Hitting harder now

Back when things weren't looking quite so good on the polling front, there was a lot of speculation that the Obama campaign was just too reluctant to really go after McCain aggressively. Well I'm no expert, but to me this ad appears to be filmed from the viewpoint of an old man staggering around the Oval Office with his vision going dark at the edges:



Strong stuff.

Straight Talk Air bans Joe Klein

When there was a "debate" (I still can't believe it) about whether or not it was okay for the federal government to intercept the electronic communications of Americans without obtaining a warrant, Joe Klein was on the wrong side of it. Moreover, he took the wrong side without even first familiarizing himself with the laws involved, and only admitted as much in a fit of pissy self-justification ("I have neither the time nor inclination…" etc.) after taking heaps of well-deserved abuse.

But since then, he's done a lot to endear. My rough estimate is that, since maybe June or July, 80% of Joe Klein's posts that have included the words "John McCain" have also included one or more of the following: "shameful," "shameless," "dishonorable" and "despicable." It's not a love-fest anymore. Not even a little bit.

For his trouble, he's now been banned from McCain's campaign plane. Keep up the good work, Joe.

Band of Horses - Our Swords

Claire McCaskill has pretty serious game

Just watched Claire McCaskill on "Late Edition" with Wolf Blitzer, appearing opposite fellow Missourian Roy Blunt, the Republican minority whip. (The Blunts and the McCaskills, it turns out, have something of a political blood feud going on. Blunt's son Matt beat McCaskill for governor in 2004 and his father Leroy unseated McCaskill's mother Betty Anne in a 1978 statewide race. Wikipedia is awesome.)

She's not my favorite Democrat by a long shot. In fact, she's one of my least favorite. I could look up specific quotes or votes to defend my antipathy to her, but it's basically that she's further to the right than I would like. Entirely predictable, given that she was elected to the Senate from a reddish state.

But for what she offers up: a center-left domestic agenda served with heaping helpings of respect and admiration for cultural conservatives, she does it with a great deal of skill. Her pitch seems a little bit corny to my effete sophisticate taste, but not that corny. I can get over my innate distrust of someone so wide-eyed and cheerful because she's also capable of being sharp and convincing.

She was one of the first senators aboard the Obama bandwagon, officially announcing in mid-January, just after his loss in New Hampshire. This reflects both sound political instincts and the the simple fact that Obama's political style really is incredibly similar to her own.

With Obama still (and I hate the recent downtick in the national trackers) looking likely to beat John McCain on November 4, that's probably a good style to have. I can't say that I'm enthusiastic about the prospect, but if I had to put money right now on who the first female president will be, I'd bet on her.

Colin Powell's endorsement is worthless

Colin Powell was wrong about Bush, wrong about Iraq, and is still not abjectly apologetic about either. When Tom Brokaw played the clip of Powell saying "Dick Cheney will be a great vice president" etc. at the 2000 RNC, his question was whether Powell regretted making that speech. The real question to ask after that clip is why anyone should assign any value to his endorsement of any subsequent presidential ticket. As digby said, only the Villagers will care, and they will care deeply because Colin Powell is very serious.

Joe Scarborough made the point in the roundtable that the effect on the news cycle itself will help Obama because McCain needs as much positive attention as possible, but I still resent being asked to care what Colin Powell thinks about anything until he owns up to what he did.

What if they really, really deserve it?

Charlie Cook:
Devastating back-to-back election cycles are truly rare: They have happened only twice in the past 80 years (40 elections) -- to Republicans in 1932 and 1934 and to Democrats in 1950 and 1952. Usually, when voters kick the heck out of one party, their anger is satisfied and they move on. Voters rarely come back the very next time and kick the same party hard again.

via Sam Boyd

He's just so damnably folksy!

Buffett takes to the pages of the NYT (note: not the WSJ) to tell America to get long:

Let me be clear on one point: I can't predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven't the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

Think about it.

Nat gas in 2H08: a visual aid

Toro!

Sherrod Brown: More like this

As I've written before, I understand that Obama can't really do things like, say, encourage his supporters to watch Fox News on election night so they can breathe in the sobs and wails of Hannity and O'Reilly like so much expensive perfume. But thank God not every Democrat in national politics is so constrained.

You'd think the junior senator from what is still notionally a swing state might have to be a little more circumspect about getting his culture war on, but he was widely considered the most populist member of the '06 Democratic class and he beat the incumbent Republican DeWine handily.

Anyway it's good to see. The post itself (on one of Fox's own blogs) is also worth checking out for the comments. A sampler:

FOX News is the ONLY fair, unbiased network out there. It's the only channel I watch to get BOTH sides of the stories. All the other channels bash McCain and give Obama a "pass" on the very legitimate concerns we should all have about Obama's judgement!

Take the Kool Aid away from Sarrod and let's prove the polls ABSOLUTELY WRONG!!!
The numbers are skewed - the the LEFT is gonna be SHOCKED!!
The stock market is UP- Bad news for Barry.
And at the McCain-Palin rally today, when the crowd said "The Pledge of Allegiance"- you should have heard them ROAR "One Nation UNDER GOD!!!"

WE URGE ALL OF THE KOOL AID DRINKERS FROM THE OTHER BIAS NEWS CHANNELS TO TUNE IN TO FOX.

Overheard on "Hardball"

"If they're unable to convict him, I think he's got a real shot, yeah."

- Unknown pundit on Ted Stevens' (R-AK) prospects, should he beat what sounds like a pretty solid corruption case.

Don't forget to turn in your secret decoder ring

Christopher Buckley's career as an Obama-supporting National Review contributor lasted four days, which has to be considered a pretty good run.

I'm kind of sympathetic to the NR readers who inundated him with hate mail though. Sensible centrist David Broder types love nothing more than wringing their hands about ideological rigidity, but backing the other party's nominee for president is not small potatoes.

Buckley whines:
So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

First of all, the problem with "fatwahed" isn't that it's spelled wrong it's that it's not even the right part of speech. I thought conservative intellectuals were supposed to know that sort of thing.

Regarding "the concept of diversity," for the purposes of the Republican base it means not using the n-word. It doesn't involve sending hard earned dollars to the National Review for the opinions of an Obama supporter, no matter who his daddy was.

I'm sympathetic to the angry emailers because nothing pissed me off about Joe Lieberman quite so much as being told by ostensibly disinterested parties that it's a shame the Democratic party wasn't a "big enough tent" for poor Joe. As if parties are supposed to include members who are prone to suggesting that it (i.e. the party) is rife with terrorist-sympathizing traitors. (Incidentally, he's now not only campaigning with McCain, he's writing op-eds for the endangered Norm Coleman. What an other-team player!)

Granted, Buckley hasn't as far as I know gone that far in his criticism of Republicans, but as litmus tests go supporting the right presidential candidate doesn't seem too unreasonable. Why would someone who's even considering voting for Obama want their work for Rich "Starbursts" Lowry anyway?

You're better off without'em, Chris. Suck it up and take the hate mail like a man.

Update:
And another thing: If you offered to resign, especially in an email entitled "A Sincere Offer" as Lowry claims then you resigned and you shouldn't title your ensuing post "Sorry Dad, I Was Fired."

Shane Victorino

As role players go, that guy is pretty damn good.

I don't much care who goes to the World Series from the junior circuit. I was thinking that Manny vs. the Red Sox would be entertaining, but now it's not at all clear that the Sox will hold up their end of the bargain.

Breaking - Matt Stairs, professional hitter. 7-5 Phillies

Trooper-whatever

It's painfully clear that people just do not give a rat's ass who Sarah Palin fired or why when she was governor of Alaska. It was a one day story that won't have any influence on who the next president is or how much Obama may or may not win by. It's nice that the investigation wasn't suppressed, but you can only lead a horse to water.

She is predictably arguing that the report doesn't say what it says. Conservatives(!), to the extent they engage the issue at all, argue that a government official with firing power can fire whomever they want for whatever reason, including political affiliation (U.S. Attorneys) or personal vendetta (Monegan). But there's not even a debate about the investigation really going on.

On the positive side, the indifference may owe something to the fact that her public image as a ditz is, with Tina Fey's help, already so deeply ingrained. That's a bad image for a potential vice president to have, but it makes it harder for people to register stories in which she's also a ruthless tyrant.

Plus there's the possibility that it's just getting lost in the overarching, McCain is in dire, dire straits narrative.

What is the deal with the McCain campaign?

Not many people I know are Republican operatives, and it would be kinda rude to ask the one who is, but what the hell is the McCain campaign doing?

Lindsey Graham, a guy in the inner circle if ever there was one, comes out and promises strong new language on taxes, but none is forthcoming. The candidate gets his first jolt of positive press in ages by scolding the crazy-cat lady who called Obama "an Arab," and then today turns around and declines to distance himself from a comparison of Obama to Osama bin Laden. And this is all while fighting a rearguard action against Bill Kristol, who was, deliciously, human anchor Sarah Palin's biggest champion. (The only bad thing about a Pfotenhauer-Kristol Smackdown is that it's never bloody enough. Oh and there's Kristol flying off the top turnbuckle with a devastating Knee-o-con on an unsuspecting but richly deserving Tucker Bounds! This is the kind of carnage they should make Pay-Per-View.)

I have to believe that the people running the McCain campaign are at least a little bit good at what they do. I'm not just going to settle on "Because they're total hacks that can't do anything right" as an explanation. But any secret strategy in an encrypted file on Steve Schmidt's laptop must involve doing a lot of stuff that doesn't make immediate sense.

Update:
Ambinder is harsh: "It's never good to overpromise to Mike Allen on Saturday, back track a little on Sunday, fail to give Lindsey Graham the message, whet everyone's appetites, offer new rhetoric Monday, throw your own campaign under the bus, facilitate your burned surrogates' leaking to the New York Times, and have nothing to put up against your opponents' four new policy proposals."

Michael Scherer on Levi Johnston

Michael Scherer is one weird dude. It's usually the totally undiminished McCain love, and maybe that's why this jumped out at me, but I don't think so. Here's the opening of his post entitled "Levi Johnston Was Nervous at First, But Then He Was Like, 'Whatever'":

Easily one of the best, non-political stories of this election cycle has been the tale of Levi Johnston, an 18-year-old kid from Alaska, who was living his life, going to high school, watching his friends tend to his MySpace page, playing hockey, and hanging out with his girlfriend, Bristol, until everything suddenly changed.

Wanting to give this as charitable a reading as possible, I assumed that by "best" he meant "ickiest," but the rest of the post suggests he was genuinely enthusiastic about it.

Bob Wright was talking about the Bristol-Levi story and said it was Bad For America because should they form a loving, cohesive family it would be a positive example of out of wedlock pregnancy. I don't even care about that angle, but there's still something kind of embarrassing about it for everyone involved. Not least of whom being the VP candidate mother who's such a big believer in abstinence-only education.

By sheer coincidence, Josh Marshall wrote a post within an hour of Scherer just to muse about how bizarre the thing was:

I was taking a few moments to think over the most surreal moments of the campaign so far. And this was certainly high on the list: John McCain's tarmac embrace of Levi Johnston, Wasilla's high school hockey star who impregnated Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol ...

Totally unprovoked "Man wasn't that f'ed up?" reminisence. Now whether or not you might personally use something more euphemistic than "impregnated" when describing the situation, Scherer's unalloyed, and by all appearances unironic glee can't be that common a response.

Week off to a good start

The G7 meeting seems to have done the trick (at least on the equity markets), Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for economics (can't wait to read the wingnuts' bleating about that one), and the ABC/WaPo poll has the presidential race at 53-43 ("Even McCain's supporters are now less enthusiastic about his candidacy, returning to levels not seen since before the Republican National Convention.").

Excellent.

Bill Ayers for Secretary of Education

Some good news

Gay hedge funders across Connecticut can take some solace in the fact that, while they may be down 37% YTD, they are now allowed to get married.

GWB Unit

Commenting on the McCain campaign's receipt of multiple cease and desist requests from popular musicians, Yglesias points out that one problem may be that it's looking in all the wrong genres:

It’s somewhat counterintuitive, but I think conservative politicians would actually do better to turn to the world of commercial hip-hop, where key conservative values like greed and violence are frequently lauded.

Indeed, was there ever a more thugged out president than George W. Bush? Were it not for the lack of demographic overlap between hip hop fans and even potentially Republican voters, I think Trick Daddy would have had the ideal theme song for his 2004 reelection campaign:

Middle Class

Rachel Maddow is going after McCain for never using the term "middle class" during last night's debate. He didn't say it in the first debate either, and Obama hit him for it.

I don't object to this being a Democratic message but on the merits it's very stupid. One of Rudy Giuliani's most annoying lines, and he used it constantly, was that Democrats never used the words "Islamic terrorists." Well Democrats aren't inclined to use "Islamic terrorists" out of a desire to be clear that it's the terrorism that is the problem rather than the Islam, and out of respect for people who might consider it a contradiction in terms. It's a semantic dispute not a national security dispute.

Republicans, for their part, don't talk about the "middle class" very much because Republicans like to stress that we're all one big American family, baby. This whole navel-gazing exercise of looking at a three-tiered distribution of wealth where some are "rich" and others "middle class" (and let's not even get into the poor), especially for taxation purposes, is irredeemably flawed. You logically can't do it because any definition of rich is too low.