jerseyhoya wrote:If the McCain campaign was willing to be a little more nuanced on the issue, they would be in good standing. Of course, you and many of the other liberals who have been attacking her on it have the same lack of nuance in looking at it. I know you were being dramatic, but we're not exactly looking at the most brazen, despicable act of dishonesty in modern political history here.

See also, a pretty decent piece on Palin and earmarks - http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/516743.html

Oh, I agree. My "lack of nuance" is for effect, and meant only to call out the dishonesty.

I wrote a few days ago (I think) that it's really the misleading framing that they put on earmarks that bothers me--as in, you could waste them all and not make a scratch on the deficit. Probably a decent case could be made for the value of almost anything requested... which of course doesn't mean that your or my tax dollars should go towards them, just that it's usually not out-and-out graft.

The table-pounding on earmarks obscures the fact that McCain's basic budget numbers don't add up. Now, you and I and probably everyone here know that his numbers don't mean much anyway, because the Congress won't approve his massive, irresponsible tax cut (and if you look at what Holtz-Eakin says when the cameras aren't rolling, it's quite possible McCain ultimately won't even propose it), nor will they wipe out all earmarks. Nor will they freeze domestic spending.

As Paul has written again and again, Americans basically don't like or want "small government." McCain has railed, to his credit, about Republicans spending like drunken sailors (and he was one; he'd know). But if push came to shove, I'm pretty confident that as president he wouldn't hold up a multi-trillion dollar budget funding vital services over a billion here or there in earmarks.

(Obama's numbers don't necessarily add up either, but he's a lot closer, and I think he's framed the debate in at least a slightly more responsible way. As a goo-goo first and a Democrat way second, I tepidly approve.)

edit: Greg Sargent puts it better than I did

Palin added that "it's not inappropriate for a mayor or for a governor" to try to get "a share of the federal budget for infrastructure."

Of course it isn't! As she says, of course a mayor or governor is going to want to tap the Federal budget for money for local infrastructure buildup, and of course members of Congress will try to get it done, too.

But that isn't the issue. It's very easy to get distracted here, but again, the rub is Palin's frequent claim that she said "thanks, but no thanks" to Federal help for the big local project. The problem is her and McCain's latter-day effort to portray her as having been some kind of Joan of Arc of pork-slayers.

edit 2: thanks for that link to the Alaska Daily News. Good piece, I agree.

Contrary to the rather hysterical claims that Gov. Palin is a right-wing, religious zealot, here's an article that portrays her more as a centrist when it comes to governing. Apparently, she's not only afraid to go after her own party, but also "big oil" when they need gettin' after.

Palin 'governed from the center,' went after big oil

"She has governed from the center," says Rebecca Braun, author of Alaska Budget Report, a non-partisan political newsletter. "She has in some small ways supported her religious views — for example, proposing money to continue the office of faith-based and community initiatives — but she has actually been conspicuously absent on social issues. She came in with a big oil and gas agenda, which really required Democratic allies to get through."

"Here you are in Alaska, a state that grew rich on oil and gas, in a state where Republicans generally protected the industry," says Persily, who worked for Palin in Washington. "Now you have Palin who comes in, says, 'Tax 'em,' and the Legislature says, 'We'll see your tax, and we'll double it,' and everyone went home happy other than the oil industry. It's a very surprising turn of events."

Eric Croft, a former Democratic state representative from Anchorage, says, "On oil and gas, her positions are much closer to that of the national Democratic Party than of the national Republican Party."

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's policy director, sees a distinction.

"The key difference between what the governor did and what Sen. Obama is proposing is, the governor did not impose a windfall profits tax," Holtz-Eakin said during a lunch with reporters last week. "It's a permanent change. It's not an opportunistic grab for 'windfall profits,' and I think that's a fundamental difference in the approach. She was trying to set the state up for both good and bad times in the oil industry, and that's very sensible."

Seems like a perfectly reasonable article. Thoughts?

Three things stick out for me in reading this article:

1) Even after two short years, she knows how to govern effectively, including reaching across the aisle at times.
2) She is far more pragmatic than many of her opponents have been (somewhat desperately) trying to portray her.
3) McCain and Palin have a much more impressive record of bipartisanship, especially on tough issues, than Obama and Biden.

seke2 wrote:saw both of the new obama ads on his website...
http://my.barackobama.com/page/communit ... sen/gG53SH

i like them. the positive one is a nice, clear, change of pace from the usual ads--just a quick 30 second snippet of obama talking about the whole "change" issue.

the negative one is a lot more biting than anything else i've seen from the left in a while, basically makes fun of the fact that mccain doesn't use a computer or send email.

Regarding the negative ad, it seems there are significant problems, both with its sensitivity and accuracy...

From Jonah Goldberg at NRO.

From Forbes, Via Ace of Spades who is all over this thing:

"In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate's savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. "She's a whiz on the keyboard, and I'm so laborious," McCain admits."

The Forbes article from 2000 mentioned in the quote is linked by Jonah in his post.

I'm not sure if this kind of ad is another sign that the Obama campaign is in disarray, but I'm wondering how many of these gaffes he/they can continue to make before he begins to bury his campaign.

oh god, what bullcrap. just shut up about all this crap

dajafi wrote:Interesting article by the Politico guy on how Bill Clinton might have advised Obama

Great article. The Politico is just at another level than any other publication at the moment.

pacino wrote:oh god, what bullcrap. just shut up about all this crap

I agree with pacino, but the spin is really no more mind-numbingly dumb than the basic argument:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/us/po ... ref=slogin

Q: But do you go on line for yourself?

Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.

Q: Do you use a blackberry or email?

Mr. McCain: No

Mark Salter: He uses a BlackBerry, just ours.

Mr. McCain: I use the Blackberry, but I don’t e-mail, I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail. I read e-mails all the time, but the communications that I have with my friends and staff are oral and done with my cell phone. I have the luxury of being in contact with them literally all the time. We now have a phone on the plane that is usable on the plane, so I just never really felt a need to do it. But I do – could I just say, really – I understand the impact of blogs on American politics today and political campaigns. I understand that. And I understand that something appears on one blog, can ricochet all around and get into the evening news, the front page of The New York Times. So, I do pay attention to the blogs. And I am not in any way unappreciative of the impact that they have on entire campaigns and world opinion.

The wholly partisan R sez: he's online. There's absolutely no importance to whether he does it for himself or has his wife or Salter or whoever do it.

The wholly partisan D sez: no, no, the whole thing is whether he can do it for himself! Terri freakin' Schiavo could have had people read e-mails to her.

I say it's really about the zillionth most important thing we could be exploring, about equal to McCain's views on why the Diamondbacks seem to be fading in the NL West. Evidently the idea behind the Obama ad was that McCain is ill-prepared to lead America in the 21st-century economy if he isn't comfortable with the 21st-century tools that drive the economy. Arguable point, but again they've simply played into their opponents' hands by allowing them to create a diversion.

From that Politico article dajafi linked to above, but worth separating out. This is something I've yelled about with my liberal friends and family members, and probably online if I were to look back through the archives.

One important thing to remember: Obama has never faced a serious race against a Republican. His important victories in Illinois and this year have all been against other Democrats in nomination battles.

Some Clinton allies say this may tend to warp his perspective about how politics works and what kind of issues and stories matter in a presidential context. Bottom line: it does not matter who is getting better coverage in the New York Times.

I think this is real, and does matter. Running against Alan Keyes isn't a real race. This is new for Obama in a very real way.

jerseyhoya wrote:From that Politico article dajafi linked to above, but worth separating out. This is something I've yelled about with my liberal friends and family members, and probably online if I were to look back through the archives.

One important thing to remember: Obama has never faced a serious race against a Republican. His important victories in Illinois and this year have all been against other Democrats in nomination battles.

Some Clinton allies say this may tend to warp his perspective about how politics works and what kind of issues and stories matter in a presidential context. Bottom line: it does not matter who is getting better coverage in the New York Times.

I think this is real, and does matter. Running against Alan Keyes isn't a real race. This is new for Obama in a very real way.

The factual point is, well, factual. 100 percent. Pretty sure that if you go back even further, he was always in a safe district in Illinois--so really he's never had a hard fight against a Republican. His Illinois Senate primary contest and, obviously, battling the Clintons was tough, but it is different.

I guess one could make the same argument about Hillary--she didn't have too much trouble with Lazio in 2000 and won in a walkover in '06. But of course Bubba had a tough contest with Bush and Perot in '92, and he lost races in Arkansas, at least two.

I don't remember where I argued this before (I'm pretty sure here), but I think the pushback I got was something about McCain never having a race either. The difference being that McCain has had to win reelection in at least a moderately competitive state on a number of occasions even though none of the races were particularly demanding. Obama was elected in a very safe district in Illinois, and has yet to run for reelection on a statewide level against a halfway credible candidate.

dajafi wrote:Interesting article by the Politico guy on how Bill Clinton might have advised Obama

That article is pretty much spot on, although I wonder if Camp Obama would heed any such advice. Something I find "interesting" (for lack of a better word) is how the Democrats, especially the "New Democrats" (Progressives), are so eager to disparage and abandon "the only Democrat since FDR to win two terms." It's as if they swallowed the Clinton Impeachment game plan hook line and sinker. The R's likely knew they weren't going to get Clinton removed from office, the real motive was to stain (pardon the pun) Clinton so other D's wouldn't want to be like him (i.e., adopt his governing and election winning strategies), get them to distance themselves from anything Clinton... IOW, prevent Bill Clinton from shaping the Democratic Party, from taking the party more towards center. The first play in the R game plan to take the middle away from the D's. What a coup it turned out to be, a coup that likely exceeded their expectations. Evident by the fact that GWB is a two term prez, how Gore didn't want anything to do with Clinton in 2K, and by how many of the electorate D side now despises anything Clinton. A brilliant play by the R's.

TenuredVulture wrote:

dajafi wrote:I just stumbled across this--seems pretty interesting. The author, obviously a big liberal, might have put his finger on why the Dems so often lose...

Smart sound stuff written by some academic type

I dunno. I'm highly skeptical of highly general pseudo-anthropological psychologizing of crowds.

Or, to put it differently, I think the problem starts with the Port Huron Statement and the new left, which was a conceit by young people attending elite institutions that they somehow had something in common with blue collar workers and Black folks fighting for civil rights.

Anyone with a real job realizes that college students, especially college students at elite institutions, form one of the most privileged groups of people the world has ever seen--sex, drugs, parties, all on mom and dad's dime.

Or, to put it another way, real people hate hippies, for good reason, and the Democrats never cut their ties with those hippies. Obama, at least at first, was clearly not a hippie. And Clinton, he was kind of a hippie, but since he had a real Southern Accent, it didn't quite count. Kerry, Gore--those guys were clearly dirty pot smoking elitists, accustomed to treating their help just like members of the family as they handed their made the mud soaked clothes they fouled at Woodstock. Real Americans want to tell these people, hey, asshat, try working for a living before you tell us what's best for us.

Or, in a more serious sense, post materialist cultural issues only resonate with people who are secure in their material well-being. The inability of democratic elites to understand real insecurity (again, I think Clinton's success is explained by the fact that he's an exception to this) and real class resentment makes them tone deaf when it comes to a quest for some certainty in an increasingly uncertain world. Like many on this very board, they don't understand why people need to believe that Americans are good guys, and that there are eternal moral truths. If that goes, for many Americans, the whole game is over.

Or, even more simply, Democrats stated interests in an more equitable distribution is unconvincing. They can't mean it, because they're really no different from the Mitt Romneys who seem to take real pleasure in screwing us over every payday.

Interesting observation. Might I add that perhaps one reason Clinton was the exception was that he was seen as a former hippie that grew up ("put on a suit and got a real job", for lack of a better phrase). Kinda like how GWB was seen as having "grown up" after his hard drinkin' days of youth.

ptk, thank you for the compliment. Of the approximately 50 million Republicans I'd guess no more than 10,000 are really rich. And less than half are social conservatives. Democrats really have no idea who makes up the Republican Party.

If John McCain can't type without pain I wouldn't expect him to be surfing the web.

Governors shouldn't be anti-earmark. They make a list of things they want. Many of these items are actually debated on the Congressional floor. If they are earmarked that's the Congressman's fault, not the governor. I doubt Rod Blagojevich gave Obama instructions to sneak $300 million in earmarks in every year.

If you want to know how to cut costs, look at the GOP Platform:

Recent audits show that 22% of all federal programs are ineffective or incapable of demonstrating results.

69 separate programs, administered by 10 different agencies, provide education or care to children under the age of 5.

Nine separate agencies administer 44 different programs for job training.

23 separate programs, each with its own overhead, provide housing assistance to the elderly.

People say not to cut entitlement programs but if the entitlement program isn't accomplishing anything, why keep it. Maybe if we eliminated all these redundant programs and actually focused on the issue we'd save some money there too. The Democratic solution is often to throw more money at something. George Bush must have thought that was a good idea since his first response to everything is to throw money at it. I don't know if this platform is sincere, but it's about time somebody actually managed the money.

The McCain campaign is playing the Palin card brilliantly. She's energized the base to the extent that more Republicans are excited about McCain-Palin than Democrats are about Obama-Biden. Some moderate or independent voting women like her. Whether the criticism is valid or not, Palin comes off as picked on by men. Like or dislike her they can empathize with what she's going through.

The Democrats and the media can't take their eyes off Palin. The Dems spend all their time focused on here, only occasionally mentioning that she's not running for President. At least she's closer to running than George Bush. Criticizing Palin or Bush isn't criticizing McCain. As long as the Dems avoid actually doing that, the GOP is golden.

Had the Republicans given the media immediate total access to Palin she would've been a story for two days. Instead she's become the Republicans' own rock star. The excitement over this interview was tremendous. I'll bet the “Hannity & Colmes” ratings on Tuesday and Wednesday will be some of the highest ever. Whether the media is positive or negative, making Palin reclusive means all the talk is about the Republicans.

jeff2sf wrote:No, Monkeyboy, I am paying attention. I'm very down on McCain, but your rhetoric and hyperbole has done nothing to advance the discussion and if anything sends me and the rest of people like me into LaEx's open arms. And if that isn't disgusting enough of a visual for you, I don't know what else I can do.

Fine, I lose on style points. Fair enough. Would you like me to critique your style?

Nice article by the American Editor of the Guardian about the differing strategies. Not that new to those of you in the thick of it, I suspect, but I did at least appreciate pulling back from the tit for tat bull shit for a while.

So there you have it. Are the Obama people right? The problems with their theory are that all this field-tilling is invisible to pundits, and that there's no way to measure its success until the votes start coming in. In the meantime, McCain is very much winning the visible war, which can be measured day-to-day. And, since he named Palin, enthusiasm on the right is sky high, so he'll have his army of volunteers now, too.

One doesn't doubt that the Obama turnout will be impressive. But there are 51 daily news cycles between now and November 4. Obama certainly needs to win a few of them. So let's sort all that out first. Then we'll talk about the big picture.

Philly the Kid wrote:Race is an issue. It's one of the big reasons why poor white people vote for people like Bush and likely now, McCain, it's why they become "ditto heads" and their kids become neo-nazi.

[imagine a pointless rant about the idiocy of these comments]

I think race is an issue, but how many of those racists would have voted for any democratic, liberal candidate, whether they be white, black, a woman, etc...?

I think America is the issue

VoxOrion wrote:

Philly the Kid wrote:Race is an issue. It's one of the big reasons why poor white people vote for people like Bush and likely now, McCain, it's why they become "ditto heads" and their kids become neo-nazi.

[imagine a pointless rant about the idiocy of these comments]

ptk spends all his time in the Midwest, Mountain States, and South with poor white people. He's asked them why they voted for Bush.

One of the reasons Democrats lose is that they think that anyone making less than $250,000 couldn't vote for the Republicans on fiscal issues, so they must be racist homophobe whacked out abortion clinic bombing Christians. If you don't know why they vote Republican, how can you win their vote?

Philly the Kid wrote:Race is an issue. It's one of the big reasons why poor white people vote for people like Bush and likely now, McCain, it's why they become "ditto heads" and their kids become neo-nazi.

"The Poor" (TM)...
- Sometimes "clinging to guns & bibles", sometimes clinging to Community Organizers
- Sometimes racists, sometimes victims
- Sometimes white. sometimes "People-Of-Color" (TM)
- Sometimes dumb, sometimes misunderstood.
- Sometimes voting for whites, sometimes "voting for change" *
- Always the next best thing to having formed an idea.


* not a metaphor for a race-based decision, "Heavens, no."