Bobby Jindal and Tommy Carcetti

Ryan Powers has an item on Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal's refusal of federal aid for expanded unemployment benefits (part of Obama's stimulus plan). Other Republican governors, like Mark Sanford of South Carolina, have been making similar noises initially, but for the most part I believe they all soon bowed to political necessity and stopped pretending that they were going to try to turn away much-needed federal dollars for their state. But unlike Mark Sanford, Bobby Jindal might be the Republican presidential candidate in 2012.

In the final season of The Wire, the mayor of Baltimore finds himself in dire need of state assistance to help pay for schools and police. He is ultimately unwilling, however, to "go begging" to the governor in Annapolis. Why turn down free money? Because the mayor is planning to run for governor himself in the next election, and he doesn't want to give his would-be opponent a huge gift by appearing to be dependent on or subservient to him.

Being human, Mayor Carcetti feels badly about his cynical short-changing of the citizens of Baltimore, whom he was elected to represent, but he justifies it by telling himself that, after he does what is politically necessary and thereby becomes governor, he'll be able to help them more than he ever could as mayor.

... or Jindal's opposition could be totally principled, of course.


h/t Yglesias

Mike Murphy is making sense

Writing at Swampland, former and probably still in some capacity McCain advisor Mike Murphy:

But these smart money Democrats are desperate [for?] two things; gallons of John McCain’s political blood sloshing around the convention hall floor and a big bounce in the polls. No bounce has come (why would it on day two?) and the McCain bashing has been limited. The Obama High Command thinks a pure slash and burn approach to McCain is very dangerous stuff in a election where the voters are so unhappy... [Rank and file Democrats] think Obama is slipping and it worries them. It’s interesting; often the McCain campaign seems to be all tactics and no strategy, while the Obama campaign is often long on strategy and short on tactics. The movers and shakers here are feeling McCain’s sharp tactics while the potential dead-on correct Obama strategy remains a cloud of unfelt intellectual property. This has given a certain psychological edge here to McCain.

Agreed. Distinguishing between "strategy" and "tactics" might be the most irritating cliche going, but in this case it's actually appropriate.

Murphy got a vicious response for this post from the Swampland comment section, which is mostly a cabal of Joe Klein-hating liberals like myself, but more feral. But David Corn, who I'm pretty sure never worked for John McCain, wrote almost exactly the same thing today:

"[A Democratic insider] said that there had been a loot [sic] of private polling done on the Democratic side that indicates that on-the-fence voters would not buy a direct slam on McCain and that they would not absorb any negative information about him unless the attacker paid tribute to McCain's military service. The consultant was adamant on this point. S/he maintained that the polling did show that voter perceptions of McCain could be changed to benefit Obama, if the attack was crafted the right way and McCain was not merely blasted."

Corn then goes on to express more skepticism about the long-term strategy than Murphy did, and his wish that these polling data weren't being kept under wraps. I would also like to see those numbers, but they probably wouldn't let me even if I asked.

Anyway, Mike Murphy's analysis may be totally insincere and calculated to advance McCain's talking points or whatever, but it also seems pretty accurate. His characterization of the Obama camp's thinking is backed up by David Corn's reporting and it's obvious that McCain has been hitting much harder than Obama in the early going. He actually professes more confidence in the Obama strategy than Corn does.

Hitting back

This is an excellent post by Theda Skocpol, making the argument that Obama needs to stop whining about McCain's negativity and start hitting back. I pretty much agree with it, but I still have a high degree of confidence that the Obama camp really knows what it's doing. Moreover, I think the plan definitely involves attacking McCain, and that appears to be happening right about now.

Obama's clumsiness

I don't want to write too much about this, but it was stupid of Obama to deliver the line about not looking like the guys on the dollar bills.

As Josh Marshall argues, the McCain campaign's plausible deniability on the Spears/Obama/Hilton ad isn't actually all that plausible. But as the occasion for Obama himself to make a fresh accusation that the McCain campaign is exploiting racism, it's pretty thin gruel.

Obama was definitely talking about the black thing with the dollar bill remark, but a prominent spokesman tried to walk it back afterwards by arguing he wasn't. That compounds the error by lying about it. Ramesh Ponnuru is right to point out that Obama has said basically the same thing before, and he knows he's got a good case because he's sending his NRO hordes over to the Washington Post site to make a big deal about it.

Now, predictably, the McCain campaign is turning around accusing Obama of being the one making race an issue, and I don't know why the Obama camp would want to have this out right now. The ad was getting panned or ridiculed by pretty much everybody already.