. [...] I suppose in our 'nation of whiners,' it's uncouth to give an exact number. Alternately, perhaps McCain can't remember because they're all owned by Cindy."
• Benen: "Throughout the campaign, there have been various trivialities that have taken on enormous political significance. Nearly everyone can no doubt rattle more than a few examples off the top of their heads -- haircuts, arugula, bowling scores, lapel pins, etc. But I have a hunch not one of these is as humiliating as this one. [...] It's one thing to be so extraordinarily wealthy that you own multiple homes. It's another to be so extraordinarily wealthy that you can't even remember how many homes you own."
• Daily Kos' MissLaura: "Is McCain's memory really that poor, and if so, what does it say about his ability to be president? Or is the number of houses he has such an unimportant question to him that it's not worth remembering? That he has a house everywhere he goes, so why bother singling them out to remember? Or maybe it's a politically inconvenient question and he knows most reporters will give him a pass."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "How rich do you have to be, and how cognitively impaired, to not remember how many homes you have? Folks, this is just weird. McCain's oddly inconsistent mental state is a serious, valid question in this election, and the media seems afraid to address it head on. Real people don't have so many homes that they can't remember, unless they're absurdly rich, or they're losing their faculties. McCain didn't make these kind of gaffes eight years ago, when he was 64. What's going on? [...] NOTE TO DEMOCRATS: This is manna from heaven. Run a freaking ad about this, non-stop."

MCCAIN VEEPSTAKES: Just Say No To Joe

Conservative bloggers continue to reject the possibility of a McCain/Joe Lieberman ticket (or a McCain/Tom Ridge ticket):

• RedState's Erick Erickson: "I like Joe Lieberman. He'd be a terrific Secretary of State. But I don't want another old guy, particularly an old pro-choicer (though he was pro-life until he ran with Algore), being Vice President. I realize McCain loves history and we had the whole Lincoln-Johnson ticket at the start of the GOP, but this would be the end of the GOP -- bookending the life of the party with a Democrat for Vice President (not to mention the legal issues)."
• NRO's Yuval Levin: "If McCain were to head into a convention having just announced a pick like Lieberman -- a man very well liked by Republicans for his views on one set of issues, but not on many others, and therefore a perfect cabinet member but a very imperfect VP choice -- he would find himself in a very uncomfortable position in Minneapolis. He would be surrounded by people he had just upset, would have brought lots of activists together at just the moment he had also opened up a huge rift over an issue that Republicans have managed reasonably well in recent years, and will have made the differences between Lieberman and much of the party -- and especially the differences over abortion -- the central issue of the convention and the main topic of conversation among the observers and reporters who will color the public's impression of the event (and thus will have made it unlikely that the party's best public face will be put forward)."
• NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru: "Doesn't [Rudy] Giuliani's experience in the primaries argue against a pro-choice pick? Here you had a candidate who had a lot going for him and whose principal defect was his pro-choice position, and he absolutely bombed. Doesn't that tell us something about where the party's sentiment is?"

Meanwhile, Power Line's John Hinderaker thinks McCain should pick MN Gov. Tim Pawlenty as his running mate: "Things are going well for McCain right now and he should be optimistic about his prospects in November. If he chooses [ex-PA Gov. Tom] Ridge, it will cause a huge uproar within the Republican base that will derail, at least temporarily, his surge. Pawlenty, conversely, is a safe choice, and in my opinion a far better one. Given the current economic climate and the unfair attacks on that issue that Obama is launching against McCain, who better than the blue-collar, 'Sam's Club' Tim Pawlenty as a running mate? Beyond that, Tim has superb political skills. When the country sees him, it will like him."

OBAMA: Wake Up, Obama Camp!

Liberal bloggers continue to express frustration over what they perceive to be the Obama camp's ineffective messaging:

• TPMCafe's Theda Skocpol: "The last month has been excruciating for Obama supporters, watching him and his campaign squander so many hopes and resources on an utterly wimpy campaign. [...] Obama is lucky he is not further behind already. And he is going to fade fast if he just runs a feel-good, bland convention about abstract 'hope' and 'change.' In addition to getting gritty and colorfully clear about his recipe for making Americans' lives better -- AND about his approach to make this nation safer and stronger in the world -- Obama needs to signal all the major speakers at next week's convention to go after McCain in a key part of each speech. We need to hear why McCain is wrong and dangerous and no longer so honest and honorable. It needs repeating with force and humor and passion. Otherwise, the Convention will be wasted, and this historic turning point for our country will be lost."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Whatever the Obama campaign is doing right now in terms of messaging isn't working very well. As I discussed earlier in the week, they have a 35-1 lead in voter contacts, a 3-1 lead in field offices, a substantial lead in free media coverage, and even a lead in paid media. So, we have the campaign infrastructure, and this is a big Democratic year. Given that McCain continues to close despite all this is a clear indication that McCain and his surrogates / affiliated organizations are doing a better job of messaging than Obama and his surrogates / affiliated organizations."
• Firedoglake's Ian Welsh: "Because Obama refuses to go hard negative, and because he believes in submarine advertising rather than national advertising, he loses the spin cycle more often than he wins it. Earned media dwarfs any and all channels that any campaign controls. As a result, John McCain is defining Obama rather than Obama defining Obama. John McCain is also defining John McCain."

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas urges his fellow Obama supporters not to worry so much: "Look, the race is tightening at the national level, but it's much less tight when you look at the state-by-state numbers that, you know, actually decide the presidency. [...] We've got the veep announcements and the conventions to get through, and then the race will start in earnest. Be zen. [...] Keep your eye on the composite -- Obama still leads that by 1.4 percent -- and maintain perspective -- McCain has never crossed the 45 percent threshold while Obama bobs between 45 and 50. I'll be officially worried when McCain shows the ability to break that barrier of support. If he suddenly starts hovering in the upper 40s, then we might have trouble. But ultimately, this is a state-by-state battle. And in the electoral college fight, Obama still has a solid lead -- without even taking into account the ground machine Obama is building (pollsters aren't)."

Benen takes the same attitude as Moulitsas: "It's not a completely analogous situation, but I can think of plenty of times I heard Obama fans' handwringing last fall, when it appeared he just wasn't going to be able to defeat Hillary Clinton. Obama was, however, taking his time, methodically executing a specific strategy. I underestimated him more than a few times before, but he managed to do pretty well, and I'm still inclined to give the campaign team at least some of the benefit of the doubt."

OBAMA II: Free Advice From The Netroots

After McCain alleged that Obama's opposition to the Iraq troop surge is grounded in his "ambition to be president," Obama offered the following response:

"One of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can't disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. I have never suggested that Senator McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America's national interest. Now, it's time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same."

Like Matt Stoller, Marshall thought that Obama's response was weak, and he offers Obama some "free advice":

"Don't ever demand someone stop attacking you. Doesn't work. Don't do it. Sounds weak. Sounds pathetic. And a lot else.

Look at John McCain attacking my patriotism. It's sad what he's become. He'll do anything to get elected. Attack my patriotism. Change all his positions. Get in bed with the same people he used to say were the worst thing in politics. He'll do anything to get elected ...

Or

Look at John McCain. He knows people are fed up with the politics he and George Bush support. So instead of saying what he's for all he can think of to do is silly stuff like attacking my patriotism."

Bowers agrees with Marshall and offers his own free advice to Obama:

"[Marshall's advice] makes sense. Growing up a nerd, I never found that complaining about being picked on made me more popular. Doubt that it works among adults, either. Let me offer Obama some more free advice of my own, also worth every penny:

• Don't defund the 527's. [...] No one is going to vote for you because you stopped the evil 527 money from entering politics. However, people might very well vote for you because the 527s unleashed a $125 million spending barrage against your opponent.
• Target white Democrats. [...] Bring them into the fold by attacking McCain as a Republican, maybe even with a 30-second spot that just keeps repeating 'John McCain is a Republican,' over and over and over. Lob something partisan their way to rally around the flag with. [...]
• Attack McCain's age. This might seem more dangerous, and I have cautioned against it before. However, it would seem foolish to avoid it at this point, because all of the clever attacks are being directed at Obama. We need to turn the tables, and this would help out quite a bit."

Finally, BooMan offers his own free advice to Obama: "Go after McCain's strengths. Do it now and do it at the convention. Let your surrogates off the leash. [...] When it comes to the national meta-narrative, it should be all about how McCain is the darling of the Beltway elite punditocracy, how he's a far-right winger that is indistinguishable from Bush/Cheney (shows no independence), and that he has no power of prediction (he makes horrible judgments). He's hot-tempered and distrusted by his colleagues, and he's showing age-related mental diminishment. This is tough stuff, but it's all true. And this election is too important to leave things to chance. McCain needs a fist in his mouth every day so that he has no room to maneuver."

Ezra Klein agrees that Obama needs to attack McCain's character: "From realist to neocon, environmentalist to driller, maverick to party man, there's more than enough raw material in McCain's shimmying to define the guy however you want. 'Maverick' could have been redefined as an epithet, this year's version of 'flip-flopper.' But his supposed political opponents have been uninterested in actually using any of it. Barack Obama appends his every mention of McCain with a disclaimer about his enormous esteem for McCain's service and patriotism. He says, in other words, that McCain does indeed exhibit an unquestionable commitment to high-minded public service. Then he sometimes says McCain is wrong on some policies. That's charming and all, but as Mike Tomasky says, it's not enough. The liberal allergy to attacking character rather than conclusions may be admirable, but it doesn't exactly help them win elections."

OBAMA III: He Supports Killing Babies?

Conservative bloggers are accusing Obama of supporting infanticide when he voted against a 2003 bill in the IL Senate called the "Born Alive Infant Protection Act":

• Erickson: "Obama supported infanticide."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Obama protected infanticide in order to protect abortion on demand. There simply is no other explanation except abject stupidity."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Obama: Abortion Radical [...] This should end the issue for even nominal Catholics and long-ago Evangelicals."
• Ponnuru: "Nurse Jill Stanek said that at her hospital 'abortions' were repeatedly performed by inducing the live birth of a pre-viable fetus and then leaving it to die. When she made her report, the attorney general said that no law had been broken. That's why legislators proposed a bill to fill the gap. Obama did not want the gap filled. He did not want pre-viable fetuses/infants to have any legal protection. In the Illinois legislature, he argued that providing them with legal protection would both be unconstitutional in itself -- a violation of the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence -- and undermine the right to abortion."
• NRO's Peter Kirsanow: "Ramesh asks, 'How big a vulnerability is [Obama's Born-Alive vote] for Obama?' I submit that it's a tremendous vulnerability. [...] Last month I mentioned that some Ohio politicos told me that focus group data showed the Born-Alive issue to be highly radioactive. Almost no one had heard about it but when told the specifics the reactions were nearly universal: brief incredulity followed by revulsion. [...] I'm unaware of any recent focus group or polling data on the matter but this is such a gut issue that such data may be superfluous. Do you know anyone who would vote the same way as Obama? Not one member of the senate did. That kind of uniformity on a substantive issue is stunning -- and an ominous barometer for Obama."

OBAMA IV: Daley Doesn't Get What The Fuss Is About

Yesterday we noted that conservative bloggers are buzzing over Stanley Kurtz' complaint that a library at the University of Illinois at Chicago is denying him access to a collection of documents discussing Obama's ties to William Ayers and "various radical organizations." Today righty bloggers are criticizing Mayor Richard Daley's comments about the controversy:

"People keep trying to align [Ayers] with Barack Obama. It's really unfortunate. They're friends. So what? People do make mistakes in the past. You move on. This is a new century, a new time. He reflects back and he's been making a strong contribution to our community."

• Hewitt: "This won't fly because as recently as last fall Ayers was filmed ranting about the fascist America of today. Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist, and Obama's friendship with him calls the nominee's judgment into question, no matter what 'contribution' the terrorist has made to his community."
• Morrissey: "They're friends. So what? Well, most Americans don't have friends who plotted to bomb the Pentagon, or assisted radicals in robberies that resulted in murder."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Note that Daley says that 'people do make mistakes in the past,' although William Ayers has never expressed regret for setting bombs in places like the U.S. Capitol and women's bathrooms in the Pentagon."

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES: The Clinton Scenario

Several liberal bloggers -- including some who were strong Obama supporters during the primary -- appear increasingly open to the possibility of Obama selecting Hillary Clinton as his running mate:

• Skocpol: "Pick a FIGHTER for VP, please. Do it yesterday. Obama, you need someone who will push hard at your side and make you better, too. And you never should have gone on vacation (shades of [John] Kerry) without a VP to carry on. [Joe] Biden will work, I think, but -- and I never expected to believe this -- it might be time to turn to Hillary. She is at least a fighter, and this election really matters to a lot more than you and her."
• TAPPED's Mori Dinauer: "I've come around to the idea that Obama might deem Clinton's presence on the ticket a necessity at this point, and given that Biden is apparently 'not the guy'. Unlike Sam [Boyd], I'm having trouble thinking of who else it could be that isn't as bland as [IN Sen. Evan] Bayh or [VA Gov. Tim] Kaine."
• The Nation's John Nichols: "Barack Obama might just need Hillary Clinton. Clinton, whether appropriately or not, seen by a great many Americans as someone who knows her way around the international stage. [...] She also has some pretty good connections in the swing states of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Then there is the whole 'dream ticket' thing. [...] If Obama takes the stage [in Springfield] with Clinton at his side, it will be the dominant news story of the weekend, the convention and perhaps of the fall campaign. Indeed, it could create that wave of excitement that Obama needs to have not just a triumphal convention but a triumphal campaign. [...] One does not have to like Clinton, or even believe that Clinton will ultimately join a 'dream ticket,' to suspect that as the Obama camp reviews the latest polls, they might be spinning the scenario one last time."
• FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver: "The case for picking Clinton doesn't have all that much to do with Obama's deteriorating poll numbers -- although you can certainly make a separate argument based on the electoral math. Rather, it's that the Republicans have shown their hand -- and made it clear that they aren't going to be running any sort of nice, safe campaign where Obama coasts to victory while the base stays asleep. [...] I think that if Obama picks Clinton, the Republicans are likely to overplay their hand. One thing that Obama has not really been able to do is to generate some organic level of backlash when he is attacked. This is separate and distinct from the notion of 'fighting back'; it is voters stepping in and refereeing the match themselves. Voters recognize that McCain has gone negative but they aren't really punishing him for it -- his favorables haven't moved at all. Why not? I think it has to do with the nature of Obama: he is new, he is confident to the point of being arrogant, and up until recently, he has been leading. [...] With Clinton, on the other hand, voters naturally want to come to her defense -- and overzealous attempts to whip the Republican base into a frenzy will be counteracted with outrage from significant numbers of older and working-class women."

TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat has been pushing for an Obama/Clinton ticket for months: "The NBC/WSJ poll has Obama leading 45-42, but Obama still having trouble with Clinton supporters. [...] Picking Clinton for VP would solve Obama's problems to a great extent."

MyDD's Jerome Armstrong, who supported Clinton during the primary, doesn't think Obama will choose her, and predicts that Obama will choose John Kerry instead: "Two people you wouldn't expect, David Gergen and Nate Silver, [are] making the late case for Clinton as the game-changer Obama needs (Gergen also mentions [Al] Gore). They are both right but, what Obama has been personally told by [ex-SD Sen.] Tom Daschle is to pick someone whom is an ally, someone whom he already trusts, on his side from the get-go -- and not have to build it with the VP choice going forward. No offense to David & Nate, but I think Obama's listening to Tom on his VP choice. Other than Clinton or Gore, there is one other game-changer out there: John Kerry. I know that will raise the ire of many among us, but not myself. [...] Kerry's a better choice than Tom Daschle, and a better choice than Biden, Kaine, or Bayh. OK, I've convinced myself, and now officially abandon Daschle with my VP prediction moving to Kerry. Look, if Obama's not going to choose Clinton (all signs point toward that being the case), and Gore is unavailable, then given the late date, it seems likely to be someone that's very well known and ready to go, which is a description of very few Democrats, one of which is Kerry."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Where Is Obama's Blog Outreach?

Jerome Armstrong wants to know:

"[Obama's New Media Director Joe] Rospars has no peers when it comes to knowing how to write an effective fundraising email. He's done a terrific job at the things set out in the profile and more, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out why he hasn't pursued a blog outreach strategy to date. I'm not talking about a constituency relationship or blogads, but a strategic message one. One that recognizes the blogs as being more powerful in concert with what the campaign is trying to do in opposition to McCain, and coordinating the execution of that strategic message. [...] Joe ought to do some outreach himself to Peter Daou, who was in a similar situation in '04 with [John] Kerry's campaign. Kerry had won the primary without any help at all from the blogs, and it wasn't until after the swiftboating explosion in August that the Kerry campaign realized they had a problem with controlling the message via the blogosphere. It was probably too late for Peter to do much, but he certainly dived in and worked well with the blogosphere in those last few months to develop an opposition message strategy against [George W.] Bush.

Now, of course, a number of things have changed, including two big things, which the Obama campaign has recognized. First, blogs have went mainstream, all the traditional media outlets have bloggers and they are 24/7 bloggers with access. They've effectively become the online outreach vehicles for the Obama campaign message push -- the Marc Ambinder, Ben Smith, and Jake Tapper world. Second, there's a world of social networking sites that have huge numbers of available for finding voters and for organizing supporters, and the Obama campaign has leveraged those like none other. But neither have replaced the partisan blogosphere, which has grown about 10X since 2004 in terms of bloggers and readership.

And without the outreach, partisan Democratic bloggers are left on their own to pursue a decentralized strategy which has largely wandered in the desert looking for an attack angle on McCain. Bloggers complain about there not being a consistent message from Obama against McCain because nothing is being coordinated from within the campaign for outreach purposes."

LEST WE FORGET: Family Comes First, Reports Man Trying To Get Out Of Work

From The Onion:

"EDINA, MN -- Frank Noller, married father of two and advertising copywriter for Harton & North, extolled the virtues of family and parental responsibility in an attempt to leave the office 45 minutes early Monday. 'My [14-year-old] son's got a bad cough,' Noller told his boss before leaving, sighing unhappily as if he would have preferred to remain at work and do his job. 'Gotta keep your priorities straight.' Upon arriving home, Noller informed his wife that he would not be able to attend his daughter's gymnastics recital because he was 'swamped with work.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:10 PM

August 20, 2008

8/20: Dukakis II?

Two weeks ago, we wrote that "the difference in mood between the liberal blogosphere and the conservative blogosphere is striking." We observed that righty bloggers were feeling increasingly confident about John McCain's chances, whereas lefty bloggers were growing increasingly concerned about what they perceived to be Barack Obama's inability to respond effectively to McCain's attacks.

Today, that dynamic is even more pronounced. As McCain continues to rise in national polls, the mood in the conservative blogosphere ranges from cautiously optimistic to very confident. Meanwhile, the anxiety in the liberal blogosphere is palpable. Josh Marshall observes that Obama's message "seems very muddled" while digby warns that "the Democratic campaign in the fall is going to have to be much much tougher than the summer [campaign] was." Several bloggers are comparing Obama to Michael Dukakis and complaining that he isn't hitting back hard enough.

The overarching theme in the netroots' criticism of Obama's campaign is that it hasn't been sufficiently aggressive in defining McCain, whether that means attacking McCain specifically or linking him with George W. Bush. Will the Obama camp start going after McCain's brand, and if so, how aggressively will it do so?

OBAMA: Let's Not Panic, But...

McCain's rise in national and state polls is making liberal bloggers increasingly worried about the state of the Obama campaign:

• digby: "It's not the end of the world (yet), but [the LA Times/Bloomberg poll] does show that McCain's negative attacks were far more effective than Obama's pivot to the center these past two months. The Democratic campaign in the fall is going to have to be much much tougher than the summer was. The Republicans are going to be firing all their weapons --- we haven't seen the worst of it, by far. We'd better hope the convention is a huge success and gives the campaign a nuclear blast-off."
• AMERICAblog's Robert Arena: "Not all is lost folks, Obama has time and money to make a shift. But if you thought that somehow this year was going to be different -- something would change and somehow the American electorate would look completely different this year than any other year, the numbers today just don't show that. This isn't a transformative election, it's another hardscrabble, claw out each and every vote, election. To win that kind of election, you need to fight for every vote and fight hard. That's why you hear the concern you hear from Josh Marshall, John [Aravosis], Joe [Sudbay], etc. And it's backed up by years of experience watching the Republicans make Democrats look weak -- [Jimmy] Carter, [Walter] Mondale, [Al] Gore, and [John] Kerry. That line of attack works when not countered and we were defeated. None of us want that in 2008."
• The Huffington Post's Marty Kaplan: "I don't doubt that Obama receives reports about what McCain is saying in speeches and ads, and summaries of what the talking heads are saying about Obama's reaction to those attacks. But my guess is that no one has assembled and screened for him a clip reel of the worst-of-the-worst -- the stuff that Obama's supporters, not to mention undecided voters, have been seeing. If he actually saw that ugly onslaught, would he really stick to his I'm-doing-this-my-way high road? Would he remain content to talk policy, and to demur with dignity when McCain and his minions slime him, rather than go on the attack and set the agenda himself? The last Democratic presidential candidate who failed to engage, who abjured ruthlessness because it wasn't consistent with the noble kind of politics he wanted America to practice, was Michael Dukakis. That misreading of what it takes to win, and not the Howdy Doody tank photo, was what sank his campaign."
• The Huffington Post's Robert L. Borosage: "Why hasn't Obama gone after [McCain]? Why haven't we seen some populist fire so clearly in order?"

TPM's Marshall analyzes what he perceives to be the Obama camp's message problem: "McCain's message is pretty clear and essentially twofold: 1) Obama is, in so many words, a frivolous phony, someone who really doesn't have any business running for president. 2) McCain is a strong leader who can defend the country. There are all sorts of sub- and secondary themes -- Obama's an outsider, questionably American, etc. But all the nitty gritty points are subservient to those two interlocking messages. From Obama, honestly, I don't sense a really clear message. There are attacks on McCain, some of which are quite good. There are positive uplifting commercials. And there are ads/messages targeted to particular states -- like Yucca Mountain in Nevada and the DHL layoffs in Ohio. But it's hard for me to come up with a clear cut Obama message in way that it's pretty simple for me to do with McCain. Even the 'change' message, which is the basis of Obama's campaign, seems much more diffuse to me than it was during the primaries."

Marshall continues: "Beating up on McCain is critical. But it's not a message in itself. And the Obama campaign needs to deepen people's trust in Obama. Not because of all the smears because an outsider running to overturn the status quo always faces trust issues. But, again, not a message. For my money, the essence of this campaign is -- Are you happy with the way the country's been run for the last 7.5 years. Has our foreign policy left us better off? Republican economic policy? You can go through all the different facets. But it's clear that the public overwhelmingly thinks the Bush presidency has been little short of a disaster. And do you want four more years of that? If that's the frame of the election, McCain will be crushed. People know they don't want four more years of Bush. McCain will be another four years of Bush. It's time for change, etc. That's the essence of the campaign. But the message, right now, seems very muddled."

OBAMA II: In Free Fall?

In contrast, the mood in the conservative blogosphere ranges from cautiously optimistic to very confident:

• RedState's Adam C: "Regardless of how you do the measuring, there is a strong argument that if the election were today McCain would win. It would be a nail biter either way. But for the first time, it is arguable that McCain is ahead today."
• AmSpec Blog's Robert Stacy McCain: "David Gergen's question -- 'Is the Tide Turning?' -- gets a possible answer from a Real Clear Politics map showing John McCain moving ahead in the Electoral College for the first time. This includes 'leaners' and it might be a bit early to start making D.C. hotel reservations for Jan. 20, but..."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Obama is in a free-fall. McCain got to the heart of the question about Obama, and especially after the crisis in Georgia, he has voters wondering whether Obama is up to the task of running the presidency as his first executive job in politics. Even a strong VP pick may not help reverse that perception -- and could make it worse by overshadowing the nominee. Democrats may not have been in a weaker position at convention time since 1984."

OBAMA III: Digging Up Dirt

Conservative bloggers are buzzing over Stanley Kurtz' complaint that a library at the University of Illinois at Chicago is denying him access to a collection of documents discussing Obama's ties to "various radical organizations":

"A large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is likely to flesh out the story. [...] Not only would these files illuminate the working relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, they would also provide significant insight into a web of ties linking Obama to various radical organizations, including Obama-approved foundation gifts to political allies. Obama's leadership style and abilities are also sure to be illuminated by the documents in question. Unfortunately, I don't yet have access to the documents. The Special Collections section of the Richard J. Daley Library agreed to let me read them, but just before I boarded my flight to Chicago, the top library officials mysteriously intervened to bar access. Circumstances strongly suggest the likelihood that Bill Ayers himself may have played a pivotal role in this denial."

• Michelle Malkin: "Stanley Kurtz has done yeoman's work trying to uncover the true nature of the relationship between Barack Obama and Weather Underground terrorist-turned-academic William Ayers. [...] During his in-depth investigation and travels to Chicago to dig deeper, Kurtz has run into unexpected (or perhaps, quite expected) roadblocks."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "For a man with such a meager track record, Obama and his friends sure seem anxious about anyone checking into it for his experience -- and his associations. A public university operating a public project should provide transparency on these issues, and not stall until after the election."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "This is a ticking time bomb for the Obama campaign. They are doing their best, through proxies, to stop the release of the Annenberg records from the University of Illinois Chicago ('UIC'). Why? Because as Rick Moran points out the release of the records will fatally undermine Obama's narrative about his associations with Bill Ayers. [...] Obama's 'pure as the driven snow despite the terrorists who love me' narrative would be destroyed with the release of the Annenberg records."
• Dan Riehl: "How's that old saying go? It's the cover up, not the crime. And we know one individual involved here is already capable of committing a crime. With all that cash from the man being available at the center of this...let's hope there's no crime involving Ayers, or...anyone else. Hmm."

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES: Breaking Down Biden

Liberal bloggers are devoting a lot of scrutiny -- most of it critical -- to Joe Biden:

• FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver: "I think the Democrats may be overstating [Biden's] electoral appeal. Rasmussen has conducted polling on Joe Biden at various times [and] in each case, Biden's favorables/unfavorables were pretty close to even. [...] Basically, I think he is identified enough with the (unpopular) institution of the Congress that he will be viewed by a lot of people as a partisan, but doesn't compensate for that by generating enthusiastic responses from the base, the way some other candidates might. Biden is fairly well-known -- by far the best know candidate of the [IN Sen. Evan] Bayh/Biden/[VA Gov. Tim] Kaine/[KS Gov. Kathleen] Sebelius group -- so perceptions of him are liable to be fairly entrenched, and may not be enhanced by the fluffy sort of treatment that the VP candidate usually tends to get from the press. There are some positives, though. Biden's numbers are quite strong among seniors, a group with whom Obama is underperforming, and fairly strong among moderates. He would probably lock up Pennsylvania for Obama -- both because he is well-known in the Philly burbs and because Pennsylvania has an older electorate -- and might play well somewhere like Florida."
• Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher: "The Vice Presidential trial balloon of the week seems to be Joe Biden. Coming on the heels of Evan Bayh, he seems like a huge relief to many, but it may be one of those situations where you feel better simply because you stop hitting your head against the wall. [...] A lot of the Vice Presidential choice's value boils down to chemistry -- and Obama and Biden very well may have it. But Biden voted for the AUMF and the Patriot Act, so all those who thought a VP who 'undermined Obama's message of change' would just not be acceptable will no doubt be uncontrollably vexed. Or not. Then there's the problem that Biden has a history of saying really stupid stuff. Which could turn out to be a plus I suppose, if he draws the flies off Obama. An unusual election strategy, to say the least."
• Jack and Jill Politics' Jill Tubman: "Biden has a history of racially insensitive and offensive remarks. Google 'Biden + Racism' and you get over 440,000 results documenting his racist bloopers. [...] Selecting Biden would be a great way to turn off the black voter base that the Democratic party will need to win this election. If this guy were a Republican, Democrats would be hanging him out to dry. All he needs is a Confederate flag to complete the picture. We're talking major Macaca moment potential here. And yes, as hilarious for [ex-VA Sen.] George Allen as that was, is Obama ready to sign up a VP with a record of racism comments, including one aimed straight at himself during the primaries? I doubt it."
• Kathy G.: "[Biden's] vote for the bankruptcy bill was unconscionable, and the man is a wholly owned subsidiary of the credit card companies (the senator from MBNA, indeed). I also find him grating and obnoxious on a personal level, and I'm not sure he'd wear well with voters over the long haul. Nor am I that confident that Biden's much-vaunted foreign cred is all it's cracked up to be. Not only did he vote for the war, but his partition plan for Iraq has been condemned by some foreign policy types whose work I respect."

In a separate post, Silver examines Biden's upside: "Biden's case is probably stronger than I [previously] indicated, because he tends to be most popular among voting groups with a lot of undecided voters, which means a lot of persuadables. In particular, Biden's strength with senior citizens could be a real asset. How so? Because seniors are far more likely to be undecided in this election than their younger counterparts. [...] What a Biden pick really would be is a redux of Gore-Lieberman. Al Gore got quite a large bounce in Florida when he selected [Joe] Lieberman, and if Obama were to pick Biden, he is probably committed to playing Florida out to the end, or at least until the last 15 days of the campaign."

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES II: More Biden

Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias thinks Biden's Iraq War vote is more problematic than his bankruptcy bill vote: "It's certainly true that I could not, in good conscience, imagine voting for the bankruptcy bill. But that's one of the many reasons I wouldn't make it in electoral politics -- as best I can tell, everyone casts unconscionable votes in defense of home state industries. Certainly I'm not aware of any Senators who are innocent of this particular sin, and Barack Obama (coal, ethanol) is no exception to the general trend. [...] I think Biden's vote for the 2002 Iraq AUMF is a serious problem. It's a bit hard for me to see how Obama simultaneously says that his 'no' vote is an important demonstration of good judgment despite a lack of experience and also that Joe Biden is a great and experienced foreign policy expert. Maybe there's a brilliant solution to that, but it seems tricky to me."

BooMan prefers Kaine to Biden: "It looks like a toss-up right now between Biden and Kaine. Given that choice, I have a slight preference for Kaine. I've always liked Joe Biden, but he's too risky for me and I don't agree with him on some major foreign policy issues. Kaine is a better fit for Obama's brand and he'll help in Virginia, which could be a decisive state. I'm not thrilled with Kaine, either, but I prefer him to Bayh. I still am holding out hope for Jack Reed or Kathleen Sebelius. I'd be psyched about either one of them. Kaine and Biden would be just okay. Bayh would annoy the crap out of me. But maybe there will be a big surprise."

Open Left's Chris Bowers previously said that he prefers Biden to Kaine, but now he seems less sure: "Kaine's positives are that he is from Virginia, worked as an urban housing rights lawyer, speaks Spanish, was an extremely early Obama supporter, and opposed the war from the start. His negatives are that he has governed ineffectively, has not been strong on messaging (even on Iraq), and seems pretty right-wing. Biden's strengths are that he is familiar with the national media, has recent Georgia cred, is an excellent debater, is a tough attack dog, won't become the Democratic favorite in the next presidential nomination campaign, and is generally in the middle of the Democratic Party. His negatives are that he supported the war from the start, muddles the change message because he has been in the Senate for 36 years, is often known as representing MBNA instead of Delaware, including his support for the bankruptcy bill. I don't think it is an entirely clear choice. Biden would almost certainly be a better campaigner and a better president, but Kaine is far more a reinforcing pick than Biden. I have been pushing the reinforcing idea since the start of the year, so it is hard to turn away now."

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES III: Netroots Speculation

The Washington Note's Steve Clemons thinks Obama will choose Biden: "My best guess today -- as I've said for days now -- is that Obama's choice is Joe Biden. In contrast to the netroots and progressive community's ' surge of concern' over the former momentum of Evan Bayh's selection -- a wide range of support exists for Joe Biden. [...] Tom Daschle and Evan Bayh were called and told they will not be 'it' according to several sources. I don't have anything on Tim Kaine -- other than insiders tell me that Obama has decided against him -- mostly because he doesn't help check off the foreign policy box or experience box. I just don't hear much about Kathleen Sebelius so am not counting her as a strong candidate. [...] But has Biden heard a word from Obama or his team? My sources say NO. According to one source, there has been total radio silence. Well, be thankful for radio silence I guess when other candidates for VP are getting phone calls saying 'Sorry....but we look forward to working with you in many other ways in the coming years.' The word that Obama has not communicated with Biden makes him, in the estimation of many, the likely candidate -- as Obama knows that Biden will accept on a moment's notice. I confirmed this with a person very close to the Delaware Senator."

MyDD's Jerome Armstrong joins Markos Moulitsas in predicting that Obama will choose ex-Sen. Tom Daschle: "We know Obama likes Daschle, we know Daschle was vetted, and we know he has a speaker slot on Wed. We even know he's floated as a potential CoS in the WH. It makes sense too, of the whole VP process we've been watching unfold for Obama."

The Huffington Post's M.S. Bellows, Jr. and Mayhill Fowler predict that Obama will choose John Kerry: "Mayhill has been following Kerry on the stump, off and on, for the past few weeks, and has seen a man transformed: a man infused with an energy and enthusiasm, even a lightness of spirit, that balance nicely with his unshakable gravitas. It may be a desire to return the favors Karl Rove and the Swiftboaters dealt him in 2004; it may be that Kerry is sincerely impressed and energized by the prospect of an Obama Camelot. We think it's both. Whatever is inspiring Kerry lately, however, it's indisputable that Kerry is inspired. And some inspiration is what Barack Obama needs -- and may well have chosen to add to his ticket."

TAPPED's Dana Goldstein thinks "it would be silly to count out Kathleen Sebelius": "Sebelius, of course, would be the bold, unconventional choice -- very Obama. But by choosing a female running mate, Obama would, unfortunately, thrust the Hillary die-hards and their ever-more marginal discontentment back into the spotlight. That said, anyone who believes that only Hillary Clinton deserves to be the first female president or vice president doesn't deserve the designation 'feminist.' So I'd relish watching the reactions to a Sebelius nod, not only because such a choice would double down on Obama's most effective message -- 'change' -- but because it would reveal exactly which Clinton boosters are ready to widen the lens and enthusiastically support women's leadership as such."

MCCAIN VEEPSTAKES: McCain/Lieberman?

Several conservative bloggers think the McCain camp is floating the possibility of selecting a pro-choice running mate for political reasons:

• NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru: "In general, I think it makes sense for a Republican presidential nominee to leave open the possibility of picking a pro-choice running mate but ultimately to pick a pro-lifer. Kathryn [Jean Lopez] has been suggesting that McCain is doing just that right now. If so, I fear his campaign has misplayed the issue. At this point, if McCain picks a pro-lifer, won't his opponents say he was browbeat by the far right?"
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "News reports say that John McCain is keeping Joe Lieberman in the running for VP. That's fine with me. Not because I think McCain will pick Lieberman -- if he does, he's so openly disrespectful of the policies and priorities of his base, and so dismissive of his need for their support, that his judgment is in question. [...] But keeping Lieberman in the mix, even as conservatives like me reiterate our strong opposition to a Democrat as veep on the Republican ticket plays well for McCain. It's designed to send a message to independents -- just as his supposed openness to a pro-choice running mate was supposed to reassure PUMA's. He's using the veep process to re-establish his credentials as a 'maverick' who may not always toe the GOP line, without actually moving left on any policies...and if talking up [CT Sen. Joe] Lieberman helps him in Florida, he's not averse to that, either."

TheNextRight's Patrick Ruffini is one of the few conservative bloggers who finds Lieberman acceptable: "To me, [Lieberman] wouldn't be the best pick, but he wouldn't be the worst either. There is much to commend the 'do no harm' VP calculus. Lieberman wouldn't be a 'do no harm' pick. If you do the static analysis (is Lieberman better than, say, Rob Portman?) it's all wrong. The difference is that any of the conventional picks don't help McCain with his #1 priority: winning the election. Despite narrowing the gap, McCain is currently about 3 points behind. He needs a better VP pick than Obama will come up with -- and unless Obama chooses Clinton, Obama's pick will be safe and milquetoast. Lieberman is the most obvious opportunity to shake up the calculus of the race. Picking him did something for Al Gore in 2000, taking him from a sure loser to a position of strength in the fall. A conservative VP on a losing ticket is still a losing ticket."

Most conservative bloggers disagree with Ruffini:

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "The addition of Joe Lieberman will not convince independents that McCain is a maverick; it will convince an already-skeptical GOP base that McCain is a RINO. Patrick knows better than most how essential enthusiasm is to the GOTV efforts and fundraising. McCain appears to have finally generated some of that enthusiasm, and picking Lieberman would snuff it out for good. Republicans respect Lieberman, but they don't want a liberal Democrat as the person who would succeed to the Presidency if something happened to McCain -- which is the entire point of the Vice Presidency. Lieberman may not be the worst choice, but he's close to it. If McCain wants a Democrat, let him pick John Breaux, whose positions really do reflect conservative values. Otherwise, the Republican Party has plenty of options for a Republican ticket."
• RedState's Directors: "Should Senator John McCain choose a pro-choice running mate, we are comfortably enough in touch with the Republican base to say without hesitation that the majority of the base would sit this race out. And we could not blame them for it."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "[McCain] doesn't need any bank shots or game-changers. He needs what was on display Saturday night at Saddleback -- a confidence in the rightness of center-right ideas across a range of issues and of course a deep belief in American exceptionalism. A conventional but base-energizing choice -- [Mitt] Romney or [Tim] Pawlenty -- will keep the momentum going and reveal no deficit of confidence in McCain's ideas or the core ideas of his party."

MEDIA CRITICISM: Maddow Gets Promoted

Yesterday afternoon, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann wrote a Daily Kos diary announcing that Rachel Maddow, a longtime netroots favorite, will be getting her own MSNBC show:

"Happy Now? The network will be formally announcing this tomorrow, but I am pleased to inform you in this fully authorized leak, that as of Monday, September 8, our mutual friend Ms. Maddow will become host of her own show, on MSNBC, at 9 PM Eastern Time."

The netroots are ecstatic, as they have wanted Maddow to have her own show for a long time:

• Daily Kos' Moulitsas: "Finally! I'll never understand why this took so damn long. Her show will follow Olbermann's, and a HUGE congratulations to one of the smartest voices on cable land. The Olbermann-Maddow 1-2 punch will be potent. Now, if we could get a decent lead-in for Olbermann, we'd have a serious block of programming on our hands."
• Atrios: "Unpossible. The 'no liberals on the teevee' rule has finally been broken. Congratulations, Rachel."
• Sudbay: "An hour of Olbermann, then an hour of Maddow. That's going to make watching MSNBC so much more fun."
• Open Left's David Sirota: "This is proof that even in today's disgusting, nepotistic and cutthroat media world -- a world that too often rewards idiocy and the idiots that spout the idiocy -- good things can happen to good people."
• MyDD's Josh Orton: "Well this is just great news. [...] Rachel is one of the smartest people I know, a great broadcaster, and an all-around cool person. So she'll certainly bring light to important stories otherwise ignored by everyone else in cable news. But Rachel will also draw an audience not necessarily predisposed to liberalism. With Rachel on the air, viewers will get the opportunity to watch real news instead of bluster -- and I bet a sizable number will jump at the chance."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Should McCain Make A One-Term Pledge?

NRO's Andy McCarthy:

"Jen Rubin argues for the McCain one-term pledge, of which I believe Ramesh [Ponnuru] has been the strongest proponent. There's a lot in what they argue, but I'm not convinced yet. I probably could be if I knew McCain were going to pick a Veep who would energize conservatives both this year and as the 2012 heir-apparent.

For us, the biggest problem with a McCain presidency, whether one or two terms, would be its front-loaded nature: McCain's greatest service to conservatives would be beating Obama. That is no small thing, but it is one that would be fully accomplished even before McCain took office. After that, what leverage would we have if McCain had run on a one-term pledge? He wouldn't need us to be re-elected, and he has demonstrated in the past that building a conservative Republican Party for the future is not a top priority for him. He'd want to ring up some presidential 'accomplishments' and the Democrats -- with increased numbers in Congress -- would be the only game in town. [...]

The one-term pledge would certainly help McCain big-time with Hillary Democrats and independents. If he picks a good Veep, the pledge could help McCain with us. It could even help him with at least some in the media, for whom the prospect of covering 'You Decide 2012' for four full years beginning this November might be even more irresistable than Obama. All in all, it would increase his chances of getting elected. I concede that this is no small thing -- in light of the frightening specter of an Obama presidency, maybe it's the most important thing. But as far as governing goes, I don't see much in it for McCain or for us."

LEST WE FORGET: Nobody Tells Robert Duvall What To Do

Townhall's Matt Lewis:

"I'm hearing that tensions were high recently when veteran actor Robert Duvall was taping a voice-over for a video to be played during the Republican National Convention. Apparently, the veteran actor objected to the direction he was receiving from Republican media guru Fred Davis. According to my sources, Duvall said something along the lines of: 'F-you Fred! If Scorsese couldn't give me direction, what the hell makes you think you can?' Though this blow-up is actually recorded on tape, my guess is it's in everyone's best interest for this to not leak out..."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:47 PM

August 19, 2008

8/19: Veep Fever

Like the rest of the political world, the blogosphere is preoccupied with VP rumors today. Now that journalists are reporting that Joe Biden sits at or near the top of Barack Obama's short list, liberal bloggers are discussing the DE senator. Most liberal bloggers appear comfortable with (albeit unenthusiastic about) the prospect of Biden as VP. While they acknowledge that Biden's Iraq vote and his lengthy tenure in Congress could create image problems for Obama, they like his feistiness and his willingness to engage the GOP on national security issues. Furthermore, they consider Biden ideologically preferable to IN Sen. Evan Bayh and VA Gov. Tim Kaine. However, Markos Moulitsas remains very critical of Biden:

"Biden voted for the Iraq war. But beyond that, even if we stipulate that he has foreign policy chops, how does that make him a good veep choice? It strikes me that any pick designed to cover up a 'flaw' in Obama (i.e. 'lack of foreign policy credentials') only accentuates those flaws."

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers reacted very negatively to National Review's report that the McCain camp "is serious about the possibility of a pro-choice VP nominee." Righty bloggers saw this as an indication that McCain is seriously considering ex-PA Gov. Tom Ridge and CT Sen. Joe Lieberman, and conservatives are unhappy about both of these possibilities. Michelle Malkin wonders: "Is McCain going to screw conservatives (again)? Wouldn't put it past him. Would you?"

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES: Can The Netroots Abide Biden?

Most liberal bloggers appear comfortable with the prospect of Biden as Obama's running mate, although they're not particularly excited about it:

• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Biden is not a reinforcing choice, as he has served in the Senate for 36 years and supported the war back in 2002-2003. In two key ways -- Iraq judgment and 'change' election -- that is very much the opposite of Barack Obama, and could muddle his message. Still, when it comes to ideological leanings and campaign ability, Biden is a preferable choice to Bayh and Kaine. [...] As a campaigner, while Biden is often criticized online as never finding a camera he didn't think should be filming him, he is very familiar on the national stage, with the national media, and is a strong debater. He is also a good attack dog, and you shouldn't have to worry about him falling down in that category. Maybe my support for Biden is mainly a testament to how poor the crop of potential candidates is than anything else. After all, being preferable to Evan Bayh isn't really saying much of at all."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "On the one hand, it's not the most exciting choice. [Biden] doesn't bring a state. Delaware's going to go Democratic. [...] Biden also occasionally says something really whacked, which we'll probably find out more of if he's the pick. On the other hand, wholly separate from the cosmetics and electioneering calculus, I think he'd be a good choice. On substance, maybe a really good choice. Most senators grasp of foreign policy is fairly thin -- and it tends to be heavily influenced by whatever lobbyists or power players are in their orbit. But Biden has a pretty deep knowledge of pretty much every big foreign policy question. And his ideas and judgment strike me as fundamentally sane."
• Atrios: "I'm a lot cooler on Biden than Josh [Marshall], but like Chris [Bowers] it wouldn't bother me that much if he were to be chosen. Of the people I don't really want to be Veep who keep showing up on those fake short lists people keep coming up with he bothers me the least. Enthusiasm!!"
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "I think putting someone who voted for the 2002 Iraq AUMF on the ticket may be more politically problematic than people realize -- Obama has cited his opposition to that bill as key evidence of his good judgment, but presumably you'd want to put Biden forward as a knowledgeable and experienced foreign policy person, thus setting up a problematic contradiction. But that vote aside, Biden really is someone who's genuinely knowledgeable about foreign policy questions rather than simply being 'strong on defense' or some BS. What's more, [...] picking Biden would signal a clear intention to engage with McCain on national security issues rather than try to dodge away from them, which is definitely a decision I support."
• Crooks and Liars' John Amato: "I was against Kaine, Bayh, [NE Sen. Chuck] Hagel and [ex-GA Sen. Sam] Nunn. I haven't thought too much about Biden yet. He a pretty smart guy, but doesn't help Obama win in any area of the country so what's the point?"
• Scott Lemieux: "Perhaps I've been buttered up by the fairly dismal alternatives being offered, but like Steve I find Biden a surprisingly decent option. At a minimum, he's strongly preferable to Kaine or Bayh, infinitely preferable to Nunn or Hagel, and clearly behind (among vaguely viable candidates) only Sebelius and [RI Sen. Jack] Reed. [...] If I thought the VP choice should be determined by political considerations, I would pass; his penchant for saying silly things and hailing from a small, safe state would rule him out. Since I think the VP pick should be primarily substantive, however, I think he would be decent -- he could play a constructive policy role comparable to Gore and is considerably more progressive than most of his assumed rivals for the job. He wouldn't be at the top of my list, but of the InTrade top 3 he's the best by a huge margin."

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES II: Bidenmania

Ezra Klein views Biden more positively than many of his fellow liberal bloggers, and he republishes an earlier post making the case for Biden as VP: "Rather than just repeat myself on why I think [choosing Biden is] a good idea, I'm just going to republish this post explaining why I think it's a good idea. The only thing I'd really add is that in the months since I wrote it -- it was originally a June posting -- Obama has shown himself more, not less, in need of an attack dog able to engage McCain on national security."

Meanwhile, Daily Kos' georgia10 pushes back against the suggestion that Biden's 36 years in Washington conflict with Obama's outsider image: "The idea that a hefty resume is somehow a roadblock to change is ridiculous. Politicians do not neatly fall into Column A 'experience' types and Column B 'change' types. But this political taxonomy is catchy, so certain members of the press gleefully run with it. Obama's image as a 'change' candidate will not be 'undercut' if he happens to pick a familiar face in politics. On one level, that image is culled from the historic nature of his candidacy. On a deeper level, it exists because the entire Obama candidacy, from the grassroots up, has been build on a foundation of change, on a need for change, and on a belief that the old politics of George Bush and John McCain are hurting the American people. That foundation is so strong (2 million supporters strong, to be exact, and millions more who volunteer or support Obama's candidacy) that it won't be cracked if and when Obama chooses an old white guy with decades of D.C. experience."

Daily Kos' Moulitsas, on the other hand, does believe that putting Biden on the ticket would detract from Obama's message of change: "Biden voted for the Iraq war. But beyond that, even if we stipulate that he has foreign policy chops, how does that make him a good veep choice? It strikes me that any pick designed to cover up a 'flaw' in Obama (i.e. 'lack of foreign policy credentials') only accentuates those flaws. Make him secretary of state. Sure, compared to Bayh and Kaine, Biden looks almost passable, but that's a low hurdle to pass. I'd rather not have to choose my poison. I'd rather have candy. I'm already assuming disappointment on Obama's pick, so I won't belabor one bad choice or another. But I'd love to see him pick a fresh face in politics who reinforces Obama's message of change. Biden doesn't. Clinton doesn't. Bayh certainly doesn't. If holding out for [KS Gov. Kathleen] Sebelius is too much to ask for, and if Obama is going to pick a guy that has been around for decades, then pick Kerry. Or even [ex-SD Sen. Tom] Daschle. But the senator from MBNA? That choice would be exciting to perhaps two audiences -- the Broderites and the credit card industry."

MCCAIN VEEPSTAKES: A Pro-Choice Veep? Seriously?

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about Rich Lowry's report that McCain is thinking about picking a pro-choice running mate:

"NR has learned that the McCain campaign has been calling key state GOP officials around the country the last couple of days and sounding them out about the consequences of a pro-choice VP pick. The campaign is asking about the reaction of conservative grass-roots activists to such a pick and whether a pro-choicer can be sold to them. This is an indication that the McCain campaign is serious about the possibility of a pro-choice VP nominee and that McCain leaving the door open to Tom Ridge last week may not have been merely a friendly nod to a longtime supporter."

Conservative bloggers strongly oppose the idea of putting Ridge or Lieberman on McCain's ticket:

• Malkin: "Is McCain going to screw conservatives (again)? Wouldn't put it past him. Would you? Which is why, despite all the encomiums he's received from his Saddleback appearance, I haven't (and won't) joined the ga-ga bandwagon."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "Lieberman is EXTREMELY liberal when he gets off of defense issues and I am not really sure it's a great idea to have a guy like in the #2 slot when the head man is 72 years old. As to Ridge, he's a squish, closely associated with the Bush Administration, not well liked by conservatives, and he's pro-abortion. Still, if could carry Pennsylvania, McCain might have to consider him, but take that away and he'd be a real dud of a VP choice."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "If McCain picked Lieberman, some would salute the gesture as a genuine effort at bipartisanship. But Lieberman was effectively cast out of his own party when Ned Lamont beat him in the 2006 primary. His approval rating in the state is 45 percent vs. 43 percent disapproval. [...] It would be nice for a Republican candidate to win Connecticut's 7 electoral votes that everyone is already tossing in the Democratic pile, but it's something of a long shot. There's much lower-hanging fruit elsewhere -- New Hampshire, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin... Beyond that, McCain would be asking Republican voters to put a socially and economically liberal Democrat a heartbeat away from the presidency, said heartbeat belonging to a 72-year-old who has survived cancer. A lot of Republicans and conservatives like Joe Lieberman, but they don't want to see him as president. Ridge was last elected to high office, the governorship of Pennsylvania, in 1998. [...] It's not fair, but he's probably most associated with the color-coded terror alert system instituted at the Department of Homeland Security. Is Ridge worth 4 to 12 percentage points in Pennsylvania? He would likely help McCain, but not by that much. The race has been looking good for McCain for the past few weeks or so. Picking either of these men would suddenly and irreversibly complicate the task before him immensely."
• NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "If John McCain picks Joe Lieberman as his running mate, he would 'snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,' as radio talk-show king Rush Limbaugh put it in an e-mail last night. Joe Lieberman should be commended as a profile in courage on the war in Iraq, standing athwart the defeatist Democratic party at a crucial time in history. But that does not a vice-presidential candidate for the pro-life Republican party make."

RedState's Erick Erickson doesn't think McCain will pick Lieberman or Ridge: "There are a lot of people getting really upset of late worrying that Tom Ridge or, to a lesser extent, Joe Lieberman, could be John McCain's Vice Presidential Pick. That is not going to happen. People should step back from the ledge. Why do I know it won't happen? John McCain does not get to be the Republican Presidential Nominee without (A) being a smart man and (B) surrounding himself with smart people. And smart people are smart enough to know that a pro-choice running mate would sabotage John McCain's chances of being President. [...] Tom Ridge, Joe Lieberman, and the other potential running mates who are abortion rights supporters are non-starters, deal breakers, and totally unacceptable. John McCain knows this. He and his campaign want to win in November. Couple both of those data points and you realize Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman are imagined picked by the media designed to sow discomfort among the ranks of people just coming to terms with John McCain as the GOP nominee."

MCCAIN: Shades Of Christmas In Cambodia...

Yesterday we reported that liberal bloggers were speculating about the possibility that McCain modeled his "cross in the dirt" POW anecdote after a story told by Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Several liberal bloggers continue to discuss this topic:

• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "One thing that has come out since I wrote last night makes me think it's more likely that McCain made this up. No More Mr. Nice Blog points out that The Nightingale's Song, a 1995 book about five graduates of the Naval Academy, one of whom is McCain -- contains a chapter on, of all things, three Christmases McCain spent in captivity. (Thanks to Amazon's 'Search This Book' feature, and the fact that the chapter in question is only four pages long, I've read it, and you can too.) It contains no mention of this incident at all. [...] To my mind, it's a lot harder to believe that McCain never mentioned the story about the cross to Robert Timberg, who wrote The Nightingale's Song, than to believe he didn't mention it in his 1973 piece. Timberg interviewed McCain, and says that McCain spent 'a lot of time' with him. He was, moreover, writing about Christmases in captivity. If mcCain didn't mention it at the time, that would be very odd. Someone should ask him."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "It's a bit odd that McCain's story about the prison guard drawing a cross in the sand doesn't appear in McCain's detailed account of his captivity, circa 1973. The first time that I've been able to find McCain mentioning this story is 1999, a full quarter of a century after he was released. If it was such a pivotal story in his life, why did we not hear about it until McCain had decided to run for president?"

NRO's Byron York spoke with McCain aide Mark Salter, who claimed that McCain told him the "cross in the dirt" story:

"I just got off the phone with Mark Salter, John McCain's closest aide whom some in the blogosphere are suggesting made up, or embellished, or did something to create the 'cross in the dirt' story. Salter told me that he absolutely did not do that."

• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, who has been blogging continuously about this story, remains unconvinced: "The reason this is weird is that it's not just one memory out of countless ones. It's a very specific Christmas memory about a character McCain recounts in other anecdotes -- and was a significant enough memory to be packaged as a Christmas-themed campaign ad last year. But this riveting story which McCain 'will never forget' didn't occur to McCain when asked to come up with Christmas memories in captivity in 1995. Salter explains that McCain could easily have forgotten it because it was not 'pivotal.' Watch the ad again and listen to McCain's testimony from Saturday night. It sure sounds pivotal to me -- something that would surely resonate deeply over the years."
• Oliver Willis thinks Salter is in no position to objectively evaluate McCain's story: "McCain Aide: My Boss Isn't Lying. Oh, well, that settles it. Stay tuned as Byron York goes in depth to tell us how McCain staffers think that John McCain is the best choice for president while Obama staffers disagree!"

MCCAIN II: How Low Can You Go?

Conservative bloggers are pushing back fiercely against allegations that McCain made up or embellished his "cross in the dirt" story:

• Hawkins: "The netroots, with absolutely no evidence to back it up, has been accusing McCain of making this story up -- which is cheap, even for them. Seriously, they're accusing a POW of lying about his experiences in captivity to make himself look good based on nothing more than the fact that Alexander Solzhenitsyn once told a story that was somewhat similar."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Sometimes you think the left has hit bottom, and then it falls off the floor."

Conservative bloggers are also arguing that by focusing attention on McCain's POW experience, liberal bloggers are helping the GOP nominee:

• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Anything that keeps McCain's heroism front and center, without a shred of evidence from any eyewitness that he's lying, is tantamount to an in-kind campaign contribution. More, please."
• The Weekly Standard's Dean Barnett: "By all means, let's focus more attention on McCain's stint at the Hanoi Hilton. Maybe the Obama campaign will offer up as a counterpoint Obama's supremely courageous opposition to the Iraq War while on the front lines of the Illinois state legislature. And by all means, let's have the left continue its campaign to minimize McCain's service in Vietnam. That should work wonders for Obama!"

OBAMA: I Have A Bad Feeling About This...

Two of the netroots' leading number-crunchers -- Nate Silver and Chris Bowers -- are both projecting Obama's lead over McCain to be nearly gone:

• Silver: "Although Barack Obama remains a slight favorite in this election, his position is more vulnerable than at any point since the primaries concluded, and he no longer appears to have a built-in strength in the electoral college that we had attributed to him before."
• Bowers: "It is bitterly disappointing that Obama is not ahead by more entering this crucial three week stretch, but I guess we will see where things stand one month from now."

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers are growing increasingly concerned about the state of the Obama campaign. They are particularly upset about what they perceive to be its lack of aggressiveness:

• Aravosis: "There is an incredible discontent out there with the way this campaign is being run. The fact that the discontent isn't being recognized, isn't being assuaged, is disturbing. People aren't worried about the election, they're becoming despondent about it. They're not motivated to work twice as hard, they instead feel as if they've had the wind knocked out of them. This is far beyond a healthy skepticism as to whether Obama can win. While Obama's attacks today on McCain are heartening, we need to see more of it. People need to see that Barack Obama has as big of balls as John McCain and, well, Hillary Clinton."
• Bowers: "It is very difficult to not conclude that McCain is winning the messaging war right now. If Obama is winning in field, paid media, and free media exposure in a very Democratic year, what other explanation could there possibly be for his narrow lead nationally? It honestly scares the crap out of me that the Obama campaign will run another vacuous, 'positive' campaign like Kerry's that simply does not attack and define the Republican nominee in a way that is necessary. If things do not go well in the next three weeks, McCain could enter the third week of September with a lead similar that the one currently held by Obama. If that happens, he will become the favorite, no matter how hard the Democratic winds are blowing."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "Various insiders are now fretting about Obama's campaign strategy going off course, and are doing what insiders do, which is to recommend shifts in how the campaign operates. My guess is that, as with [Al] Gore and [John] Kerry, at this point no one is in charge of the Obama campaign, there are too many competing fiefdoms for message discipline to work. That's why lobbying on the inside doesn't really work for things like message changes on a Presidential level. Remember also that just being negative is not 'taking off the gloves' or 'going on the attack'. Polling about issues and then criticizing McCain based on that data is not working, Obama is going hard against McCain on big oil and McCain but McCain is still gaining. So any effective messaging strategy will have to start from outside and gradually be adopted by the campaign, since it will have to seem internally as if the major power centers have independently arrived at the same conclusion."
• digby mourns the Obama camp's opposition to independent expenditure groups: "The Obama campaign does not want to be involved in negative campaigning on this scale and perhaps, as the new, lesser known guy, Obama has to be more careful of such things. That, needless to say, is why the independent expenditure groups would have been so important. It's now rumored that the donors have been set free to finance some non-campaign related efforts, but it would be a miracle if they could pull it off at this late date. These things have to be planned --- something I'm sure Freedom's Watch and their advisor Karl Rove have certainly been doing for months."

The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum urges Obama supporters to calm down: "Liberals have been in a dither for several weeks now over Barack Obama's supposedly listless campaign performance following his return from Europe, and as near as I can tell this turned into something close to panic after his performance in Saturday's Saddleback Church pseudo-debate. Obama was deliberate and thoughtful! McCain was direct and forceful! Joe and Jane Sixpack will take wrong but strong every time! Give me a break. Of course McCain was direct and forceful. He was on his home turf and he could afford to be. Abortion? Life begins at conception. Gay marriage? Against it. [...] Obama, of course, had no such option. What's he going to say? That he has a 100% approval rating from NARAL? Gay marriage is a gift from God? [...] If this had been an AFL-CIO forum, the tables would have been turned. But it wasn't, and Obama played the hand he was dealt. That's life. Obama's campaign tactics will almost certainly get more aggressive after the convention, when most people finally start paying attention, but in the meantime it's worth noting that Obama's performance at Saddleback Church might have been better than all the heathens who read this blog think."

Daily Kos' DemFromCT also believes that the Obama camp doesn't need bloggers' advice: "Obama needs to be more succinct, start throwing in better sound bites, and needs to reach the gut as well as the heart and the head. He needs to get over the C-in-C threshold, but the key to the election is the economy. And he needs to better define McCain. But, you know, these aren't great mysteries, and the campaign has done pretty well so far. So, rather than give advice to people that don't need it, I think I'll just sit back and enjoy the next two weeks."

OBAMA II: Where's The Outrage?

Liberal bloggers are decrying McCain's allegation that Obama's opposition to the Iraq troop surge is grounded in his "ambition to be president." Liberal bloggers believe that McCain is "basically accusing Obama of treason" and they want Obama to respond more forcefully to McCain's remarks:

• TPM's Marshall: "With so many instances of corruption and influence-peddling around him and whatever problems with the candidate that are keeping the campaign from letting reporters interview him anymore, John McCain is now again charging Obama with what amounts to soft treason -- wanting to lose the war in Iraq in order to make himself president. The lack of any consistent lines of attack against McCain is becoming palpable."
• Aravosis: "McCain accuses Obama (again) of treason. Will Obama respond? Ever?"
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "More thinly veiled accusations of treason? It's time for the Obama campaign to stop 'respecting' John McCain's service to this country more than 40 years ago and start pounding him for his repeated failures in judgement over the past seven years."
• Firedoglake's Scarecrow: "In his speech to the VFW today, McCain not only misrepresented his support for the veteran's bill that [VA Sen.] Jim Webb championed, he also again attacked Obama's patriotism, repeating the outrageous smear that his rival would put political ambition over America's security. After this, the media has no further excuse for assuming the man John McCain has become is honorable. Note to media: Lying and smearing your opponent are not honorable."

OBAMA III: How To Go After McCain

Several liberal bloggers are discussing possible anti-McCain narratives:

• Stoller: "What is important is not the specifics of the attack but that the Obama campaign find a way to test potential narratives. McCain fished around for awhile with his ads before hitting on celebrity. He tried going after him for being a flip flopper on Iraq, for cutting funds to troops, for raising prices at the pump, for being wrong on Iraq, for arrogance, and for being an obstructionist. They didn't stick. When McCain did find a line of attack against Obama -- as evidenced by youtube views and cable news views -- that stuck, he went off and produced new versions of that same theme. It's an approach that is evolutionary, not top-down. This is not Karl Rove evil genius work psychoanalysis or sophisticated psychographic polling and micro-targeting, it's simple trial and error that any popular junior high school bully uses to find the weak spot in the new kid. Mock him until he starts squealing, as measured by outrage and youtube views."
• Stoller continues: "Why not do the same in going back at McCain? Obviously Clark's line of attack, that McCain's POW status is pretty irrelevant to his race for the White House, and that he has no actual executive experience, drew blood. The reaction was fierce and angry, which is precisely what you need for a message to resonate with the public at large. But really, any effective narrative on McCain would work. What is clear though is that any narrative that does work draws, as Clark's did (and as McCain's celebrity ad did) squeals from elite pundits and journalists. Elites don't like changes in narrative, so be aware that any real shift against McCain will be disliked by elites. It probably makes sense at this point to work from outside to test different narratives. Right now, there are two competing ideas. The first is that McCain is no longer the honorable man he used to be, the second is that McCain is old, crazy, and unsuited to be President."
• BooMan: "Karl Rove perfected the strategy of going right after a candidate's greatest strength. In Kerry's case it was his distinguished military record. In Obama's case it is his charisma and popularity abroad. In McCain's case it is his reputation as a maverick, his media-darling status, and his record as a Vietnam veteran and POW. Those are precisely the strengths that need to be taken on squarely. And there are more. McCain is showing age-related performance problems. He's taking radical right positions on abortion, on foreign policy, on social security, and more. Many members of his caucus are profoundly discomfited by the very idea of John McCain as commander in chief. [...] What are a few panders and flip-flops in comparison? The danger for Obama is that by listening to Beltway consultants and media insiders he may make the mistake of conceding that John McCain was once a man of honor, integrity, and principle. He wasn't honorable at the Naval Academy. He wasn't honorable in his first marriage. He wasn't honorable when he voted against MLK Day, or when he got involved in the Keating Five. He wasn't honorable when he defended the Confederate Flag (as he has admitted). He's not being honorable now. So, when was he honorable? There is only so much deference you can pay to a man's captivity at the hands of the NVA."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Reading The Tea Leaves

FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver makes some predictions about Obama's VP choice:

"I would not dismiss the possibility of a surprise choice, precisely because the Obama campaign has the discipline to pull it off. Still, I have to agree with Sean that the more build-up there is, the more pressure there is on the Obama campaign to deliver on a big name. Would a head-fake make sense if the Obama campaign were going to deliver us a [TX Rep.] Chet Edwards or -- bless his political heart -- a [MT Gov.] Brian Schweitzer -- someone who had all those iPhone-carrying Obama supporters furiously checking Wikipedia after they received Team O's text message?

Not much. Either they're playing it straight-up -- meaining Biden, Bayh, Kaine, or Sebelius -- or it's some kind of A-lister, someone for whom the elaborate staging of it all doesn't produce an anti-climax. That list is probably limited to Hillary, Gore, Kerry and Colin Powell, though I have real trouble imagining the latter two. Somebody who had officially disqualified themselves -- [ex-VA Gov.] Mark Warner or Jim Webb -- would presumably also produce a lot of shock value. But I think we need to start discounting some of these second-tier picks that don't have strong brands, like the Jack Reeds and the Chris Dodds."

LEST WE FORGET: Double-Jointed Man On Date Breaks It Out Too Early

From The Onion:

"COOPERSTOWN, NY -- Double-jointed man Stephen Rothkowitz's first date with Lois Hiller, 30, was irrevocably derailed when the 29-year-old process server prematurely demonstrated his ability to bend his thumb all the way back to his wrist, witnesses reported Tuesday. 'There seemed to be a lull in their conversation, and then he just started yanking his thumb around,' said patron David Cantrall, who was seated adjacent to Rothkowitz's table at the D&R Steakhouse. 'He didn't even preface it with something like, "Hey, guess what I can do?"' Rothkowitz was reportedly unable to salvage the evening by shooting milk out of his eye."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:50 PM

August 18, 2008

8/18: Back In The Saddle

Political bloggers are discussing John McCain and Barack Obama's respective interviews with mega-pastor Rick Warren at his Saddleback Church in CA. Liberal bloggers believe that Obama and McCain both gave successful performances, although some lefty bloggers aren't convinced that Obama's evangelical outreach will pay off on Election Day. Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, are convinced that McCain was the night's clear winner and that he did a better job of connecting with the audience. The American Spectator's Philip Klein echoes the sentiments of many conservative bloggers when he writes: "All I can say is that Barack Obama will have his work cut out for him in this fall's debates if this is at all an indication of how the two of them perform on the same stage."

SADDLEBACK: Mutually Beneficial?

Most liberal bloggers felt that Obama and McCain both gave successful performances at Warren's forum:

• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "For Obama, the goal was to impress a largely-skeptical audience of conservative evangelicals that he is a man of strong values and Christian faith, and that there are areas of common ground between them. For McCain, the goal was to remind the evangelical audience that they're really on the same page when it comes to social issues, notwithstanding his denunciation of the religious right eight years ago. What we saw last night from the Rev. Rick Warren's Saddleback Church was both candidates doing what they set out to do. It was a success for Obama and McCain, for entirely different reasons."
• The New Republic's Noam Scheiber: "The audience [was] primarily evangelical Christians -- a group among whom McCain leads by better than 2 to 1, according to recent polls. That means that if McCain did any worse than twice as well as Obama, it counts as a win for Obama. And, from where I sit, McCain didn't come close to doing twice as well. My sense is that Obama struck a lot of previously skeptical evangelicals as a reasonable and God-fearing man (a real achievement given that so many of the questions touched on issues that favor Republicans among these voters -- abortion, judges, stem cell research, etc.). That's a big improvement in light of where Obama started. Advantage Obama."
• MyDD's Transplanted Texan: "I think both [candidates] had a positive performance. Obama's was better, and probably more tailored to the specific audience. It certainly didn't seem forced. However, given that this is an audience likely leaning towards McCain to begin with, Obama may have allayed some fears, but I don't think he overcame the gap. In short, he won a non-event."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "For better or worse, Obama seems to have chosen to treat this event as sort of an intimate evening with Rick Warren -- that just happened to be nationally televised. McCain, by contrast, treated it as a straight campaign event: he had his stump speech talking points ready, and he was eager to cram as many of them into his 50 minutes as possible. I don't know if this was a good decision on Obama's part, but I don't have any doubt that he'll choose a much more direct speaking style at his three face-to-face debates with McCain."
• Crooks and Liars' John Amato: "Obama tried to be thoughtful in all his responses[;] some people say he takes too long to answer, but I think he's just trying to think before he responds. In the debates he will have to be quick on the draw and powerful, but he looked comfortable and sincere. [...] McCain is very good in these intimate settings. Put him on SNL or Jay Leno and he does very well. That's something that shouldn't be taken lightly by us or the Obama camp."

Several liberal bloggers are skeptical about Obama's efforts to reach out to evangelical Christians:

• digby: "The Saddleback congregation applauded Obama very nicely. But as I hear this (California!) evangelical audience cheering McCain far more wildly for everything from offshore drilling to gay marriage to taxes and clapping for every tired old stump line like it's the first time he's said them, I really have to wonder whether this 'outreach' is going to add up to anything. I know it's a small sample, but as Warren points out, social conservatism is not just about religion, it's a 'worldview' and McCain is the one who shares it, not Obama."
• Firedoglake's Teddy Partridge: "Senator Obama, I hope you learned something yesterday on the Saddleback Church/Store stage. The thoughtful, considered answers you craft in hopes of sharing your faith with the greedy prosperity-Xtians aren't going to sway them. John McCain's angry snappish answers -- his rigidity, his soundbiteiness, his 'clarity' -- provoked rabid applause. Your cautious conversational style as you tried to reveal what moves you and how your faith manifests itself: not so gripping."

SADDLEBACK II: ...Or A Home Run For The Mac?

Most conservative bloggers felt that McCain was the clear winner:

• Commentary's John Podhoretz: "I don't know how to say this more clearly: If John McCain can perform during the three debates the way he is performing tonight with Rick Warren, he will win this election. The contrast between him and Barack Obama (who answered the same questions an hour before him) has really been quite startling."
• NRO's Mark Hemingway: "I don't want to get to overheated about what occurred tonight, but I do think McCain had a clear and decisive victory over Obama. It all comes down to something that Phil Bredesen, the Democratic governor of Tennessee recently said about Obama: 'Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.' By that standard, McCain did extremely well and Obama did very poorly."
• NRO's Byron York: "It was clear that McCain was the [crowd] favorite. That was hardly a surprise; at a small gathering I attended a few years ago, someone asked Warren how many of his parishioners voted for John Kerry. He thought for a moment and said 15 percent. So the conservative Saddleback crowd, while happy to see Obama in their midst, was not going to be on his side. What they wanted was proof that John McCain was on theirs, and that's what they got."
• AmSpec Blog's Klein: "All I can say is that Barack Obama will have his work cut out for him in this fall's debates if this is at all an indication of how the two of them perform on the same stage. McCain was really at his best and the contrast played to his strengths. Obama was long-winded and wishy-washy in his answers, while McCain was short and to the point -- Rick Warren even had to ask him additional questions because he finished them so much more quickly than Obama. [...] If this were an actual debate, it would have been a blowout. Obama looked every bit like the rookie against a seasoned (not washed-up) veteran."
• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "I agree that McCain did better than Obama. Obama's greenness occasionally showed and it is clear that the two candidates can't really compare in life stories, even if Obama does a better job of writing about his. McCain was more effective at connecting with the audience and displaying his sense of humor."
• NRO's Rich Lowry: "In the first fifteen minutes, McCain had established a moral seriousness stemming from his conduct in Vietnam as a POW and his long-time as a national leader that Obama can't match. Throughout the rest of the night, he brought up Iraq, al Qaeda, and the Georgia crisis, when Obama was more inward-looking. McCain sounded like a potential commander-in-chief, Obama more like a potential friend. [...] As for the social issues, tonight should throw a damper on the notion that Obama is going to make major inroads among evangelicals voters. Why would they vote for his social liberalism couched in exquisite equivocations, when they can vote for someone who agrees with them on most everything like John McCain?"

SADDLEBACK III: The Abortion Question

Conservative bloggers are criticizing Obama's response to Warren's question about abortion. When Warren asked him "at what point does a baby get human rights," Obama began his response by saying that "answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade." Conservative bloggers are slamming Obama for his response:

• RedState's Feddie: "Barack Obama refuses to address the defining civil-rights issue of our time."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "As President -- even as Senator -- Obama is expected to have an answer for this. Quite literally, there is no higher pay grade in the US government, and abortion is one of the issues he has to face. If he can't face it, then he should go back to community organization and leave politics for people who can. John McCain had no trouble answering the same question. Obama dodged it -- and for good reason: his answer would have exposed his radical views."
• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "At Saddleback Barack Obama responded to the question addressed to him by Rick Warren on abortion as being 'above my pay grade.' Those who have dug into his record in the Illinois senate, however, have found evidence that Obama is a devout believer in what might be called the sacramental or positive good view of abortion: nothing can be allowed to interfere with the unfettered exercise of the purported right, including the accident of an infant born alive."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "The consensus on yesterday's forum at Saddleback Valley Community Church is that Senator McCain had an exceptional night, that Rick Warren pulled off a very difficult job, and that Senator Obama was smooth as usual except for his 'above my pay grade' gaffe, which is one of those phrases that will stick and hurt."

SADDLEBACK IV: Did You Know That John McCain Is A Former Prisoner Of War?

Several liberal bloggers were upset to learn that "despite assurances, McCain wasn't in a 'Cone of Silence'" during Obama's interview with Warren (which took place before McCain's). They believe that McCain could have easily listened to a broadcast of the questions that Warren asked Obama, which would have given him an advantage over his rival. Liberal bloggers were further upset by the McCain camp's response to these allegations, which referenced his POW experience:

"Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said on Sunday night that Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions.

'The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,' Ms. Wallace said."

• digby: "Well ok then. The man is incapable of cheating because he was a POW. We shall hear no more about it. (Of course his first wife and the shareholders in the Lincoln Savings and Loan might disagree, but far be it for me to bring that up.)"
• Mark Kleiman: "The notion that McCain's suffering as a POW guarantees his honesty in all transactions for the rest of his life would have to improve a lot to be ridiculous. There is simply no logical connection I can imagine between former-prisoner status and honesty. In fact, we know that McCain has cheated on many occasions, starting with cheating on his wheelchair-bound first wife with a string of girlfriends, the richest of whom became his second wife."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Wow. Yes let's talk about outrageous. Using McCain's prisoner of war status to now claim that he can never be called on a lie? To suggest that former POWs don't lie about anything, so don't you dare ask them? That is simply a bizarre thing to reference, McCain's POW days, when asked whether McCain was prepped for a debate. It feels awfully desperate. And a little bit crass too."
• Ezra Klein: "What's mainly impressive here is the versatility of the defense. 'The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, burnt the toast is outrageous.' 'The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, thinks Val Kilmer was the best Batman is outrageous.' 'The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, would cynically leverage his POW status for political gain is outrageous.'"

Firedoglake's Attaturk: "[This] is all part of a pattern. When called out for a factual error in something so trivial yet memorable as using dominant pro football teams of an era to patronize he uses the POW card. He uses the POW Card to push his Cuba policy. He uses the POW Card to get a forty year old dig in at hippies. He has used the POW card to say he isn't a racist, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. He has used the POW card to excuse years of voting against issues supporting veterans. He just used the POW experience again to apparently plagiarize Solzhenitsyn (classy, the guy just died). But then again, how dare I accuse John McCain of this, he was a war hero. Only Democrats with three purple hearts, a bronze star and a silver star, and who actually had to kill a man in personal combat are worthy of being called deceitful or wimps."

SADDLEBACK V: Sour Grapes, Anyone?

Conservative bloggers are pushing back fiercely against allegations that McCain heard some of Warren's questions beforehand, and they are criticizing NBC's Andrea Mitchell and the New York Times' Katharine Seelye for reporting on the controversy:

• Michelle Malkin: "The Obama camp and its media water-carriers are seriously accusing John McCain of 'cheating' in his appearance over the weekend at Rick Warren's Saddleback church forum because he was in his motorcade when the program started -- and then escorted to an empty room without media hook-ups. NBC's Andrea Mitchell spread the unsubstantiated rumor that somehow McCain heard Obama's questions while on his drive. The nutroots went, well, nuts. The NYTimes piled on ('Despite Assurances, McCain Wasn't In a "Cone of Silence"'). The McCain camp has protested. And now we have the spectacle of the Democrat presidential nominee and his press entourage bleating about the 'cone of silence' because he didn't fare as well as his opponent. [...] I think we know where the Left is headed again. Remember 'Is Bush Wired?'"
• Townhall's Amanda Carpenter: "I understand the Obama people are mad. But if they are going to accuse McCain of cheating to members of the media, they'd better dang well have some proof. I don't lay blame on petty staffers, though. I expect them to gripe after a bad performance by their boss. I don't expect their whining to be legitimately reported without any skepticism. So my question is this: is it fair for Andrea Mitchell to 'put out' what the Obama people are saying privately, true or not?"
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Remember back in 2004 when George Bush trounced John Kerry in the debates? The left saw a funny shape under Bush's jacket and immediately decided Bush must have had answered piped to an earpiece from Karl Rove. That was the only way he could have done so well. A variation on that happened over the weekend. Andrea Mitchell and NBC are in full cover mode for the Obama campaign to undo Obama's self-inflicted damage. [...] The New York Times too is pushing the 'McCain knew the questions' story. It is the only way they can explain how well McCain did and how poorly Obama did."

Hot Air's Allahpundit is annoyed that people are having this argument in the first place: "It's exceptionally stupid of [McCain] not to have arrived on time and observed the terms about isolation knowing what the left would do with it. Michael Crowley at TNR is right that he's not the type to cheat, but, er, a good way to prove that you're not the type to cheat is to actually follow the rules you've agreed to. McCain seems to have assumed people would give him the benefit of the doubt simply because he's McCain, a show of mind-boggling naivete in the middle of an election. [...] So another home run ends up with an asterisk next to it."

MCCAIN: Young And Sweet, Only 72

Several liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain for bringing up his POW experience while answering a question about his taste in music:

"Speaking to Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Institute in Colorado on Thursday, McCain found himself explaining a recent interview with Blender Magazine in which he selected ABBA's 1976 track 'Dancing Queen' as his favorite song.

'What were you thinking?,' Isaacson asked him, looking incredulous.

'If there is anything I am lacking in, I've got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life,' McCain joked. 'I've got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again.'"

• Yglesias: "Yes, yes, we get it -- John McCain is so famously reluctant to discuss his POW experience or exploit it for political gain that he manages to bring it up in the context of wildly unrelated questions about his affection for 1970s-era Scandinavian pop acts."
• Firedoglake's Spencer Ackerman: "What? McCain was shot down in 1967. ABBA began making music in 1972. Don't try this shit on me, McCain! Your POW experience has nothing to do with your Partridgey musical taste."
• hilzoy: "We must never, ever forget that John McCain is reluctant to speak about his military service and his heroic war record. As he himself has said, 'I apologize for maybe being a little reluctant because I really believed that I served in the company of heroes.' He only discusses it when he has absolutely no alternative. [...] To see Blender Magazine heartlessly sweeping aside McCain's protestations and dragging his most private, closely-guarded secrets out into the spotlight like that -- it just tears at your heart, doesn't it?"

MCCAIN II: Coincidence?

In other news related to McCain's POW experience, liberal bloggers are buzzing about Daily Kos diarist rickrocket's suggestion that McCain's anecdote about his secretly Christian prison guard was modeled after a story told by Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

• Ezra Klein: "It's quite a coincidence. A couple bloggers have started looking for some further evidence that this story actually happened to McCain. When he returned from captivity, McCain wrote a 12,000 word memoir for US News and World Report. The role of religion is emphasized, and the rare glimpses of humanity in his captors is detailed. The story of the guard and the cross is notably absent. In 1974, McCain is invited by Ronald Reagan to a prayer breakfast. He tells a powerful story about the sustenance he found when spirituality crept in the cracks of his captivity. He does not tell the story of the guard. It first appears, as far as anyone can tell, in 1999, in McCain's book, Faith of my Fathers. [...] There may be nothing here. But McCain is a huge Solzhenitsyn fan. And the enthusiasm with which he repeats this story in his presidential incarnation contrasts oddly with his apparent reticence to mention the moment -- even when talking about religion and captivity -- in the thirty years before his presidential run."
• Balloon Juice's Michael D.: "I think there is pretty solid evidence that [McCain]'s just copying other peoples' shit. [...] The other possibility is that McCain really thinks this happened to him, and can't differentiate between something he read and something he actually experienced. [...] My guess? No one will ask McCain about it for fear of being accused of questioning his patriotism."
• dday: "It's entirely possible that this type of scene happened at a prison camp more than once, and there are differences between the two stories [...] This is not something you can prove or disprove. [But] that didn't matter in 2000. Al Gore said he invented the Internet and that he found Love Canal and that he and Tipper were the inspiration for Love Story. That's what happened and there was no shaking anyone in the media off of that, and they were going to use those and other nuggets to build a story about Gore's serial exaggerations."
• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "If I were a reporter, I would check it out, for instance by asking people who were prisoners with McCain whether they had heard this story at the time. Since I'm not a reporter, I plan to reserve judgment."

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "I've now heard [this story] countless times. McCain has used what appears to be an intensely personal moment in a prison camp as a reason to vote for him in a campaign ad. As he tells it today, it was the pivotal moment in his struggle to survive in the Hanoi Hilton. And yet, in his first thorough account of his time in captivity, in 1973, the story is absent. The story is also hauntingly like that recounted by Solzhenitsen, as told in Luke Veronis, 'The Sign of the Cross'. [...] I have one simple question: when was the first time that McCain told this story?"

MCCAIN III: Another Foreign Policy Gaffe?

Liberal bloggers are accusing McCain of making a major gaffe when he described the Georgia conflict as the "first...serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War":

• Benen: "Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has fought (or is fighting) two wars in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan, and two conflicts in the Balkans. There have been multiple crises in Israel. There was a burgeoning nuclear crisis with North Korea. There is, and has been, a crisis in Darfur. There have been multiple, shall we say, tense moments between Pakistan and India, nuclear powers both. One could make the argument that the attacks of Sept. 11 were, themselves, a serious international crisis. And yet, there's John McCain, describing a regional conflict between Russia and Georgia as the first 'serious crisis internationally' since the end of the Cold War. Do the other crises simply not count? Or does McCain not remember them? Taken in isolation, McCain's frequent confusion about foreign affairs may seem like inconsequential verbal miscues, but taken together, the presumptive Republican nominee appears to have no idea what he's talking about."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Given that McCain has been using the situation in Georgia to pretend he's the president (speaking of presumptuous), it's not surprising that he wants to present this as the biggest crisis ever. And he's right, assuming you forget the Gulf War, and Somalia, and the Rwandan Genocide, and the earlier war in Georgia, and the breakup of Yugoslavia and all the wars that spawned, and 9/11, and Afghanistan, and Iraq and North Korean nuclear testing, and the war in Lebanon, and Darfur -- then this is the first serious international crisis since the end of the Cold War."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "[McCain's] New and Improved Talking Points: 'Iraq is just a regional conflict and Georgia is the true epicenter of the glorious struggle for western civilization.' The stupid just never, ever stops."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "Beyond McCain's seemingly poor memory, the interesting thing is the confusion in terms of high-level concepts. It was just a little while ago that McCain was giving speeches about how 'the threat of radical Islamic terrorism' is 'transcendent challenge of our time.' Now Russia seems to be the transcendent challenge. Which is the problem with an approach to world affairs characterized by a near-constant hysteria about threat levels and a pathological inability to set priorities."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "One of the great threats we face is the personal sense of grandiosity of the lead foreign hands who shape the course of our role in the world. Not national grandiosity, but personal grandiosity. Because if you're a foreign policy hand or political leader your own quest for greatness is constrained by whether or not you live in times of grand historical events. There's a lot of this nonsense floating around today by pampered commentators who want to find a new world historical conflict to write bracing commentary about before we're done with the one from last week. But John McCain might be president in six months. And whether it's his own shaky judgment, temperament or just the desire to find a campaign issue, this loose cannon is a real threat to this country."
• hilzoy: "This is serious. I'm not trying to score political points here. One way or another, the next President will have to deal with our shattered reputation abroad and the challenges, predictable and unpredictable, that the next eight years throw at us. We cannot afford to elect another President who really doesn't get these things. Anyone who thinks that the war with Georgia is the first serious international crisis since the end of the Cold War, or who can say, without apparent irony, that 'In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations', is just not up to the job."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Wow. [McCain]'s more out of touch than we thought."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: No One For VP!

Yglesias:

"Like everyone else in DC, I'm pondering the so-called 'Veepstakes' -- [IN Sen.] Evan Bayh? [DE Sen.] Joe Biden? [RI Sen.] Jack Reed? [KS Gov. Kathleen] Sebelius? -- except unlike a lot of people I'm having a hard time developing really strong opinions about it. Which reminds me of one pretty strongly-held opinion of mine: We should eliminate the office of the Vice Presidency.

When you think about it, it's exceedingly odd. The Vice President has no formal role in the conduct of government to speak of. And yet, since the end of World War II the choice of VP has been very important. Not so much because the Vice President is an important person but because no many VPs go on ([Harry] Truman, [Richard] Nixon, [Lyndon] Johnson, [George] HW Bush) to become President while others ([Al] Gore, [Hubert] Humphrey, [Walter] Mondale) become major party nominees. Consequently, even though the office is trivial, the choice is very important. But the choice is also fairly important politically to the person who does the choosing. Therefore, 'would it be good for this person to become a presidential nominee' gets relatively little consideration during the decision-making process (relative to: would s/he be a good surrogate? give me a 'bounce'? help with a state?) even though it really ought to be the primary consideration. Beyond that, you have the '[Dick] Cheney Paradox.' It seems perverse to have a Vice President who doesn't do anything. But a Vice President who does too much becomes a destabilizing influence within the government -- nobody really knows who he speaks for, and he can influence things in ways that provide for no accountability."

LEST WE FORGET: Underprotective Father Demands Daughter Arrive Home By 10 A.M.

From The Onion:

"NASHVILLE, TN -- Local resident Nathan Corbin, 37, has set a strict 10 a.m. curfew for his 16-year-old daughter Kathy, the underbearing father told reporters Tuesday. 'Rules are rules -- she has to be through the door or at least passed out on the lawn by no later than 10 in the morning on school days,' said Corbin, adding that Kathy is no longer allowed to have more than three boys in her room at one time. 'I've also warned her on several occasions to keep it down when she comes home because her [14-year-old] brother [Kevin] has usually smoked quite a bit of pot by that time and is asleep on the couch.' Corbin admitted to recent laxness in enforcing his 'no stealing more than $35 a week from your stepmother' policy, but defended indulging his daughter, citing the increased cost of cigarettes."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:54 PM

August 14, 2008

8/14: How Many Electoral Votes Does Georgia Have?

For nearly a week now, John McCain has seized up the coincidental timing of Georgia's conflict with Russia and Barack Obama's vacation in HI. By gushing support for Georgia Pres. Mikheil Saakashvili and racheting up his rhetoric against Russia, McCain is betting that the spotlight will convince voters he's an experienced leader who can handle international crises (and that Obama, by comparison, cannot). But McCain is also running the risk of overreaching, particularly with his annoucement 8/13 that he's dispatching two of his top surrogates, Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on a fact-finding mission to Georgia. As the week winds down, will voters see McCain as a take-charge executive, or a posturing war monger? Will Obama be seen as disconnected amateur, or a candidate appropriately deferring to the Bush administration to handle the crisis?

MCCAIN: Pot, Meet McCain

In his latest denoucement of Russian aggression, McCain on 8/13 told reporters:

"In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations."

Liberal bloggers immediately pounced on the gaffe:

• MoJoBlog's Jonathan Stein: "I don't even have to say it. Easiest blog post ever."
• The Impolitic: "Meanwhile, anyone know about McCain's drinking habits, because it's hard to believe he said this while he was stone cold sober. ... The irony of that statement surely won't be lost to any but the most deluded observers."
• Shakesville's Chet Scoville: "The inanity of McCain's statement speaks for itself...."
• Huffington Post's Sam Stein: "It was the type of foreign policy rhetorical blunder that has regularly plagued the McCain campaign and could have diplomatic ripples as well. Certainly the comment was meant in innocence. But for those predisposed to the notion that the U.S. is an increasingly arrogant international actor, the suggestion by a presidential candidate that, in this day and age, countries don't invade one another -- when the U.S. is occupying two foreign nations -- does little to alleviate that negative perception."
• D-Day: "You hear that, George Bush? McCain's coming for you! Nations don't inv- what, he supported the surge? Hey, every rule has its exception, right?"
• Daily Kos's smintheus: "To his increasing embarrassment, ... [while trying] to justify his foreign 'policy' adventurism to reporters, John McCain made a rather startling pronouncement. As so often, McCain was taking his cue from his other inept ally, George Bush. ... So does that pronouncement disqualify McCain for the presidency? Or just disqualify him to speak about his own 'policy' toward Iraq?"

Conservative bloggers shrugged off McCain's gaffe as miscommunication. Political Machine's Dave: "Of course, the lefties have jumped all over this. Perhaps what McCain meant to say was that nations don't invade other nations, unless in response to an invasion of a third country and then after thirteen years of broken promises, a nation may invade another nation under the auspices of several standing UN resolutions. But that probably would have taken too long to say."

More broadly, the gaffe highlighted the week-long debate in the blogosphere over whether the U.S. invasion of Iraq is analagous to the Russian invasion of central Georgia. The following excerpt by The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan gives a good taste of that ongoing debate: Peter Wehner huffs and puffs over my comparing Russia invading Georgia with the US invading Iraq. Reihan offers a semi-defense while still critiquing my position on Iraq. (Good point on Kosovo, though, and one the Russians are very keenly aware of). And Dean Barnett wants to know where my outrage is. Yep, as my readers have pointed out, I was a little too mad at Bush to express adequate sympathy for the plight of the Georgians at first. I tried to rectify that as graphically as I could. What Putin is doing is repulsive to civilized norms, and longtime readers of this blog will know I have no great love for Putin (unlike Bush, one might add). ... We can argue over the analogies. Yes, Iraq was a wicked dictatorship, and Georgia is a nascent democracy. Yes, the US is not Russia in terms of democratic norms. But actions and context are important. Iraq is thousands of miles away from the US; Georgia is on Russia's doorstep. The US invaded without the critical second UN resolution, putting the US outside the kind of international legitimacy in a way not totally unlike Russia. There is no American population in Iraq; there is a sizable Russian population in Georgia. Russia is recovering from one of the most precipitous declines in power in world history; the US stood athwart the globe in 2003 with no serious competitors. The Russian intervention has not toppled the Georgian government and has been halted after a few days. The American intervention in Iraq is now in its fifth year, with the administration doing all it can to stay longer."

MCCAIN II: Maverick Sends Wingmen To Check Out The Bogeys

Talking Points Memo's Greg Sargent: "At a press conference just now, John McCain redoubled his efforts to thrust himself into a leadership role on the Russia-Georgia crisis front, announcing that two top campaign surrogates, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, are going on a visit to Georgia. McCain said:

"The situation in Georgia remains fluid and dangerous. As soon as possible my colleagues senators Lieberman and Graham will be traveling to Georgia. They're both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I hope that other members of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate will go together."

"Lieberman and Graham, of course, are key campaign allies of McCain. The Arizona Senator has been using Obama's absence on vacation to associate himself more directly with the Russia-Georgia war in the mind of the public. ... McCain's announcement of his key campaign allies' trip abroad also seems designed to shoulder Bush aside as the primary GOP leadership figure here."

Politico's Jonathan Martin: "I think Greg Sargent is on to something.... Yes, they're both members of the Armed Services Committee. But McCain's declaration has something of a shadow government feel to it, as though he's sending his own emissaries into the war zone."

In addition to charges of political opportunism, and the potential risks to foreign relations that McCain's rhetoric could be having (particularly if it clashes with the current administration), liberal bloggers denounced what they see as a blatant double-standard: Obama was accused of presidential "presumptuousness" during his publicized world tour, while McCain's actions toward Georgia and Russia are portrayed as statesmanlike.

• Reality-Based Community's Mark Kleiman: "And is this really a good time for McCain to be sending his own delegation to Tbilisi? Isn't that a trifle presumptuous? What happened to 'one President at a time'?"
• American Prospect's Adam Serwer: "It seems that McCain thinks he's already President of the United States and is sending his own 'delegation' to Georgia consisting of Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Joe Lieberman. (Why not Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson? They are after all, the only Senators who could say "We are all Georgians now" and mean it literally.) No doubt this will produce a flood of reports noting how cocky and presumptuous it is for McCain to be acting as though he is already President and should be formulating policy in response to the situation there. These reports will be almost as numerous as the stories noting that McCain does not have the authority to conduct negotiations on behalf of the United States, and that doing so deeply undermines the President's authority to conduct said negotiations since foreign governments can't be sure about where they actually stand with our own. These will be followed by hysterical condemnations by Right Wingers about McCain overstepping his authority, much the same way as they did last year when they accused Nancy Pelosi of 'conducting independent negotiations with foreign governments' on her trip to the Middle East when she simply reiterated U.S. Policy everywhere she went."
• Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "Try to imagine the response if Obama dispatched two of his top campaign surrogates to Georgia to review conditions on the ground. There would be apoplexy — how dare a presumptive nominee act like he's already president. But that is effectively what we're seeing here. McCain is on the phone with Saakashvili on a daily basis — occasionally multiple times throughout the day — having international discussions of an unknown nature."
Hamsher: "I realize it's a delicate situation, but other than moving Evan Bayh to the top of the VP list in response (and potentially handing a Senate seat to the Republicans), where's Obama?"

But many conservative bloggers think the fact-finding mission is just the latest part of an appropriate, savvy strategy against Obama. Wake Up America's Susan Duclos: "This is a very smart move by John McCain politically because from the second news came out about Russia attacking Georgia, he has been in front of the situation, leading the way on statements. He called it right while Obama equated the victim with the aggressor by calling for restraint from Georgia and Russia, then Obama had to modify his position to sound more like McCain did the first time around. McCain led Bush even by coming out with just the right statements, each day, staying in contact with Saakashvili each day and keeping on top of the information and situation. McCain has shown leadership while Obama has been on vacation. Now the timing of Russia's actions cannot be laid at Obama's feet, it was coincidental that Russia chose that moment to attack, but it certainly hasn't done Obama any good in the eyes of the public to have John McCain leading the way, very presidentially."

However, some had reservations. HotAir's Allahpundit: "A sour note in an otherwise strong statement proposing harsh consequences for Russia's aggression, from booting them out of the G8 to rejecting their membership in the WTO to sending peacekeepers to their new Sudetenland in Ossetia and Abkhazia. He's careful to say that Liebs and Graham will be going in their capacity as senators and members of the Armed Services Committee (and invites other members to go with them), but given the context and the fact that they're his two most ardent supporters, it comes off like he's dispatching them as envoys. Questions that pop to mind: Do Committee members really need to conduct their own fact-finding missions in the middle of a hot war? State and Defense briefings could probably get them up to speed. And what would the reaction have been if The One had made this move first with Bayh and Webb in the surrogate roles? Would have seemed to me like a transparent attempt to squeeze a photo op from a crisis that the administration's already straining to manage without needing any extra distractions. Well, here you go."

Finally, conservative Sullivan sees the "envoy" as just the latest example of a worrying trend: "He's despatching Lindsey and Joe as emissaries to the country immediately. He's on the phone with Sakashvilli daily. He's giving press conferences. He's warning of a new Tsarist empire. You can tell what sends him into high-energy zones: a clear enemy abroad. He knows black and white; and he knows war. It gives him clarity and strength. Up next: Iran and China. Oh, the conflicts we can have ... If this is the dynamic you want to see in the next president, McCain is your man."

MCCAIN III: The Conflict's Conflict Of Interest?

McCain's escalating rhetoric against Russia and his continued support of Georgia has fueled liberal suspicions that the McCain camp is too personally and professionally involved with the Georgian government.

• BAGnewsNotes: "The McCain campaign's neocon grandstanding and effective U.S. foreign policy takeover is being driven by McCain's combined foreign policy adviser and lobbyist for Georgian president Saakashvili, Randy Scheunemann (check bio). In yesterday's photo aboard McCain's plane, we see Scheunemann and Lieberman jawboning with McCain, seated behind. Obviously, the major prop here is the map of Georgia. As much as McCain accuses Russia of having grand designs, what the map most calls into relief -- with Obama on vacation, Graham and Lieberman packing for Georgia, and Scheunemann dangling the paper in the aisle for the cameras -- is how McCain is milking the crisis for all it's worth."
• DownWithTyranny: "It's hard to believe-- well, not too hard -- that foreign governments hire top McCain staffers and part of the deal is that McCain beats the war drums for them. Is this even legal?"
• D-Day: "[Scheunemann] is a registered lobbyist for a foreign agent embroiled in a conflict with the Russians. McCain has rushed to Georgia's side, telling the country that 'we are all Georgians.' His top foreign policy advisor is being paid by them. Can you say 'conflict of interest'? Scheunemann is a C-level neocon, and Georgia is a C-level neocon entity, but the fact that this war has burst to the surface not only gives the appearance of impropriety, it damages our foreign policy. You can't tell me that this isn't very harmful. ... So McCain's freelancing is putting pressure on the Bush Administration to act - by attacking the Russians or something just as foolhardy. And there's a foreign lobbyist right in the middle of all this. Scheunemann should clearly be fired. ... It's bigger than Scheunemann. It's about the culture of Washington that permits this gross conflict of interest. Think Progress has more on how Scheunemann likely orchestrated McCain's nomination of Saakashvili for the Nobel Prize, for his own financial gain. This is unbelievable."

Moreover, many liberal bloggers suspect a broader conspiracy involving GOP strategist Karl Rove and Sec/State Condoleezza Rice, both of whom held meetings with the Georgian government last month.

• emptywheel: "The White House has started to panic over a July 9 meeting between Condi Rice and Mikheil Saakashvili, desperate to suggest they didn't encourage Georgia's crack-down in South Ossetia. Given that panic, I wonder whether Karl Rove had any similar chats with Saakashvili when they were in Yalta together just days later? Now, there's been a lot of justified chatter about the role of Randy Scheunemann, who appears to be advising the Republic of Georgia at the same time as he provides campaign advice to John McCain. ... There's something going on--and given Karl Rove's presence close to the scene of the crime, I've got my suspicions."
• Hamsher: "The Bushies insist they knew nothing about what the Georgians were planning, Condi Rice phoned it in despite the fact that she's a Russia specialist who met with Saakashvilli on July 9, and Karl Rove was suspiciously in the area with Saakishvilli shortly thereafter. Throw in McCain's lobbyist ties to Georgia and you've got quite a constellation of events that just happened to play to McCain's perceived strengths."

POWELL: The Swing Vote Of 2008?

On 8/13, GOP pundit Bill Kristol announced on FOX News:

"This is not an absolute done deal, but these people are very confident that [Colin] Powell will endorse Obama. ... He may well give a speech at the Democratic convention explaining his endorsement of Obama."

But Powell immediately denied the report:

"I do not have time to waste on Bill Kristol's musings. ... I am not going to the convention. I have made this clear."

However, by ending the conversation before reporters could ask whether he would endorse Obama, Powell threw open the door of speculation.

Moderate Voice's Joe Gandelman: "Once again Colin Powell ... is in the spotlight and continuing his role as one of the most respected and also discounted political rock stars in the nation. Republicans love him when he is toeing the party line. Democrats love him when he seems to be bucking the party and administration line. Republicans discount his importance when he doesn't hold the party line. Democrats say he was a lousy Secretary of State when he isn't breaking with the party line. ... Both candidates clearly want Powell's endorsement, even though supporters of each candidate will diss Powell if they think he's leaning towards the other one. To McCain, a Powell endorsement would signal to crucial independent swing voters that he indeed is still the 'maverick' who isn't a cookie-cutter establishment Republican. ... Most important, it would also signal that military man Powell would feel and perhaps sleep better with military man McCain at the Oval Office helm. To Obama, a Powell endorsement would be a huge 'get.' ... It would signal to independent voters that Obama is truly someone who can reach across the aisle and is not the stereotypical Democrat. It would also signal that military man Powell would feel comfortable with non-military man Obama at the Oval Office helm. It would also be interpreted by some as Powell giving a finger in the eye to the Bush administration for the way he was treated and the damage serving it did to his reputation in some circles. In fact, if Powell endorses Obama, GOPers will likely suggest it's because he is the equivalent of a disgruntled administration employee.... Prediction: It's unlikely Powell will sit this one out — if only because both sides will be clamoring and pressuring through their associates to get Powell to endorse them and he'll be under pressure not to do something that will favor one side...until he endorses. And then he'll be the target of demeaning comments from the side of whatever candidate he didn't endorse — the same folks who are clamoring for his endorsement now."

• National Review's Jim Geraghty: "If accurate, this is huge and great news for Obama. Powell even contributed to McCain at the beginning of the race. ... If I believed in truly devious motives, I would speculate that someone leaked this in order to scuttle whatever discussions were going on between the Obama camp and Powell."
• Donklephant's Justin Gardner: "Honestly, I think it could swing a significant number of Independents to either candidate's favor. After all, Powell is one of the more popular moderate political figures we've encountered in the past couple decades, even with that infamous speech at the U.N. looming in the background. My guess? I think he would have come out for McCain a lot earlier if he was going to support John, so I think he's leaning heavily towards Obama because he shares a similar approach to foreign policy with the Illinois senator. That doesn't mean he'll explicitly endorse Obama, but Powell's silence would be telling in a year like this...especially consider he has been a lifelong Republican…albeit a moderate one."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Is there any political figure in America whose endorsement would mean more to Barry O? Impeccable military credentials, 'reformed' Bush cabinet member, harbinger of the very sort of post-racial crossover appeal The One is desperately seeking, and a spectacular counter to Lieberman's own imminent Zell Miller-ish turn at the Republican convention."
• The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder: "It's true that the Obama campaign is trying to line up some high-profile Republicans, but I do not think Powell will be one of them."
• Sullivan: "I wouldn't be so sure about the Powell endorsement rumors. I'm with Ambers on this. It's too ballsy a move for Powell. I'm also inherently suspicious of Kristol's motives. If Powell were considering such an endorsement, Kristol would do all he can to derail it. Prematurely leaking it, creating a fire-storm and forcing Powell to deny is one way to pre-empt such a move. It's vital for the neocons to prevent Obama gaining traction with serious foreign policy machers. But it makes sense in one obvious way: Powell understands how deep a hole the US is in internationally, and how only Obama truly has a chance to get the country back on its feet. It's the impulse of a patriot. And maybe the smears have made him mad."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "This is in some ways interesting, and in some ways to be expected. It is interesting because you might have assumed that Powell, a military guy and a Republican who also happens to be a political donor to McCain -- might stick with him. So why do this? You can certainly understand why Powell would be tempted to support the first African-American candidate with a legitimate shot at the presidency. But aside from race, I think there is another similarity between Powell and Obama; the less you know about their political views, the more you like them. Frankly, had he wanted to, Powell could have probably been elected president as a Republican if he simply refused to say anything. A cynical view for this move for this move, of course, is that Powell clearly cares about his legacy and this is his way, perhaps, of redeeming himself to the media and insiders."
• Martin: "More broadly, it's fascinating, that two of McCain's allies and fellow Vietnam vets, Chuck Hagel and Colin Powell, are remaining on the sidelines. Both, it seems, respect McCain too much to dishonor him by appearing at his opponent's convention (as Hagel's office announced yesterday). But both also are concerned enough about the Bush administration, the war and perhaps McCain's ties to the two that they also have yet to get behind their friend."

However, many liberal bloggers were highly suspicious of Kristol, who's known for several terrible predictions and who many see as a Republican hack with ulterior motives.

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "For what it's worth, Kristol is about as far from a straight ahead reporter as they come, and just about everything he writes comes from a partisan Republican perspective. What's more, Powell's spokesman is emphatically denying that Powell will be at either party's convention in the coming weeks."
• Shakesville's Melissa McEwan: "Given his track record on everything else (*cough* Iraq War *cough*), I'm sure this info is solid and you can take this prediction to the bank!"
• Think Progress's Satyam: "Caution: Note that the Kristol Ball has a mixed record," linking to a post detailing his failed prediction of GOP strategist Mike Murphy joining the McCain camp, as well as the three major factual errors he committed in the first six months of his New York Times column.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Where Does The Edwards Love-Child Fit In?

Weaving together suspicions over both the Rove story and the Kristol story, Washington Note's Steve Clemons: "So, what is Bill Kristol up to? I have a hunch -- but it's completely speculative. Since Steve Schmidt was given the operative reins of the McCain campaign, Schmidt has been pushing hard for flamboyant, dramatic showdowns to contrast McCain from Obama. He helped orchestrate the ongoing political theater on oil drilling. And Schmidt and his team have grabbed the Russia-Georgia conflict and tried to ratchet higher US-Russian tension rather than stand down, again to differentiate the McCain camp from what they hope is perceived as a more dovish Obama position. My hunch is that Bill Kristol and friends don't want interest-calculating negotiators and balanced, sensible, pragmatic realists around McCain. They are perhaps using the Russia conflict to purge their foreign policy team of those who are not neocon or neocon-friendly -- and by trying to 'export Colin Powell to Obama,' Kristol is really going after his close friend and ally Richard Armitage while at the same time attacking General Powell's utility to Obama. And who is helping Steve Schmidt and Bill Kristol orchestrate this purge and exploit this European crisis? I think Colin Powell's old White House nemesis -- Karl Rove. Just a hunch -- but McCain's team is working on achieving national security clarity of the neoconservative kind."

LEST WE FORGET: Obama's October Surprise

The Onion: "Barack Obama's once-commanding lead in the polls slipped to two points Monday, continuing a month-long slide that many credit to the recent appearance of the Democratic candidate's heretofore unknown half-brother, Cooter Obama. Long kept a family secret, the overalls-clad, straw-chewing Kentuckian first entered the public spotlight in July, when he drove his 1982 Ford flatbed pickup through the press corps at an Obama rally in order to inform his brother that he caught the skunk that had been living under his front porch. According to witnesses, Cooter's skunk proceeded to spray Washington Post political reporter Michael D. Shear in the face. 'Sorry 'bout that, mister! Some tomater juice'll take care of the stank,' Cooter said as his mortified younger brother led him off the stage. 'Shoot, Barack, you didn't tell me you was runnin' for president!' ... [P]olitical experts said Cooter's increased visibility in recent weeks has hurt Obama's polling among urban, upper-middle-class, non-straw-hat-wearing voters."

Posted by Chris Bodenner at 12:57 PM

August 13, 2008

8/13: Throwing Bombs Bursting In Air

Introducing John McCain at a campaign event in York, PA on 8/12, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) said:

"In my opinion, the choice could not be more clear: between one candidate, John McCain, who's had experience, been tested in war and tried in peace, another candidate who has not. Between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not."

Bloggers sympathetic to Obama seized upon "always put the country first," accusing the McCain camp of attacking Obama's patriotism. Alluding to the controversial "Lack of American Roots" memo by Mark Penn, Taylor Marsh wrote, "What, Mark Penn is working for McCain now?" Similar reactions:

• Moderate Voice's Joe Gandelman: "Lieberman has jumped the [shark] because he is saying without actually saying it that Obama is potentially a traitor, if not one already. A patriot puts his country first. So who is craven enough to put his country second? The fact is this: The old Joe Lieberman and the old John McCain wouldn't suggest or come close to calling Obama unpatriotic because he disagrees with them. They would have aggressively challenged him on his positions but never questioned his bona fides as someone who cared for his country."
• No More Mister Nice Blog: "Barack Obama needs to tell the public that this gutter approach to politics will be America's problem if John McCain is elected president, because if he and his crowd campaign this way, they'll govern this way -- by dividing the country, questioning the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with them, and going into character-assassination mode whenever they're challenged."
• Talking Points Memo's Greg Sargent: Just moments ago, the McCain campaign emailed out the same Lieberman quote to its full press list -- putting its official stamp of approval on Lieberman's assertion. This is effectively an abandonment of the campaign's quasi-official position, which used to be that the McCain camp saw questioning Obama's patriotism as off limits. Last month, senior McCain adviser Charlie Black said explicitly that 'we don't want to talk about his patriotism and character. We concede that he's a patriot and person of good character.' That no longer appears to be operative."

But most of the uproar centered on Lieberman being an traitor -- to his party. Ever since losing his Senate primary two years ago (which Obama tried to prevent by campaiging for him, liberal bloggers often point out), Lieberman has steadily drifted towards the GOP, particularly on foreign policy. This year, he has become one of McCain's most vocal supporters, thus alienating Dems to the brink of banishment.

• HotAir's AllahPundit: "The question's no longer whether Joementum's going to split with the Democrats. It's whether he's going to do it in dramatic fashion during his speech to the Republican convention or whether he'll leave it to Reid to push him out by stripping him of his committee assignments. ... If you're Reid, do you take his assignments away now or chance having him take the stage with a national audience and tell the Democrats, 'You can't fire me, I quit'? You don't want to antagonize him before he speaks, but since he's already taken the gloves off, why not cast him out beforehand? Or will that backfire by letting him use his speech to play the victim shunned by a party establishment that can't tolerate dissent within its own ranks?"
• Jed Report: "If Joe Lieberman honestly believes what he's saying, then why did he urge Barack Obama to run for president in the first place?"
• Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "As for Lieberman, just last week, the former Democrat contributed $100,000 to the DSCC. A Lieberman-friendly Democrat told Roll Call why Lieberman made the donation: 'Basically, he doesn't want everybody to hate him. Plus he wants to keep his committee.' At this point, Dems everywhere are going to hate him and he's going to lose his committee. Looking at the big picture, this is, quite obviously, the end of Lieberman's relationship with the Democratic Party. ... Lieberman might as well kiss his committee gavel goodbye, and once that happens, he'll have no incentive to caucus with the party. Lieberman probably realizes this, which will make him an unrestrained Republican attack-dog throughout the campaign cycle. I still wonder, though, if Lieberman has considered the implications for his reputation — not with the party, and not with his constituents, but with the media establishment he loves (and which loves him right back). Lieberman's interesting to pundits and talking heads because he's unusual. The media can't get enough of unusual. Lieberman was on the Democratic ticket eight years ago, he had Obama campaigning for him two years ago, and now he's McCain's Mini-Me. The media can't get enough. But come January, if he's just another Republican hack, he's not quite as fascinating anymore."
• Talking Points Memo's Greg Sargent: "Another day, another unsightly smear of Obama from Joe Lieberman."

Lieberman's "country first" comments seemed his most strident yet, and his escalating role as McCain's attack dog has revived VP speculation.

• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "And so the evolution from hawkish Democrat to Republican attack-dog continues. What Lieberman is doing is what a vice-presidential candidate tends to do: savage the opponent. Or more accurately, what Rove Republican vice-presidential candidates have been trained to do: savage the opponent as a traitor. It's funny but I don't recall him ever being so aggressive when he was Gore's running mate."
• Hartford Courant's Jesse A. Hamilton: "The talk won't go away until, A) Sen. John McCain picks somebody else to be his running mate on the Republican ticket, or B) McCain picks Lieberman."

Huffington Post's Marty Kaplan spots irony in Lieberman's questioning of Obama's patriotism: "Ever since their diaspora, Jews have been accused of putting something else -- themselves, the dispersed Israelite people, then Israel itself -- ahead of their own country. Jewish citizens of Russia, Germany and America, to pick just a few, have been slandered (and sometimes killed) for allegedly putting their allegiances to the Hebrew nation ahead of their patriotism toward the motherland, the fatherland or the homeland. This is vintage Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And yet what do we hear today from Orthodox Jew Joe Lieberman? ... Does Joe Lieberman not realize that he is using one of the oldest anti-semitic tricks in the book to accuse Obama of being the Islamic candidate?"

The conservative blogs didn't pay much attention to Lieberman's comments, and those who did generally thought Obama supporters were overreacting. Don Surber: "I parse it as saying put the country first in legislation, which is not questioning one's patriotism but rather a common parliamentary elocution; we must put our country first, and compromise on campaign reform. McCain has reached out across the aisle many, many times. Obama hasn't. Reasonable minds may disagree with this interpretation. But the reaction was over the top...."

Some right-wing bloggers thought Lieberman's attack should have been even more explicit. Right Wing News's John Hawkins: "Lieberman could have also added that we have a choice between one candidate who has always raised his hand for the national anthem and another who has not. We have a choice between one candidate who spent 20 years in an anti-American, anti-white church and another who did not. We have a choice between one candidate who made a big deal out of the fact that he didn't want to wear a flag pin and another candidate who did not. Just pointing a few things out...again, because those are all relevant points people should keep in mind when they step into the voting booth."

MCCAIN II: Getting Peachy With Georgia

Following Lieberman's controversial comments, McCain stepped up to the stump in York and delivered his most ardent rhetoric in support of Georgia against Russian aggression. McCain said:

"[Georgian Pres. Mikheil Saakashvili] knows that the thoughts and prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation as they struggle today for their freedom and independence. He wanted me to say thank you, to give you his heartfelt thanks for the support of the American people. [I told him] I know I speak for every American when I say to him today, we are all Georgians."

McCain critics jumped on that last line (many bloggers believed it to be an allusion to Europe's "We are all Americans" sentiment following the 9/11 attacks):

• The New Republic's Michael Crowley: "So says John McCain. ... It may be a noble sentiment, and Georgia is deserving of American diplomatic support. But is he really speaking for all--or even most--Americans? My strong hunch is that precious few Americans want to feel they're the victims of Russian aggression. Instead they want all the foreign-policy madness to calm down already. It hardly seems a winning message for McCain to imply that in their hearts the American people should consider themselves at war with Russia."
• dday: "So today John McCain let me know that we are all Georgians - especially the guys on his staff being paid by their government, I guess. Now, Russia and Georgia set conditions for a cease-fire and withdrawal, under a French framework (French!?), so I guess by 'we are all Georgians' McCain means that 'we are all losers of brief wars where we belligerently try to take over breakaway regions by force using indiscriminate violence and suffer the consequences.' There are no noblemen in this conflict, but to signal some kinship with the Georgians is tantamount to allying with them in a dirty war against the Russians, which is just a fair bit of madness."
• American Prospect's A. Serwer: "I think I speak for most Americans when I say: 'Does he mean the state?' In all seriousness, if the battle over South Ossetia is 9/11, then didn't McCain just commit us to a military response, since that's how the United States responded in the aftermath of the WTC attacks? The election hasn't even happened yet and he's trying to start new wars. Some people might call that 'presumptuous.'"
• Daily Kos's smintheus: "How would the trad media have portrayed Barack Obama if he had behaved as John McCain has done since Georgian President Saakashvili sent troops into South Ossetia? Would it have been 'presumptuous' to issue proposals to intervene in the fighting even before the President had spoken? To stake out an aggressive position far in front of anything the US wished to adopt? To attack a rival candidate for refusing to do the same? ... What if he claimed to be able to speak for the nation?"
• Think Progress's Matthew Yglesias: "Common sense indicates that, no, I am not a Georgian. But John McCain says 'today we are all Georgians.' But does he mean it? Suppose Russia was bombing Atlanta and threatening to advance to Savannah. In solidarity with Georgia (the state) Americans from all fifty states would band together and fight the Russians off. Now I don't think we should go to war with Russia. And I hope John McCain doesn't think we should go to war with Russia. But insofar as he doesn't mean that we should go to war with Russia on Georgia's behalf, what's the meaning of the claim that 'we are all Georgians'? On one level, it’s empty political sloganeering. But on another level it's not empty — it's downright irresponsible, and an example of the sort of irresponsible behavior that got us into this. But this stuff isn't a game — Putin, Shakashvili, the Ossetes and the Abkhaz are all playing for keeps. We shouldn't imply guarantees that we don't intend to keep, which means the public statements of our officials have to be driven by realistic assessments of the situation and of American interests not by mawkish sentimentality."

But The New Republic's Jonathan Chait chastised his fellow liberal: "Does [Yglesias] really not understand this? The point is that we can't physically defend Georgia from Russian agression, but we can make a symbolic stand of unity with a democratic, pro-Western state that has been attacked by an autocratic aggressor. Is Yglesias trying to argue that, since we don't have the capacity to intervene militarily, we can't make basic moral judgments?"

In addition to his words of support for Georgia, McCain continued to sharpen his rhetoric against Russia:

"I think it's very clear that Russian ambitions are to restore the old Russian Empire. Not the Soviet Union, but the Russian Empire."

• I Don't Like You Either's damozel: "And people think this man is 'ready to lead'? He's not even living in the same century as the rest of us."
• Wonkette's Jim Newell: "Many of us freaked out today when John McCain [accused Russia of imperial ambitions]. How does anyone arrive at that after reading about the situation between Russia and Georgia? Jesus. But then again, are we just getting soft? Think back to the glory days of the Republican primary season. All of the candidates launched into over-the-top fear babble of this nature on a daily basis, and it was usually more insane!"
• Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall: "Watching John McCain speak about the Georgian crisis in the video below should deeply worry anyone interested in a sane US foreign policy -- or the safety of their children. One arch joke from the earlier part of this decade was that the one good thing about the neocons obsession with getting into a war with Iraq was that it distracted them from their much bigger obsessions -- ratcheting up Cold Wars with China and/or Russia. The people that are pulling McCain's strings are the people who want to push us into a new Cold War with the Russians -- and ironically and a bit improbably with the Chinese too. But the Russians are probably more willing to oblige us since their power remains limited to oil reserves and military power. In other words, they're people McCain's folks can understand and vice versa. ... But think for a moment where we'd be if this man were president right now, as he may well be in six months. This man takes the counsel of the people who got us into the Iraq War. On foreign policy, he is in league with the people who were so extreme they've now largely been kicked out of the Bush administration. People like John Bolton and others like him. ... This man is simply too dangerous and unstable to be president. People need to wake up and get a look of the preview he's giving us of a McCain presidency."

Conservative commentary on Obama has dwindled this week because the Dem is still on vacation in HI. But McCain Report's Michael Goldfarb took the occasion to snipe at his boss's rival and contrast the candidates' current schedules: "Barack Obama enjoys a jog at Hawaii's Kailua Beach, keeping focused on his workout even as his fans try to snap photos. Meanwhile John McCain is campaigning in Pennsylvania, has twice spoken with the President of Georgia, and is working to prevent a close American ally from collapsing under the weight of a Russian invasion."

Yglesias hit back: "It seems the McCain campaign has decided to take advantage of the violent conflict in Georgia to score political points against Barack Obama by criticizing him for going on vacation while McCain 'has twice spoken with the President of Georgia, and is working to prevent a close American ally from collapsing under the weight of a Russian invasion.' But, look, nothing McCain is doing is actually helping Georgia. Various diplomats from the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and elsewhere are trying to negotiate an end to the crisis. Obama is trying to relax before the hard months of campaigning ahead. And McCain is . . . engaged in political posturing and a lot of empty tough guy rhetoric that's better suited to a Bill Kristol column than to the White House. A lot of the rhetoric about this situation has, in my view, been over the top but I think it's clear that America has a real-but-limited interest in maintaining a Georgia that isn't entirely under Moscow's thumb. But what's needed are practical steps in that direction, not empty sloganeering and political stunts."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: At Least He Gets All The Holidays Off

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg: "Obama Is Not Actually the Antichrist. Because, as those of us who follow these things know, the antichrist is Jewish. Several years ago, I went to see Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, where he confirmed this to me, and offered up the observation that I, technically speaking, could be the antichrist. I've been following Ross on this subject, and it's a bit silly to think that true pre-millenarian wackadoos believe that Obama could be the antichrist, because true pre-millenarian wackadoos know that the antichrist is a Jew. Unless of course Obama is in fact Jewish. But you can't be Christian and Jewish and secretly Muslim at the same time. Or can you?"

LEST WE FORGET: "Couldn't Be Plainer"

American Prospect's Paul Waldman: "Though there was no particular evidence that the tire-gauge attack was having an effect, the McCain campaign's glee was evident. Just days before, they had alleged that Obama's criticisms of their tactics constituted 'fussiness and hysteria,' and now here they were brandishing small, phallic objects bearing their opponent's name. Meanwhile, McCain himself was sent out to pose in front of working oil rigs, to testify to his thirst for pulling more black gold from the earth. The message couldn't be plainer: See that itty-bitty, little tire gauge? If you vote for Obama, that's how big your penis is. If you vote for McCain, on the other hand, your penis is as big as this rig, thrusting its gigantic shaft in and out of the ground!"

Posted by Chris Bodenner at 01:26 PM

August 12, 2008

8/12: Pilloryland

The Atlantic's Josh Green on 8/11 published an expose (which was teased by Politico the day before) detailing the dramatic inner-workings of Hillary Clinton's failed presidential campaign. Green's article was buttressed by nearly 200 emails and memos he obtained from various campaign staffers. As one of the foremost experts on "Hillaryland," Green wrote:

"Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence -- on her capacity.... In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles' heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton's loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. ... What follows is the inside account of how the campaign for the seemingly unstoppable Democratic nominee came into being, and then came apart."

The most talked-about document obtained by Green was a March 2007 memo written by top Clinton strategist Mark Penn, who advised his boss to subtly portray Barack Obama as un-American. Penn wrote:

"All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050. It also exposes a very strong weakness for him -- his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values."

CLINTON: Ruing The Day One

Bloggers from the left and right condemned Penn's memo as cynical and conniving. Overall, many saw Green's article as confirmation that Clinton had lost to Obama because of the back-biting, lack of preparation, and mismanagement within her campaign staff.

• Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "My guess is that Penn's career as a A-list political consultant was probably over anyway, but hopefully this drives a final nail into his coffin. What a sleaze."
• Prairie Weather: "Hillary Clinton's campaign revealed (as many of us noticed) someone who did not have basic leadership skills. A lot of hope, an admix of self-righteousness and a good deal of anger, but not the ability to make decisions. She couldn't control her own staff and didn't seem to make an effort to exert leadership."
• Robert Stacy McCain: "'Personnel is policy,' the old saying goes, and Hillary's campaign had assembled a cadre of second-raters in top positions. But this is entirely the candidate's fault. The candidate is always ultimately in charge of his own campaign, and if Hillary put the wrong people in charge, she has no one to blame but herself."
• New Republic's Eve Fairbanks: "What with Team Hillary's old melodrama and Team Edwards's new one, those 'No Drama With Obama' signs the Obama staff hung all over their Chicago office are starting to look like just the right mantra."
• Wonkette's Jim Newell: "These people aren't all nuts, though, it seems after reading this. Hillary was just such a frontrunner, with so many advantages, that each of her top advisers was going out of his or her mind 24 hours a day not wanting to be the one that blew it. As a result they just fought all the time, these very smart individuals, and ended up blowing it as a team. And that's quite an achievement."

Atlantic Monthly's Ta-Nehisi Coates, an Obama supporter, offered an interesting contrarian take: "I'm not particularly outraged by this. Let Mark be Mark. The fact is, if anything, it looks like Clinton ultimately held back, no? I was pretty pissed about that hard-working white voters remark, but for some reason, I've come to think of it as a slip. Let me expound on that. Not a slip, like Clinton didn't mean it. But a slip like, it's exactly what she meant. It just wasn't supposed to be a dog-whistle. It was the un-pc truth. At least from her twisted perspective."

Many conservative bloggers viewed Penn's "Other" strategy as proof that Republicans are victims of an unfair double standard when it comes to playing patriot games. RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "I trust that after this, we won't hear all that much more about how the evil Republicanses are working to make Barack Obama look un-American. Let history record that it was the Clinton campaign that sought to beat everyone to the punch on that issue. And it was a strategy they followed with a surprising degree of devotion as well; recall the picture of Barack Obama dressed up in Somali tribal wear that the Clintons released to the public by leaking it to the Drudge Report. Recall as well Hillary Clinton's statement that Barack Obama was not and is not a Muslim 'as far as I know.' The Clinton campaign went out on the warpath to make Obama look like The Other very early in the game. These tactics are, of course, despicable. The only mildly amusing thing about them is that the Clinton campaign--and all of the Democrats associated with it--acted more like their conception and caricature of Karl Rove than the real Karl Rove ever did."

Adding a racial layer to that argument, Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Barack Obama has twiced smeared John McCain and the Republican Party as racist and fearmongering — but perhaps that may be better explained as projection. ... Politico reports that a campaign strategy of xenophobia didn't come from the GOP. ... It will also have one other effect, and that's to put the race card out of reach for Barack Obama. He can't call McCain a racist and a fearmonger again without first pointing the finger publicly to the Clintons, who obviously went a lot farther than McCain would ever countenance along those lines. (McCain all but forbid the mention of Jeremiah Wright by his campaign or surrogates.) This could also rip the veneer of inclusionism off of identity politics and expose it for the tribalism that it is. These memos and the Democratic infighting demonstrate the corrosiveness of identity politics and its eventual outcome — division, bitterness, and loss. That will help improve American politics in the long run as we focus on ideas and philosophy, and not the color of skin, internal plumbing, or ethnicity of our great-grandparents."

Nate Silver suggests that Penn-like tactics largely led to Clinton's defeat, specifically by alienating once-loyal black voters: "Overall, Clinton lost 100 points of support among black voters in about 120 days: a truly remarkable achievement. Since black voters make up about 20 percent of the Democratic primary electorate, a 100-point swing among black voters translates to a 20-point swing among all voters. And that, essentially, was how the primary was lost. ... It is clear from reading the Penn Memos that the Clinton campaign had very little idea this was coming. There is abundant discussion about how to squeeze every last nanometer of a vote out of groups like 'waitress moms', but very little substance about how to build or retain their support among African-Americans. ... Clinton, to her credit, declined to press many of Penn's more venomous lines of attack, although they came out occasionally through surrogates, including Clinton's husband. More fundamentally, though, one senses that the Clinton campaign simply took the black community for granted, and didn't understand how certain of their core lines of argument might go over with African-Americans. In particular, Clinton's claims to being experienced were always fairly specious, considering that she had spent barely more time in elected office than Obama (less, if you count his years in the Illinois State Senate) and had relatively few accomplishments to her name...."

Several bloggers discussed the implications that the memos may have on Democrats this fall:

• Patterico: "The article and leaks hurt Hillary and the timing of the release, right before the Democratic Convention, is especially damaging. It helps Obama to portray Hillary in the worst light possible...."
• Taylor Marsh: "No doubt the Clinton hating Obama blogs will cluck, cluck, cluck with satisfaction over this one. Seen as validation, the internal memos hinted at in Allen's piece and dished about recently, the subject of which has been whispered about among political junkies for months, will also likely spur people on to asking more about Hillary's campaign and what, exactly, went wrong and who's to blame. However, many will simply not write this tale until after November. Most Democrats don't want to do anything to distract from winning."
• Marsh: "First Edwards, now this stuff. Are the stars converging to sabotage the Democrats? Or are we doing it to ourselves. Remarkable."

CLINTON II: Get Rielle!

In an effort to debunk the Clinton camp's latest excuse for losing the election, Silver: "Not to re-litigate the Primary Wars ... but [Clinton spokesperson] Howard Wolfson tells ABC News that, were it not for John Edwards, Hillary Clinton would have beaten Barack Obama in Iowa:"

"Our voters and Edwards' voters were the same people," Wolfson said the Clinton polls showed. "They were older, pro-union. Not all, but maybe two-thirds of them would have been for us and we would have barely beaten Obama."

"Iowa actually didn't turn out to be that close, with Obama defeating Edwards by 7.9 points and Hillary Clinton by 8.1 points. For Clinton to have beaten Obama, she would have needed (as Wolfson correctly points out) about two-thirds of those Edwards voters. The thing about Iowa, however, is that unlike virtually any other electoral contest, second choices matter, since Democratic caucus rules dictate that a voter may caucus for her second-choice candidate if her first choice does not achieve the 15 percent of the vote required for viability. As such, Iowa pollsters did a lot of work in trying to determine voters' second choices. And in virtually every survey, Clinton did rather poorly as a second choice: an average of several surveys in December showed that she was the second choice of about 20 percent of voters, as compared with 25 percent for Obama and Edwards.... So the odds are that, if John Edwards had dropped out on the morning before the Iowa caucus, Obama would have won by more points rather than fewer. It was also the case that Barack Obama appeared to get the lion's share of Edwards supporters once Edwards dropped from the race. ... [Wolfson] is making a much cruder sort of argument based on the polls, and the evidence cuts against him."

Markos Moulitsas uses similar data to debunk Wolfson's claim, concluding: "So if Clinton was truly the second choice of Edwards voters, they sure had a funny way of showing it -- voting for Obama in huge numbers."

In a scathing post entitled "These people are disgusting," Coates: "Here was excuse-mongering as art: If you count only the primary states we're winning. If you count Florida and Michigan we're winning. If you count the states with the most electoral votes, we're winning. Now it's, If the John Edwards story had broke we would have won. ... In its specifics, this claim is preposterous. Recall that Clinton lost Iowa by almost ten points. Recall that the Clinton campaign's biggest weakness was an utter ignorance of caucuses. Recall that after Edwards dropped out, Clinton lost eleven straight primaries. But in broader terms, the worst thing about the Clinton campaign is/was their complete inability to come to terms with the fact that they were supposed to lose. Not because Barack Obama is more of a liberal, not because he'd make a better president, not because Clinton supported the war, not because Bill Clinton is amoral, but because they ran a losing campaign. ... Accountability does not exist with these guys, and in that, they really are Bush-lite. They had millions of dollars, front-runner status and, allegedly, the greatest politician of our era stomping for them--and they got their asses handed to them. But they can't come to terms with it."

But TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat thought Wolson's argument had some substance: "I have no idea what would have happened the night of January 3, 2008 if Edwards had not been in the race, but to ignore the fact that John Edwards served as Obama's attack dog in Iowa ... when discussing his effect on the race, is absurd."

Many bloggers commented on the irony that the Clinton camp was essentially saying that she was yet again the victim of adultery:

• Jill Stanek: "Do her people really want to go there? If so they'll incite comments like mine: It appears Hillary is repeatedly doomed by men who can't keep their pants zipped."
• National Review's Jonah Goldberg: "Look, the Clintons have their understandable, if not always legitimate, gripes about losing the nomination. But there is just one thing the Clinton camp can't ever, ever, ever complain about. Can you guess what it is? No? Well, here it is: You can't whine about smooth-talking southern politicians who cheat on their wives and then brazenly lie about it. Howard Wolfson is floating the idea that Hillary lost the Iowa caucuses — and by extension the nomination — because that no good John Edwards didn't 'fess up to the American people. What a scoundrel that John Edwards is!"

MCCAIN: Well At Least He's Using The Internet Now

Liberal bloggers on 8/11 widely circulated a post by Congressional Quarterly's Taegan Goddard, who wrote: "A Wikipedia editor emailed Political Wire to point out some similarities between Sen. John McCain's speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. Given the closeness of the words and sentence structure, most would consider parts of McCain's speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia."

McCain opponents piled on:

• OpenLeft's Chris Bowers: "Now, I love wikipedia, and think it is a great resource. However, lifting your report on a subject directly from an encylopedia is something most people are encouraged to stop doing in, oh, about the sixth grade. If you, your policy team, and your speech writing team are still doing it when commenting on an international crisis while running for President of the United States, that's both pathetic and scary."
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "It's never a good sign when a presidential candidate is caught cribbing foreign policy notes from Wikipedia -- particularly when that candidate is trying to put himself forward as the more serious and experienced choice in the realm of foreign policy. ... But taking a step back, it's always interesting to think about these stories from the perspective of the shoe being on the other foot -- what would the reaction have been had this story come out in relation to the other candidate. In this case, what would have happened had Barack Obama, not John McCain, been caught cheating on the 3 AM test by appropriating from Wikipedia? ... This is a major league embarrassment, one that goes a long way towards undercutting the meme that McCain is untouchable on foreign policy."
• Steve Benen: "[The alleged plagiarizing] strikes me as something of a gaffe, which when added to the list, points to an embarrassing situation. McCain thinks Czechoslovakia is still a countrybetween Sudan and Somalia; he's confused about how many U.S. troops are in Iraq; he's confused about Iran's relationship with al Qaeda; and he doesn't understand the difference between Sunni and Shi'ia. And now, McCain can't give a speech about the war in Georgia without relying on an online encyclopedia for content."

Conservative bloggers rushed to McCain's defense:

• Powerline's Paul Mirengoff: "CQ's suggestion of wrongdoing by McCain strikes me as ridiculous. The information that the McCain campaign apparently obtained from Wikipedia is simple factual background material. ... The idea that he should have cited Wikipedia as his source for basic factual information about Georgia is absurd. ... CQ's Taegan Goddard wonders 'whether a presidential candidate should base policy speeches on material from Wikipedia.' But McCain was not basing any policy prescription on the (apparently accurate) background information contained in Wikipedia -- e.g., the fact that Georgia adopted Christianity early on or that it gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Rather it is clear from the face of the speech that McCain has first hand knowledge of the current situation in Georgia, having met, he says, with President Saakashvili 'many times, including during several trips to Georgia.' CQ elects to omit this fact. This story, then, looks like much ado about nothing, and I'm surprised that CQ decided to run it."
• Outside The Beltway's James Joyner: "I agree that it's probable that McCain's speechwriter(s) looked at the Wikipedia entry for basic facts when crafting the historical portion. But that's hardly 'plagiarism.' Or, frankly, even noteworthy. It's hardly a novel finding that there was a Russian Revolution, that Georgia was annexed in 1922, that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and that Georgia struggled mightily in its early years of independence. ... More importantly, a political speech isn't a term paper. For one thing, candidates seldom write them, so they're almost always passing off others' work as their own."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Amazing how dismissive the left was when bloggers accused Obama of lifting whole passages from other people's speeches and yet the left is perfectly willing to accuse John McCain of plagiarism by accurately recounting Georgia's history. Here again is the take away point: McCain has gotten so much good press for his statements and speeches on Georgia, clearly contrasting his experience with Barack Obama's inexperience, the left must discredit McCain. They cannot build up Obama. They must tear down McCain -- even if it means they'll grasp at straws to do it."

Blog P.I's William Beutler offered a nonpartisan critique: "But as a writer and former professional journalist, I know from plagiarism, and I think McCain's detractors are jumping on this one a little too quickly. I think the only reason there is any controversy is because the first quoted passages, about Georgia and Christianity, are obviously very similar. They are also very short. And in all three examples, the text is purely expository: none of it expresses any thoughts, feelings, emotions or other content that would be an obvious case of intentional plagiarism. Additionally, it's worth noting that historical facts cannot be plagiarized, only their expression. If there is any here, it's probably inadvertent. ... Of course, if the campaign did plagiarize it, at least Wikipedia is released under a free public license."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Keeping Dr. King's Dream Alive (Forever?)

Responding to the ongoing refusal by the Congressional Black Caucus to allow white Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) to join the group because his skin color, American Prospect's Adam Serwer: "Cohen's district is mostly black. If the priority is to address the needs and concerns of black Americans, then I assume that means the black folks in TN-09, who voted for Cohen as their representative. Unlike in 2006, where his mandate was questionable because he won with a small percentage of the vote in a crowded field, Cohen's victory this year [79% to 18%] represents a conclusive rejection of the presumption that he needs to be black to best represent them. ... This isn't about giving Cohen honorary black status, it's about making sure the needs of his constituents are better served. As it stands, Clay has essentially said addressing the needs of the black community in Memphis is less important than making Cohen understand that he isn't black. I'm pretty sure he's figured that out by now."

LEST WE FORGET: So That's Why He Supports Stem-Cell Research

Reason's Dave Weigel: "It's been a while since I suited up and dumpster-dived in the Obama conspiracyverse. In my absence, I reckon that the average IQ there has dipped by 20-25 points. Take this latest revelation from Larry 'Whitey Tape' Johnson: "Republican operatives ... have unearthed critical information on Obama and are just biding their time until after the convention to drop it on him. Such as? Having a birth certificate that lists you as Barry Soetoro.' Incredible! Ann Dunham met her second husband, Lolo Soetoro in 1966, in Hawaii. 'Barry' Obama was, at this time, five years old. The only reasonable explanation is that Dunham and Soetoro built (or purchased) a Genesis Device to clone a new son, using DNA from Barack Obama Sr. that Dunham had pulled off one of his combs."

Posted by Chris Bodenner at 01:24 PM

August 11, 2008

8/11: Olympic Flames

Coverage of the opening of the Olympic Games on 8/8 was largely overshadowed by the armed conflict that broke out between Georgian and Russian troops in the break-away province of South Ossetia. The following are some general reactions to that conflict:

• RedState's jonlester: "This weekend's rapidly escalating fighting in the former Soviet republic of Georgia is absolutely appalling. Saakashvili's irresponsible and disastrous offensive to retake South Ossetia has provoked a predictably heavy-handed Russian retaliation. Both sides seem to be indiscriminately shelling and bombing civilian areas for (apparently) no greater cause than ethnocentric identity. [W]e were already looking at needless antagonism of Russia, which would set back future energy supply farther than new domestic drilling could ever make up for, among other important considerations. Now Russia's hand has been forced and the whole thing is just a sorry spectacle for all."
• Pajamas Media's Roger Kimball: "What we'll think of is the country of Georgia and we'll realize that August 8 was the date when Russia began reassembling the former Soviet empire in earnest. When Russian tanks and troops poured into the separatist Georgian province of South Ossetia yesterday, it was not, as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, part of a 'peacekeeping mission.' It was part of an imperialist mission whose undeclared goal is to reabsorb the whole of Georgia–West-leaning Georgia with its critical oil pipeline supplying energy to an increasingly thirsty Europe–into mother Russia. Indeed, that pipeline is the unacknowledged key to the drama–unacknowledged, anyway, by the belligerents. As an AP story notes, the 'U.S.-backed oil pipeline runs through Georgia, allowing the West to reduce its reliance on Middle Eastern oil while bypassing Russia and Iran.'"
• Larison: "It's not just that I find the charges of Russian imperialism a bit tired coming from people who have insisted for years that invading other countries, toppling their governments and setting up puppet states is not imperialism, but I find them very boring. I mean, how unimaginative can one be to say, 'They're bringing back the Soviet Union!'? That's the sort of thing an eccentric Bond villain would try to do. There are no more workers' councils, and there is no more USSR. In every sense of the word, the Soviets are gone and their empire is dust."

FOREIGN POLICY: Proxy War

The Georgia-Russia conflict quickly became a conflict between John McCain and Barack Obama, who each released statements reflecting their different approaches to foreign policy. Alas, A Blog's Jeff Fecke: "Both candidates for president issued a statement about the war going on in South Ossetia, and their responses to the incident pretty much sums up the difference in the two men. Obama said:"

"I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis."

"Pretty reasonable, right in line with the realistic approach to foregn policy that Obama has embraced. We don't have a good hammer here, and frankly, our interests are best-served by this conflict coming to a swift resolution. Calling on both sides to cease hostilities and talk to each other is really the only thing a sane person could advocate, which is why John McCain is not saying it:"

"[Today, news reports indicate that Russian military forces crossed an internationally-recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia. Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory.] ... The U.S. should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course. The US should immediately work with the EU and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this perilous course it has chosen. ... Finally, the international community needs to establish a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force in South Ossetia."

"That's great. And while we're at it, maybe we can dispatch Iron Man to blow up the Soviet tanks, and have Czechoslovakia dispatch their fleet of invisible boat-mobiles. Look, I'm all for taking this to the UN -- I mean, that's what the UN is for. But Russia has a veto on the Security Council, so any UN-backed resolution is going to need Russian approval. Putting diplomatic pressure on Russia is unlikely to accomplish much, other than angering Russia. And going to NATO to start discussing how we can get engaged in military action on the Russian border is, to put it very charitably, incredibly reckless and absolutely insane, and should disqualify McCain for president. ... We may like Georgia just fine, and hope that they get through this conflict, but let's be honest: the Russians are going to do what the Russians are going to do. We're not going to be able to bully them, and we sure as hell aren't going to be able to scare them. If we are going to get the best outcome for American interests in this conflict, the only tool that we have to use is diplomacy. It's not as fun as playing with tanks, but it's got the advantage of maybe working, and at the very least, not making things worse."

Other McCain critics agreed that he took a rash and bellicose stance:

• Think Progress's Matt Yglesias: "John McCain likes to go in for ferociously anti-Russian rhetoric and has embraced silly anti-Russian ideas, so I wasn't surprised to see that his rhetoric on the Russia-Georgia conflict involves strongly taking Tblisi's side. I am, however, a bit curious to learn that he's decided to make this a campaign issue, with national security adviser and former registered lobbyist for Georgia Randy Scheunemann condemning Barack Obama for moral equivalence."
• Doublethink's James Poulos: "McCain's men are busying themselves decrying anyone who two days ago held the majority opinion about the complexity level of the Russo-Georgian War as a useless dimwit and pinko commie symp. It's a nightmarish oversimplification of a situation that, Rose Revolution notwithstanding, will never fit cleanly into the us-versus-them dynamic which would make solidarity with Georgia such an easy reflex. ... None of which means I don't have a soft spot for Georgia, love their flag, or support the rule of law and representative government over fiat and autocracy. I do. ... Even more important, for American purposes, than determining the precise percentage by which Saakashvili is responsible for his own country's woe is making clear that the McCain campaign's attempt to cast foreign policy prudence as something only an idiot like Obama would consider is a serious blunder of epic proportions and an embarrassment to thinking people everywhere."

Pro-McCain bloggers, on the other hand, viewed Obama's response as too sympathetic to Russia, and more broadly argued that such a stance proves he's insufficiently experienced in foreign affairs:

• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "On Friday the Obama campaign issued a pathetic statement 'strongly condemn[ing] the outbreak of violence in Georgia.' Strongly! Obama found no reason to distinguish between Russia and Georgia in strongly condemning the outbreak of violence. Or perhaps he found it too difficult to do so."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Instead of scolding Russians for attacking Georgia, he told Georgia to exercise restraint as Russian bombers attacked their civilians. ... Obama clearly has no idea of the issues or the consequences surrounding Putin's South Ossetia adventure. He's flailing for a policy, while McCain — who's actually been to Georgia and studied the ongoing political conflict for a decade — understood immediately what the outbreak of war means, and what its motives are."
• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "The situation in Georgia is serious. The U.S. and the West are being tested: will we defend an ally and check Russian ambitions in the Caucasus? On the political front, Georgia may in fact be the '3 a.m. moment.' And the candidates' reactions are telling. As Abe pointed out, McCain's reaction was swift, specific and unequivacal: the international community won't tolerate the invasion of a sovereign state. Obama's best effort is to suggest 'calm' and go on vacation. No words on the matter from His actual lips. ... It is instructive that Obama takes such a ho-hum attitude to the invasion of a U.S. ally. You don't have to be a partisan to see how serious the situation is and how inadequate Obama's response is."
• Next Right's Josh Kahn: "The Russian government's incompetent attack against John McCain has handed him a great weapon against Obama. The attack makes clear that the Kremlin wants Obama to win the election but the open support of a nation busy doing this is hardly going help a candidate who's already fighting a reputation for dictator-coddling. John McCain's statement on the crisis was excellent, but there's a lot more his campaign can do. The McCain campaign and the RNC should directly tie Obama to the Russians. The message: 'Russia wants Obama to win because they know he'll be a weak President.'
• McCain Report's Michael Goldfarb: "It's this campaign's position that every American has a 'vested interest' in the welfare of the Republic of Georgia, a key regional ally and a member of our Coalition in Iraq. Georgia is a small, democratic state which has seen its sovereignty violated by a much larger pseudo-democracy. If the position of this campaign 'mirrors' the position advocated by the Georgian government, it is because John McCain stands by our allies as Senator Obama offers only platitudes about condemning violence that mask the deeper moral equivalence of his foreign policy positions. Shouldn't it be of far greater concern to Americans that the Obama campaign is pushing an attack that is 'mirrored' by PR firms flaking for Putin's Kremlin?"

On 8/9, the Obama camp released a statement racheting up his rhetoric against Russia, moving much closer to the rhetoric initially voiced by McCain:

"Over the last two days, Russia has escalated the crisis in Georgia through it's clear and continued violation of Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. On Friday, August 8, Russian military forces invaded Georgia. I condemn Russia's aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire. Russia must stop its bombing campaign, cease flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace, and withdraw its ground forces from Georgia."

Conservative bloggers seized on that statement as an example of Obama flip-flopping, and they accused him of naively catching up with McCain's stance. Many of them linked to a post by Politico's Jonathan Martin as evidence that McCain had possessed the foresight to predict Russia's actions. Martin: "It has been a rough few weeks for McCain on the foreign policy front — paging Dr. Maliki — but he appears to have been ahead of the curve in his assessment that Moscow was the bad actor here. McCain aides feel encouraged that their candidate appeared to get it right first, and they are now working to remind reporters that he's long been wary of Putin's Russia. Pushing the prescience line, aides are circulating a pair of YouTube clips from 1999 and 2000 that feature some tough talk from McCain about the new Kremlin regime. Speaking about Chechnya in an appearance at Arizona State University in 1999, McCain said: 'The mindless slaughter is being conducted by a Russian military that seeks to reassert itself not only in the former Soviet Union but also to extend its reach throughout what used to be the former Soviet Union in an attempt to fold back into the Russian empire those countries that have broken away from it, most notably Georgia.' And, in the memorable South Carolina primary debate in 2000, McCain offered grave skepticism about the new Russian leader, referring to Putin as an 'apparatchik.'

Politico's Ben Smith echoed his colleague's sentiments: "Russia and Georgia stayed at the top of the news today, and the McCain campaign is touting its man's 'prescience' — he's never trusted Putin or the Russians, and he, and Randy Scheunemann, were talking like they knew Thursday night's conflict would be a pretext for a wider Russian invasion before virtually any other world leader would say that publicly. ... It's a good moment for McCain."

Many bloggers, however, dismissed McCain's "prescience" as pure luck, arguing that McCain has always held a blind, blanketed antagonism towards Russia:

• American Conservative's Daniel Larison: "So now McCain is trying to claim that he foresaw what Russia is currently doing in Georgia, when the only reason McCain 'knew' what Russia would do is that he always assumes that Russians have the very worst motives and goals and then declares himself prescient when Russia does something objectionable. At least Smith's use of the word instinct is correct–McCain is viscerally opposed to Russia, and so instinctively lurches to whatever the anti-Russian position is on any given issue. The video Smith digs up includes (the videos are being circulated by McCain aides) shows how fanatically anti-Russian McCain has been for at least the last decade...."
• Lawyers, Guns, And Money's davenoon: "McCain supporters are obviously going to try and run a good distance with the argument that he was somehow 'prescient' on the question of Russian power. I'm not quite sure how to put this, but McCain's apparent inability to view Russian foreign policy as anything other than retooled Soviet ambition strikes me as unhelpfully alarmist. Let's recall that if things had gone as McCain preferred, the United States would have somehow expelled the Russians from the G-8, forced NATO to rapidly absorb Georgia and the Ukraine, unleashed the fookin' fury on Iran, and pursued any any number of other needlessly provocative (and delusional) goals."

In addition to racheting up its rhetoric against Russia, the Obama camp criticized McCain for an alleged conflict of interest involving his chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who had been a long-time lobbyist for the Georgian government until just five months ago and whose firm still lobbies for it. In response, the McCain camp suggested that the Obama camp was inappropriately aligned with the Russian government:

"The Obama campaign's attacks on Randy Scheunemann are disgraceful. Mr. Scheunemann proudly represented a small democracy that is one of our closest allies in a very dangerous region. Today, many are dead and Georgia is in crisis, yet the Obama campaign has offered nothing more than cheap and petty political attacks that are echoed only by the Kremlin. The reaction of the Obama campaign to this crisis, so at odds with our democratic allies and yet so bizarrely in sync with Moscow, doesn't merely raise questions about Sen. Obama's judgment — it answers them."

RedState's Erick Erickson: "At the same time the Kremlin was attacking John McCain for Scheunemann's ties to Georgia . . . you guessed it . . . Barack Obama's campaign attacked McCain for Scheunemann's connection to the Republic of Georgia. ... No word on when Obama will apologize to Randy Scheunemann for joining the Russians in smearing him. It is also worth pointing out that Georgia is an American ally with whom we have military relations. Obama attacked a man who lobbies for an American ally. Not all lobbyists are bad. Obama should know given the high number of lobbyists he surrounds himself with."

Jed Report: "The McCain campaign misses the issue entirely: it's not about whether or not their position is right or wrong. It's about the fact that a top McCain campaign official has a major financial stake in taking that position. Conflicts of interest like this undermine John McCain's moral authority. If he truly supports the positions he is taking, he ought to fire advisers like Scheunemann whose recommendations are influenced by the profit motive. Would firing Scheunemann really be such a hard thing to do?"

New Republic's Josh Patashnik: "It also seems like the Obama campaign swung and missed when it tried to highlight McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann's lobbying for Georgia. Yes, McCain's campaign is basically run by lobbyists (and, in many cases, lobbyists for foreign governments), but when Russia marches into Georgian territory it hardly seems like the right time to raise the issue. If McCain's initial statement was too aggressively pro-Georgian, then it should be criticized on those grounds, not because of Scheunemann's ties to Tbilisi."

EDWARDS: I Did Not Have Sexual Procreation With That Woman, Miss Hunter

On 8/8, John Edwards finally confirmed what the National Enquirer has trumpeted since last fall: he did have an extra-marital affair with Rielle Hunter (though denied being the father of her baby). Edwards:

"In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99% honest is no longer enough."

Reason's Michael Moynihan: "John Edwards picked a pretty good day to admit his caddishness. Not only is it a Friday—the preferred day for dropping ugly and/or embarrassing stories—and the start of the Beijing Olympics, but Vladimir Putin, errr, Dmitri Medvedev sent Russian troops into the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia."

Slate's E.J. Graff: "I am incredibly annoyed that we have to waste any air, print, or pixel time on this. Why do I care about some dude's marriage and marital problems -- unless he did something that in any way abuses public power? ... I just don't care what politicians do with their zippers, so long as their policies and votes are in order. ... But private dalliances, seductions, and oversize sexual appetites? Eh. Not my problem. Leave the poor family alone."

In response to Graff, New Republic's Eve Fairbanks: "Couldn't disagree more here. I do care! But it isn't that I'm all exercised about 'some dude's marriage and marital problems'--after all, Edwards said on Nightline that his and Elizabeth's marriage was stronger after this happened. It's that Edwards did abuse his power, as much power as anybody who's not in office has. Let's review Edwards's mistakes--I'm not even including the affair itself here:"

• He used campaign donations to pay his mistress $114,000 for web videos that were hardly ever used.
• He lied repeatedly about the affair to the public.
• He showed zero concern for the Democratic Party by trying to sell himself as its commander while he knew he was secretly holding a live grenade.
• He made his closest political ally--Elizabeth--complicit in his lies and muddied her reputation.
• He--to use a very generous interpretation of events--showed zero curiosity about some very curious things intimately related to his life, namely, why his campaign finance chief paid his mistress $15,000 a month and why a top campaign aide fathered his own ex-mistress's child.
• He gave a bizarre, creepy, lawyerly response to the straightforward question of whether a National Enquirer photograph showed him holding his ex-mistress's baby.
• And he went on TV and tried to make his own personal mess into a teachable moment for America, launching into a treacly morality tale about how fame turned the head of a Small Town Boy and insisting that people would forgive him because he's "imperfect"--a sanctimonious, unapologetic word that implies that those who hoped for anything different from him were asking for the impossible, perfection.

"Given that this is the first and, I hope, last thing I write on this, I don't feel too bad about wasting precious pixels. ... If this story tells us anything about Edwards, it's that he is, along with many other, probably nice things, also a brazen liar and cover-up artist who doesn't consider (and then incompetently handles) the irreversible consequences birthed by his actions. That's enough for me to want his hands away from any reins, big or not so big. To put one last way: I don't care whether a politician lets his zipper down, either, but character is what you do after the zipper comes back up."

Blogging at the Daily Kos, Elizabeth Edwards wrote: "Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some – most recently – caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences. None of these has been easy. ... This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private. ... John has spoken in a long on-camera interview I hope you watch. Admitting one's mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do, and I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame. ... I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John's conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time."

In response, Slate's Hanna Rosin: "I find this Elizabeth Edwards post on Daily Kos excruciating. We are supposed to ride with this couple through her cancer diagnosis and relapse, through their son's death, their fertility treatments, and the rededication of their marriage, but then we are supposed to butt the hell out when the story line veers from the tragedy and heroics. If you believe in a system, you have to live and die by it. Elizabeth Edwards buys into the culture of overconfession. She is an obsessive blogger, for God's sake. You can't just get suddenly pissed off because the confessional culture came back to bite you."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Bush Whacked Again

American Prospect's Dylan Matthews: "It's hard to overstate what a catastrophe this conflict has been for the Bush administration. The sight of Russia destroying one of the poster nations of the democratization agenda is bad enough, but there are a whole host of other setbacks. As the above article illustrates, the war's brought to the surface existing antipathy among Russians and Ossetians, and provoked a new "stab in the back" narrative among Georgians. It's provided an opportunity for Russia to turn the Kosovo independence precedent against us with regard to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It's disrupted the American NATO expansion strategy, not to mention the administration's missile defense plans. Hell, it promises to reduce the troop presence in Iraq, if only by a percentage point or two. If there's a more humiliating way for the Bush foreign policy record to end, I can't think of it."

LEST WE FORGET: "Local Idiot To Post Comment On Internet"

The Onion: "In a statement made to reporters earlier this afternoon, local idiot Brandon Mylenek, 26, announced that at approximately 2:30 a.m. tonight, he plans to post an idiotic comment beneath a video on an Internet website. Mylenek, a moron, prepares to publicly address the 'dumbest shiz [he's] evr seen!!!1!' 'Later this evening, I intend to watch the video in question, click the 'reply' link above the box reserved for user comments, and draft a response, being careful to put as little thought into it as possible, while making sure to use all capital letters and incorrect punctuation," Mylenek said. ... Mylenek, who rarely in his life has been capable of formulating an idea or opinion worth the amount of oxygen required to express it, went on to guarantee that the text of his comment would be misspelled to the point of incomprehension, that it would defy the laws of both logic and grammar, and that it would allege that several elements of the video are homosexual in nature."

Posted by Chris Bodenner at 01:00 PM

August 07, 2008

8/7: A Family For Each America?

With campaign commentary over Barack Obama and John McCain in a momentary lull, bloggers have seized upon a controversy involving former Dem candidate John Edwards. Beginning last October, the National Enquirer has reported on rumors that Edwards was involved in an extra-marital affair with Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker who worked on his pres. campaign. However, since the article was based entirely on anonymous sourcing, and because the Enquirer isn't exactly known for credible journalism, the mainstream media largely ignored the rumors.

But last month, the Enquirer dropped a bomb shell: Edwards and Hunter had rendezvoused at an L.A. hotel so that Edwards could visit an alleged "love child" he had with Hunter. Fox News gave some credibility to the story when it confirmed with a security guard that Edwards had been at the hotel that night. Yesterday, the Enquirer finally published photos of Edwards with his alleged baby. And today, McClatchy reported on growing pressure within the Dem Party for Edwards to address the rumors directly. Ex-DNC chair Don Fowler:

"If there is not an explanation that's satisfactory, acceptable and meets high moral standards, the answer is no, he would not be a prime candidate to make a major address to the convention."

MEDIA: Dams Have Broken On The Mainstream

Many liberal bloggers continue to dismiss the "love child" rumors as tabloid nonsense. Deceiver: "Boy, you skip a day on the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter non-story and you miss a lot of non-news." Atrios seemed to mock the story by posting an "actual photo" of Edwards' and Hunter's baby: Bat Boy, the famous fictional character of the Enquirer.

Some liberals, however, seemed to start believing that the rumors must be true. Gun-Toting Liberal: "Who WAS this man of character and decency we all loved and trusted after all, we are asking ourselves. Sadly, we just THOUGHT we knew the guy — we didn't. Live and learn — it's never good to put our heros up on a pedestal lest we place our own selves in a vulnerable position."

Many bloggers questioned the veracity of the Enquirer photos:

• Hot Air's AllahPundit: "I wasn't planning to blog the story otherwise, but honestly, the more I look at that blur the more it looks like a Photoshop filter. ... I've used the paint and blur P-shop filters myself on occasion when working on a satirical image that I couldn't get to look quite right; the filters help soften and obscure the hard lines that indicate where the 'stitching' is. Same here, maybe? Not good enough? All right, let's try another angle. The encounter in the hotel allegedly took place on July 21. Here's an AP photo of Edwards taken earlier that same day in Los Angeles. Compare the sideburns and the distance between his hair and his right temple. Hmmm. Still not good enough? Well, the original Enquirer story claims he was wearing a "blue dress shirt" when he entered the building. There's no collar on the shirt in the new Enquirer photo (in fact, in the smaller photo — which clearly is Edwards — it looks a bit like a hospital gown), although I guess he could have changed for whatever inexplicable reason when he got to the room."
• Wake Up America's Susan Duclos: "I now have added another question to my list: How did they get a picture of him and the baby IN the room?"
• Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "I can't really tell if [the photos are] genuine based on the small clip online, and I'm surprised the Enquirer hasn't posted more than a couple of images, but they're there."

But by far the most commentary focused on the mainstream media's continued refusal to report on the rumors. Many conservative bloggers perceived that reluctance to be part of a conspiracy by the "liberal media":

• Gateway Pundit: "Gee... Do you think the Leftist American media could start reporting on this major political scandal, yet? It is an absolute disgrace that the mainstream media remains silent! The National Enquirer continues to do the hard journalism the mainstream media refuses to do."
• Death By 1000 Papercuts's Mondoreb: "The real scandal wasn't that Edwards fathered a baby while married to a cancer-stricken wife. ... It was the monolithic refusal of the American mainstream press to even investigate the facts of the story, which were, with the application of a little legwork, easy enough for them to investigate. After Edwards was caught by the Enquirer's reporters at the Beverly Hilton at 2:40 in the morning July 22, the reason for not reporting was 'there’s no confirmation'. When FoxNews confirmed the run-in by interviewing one of the hotel security guards involved, the reason shifted to, 'We want to see pictures'. ... But outside of a few dailies and a few mentions at FoxNews, there was none. Customers of CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, the New York Times, Time, Newsweek and the LA Times –- where LAT's Blogs Editor, Tony Pearce, infamously and specifically ordered his reporters not to blog on the topic –- are still in the dark."
• A Blog For All's lawhawk: "Will the Los Angeles Times now deem the story newsworthy? Or, will they, like other big media outlets, continue to embargo the story because they've decided that it isn't worth our time to read about Edwards conduct and marital infidelities? My thoughts and prayers go out to Elizabeth Edwards and her children. ... May she take John for every last penny. However, bloggers are reporting on this, and it further underscores the fact that the public can and will continue to rely more on alternative news sources because they have had it with the media elites who determine what stories should fly and which ones get buried."

Slate's Mickey Kaus has been at the forefront of the Edwards rumors since the Enquirer story first broke. Yesterday, he compiled a list of reasons why the mainstream media have not reported on the story. Kaus: "Why write about the Edwards scandal? Here's a short clip-'n'-save response to those (including many friends) who argue the Edwards scandal shouldn't be pursued--or at least pursued too vigorously-- even if it is true:"

• 1. No "private citizen": Edwards was certainly a contender for VP, or a big cabinet post like Attorney General, or even the Supreme Court, before the scandal first erupted in the "undernews" in late 2007. Some reporters say he was still on Obama's VP list until quite recently. If he's now finished as far as those big jobs are concerned, it's in large part because of this scandal, which Obama might never have learned about if everyone had followed the MSM's lead. Even now, Edwards may not be out of the running for an array of lesser public posts--including cabinet-grade positions--that provide non-trivial power and a platform for future advancement. Important unions back him. ... It's silly to say "he's just a private citizen".... What makes the scandal awful and unpleasant ... is that Edwards has a very ill wife. ...
• 2. Hypocrisy: ... Why, after all, was Edwards ever considered presidential material. Is he a great executive? No. A brilliant policy expert? No. An accomplished diplomat? No. He's an ex-Senator with one undistinguished term in office who rose in life on the basis of his singular ability to use tearjerking stories to move juries and win large verdicts. ... Edwards' most effective anecdote this year, however, was probably the story of his popular wife Elizabeths' struggle against cancer. He made it the emotional center of a TV ad: ... During a joint 60 Minutes interview focusing on his wife's illness, Edwards explicitly linked his behavior in that struggle and his fitness for public office: ...
• 3. Relevance: If a politician is a great executive, thinker or diplomat who cheats on his brave, ill wife, you figure, "OK, We're not hiring him because of his sterling private behavior." If a politician whose chief appeal is his self-advertised loyalty to his brave, ill wife cheats on his brave ill wife, what's he good for again? And if Edwards' crucial talent as a public official is his ability to move people with tearjerky anecdotes, and those anecdotes ... turn out to be BS or half BS, that's more than random hypocrisy, It goes to the core of what he does and what he claims to offer. ...
• 4. Irresponsibility: How irresponsible was it to seek the party's nomination knowing that this scandal was lurking around, ready to explode? What if he'd won? Are we sure it wouldn't have been discovered by the McCain campaign before November? ...

More Kaus: "The only legitimate reason not to cover this scandal, it seems to me, is simple sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards--and I've gotten enough emails from anguished and angry members of the MSM to conclude, with Estrich, that it's the prime reason for the MSM blackout. ... Reporters don't have to print everything. You could conclude that the need to protect Mrs. Edwards her children is so great, the karma of Enquiring so bad, that all of the obvious, public-interesty reasons for covering the story should be thrown out the window. And if John Edwards were already so damaged that in practice he'd never get a significant public office even if he wants one, I might agree.... But that's a point that clearly hasn't been reached yet.... A man arrogant and ambitious enough to think he can run for president posing as a loyal husband while keeping his second family secret ... will be arrogant and ambitious enough to keep hiding under the shield of his wife's illness until he can attempt a comeback -- if given the chance."

Most bloggers, conservative and liberal, agree that the "love child" genie is out of the bottle, and that the mainstream media now have no other choice but to pursue the story. RedState's Streiff titled a post, "The Dike Gives Way." Moderate Voice's Shaun Mullen wrote, "it's on the verge of going big time. Very big time." Other reactions:

• Liberal Values's Ron Chusid: "The [McClatchy] article proceeds to describe how Edwards, rather than explaining the situation, has been avoiding reporters. It is appearing that such stonewalling will not work much longer as reputable news sources such as McClatchy are picking up the story despite showing initial reluctance."
• Gawker's Ryan Tate: "[McClatchy's] Raleigh News & Observer, which unlike other newspapers has never declared itself too good for the John Edwards love-child scandal, is first with the angle that will probably at long last propel the sordid tale into the Times and Washington Post and basically everywhere: Edwards' presumed speaking slot at the convention, which "ordinarily would be locked in," may be taken away unless he eliminates questions about his alleged affair and love-child. The News & Observer seems to have assembled the piece before the blurry new pictures of Edwards-and-daughter surfaced today, so it probably shouldn't have much trouble scaring up another statement like this, the only supporting quote in the article:"

  "He absolutely does have to (resolve it). If it's not true, he has to issue a stronger denial," said Gary Pearce, the Democratic strategist who ran Edwards' 1998 Senate race. "It's a very damaging thing. ... The big media has tried to be responsible and handle this with kid gloves, but it's clearly getting ready to bust out. If it's not true, he's got to stand up and say, 'This is not true. That is not my child and I'm going to take legal action against the people who are spreading these lies.' It's not enough to say, 'That's tabloid trash."

  "Oh yes, the buttoned-down media will soon be lapping this story up with a spoon. See, previously the Edwards scandal was just an irrelevant trifle about how the maybe next U.S. attorney general or even vice president had a baby with another woman while his wife died of cancer and possibly paid the mistress hush money and lied to everyone about it. But now it's about how a speaker at a meaningless convention might distract the media from covering the media event in the way media handlers prefer. In other words, a REAL story."
• Flopping Aces's Curt: "No way, no how, can the MSM ignore this story if he is ousted from his speaker role at the convention. They can spin it anyone they want, but the simple fact that the story is so controversial that it prevents him from speaking should wake the MSM up from their slumber."
• Don Surber: "Dems do what MSM won't. They are asking about the love child of Democrat John Edwards. ... When Edwards is not in Denver later this month, I wonder how ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC, and PBS will explain his absence."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Square And The Thousand-Yard Stare

TownHall's Matt Lewis: "[Maureen Dowd] finally hits the nail on the head when she writes, 'For McCain, being cool meant being a rogue, not a policy wonk; but Obama manages to be a cool College Bowl type, which must irk McCain, who liked to play up his bad-boy cool.' ... Interestingly, this is the same phenomenon [that] caused McCain ... to resent Mitt Romney during the GOP primaries. McCain had been running for president for a decade, but then this really sharp, preppy, polished guy showed up with all this money, PowerPoint presentations, and a perfect family, and started rocking the boat. McCain and Rudy were the cool kids in the back of the class throwing spitballs; Romney was the kid in the front of the class with his hand up to answer every question ... you get the common analogy ... It's not so much that McCain is envious of Obama -- as much as it is that he currently views Obama as a 'goody-goody' poseur who hasn't paid his dues. So yes, I think it's fair to say this is personal. But saying McCain envies Obama is the wrong way of looking at it. He doesn't envy Obama, he looks down his nose at him."

LEST WE FORGET: The Pied Piper Of White People

Stuff Educated Black People Like: "EBP like Oprah. She has an exceptional ability that most other EBP wish they had - the ability to hold the attention of people and make them do, like, or buy just about anything. ... EBP are constantly fighting at work or any place else to get ahead and/or be heard, while Oprah can tell white people to read a book or buy a CD and they do it without second thought. How else do you think Jamie Foxx sold so many albums? Oprah! ... Not even white people cared about Dr. Phil or Racheal Ray until Oprah said they were acceptable white people. ... EBP like Oprah because she's powerful, rich, and kicked Stedman's trifling self out! It isn't necessary for whites to comment to an EBP how much they love Oprah, they already know you do, even if the white person doesn't know why."

Posted by Chris Bodenner at 12:54 PM

August 06, 2008

8/6: This Mule's Got Some Kick After All

Hitting back against GOP mockery over tire gauges, Barack Obama in a town hall meeting 8/5 said:

"Now two points, one, they know they're lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they're making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."

Obama's tone -- lively and sarcastic -- was noticeably different than his usual calm and coolness. His new tone seemed to be a reaction to the recent string of jabs by the McCain camp and subsequent hand wringing among Obama supporters that he's been too above the fray and needs to take the fight to the GOP. Thus, liberal bloggers were generally heartened by Obama's retort:

• New Republic's Jason Zengerle "I don't know if a politician has ever offered a more pitch-perfect response to the idiocy of the modern-day GOP."
• American Prospect's Ezra Klein: "Obama is never better than when he's intellectually indignant. This was true on negotiating with dictators. It was true on the gas tax holiday. And it's proving true on tire gauges. If I were on the Obama campaign, the themes laid out in this video wouldn't simply be my rejoinder to the GOP's tire gauge bullshit. They'd be my message for the next few months."

Others who were sympathetic to Obama's argument nevertheless had reservations about his word choice:

• New Republic's Michael Crowley: "My gut says that, given the way shallow national politics works, Obama will lose this exchange and wind up sounding like a Dukakisian know-it-all. But I'm tempered by the example of his fight with Hillary Clinton over her empty gas-tax holiday proposal, which Obama (corectly) derided as a political gimmick."
• New Republic's Noam Scheiber: "I don't think it was quite pitch perfect--maybe a touch too eggheady with the mention of 'experts.' But deriding the GOP for embracing ignorance was a nice way to invert McCain's charge. I'd guess this resonates more than usual after eight years of George W. Bush. And Obama delivered the riff in the right tone--not angry or righteous but bemused: 'This is the kind of thing they do, I don't understand it...' Even more effective was Obama's jujitsuing of McCain's 'Celeb' ad (again, with the possible exception of the word 'experts'): 'This is serious business. Instead of running ads about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, they should go talk to some energy experts and actually make a difference...' It's a great punchline--it really flays the GOP for a.) being out of touch about what matters to voters, and b.) the party's less than high-minded campaign tactics. But it does all this with the same light hand. If Obama adopts this as a standard refrain, that ad could end up backfiring on McCain."

Talking Points Memo's Greg Sargent compares Obama's biting remarks to the GOP's mocking of Democrats: "The whole tire gauge dust-up is useful because it sheds light on the different species of mockery the two campaigns are directing at each other -- the realm of mockery being one where the GOP has enjoyed a distinct advantage in the last two presidential elections. ... For the moment Obama is striking a lighter tone at times than the GOP is -- something that represents a change from the last election. The GOP's mockery of Obama this time around -- the celeb ad, the tire-gauge stunt -- has a kind of grating, adolescent, forced quality to it. Last time, the GOP's mockery of John Kerry had a kind of effortless quality that just isn't there right now. ... Another factor: Pundits and opinion-makers, for a host of reasons, just don't seem to be as willing, or as able, to join in the GOP mockery of Obama as they were four years ago against Kerry. Sure, there's plenty of the usual media clowning, but it tends to come across as flailing. The punches just aren't really landing."

I Don't Like You Either's Blue Stockings agrees: "I think it'll backfire just because most people, even right-wingers, want to find a way to save money on gas. If inflating tires works, which it does, they'll notice it all right."

Conservative bloggers used the occasion to reiterate why they think Obama's original "tire gauge" remarks were inaccurate and foolish. Dismissing Obama's retort as a red herring, Red State's Kevin Holtsberry: "But the problem isn't that Republicans denied that air pressure could save fuel. The problem is that Obama's math was way off. Powerline did the math, Jim Geraghty did the math, and Jake Tapper did the math, and under no scenario do you get to savings equal to offshore drilling. So who is ignorant and who needs to talk to the experts?"

But bloggers such as Obsidian Wings's hilzoy insisted that Obama's math was perfectly accurate, and decried Republicans like McCain for misleading ordinary voters: "So: is it true that we can save as much oil by inflating our tires and getting regular tuneups as 'they're talking about getting off drilling'? Yes. I assume that Obama is comparing the oil saved by inflating tires and getting tuneups to the amount of oil we could get by drilling offshore in currently restricted areas. ... When the McCain campaign says that 'Senator Obama's solution to high gas prices is telling Americans to make sure their tires are inflated', ... it's as though they were saying: we are going to adopt a strategy that will force you, the voters, to spend hours of your lives checking each and every one of our statements for accuracy. We have no respect for the value of your time. Nor do we respect your intellect or your civic engagement: if we did, we wouldn't adopt a strategy that can only work if voters are too apathetic to notice that what we're saying is false. ... It's a curious strategy for someone who claims to put country first, and to care about honor."

In response to Obama's "ignorant" remarks, McCain said:

"Obama said a couple of days ago says we all should inflate our tires. I don't disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it."

That admission seemed to deflate the GOP rhetoric against Obama and put the whole issue to rest. MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "The McCain campaign appears intent on trying to win the daily media battles -- even to the bane of crafting a broader narrative on what their campaign is about, what their candidate stands for, and what type of President he would be. I've always thought this to be a risky strategy; ... But it is a tremendously risky strategy when the meme starts to take hold that a candidate will say anything -- even things that he distances himself from just days later -- to get elected. We've already seen this from McCain, who has changed his position on almost every single major (and even minor) issue facing the country, and whose campaign has been forced to walk back criticisms of Obama (think the visit to the military base in Germany or the claims about Obama's tax plan that were exposed as wholly false). Now McCain is being forced to back away from yet another claim, again feeding the story line that he will say anything (even claims he must walk back just days later) to become President."

MCCAIN: Take My Wife, Please!

The liberal blogosphere was in an uproar over McCain's comedic remarks at a Sturgis biker rally on 8/4 p.m. Suggesting that his wife, Cindy, should enter the rally's beauty contest (which is "essentially a topless" competition), McCain said:

"I told her with a little luck she could be the only lady to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip."

• Kathy G.: "I've written about this before, but is John McCain a gigantic sexist asshole, or what?"
• Jezebel's Megan Carpentier: "Miss Buffalo Chip isn't a beauty contest in the traditional sense — it's a relatively debauched topless (and sometimes bottomless) multiday contest where women dance, jiggle and reportedly even perform blow jobs on bananas for the titillation of the spectators. And John McCain offered up his 54-year-old wife as a contestant. ... He did it to pander to the crowd's idea of appropriate masculinity, and that apparently includes over-sexualizing your wife and the mother of your children for the amusement of a few people in a crowd. McCain offered up the thought of his wife objectifying herself for the sexual gratification of others (at his suggestion) in order to get a couple of chuckles, inspire some male fantasy and make a few 'friends.' Fun! ... I think it's another piece of gravel in a growing mountain of evidence that John McCain doesn't think a lot about women, their place as equals in society or their rights in that society. But he does seem to think a lot about us as sexual beings — or, at least, sexual objects."
• Moderate Voice's Elrod: "So, if we are going to have a conversation about character, let's consider John McCain's view of women in his life, and women in general. He essentially offered his wife up for a Girls Gone Wild video; I don't think I've ever seen a more grotesque pander in my life. Now I have no problem with McCain going to Sturgis. I have a lot of respect for biker culture, which is very strong in East Tennessee where I live. But offering your wife up for Miss Buffalo Chip ... is truly crass. When placed alongside a lifetime of callousness toward women, it reveals a troubling window into John McCain"s character."
• And primarily addressing pro-Hillary women upset over her primary loss, Taylor Marsh: "Hello, all of you anti-Obama zealots, got misogyny? That's your man, John McCain, a where's Pakistan?, Sunni or Shia - who cares?, bomb-bomb-bomb Iran, Take my wife topless please, kind of guy. You can add McCain offering up his wife for a topless contest to what John McCain once said about Hillary, before he needed her votes.

Liberal bloggers were also upset over what they perceived to be a lack of outrage in the mainstream media, as well as a double standard when it comes to McCain and Obama. Pandagon's Jesse Taylor: "All I'm saying is that if Barack Obama had gone to an event with 20,000 people wasting gas to talk about energy and said that his wife should have simulated sucking a banana dick between another woman's legs, this race would be fucking over."

Jed Report doesn't view McCain's remarks as intentionally sexist, but nevertheless criticizes him for what he sees as shameless pandering: "I think the issue here is that McCain is so out-of-touch that he had no idea what he was talking about. If he knew it was nude event, I can't imagine he would have said he wanted to see Cindy in it. He's not that stupid. The point I'm making is that while John McCain was trying to position himself as the biker's best friend, the truth is that he's a $520-shoe wearing elitist -- and a total phony at Sturgis. He's got nothing more in common with the Harley-riding bike ralliers there than George Bush does with a true rancher in Texas. Does America really want another faker in the White House?"

Conservative bloggers were mostly silent on the controversy. However, The Stranger's Dan Savage, a liberal sex columnist, came to McCain's defense: "We're wasting our time beating up on John McCain for suggesting that his leathery ol' wife should participate in a topless/bottomless beauty pageant. Yes, Obama couldn't say it -- but then Obama isn't a notorious ladies man and adulterer that dumped his first wife when she went and got all ugly and shit. More to the point, and setting aside the issue of race, people think it's cute when the elderly pretend that they've still got it and say mildly racy (not racist!) things about their leathery ol' spouses. These comments would be interpreted very differently if Obama made them not because Obama is black (or a Democrat) but because Obama is young and virile and his wife is a total fucking fox. If Obama had suggested that Michelle enter a topless beauty pageant we would be forced to actually conjure up mental images of Michelle taking part because Michelle could. (And she could win.) When McCain says it about Cindy, we don't picture Cindy entering the contest because she couldn't and, on the off chance that she did, she certainly wouldn't win it. People don't perceive sexual heat, or sexual tension, in McCain's marriage and therefore they don't perceive any in his comments. The people in that crowd -- and the people watching the clip on YouTube -- interpret them like this: 'Hey, the old dude still thinks his old wife is hot -- awww, isn't that cute?' Democrats and progressives straining to make an issue of this by playing 'if Obama said it!' are making a mistake. We're not the party of idiotic, knee-jerk prudery and we look ridiculous when we pretend that we are."

CELEBRITY: Paris For President

In response to her unsolicited appearance in McCain's "Celeb" ad, Paris Hilton hit back on 8/5 with a "campaign ad" of her own. Politico's Ben Smith: "Paris Hilton makes fun of John McCain's age and unveils her own energy policy. Really. UPDATE: Obama spokesman Bill Burton reacts: "Whatever." UPDATE: McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds emails: "It sounds like Paris Hilton supports John McCain's 'all of the above' approach to America's energy crisis - including both alternatives and drilling. Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan.'"

The blogosphere was all over the Paris video, but few had anything of substance to add to the political debate surrounding it. Moderate Voice's Jazz Shaw's response to the ad was typical: "And so it comes to this. We're in the midst of a heated presidential contest, an energy crisis looms, the economy is on the skids, and I come before you today to once again write about... Paris Hilton."

Begrudgingly, New Republic's Dayo Olopade takes the time to fact-check Paris: "I write this in full knowledge that I am fanning the flames of this distracting devolution into the realm of actual celebrities--but as long as millions of people are going to be listening to Paris Hilton on energy (far more than might have tuned in for McCain's remarks here or Obama's here), and because this is important stuff--we may as well run it through the Vine fact-checker.... In reality, experts--and McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin--repeatedly acknowledge that it would take 5-10 years for any tangible effects of offshore drilling to take hold; new oil production would only amount to 1 percent (200,000 barrels) of projected US demand when it does become available; and if new oil in 2015 or so could lower the price of gasoline, it would only do so by a few cents. So there's no 'tiding' over anything until technologies 'kick in.'"

OBAMA II: Ramblin' Man

In his latest column, David Brooks wonders why Obama isn't polling higher (given all the indicators this year that a Democrat should be crushing a Republican). Brooks argues that voters might not be connecting with Obama because of his "sojourner" background:

"There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged. As a result, voters have trouble placing him in his context, understanding the roots and values in which he is ineluctably embedded."

Campaign Desk's Megan Garber thinks Brooks's column negatively reinforces the "otherness" meme attached to Obama: "[The column] would seem, all in all, a fairly round condemnation of the presumptive Democratic nominee: non-committal, calculating, other. While emotional engagement can be, of course, a liability for a candidate (see 'Scream, Dean'), automaton-like coolness is perhaps even more of one. And there are few things worse for a politician to be, in Americans' eyes, than calculating. While Brooks mentions the positive side of Obama's in/out dichotomy -- 'his fantastic powers of observation,' 'his skills as a writer and thinker,' and the fact 'that people on almost all sides of any issue can see parts of themselves reflected in Obama's eyes" -- the column's overall taste is somewhat bitter. It paints a picture of someone defined by, in the largest sense, his otherness."

Huffington Post's Andy Ostroy attempts to debunk Brook's theory: "Brooks summarily tears apart Obama's entire career as if it's truly meaningless. That Obama's a self-made success with infinitely more impressive credentials than, say, George Bush, gets lost on Brooks. His job as a conservative pundit is not to speak the truth about Republicans, but to distort the truth about Democrats. But the truth is, Obama is the American Dream personified. Of mixed-race heritage and from a poor, broken home, he made his way into the finest academic institutions in the country, and became the first ever black editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. He spent years as a community organizer, 12 years as a law professor, 6 years as a State Senator, 3 as a U.S. Senator, and stands the best chance of anyone in history of becoming the first black president. Yet Brooks' column conjures up the image of some emotionless, spiritless, disconnected automaton who somehow managed to accomplished this greatness without ever having any real, intimate relationships or intellectual curiosity. That he somehow robotically drifted his way to being some sort of comatose-like wonder, having fooled everyone and touched no one. Give us a break, Brooks."

No More Mister Nice Blog's Steve M. sees a double standard when it comes to Democrats and Republicans: "What's preposterous about this is that our last three Republican presidents all benefited from an utterly phony sense of rootedness. Reagan, as Brooks says, was believed to have 'small-town virtues' even though he went Hollywood 43 years before he was elected president. Both Bushes were old-money preppies, born in New England, who pretended to be down-home Texans, and the younger Bush compounded the fraud by cynically buying an ersatz "ranch" a year before running for president."

Ian Leslie embraced Brooks's argument, and insists that Obama has actually done the same: "Obama is well aware of this ambiguity in his image, and cultivates it. He has written that he 'serves as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes can project their own views.' More recently he said that he has become 'a symbol of America's best traditions.' He was rather unfairly pilloried by John McCain for this. Rather than self-glorification, he was trying to deflect attention from himself - to say 'it's not about me'. Elsewhere he referred to himself as 'just the excuse'. He seeks to remove or at least blur any fixed notions of who he is, or what he stands for, from the campaign. He embraces ambiguity."

Many conservative bloggers used the column to reinforce their view that Obama is a cynical, conviction-less politician. Protein Wisdom's Dan Collins: "Brooks actually has interesting things to say about Obama's pattern of being in and out at the same time, a liminal figure who seems to have issues with committing to institutions, whilst using them for his own benefit: A calculated ambiguity, one might call it. Fascinating how someone so averse to committee work would want to preside."

Other bloggers offered alternative reasons as to why Obama isn't polling as high as he should be:

• Stephen Bainbridge: "Look, the answer is a lot simpler. The USA is still a 50-50 country. (Or, maybe more precisely, a 47-47 country.) The GOP brand name is in trouble these days, but the vast bulk of the people who voted for Bush 43 (twice), Dole, Bush 41 (twice), and Reagan (twice) aren't likely to be swept off their feet by Obamamania. The plurality of American voters who still self-identify as conservative aren’t going to be an easy sell for a left-liberal product of the Chicago machine. The narrow swath of people who are really in play don't produce landslides. ... In sum, just because media elites, Manhattanites, and Hollywoodistas are swooning over Obama doesn't mean he's going to win the center-right heartland."
• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "The second factor, I'd argue, is, paradoxically, Democratic strength. The shift away from the GOP is pronounced everywhere (democracy hasn't failed completely) and few doubt that the Dems could make big gains in both House and Senate this fall. So the threat of the kind of Republican agenda that propelled Bush from 2002 to 2006 is much diminished. McCain, moreover, is not so bad a figure to deal with a Democratic Congress from the perspective of many independent voters, especially since the Congress is pretty much reviled as well. So the choice becomes an all-Democratic government, headed by a senator whose newness is still one of the most striking things about him - or an old war horse who ticked off all the right Republicans at one point or other and who was more right about the sruge than Obama. Obama's hopes for a landslide therefore rest on the chance that economic distress will now do to the public mood what Iraq once did - and make bold change seem necessary."

OBAMA III: Oy Vet!

Much of the right-wing blogosphere was in an uproar over a Wall Street Journal report on the recent resignation of Obama's Muslim-outreach coordinator, Mazen Asbahi, who once sat on the same board as a fundamentalist imam and who had spoken before various groups with scholars associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "The big story isn't so much how Asbahi would have been a threat to the US as a member of Obama's campaign (answer: not much), but in how inept Obama and his team are at background checks. These will be the same people who appoint people to government posts if Obama wins the election. How many of these 'mistakes' will occur then? Competence usually comes with experience, and Obama doesn't demonstrate much of either."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: If You Can't Take The Heat...

The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates: "I don't think anyone during the primary accused Bill Clinton of being a 'racist'--as in 'I don't think black people are equal to whites.' He was accused of race-baiting. Some of it was, from my perspective, dubious. Deriding Obama's identity as a guy who consistently opposed the Iraq War as a 'fairy tale' is not only fair, but actually kind of true. But I thought the infamous South Carolina/Jesse Jackson comparison was race-bating--either that or it was just foolishly dismissive. Nevertheless, it amazes me that Clinton is actually still pissed-off about this idea that he's a racist. Of course it's telling that he's turned the very specific charge of race-baiting, into a much larger, much easier to attack charge of racism. I have no doubt that Obama's surrogates worked behind the scenes to push the Clinton race-baiting angle, while Obama angelically smiled and claimed to take no offense. But that's what people do when they're running for office. The whole Clinton appeal was based on this idea that they would fight dirty, that they could counter the Republican attack machine, that politics was basically dirty, and to win you had to be willing to fight that way. How then can you be mad that you lost to someone who fought dirty? Wouldn't you have done the same thing?"

LEST WE FORGET: Hell No, We Won't Go!

Vail Daily reports: "Poo and pee dominated a public hearing Monday on a new law that prohibits people from carrying certain items if they intend to use them for nefarious purposes. The law, crafted in advance of the Democratic National Convention, was adopted unanimously by the City Council. But not before a hearing laced with comedy and profanity. Representatives from some of the groups planning large-scale protests during the DNC this month said the ordinance was unnecessary and accused city officials of fear mongering. 'The intent of this ordinance is to try to smear protesters and make them look as if they are somehow criminal or somehow going to engage in some kind of gross conduct,' said Glenn Spagnuolo, an organizer with the Re- create 68 Alliance. The ordinance makes it illegal to carry certain items, such as chains, padlocks, carabiners and other locking devices. It also prohibits the possession of noxious substances. Two of the most frequently used examples of a noxious substance are a bucket of urine and a 'feces bomb.'"

Posted by Chris Bodenner at 01:00 PM

August 05, 2008

8/5: Mood Swings

The difference in mood between the liberal blogosphere and the conservative blogosphere is striking. Righty bloggers are clearly feeling pretty good these days, especially when compared with a few weeks ago. They're convinced that John McCain's recent slew of attack ads have hurt Barack Obama, as evidenced by McCain's rise in national polls. Conservative bloggers are particularly excited that McCain has moved ahead of Obama for the first time in the Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll and in the latest ATV/Zogby poll. They see these polls as evidence that "voters are becoming disenchanted with Barack Obama" and that Obama "[has] run out of gas in this electoral cycle".

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers are concerned that Obama's campaign has demonstrated an inability to respond effectively to McCain's attacks. Several bloggers believe that Obama made a tactical mistake in discouraging third-party groups from launching ad campaigns on his behalf. Chris Bowers writes:

"I don't think it is hard to imagine that the past four weeks, which generally have not been great for Obama, would have been very different if well-funded 527's like Vote Vets and Progressive Media USA were flooding the airwaves and appearing on news programs with attacks on McCain. As it is, Obama's relative reluctance to go on the attack, combined with severely weakened progressive advocacy organizations, is the main reason why McCain has been able to dominate the terms of the debate lately."

OBAMA: Time To Worry?

Several liberal bloggers are concerned about McCain's rise in the national polls, which they attribute to his recent slew of attack ads:

• Open Left's Bowers: "Obama's numbers haven't dropped, and are actually on a slight uptick. Instead, McCain's have risen quite dramatically, gaining 3.2% in just one week. His new identity based lines of attack appear to be consolidating some undecided in his favor, rather than peeling off Obama supporters. It isn't about gas prices or drilling -- coverage of that issue has been dwarfed by the identity-based attacks."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "I've had a bad feeling about the direction of the campaign for the past couple weeks. We've been saying for months that McCain and the GOP would go negative, very negative. No surprise. That is what's happening. Karl Rove and his crew are at their best destroying people and they're running the show now. The latest tracking polls seem to indicate that McCain's negative attacks are having an impact. The corollary is that Obama's response hasn't been working, or at least it hasn't been enough. That needs to change, fast. [...] For those who think it's too early to be worried, here's some historical perspective: the first Swift Boat ad attacking John Kerry was launched on August 5, 2004."
• BooMan: "The negative attacks have already started and they seem to have eroded Obama's lead in the national polls. Fortunately, the state-by-state polls still look excellent, but there is cause for concern."

OBAMA II: He Thinks He Doesn't Need Outside Help, But He Does

Some liberal bloggers think Obama's decision to discourage efforts by third-party groups has put him at a disadvantage:

• Bowers: "I don't think it is hard to imagine that the past four weeks, which generally have not been great for Obama, would have been very different if well-funded 527's like Vote Vets and Progressive Media USA were flooding the airwaves and appearing on news programs with attacks on McCain. As it is, Obama's relative reluctance to go on the attack, combined with severely weakened progressive advocacy organizations, is the main reason why McCain has been able to dominate the terms of the debate lately. [...] Of course we are losing debates -- we through away our best weapons. If Obama loses this campaign, it will be just as much his fault for de-funding the 527s as it will be for the media buying into McCain's attacks. In fact, the entire reason you fund the former is because, by now, all Democrats should expect the latter."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "Obama is out-organizing McCain dramatically in field, both in terms of small dollar donations and in terms of putting real resources into states. But McCain is out-organizing Obama in the media space, which is much more about elite organizing. McCain has an effective set of surrogates and his outside groups are functional and accepted into the national conversation, whereas Obama has marginalized his erstwhile allies in the media space. As a result, very little that comes from outside sticks onto McCain. As a simple example, McCain had such a horrible week while Obama was abroad and the Iraqi government endorsed Obama's withdrawal strategy that one top Republican strategist said 'We're fucked'. And yet, McCain is gaining in the polls, and the media narrative just didn't pick up McCain's Iraq position (even though allies like VoteVets pushed it hard)."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Obama seems pretty much on his own in facing down McCain's increasingly nasty attacks (yes, we have the blogs, but the blogs aren't enough by themselves -- see my discussion of this further down). The conventional wisdom is that the best way to respond to these kind of attacks is to respond in kind, and blow them out of the water (note how McCain responded to Obama's 'race' comment, and note how it threw the Obama people off-balance -- also, note what McCain did to Wesley Clark). You do that with the candidate himself, sometimes (if you feel a need to show that the candidate can get angry if necessary, i.e., has balls), but more often you use outside groups and surrogate members of Congress, and other third parties, like the blogs, talk radio, etc. But in this case, our outside groups were shut down a few months ago, so they're gone, and many of their staff, some of the top political people in town, aren't even working on the election at all now. As for Democratic Senators and House Members, they've been oddly silent over the past week or two, and at least don't seem part of any larger, public, and coordinated strategy to counterattack. And yes, finally, the blogs are still here, but as I've argued many a time (see the [Samuel] Alito filubuster fiasco), the blogs can't act in a vacuum. A proper political marketing strategy requires multiple layers, multiple actors, each complementing the other's work, the other's message, the other's attacks."

OBAMA III: Don't Look Now, But McCain's Ahead!

Conservative bloggers are excited that McCain moved ahead of Obama for the first time in yesterday's Rasmussen tracking poll and in a new ATV/Zogby poll:

• Glenn Reynolds: "Given the adulatory media coverage to date, this suggests significant weakness on Obama's part."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "These trends look very troubling not just for Obama but for the entire Democratic Party. It looks like both have run out of gas in this electoral cycle, and that may not just be a metaphor. If the Democrats and Obama offer nothing but populist platitudes and obstructionism on developing American oil production -- and American jobs -- this summer swoon may only get worse in November."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "No one from the McCain campaign is going to start measuring drapes. They are well aware of the fact that the conditions favor a Democratic victory. But Barack Obama's inability to make the sale complete is rapidly becoming an unshakably bad trait."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "How did this possibly happen? I've got a few theories [...] I'm of the opinion that the more people learn about Barack Obama, the worse it is for him. Obama is charismatic and highly likable, so his first impression is very positive. But the more people learn about his positions and background, the harder it will be for him to be 'all things to all people'. In short, his support is tenuous and superficial. [...] McCain won the week last week, because for the first time this cycle, the McCain campaign had a consistent message and was able to begin crafting a negative narrative to define Obama as out-of-touch. [McCain strategist Steve] Schmidt has been at the helm for less than a month, but he was able to turn Obama's trip into a positive for McCain (or, at least, make it a wash). Not bad at all. It is also likely that there has been a backlash to Obama's trip. Aside from the fact that speaking to 200,000 Berliners isn't necessarily going to play well in Peoria, failing to visit the wounded troops plays into the stereotype about Democrats not caring for the troops."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "A new ATV/Zogby poll offers more evidence that voters are becoming disenchanted with Barack Obama. [...] The question, obviously, is whether that erosion will continue as voters continue to learn more about Obama, and see him less as a media phenomenon, and more as a conventional, but very liberal, Democrat with little practical experience."

OBAMA IV: Prescribing The Wrong Medicine?

Conservative bloggers are criticizing Obama's speech on energy that he delivered yesterday in Lansing, MI:

• The Weekly Standard's Dean Barnett: "It's interesting that Obama has responded to the political circumstances of the day by giving this major address. He rightly lamented that it took 30 years of government inaction to get to this crisis point, and mentioned that John McCain had been part of the government for 26 of those years, Touche. Still, He avoids mentioning the areas where government has done the most harm, namely its jihad against nuclear power and its various prohibitions on fully exploiting our indigenous resources. Why does He avoid mentioning such things? Because those are policies He'll perpetuate. What's more, Obama has been a senator for almost four years and running for president for almost two years. I don't recall energy being a preoccupation of either Senator Obama or Candidate Obama until this past week."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Yesterday's energy speech by Obama was a perfect example of the almost astonishing emptiness of the Obama platform on this and other crucial issues. [...] Obama declared that, as president, he would direct $15 billion a year into an effort that would end our import of oil from the Middle East and Venezuela while creating 5 million new jobs over 10 years. No specifics were provided. Details to follow, I guess. This is the sort of stuff that high school debaters wouldn't dare try as even a sleepy judge would flunk them for offering up magic machines that work on sugar as the answer to our energy problems. Obama dares not offer any specifics on any element of his plan because none are possible or even capable of passing the laugh test."

Conservative bloggers are also accusing Obama of flip-flopping after he called for the gov't to sell 70M barrels of oil from its strategic petroleum reserve:

• Hinderaker: "This is, of course, another policy reversal on Obama's part. Until now, he has opposed selling gasoline from the Reserve. [...] Now, I have no problem with a politician changing his mind when conditions change. [...] But Obama's opposition to selling petroleum from the Reserve is not some relic of the days of cheap oil. It was reiterated on July 7, in St. Louis. [...] On July 7, oil and gas prices were higher than they are today, not lower. So Obama's explanation that he changed his mind because 'Americans are suffering' is transparently false. What has really happened is that Obama has been reading the polls, as always: John McCain has caught up with him, and poll respondents now say that they trust McCain more on energy. Hence the new policies that Obama unveiled today."
• Barnett: "A month ago, Barack Obama righteously (not to mention correctly) opposed tapping the Strategic Oil Reserve. Back then, Obama said that we should only tap the reserve in the event of an emergency. Since then, oil prices have plummeted by $25/barrel, or more than 16%. And yet now, inexplicably, the Emergency According to Obama has grown since His last pronouncement on the subject and we must now tap the Strategic Reserves."

Meanwhile, RedState's Mark Impomeni doesn't think releasing 70M barrels of oil will do much to lower gas prices: "Obama's plan to release 70 million barrels from the reserve is as insulting as it is cynical. [...] According to the Energy Information Agency, the United States uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day. Obama called for 70 million barrels of oil to be released from the SPR to help lower prices. Furthermore, he dressed up his proposal by specifically calling for light crude to be released, on the theory that it could be more easily refined into gasoline and thus have the greatest impact on prices. 70 million divided by 20 million is 3.5. So, Obama's answer to high gasoline prices is to release three and a half days worth of oil from the nation's emergency reserves."

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES: You May Hate Me But It Ain't No Lie, Baby, Bayh, Bayh, Bayh

Bil Browning's prediction that Obama will announce IN Sen. Evan Bayh as his VP choice on Wed. morning generated a number of Bayh-related posts in the liberal blogosphere. Suffice to say, liberal bloggers aren't fans of Bayh:

• Firedoglake's Teddy Partridge: "That's not change America needs, that's a legacy Senator going along with the Washington thinking and failed establishment policies. The Democratic party selected Barack Obama as our nominee for the express purpose of moving our party, and our country, away from these failed policies. Don't choose a fellow whose career is defined by these policies, Senator Obama. It's the most important decision you will make before your Inauguration. And you can do better, sir. As you must."
• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "On paper Bayh seems like a good veep candidate. But ugh."
• BooMan: "The selection of Bayh would be met by stony silence at best within the Progressive Movement. Many would be outraged and consider it a betrayal of trust. For my part, I'd be bitterly disappointed. But I wouldn't read it as anything more or less than a strategic calculation."

FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver offers a qualified defense of Bayh's voting record: "I can't say that I'd be thrilled with the selection of Evan Bayh as Barack Obama's VP nominee. But this has more to do with personality factors -- my feeling that Bayh is a little dull and drab, and that Obama may underestimate the importance of maintaining high levels of excitement among the Democratic base -- than anything having to do with his voting record. Bayh gets a bad rap in the liberal blogopshere because he is perceived as a centrist. There is a grain of truth in that; he certainly isn't [VT Sen.] Bernie Sanders. But he also isn't from Vermont. He's from Indiana -- and I would argue that Bayh is about as liberal a senator as Indiana is likely to elect."

Ezra Klein thinks Obama will choose Bayh: "My hunch now is that it'll be Evan Bayh, if for no other reason than Evan Bayh is the single whitest man in America, and I have a feeling that the Obama campaign wants America's Whitest Man in some pictures these days. [KS Gov. Kathleen] Sebelius was always something of a gamble, a doubling-down on the sort of politics that Obama was pursuing. But as the Obama campaign has lost its message a bit and watched the new politics get kicked in the teeth a couple times by the old politics, it's becoming less likely that they'll make a particularly innovative veep choice. Bayh is conservative, hawkish, and elevating him to veep will deprive Obama of a crucial vote in the Senate, but he's a known quantity in the Midwest and and for the media, and the Obama campaign is being reminded of the need for a known quantity every time they turn on the television."

MCCAIN: In Bed With Big Oil?

Last week, we noted that liberal bloggers were buzzing over The Washington Post's report that McCain received a surge in campaign contributions from oil industry executives after he reversed his opposition to the offshore drilling ban. Now, liberal bloggers are buzzing over the following report from TPM's Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld:

"Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports. [...] These Hess contributions...will give more ammo to those arguing that McCain is being rewarded by campaign contributions in exchange for pro-industry positions."

Sargent later reported that "a Hess 'office manager' and her husband, an Amtrak worker, both chipped in $28,500 apiece on the same day that all those Hess execs did," but that this office manager "declined to say whether the contributions had been bundled by another Hess employee or who bundled them".

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the revelations:

• Daily Kos' SusanG: "Sargent actually got on the phone and talked to the office manager about the contributions, and she adamantly claims the contributed funds are entirely their own. Then he followed up an hour or so later, discovering the Rocchios are well-off enough to give over $50,000 to a political campaign, yet they don't own their home."
• Atrios: "That's mavericky! That, my friends, is ethical politicking we can believe in."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "This isn't an instance in which Big Oil was just supporting the Republican candidate because of partisan and/or ideological loyalties -- this is Big Oil rewarding John McCain for reversing course and telling voters exactly what the industry wants the public to hear."
• MyDD's Josh Orton: "There's not any disguising the fact that McCain benefited tremendously from reversing his position on the federal offshore drilling ban -- a strategy that is purely political and yields almost no practical improvement for our current energy situation."
• dday: "It's entirely possible these contributions are legitimate and that Hess staffers just love McCain ever since he flipped on drilling. That's the charitable explanation. The bad one is illegal straw contributions from oil companies [...] It's well-established that the McCain campaign is crawling with lobbyists and deeply corrupted by their influence, with the new set of positions matching the concerns of the new corporate contributors. This set of oil company donations is the most vibrant example, and so it makes the most sense to continue on the offense and keep pointing them out."

MCCAIN II: Under Pressure

Liberal bloggers are pushing back hard against the McCain camp's efforts to mock Obama for calling on drivers to properly inflate their tires in order to conserve gas:

• Atrios: "Does anyone understand why Obama suggesting that people keep their tires properly inflated is some sort of hilarious gaffe?"
• Moulitsas: "Who knew that telling people to properly maintain their vehicles for maximum gas efficiency was some sort of craaaazy gaffe? [...] That Obama is so crazy! But Republicans Arnold Schwartzenneger and Charlie Crist said the same thing. [...] Of course, they didn't realize at the time that speaking of common sense, practical ways to increase one's gas mileage and save money would get in the way of the last GOP anti-Obama smear. Oh, and those liberals at NASCAR are also talking crazy. [...] Someone wave a tire gauge at Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, and Dale Earnhardt Jr! Craaaaaazy! Is this the 2008 version of the purple bandaid?"
• Benen: "The list is a little long to reproduce here, but sure enough, [CT Sen. Joe] Lieberman, Crist, Schwarzenegger, the Bush administration, Republican congressional candidates, NASCAR, and the American Petroleum Institute all agree that routine tire maintenance actually help fuel efficiency, just as Obama said. [...] Public opinion is notoriously hard to predict, but I feel pretty certain this is a loser of a stunt. No one, no matter how ignorant, can really believe that properly-inflated tires are the sum total of Obama's energy policy."
• Bill Scher: "Obama's actual comment last week was: '...we could save all the oil they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires, and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much.' He was decidedly not saying 'all you need to do' is inflate your tires, or 'my entire energy policy' is inflating your tires. (Obama has a much larger energy plan centered on investment in renewable energy and fuel efficiency technology. Similarly, it would not be fair to say Sen. John McCain's 'entire' energy policy is coastal drilling, when he is also advocating loosening regulations on nuclear power and a contest to promote battery technology.) Obama was observing that coastal drilling would save us so little oil and so little money even twenty years from now, that you can actually save more money immediately by doing 'simple things' such as keeping your tires properly inflated. Where did he get that crazy idea? From George Bush's Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency. [...] Inflating your ties does not amount to an energy policy. It's just more of a policy than coastal drilling, since unlike drilling for a tiny amount of oil, it would at least save us some money now."

Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey defends the criticism of Obama: "No one doubts that proper tire inflation can help with efficiency, and no one thinks it's silly to maintain one's vehicle for a variety of reasons. However, Obama clearly stated that we could get just as much oil from tire inflation and tune-ups as we can get from drilling -- a ludicrous statement well deserving of ridicule."

MEDIA CRITICISM: The Milbank Chronicles

On Friday, Atrios took exception to the following passage from the 7/31 edition of Blogometer:

"In other news, liberal bloggers are buzzing about ex-McCain strategist John Weaver's criticism of the McCain camp's recent tactics, which they see as evidence that the McCain camp's negativity is causing a backlash. Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, are linking to Dana Milbank's column that mocks Obama for being 'presumptuous.' The excitement that Weaver's and Milbank's respective words are generating in the blogosphere illustrates how people in politics are never more influential than when they're criticizing their own side."

Atrios wrote: "Yes, because Dana Milbank's a liberal just like John Weaver is a conservative. Please kill me."

For the record, we were not trying to suggest that Milbank is a liberal in the same way that Weaver is a conservative. The point we were (clumsily) trying to make was that the considerable attention Milbank's column received in the conservative blogosphere was in large part due to the perception (which may or may not be accurate) that Milbank leans left. Conservative bloggers thought Milbank's critique of Obama had added force because he is (in their view) an Obama sympathizer. So, they wrote sentences like "even [Keith] Olbermann's regulars think it's time for a hubris check" and "even the likes of Dana Milbank are beginning to get tired of the arrogance that now emanates from the Obama campaign".

That said, we were wrong to present Milbank's liberalism as an incontrovertible fact (which we did when we wrote that Milbank was "criticizing [his] own side" by mocking Obama). As far as we know, Milbank does not publicly identify as an Obama supporter, and certainly not in the way that Weaver publicly identifies as a McCain supporter. So, we regret our poor choice of words.

Meanwhile, Milbank's reputation in the liberal blogosphere continues to plummet. In a Daily Kos diary that has received over 1,000 comments, MSNBC's Olbermann explains that Milbank will no longer appear on his show:

"Dana Milbank of The Washington Post...notified us today that after four years appearing with us, he had accepted another television offer. This saved your crack Countdown staff an increasingly difficult decision. For nearly a week we'd been waiting for him to offer a correction or an explanation for his column from last week in which he apparently reported an Obama quote without a full context turned the meaning of the quote inside-out. Then he called criticisms of his column 'whines' [...] We had decided not to have Dana on this news-hour again until this was cleared up, and, sadly after some very happy years, he's apparently chosen to make that cloud permanent. Good luck, Dana."

Liberal bloggers are pleased by Milbank's departure from Olbermann's show:

• Sudbay: "Dana Milbank, the snark-master at the Washington Post, included a grossly out-of-context quote from Barack Obama in a column last week. Instead of rectifying his mistake, Milbank mocked those who challenged him. To most of the traditional media and almost every cable pundit, that's quite acceptable. Not to Keith Olbermann. [...] It's practically a first: A reporter is suffering the consequences for bad behavior. Keith says good luck. But, this feels more like good riddance."
• Atrios: "Bridge burning. More like this."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Next Cheney

Ezra Klein critiques the DNC's new website, "The Next Cheney":

"In 2001, John McCain told Dick Cheney that 'With a little more luck, I might have been able to ask you to be my Vice-President.' The DNC has thus put together The Next Cheney, a compendium of information on some of the folks populating McCain's shortlist. [...] Turns out they're all bad! But the sites like this one do tend to wipe out the differences between the candidates: A proven pragmatist like [FL Gov.] Charlie Crist would be far better than a GOP hack like [VA] Representative Eric Cantor or [SD] Senator John Thune."

NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez had a different reaction to the DNC's website:

"'The Next Cheney.' That's the name of the DNC's website devoted to McCain veep possibilities. They've unintentionally rallied me, as I get enthused by the prospect of a Cheney in the White House for another four years."

LEST WE FORGET: Looks Like Someone Has A Case Of The Mondays

From Overheard in the Office:

Patricia: "Sometimes, and it depends on the day I'm having, I am either 'Positive Patty' or 'Pessimistic Patricia.'"
IT chick: "Yeah? Sometimes, and it depends on the day I'm having, I put whiskey in my coffee."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:20 PM

August 04, 2008

8/4: About Those Ads...

John McCain's recent spate of attack ads continues to dominate the attention of the political blogosphere. Many liberal bloggers (along with the New York Times editorial board) see a racial subtext in McCain's "Celeb" ad, which compares Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. They're also critical of McCain's "The One" ad, which compares Obama to Jesus and Moses. Liberal bloggers believe that McCain's negative ads reveal him to be "a bitter old man" who makes personality-based attacks in order to avoid talking about the issues. However, some liberal bloggers are worried that McCain's ads are hurting Obama.

Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, are delighted by McCain's negative ads. They believe that this election is rapidly becoming a referendum on Obama and that McCain is doing what he needs to do to win. They see Obama's evaporating lead in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll as evidence that McCain's negative ads have been effective. Dean Barnett writes:

"This will remain a dreadful year for Republicans, and the McCain campaign will have the unhappy task of running into a stiff headwind all season. But this campaign at its heart remains Obama vs. Not Obama. And Not Obama is developing momentum."

MCCAIN: Playing Dirty?

Liberal bloggers continue to argue that McCain's "Celeb" ad has racial undertones, and they're angry that the McCain campaign accused Obama of playing the "race card" when they believe that McCain was the one who injected race into the campaign:

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "I'm amused to hear the McCain camp's deep sense of 'grievance' over any suggestion that McCain is running a xenophobic and often race-tinged campaign against Barack Obama. It's amazing how you can be pushing a message that your opponent is in league with foreign terrorists and comparing him to twenty-something white women best known for their 'behind the music' episodes and so many people can get the wrong idea."
• digby: "I think the Britney ad worked on a number of levels, the racial aspect being the most subtle and easily dismissed. I can understand why most people didn't see it as racist. That is, after all, the whole point of dogwhistles. [...] I have no doubt that the campaign has learned the proper lesson from all this. McCain and his nasty surrogates can dogwhistle themselves hoarse all the way to November and nobody can call them on it. If the 'liberal' media does, they will be portrayed as in the tank for Obama and part of the problem. It's a brilliant inoculation. Indeed, it may be such a thorough inoculation that it means that Obama is now in a bit of a straitjacket, having to second guess all criticism of McCain to ensure that it can't be taken as 'racist.' [...] So, Obama is going to have to be a modern day Jackie Robinson and stoically endure the more subtle forms of racial ugliness that the right throws at him without ever fighting back or even mentioning that it is happening."
• BooMan: "The Republicans are playing on something visceral and subconscious. Just as the the makers of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner intentionally chose a liberal white family to demonstrate that racism lingers longest and deepest on the subject of sexuality. I'll work with them, live with them, drink with them, play with them, but I don't want my daughter dating, let alone marrying, them. [...] But just because we can't change people's hearts and make them race-blind doesn't mean we have any right to exploit those feelings for political gain. And that is what the Republicans do, and have done, ever since they adopted the Southern Strategy and betrayed their legacy as the party of Lincoln. Mention any of this and...RACE CARD!! comes flying back in your face."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "[One] reason the McCain campaign is so excited to accuse Obama of 'playing the race card' is that one of Obama's strengths is that he is not perceived by the wider American public as the aggrieved black man -- he is no Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. By claiming Obama is playing the race card (however absurd the charge), they can turn him into the angry black man. It really is shameless and disgusting, and while I had seen no racial component to the Britney ad earlier, I can understand where [Bob] Herbert is coming from now. I just didn't see it before."

MCCAIN II: Race Matters

Several liberal bloggers believe that the Obama camp must be careful about how it responds to the McCain camp's "race card" charge:

• Open Left's Mike Lux: "I am convinced that the genius of the infamous Harold Ford 'call me' ad wasn't the subliminal white women/black man stuff, but that it got such a negative reaction from civil rights leaders and white liberals to an ad that just seemed to working class TN voters as just a funny ad. The initial run of the ad for a few days did nothing bad to Ford's poll numbers, but the reactions to the ad in the week following the initial run did. This is what makes the strategy for McCain so good, and the reaction from our side so tricky. I don't think the answer is the response from Obama manager David Plouffe, which was just to say 'No, we're not' when McCain and [his adviser] Rick Davis accused Obama of playing the race card. I think the reaction has to be both less defensive and more aggressive."
• Obsidian Wings' publius: "The race card stuff consciously feeds white resentment. When tireless civil rights hero Rick Davis says how outraged he is about the 'race card,' it's intended to reinforce the view (among some white people) that they are punished because some evil minority will claim 'racism' when they shouldn't. If it weren't for this frightening monster ready to cry 'racism' at the drop of a hat, then their children would get into Harvard, or they'd already be promoted, or their kids would get better financial aid, or they'd pay less taxes, or whatever. Rather than try to overcome this division, the honorable John McCain is stoking the fires. And I think that gives you a pretty decent indication of what a McCain presidency will look like."
• TAPPED's Adam Serwer: "[Obama] has to extricate himself from an ongoing racial competition between blacks and whites, where the prosperity of one is seen as detrimental to the other. [...] In a dispute about race, the McCain campaign knows it will end up with the larger half. For the most part, most white people's experience with race isn't one of racial discrimination. [...] What white people can relate to is the fear of being unjustly accused of racism. [...] This is why the campaign needs to avoid dealing with race in the context of his rivalry with McCain whenever possible."

MCCAIN III: Let's Not Read Too Much Into This

Not every liberal blogger believes that McCain's "Celeb" ad has racial undertones:

• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "I think the McCain campaign's 'Celebrity' ad and the whole line about Barack Obama being too arrogant or something are pretty ridiculous, but it's a bit puzzling to me to see liberals expressing the view that these are some kind of crypto-racist lines of attack. Given that Obama's black, and America's history, I think it's always going to be possible to read some kind of racial subtext into attacks on him. But both of these are lines of argument you could easily imagine being deployed against a white candidate and, indeed, they're fundamentally similar to arguments Republicans regularly make against Democrats. Beyond that, trying to sniff out racial subtexts in these kind of things strikes me as overwhelmingly likely to prove problematic. People really don't like to be called racists."
• Oliver Willis: "I have to confess, I don't think the overtones in the Paris Hilton/Britney Spears ad from McCain was about race. I think some on my side of the aisle are reading too much into this -- the McCain people just aren't smart enough to be that subtle."
• FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver: "I emphatically do not buy that the ad has racial undertones."

Conservative blogger John Hinderaker also denies that the ad has racial undertones: "The New York Times editorial board predictably weighed in on Obama's behalf, calling the Celeb ad a 'racially tinged attack.' How can this be, since the ad never mentions race, and has nothing to do with race? [...] Does the Times seriously believe that any ad that contains images of both a white woman and a black candidate is racist? (Don't white women often appear in Obama's own ads?) That strikes me as a very weird position, which perhaps reveals more about the Times editorialists than about campaign advertising."

MCCAIN IV: Obama The Antichrist?

Liberal bloggers are harshly criticizing McCain's latest attack ad, "The One", which compares Obama to both Jesus and Moses and declares that Obama "has annointed himself, ready to carry the burdens of the world." Some liberal bloggers see this ad as an example of dog-whistle politics designed to anger evangelical Christians:

• Sadly, No!'s Gavin M.: "The McCain campaign has apparently decided to spread the notion among Evangelicals that Barack Obama is the Antichrist."
• Crooks and Liars' John Amato : "This is typical for the McCain campaign. Dog-whistle politics is a common tactic by [Karl] Rove and Lee Atwater. It's in play now right before your eyes and this time it's targeted at evangelicals."

Other liberal bloggers think McCain is embarrassing himself with this barrage of negative ads:

• Balloon Juice's Michael D.: "Remember the attack line Conservatives used, Bush Derangement Syndrome? Can we start an Obama Derangement Syndrome meme? McCain's ads have not focused one iota on what McCain will do as president -- except prolong a war and make tax cuts permanent (which I am totally for -- in peacetime.) They're completely focused on Barack Obama and how popular he is. It's quite funny when you think about it. McCain is grasping, big time."
• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "I am absolutely no judge of these things, but I think this new McCain video truly jumps the shark. [...] It has been reported for a while (though alas I can't find it now) that the McCain campaign refers to Obama as 'the One', with contempt. I don't think that putting your most contemptuous, peevish impulses out there for all the world to see is a winning strategy, myself."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "John McCain is a bitter old man. There, I said it. Really, it is getting difficult to think of McCain is any other way. McCain complains about feeling 'left out'. He doesn't like new food. He doesn't like young celebrities. He is sensitive about his age. The dude is just bitter. [...] I'm not sure what happened to John McCain to make him so bitter, given that he is a U.S. Senator and worth several hundred million dollars, but he is bitter nonetheless. Electing him would be a demonstration that we as a nation are bitter toward the world, toward the civil rights movement, and toward youth culture. In other words, it would be pretty much the same stuff that conservatives have run on for decades. This time, let's put that out in the open, and stop beating around the bush on it."

MCCAIN V: Bravo, McCain Campaign!

Conservative bloggers continue to praise McCain's recent batch of negative ads:

• NRO's Rich Lowry: "Who would have thought it? The McCain campaign is now running more effectively viral ads than the Obama campaign. The Landstuhl ad, which I didn't like (because of the factual problem) stoked a week's worth of debate that was harmful to Obama. The 'Celeb' ad has dominated cable chat and had 1.2 million YouTube hits the last time I looked. Now, there's this brilliant 'The One' ad [which] will, I'm sure, be a YouTube sensation because it's so fun to watch. None of these ads need to have -- nor have they had, as far as I can tell -- a big broadcast run to be effective."
• The Next Right's Josh Kahn: "Overall, even though I share a lot of [ex-McCain strategist Mike] Murphy's concerns (and the one Marc Ambinder's anonymous strategist outlines) I've been heartened by [McCain's] new strategy. The campaign's recent moves have shown a willingness to take some risks and have successfully injected the campaign's message back into the press. That's a critical change from the last few months and if they start taking some risky plays to build up McCain himself we'll have a real chance to win this thing."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "The bottom line for McCain is this: Either he will have to endure being called a racist by journalists like Bob Herbert, or he will need to resign himself to sitting back and politely allowing Barack Obama to win the election."

OBAMA: Why, Barack, Why?

Although he previously opposed efforts to expand offshore drilling, Obama said on Friday that "he would be willing to support limited additional offshore oil drilling" if it were necessary to pass a comprehensive energy policy that would promote fuel efficiency and develop alternative energy sources:

"'My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,' Obama said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post.

'If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage -- I don't want to be so rigid that we can't get something done.'"

Many liberal bloggers are criticizing Obama for shifting his stance on expanded offshore drilling:

• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "Obama said he might support more drilling if it were paired with comprehensive energy conservation measures and alternative energy development. So what's the headline? Obama shifts, says he may back offshore drilling. I'm sure the Republicans are going to praise Obama for his flexible stance now that he's decided to push a compromise with their oh so practical agenda. There's no way they will use this to push the idea that he's unprincipled. They wouldn't dare set up a web site called http://www.bothwaysbarack.com. Awesome. And awesome position that he's put [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi in, who has refused to allow a vote on drilling in the House."
• Bowers: "If Obama's poll numbers don't drop next week, and if the actual legislation that passes into law does so despite significant conservative Republican opposition, then I guess this won't be a terrible move. Until that time, however, it smacks to me of a major political mistake that will result in destructive legislation while adding credence to the attacks that Obama isn't leading, and is too easily persuaded by the political winds. We get bad legislation, and Obama's chances of winning the election are damaged. That does indeed strike me as a major error."
• digby: "That was quick. The Republicans stage a little hissy fit and to anyone not paying close attention it appears that they got instant results. [...] Obviously, Obama changed his position because of public opposition to the ban and because he thinks he could use it get Republicans to sign on to other legislation as he says. It's an election year. But I would suspect they will extract another 100 pounds of environmental flesh before they do. That's how they operate."

A few liberal bloggers think Obama made the right decision:

• MyDD's Jerome Armstrong: "It's a good move by Obama. It's not great that he's been on the record opposing it for the last couple of months, and that's why he dumped this now, but I think there's momentum enough for just the type of comprehensive plan that Obama is talking about, to take shape in Congress in September (or at least for electioning on). Better he flip now and be on the right side of the issue going forward, than continue being in the wrong with a losing message. It's been clear for nearly a month that drilling was providing an opening for the Republicans. And what's become obvious to me in the last few days is that they were framing it as a patriotic issue, with Obama advocating 'Foreign Oil' for the US -- that was the real kicker in the 'Celeb' ad. Republicans are fired up about this issue. I watched a McCain crowd jump to its feet in a standing ovation at his town hall in support for it today. They've framed it as a patriotic duty and it has serious legs. Pelosi can suck it up and actually do something to save the planet instead of just talking about it. Democrats can now take the opening by saying, 'yea, we'll compromise' and then make the bill a real long-term energy solution."
• Firedoglake's Scarecrow: "I think this is a smart move by Obama. More off-short drilling is environmentally risky; as a supply policy it's delusional and if done alone only locks us into an untenable future. But conditioning it in the framework of strict environmental protection, rather than immediate price/supply relief, and as part of a transition to something else, is where the debate needed to be."

OBAMA II: Flip-Flop Alert!

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about Obama's decision to change his position on expanded offshore drilling:

• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "Now that Barack Obama has said that he is open to offshore drilling, one wonders what will be the next policy issue on which he will flip-flop for the judges. [...] Incidentally, I really hope that people don't buy Obama's claim that he is compromising on offshore drilling only as a part of trying to facilitate the passage of a broader energy package. We don't know what the particulars of such a package will be and it is more than a little bit silly to claim that a reversal on offshore drilling is necessary to pass such a package given that the legislative bidding on this issue has not even begun. More likely, Obama looked at the overwhelming support offshore drilling has in the polls and decided 'There go the people. I must follow them for I wish to be their leader.' Assuming, of course, that he does not believe he currently is the leader."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Obama once again reveals himself as a traditional politician, one that will swing like a weathervane in order to get elected. The only quality remarkable about Obama is his shamelessness in policy reversals, expecting everyone to ignore his obvious change in stance as Obama pretends that he has always supported what he used to oppose."
• The Next Right's Soren Dayton: "Barack Obama's flip-flop on offshore oil drilling is a major strategic victory for House and Senate Republicans. The Democratic plan was to reup the Congressional ban on offshore oil drilling as part of a long-term continuing resolution. [Sen. Maj. Leader Harry] Reid had originally promised a vote on offshore drilling, but has backed off that promise now that it has become a potent issue. Now it is time to drive this issue home as a clearly branded Republican issue. The longer the fight goes on, the more it paints Democrats into a terrible corner. And there is a synergy between high energy costs and broader economic insecurity that will likely be the driving issue in November."

Conservative bloggers are also criticizing Obama's explanation for his shift:

• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "Obama invokes the politics of an overall 'energy package' in order gain room to maneuver. Drilling for oil offshore is either a good idea or bad idea. If it's a good idea, then there is no reason why lifting the ban needs to be 'part of an overaching' 'really thoughtful' energy package. If it's a bad idea, then Obama should not consent to it, and certainly should not signal his willingness to do so. But to Obama, in all likelihood, off-shore drilling is neither a good idea nor a bad idea; it's just a suddenly thorny political issue."
• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "Although the shift leaves him open to charges of flip-flopping, Obama is probably trying to take one of the Republicans' best issues off the table, the way Bill Clinton did in the 1996 campaign by finally signing welfare reform. But after signing the reform bill, Clinton didn't leave much room for Bob Dole to get to his right on welfare. Obama's tepid position on drilling still leaves plenty of room for John McCain to get to his right. And in 1996, the new welfare reform law was a reality. This is just a campaign promise that differs from past promises."

OBAMA III: Duckin' The Debates?

Conservative bloggers are criticizing Obama for refusing to accept McCain's challenge to participate in a series of joint town hall meetings in addition to the three debates proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates:

• Morrissey: "This news will surprise no one that has followed the number of gaffes Obama makes when speaking off the cuff. When the press finally got embarrassed by their fawning attitude and asked him tough questions in the Pennsylvania debate, Obama folded like a cheap suit against Hillary -- and immediately stopped appearing in debates. He has provided an almost endless series of gaffes when speaking extemporaneously, and obviously wants no part of McCain in this format."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Supporters of Senator Obama have to be deeply disturbed by Obama's decision to duck Senator McCain's invitation to change American political debate via a series of one-on-one townhall meetings across the U.S. Here was a chance to genuinely reinvent how presidential elections are conducted -- to raise the conversation and empower voters, and Obama ran away. So much for the Obama rhetoric of change and a new era: Obama's a machine pol afraid to get too far from [adviser David] Axelrod's script. The big duck is an admission by Obama that the scars from his late primary season debate battles with Hillary still smart."
• Yousefzadeh: "Gee, I thought that the old, enfeebled, elderly and Methuselah-resembling John McCain wouldn't stand a sand castle's chance in an earthquake again the young, vigorous, rhetorically masterful Barack Obama. [...] Front runners don't like debating, of course, but again, it was my understanding that Barack Obama would clean John McCain's rhetorical clock in any debate between the two. Strange then that Obama doesn't take advantage of an opportunity to engage in a little clock-cleaning."

OBAMA VEEPSTAKES: Draft Clark: The Sequel

Matt Stoller and Aaron Ament have launched a campaign urging Obama to choose Gen. Wesley Clark as his running mate (or at least put Clark on his VP short list). Stoller explains:

"Before the idiot DC villagers threw a hissy fit about Clark, he was on the short list for VP. Is it realistic to see him back on that list? Well really, it's up to Obama. Choosing Clark would be a clear demonstration that Obama intends to significantly shift the political debate in the country and that he refuses to allow old school bitchy sniping from DC insiders to dominate our national political discourse. What Clark said -- that McCain has no experience in national security decision-making -- is absolutely true, and it's a point that needs emphasis repeatedly and effectively by someone who can deliver it.

Clark has a 34 year service record, has won a war, commanded troops all over the world, and nearly died of his injuries in Vietnam. He has run for President and been a surrogate for hundreds of Democrats all over the country, including Ned Lamont. He was against the war in Iraq, and knows the military bureaucracy inside and out. This is someone who would make an insanely good Vice President, and someone who has deep connections to the newly formed progressive communities that emerged from 2002-2006. Senator Obama would do well to choose Clark as his running mate."

Many liberal bloggers support Stoller's campaign:

• digby: "I think now would be the perfect moment to reject the faux-outrage culture of the Village and pick somebody who isn't afraid to call McCain out on foreign policy and military affairs. Steve Schmidt will send everyone in DC a case of smelling salts and a personal fainting couch, but unless Obama figures out a way to signal that he's getting off the hissy fit express, this campaign is going to be torturous. And we know one thing: capitulating to it doesn't work. They just up the ante."
• Daily Kos' mcjoan: "Obviously the choice of running mate is highly personal and not something in which any outside organization can have much sway. I don't expect this effort to make much difference in Obama's selection process. But highlighting General Clark and the tremendous service he's given not only his party, but the nation, is more than a worthwhile cause, particulary when the story makes it to the traditional media."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Wes Clark was my guy in 2004 but after what I perceived to be a lackluster campaign (although I still voted for him in CA after he had dropped out) I was actually glad he didn't run in 2008. But now that it's clear that neither [Hillary] Clinton nor [VA Sen. Jim] Webb will be VP, and after Clark's refreshing display of backbone when dealing with the Face The Nation flap (not to mention the lackluster supposed remaining shortlist), I'm enthusiastically on board with Clark as Obama's VP."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The McCain Surge

Hot Air's Allahpundit notes that McCain leads Obama for the first time in the Rasmussen Daily