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 August 5, 2008 01:20 PM