The Lion and Gun

I was hoping for some good anecdotes about resume tarnish of Bush Administration officials when I began reading a Wall Street Journal Article entitled 'Bush Administration Alumni Find Job Climate Chilly', found here. Instead, I found an article lamenting the job market in general rather than how employers distrust 'Bushies'.

The unusually tough job hunt reflects the depressed market for senior management talent, with some Bush administration officials bracing for lower-paying jobs than they anticipated, say recruiters.

Is it just me, or does this email today from the Obama Campaign seem a little disingenuous?

Ross --

Yesterday the McCain campaign said they would outspend our campaign by $10 million in the final days. This is on top of recent news that, as of October 15th, our opponents had $20 million more in the bank than our campaign and the DNC combined.

As of this morning, they may be able to outspend us -- but your generosity in response to my last email gives me hope that by the end of the day, we can rise to the challenge.

Andrew Sullivan nails it. I had no idea I felt like this till I read it, but I couldn't have put it better:

The more I think about it the more this election day feels like one giant collective, global puke. That Bush-Cheney thing never quite settled with us, did it?

Obama's all over this:

President Bush is sitting out the last few days before the election. But earlier today, Dick Cheney came out of his undisclosed location and hit the campaign trail. He said that he is, and I quote, “delighted to support John McCain.”

I’d like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it. That endorsement didn’t come easy. Senator McCain had to vote 90 percent of the time with George Bush and Dick Cheney to get it. He served as Washington’s biggest cheerleader for going to war in Iraq, and supports economic policies that are no different from the last eight years. So Senator McCain worked hard to get Dick Cheney’s support.

Is this the McCain campaign's October November surprise?

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Geraldine Ferraro endorses Obama.

Gotta say, I didn't see that one coming.

So apparently Senator Obama showed a 'rare flash of anger' tonight and 'uncharacteristically snapped at reporters' outside his home. He was walking his seven-year-old daughter to a Halloween party down the street and was swarmed by the press. That's when he became totally unhinged:

He grew especially testy when a Polish television cameraman tried to approach them.

"Come on guys, get back on the bus," he pleaded with journalists, many of whom had accompanied him from the airport to Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood.

Obama, wearing sunglasses but no costume, and his daughter, dressed up as what campaign aides said was a "corpse's bride," then broke into a sprint, leaving the journalists behind.

It's Friday evening, so why not? The GOP's about to go through some tough times; now's as good a time as any to start the slow descent into alcoholism. . .

Via ThinkProgress, here's former Reagan Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein -- who endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President today -- on the McCain campaign's selection process for Vice-President:

You know what most Americans I think realized is that you don’t offer a job, let alone the vice presidency, to a person after one job interview. Even at McDonald’s, you’re interviewed three times before you get a job.

Take a look at the video here of an Atlanta voting line on this last day of voting in Georgia. Eight to ten hours -- and you don't see anybody leaving the line.

These images are being watched around the world. People everywhere are saying: there's something happening in America.

Photo published under a CC license by DuPeyxl

John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis bragged this morning that their campaign will be outspending Barack Obama by $10 million in television advertising over the final stretch before Election Day. Where's the money coming from? Says the Washington Post:

The decision to finance a final advertising push is forcing McCain to curtail spending on Election Day ground forces to help usher his supporters to the polls, according to Republican consultants familiar with McCain's strategy. . .
"The desire for parity on television comes at the expense of investment in paid boots on the ground," said one top Republican strategist who has been privy to McCain's plans. "The folks who will oversee the volunteer operation have been told to get out into the field on their own nickel."

According to constitutional scholar Sarah Palin news media criticism of her political strategy is a gross violation of the First Amendment:

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

Barack Obama is speaking today in Des Moines, Iowa. Why is the Dem candidate stumping in a state he'll easily win just four days before the election?

“Obviously, Iowa holds a bit of a special place in our story and I think it's fitting to take that last trip back,” [Obama spokesperson Robert] Gibbs said.

This is what it comes down to. After two years of high-profile debates, large-scale internet campaigns, sophisticated television advertising, and intricate metrics and polling, it now comes down to this: boots on the ground, people on the move, partisans inspired by a man and a message to bring their fellows to the polls.

This is the best Democratic ground game in history. And unlike previous powerful Dem machines it's not built out of street money and Tammany Hall and union bruisers (though they all still play a role). It's constructed on the backs of hundreds of thousands of volunteers across America.

And I should say, that goes for the Republican party, too. The Dem machine is probably better this time out, but the Republicans are no less dependent on hard-working citizens fueled by passion for their candidate and their cause. Here's to them, all of them, from both parties.



Now go find nine people.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo highlights this finding from a new Gallup poll:



It's true, as Josh says, that a clear majority of Americans agree with Obama that wealth should be spread around. What I'm more interested in, though, is the severe downtick in support -- 68% to 58% -- from polling conducted in April of this year. Could McCain's campaign trail rhetoric be having an effect? Probably, but I doubt it's enough to explain the sudden reverse in what's been an upward trend for the past seven years.

In fact, the last time Americans were feeling this stingy was at the depth of the previous recession. This is perhaps a natural reaction; as Americans start to worry about their own well-being they care less about others. That reaction only makes sense, however, if one presumes that 'spreading the wealth' will be to one's own net detriment: either that one is wealthier than most, or else that the wealth will be disproportionately 'spread' to the poor. Probably it's a combination of both. Either way, this calls for liberals to make clearer the benefits of government stimulus to the middle class.

What is concerning is that this is just the very beginning of what could be a long and deep recession. Generosity has already contracted to a near-record low (going back to 1985), and it will likely fall further before this is through. Combined with the media's uncritical regurgitation of belt-tightening neo-Hooverism, this will make it more difficult for a President Obama to rally the nation behind any major spending proposals.

According to a new Public Policy Polling poll, Barack Obama has a lead of 10 points in Colorado and 17 points in New Mexico -- with about two-thirds of all Colorado votes cast through early voting, and more than half in NM. Now McCain's only hope is to win Pennsylvania -- and looking at the state's polling I'm convinced that McCain's 'plan' there is more bluster than strategy

Since we're on the subject of race (not exactly fun to blog about) this article in Esquire is worth a read. Interviewing four white nationalists, David Peisner finds the initially puzzling result that three of them are supporting Obama. (The black nationalist he interviews is voting for McCain.) This reflects the degree to which the white power movement has shifted over the past decades from bigotry to racism. That's not exactly six in one, half-dozen in the other. Most white nationalist organizations promote white racial consciousness and, usually, race separation. They encourage racial consciousness amongst blacks as well and are intellectually indebted to the Black Panthers as much as they are to White Aryans. (They also tend to be radically populist and identify with left-wing Democrats' anti-trade and and anti-corporate stances.) I suspect this is a mainly rhetorical reaction to the failures of white bigotry in the 1960s and perceived successes of black power in the 1970s.

Regardless, it can clearly make for some strange bedfellows. Which is why many white nationalists desire an Obama Presidency: they respect his own racial consciousness and hope his Presidency will awaken whites to theirs.

With all that being said, it's important to point out that whatever they profess, white nationalist ideology -- and whatever appeal it holds to some Americans -- is fundamentally driven by bigotry. As I've argued before, 'white consciousness' and black consciousness aren't comparable: black consciousness is about African-American history and culture, not simply race; white history and culture, however, is indistinguishable from American history and culture. Thus 'white racial consciousness' is nothing, a chimera, a (marginally) more politically correct stand-in for hatred and bigotry and fear. And of course there are plenty of white supremacists who still just plain old don't like black people. But understanding white nationalist thought renders the Obama endorsement less surprising, if still pretty bizarre.

There's an interesting discussion taking place between Ross Douthat and Matt Yglesias (and Douthat again) about the role of race in this election. Is it true that normally acceptable political attacks (to the degree any political attacks are acceptable) have been rendered anathema by Obama's race? If so, is that justified? In other words, is it too much to read race into so many of McCain's ads?

I think Matt is essentially right when he says:

Well, obviously you could read just about anything as a coded racist appeal. And I think a case could be made that you’d be right to.

Most folks will be handing out candy and sweets. I'll be handing out Obama leaflets and buttons. Guess which house on my block is gonna get egged?



Incidentally, I lived in Britain for a couple of years a while back and one of the odd little cultural differences I noted is that they don't really celebrate Halloween. I mean, they acknowledge it, and I'm sure in some places children there go out panhandling for a sugar rush. (My neighborhood was decidedly not the kind of place you wanted your children going after dark.) But there wasn't that much attention paid to it, not like on this side of the Atlantic. The upshot is that they get two extra October weeks to push Christmas goods on you.

Photo provided under a Creative Commons license by Alex Thompson

The folks who made the video in this post are at it again. I present you with John McCain attack ads as directed by Juno's Jason Reitman, David Lynch, and M. Night Shyamalan (complete with awkwardly narcissistic director cameo).



(h/t Hot Air)

Bankers are getting wise to the coming public outcry. I doubt this goes far enough, however.

Owen Lattimore was one of America's best-respected scholars of east Asian civilization. For more than a decade he directed the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University; for years he sat on the board of the Institute of Pacific Relations and edited its journal, Pacific Affairs. He was dispatched by Presidents to collaborate with allies and advise foreign heads of state. He was a liberal technocrat disposed to embracing controversial points of view.

In all this the arc of Lattimore's life traces a similar line to Rashid Khalidi's.

Both are the kind of men reviled by many on the right -- refined in taste, scholarly in habit, esoteric in thought, internationalist in point of view. In Lattimore's day they were called 'pin-stripe men' by their detractors; today it's 'liberal elitists'. Both Lattimore and Khalidi attracted the scorn of self-proclaimed patriots because of their foreign sympathies: Khalidi for his support of Palestinians, Lattimore for his tolerance of Chinese communists. Both were murkily associated in conservative minds with ostensible traitors selling out American interests abroad, leaving Israel vulnerable to hostile neighbors or allowing China to fall into Mao's hands. Both were accused of conspiring with the forces that seemed to pose the greatest existential threat to America at the time, terrorism and communism. Both men were subject to angry denunciations by writers at the National Review.

Both now share something else in common: their names and reputations have been publicly dragged through the mud by unscrupulous politicians looking to advance their careers. John McCain and his campaign underlings are accusing Dr. Khalidi of anti-Semitism and trying to link him with Arab terrorists. Dr. Lattimore's accuser called him the 'top Soviet agent' and dragged him before Congress to testify.

The ambitious Senator who called Lattimore a spy was a previously little-known freshman from Wisconsin named Joseph Raymond McCarthy. Lattimore was his first high-profile victim. It was McCarthy's accusations against Lattimore that prompted Herbert Block to coin the term 'McCarthyism'.

What is happening today is literally its definition.

It is to these depths that Senator McCain has sunk.

Last night's Obamarama got better ratings than the shows normally in the timeslot: 30 million people tuned in. Tony Little would kill for that.

Watching the video below for a second time I'm convinced that Goldfarb really does think Rick Sanchez knows who he's talking about. It's Jeremiah Wright. I can see the wheels turning in Goldfarb's head. He wants to say it. If he was writing for the Weekly Standard he'd say it. But as a McCain campaign spokesman he can't.

Maybe he's hoping that other media outlets will figure it out and reintroduce Wright into the conversation -- but that might be reading too much into it. I really think he just talked himself into a corner. Couldn't admit he was wrong; couldn't say Wright's name; maybe hoped Sanchez would catch on.

What's surprising about this, then, is the extent to which the McCain campaign is going to not bring up Wright. Considering the filth and sleaze they've peddled over the past few months it's more surprising -- even puzzling -- than it is commendable. Maybe they think it will backfire? But then so did Ayers, and they kept that going for weeks.

Bizarre.

So Republicans in the past few days are pushing this ridiculous line that Obama knows a guy who holds pro-Palestinian views ∴ Obama hates Jewish people. Of course Obama isn't an anti-Semite -- and neither is Rashid Khalidi, although Rick Sanchez here gives McCain talking hack Michael Goldfarb a pass on that. The Farb nevertheless manages to insert foot in mouth well past the gag reflex. Seriously, this is almost difficult to watch:



If he was Sarah Palin he would've winked.

Fox News has been pushing its latest poll which shows a McCain resurgence tightening the race in its closing days. Except it seems to have got that result by shifting its weighting by party four points in favor of the Republicans. Maybe millions of Americans really have switched from Dem to Republican in the past week. Personally, I doubt it.

Anyway, maybe all of those Drudge eulogies came a little too soon.

It bothers me just a little bit that this is a group of ten-year-olds in school uniforms and yet they're all way cooler than I am.



Well, maybe not that one chubby white kid in the back. See more video, including an interview with some of the performers, here.

Okay, so Joe the Plumber didn't show up at a McCain rally today in Ohio and McCain kind of embarrassed himself shouting out to a man that wasn't there. The video's amusing, and if you haven't seen it don't worry -- it'll be replayed on the cable networks (that aren't Fox) endlessly.

But that's not what got my attention in this Wall Street Journal piece. (After all, seriously, who cares? Mix-ups like that happen. They don't tell us much about the candidates.) It's this bit at the end:

At the first rally, McCain also misstated comments that Obama had made about what happens if he loses.

“Last night Sen. Obama said that if he lost he said he would return to the Senate and try again in four years for the second act,” McCain said. “That sounds like a great idea to me! Let’s help him make it happen.”

He did not, in fact, say anything about running again.

I still think it's kind of silly to speculate about Presidential prospects four years hence, as the tight race between Dem Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani right now shows. But Chris Orr's proposition that Jindal's race would hobble his chances at winning the nod provoked thoughtful responses from Ross Douthat, Dave Weigel at Reason, and Daniel Larison. Proffers Larison:

[N]ever underestimate the Republican desire to get on the high horse of anti-racism and egalitarianism, to say nothing of the even greater desire to demonstrate that they are in no way racist. This is the “defensive crouch” for Republicans, which has led them time and again in the last twenty years to nominate the “inclusive” moderates who engage in various minority outreach efforts to no avail. The Palin pander to women failed magnificently, but the failure of most of the other panders over the years has not discredited these attempts inside the GOP. The inevitable next step will be to nominate a non-white candidate.

I haven't blogged much about Prop 8 -- which would amend California's constitution to prohibit gay marriage -- because I assume that if other people's sexual behavior offends you so much that you think they shouldn't enjoy the full rights the rest of us have then there's not much I can say to change your mind. But in case anybody on the margin wondered if bigotry and homophobia really does fuel the 'Yes to Prop 8' movement, I present you with this video, via Crooks and Liars, of Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute and Prop 8 spokesman.



In case you're unable to see the video, I should make it clear that the comparison between Nazis and gays isn't implied in Dacus's speech. It's open and explicit:

There was another time in history when people-- when the bell tolled. And the question was whether or not they were going to hear it. The time was during Nazi Germany with Adolf Hitler. . . . Let us not make that mistake folks. Let us hear the bell. Vote on Proposition 8.

Oops, no, but close enough:

For all the shortcomings of the campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama offer hope of national redemption. Now America has to choose between them. The Economist does not have a vote, but if it did, it would cast it for Mr Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America’s self-confidence.

It continues. Via Ezra Klein, a lengthy examination of the conspiracy of radical ties around Obama conspiring to hide that he's the son of Malcolm X. Via John Cole, a 67-page document called 'An Examination of Obama’s Use of Hidden Hypnosis Techniques in His Speeches'.

It's not gonna go away on November 5th. Vince Foster was nothing compared to what the wingnuts will spin over the next four to eight years. Folks, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is back.

I wonder how long it'll be till these two documents are gravely contemplated by the hacks at NRO.

Chris Cilizza at The Fix wonders if Matt Drudge is losing his mojo. Drudge, subject of much recent hagiography by mainstream-media-cum-blogger types, has been pushing a McCain comeback theme for the past week that's been largely ignored by the media.

Drudge's purported influence has always been overrated, but it's true that he has pull that hasn't manifested itself over the past week. Maybe that's just a blip, or maybe it'll damage his cred for a while, but I doubt it's the beginning of the end. It won't be difficult for the guy to worm his way back into reporters' hearts.

Why is this happening now? It's simple: the newsmedia has a very high tolerance for the ridiculous (to say nothing of the public), but not infinitely so. The narrative now is of an Obama steamroller and even Drudge can't offer enough persuasive counter-evidence to change that. So Drudge is learning the McCain campaign's harsh lesson: when the truth is very obvious it ain't easy to make lies stick.

Do I think it was great television? Well, it wasn't The West Wing, but it placed pretty well on a scale from one to Fear Factor.

Do I think it was good political advertising? You betcha.

It wasn't a closing argument so much as an emotional appeal to undecided voters, which are either people who haven't paid much attention to the election or voters inclined to support Obama but uncomfortable with him for whatever reason (race, rumor, inexperience). It's questionable how many voters in the first category would be watching, and how many in the second are really persuadable, but undoubtedly Obama made some gains.

Obama's problem as a candidate has been connecting with voters. They get that he understands them, but in a cerebral, analytical way. For many a ballot cast is an emotional act and they want to know they've got a guy who's on their side. McCain isn't exactly stellar at this, either. But Obama's no Bill Clinton; he can't bite his lip and feel your pain.

Last night Obama found a way to overcome that somewhat. Eve Fairbanks at TNR has a really smart take on this: The Dem presented a new side to himself, Obama-as-chronicler/narrator, by helping 'real people' tell their stories. His voiceover was his way of telling viewers he understands. There was a Morgan Freeman quality to it -- I couldn't imagine Morgan Freeman, as awesome as he is, saying 'I feel your pain' and getting away with it. But there's a resonant world-weary wisdom in the man's voice that makes people feel comfortable when they hear him. Obama had a bit of that last night.

The campaign was also trying to shift the narrative back to where it was at the end of the DNC. Since the roll-out of the GOP VP just hours later, the media has relentlessly focused on the Republican candidates. This worked to Obama's benefit, but he maximized those gains weeks ago. At this point the voters left at the margin, in those two groups I mentioned above, are best persuaded by a positive message. This ad might get the media talking about that message over the final days of the election cycle.

In one sense this is all superfluous. The deal was sealed when the financial markets collapsed; after that there was almost nothing the McCain campaign could do to win. But winning is only the beginning: Obama wants a broad mandate to govern. The bigger his margin and the longer his coattails the more likely his first term will see the triumphant passage of big parts of his legislative program. The more likely his first term will become a second.

Beyond a mandate, that will require the ability to persuasively communicate with Americans. Last night suggests that this, at least, won't be a problem.

I'm writing up my thoughts on the ad momentarily, but to whet your appetites here are some reactions on CNN -- including Mark Halperin's, which is about as racy as CNN gets.



Even the dude from The Weekly Standard thinks it was great. That said, I still think Mark Halperin's a tool factory. A friend of mine this weekend remarked to me: 'I think I hate Mark Halperin because he always calls Obama "The Land of Lincolner."' I'd never really thought of it that way, but I'm pretty sure that's a fair reason.

Governor Palin's outright admission in an interview with ABC news tonight that she's interested in leading the party if the GOP ticket is defeated on Tuesday is burning up the wires. To say it was off-script would be to understate things. CNN's Dana Bash read the quote to a senior McCain adviser who had not seen it for himself:

I just got off the phone, Wolf, with a senior McCain adviser and I read this person the quote and I think it's fair to say that this person was speechless. There was a long pause and I just heard a, 'Huh,' on the other end of the phone.

Hope. Twenty-seven minutes of it.

This time I'm gonna watch it for real.

It begins. Andrew Cuomo, ala Elliot Spitzer, never misses an opportunity to self-aggrandize.

I don't actually have a television and the commercial isn't streaming online so instead I'll be liveblogging eating a light dinner and watching Daily Show reruns.

8:35pm Thanks for sharing this liveblog experience with me. It was fun. I should liveblog more often. Hell, it almost makes me want to get a TV. Alas, I am too poor for that. But if I were a rich man . . . If I were a rich man . . . If I were a rich man, ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum; all day long I'd biddy biddy bum, if I were a wealthy man.

8:30pm I can't believe how fantastic the commercial was or was not. Clearly the gamble paid off or failed dreadfully or was more or less a wash. This is one more nail driven into McCain's coffin or a ridiculous over-reach or a meaningless expenditure by a flush campaign that will make little impact with voters one way or another. Certainly we can all agree that those thirty minutes will have an impact the strength of which may or may not be determined in coming days.

8:28pm Obama is probably addressing viewers live from his rally in Florida by now. I am sure that his rhetoric is soaring, his policy ideas both nitty and gritty, his appeal aimed directly at Middle America. Viewers swoon. Well, if they haven't switched to Pushing Daisies.

8:24pm I've finished my cucumber. Decided to save the remaining clementines until after. I will be eating five in total, and then a couple of oatmeal cookies. I will be very regular tonight.



8:21pm I wonder what Obama's doing on his commercial now. I'll bet it's cool. Sigh.

8:17pm You might not know this, but living in Canada I'm IP blocked from viewing Comedy Central's clips of The Daily Show -- I have to watch them all at Canada's Comedy Network website. And since most of you all are from America (or other places equally not Canada) you can't see any of the clips at that site. So if you like going to blogs to watch clips from the Daily Show I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere. (Or, like, get a TV. But then who am I to talk?)

8:16pm Is it just me or is the Daily Show consistently better in election years? Also, let it be known that Wyatt Cenac is the funniest regular reporter they've added to the show in years.

8:13pm Obviously the splinter was worth it for the sweet succulence of undersized seedless oranges. This is perhaps the first time I've mingled oranges and cucumber, however. It is an odd symphony of taste -- cacophony, really -- that does not entirely disappoint but nevertheless remains unlikely to be tried again.

8:10pm You read that right, folks: clementine oranges. Apparently they're in season now. I picked up a small crate last night and the despondent grocery bagger didn't bag it so I had to carry it home in my bare hands and I got a painful splinter. It's a sad testament to the state of society today -- that such small things could be forgot, with such dire consequences. The erosion of quality in the service industry has been horrendous over the past several decades, even in venues where servers are tipped. Alas.

8:07pm Sorry I'm a few minutes late; just prepared for myself some fresh cucumber slices and peeled a number of clementine oranges. I'm all set now, though.

Joe the Plumber is grilled by Shepard Smith on Fox News and he makes Sarah Palin look like Buckminster Fuller:



It's true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and Smith does a pretty good job of explaining why. (Kudos to Fox News, by the way, for the rare swing at real journalism.) I praised Joe in an earlier post (can't find the link right now); this was sparked by the willingness of a citizen to confront a politician with hard questions. That's something we need more of. But Wurzelbacher's story, which early on seemed like it might be the tragedy (or satire) of an unsuspecting man thrust into the spotlight and under the microscope of a dirt-digging media, has now transformed into a shabby spectacle of self-exploitation. Hell, the guy got a manager today and could be cutting a country album in the coming weeks. There is something sad about seeing this ostensibly ordinary American pathetically grasp at the limelight with both hands. Given the precious power to influence people he wields it recklessly, irresponsibly; he whores himself out to every media outlet with five minutes to spare and spouts words without an ounce of understanding or an inkling of recognition of the power they contain.

Sigh.

(h/t Andrew Sullivan)

It's only an hour away. I'm not sure if he might be over-stretching a bit here (certainly Ross Perot's economics lectures did nothing to seal the deal in '92) but it's not like he doesn't have the money, or margin, to take a little gamble. It pales in comparison to some of the stunts McCain has pulled off. And most of the spectacles Obama's cautious campaign has engaged in -- the overseas trip, the stadium speech, the rejection of public financing -- turned out to be pretty successful. (The one possible exception was the Berlin speech.)

Anyway, I'll be watching. In the meantime you can watch a preview here.

Jon Methven, writing for the greatest semi-regular compendium of short literature in America, shows us how the financial crisis is affecting ordinary Americans.

Dear Pamela—

I realize you're angry at how Friday night's Monopoly game ended. I'm writing this note to explain why certain things occurred the way they did, and, hopefully, to chip away at the chilly silence that has characterized our relationship the past few days.

Since we haven't spoken, I'm not aware of your stance on the causes of our dispute. I believe our major issue was the housing crisis, which began with your properties on Ventnor Avenue and Marvin Gardens. But in order to put that in context it's important that we first discuss the children's inflationary habits.

In recent days national polling trackers have gradually tightened while state-level polling has remained stable or moved slightly in the other direction. This has led many Republicans to crow, and Dems to worry, that McCain is gaining on Obama and state results are simply 'lagging' national numbers. Nate at FiveThirtyEight does a pretty thorough job of refuting that argument. He says that in past cycles state polling might have lagged, but these days it's usually released within a day or two of the poll leaving the field, and may even be 'fresher' than some national data.

So why the discrepancy?

There's a good chance it's just noise in the national trackers. I think we'd need at least a few more days before concluding there's been a shift of momentum to McCain.

But even if that is the case there are two pretty good reasons to expect a tightening race nationally would not be reflected in state polling. Both stem from the mundane fact that battleground states are subject to the lion's share of polling. John McCain's recent campaign strategy, even as he's shifted from character attacks to differences on the economy, has been aimed more at ginning up the base than at persuading moderates. Calling Obama the 'Redistributionist-in-Chief' probably plays better in Mississippi than Ohio. So it's entirely possible that McCain is running up the score in states he'll win anyway -- states, in other words, that aren't being polled -- while failing to make an impact in swing states. The gains in red states would still be reflected in national polling.

Conversely, we're seeing Obama devote massive resources to advertising. That money isn't being spent in solidly red or solidly blue states; again, it's flowing to the battlegrounds. That, too, could stabilize his support in state polling even as national numbers erode.

Regardless, it's probably safe to say that the worried Dems at TNR are working themselves up over nothing. Election day anxiety is a good thing, if only because complacency is bad. But that doesn't make it right.

At a September rally Joe Biden explained to an actual fifth-grader what the Vice-President does. Unlike his Republican rival he did not appropriate for himself massive extra-Constitutional powers in the process. (On the other hand his answer is, unsurprisingly, quite a bit longer.) Anyway, this is ridiculously cute.

An eye-opening eye-witness account (with pictures) of near-chaos outside a McCain rally by Sean Quinn of FiveThirtyEight:

After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob. There is a moment in a crowd when something goes from mere yelling to a feeling of danger, and that's what we witnessed. As photographers and police raced to the scene, the crowd elevated from stable to fast-moving scrum, and the two men were surrounded on all sides as we raced to the circle.

Errol Morris, in his article mentioned below, links to a fascinating collection of political ads from 1952 to present curated by David Schwartz of the Museum of the Moving Image: The Living Room Candidate.

The site provides an immediate and visceral means of tracing the evolution of political advertising. It's a bit surprising to see how little the messages relayed by those ads have changed -- the platitudes that work today (change, experience, reform, security) worked just as well half a century ago. Attack ads, too -- if you think McCain is using scare tactics against Obama, take a look at some of the ads Nixon was running in 1968. Still, one can't help but compare any of today's sophisticated advertising to the low production values of this earnest but stilted Stevenson ad from 1952:



In some ways, though, the proliferation of user-generated YouTube videos is bringing us full-circle. Again we're seeing political ads, thousands of them, with low production values, earnest and stilted. All that was old is new again.

Anyway, I just spent way too much time playing around with the site. Check it out, but be warned -- you could lose hours there.

Errol Morris, who is one of the greatest living documentary filmmakers, has been dabbling in political ads for the past four years. He shares some of his thoughts and insights, and a little bit of history, in this piece. Having directed 'real-people ads' for Democrats in 2004 and 2008, he sees a stark difference in the people he interviewed:

[In 2004] voters were not pro-Democrat; nor were they anti-Republican; they were anti-George W. Bush. They were upset with this particular Republican candidate. Several people said, “After this election we will go back to voting Republican. This vote is not a break with the party; it’s a break with this man. He lied to us. We don’t trust him.” The voters I interviewed felt betrayed. But they were not voting for John Kerry; they were voting against George Bush. . .

This time — as opposed to 2004 — the content of the interviews has been qualitatively different. The people I interviewed have embraced Obama. They are voting for a candidate, not against a candidate. Lissa Lucas, for example, tells the story of voting for someone for the first time in her life. There is a feeling of hopefulness. There is this optimism, even though the situation in the country is arguably much worse than four years ago. A failing economy. The continuing war in Iraq. A crumbling infrastructure. But there is the core belief that if we pull together, we can save the country.

In talking about what a bad year it is for any Republican to run, it's important to remember that both candidates have had hurdles to cross. David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy:

[C]onsider this: Kerry, Dukakis, Mondale, McGovern, and Humphrey. Those are the last five northeastern or midwestern liberals to win the Democratic nomination. Moreover, no Democrat has won the presidency without at least one member of the ticket being widely perceived as closer to moderate than to liberal since at least 1948, perhaps 1940.

With so many self-proclaimed strategists on McCain's side so disastrously wrong about so many things it ought to be difficult to find any single one who's outpaced the rest. Luckily Bill Kristol makes it easy. Seriously, has there ever been a guy who's given more consistently terrible advice? He makes Bob Shrum look like Mark Hanna.

Anyway, here's his latest nugget, in response to Obama's anti-Palin ad:

Palin should hold a press conference today to respond, and do TV, radio and print interviews. In them, she should take on the Obama campaign on economic policy . . . And let her accept the Sunday shows--and challenge Biden to debate economic policy with her on the Sunday shows.

From one generation to another.



Full warning: I'll probably be gushy all week.

I've already argued pretty extensively that conservative Republicans are convinced the party's upcoming loss is the result of insufficient conservatism; that Sarah Palin is central to their plan to wrest control of the party; and that this could be disastrous for the GOP. Now there are reports in Politico and the New York Times of a secret meeting of conservative leaders. They aim to marry old principles with new blood explicitly intent on re-fighting battles thirty years past:

One of the topics of discussion will be how to fashion a "national grassroots political and policy coalition similar to the out Reagan years," said the attendee, a reference to the development of the so-called New Right apparatus following Jimmy Carter's 1976 victory and Reagan's election four years later.

"There's a sense that the Republican Party is broken, but the conservative movement is not," said this source. . .

Obama sees Palin writhing on the ground and lunges for the jugular. Ouch:



The notion that Sarah Palin is the Republicans' best hope in 2012 still kind of boggles my mind. I don't care how many books she reads. When the very sight of her is a strong closing argument against the Republican ticket -- and it is -- I'd say her brand is pretty tarnished. No, worse: this is her brand. She's a joke. She's the Carrot Top of political leaders. The mind reels.

Posting at RedState (and writing from Bizzaro World) Republican 'strategist' Dan Perrin offers seven astonishingly stupid reasons why McCain-Palin is 'a lock to win' the election. Briefly:

1. The media predicts an Obama win. People don't like to be told who to vote for, especially by the media. QE-fracking-D.
2. The Gallup poll taken immediately after Labor Day usually predicts who'll win in November. The sixty or so Gallup polls conducted after Labor Day and the hundreds conducted before can be ignored because it is well known that Americans decide who to vote for on the first Monday in September. Over-stimulation occasionally causes some to momentarily forget their choice, but it always comes back to them on November 4th.
3. Six states since 1972 have always gone with the winner -- Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee. Perrin hasn't done the math, but one can only assume that the chances six states out of 50 would align with the winner across nine elections are infinitesimal. The fact that six of those nine elections were landslides is irrelevant to the analysis. It is also clear that John McCain will win all of those states. Your polling data is no match for Perrin's baseless assertions.
4. Obama is 'hemorrhaging' Jewish support after remarks by Louis Farrakhan nobody heard about or would take seriously if they did. One might counter that there is no evidence to support this contention. One would be referred to the reason immediately above.
5. The massive (and so far very well-hidden) Larry Johnson/Hillaryis44 vote.
6. A hair dresser in the midwest told Perrin she wanted a strong leader in a time of economic crisis. Perrin also paraphrases Mark Penn to bolster this point, which should be enough to invalidate everything else he says.
7. Racists lie to pollsters. Gotta love those guys.

1. Whichever candidate secures more than 269 electoral votes wins the election.
2. Barack Obama currently has a 96.2% chance of securing more than 269 electoral votes.

Here's McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis in a throwback to his college days in gender studies on conservative talk radio:



(h/t Crooks and Liars)

It's becoming increasingly clear that Governor Palin and her advisers have essentially declared war on her running-mate and handlers. McCain's staff is firing back, with one of his top guys calling her a 'whack job'. The conservative base is rallying around her and resolving to remove McCain from effective power within the party even if he wins the Presidency. The Democrats will win a substantial (possibly filibuster-proof) Democratic majority in Congress, and the public and punditocracy expect and Obama landslide on Tuesday night. The next President will face a major financial crisis, two foreign wars, and the looming threat of Islamic terrorism.

With all that in mind I can't help but wonder: If McCain somehow manages to pull this off, how will he possibly be able to govern? It seems to me he'll be a lamer duck than President Bush has been for the past three years. All of the back-stabbing and recrimination that will happen should Republicans lose the Presidency will probably still happen, only now it'll play out between 1600 Pennsylvania and Number One Observatory Circle. An entire branch of government could be borderline non-functional at a time when government action turns out to be pretty important.

So this public in-fighting carried out in the press shouldn't simply embarrass the McCain campaign. It should raise (even more) serious questions about the Republican's ability to govern if elected. Or am I over-thinking this? Let me know in the comments.

Nate Silver takes a look at early voting and finds something unsurprising but remarkable nonetheless. Early voting has already surpassed 2004 totals in three states: North Carolina, Louisiana, and Georgia. Those are all states with large African-American populations. In fact, Nate finds a direct relationship between the number of African-Americans and early voting totals across a number of states. As I've long suspected, more African Americans are going to the polls than most pollsters accounted for.

And for some reason seeing that chart made me think about the real people behind the numbers. Millions of black Americans, many of whom have felt abandoned by their own country, are being inspired by this man Obama. Four or eight years of his leadership will draw them even further into the American polity. 90-year-old grandchildren of slaves who never thought they'd get to cast a vote for a black man are voting for one now; young black children can now better believe that they're capable of anything. America is coming closer to fulfilling its great promise in the world -- what a change from the shabbiness of the past eight years. And, I dunno, I'm not usually one to gush about these things. But there's just something really great about that.

Photo provided under a Creative Commons license by Dan Raustadt

After incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman suspended all negative advertising against Democratic rival Al Franken, the Republican National Committee unveiled a new advertising strategy to chip away at the former comedian's small lead. Apparently it involves d-list celebrities and Pat Boone topless. Hopefully some advertising guy got fired for this.

Ideological change is a gradual, halting, imperfect process. It is less the product of stunning events and influential personalities as it is the slow accumulation of received wisdom over long periods of time. Driving it are deep demographic and generational shifts -- the coming of age of baby boomers; the influx of Hispanics over the past fifty years.

Political parties have a role to play in this process. No party ever perfectly captures the zeitgeist; that is not, after all, the role of parties. They aim to squeeze very different policies out of the same electorate and, in the longer term, to reshape that electorate in their own image. Successful political parties will find a balance between these sometimes contradictory goals: to appeal to the nation as it is and nudge it in the direction that it ought to be.

Parties don't always strike the proper balance. Sometimes a party ensconced in power will overreach, provoking a backlash and prodding voters in precisely the opposite direction. Other times a party will be too cautious, taking up a humble stewardship of the nation -- maybe even finding a great deal of electoral success doing so -- without real leadership or staying true to its goals.

And sometimes a party out of power will cleave so strongly to its grand vision in defiance of all political reality that it is rendered an ideologically pure irrelevance.

The good news is that American big-tent political parties, unlike the kaleidoscope of ideological parties littering European parliaments, exhibit a considerable degree of intellectual flexibility. They constantly reinvent themselves as different factions jockey for power and political leaders play with different strategies. Ideological shifts within a party can occur much more rapidly than within the nation at large.

This, however, can be a double-edged sword.


McCain v. Palin

An ideological shift looms for the Republican Party. The choice of path is perhaps nowhere more obviously displayed than in the increasingly public cleavage between the two halves of the national ticket: John McCain, until recently the darling of the party's moderate wing, and Sarah Palin, evangelical firebrand.

Palin may not know much about national and international affairs -- may even be a 'whack job', as one McCain aide recently described her -- but it is becoming clear to me that early appraisals of her political skill might not have been unfounded. She has a history of using powerful allies for political gain and then screwing them over. A week from now John McCain's political corpse might one more victim of a political black widow. Throwing handler-in-chief Nicole Wallace under the bus is simply the most recent in a long line of attacks against her own campaign. By now it's as clear to the public as it is to the pundits and campaign insiders: Sarah Palin is no longer running for Vice-President in 2008. She's running for President in 2012.

But this is not just a tale of personal ambition; it's a battle for the heart of the Republican Party. The lines might have been drawn before 2006, but it's only now that the faithful are lining up on either side. And if Rush Limbaugh and former Bush aide Jim Nuzzo are to be believed, it will be attitudes toward Palin that will determine which side an activist is on.

Before I continue I should make this clear: I don't mean to imply that Palin will definitely be the nominee in 2012, nor even that she'll be the leader of the Republican right's forces -- although she's better positioned for both than anybody else. It's impossible to say what will happen in the next four years. Obama could tank; there could be a serious foreign policy crisis or natural disaster; there could be a rising star in the GOP that eclipses the governor of Alaska; there could be a battle between Palin, Huckabee, and Jindal (maybe others) for leadership of the right; or the conservative base could split allowing another moderate to claim leadership. There are simply too many imponderables. Hell, even the great cleavage between moderates and conservatives might not come to be, or it might be reshaped in the aftermath of this election.

Nevertheless, it seems clear that in the coming weeks recriminations between Palin and McCain camps, and the conservative and moderate wings of the party, will grow more acute.


The Small Tent

The question defining this debate should be, 'What went wrong?' The fractured state of the ticket, however, lends itself to a kind of fruitless simplification that changes the question to, 'Who's to blame?' That debate precludes, in the short run, the kind of compromise that has held the two wings of the party together since at least the days of Goldwater. True, the moderate wing has issued a great deal of thoughtful reflection in recent days -- and the ideological diversity of these 'moderates' (I'm use the term loosely and for lack of anything better) shows how many factions the self-defined conservative base wants to kick out of the big tent.

There's the rub. Rush Limbaugh can say that the McCain campaign failed because '[g]oing after moderates, independents, and all these yokels is not the blueprint;' he can say the loss proves the 'Republican Party "big tent" philosophy didn't work' and call for Sarah Palin to be made the head of the party. He and base conservatives can simply say, 'It's McCain's fault.'

Surely plenty of moderates will be happy to blame the loss at least in part on Palin. But this false dichotomy, McCain or Palin, ignores a lot of the real reasons for Republican failure (some of which, admittedly, were beyond their control): an unpopular President, a tanking economy, an exciting challenger. McCain's campaign really was poorly run. And Palin was a liability -- but then so was the man at the top of the ticket.

Those demographic trends I mentioned at the top of this post mean that Republicans are going to have to refine and sharpen their message. That's the business that ought to be at hand. Instead, if the right gets its way, there will be an argument over blame. All of the failures and challenges and the lessons they impart will be forgotten. And there's no reason to think that won't happen.

After all, blaming the loss on McCain -- and, by extension, moderates -- is easy. It doesn't force self-examination or a confrontation with error. It confirms the biases and proclivities of conservative Republicans. It provides the satisfaction of saying, 'I told you so.' And, perhaps most importantly, it provides the leverage Sarah Palin and party leaders who (perhaps foolishly) wish to make her their tool need to take over the party from more politically pragmatic but less ideologically pure types.

The big tent will be no more. The party four years from now will be as ideologically straight-jacketed as it was in 1964, but instead of representing a rising new force in American politics it will be propping up the corpse of a long-withered idea. In some ways, then, Palin is the anti-Goldwater: the perverted monstrosity of a conservatism let go to rot; the last voice in a fifty-year game of Chinese whispers.

Some see the party reforming itself as a shrill populist scream against modernity: anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-Wall Street, anti-trade. In Palin Republicans will have 'a populist, far-right politician with intense celebrity appeal.'

Barring unforeseen Democrat disaster, they won't have a chance in hell.

The strategy is to play for culturally conservative anti-government independents and neocons while ginning up the social conservative and evangelical base -- a coalition of Kaganites, Dobbsicrats, and Limbaughblicans. But in order to win the party will still need its small-government conservatives, its libertarians, its foreign policy realists. It will increasingly need to reach out to pro-choice moderates, to minorities, to today's youth. It will have to persuade moderates that failed to support it this time to change their minds.

The Palin plan explicitly does none of that. It is more likely to drive those voters away. And if Rush Limbaugh is to be believed, that's the point.


Democrats Rising

There is an opening here for a smart, flexible, and pragmatic Democratic administration. If a President Obama proves himself an appealing leader and the party can present a coherent ideology that allows room for defecting small-government, low-tax, and realist Republicans, Democrats can build the kind of broad electoral consensus that's existed on the right since at least 1980 --and that Democrats shepherded in the generation beginning with Roosevelt. They can positively reshape an America that is demographically trending in their direction anyway. They can really shit American ideology. The center-right nation can become center-left.

It won't be easy. A President Obama will face the greatest financial crisis, and probably the longest and deepest recession, since the Great Depression. He'll have to manage two wars and the threat of Islamic terrorism. He will rule a nation that remains, even with a Democratic landslide, more partisan than it's ever been. Yet Franklin Roosevelt faced equally great challenges and triumphed. And Barack Obama's centrist consensus-building, though bound to disappoint many progressives, is probably the stuff we need right now to make it through this mess.

I have no illusions about a permanent Democratic majority. Even if the party makes it through the next four years unscathed -- and the GOP spends that time eating its own head -- Soren Dayton is right when he says that the Republican party will eventually heal its wounds. Conservatism will reemerge, undoubtedly in a new form, and will eventually be ascendant once again. In the meantime a successful Democratic party could force Republicans to move to the middle as they did with Eisenhower and as Dems did with Clinton.

This is no vast shift in American consciousness. Ideological change will remain a gradual, halting, imperfect process. The rosiest future for Democrats has a marginally-left-of-center populace supporting a marginally more left-of-center government. America will still be America. It certainly won't be Sweden. And even that small degree of change is not foreordained. Much will depend on how a President Obama handles the challenges placed before him.

Much more may depend on who wins the heart of the Republican Party.
Photo provided under a Creative Commons license by rev_bri

I think I was mean to my laptop at some point and now it's angry at me. It won't tell me what the problem is. Typical. Anyway, I think it's working now, so I'll have a few more posts up tonight.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist has taken a step that will surely hurt the McCain campaign. In consultation with advisers Crist has signed an executive order to extend voting hours for early voters in the state. Shorter hours tend to harm urban voters and early voting rewards the party with the most energized base. On both counts this is a move that will help Democrats in this crucial swing state.

It's a commendable move that places the integrity of democracy over party ideology, but it also begs the question -- what's the angle here? And with offshore drilling unpopular in Florida, and with moderate Crist having been passed over in favor of know-nothing conservative Palin, one has to suspect sour grapes. I mean, dude got engaged just so he could be McCain's running-mate. Didn't even see Romney selling out like that. And McCain passes him over? Cold, man. Cold.

I mentioned yesterday that the cast of The Wire would be campaigning for Obama today. The campaign's already got a video online from their appearance. The McCain campaign continues to lobby the cast of The Facts of Life, but they can't get Tutti on-board.



(h/t Spencer Ackerman)

Following from the post below, here's three simple rules left progressives would do well to live by:

1) If somebody has a novel theory of government, society, or economics that he thinks can change the world, he's probably wrong.

2) If somebody believes revolution is necessary to instill the kind of change he wants to see, that's probably not the kind of change anybody else wants to have. Even if it is, he's definitely not the guy to bring it about.

3) Be picky about your friends. Seriously, there's nothing that makes contemptuous moralizing more ridiculous than sharing the high horse with guys like Hugo and Fidel.

4) Bonus tip: Lose the Che t-shirt. Seriously, that was cool for, like, fifteen minutes back in the early nineties. After they made the movie and you saw that fat dude at T.G.I.Fridays wearing one you probably should've realized it jumped the shark ages ago.

The first in an ongoing series.

Hugo Chávez recently made history by becoming the first Latin American leader to expel Human Rights Watch monitors from his country after the organization published a report on the shabby state of freedom in Venezuela:

The official reason we were given for our expulsion was that we had violated the constitution by criticizing the government while on tourist visas. It was a curious allegation since our immigration cards included a "business" box, which we had dutifully checked off. In any case, Venezuela's foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, made clear the next day that the government's decision had nothing to do with our visa status. "Any foreigner who comes to criticize our country will be immediately expelled," he declared. Of course, had the Chávez government actually been interested in upholding its laws, it would have respected our rights—enshrined in the Venezuelan constitution—to immediately contact our embassies, obtain legal counsel, and receive a fair hearing. Instead, as we discovered only after we were finally ushered onto a plane at the airport, it bought us a one-way trip to Brazil.

Keep reading...

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Full admission: I've never really read anything by Bernard-Henri Levy. He's one of those thinkers whose existence I'm vaguely familiar with and whose name I might drop after the third pint when my instincts tell me (usually wrongly) that pretense is the way to pick up whatever woman I'm hitting on at the time. But I've never exactly detected a Levy-shaped hole in my intellectual life. I guess the idea of a French public intellectual journalist-philosopher never held much appeal to me.

Reading his recent overwrought-bordering-on-satire piece on the financial crisis in The New Republic only confirms my bias. Stuffed to bursting with references to all-star philosophers that betray a depth of understanding any precocious fifteen-year-old could achieve in an hour spent skimming the backs of books in the philosophy section at Barnes & Noble, it reads like a self-important high school debater's monologue as interpreted by the screenwriters of The Matrix.

It's prose that'd make Victor Davis Hanson weep.

I'm tempted to quote the entire article -- seriously, it's that so-bad-it's-good. I'll limit myself to a few highlights after the jump.

One recalls "Leviathan," Rousseau's "Social Contract," de la Boetie's "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude": theories that had almost fallen out of view but in fact described what is taking place now in plain view, during a worldwide crisis unprecedented in the history of our various capitalisms.

What is a social bond and how is it broken? Voila. Here we are. This debacle, this shipwreck, is showing us the answer. . . .

Is man a predator of man? Does the fear of this predator slumber within us? An anxiety, formerly concealed by a poorly applied varnish of civilization, about a state of nature that is re-emerging? Consider the princes of finance, once so polite, so complicit, so civilized, who have been facing each other at the edge of the abyss, waiting to see who will be the next to fall; consider that dance of wolves, the ferocious ballet of battered predators sniffing at each other, detecting the scent of death on their neighbors, coveting their remains; consider the tango of white-hot hate that has been discreetly called the "drying up of interbank credit."

The scent of execution and of collective suicide has been circulating in the middle of the pack.

It is as though we have been watching a deadly dance around a fire--

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