October 06, 2008

10/6: Off Come The Gloves

Conservative bloggers were delighted by Sarah Palin's incendiary remarks about Barack Obama, in which she invoked his ties to ex-Weatherman William Ayers and accused the Dem nominee of "pallin' around with terrorists". Righty bloggers have been discussing Obama's connection to Ayers for months, and they're pleased that John McCain's campaign is finally willing to "go there." Matt Lewis echoes the views of many conservative bloggers when he writes: "If McCain is going to have a chance to win this race, he will need to take the gloves off -- or at least -- empower Palin to do so." Liberal bloggers are responding to Palin's remarks by arguing that she is in no position to portray Obama as un-American, considering that her husband Todd Palin was a member of a secessionist organization.

Liberal bloggers aren't surprised by McCain's "newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character". Oliver Willis writes: "Did anyone with even half of a brain not see this coming?...McCain is going to throw mud. It is what Republicans do when elections come down to crunch time." Still, liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain for adopting this strategy, arguing that he is damaging his reputation in a desperate attempt to reverse his slide in the polls. Most lefty bloggers are confident that these tactics won't work, and they're applauding Obama for hitting back hard with his "Keating Five" web video.

PALIN: Better Late Than Never

Conservative bloggers are pleased that Palin invoked Obama's association with Ayers and accused him of of "pallin' around with terrorists":

• RedState's Dan Spencer: "Obama continues to struggle to downplay his association with this unrepentant American terrorist. I thank Governor Palin bringing Obama's association with Ayers to the attention of the American voters."
• Lewis: "Kudos to Sarah Palin for calling out Obama on his close connection to a domestic terrorist who used to blow up buildings -- a man who still doesn't regret it. [...] We've got about thirty days left until Election Day. If voters know the truth about Obama's friendship with Ayers -- and still elect him -- we will have to live with that. But I suspect that most voters have no idea exactly how bad Ayers is, nor do they realize just how close he is to Obama. This, of course, is exactly why the McCain campaign must do a better job of informing the public of this fact. [...] If McCain is going to have a chance to win this race, he will need to take the gloves off -- or at least -- empower Palin to do so."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "The McCain camp says it is going to get tough on Barack Obama during the last month of the campaign. Well, I certainly hope so: if they've been waiting for someone else to do it -- reporters, say -- that hasn't worked out so well. Realistically, the only ones who can bring public attention to Obama's weaknesses are John McCain and Sarah Palin. Which is why Palin told a group in Colorado today that Obama doesn't view America the same way they do."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "As more details emerge on the Obama-Ayers connection [...],the Obama talking heads are hysterical with outrage, which is a clear signal to Team McCain to keep digging and swinging on the subject of Obama's judgement. Just who, after all, does he intend to staff the 3,000 executive branch jobs with? Who will be at Defense and Justice and Treasury and State?"
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "Politically, I wonder whether bringing up Obama's relationship with Ayers will work for McCain given the severity of the financial crisis the blowback from 'going negative.' But nonetheless, it seems worthwhile for Americans to consider that they are on the verge of electing a president who spent most of his life among the most radical fringe elements of the left. Obama likes to say that he didn't know Ayers well, but seriously, how many terrorists does the average person know, even tangentially?"

PALIN II: Pleading Ignorance Ain't Gonna Fly

Conservative bloggers are disputing Obama strategist David Axelrod's claim that Obama "didn't know [Ayers'] history" when he attended a campaign event at Ayers' home in the 1990s:

• RedState's Erick Erickson: "We're really supposed to believe Obama did not know [about Ayers' past] by 1996, given all the major media coverage of the 1996 Democratic Convention going back to Chicago despite the 1968 riots -- including local and national media interviews with Bill Ayers on the subject [...]? You've got to be kidding me."
• Hinderaker: "It is inconceivable that Barack Obama knew Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn well enough to kick off his first political campaign in their living room, but didn't know that Ayers and Dohrn were Communists who led the Weatherman faction of SDS, urged young people to 'kill your parents,' carried out approximately 30 bombings, including New York City's police headquarters, the Capitol and the Pentagon, celebrated the Charles Manson murders, spent years living underground to avoid criminal prosecution, and continued to express their lifelong hatred for the United States in books, magazine articles, and public speeches. This is rather like a person claiming that he had worked closely with Arnold Schwarzenegger for years, but had no idea that he was once a bodybuilder and movie actor. Ayers' and Dohrn's radical past is their only claim to fame."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "A defense that Obama didn't knew in the 1990s that Ayers was unrepentant would be plausible. However, the campaign must have concluded that this defense isn't good enough. A defense that Obama didn't know about any of the underlying terrorism is preposterous."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Ayers was hardly quiet about his life and his aspirations. He wrote a book about it in 2001. Chicago Magazine did a lengthy profile of him at the time, complete with pictures of Ayers standing on an American flag thrown on the ground in an alley. Nevertheless, Obama continued to work with Ayers at the Woods Fund and work together on public events. Either Obama liked what Ayers did, or he's the most clueless politician to have ever reached the US Senate, and neither commends itself as a recommendation for a presidential candidate."

PALIN III: Don't Throw Stones If You Live In A Glass House

Many liberal bloggers are arguing that Palin is in no position to cast aspersions on Obama's patriotism, considering that her husband Todd was a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party for years:

• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "If Sarah Palin wants to talking about palling around with people who find America less than perfect, then it's time to talk about her association with the Alaska Independence Party (AIP)..."
• TPM's Greg Sargent: "If Palin is going to say this, it is now perfectly legitimate to point out that she repeatedly courted a secessionist group founded by someone who openly professed hatred of the American government, cursed our flag, and wanted to secede from the Union. Sarah's husband, Todd Palin, was a member of this group, which continues to venerate that founder to this day, for years. [...] The main takeaway from today's Times story is that Obama's ties to Ayers are, if anything, less substantial than commonly alleged. So if the Ayers association means Obama 'palled around' with 'terrorists,' as Palin put it today, surely Palin can be said to have 'palled around' with a secessionist party whose founder openly professed hatred of America. If Palin is going to directly question Obama's patriotism over his association Ayers, surely all these facts are now fair game and freshly relevant."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "Sarah Palin is accusing Barack Obama of 'palling around with terrorists.' But isn't her husband a former member of a political party which has treason against the United States as its central tenet? Answer: yes."
• Firedoglake's Phoenix Woman: "An elected governor of a state within the United States of America is palling around with people who openly hate America. More than that -- she married one of them and is married to him to this day. [...] Even without being a card-carrying member, she still to this day cuddles up to them and speaks at their meetings."

PALIN IV: The AP Plays The Race Card?

Conservative bloggers are blasting the AP for publishing an "analysis" piece which argues (among other things) that Palin's attack on Obama "carried a racially tinged subtext":

"By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is 'palling around with terrorists' and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign. And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret."

• RedState's Moe Lane: "The AP desperately tries to play the race card on Palin."
• Michelle Malkin: "Putting the 'Ass' in 'Associated Press,' one of the wire service's Obama water-carriers attempts to smear Sarah Palin as a racist for spotlighting Barack Obama's longtime relationships with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. [...] Meanwhile, back in the real world, McCain continues to forbid his campaign from going after Obama for his longtime friendship and ideological partnership with Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- and refuses to attack Obama on the Fannie/Freddie/CRA debacles because he fears being perceived as a racist. Earth to McCain: They will see RAAAACISM in whatever you and Palin will say and do from now until Election Day. Fight or get rolled. Wake. Up."
• AmSpec Blog's Quin Hillyer: "This might be the single most irresponsible piece the Associated Press has EVER run. Not only does it badly misstate (i.e. excuses, plays down, hides) the level of Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, but it goes to phenomenally bizarre lengths to claim that Sarah Palin's repeated references to Ayers -- who is white -- somehow 'carry a racially tinged subtext.' HUH????!!???? This is sick. Literally sick. Have things really reached the point where ANY criticism of Obama is racist? Next thing you know, criticism of Obama for having the most liberal voting record in the Senate will be called racist."
• Hinderaker: "When the McCain campaign ran an ad that had a white woman in it, it was denounced as racist. When it ran an ad that had an African-American man (Franklin Raines) in it, it was denounced as racist. Now the McCain campaign links Obama to a white man, the former terrorist, and still anti-American, Bill Ayers. That's racist too. I think we've exhausted just about all the possibilities. The only non-racist thing McCain can do, apparently, is concede the election. There once was a time when the Associated Press was a respected news-gathering agency. Some years ago, it began to abandon that mission in order to transform itself into a liberal advocacy organization. That transformation is now pretty much complete."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "[This is] one of the clearest examples you'll ever see of why The One seldom dirties his hands by playing the race card. Not only will his political surrogates do it for him, his media surrogates happily will, too."
• The Next Right's Jon Henke: "Why are Douglass K. Daniel, the Associated Press and Andrew Sullivan so eager to race-bait? I'm not saying they're racists, per se, but it is rather remarkable how often they imagine they're hearing 'dog whistles'. It's even more remarkable that they have no problem fomenting racial tension for political gain every time they find a way to infer racism."

MCCAIN: Here Comes The Sludge...

Liberal bloggers weren't surprised by the news that McCain is launching "a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character" that will criticize Obama's "judgment, honesty and personal associations":

• Firedoglake's Blue Texan: "You knew this was coming."
• Willis: "Did anyone with even half of a brain not see this coming? [...] McCain is going to throw mud. It is what Republicans do when elections come down to crunch time."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "Golly. Who could have predicted that a Republican presidential campaign would go down this road when October rolled around?"

Most liberal bloggers are portraying McCain's assault on Obama's character as an act of desperation:

• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "[This] is the sign of a candidate and campaign with nothing substantive to run on, and only a desperate final hail Mary as a last resort."
• BarbinMD: "As John McCain watches his last chance to be president slipping through his fingers, he's decided that it's time to go South Carolina 2000 on Barack Obama. [...] John McCain is afraid to run on the war, he's afraid to run on health care, and he's terrified to run on the economy, so he's going to go for fear and smear. It's all John McCain has left."

That said, liberal bloggers are still criticizing McCain for embracing such a strategy:

• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "Sometimes, I try to imagine what it will be like for John McCain when this campaign is over, and he realizes how completely he has destroyed his character and his honor. I cannot imagine that it will seem worth it come December."
• BooMan: "It looks to me like John McCain is going to make the last month of this campaign as unpleasant and dishonorable as possible. And that is going to leave a mark on his legacy almost as large as his decision to select a beauty contestant as his running mate."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "John McCain already sold his soul to Karl Rove. These next few weeks are going to define him forever."
• digby: "This is what heroes with honor and integrity do. A true patriot will always try to change the subject by smearing his opponents character, particularly during time of crisis."

MCCAIN II: Destined To Fail?

Most liberal bloggers are confident that McCain's assault on Obama's character won't work:

• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "Bring it on. McCain will continue to trash his brand as a straight-talking bi-partisan maverick, the media will be repulsed, and it really is too little too late. I really am surprised that they thought they could run a substance free biography based campaign during a two-front war and an economic crisis, but by now I should never be surprised by Republican stupidity."
• Ezra Klein: "This assault probably will fail, and it probably will be defeated. Because the Obama campaign has figured out something pretty basic about it: Though the attacks work to touch something very deep and very real and a little bit scary in the American psyche, they're fundamentally pretty stupid. Stupider, I'd guess, than the voters, who may find a campaign based on reference to aging radicals and Columbia professors and crimes from the 1960s a bit esoteric amidst a financial crisis."
• Beeton: "Too bad for John McCain, not only is the country in a much different place than it was just 4 years ago, but the left is far better organized with a media infrastructure that has been able to effectively hit back against such attacks in real time. This isn't 2004 anymore."
• Willis: "In the next month we are likely to hear all sorts of smears about Sen. Obama, his wife, and the rest of their family. We'll hear the smears from John McCain, the screechings of Sarah Palin, Republican operatives and the media. Then Barack Obama will talk, the caricature will be forced to do battle with the reality and lose, and America will understand we live in a serious time on the edge of the precipice and we need a steady hand to lead us. In all likelihood, even though the steady hand is a young black one with a funny name, we're ready as a nation to finally get serious about the future and not give a hoot."
• FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver: "I am not here to dispute that this is McCain's best strategy -- in the same way that an onside kick is a team's best strategy when it trails late in the game with no timeouts left. But like the onside kick, it is fairly unlikely to work. [...] If the McCain campaign brings up William Ayers -- or Jeremiah Wright -- it will almost certainly be seen as attack politics. This might seem to be stating the obvious. But remember that this wasn't the case during the primaries. The Wright and Ayers stories were instead driven by actual news -- ABC's reporting of Wright's inflammatory sermons, for instance -- and were largely not pushed by the [Hillary] Clinton campaign. So unless McCain's oppo research team is sitting on some fresh news about Obama's ties to Ayers or Wright, the stories are liable to be reported as a typical partisan attack, which will impeach their credibility in the public's eyes and reduce their staying power."

MCCAIN III: The Last Battle

Several liberal bloggers believe that this election will serve as either a vindication or a repudiation of this type of attack politics:

• Klein: "This next month will be ugly. And it contains a great danger: If it works, McCain's vicious strategy will be purified in the clean light of victory. He will give a speech before a series of unexpected audiences -- the Arab-American Institute, say, followed by the NAACP -- and an interview in which he says contrite things, and the media will applaud this, because they do not want to believe McCain a bigot or find themselves at war with the White House. But McCain's strategy is an opportunity of sorts, too. If his campaign's final assault is defeated, it will be read as a repudiation of these politics. It will be understood as firm proof that you can no longer purposefully shatter this country's uneasy sense of tolerance and consensus and be assured that your pieces will be bigger. Just as the strategy would have been whitewashed by victory, it will be darkened by defeat."
• Obsidian Wings' publius: "McCain is apparently set to launch one last vicious wave of character assaults on Obama -- 'the Ayers strategy,' if you will. To which I say -- good. Like Luke's battle with Vader, this is a necessary and inevitable fight -- so let's have it. Political campaigns are the ultimate Darwinian environment. Whatever strategy wins passes its genes on to the next campaign. [Lee] Atwater won. Rove won. And so they live on even today. It didn't matter that they used slimy tactics. So long as these tactics succeeded (e.g., Swift Boat), they would inevitably reemerge in future campaigns. We can rail and whine about Atwater slime all we want, but there's only one way to stop it -- win. Ayers-style tactics will be abandoned if and only if they don't work. And that's why winning is important. It's not merely that Obama will be a substantively better president. His winning (or losing) will affect the shape of future campaigns. What's so potentially exciting about an Obama victory (among other things) is that it means a substantive, non-juvenile campaign strategy can win. It also means that [McCain strategist Steve] Schmidt's Atwater tactics will go down in embarrassing defeat."

OBAMA: Massive Retaliation

Liberal bloggers are delighted that "Obama, after attacks on his character and past associations, is hitting back by highlighting John McCain's ties to the 'Keating Five' savings-and-loan scandal". They believe that McCain's ties to the Keating Five scandal are more substantial -- and potentially more damaging -- than Obama's ties to Ayers:

• Sudbay: "McCain wants to talk about candidate's 'associations.' Let's start with Charles Keating."
• Marshall: "For weeks, many of you have been asking me, why haven't the Democrats been bringing up McCain's history as a member of the Keating Five? Especially since it ties so clearly into today's financial crisis, his wife's company's ties to Keating and his history of supporting lax banking and finance industry regulation? When is the Obama campaign going to bring this up, I keep hearing. Well, I think you've got your answer."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "Obviously reporters are going to be sorely tempted to equate Charles Keating with William Ayers and rail about how the campaigns are both descending into the muck. The difference is that Charles Keating had a financial relationship with John McCain for which McCain did political favors during a financial crisis that was structurally identical to the one the next President will have to solve, while William Ayers was a guy living in Obama's neighborhood who committed terrorist acts when Obama was eight."
• Willis: "This [Keating Five] documentary and other evidence of John McCain's long-term affair with deregulation directly ties into the current collapse of the financial markets. Unlike the McCain campaign's flailing character attacks, John McCain had a role in the plague now infecting the American economy."
• Open Left's David Sirota: "Though the Politico tries to draw an equivalency between talking about McCain's Keating Five record and the GOP trying to liken Obama to a terrorist sympathizer, there is no equivalency at all. While the attacks on Obama are absurd extrapolations, it is undeniable that McCain was formally rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for his involvement in a financial scandal most analagous to today's economic crisis."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Remember, the Keating Five isn't just another scandal, it's a financial scandal in which John McCain and 4 other Senators did favors for big banker friends who then brought down 1,000 US banks. Sound familiar? And McCain did this at the age of 54. He was no spring chicken. By the age of 54, your ethics are pretty well established."
• Firedoglake's Attaturk: "Twenty years ago, Barack Obama was on the spur of the moment doing this, giving a complete stranger enough money to make it back to Norway to be with her husband. Being a good Samaritan. [...] And what was John McCain up to 20 years ago? Why, hanging out and greasing the wheels for his buddy and future felon Charlie Keating. McCain's former benefactor and close personal friend. Oh, and look, there's even a documentary about it! Thanks for walking into that trap by telegraphing your coming mud-tossing Maverick."

On the right side of the blogosphere, Jim Geraghty doesn't think the Obama camp's "Keating Five" attack will work: "Can you find a single American who otherwise would support McCain but has decided against it because of his meetings with an Savings and Loan owner back in the late 1980s? (By contrast, I could find a lot of Americans who think a lengthy working relationship with a man who tried to kill U.S. Servicemen, policemen, and innocent civilians is ipso facto disqualifying for those who aspire to be commander-in-chief.) This is chaff -- noisy, shiny, easily deployed -- designed to throw off a metaphorical radar-guided missile from reaching its target."

OBAMA II: Bravo, Barack!

Liberal bloggers are also pleased that Obama is "opening a major assault on what he charges is a 'radical plan' by [McCain] to decentralize health insurance":

• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "At long last the Obama campaign is trying to get some attention for John McCain's health care proposals -- proposals that are much more radical than they seem at first glance. The crux of the matter is that McCain wants to eliminate the tax-favored treatment of employer-provided health insurance, substantially undue regulatory minimums about what insurance plans must cover, and over time phase out any form of tax preference for health insurance whatsoever. The vision, at the end of the day, is to create a situation where most Americans have much less comprehensive insurance coverage."
• publius: "I'm ecstatic that McCain's health care plan has taken center stage on the campaign trail. It's a debate worth having. Unlike the juvenile nonsense we've endured for most of the campaign, it's a truly substantive political debate -- one that illustrates the deeper philosophical differences between the candidates and their parties. It also illustrates -- to me, anyway -- an important theoretical flaw with conservative economic ideology."
• Klein: "McCain has managed to build a health care plan that's a bad deal from a medical standpoint, an insurance standpoint, a cost standpoint, and a tax standpoint. Even insurers don't really win, because patient dissatisfaction with the individual market will almost certainly hasten real reforms. It is, as far as I can tell, a lose-lose-lose-lose-lose health care plan. A rare feat."
• Willis: "For decades John McCain has been the benficienary of government health care as a veteran of the armed forces and as a U.S. Senator. But for you, Mr. and Mrs. America, he wants to impose a tax of epic proportions."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Murphy Advises The Mac

Ex-McCain strategist Mike Murphy:

"...For the last nine weeks the McCain campaign has tried win by raising Obama's negatives. Ads have attacked, McCain and Palin has have attacked. This has failed. Over the top negative attacks and a campaign message that too often seems to be little more than sarcasm and suppressed anger has damaged McCain's priceless and hard earned 'brand' as a different kind of Republican. McCain's best option now is to ditch the chainsaw and offer a scared and angry country what it badly wants; hope and leadership.

Palin should drop the braying attacks on Obama's aging hippie bomber pals and start connecting to her cherished hockey moms on the one issue they = are actually worried about; a quickly slowing economy. Chuck the hacky and ineffective negative ads and switch to man on the street spots with real people voicing their real doubts about Obama; too weak to stand up to Washington's mighty special interest cartel or the newly empowered Democratic bosses of the Congress and Senate, too liberal to know how to fix the economy, too inexperienced to handle a dangerous world. On Tuesday, McCain should look into the camera and connect to the 80 million scared and worried Americans who will be watching him.

McCain is losing. To regain a chance to win, McCain must run as who he truly is; pragmatic, tough, bi-partisan and ready to break some special interest china to get the right things done in Washington. Fix the message, and you will fix the states."

LEST WE FORGET: Parents Of Obama Volunteer Couldn't Be More Proud, Sick Of Son

From The Onion:

"OAK PARK, IL -- Parents of Obama '08 campaign volunteer Mark Lowe said their son's selfless work for the Illinois senator has shown the 22-year-old to be mature, civic-minded, and absolutely unbearable to talk to. 'I remember when I was going to vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary, and [Mark] spoke for 30 minutes about how Obama is the next Kennedy, the only candidate capable of bringing real change, and how Hillary embodies everything that's wrong with Washington,' David Lowe, 58, said. 'It's incredible that he's so passionate about our nation's future, and now he really needs to shut the hell up.' Lowe, who spends up to 40 hours a week sending e-mails, making phone calls, and engaging complete strangers in drawn-out discussions about Obama's message of hope as he canvasses door-to-door, is expected to cost the Democratic nominee some 15,000 votes."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at October 6, 2008 02:09 PM