Category Archives: Obama-Biden

Hate Versus Hope

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Like many of you, I suspect, I am skeptical that Barack Obama will be able to accomplish many of his proposals before 2010, or even in his first term. Money is too tight; emotions are too raw. Yes, we can, but it ain’t gonna be easy.

However, I want voters to vote Dem on Tuesday if for no other reason than to send a loud and clear message that the days of Atwater-Rove hate, fear and smear campaigns are over. I want conservatives to understand that if they want to win elections, they’ve got to have something more to offer than the demonization of their opponents. Of course, that would put hacks like Ed Rogers out of work. And what’s not to like about that?

Last night, after the half-hour infomercial, the McCain campaign ran a standard hate ad. Ominous music, unflattering photo of Obama, whispery voice telling us we can’t trust him. How many times have we all seen that same ad? The identities of the candidates change, but it’s the same damnfool ad. I suspect that ad worked against McCain more than for him.

I think the best thing about the infomercial was that it gave voters another look at Obama, so they can see for themselves he’s not frightening or radical. McCain called it a “gauzy feel-good commercial.” Yeah, it was. So what has McCain given us except murky, feel-bad commercials?

Seems to me that every time I see McCain or Palin they’re wiggling their fingers in the air and saying boogaboogaboogabooga. Not exactly a plan for governance. Of course, that was all the plan Bush ever had, either.

As I’ve said before, if you look at the two candidates’ web sites you see that Obama’s “issues” section has ten times the detail as McCain’s “issues” section. So who’s the empty suit?

Even when he stops smearing Obama and addresses issues, McCain offers little else but slogans. For example, if you go to McCain’s economy section and scroll to the bottom of the page, there’s a video called “The McCain Economic Plan.” It is comically insubstantial, consisting mostly of McCain decisively telling us how decisive he is. The only specific offered is the promise to build nuclear power plants.

McCain-Palin supporters are scarier than McCain. This is not to say there aren’t jerks on the Dem side, also, like the asshole in San Francisco who hung Sarah Palin in effigy recently. Keith Olbermann made the guy the Worst Person in the World, and he richly deserved it. I hope the Secret Service let him know that threats to candidates are taken seriously.

But seems to me that all we hear from McCain-Palin people is hate. Well, that and ignorance. This was in the New York Times today:

People at McCain and Palin rallies often accuse Democrats of just wanting handouts. “A lot of people on the other side just want free money,” said Susan Emrich, at a McCain-Palin rally in Hershey on Tuesday. A real-estate agent, she wears a T-shirt that says, “I’m voting for Sarah Palin and that White Haired Dude.” Ms. Emrich would like to attend another rally later that day in nearby Shippensburg, but can’t. “I have to work,” she explains. “I’m a Republican.”

WTF does that mean? Does Ms. Emrich assume all Democrats are welfare recipients? And then there’s this:

When you ask Republicans what they think of Mr. Obama, the word “socialist” comes up more often than not. They mention that he is a smooth talker, and not in a good way. A lot of them seem to have real problems with Michelle Obama, too, though they cannot pinpoint why.

Of course not.

And they do not much care for that Joe Biden, either, or whatever his name is — many cannot immediately summon it.

Can we say “low-information voter”? See also Sean Quinn’s account of a McCain rally in Miami.

Last night on “Hardball,” Tweety interviewed Tom DeLay. Why? I flipped the channel; there are more entertaining ways to pollute one’s mind than watching DeLay. But now I’m sorry I did. Joan Walsh wrote,

DeLay, of course, was one of the most corrupt, hypocritical and divisive pillars of the 1990s GOP revolution, and he’s hugely to blame for his party’s sad fortunes today. But he still gets around the cable shows, and to see him on “Hardball,” just a half hour before I was on, spewing hate about Obama, was kind of unsettling. Obama’s a radical and a Marxist, he insisted, more radical than Al Gore, John Kerry or Barney Frank. He threw out Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. Ultimately I lost track of the times he called Obama a “Marxist.” But appearing right after DeLay, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz mopped the floor with him, to Matthews’ apparent surprise and enjoyment. Obama should send her flowers. I should send her flowers.

Walsh on the informercial:

So that experience shaped the way I watched Obama’s 30-minute infomercial, and it was a perfect tonic. Maybe it was a dull for a moment or two, but Obama can stand to be a little dull, when he has the likes of DeLay and other vicious hit men tarring him as a dark and dangerous Marxist socialist “redistributionist.” He’s fighting for the right to be one of us: normal, sometimes dull and yet presidential, and his ad did it all tonight.

Can we turn American politics into something other than a freak show? Yes we can!

No Fear

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North Carolinian Terry Mancour looks on the bright side of having his car keyed:

The anecdotal reports from our fellow Obamanauts have documented a string of petty vandalism across New Carolina, with cars bearing Obama stickers getting viciously hacked like this every day. It was an erratic and not particularly successful attempt at voter intimidation. At least I didn’t feel intimidated. And I tried to keep things in perspective.

A century ago there would have been lynchings and homes afire, doors being busted down at 4am, the kind of cruel guerrilla warfare one tends to associate with banana republics and Asian despots. Even a few decades ago there would have been angry meetings, axe-handle wielding thugs, vicious dogs and fire hoses. If the sum total of politically oriented violence in North Carolina was reduced to a few angry words, a scuffle or two and poorly worded public attacks, well, I had to count that as progress.

It’s progress on several fronts, I think. Four years ago I heard from several southerners who said they did not dare put a Kerry bumper sticker on their cars or a Kerry sign on their lawns, and petty vandalism was the least of their fears. Of course, according to righties, the only vandalism that went on was against people with Bush signs. And maybe there was more retaliation against people with Bush signs, if only because in many parts of the country it took a ton of courage to display a Kerry sign at all.

Maybe southerners are less fearful of openly supporting the Democrat this year. See, that’s progress.

Mancour continues,

“You don’t seem very intimidated,” he said, surprised. He was from California and he had been watching the circus that is southern politics with a mixture of amusement and anxiety. Clearly he had been expecting dogs and fire hoses and race riots by this point.

“I’m not,” I shrugged. “Like I said: they’re scared. And I’m not. I’m not even particularly angry. If my cherished ideas of political philosophy were getting flushed down the toilet every day, I’d probably be scared to. I guess it’s because I’m a parent. When I see stuff like this, it reminds me of my kids drawing on the walls. You can get upset about it, but they’re just kids.”

It may be that the most devastating thing you can say to a rightie is we’re not afraid of you any more.

End of Days, the Prequel

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The Asian and European markets are tanking this morning. It’s shaping up to be a fun day on Wall Street.

Now, for the good news — Nate Silver says the McCain campaign is on life support. In “Blame game: GOP forms circular firing squad,” Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen and John F. Harris of The Politico document the unraveling of the GOP political machine. There will be some juicy books written about the McCain campaign when this is over, I bet. The GOP also expects to be routed in the House.

Headline in today’s Los Angeles Times: “McCain’s homestretch strategy: paint Obama as a socialist.” Brilliant.

Even Scott MClellan endorses Obama.

According to Nate Silver’s “scenario analysis,” McCain absolutely must win Florida and Ohio to win the election. Both states are leaning blue at the moment, but, y’know, stuff happens, especially in Florida and Ohio. On the other hand, Obama can lose both Ohio and Florida and still win the election, Nate says.

It’s looking about as good as it could possibly look for Obama.

In the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne makes the interesting observation that the GOP seems to be splitting into McCain and Palin camps. The stats say Palin is a drag on the ticket, Dionne says,

Yet the pro-Palin right is still impatient with McCain for not being tough enough — as if he has not run one of the most negative campaigns in recent history. This camp believes that if McCain only shouted the names “Bill Ayers” and “Jeremiah Wright” at the top of his lungs, the whole election would turn around.

Then there are those conservatives who see Palin as a “fatal cancer to the Republican Party” (David Brooks), as someone who “doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin” (Kathleen Parker), as “a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics” (Peggy Noonan).

If you think about it, Dionne continues, you see the split forming between the party elite and its rank and file.

Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.

They’re all scapegoating Bush, of course. But “movement conservatism” is coming unglued, and this is not Bush’s fault alone.

Conservatism has finally crashed on problems for which its doctrines offered no solutions (the economic crisis foremost among them, thus Bush’s apostasy) and on its refusal to acknowledge that the “real America” is more diverse, pragmatic and culturally moderate than the place described in Palin’s speeches or imagined by the right-wing talk show hosts.

Conservatives came to believe that if they repeated phrases such as “Joe the Plumber” often enough, they could persuade working-class voters that policies tilted heavily in favor of the very privileged were actually designed with Joe in mind.

When the dust settles after election day, it will be interesting to see how working-class Americans voted.

Time and Tides

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These days events and issues and the nation seem to be sweeping toward some irresistible something that’s bigger than all of us. It feels like river currents rushing toward a waterfall. Have you felt that, too?

History shows us that no status quo lasts forever, no matter how solid and immutable it seems. Sometimes changes are slow and imperceptible, but occasionally some confluence of events breaks the old order apart and sets up a new one almost overnight, or at least within the space of a few years instead of a few decades. Most of the time invasion or insurrection are involved in these changes, but not always. The breakup of the Soviet Union is a prime example of events taking over and forcing change almost overnight without gunfire.

I’m not saying I expect armed revolution or a change in our form of government. I am saying that the political status quo that has prevailed in America for the last few decades is disintegrating rapidly. I suspect the next two or three years will be disorienting for most of us.

Assuming Barack Obama wins the election — it’s looking good, folks, but it ain’t inevitable — I don’t expect a replay of the Clinton years, in which a huge right-wing juggernaut worked relentlessly to destroy the Democratic administration.

Oh, they will try. I fully expect that within two weeks of an Obama inauguration, Tony Blankley will be all over cable television explaining ever so unctuously that the Obama administration has already failed. Hell, he might not even wait until Obama is inaugurated before declaring the Obama administration has already failed.

But Blankley is complaining that other “conservatives” are abandoning the cause, leaving him to fight on alone. His old comrades in arms, like George Will, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks have left the field of battle, he thinks.

In an Obama administration, George Will will still be an insufferable prick, Peggy Noonan will still mistake her psychological projections for insight, and David Brooks will still be an idiot. Some things will not change. What will change, I believe, is that the Right’s ability to dominate the national conversation and overwrite real issues with its phantasmagorical agenda will be much diminished. This will happen not because they’ve changed, but because the political climate of America will have changed.

The powerful Rabid Right is becoming old and shabby and, like, so last decade.

Please let me be clear that I do not expect to wake up on January 21 living in political utopia. I’m a Buddhist, remember; all phenomena are dukkha. And as I said, there will be massive disorientation while the Powers That Be figure out the new rules — indeed, until they begin to notice there are new rules. And there will be disorientation across the political spectrum, not just on the Right. It will take some time yet before Democrats in Congress stop cringing in fear of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

We see disorientation already in the way the McCain campaign evokes a “real” America that looks like the America they thought was out there somewhere, but which they are finding strangely elusive. Rosa Brooks writes,

The GOP code isn’t hard to crack: There’s the America that might vote for Obama (a suspect America populated by people with liberal notions, big-city ways and, no doubt, dark skin), and then there’s the “real” America, where people live in small towns, believe in God and country, and are … well … white. … But with each passing year, the “real” America of GOP mythmaking bears less and less resemblance to the America most Americans live in.

At the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove writes that “the tax argument still works.” He lays out the arguments that he thinks McCain might still employ to pull off a win. Remarkably, these are the same arguments McCain has been employing and which are not working.

Meanwhile, Karl’s masterpiece, his personal Frankenstein monster, is a pariah even in his own party. People still listen to Karl … why, exactly?

The GOP is losing because they are marketing to a demographic that doesn’t exist — America circa 1980-2004. The political shift began with Katrina. It is being accelerated by the financial crisis. We are rushing toward something that is very different from where we have been. My hope is that Barack Obama is the leader he seems to be, and will steer us into a soft landing.

See also: Joe Klein, “Why Barack Obama Is Winning.”

Obama in St. Louis

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[Update: This photograph moves me deeply, and not just because of the size of the crowd. The blue-domed building in the background is the old courthouse, where the Dred Scott case was tried in the 1840s 1850s.]

There was a massive Obama rally in St. Louis this afternoon. Here’s some coverage from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Video diary of Obama rally

Watch: Video from the Obama crowd at the Arch

Obama rally: Secret Service puts crowd at 80,000

The Secret Service estimated 80,000 people attended the rally at the Arch today, but St. Louis police estimated 100,000. That’s a lot of people. Missouri recently slipped from the leaning-McCain column into the slightly-leaning-toward-Obama column, I understand, although it will be very close.

And judging by the videos, people at Obama rallies are nicer than people at McCain rallies.

Tigers! Maul those Longhorns!

Update: “All I Can Say Is, Wow“

Collusion

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Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press:

Barack Obama’s legal team wants a special prosecutor to determine whether partisan politics is at play in a reported though unconfirmed Justice Department investigation of a voter registration effort which has been the target of numerous complaints of late, including one in Michigan.

With the election just over two weeks away, Bob Bauer, Obama’s chief lawyer, said in a conference call with reporters this afternoon that he is asking U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to to hand over to special prosecutor Nora Dannehy any probe into what Bauer called “bogus claims of vote fraud” that mirror concerns raised by Republicans two years ago.

According to a recent Justice Department report, those issues played a role in the controversy over the forced resignations of nine former federal prosecutors.

Bob Bauer was just on Olbermann’s program saying that there was an appearance of collusion between the McCain campaign and the White House. The Justice Department is engaged in “investigations” to bolster the McCain campaign’s claim that ACORN is destroying democracy as we know it.

Update: More details at Bloomberg.

Obama and the Art of Wu Wei

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I keep hearing pundits say that McCain won the three debates “on points” but that Obama won “on style.” I think these guys were watching a different sports event from the one I watched.

The “on points” pundits were scoring a boxing match. McCain was more aggressive. He landed punches. He got in zingers. Last night Pat Buchanan compared Obama to a boxer in the late rounds who was sitting on a lead (doesn’t that mean he was ahead “on points”?) and was dancing around to avoid being knocked out while he ran out the clock.

What I watched was more like kung fu. In the martial arts, aggression for the sake of aggression is more likely to work against you than with you. The master knows how to use his opponent’s energy against him. He lets the more unskilled fighter beat himself.

Martial arts masters employ the principle of wu wei — the action of non-action. This sounds like passivity — it often looks like passivity — but it is the art of channeling the flow of energy around you to accomplish a task or defeat an opponent. Put another way, it is the art of letting action act itself, or letting movement move itself, while you go with the flow.

It’s also the art of knowing when not to act. If your opponent is beating himself up, don’t get in his way.

Those who think Barack Obama should have been more aggressive in his debates with McCain are, IMO, entirely wrong. If Obama had been more aggressive, he risked seeming angry or mean and giving McCain sympathy points. Instead, Obama masterfully let McCain beat himself and didn’t get in the way.

McCain, IMO, lost the debate when he got stuck in whiny, petulant mode and wouldn’t let go of statements by Congressman John Lewis — which were not spelled out in the debate, and I doubt most viewers had any idea what McCain was talking about — and Bill Ayers. Obama actually gave McCain several opportunities to drop the subject, and McCain would not. For that entire sequence McCain was, in effect, punching himself in the face, while Obama stood aside and let him do it.

This was skillful. It also took discipline — a lesser debater would have interrupted McCain to defend himself more forcefully, and I’m sure that’s what Pat Buchanan et al. thought Obama was supposed to do. But Buchanan and McCain are old-style Irish pugilists who stand straight up and punch away. Obama was in crouching tiger, hidden dragon mode.

______

I was struck by the pundits’ reactions to the abortion section of the debate. Granted, I was mostly watching MSNBC — sometimes flipping over to CNN — and I realize reactions may have been different elsewhere. But pundits I saw were shaking their heads over this part of McCain’s argument:

MCCAIN: Just again, the example of the eloquence of Senator Obama. He’s health for the mother. You know, that’s been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything.

That’s the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, “health.” But, look, Cindy and I are adoptive parents. We know what a treasure and joy it is to have an adopted child in our lives. We’ll do everything we can to improve adoption in this country.

McCain spoke of women’s health with a sneer on his face. He made “air quotation marks” around the word “health,” as if the mother’s health concerns were some kind of joke. He can’t stop whining about what John Lewis said about him, but women facing health complications in their pregnancies are just supposed to suck it up.

I realize the “criminalize abortion” movement routinely argues that “health of the mother” can mean a bad hair day, but in the real world pregnancies — including planned and wanted pregnancies — don’t always go well. I think most adults understand that. And most of the post-debate commentary I saw criticized McCain for the “health” comment.

Four years ago, in the Kerry-Bush debates, Bush had a simple message on abortion — he was against it. Poor Kerry had to put together more than two sentences to explain his position — that he opposed it personally but didn’t intend to impose his views on others. The post-debate commenters — including Andrea Mitchell, as I recall — said of this that Kerry doesn’t know how to talk about abortion. (What the hell was he supposed to say? “I’m for it”?)

But now it’s the Republican who doesn’t know how to talk about abortion. Times, I believe, have changed.

And I’m sure you enjoyed this bit —

MCCAIN: I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade that would be part of those qualifications. But I certainly would not impose any litmus test

Um, dude? You just imposed a litmus test.

Third Presidential Debate: Live Blog

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First off, let’s stop thinking about a landslide. The remaining “undecided” voters are mostly older, less educated and white, I understand. It’s like a majority of them will move to McCain and tighten up the race in the last three weeks. No complacency.

Here we go.

Jeez, McCain is being friendly to Obama. The nice and calm McCain showed up tonight.

So far we haven’t heard anything new, except that McCain apparently has decided to be soothing rather than angry.

OK, McCain is back to taxes.

McCain indeed is planning to cut corporate taxes.

Class warfare! Yes! Grumpy McCain is coming back!

Why increase taxes? Because we’ve got a kajillion dollar deficit, you creep.

McCain the asshole is coming back. You can’t keep him down for long.

Does McCain understand what “spread the wealth around” means?

Invest in America. Yes! Obama said “Invest in America.” This should be a campaign slogan.

Wow, the moderator wants McCain to answer the question that was asked. That’s new.

John, we owe China a lot more than half a trillion dollars.

He can save billions by eliminating the tarrif on sugar from Brazil? I think I missed part of that.

Earmarks! Pork! boogaboogaboogabooga

Balance the budget in four years? That’s insane.

We’re going to balance the budget by job creation and energy independence?

I mean, is it me, or is McCain an asshole?

Here we go … say it to his face.

Town hall meetings? The negative campaigns are Obama’s fault for not doing town hall meetings?

Whine whine whine. Oh, McCain has not repudiated nasty remarks. He repeats them.

He’s not bringing up Ayers. Coward.

Yes. The American people are not interested in our hurt feelings. Perfect.

Comment about Chico and the Man — LOL! Chico and the Man in the Twilight Zone.

Yes, John, keep whining.

John is angry.

Oh, Obama brought up the “pal around with terrorists” line.

McCain didn’t take the Ayers bait.

Oh, yes, Ayers, ACORN, the whole thing. I think McCain is giving in to his temper. I wonder if this was the plan.

McCain is losing this debate worse than the other two. People don’t give a bleep about Ayers and ACORN.

I forgot about CNN’s squiggly lines. I just flipped to CNN.

At the name “Sarah Palin” the squiggly lines dropped like a rock. Flatline, folks. Oh, the “men” line is up just a tad. Well, men. You know.

Iraqis united? People are being killed for returning to their homes.

I swear, McCain is losing this one worse than the other two.

Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Very safe.

Easily eliminate dependence on foreign oil?

Obama is being realistic. Talking to the camera.

Does John think NAFTA is popular?

Community colleges have what to do with free trade?

I think McCain is right on the edge of blowing a gasket.

Oh, I love the split screen. McCain’s inner asshole is there for all the world to see.

Here Obama is presenting a clear and sensible plan for health care, even though it doesn’t go nearly as far as I’d like. Now McCain will lie about his plan.

Yeah, John, blame it on fat people.

He’s going to repeat the lie about fining small business again.

I mean, is McCain is an asshole or what? He’s not even making sense. The fine again.

That mean old Obama is going to make employers provide health benefits. For shame.

Oh, the gold-plated insurance that no one has. Yes, John, show us how out of touch with reality you are.

Senator Obama wants government to do a job. Well, yes.

Roe v. Wade. Somebody finally brings it up.

“Strict adherence to Constitution” = anti-choice.

“We have to change the culture of America.”

The “present” vote is a procedural thing in the Illinois Senate. It sounds weird but is no big deal, I understand.

Keep smirking and smiling, John.

We can’t have healthy mothers. “Health of the mother” is an extreme position, according to John.

“We have to work together” for John means abortion gets banned.

Make college affordable. It is a disgrace that there is such a barrier for people to get an education.

McCain begins to speak, the squiggly lines drop. “School choice” has not been “proven” in New Orleans, John.

“Competition” doesn’t help schools, John. Now he’s repeating the old right-wing canard that some of the best schools cost the least money. Those are the exceptions, not the rule.

Vouchers = yesterday’s issue. Even the wingnuts are abandoning it.

Sarah Palin has an autistic child?

Vouchers have not been proven. Where they’ve been in place a long time they haven’t done squat.

Almost over.

John, I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.

Invest in the American people. I like it.

Sacrifice, service responsibility. We can do it. Work for you.

_______

I sincerely think McCain sucked at least as bad, if not worse, than he has in the other two debates.

David Gergen is saying that McCain got over-emotional and angry in the middle of the debate. Obama won the last half hour, he said.

I agree with Gergen. I think that when McCain would not let go of his personal hurt feelings about being insulted, he was losing big time.

I’m going to guess that this debate won’t change the trajectory of the opinion polls. I think the polls will tighten up at the end for reasons explained at the top of the post, but this debate won’t change the polls.

Just picked this up at Huffington Post:

Watch the eye roll.

I also am not sure the “I am not George Bush” line will help McCain much. Right now his biggest problem is that he is John McCain.