Entries associated with the tag "John Mccain":

Not only did my SUPERPHONE die about 9:15, it's a bit hinky with our blog system, hence the slow fade from blog to Twitter to silence. I have to go to bed, but some late thoughts:

* Best moment of the night: reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing the national anthem with everyone in Grant Park.

* Second: The guys on the Michigan Ave. divider singing "This Land Is My Land." Thank you for that.

* Further: Obama's speech. Sam Cooke, Lincoln, puppies, and the Bible. The omen I should have picked up on was catching a truly gifted Red Line busker singing "A Change Is Gonna Come" the other day. Probably the best busker I've ever seen--a saintly voice. It takes guts to do "A Change Is Gonna Come." And he pulled it off.

* McCain's speech. It will get lost in the fray, but it was outstanding--not merely conciliatory, but insistent, almost to the point of excess, on the need to work with Obama's victory. Just when I think the man has lost all sense of decency he pulls me back in. My gut reaction is that McCain's sense of duty kicked in, which I think is strong with him. It's an invigorating perspective on being an American in the political opposition; watch it, if you missed it.

* Rhetoric and words: they're important. I like being reminded of that, since the subject is obviously dear to me. Also, voting. If you're like me the 2000 election was a formative event (I stayed up until the infomercials took over from the cable news broadcasts), but it's still pretty impressive that I can go to the polling place on Tuesday morning and have a new president beyond all sense of doubt by Tuesday evening.

* Also, McCain just seemed relieved to me. Bears mentioning.

* Roland Martin crying on CNN.

* All the "Yes we can" and "Si se puede" chants on Michigan leaving the rally. It was a bit like what I imagine Berlin was like just after the Wall fell.

* The crowd at the rally. Energetic and obviously partisan, but usually respectful and generally aware, in the group mind, of the gravity of the event.

* Atrios, still with his finger on the pulse: PRESIDENT BARACK FUCKING HUSSEIN OBAMA.

* Hearing "The Rising" on the way out. That song kills me. I can't make it through the bridge without getting misty.

* My home state. Sic semper tyrannis, mufuhs. There are no easy buckets on this court.

* Obama whatever, the big news tonight is that Virgil Goode might lose. Goode used to be a tolerable, libertarian conservative Southern Democrat-turned-Republican whom I didn't pay much mind (I grew up next to his district, but not in it), until he started going berserk over Muslims and coming across like a damn fool. I realize that this is a fairly obscure race, and one I didn't even pay attention to because I figured Goode would walk away with it, but it's resonant. Obama's victory is a watershed moment, but within a narrow timeframe it's not surprising. Goode facing defeat knocked me on my ass.

Sarah Palin, the gift that keeps on giving:

"In Reno, Nevada, Sarah Palin just told the crowd about John McCain, 'Send him on his last mission!'"

John McCain in Indiana:

"He wanted $3 million for an overhead projector in a planetarium in Chicago. My friends, when you need to stay in your homes, when you need to have your taxes lowered, we're going to spend $3 million for an overhead projector in a planetarium? Not on my watch."

One of the unfortunate things about this campaign is that the Democrats nominated a compelling if risky candidate and... this is what he got to run against. Some weeks this has seemed like the 49ers-Chargers Super Bowl. Per Ben's suggestion:

Based on virtually all the polls since late September, the odds are obviously in Obama's favor, but Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com flags one variable that may favor McCain:

"But there is one remaining theoretical possibility that amounts to the 'nightmare scenario' for pollsters. What if those who refused to be interviewed have very different political views than those who agreed to participate?

"This concern is far from trivial, as even the most rigorous national surveys struggle to achieve response rates over 30 percent. And it is hard to know much for certain about those who do not respond because, obviously, we cannot interview them."

[snip]

"While they always weight this group up to its appropriate level, he could not rule out the possibility that the missing respondents may be those with less racial tolerance, as they were in Pew's 1997 study."

Via the Atlantic's cool-headed, analytical Marc Ambinder.

The inestimable Billmon:

"It might not be a 1964 or 1972 or 1984 style absolute landslide, especially in the electoral college, where the Republicans have built in structural advantages (like the overweights given to small rural states), but -- again, assuming Gallup is even close to right -- there shouldn't be any doubt on Wednesday morning that the country has decisively rejected both the Republican Party and the conservative ideology that has dominated American politics since Ronald Reagan first took office."

What you need to know going into tomorrow:

* Barack's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, passed away today. Duncan Black, who has such a gift for finding the less-obvious tension in political news, makes a salient point about how the tragedy is greater than her death alone: "Obama's going into this without any of his guardians left - father, mother, stepfather, grandmother, grandfather."

* The most salient Reader articles on Obama: Ben Joravsky explains why a vote for Obama isn't a vote for Daley; Michael Miner argues that personal dynamism, not political movements, boosted Obama and Harold Washington to political success; Hank de Zutter profiled Obama back in 1995.

* Also relevant: Ben Joravsky on Obama and the local machine.

* The Reader's roundup of election night events. If you enjoy the accompanying Sarah Palin portrait, you will also like its source, Lauri's Veeps. Its creator, Lauri Apple of FoundClothing/Gapers Block fame, will be live-painting a portrait of Joe Biden tomorrow at Sonotheque, which I will have to miss because I will probably still have my reporter's hat on in Grant Park.

* Talking Points Memo speaks with Obama's national field director, Jon Carson. He breaks down the electoral vote needs for the campaign.

* The Washington Post claims Iraq died as an issue. They've got some numbers to back it up, but it's worth remembering that Obama probably wouldn't even be the Democratic nominee without the failure of the Iraq war.

* John McCain hit seven states today; he's far and away the most energetic part of his campaign. His GOTV is busted.

* A reminder: if you really, really, really can't decide, vote your pocketbook!

* The Trib has a handy guide to tomorrow's rally.

* The go-to sites for polls: FiveThirtyEight, RealClearPolitics, TPM Poll Tracker, DKos scoreboard

* Twitter: The WaPo's VoteMonitor; Twitter's own filter; Ana Marie Cox; Joe Trippi; Twitter Vote Report

Greg Hinz:

"The irony of Hyde Park professorial cool trumping an emotional foe with a military background when the last local guy to be nominated for president, Gov. Adlai Stevenson, saw his intellectualism trumped by Dwight Eisenhower's martial fame."

Update: Chicagoland correspondent ptb: "for your list of electoral anti-veteran outcomes, possibly homosexual Abe Lincoln over McClellan, 1864"

I will continue to repeat myself: 

2004: Military hero loses to undistinguished former member of the Texas Air National Guard.

2000: Vietnam vet loses* to same

1996: Decorated member of the Greatest Generation loses to draft dodger.

1992: See 1996.

1988: Maybe this is an exception, but he was running against Michael Dukakis (for the record, Dukakis served in Korea, but GHWB was highly decorated)

1984: Both men served, but neither saw action or left the country, IIRC.

1980: Naval officer loses to Hollywood serviceman

It just doesn't really help that much anymore. 

* This is complicated, obviously, but Kathleen Harris/Supreme Court bullshit aside I tend to subscribe to the truism that you don't blame the refs.

Eric Zorn gives eight reasons why Obama will win. None of them is the most obvious.

BREAKING! MUST CREDIT CHICAGOLAND!!!: PEOPLE LIKE MONEY AND WANT MORE OF IT

I spent a while yesterday reading articles and playing with tax calculators, and based on my very rough estimates, I would get about a $60 tax break under McCain's proposed tax plan. Under Obama's proposed tax plan, I would get about a $600 tax break. 

I used this to get a generic estimate of what I would pay under the current tax structure given a standard COL raise [ed note: knock on wood! cross your fingers for me still having a job by inauguration!]. I used the Obama-Biden Tax Calculator to see what socialist redistribution would do for me.

OK, this part is significant enough that it deserves its own paragraph. Instead of a tax calculator, John McCain has a section of his site which depicts several scenarios in which a married white couple in a pastoral setting with two children would get tax breaks. One of the couples, in fairness, may be intended to be somewhat swarthy. Besides the fact that the presentation is obviously TOTAL DESIGN AND CULTURAL FAIL I am neither married nor have children and so that page is about as relevant as the untranslated Dead Sea Scrolls.

So I used the Election Taxes site and checked it against some news articles and it seemed to square: People like me, which is to say people who are far from wealthy, will get money get money under President Obama, and we can go out and buy drugs and see godless Hollywood entertainments the way Marx prophesied.

If you don't believe me or think that I may be in a small, culturally if not financially elite demographic, Viveka Welly at chartjunk did a clever, Edwart Tufte-esque redrawing of a Washington Post graphic that charts both the candidates' tax plans and their relationship to income distribution. It's really a great work of quantitative information design, but I've modified it slightly to make it a bit clearer in its implication, drawing on the work of some of our generation's finest economic theorists.

As you can see, the vast, vast majority of Americans will get a considerably larger tax break under Obama's dramatically progressive tax plan. Whether or not that makes fiscal sense is obviously a hot topic, but I am not trying to argue any economic theory more complicated than Occam's Razor. If you are voting for Obama, and a McCain supporter asks you why, and you don't really want to talk about it, just say you are voting your pocketbook. They won't think you're right, but generally the logic will make sense to them.

Update: This post by bonddad has a dramatic graphic about government spending and consumer spending vis a vis GDP that's extremely relevant to the discussion above.

Bridge for sale, cheap:

Strategists say if McCain loses, it won't be his fault

If by "strategists" you mean Republican political professionals, including Dick Armey and McCain's own political director, yes, I bet they do say that. I wonder what Mitch Daniels thinks.

There are so many complex issues in this presidential election. Who knows how we’ll get out of the financial, military, environmental, heath-care, and entitlement messes we’re in? But things got simpler when, during the second of the three presidential debates, John McCain accused Barack Obama of earmarking $3 million to buy an "overhead projector" for "a planetarium in Chicago." The charge was surreal. What could McCain be referring to? Some gold-plated custom number from a secret department at Staples?

By the next morning, newspapers all over the country were pointing out that the money was budgeted to replace the planetarium's nearly 40-year-old sky projection system, which spreads the whole firmament across the dome of Adler's historic Sky Theater. The request for federal funding wasn't approved, but, according to Sky Theater manager Mark Webb, the planetarium is still hoping to replace the old, two-ton machine—all gears and motors—with something more appropriate for the digital age. Webb says a new system would allow for more flexible, accurate, and up-to-date programs and "would let us see space from anywhere in the known universe."

Amazingly, those pesky front-page corrections didn't stop McCain from making the "overhead projector" claim again. In a jaw-dropping moment during the third and final debate, he hauled it back out using exactly the same words. And that’s when all the complex issues of this campaign clicked into focus: if you think the Adler should make do with the old technology—or maybe a blackboard—and if you want another president who sticks to his story no matter what the facts are, you know who to vote for.

Now, take these words home and think it through
Or the next rhyme I write might be about you

Per Michael Miner's advice, I tried to read John Kass's weird column about liberty, but I hit a wall here:

"The entrepreneurial mind isn't willing to settle and wants to make more than $250,000 in salary or whatever the federal government deems proper. They don't want proper. What they want is to take risks and reach the American Dream."

Oh, for fuck's sake. What he's blithely referring to is Obama's plan to raise income taxes on households making $250K. No one's capping income, as Kass implies, but I guess 39%: socialism, 35%: TEH AMERICAN DREAM. If you think that's too much--or Obama's plans to substantially raise the capital gains tax on the same income bracket, or estate taxes on estates worth over $3.5 million dollars--fine. But it's a better deal than the early years of Chairman Reagan's reign, who saddled anyone with a 1983 income of $106K ($233K in 2008 dollars, via) with a 50% tax burden.

Joshua Green, now with the Atlantic and one of the country's most perceptive political writers, reviewed "Reagan's Liberal Legacy" in a January 2003 piece for the Washington Monthly. He wrote:

"Reagan continued these 'modest rollbacks' in his second term. The historic Tax Reform Act of 1986, though it achieved the supply side goal of lowering individual income tax rates, was a startlingly progressive reform. The plan imposed the largest corporate tax increase in history--an act utterly unimaginable for any conservative to support today. Just two years after declaring, 'there is no justification' for taxing corporate income, Reagan raised corporate taxes by $120 billion over five years and closed corporate tax loopholes worth about $300 billion over that same period. In addition to broadening the tax base, the plan increased standard deductions and personal exemptions to the point that no family with an income below the poverty line would have to pay federal income tax. Even at the time, conservatives within Reagan's administration were aghast. According to Wall Street Journal reporters Jeffrey Birnbaum and Alan Murray, whose book Showdown at Gucci Gulch chronicles the 1986 measure, 'the conservative president's support for an effort once considered the bastion of liberals carried tremendous symbolic significance.' When Reagan's conservative acting chief economic adviser, William Niskanen, was apprised of the plan he replied, 'Walter Mondale would have been proud.'"

Like I said, maybe you think Obama's tax plan is unfair. And that's fine. Maybe you're a libertarian; maybe you're an anarchist, and it would warm my heart if John Kass secretly wears a suit coat with safety-pinned sleeves around the house and gets down to Never Mind the Bollocks. What really chaps my ass about Kass's column is the insinuation that Obama represents some kind of sea change in the philosophy of government.  He's an SOP moderate Democrat. As Paul Krugman writes in the New York Review of Books, "He sounds, in other words, a lot like Bill Clinton in 1992." Fairly or not, and Clinton's administration has no small reponsibility for the economic crisis, people look back on those years with fondness for their relative stability.

Put it this way: Obama's running a different offense on a different part of the field, but it's still the same game. It's sexy and it generates traffic to pretend that we're living in a radically different country, as far as economics, personal liberties, and so forth, from any other point in my lifetime, but it's just not the case.

Unlike Michael Miner, I do think people are supporting Obama out of fear (to an extent, of course). I think they look at him and see a calm technocrat with impressive message control and increasingly bipartisan support. I think people are afraid of fear, and I think McCain sunk his campaign with a series of impulsive, hasty decisions that show a complete lack of faith in their product, in themselves.

McCain, to borrow a useful phrase from Mobb Deep, is just a shook one. John Kass is the last person to be a shook one, I'd think, but go read the column. It's nervous, meandering, and unsettled, like McCain's pitch a trailing indicator rather than a leading one, standing athwart history yelling stop, I think I'm going to barf. 

The worst possible interpretation of the Palin pick is that the McCain campaign is old and thinks with its collective dick. I didn't think that--initially she seemed plausible, for someone who didn't know anything about her, not that I knew much more than the campaign--but then I read the NYT's interesting if not particularly shocking piece on why the McCain campaign is full of fail (not mentioned: the campaign is leaking like a sieve to the liberal media during the stretch run instead of campaigning):

"What he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues — energy independence and ethics reform — and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her. A friend had said to Davis: 'The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P.'"

What is this cover of Time you speak of? Doesn't Wonkette blog there?

This was probably a good idea circa 1950, before television... and Saturday Night Live... and the 24-hour news cycle... and YouTube... and all the other things that have made the cover of Time a non-factor. Anyway, since this blog has been a repository for confused speculation on McChaos, I thought I'd pass it along. I think it might factor in, but the ultimate lesson, I'm starting to think, is that the campaign lives in fear of its own base and it's pathetically obvious.

Steve Benen labels the stream of half-assed attacks on Obama "pinata politics." Right now they've got the Ayers, socialism, welfare, and ACORN balls in the air--which is not only a lot, it's also all pretty dated (whoever can come up with a fresh, effective smear stands to make a pile). Billmon has more on ACORN.

This, incidentally, is why I haven't been able to get especially riled at the McChaos campaign's frantic meme-tossing. At this point I wouldn't trust Rick Davis to clean my fridge, much less get a well-known and heretofore fairly respected senator elected to the presidency.

Update: I totally forgot about the latest, the Obama campaign's small-donation flood.

Update II: Rick Davis: sure, maybe we'll use Rev. Wright too, why not. Clearly they haven't found the right leftovers to microwave.

John McCain just--to use Josh Marshall's piquant phrase--"played the infanticide card." It's over. More later.

Update: Eric Zorn's remarkable chronology on Born Alive and his summary; more from the Trib; Time's Michael Scherer on the Born Alive legislation; Steven Waldman's reasoned criticism from Beliefnet; Factcheck.org; NYT's Check Point; Anthony Stevens-Arroyo on BAIPA.

Update II: Here's the video, from TPM. As a TPM reader points out, scare-quoting "health" was an ill-considered gesture.

The American Conservative's blog Eunomia, by U. of C. grad student Daniel Larison, is one of the best blogs I've come across in a long time: intelligent without being arrogant, serious without being stuffy. It's also a pleasure to read in the strictest sense--he writes clear, confident sentences without decoration or bluster, which is all the more impressive for a blog (see also Ben Dueholm on Larison). As an example, "That's Not Change, That's More of the Same" is a compelling and not inaccurate critique of Barack Obama, which draws on the diverse coalition of John Kass, Ryan Lizza, and David Sirota to argue that Obama tends to track towards the status quo, arguably undermining the "change" motto of his campaign.*

Larison's point underscores a very important point about why the Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright attacks have been failing. It's barking mad to infer that he's an angry black hippie Islamoterrorist because it's so clearly not the case. The more logical critique is that Obama "associated" with Ayers and Wright, inarguably two members of the Chicago political power structure, because it was politically expedient, to avoid making waves, and that's a failing, just as it's a failing to go along with the more traditional aspects of the local machine. As Larison points out, his votes on the FISA and bailout bills, which have come under fire from progressives, are in keeping with his political nature.

Reasonable people have made their peace with this, like the Reader's own Ben Joravsky: "I’ve cut Obama some slack, just as I did Dick Durbin, Paul Simon, Sidney Yates, Paul Douglas, and all the other liberals we’ve sent to Washington. Agreeing to look the other way while the machine does its dirty deeds is part of the deal they make to win a seat in Congress and start working on important national issues." For other reasonable people it's insufferable hypocrisy. I don't know. Vote your conscience.

Either way, that's not the message that's gotten through.

How this thesis will apply to an Obama presidency is complicated, however. It's likely that he'll come into the presidency with a substantial electoral and popular victory (FiveThirtyEight currently estimates a greater than 50% chance of 375+ electoral votes) and large majorities in both houses of Congress, making him, for the first time in his political career, the leader of his party. And not just the titular leader, but its organizing principle. He'll be his own Daley, in other words. How much of his political personality has been of necessity, and how much is innate? It's a compelling question, and not one I've seen addressed (or can answer).

But as (above all other ideological associations) a skeptic, when Obama presents himself as a vessel for the hope of his supporters, I can't help but think it's a subtle acknowledgment that he's still a cipher, still unformed. As the battle to elect Obama president seemingly draws to a close, it signals the next round, the battle for his presidency.

* If you wanted to take issue with this part of Larison's argument, I think it's fair to point out that for the past seven years we've had a president with an almost pathological inability to compromise, so a go-along-to-get-along Obama presidency would represent change, although not the sexiest kind.

That's a big lead, though including third-party candidates knocks it down to 12 points, as Nate Silver explains; his analysis is, as you might guess, sound. Here are some points that jumped out at me:

"Among independents who are likely voters - a group that has swung back and forth between McCain and Obama over the course of the campaign - the Democratic ticket now leads by 18 points. McCain led among independents last week.

"McCain's campaign strategy may be hurting hurt him: Twenty-one percent of voters say their opinion of the Republican has changed for the worse in the last few weeks."

[snip]

"McCain's favorable rating has fallen four points from last week, to 36 percent, and is now lower than his 41 percent unfavorable rating. Obama, by contrast, is now viewed favorably by half of registered voters and unfavorably by just 32 percent.

"Obama holds a considerable edge over his rival on having the right 'personality and temperament' to be president, with 69 percent saying Obama does and 53 percent saying McCain does."

And here's the punchline:

"One in three voters say they have heard 'a lot' about Ayers, and 31 percent say they have heard something about him, though far fewer - 9 percent - say the association bothers them.

"Four percent of voters say that it bothers them that Obama is a Muslim, which he is not. Fifty-six percent say nothing about Obama’s past bothers them."

In other words, the difference between an active theme they've been pushing and a completely insane rumor is five points. Now, I take that to mean bringing up Ayers tomorrow night will only hurt McCain, and would surely be the takeaway moment instead of any new economic proposals. But now he's said he would. Oops.

McCain's even running behind Barack on the question of who would raise your taxes. In other words, he's finding new ways to fail. Stay tuned for my attempt to compete with Gwen Ifill, due after election day: Change: John McCain's Campaign Was Awful Plus a Sexier Thesis TK.

Update: Ian Welsh turns a skeptical eye on Obama's economic plan. His general thesis bears mentioning: don't be disappointed, what with all the enthusiasm and mixtapes and Walgreens T-shirts and whatnot, if Obama turns out to be a Clintonian neoliberal. I mean, be disappointed, I guess, but don't be surprised.

* Tribune Company star columnist Jonah Goldberg FTW: Barack Obama has it easy because he's black. Double standards sure make it hard for white candidates in America. Apparently if he was white, the McCain campaign would be hitting him "twice as hard," and obviously that would be working out swell because the real problem with the McCain campaign is that it's way too positive.

I find his piece incredibly offensive and loaded with guilt-by-association: Peter Beinart is not a "Liberal Democrat."

* Not to worry--the McCain camp has a special plan to bring out their "best material for the last ten days of the race." Until then they will presumably continue to use the same lackluster, confused approach that torpedoed McCain's greatest appeal. And just in time!

* One of the crushing flaws in McCain's attempt to paint Obama as a radical/liberal/etc is that it's really a play for staunch Republicans; meanwhile, Obama is actively courting the moderates that were supposed to be in play for McCain and might have been if his campaign, like, tried.

* Goldberg's National Review colleague Christopher Buckley endorses Obama and bails from his dad's mag.

* Ezra Klein has more on the Employee Free Choice Act.

* Uh oh.

McCain has a "new" stump speech--mostly leftovers, but one thing caught my eye:

‘‘Sen. Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi and Sen. (Harry) Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq’’

OK, that's a new one. What he's referring to is the Employee Free Choice Act, which has passed the House but not the Senate. In it, there's a provision that employees can unionize by signing cards instead of having to vote on secret ballots, aka "majority signup." Here's the AFL-CIO's take; in opposition, the Heritage Foundation. Basically the pro-EFCA people think it keeps employers from harassing employees, and the anti-EFCA people think it keeps unions and employers from harassing employees. I don't know enough about the dynamics of union voting to opine reasonably either way. Obama came out for the EFCA in 2007 (from his Senate site).

"No, no ma'am," he interrupted. "He's a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements."

Good. TPM has more.

To my knowledge there's just one man
That's really a true American: George Lincoln Rockwell.
I know for a fact he hates Commies 'cause he picketed the movie Exodus.

--Bob Dylan, "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues"

A couple days ago Michael Miner put together the nexus of crooks and terrorists that Barack Obama is part of by way of working with the Annenberg Foundation. Now, he's a long-time Chicago journalist and one of the city's most perceptive observers, but apparently he missed a huge connection. Michelle Obama once worked at the same law firm as Bill Ayers's Weatherman wife, Bernadine Dohrn: the radical terrorist-supporting fringe outfit Sidley & Austin (motto: "Palling around with terrorists since 1866")! So saith the McCain campaign!

OCI friends: beware!

Update: Here's what I don't get. The people who think Obama is a terrorist/traitor/whatever are clearly not going to vote for him. Is the McCain campaign that scared of not getting the top tenth of one percent of the craziest part of the base out? It's like if the Obama camp put all their resources into the vote of people who hand out the Socialist Worker. It just doesn't make any sense, unless it's some subconscious desire to commit electoral suicide. I'd say they've run out of ideas, but there are so many more plausible smears that seem really obvious. I'm flummoxed.

William Iberschof:

"Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen."

And it's not like he's pulling punches; Iberschof calls Ayers's activities "terrorist."

Related: After the last somber debate the country is just trying to pick a fight right now between McCain and Obama.

Further: This post, "Is McCain endangering Obama?" at the Swamp is all well and good, but citing Andrew Sullivan on the subject of McCarthyite language is ironic, given that in 2001 he called pacifists traitors. Now that there's not much future in that sort of rhetoric, he's changed his tone.

The McCain campaign plane is better than Obama's, which is cramped, uncomfortable and smells terrible most of the time. Somehow the McCain folks manage to keep their charter clean, even where the press is seated.

Wow. The thinly veiled threat at the end really seals it.

Normally I try to avoid gaffe ephemera, but this is special.

ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!

About halfway through tonight's debate, when I wasn't really paying very close attention, I realized: Obama's playing the four corners defense. It's an infuriating old basketball strategy, which the shot clock was implemented to prevent (or, in this case, Tom Brokaw), in which a team with a big lead just tosses the ball around until the clock runs out. In other words, I think Ben's right:

"For a politician with an easily exaggerated tendency to caution, this was a very, very cautious Obama performance. I've never seen him shade his views so closely to the prevailing (and badly off-kilter) Washington consensus as he did tonight."

And Roy Edroso:

"I sympathize with their dolor. Obama was low key and, it must be said, sometimes evasive, but it got him over."

To a certain extent, this can be laid at the feet of Tom Brokaw, for whom the nation's biggest crisis seemed to be please follow the rules, please and who cribbed pretty heavily from Jim Lehrer. (Maybe I can't take him seriously because I think he's always just about to say "A fireball destroyed France today, and Gehrrrrald Forrrd is dead.")

Who won this pitcher's duel? Who knows--I thought it was probably a draw, and maybe even with a bit of an edge to McCain, who seemed more engaged and, at times, empathetic. More from Roy Edroso: "Might it be that McCain is unconsciously telegraphing, so to speak, a painful awareness that he's not the man he's been asked to play on TV? I hope so -- that man may yet be President." Perhaps he was simply passing the low bar of his running mate and his campaign, but I was slightly impressed. The polls seem to disagree with me.

McCain even threw in a surprise, the only one of the night: a plan to buy $300 billion worth of bad mortgages to stabilize home prices. It might not be a bad plan, but it's not going to go over well with the base. He's really boxed in on a lot of issues.

Bonus debate meta-drinking game!

Drink when someone makes a drinking game

Drink when someone liveblogs a debate and updates about what they're drinking

Tomorrow's outrage today

That One. Know it. Fear it. Figure out what the fuck it means.

About that projector

"It has begun to fail, leaving the theater dark and groups of school students and other interested museum-goers without this very valuable and exciting learning experience."

I think this puts it about as plainly as possible as to why Bill Ayers, as an issue for Obama, has no traction:

"His larger point, which has some truth, is that the GOP has only been able to make culture-war politics work when they've been able to link those themes to real issues of jobs, safety, schools, and so on. By this standard, he expects any dedicated Obama-Ayers push to founder on the shoals of its own irrelevance."

And I think it's related to:

"I think there's probably a pretty interesting story to be told about how Republicans have lost the younger vote so badly.... I think at some point the wingnuts stopped having a conversation with the country and started having a conversation amongst themselves. It makes sense to them, but is gibberish to to the rest of us."

I was thinking about these sorts of things when I watched an excerpt from McCain's recent Albuquerque speech. His argument pretty much went like this: you want change -> you know who I am -> you don't know who Obama is. 

See the problem here?

Actually, it's both simpler and more complicated than that. John McCain's campaign sucks. I don't think that can be discounted. He has an unpopular view on Iraq, yet it's the only issue they seem to think they have an advantage on; he's ceded the issue of Afghanistan at a point when the war there is going badly; he couldn't get his own party together on the bailout bill and may have torpedoed the original agreement, which he then followed by blinking when Obama wanted to debate; his campaign admits that they can't talk about what voters claim is most important to them; his VP nominee is such a joke she's single-handedly saved Saturday Night Live. Oh, and he always comes across as a dick--like George W. Bush without the charm.

And now he wants to completely blow up employer-funded health care and pay for it by cutting Medicare. Maybe you think that's a good idea; maybe you think Obama's plan is mushy and vague. But, in the midst of an economic meltdown, his timing is a bit off.

So I'm hesitant to read too much into Obama's recent jump in the polls. Congressional races will tell us a bit more about larger shifts in the electorate. But when people try to tie poll movement to complex electoral shifts on the fly, it's at least worth keeping in mind that the simplest explanation in most circumstances is that someone screwed something up.

There's a reason that Obama is getting compared to both Reagan and FDR--he seems confident in the midst of crisis, while McChaos's campaign has been growing exponentially feckless. That's part of why the Ayers strategy is so pathetic--unlike the Swift Boat attack, there's no organization, no tenuous historical argument. Calling it a "strategy" is an insult to effective ratfucking. It reeks of desperation, and while it might be inevitably desperate, it didn't have to reek.

That, to me, is the biggest surprise: the Republican operatives have forgotten how to play. Maybe it's because the failure of the current president has stopped the money train, but I really think they're just panicking, and it shows, and it's killing them.

Update: Josh Marshall has a thoughtful analysis. His point that the left has caught up to the right in terms of having an effective online "media" of its own is salient, I think. With all the emphasis on Kos et al it's easy to forget that Instapundit, Powerline, and Red State used to be subtly influential in ways they aren't now. Why? I think they've been partisan at the expense of their own party, but it might just be the inevitable decline of empires.

The McCain campaign's decision to revisit Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright (since, you know, that worked out so well before) is wholly unsurprising given his personnel and his place in the polls, but I can't help but think it only emphasizes his rash choice of an obscure and unvetted VP candidate. Crazy pastor? Check. America-haters? Check.

I was hoping the selection of Sarah Palin would lead to a valuable, earnest national discussion on the subject "White People: Crazy?" but the ironies seem to be lost.

I've seen some attempts to brand the failed bailout bill as a Republican attempt to grind the gears, but it ain't necessarily so. When Kos, Mark Kirk, Bill Foster, Tom Udall, Jesse Jr., Dan Lipinski, and many others (Update: netroots heroine Darcy Burner, too) line up broadly on the same issue in opposition to their parties' powers that be, the truth is a lot more complicated. House members, with smaller, more ideologically pure/radical beliefs and constituencies, are going to be less likely to play along with Establishment consensus, which is right now unenthusiastically for the bailout bill. If anything is grinding the gears, it's the rush to act on a crisis that the experts themselves are at odds on the magnitude of. The Incredible Disappearing President, obviously, can't do much.

Update: This is clearly your fault, peons. You should listen to the experts and do what you're told. No, the experts who are telling you to vote for the bill. Wait, where are you going...?

One of my commenters expressed disappointment that Obama would embrace the current, desultory bailout bill, but I'm not terribly surprised--I'd expect him to govern towards a consensus center, which after two Bush administrations is an instinct that I think helps him generally, but isn't going to play well in a scenario when people are looking for someone to lead a boat-rocking consensus instead of a hold-your-nose-and-vote consensus. He just doesn't seem to have that instinct. This might really hurt him in the presidential election if he wasn't running against McChaos's worst campaign ever, which is going to run laps around satire later today.

After two Bush campaigns it was nice to see two well-spoken candidates talk about subjects they have some interest in and knowledge of. It seemed like a pretty even match, as far as explaining their disagreements (and agreements). I do think Obama did quite a bit of damage to McCain on Afghanistan and Pakistan, where it sounded like he has a plan that he's confidence in. McCain sounded like he just wanted to undermine that and... move on.

Not that Obama did a bangup job throughout--I just watched Joe Biden not stumble through the tactical vs. strategic question about the surge and pound McCain on the economy. Obama didn't drive in every nail, and I don't know that he "won," but he didn't lose, which might be winning, if that makes sense. He seemed calm and studied, and given the times and the past few years I think it's secretly a huge advantage.

Apparently the immediate spin from the Republicans is that Obama agreed too much with McCain. I think they're playing themselves. I think it helps Obama, because he didn't look like he was just out for blood.

I do think McCain--the sneer, the pissed-off laugh, the unwillingness to look at Obama--came across as an asshole, especially on the split screen.

I don't know if that'll help him or not. Seriously.

So the exciting news this morning is that McCain has an ad connecting Barack Obama to the Chicago/Illinois Democratic machines, which is news because... McCain made an ad about it. The more interesting question, which, ahem, some of us have been talking about for months now, is whether that matters, and if so, how much. Coincidentally, that's what Ben Joravsky's column is about this week.

And I think he's got a pretty good point, or at least one I think, at this point, I agree with--Obama's sin isn't so much being part of the machine as not using his charisma and talent to do a damn thing about it, up to and including (unsuccessfully) endorsing the odious Dorothy Tillman.

And that's the decision a lot of people are going to have to make in November. If that's a deal-breaker, then it's a deal-breaker, and if it's not, it's not. It really has a lot to do with one's own moral calculus with regard to the other options, a calculus that's different depending on whether you live here (where Obama will win handily) or in, say, Colorado (which is looking like a key state).

I will have to say that I'm surprised that the Obama campaign, which has loosened its grip on the high road, hasn't gone about pounding Phil Gramm and his ties to McCain. Then again I am not one of the highly paid professionals who have been responsible for the rousing success of the Democratic party in the past decade.

As it stands now the RNC/Palin/whatever bump has gone the way of AIG and FiveThirtyEight's projections now look really good for Obama again. I think the conclusion we can derive from this is that the election will be dramatically, like 2000-level, close.

NOT COMING ACROSS LIKE AN ELITIST FAIL. I'm a Web editor and I don't really care that McCain can't use a computer. He's a 72-year-old Senator, for heaven's sake--if I'd had a staff of people for the past 20+ years to do research for me on whatever I felt like I needed to know about, I probably wouldn't know much about computers, either. When you're 72 and running for president and you don't know how to use the holodeck we'll see how you feel.

Please don't run this ad on TV. (I know it's cute. That's the problem. It's kind of the worst-case scenario.)

But more importantly: @%!$#!!! Maybe you should talk about charging victims for rape kits and the Violence Against Women Act.

NB: I keep hearing that the Obama team has a great ground game and GOTV operation and the real math and whatnot, and that seems plausible. But I can't help but think that the leadership's many years of experience in and around the benign dictatorship of the local Democratic machine might be a hindrance in a toss-up election.

I've been reading my usual roundup of left-wing blogs and political Web sites, and there's fuck-all about Barack Obama on them. It's wall to wall Sarah Palin with the occasional news bite about McCain. It reminds me of a couple months ago when the right-wing blogs and magazines were all Obama, all the time. 

In other news, John McCain pulled ahead of Obama in all the the FiveThirtyEight indicators. Today, I think, was the first time that's happened in awhile.

I can't help but think these things are related. And it seems the Obama campaign might think so too. Marc Ambinder suggests that the 527s are on the way.

Barack Obama was in Lebanon, Virginia, yesterday (that's halfway between Slabtown and Stone Bruise along the Trail of the Lonesome Pine--not kidding) and said something about putting lipstick on a pig and it not being any different, and... whatever. I think what's important to realize is that the better choice is the mellifluous and pedigreed "you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear," although that may have been heard as a slur against Sarah Palin's moose-skinning abilities.

Personally I think the point at which McCain sold his soul was when he hired Tucker Eskew. It's one thing to hire someone who worked against you; it's quite another to reward someone for kneecapping you.

"134 men died. Somehow John McCain's life was spared. Perhaps he had more to do."

--RNC introductory video

Update: Not much to say about McCain's speech--the policy part was awful, the parts about his biography and America were strong, so pretty much what I expected. Someone at the Xcel Center really should have been ready with "Stand Up and Fight" from Carmen Jones, though.

Update II: I couldn't find "Stand Up and Fight," but here's "There's a Cafe on the Corner."

Michael Steele, former lieutenant governor of Maryland (he lost his race for Senate) got the crowd chanting DRILL BABY DRILL. That was AWESOME. To steal a neologism from Stephen Colbert, it was crasstastic! I would kill for a McCain t-shirt with that slogan. Both parties need to be more like Threadless.

Mitt Romney: words cannot express how much I'll miss him after November. He's camp for political junkies, this incredibly earnest, pretty, expensive figure who looks perfect on paper and at first glance, but who observation quickly reveals to be just busted. He's like the Legends of the Fall of politicians. "Tyrannosaurus appetite of government unions." See how it's just slightly off, like a chair with a leg that's just a bit too short? That's Mitt Romney. He has everything except talent.

I can't actually say anything bad about Mike Huckabee other than that I disagree with virtually all his actual political stances. He's the only good speaker in the Republican party--he sounds exactly like John Edwards, actually, but the difference between Edwards and Huckabee is the difference between good and great. His only competition right now in political oratory is Obama. He's also the only politician who sounds thoughtful about Christianity, especially off the cuff, as one would hope from someone with an M.Div.

Wow, who thought it was a good idea to bring up eloping? Paraphrasing: "They face the challenges that parents throughout America face": her daughter's pregnancy is a qualification. Well played!

I've been trying to figure out what the deal is with the pictures behind the podium is, and I finally figured it out: it's a screensaver!

Rudy using "community organizer" as a punchline was slick. "Community organizer" is going to be the new "San Francisco values." Mitt Romney must look at Rudy with angry, unbridled envy. 

DRILL BABY DRILL! We are inside Terry Southern's head right now. Mitt Romney is wondering why they aren't chanting about tyrannosaurs.

"He immersed himself in Chicago machine politics." Hey, that's us! Sorry, kind of zoned out there.

"Who won? Bin Laden? Al Qaeda?" Isn't that kind of an awkward question? You know, given things?

Rudy is blasting "them" for saying that Sarah Palin running for VP makes her a bad mother. (He really loves being snide--he feels the same way about being a douchebag as I feel about baby animals.) Followed by a cutaway to Bristol Palin. They're cutting away to Bristol Palin every 30 seconds, so I guess the gates have been opened. I think I'm going to be ill.

Hey, it's the woman of the hour. Damn, she's pretty good. I think the accent alone might be worth half a point. Mitt Romney must be grinding his teeth into powder.

The stiff upper lip about Wasilla... she's good. Even if you don't like her, you should be aware of this. Thus far it's really a star-making performance. I wouldn't mention the Bridge to Nowhere, though. I mean, it's not simply a lie... there are T-shirts. You have to finesse that shit.

The thinly veiled torture lust just makes my blood run cold. Coming from someone seemingly normal--someone who hasn't clearly gone 'round the bend like Giuliani or Romney--just makes it all the more terrifying.

ptb: "sarah palin is kind of dressed like hermann goering. DOWNTOWN PRINT IT"

Hang on... now they're doing some kind of halftime show/performance art/country concert... now John Rich is singing a country-rock song... "he got shot down in some Vietnam town... put him in the Hanoi Hilton, thought they could break him in two...." John Rich sings of arms and a man! It's like "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" with creepy overtones about habeas corpus. I'm developing irony cancer.

Sarah Palin's a star; she made herself with that speech, just as Obama did back in 2004. The structure was brilliant, moving from hockey mom to barnburning conservative; it was polished in the cultural details, like the phrase "a servant's heart"; and her glaring weaknesses were returned as culture-war ammunition. She has a presence that's a mass-charismatic version of normal, perhaps closer to Bill Clinton than George W. Bush--composed, unforced, folksy, and radiant, yet with a killer instinct. I'm not surprised the National Review is in a glee meltdown and talking of flipping the ticket.

Will this change the shape of the immediate election? My friend Ben seems to think the speech was too small: "perfectly pitched to a party interested in nothing more than nurturing its own resentments."  Perhaps, but she's better at it than any other prominent Republican since Bush was still trying.

Either way, she's gone from albatross to future star with one speech, which, as a politics, writing, and oratory junkie, I can't help but be impressed with. If you don't understand why some of us wade through the John Warner and Mitt Romney speeches, that's why.

George W. Bush looked hale, like he usually does when he's not working. His comparison of the angry left to the VC was invigorating; indeed they won't break John McCain's spirit, because they're all being thrown in jail. (Anyway, Tucker Eskew beat them to it.) Stephen Colbert had the best line (paraphrasing): "A Republican National Convention without George W. Bush would have been like a USC reunion without O.J. Simpson."

Fred Thompson, the worst Law & Order DA, ate his Wheaties; accusing Barack Obama of wanting to kill newborns was some advanced double-secret dog-whistle politics. If he'd been this spunky back in the spring, he would have... well, he would have lost anyway, but with more dignity. To quote Chris Rock, "I haven't seen white people this angry since they canceled M*A*S*H."

The main course was leftovers: Joe Lieberman, who delivered the keythroatclearing as the sound of one hand not clapping. He was the bright spot for the Republicans, proof that despite their rough week they dodged a bullet when John McCain was forced to leer at pick Sarah Palin. Say what you will but she probably won't talk over applause to explain her own obvious joke. Twice. There is such a thing as bad press, but it's better than Joe Lieberman. Take it from someone who cast his first presidential vote for Al Gore.

MSNBC brought on Harold Ford, Jr., who gave the Republicans an A and a B+ but I didn't catch for what. He's clearly angling to be the next Joe Lieberman, which tells you all you need to know about his political instincts.

I was doing my fantasy football draft for most of the evening, so I didn't catch much on policy specifics except for multiple descriptions of John McCain's torture a much stronger stance against abortion than usual, which is either a sign they really, really mean it this time or they're extra-worried about the evangelicals turning out.

Kinda thinking that Sarah Palin and the Gustav unconvention are going to put McCain ahead in the polls.  Permanently? I have no idea. But for awhile at least, yes. There are indicators that the former is helping, and it's worth remembering how weird the VP slot is--Cheney aside, unless McCain dies she'd be perfect.

And as far as the VP being a "corrective" to the ticket--Biden's experience, Palin's social conservatism, etc.--the angle that's not being explored is that Palin sends a message that JOHN MCCAIN IS GOING TO LIVE FOREVER.

In re Gustav (and don't forget Hanna), Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground (the best weather site) and millwix at DKos are invaluable.

Since the immediate CW on Sarah Palin seems to be WTF (inexcusable!), I thought I'd take a look. I know it's not local, but the hairs went up on the back of my neck when I saw the first wave of reaction.

First, start with James Wolcott's rundown of the other main candidates. They sucked. Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge were the most Serious choices, and they were apparently ixnayed by management (can't remember where I read that, but I'll update when I find it) for being too moderate. Don't know what happened to Eric Cantor.

That leaves as your "strongest" candidates Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty. Romney was a one-term governor of Massachusetts. Pawlenty is partway into his second term. Neither has any political experience outside of state or local politics, unless you count being CEO of the Winter Olympics. Neither is/was overwhelmingly popular as governor, although they held their own. Neither is particularly charismatic. I guess you could include Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, but the former isn't a politician at all and the latter isn't a politician and was a disaster at HP.

I'll be honest and say that I don't know that much about Palin as governor, so I'll have to outsource immediate opinion to erstwhile Alaskan Dave Noon at the generally left-wing blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money, who vouches for her personal appeal (and it appears she has a gift for political theater), competence, and lack of corruption (heretofore the only famous thing about Alaskan politics, especially their Republicans), and casts a skeptical eye on the nascent Troopergate scandal.

His biggest criticism of her is that she's a radical social conservative (but not so radical that she'll give the middle finger to her state supreme court; more) and ready to drill the fuck out of Alaska for oil, but that's clearly part of her appeal to the McCain campaign. Her choice to car