Category Archives: McCain-Palin

Right, Meet Reality

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I think McCain was at his worst last night when he used lines that are sure-fire winners when thrown at a right-wing audience but which leave the rest of us cold or confused.

For example, on the Right, General Petraeus is the second coming of Robert E. Lee. To the Left, he’s a tool. To Independents, he’s some military guy they may vaguely associate with the Bush Administration, or not. To the Right, everything Petraeus says is gospel. To the Left, it’s suspect. I believe that to most Independents it’s white noise — just more of the endless bullshit about the endless war, and who knows what to believe any more?

McCain says Petraeus as if he expect the audience to genuflect at the sound of the General’s name. Memo: They ain’t genuflecting.

Also, if you were watching CNN, whenever McCain deployed the words Iraq, Petraeus, surge, victory and success together in near proximity, you saw the squiggly lines go flat. I don’t think most people bleeping care about the bleeping surge or a bleeping victory in Iraq. Iraq itself represents the Ultimate Bleepup to most people, and nothing associated with it can ever be made shiny.

And how long will it take the Right to notice that “fourth generation” wars don’t end in victory? At best, they sort of taper off into reasonably favorable conditions. Victory is obsolete. And I think many people who are not right-wing ideologues understand this on some level, even if they cannot always articulate why it is so.

The United States stayed in Vietnam way too long because our political and military leaders continued to pursue the mythical beast of victory. Some of McCain’s talk about bringing troops home with “victory and honor” could have been picked up verbatim from 1971 or so. It was dumb then; it’s insane now.

I also think McCain comes across as a dolt whenever he continues to harp on some right-wing talking point that Obama, clearly and calmly, has just demolished. For example, in both debates McCain continued to claim that Obama will raise just about everybody’s taxes, even after Obama stated and re-stated his actual tax proposals. This is an especially poor tactic (but not a strategy, Senator McCain) when the opponent standing next to you is such a likable guy. Here’s this nice fella, and that nasty McCain’s calling him a liar.

As I remember, when McCain said “Well, you know, nailing down Sen. Obama’s various tax proposals is like nailing Jell-O to the wall. There has been five or six of them and if you wait long enough, there will probably be another one,” the squiggly lines dropped. I bet that brings down the house at McCain rallies, but in front of a non-partisan audience a line like that is just pettiness.

Memo: Ronald Reagan is still dead. And, as more than one blogger has written today, “I knew Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was a friend of mine, and you, Senator McCain, are no Teddy Roosevelt.”

You get a glimpse of McCain’s real problem in this post by The Weekly Standard‘s Fred Barnes:

The candidates were queried on a narrow range of foreign, economic, health care, and environmental issues–the stuff they talk about every day at rallies and fundraisers. These didn’t come close to what voters at a real town hall meeting might have asked. There was no mention of abortion, immigration, moral values, same sex marriage, guns, their role models, their view of the presidency, or their religious faith.

In other words, the questions didn’t come close to what right-wing ideologues hand-picked to fill up McCain town hall meetings might have asked. Instead, it was boring stuff about foreign, economic, health care, and environmental issues.

Barnes is right that the candidates — well, Obama anyway — address these topics in their stump speeches. However, most of the nation has not heard the stump speeches. For most voters, the debates provide the only view of the candidates outside of commercials and brief news clips they are going to get. That’s really sad, and we need to change that, but that’s how it is.

Barnes continues,

Rather than an unrehearsed town hall meeting, the Commission on Presidential Debates let NBC anchor Tom Brokaw to select the questions. The result was questions that reflected what interests an East Coast newsman. Nothing wrong with that, except this was supposed to be a town hall debate in which the concerns of average folks would be front and center. They weren’t.

Barnes might think it’s elitist of me to say this, but I don’t think Barnes would recognize the concerns of average folks if they bit his ass. In fact, polls say their priorities of concerns are pretty much inverse of what Barnes thinks they are.

Last night and this morning some on the Right lambasted McCain for not bringing up Bill Ayers or Reverent Wright or the host of other red herrings the Moosewoman has been throwing lately. But he did not, and this shows us that at least some of McCain’s handlers make occasional visits to the real world.

The base can’t get enough of Ayers and Wright. The base is more interested in Obama’s alleged Muslim-terrorist ties than in the financial crisis. The base is out of its bleeping mind. But to Americans who are not lunatics, the sleazy allegations and hate speech the McCain campaign uses to fire up the base would have been shockingly out of place in last night’s debate. Think nude poll pole dancing at a church supper. It would have damaged McCain a lot more than Obama.

Put another way — the Right’s fantasy narratives and agenda cannot survive outside the Right’s fantasy world. Forced into a real-world context, they dissipate like smoke.

Clicking for America

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This is for all the uncommitted voters the cable networks round up to be in their focus groups and who say they wish the candidates would be more specific —

If you want details, don’t wait for details to be spoon fed to you through mass media. The candidates’ websites have the details. All you have to do is click and read.

And, to say one nice thing about the McCain campaign, I think their issues page is better designed and more inviting to read than the Obama issues page, which is a bit sterile in contrast. On the other hand, when you get beneath the interface, some of McCain’s content is a bit dated. His “Relief for American Families” section still promotes a summer gas tax holiday, for example. And much of the content is vague. You read that John McCain is going to act decisively to achieve this or that goal, but often the “how” is missing.

On Obama’s site you get how up the wazoo.

  • He has bulleted lists.
  • He has lots of bulleted lists.
  • His bulleted lists have bulleted lists.

So, next time you hear people complain they want more details on how the candidates stand on issues, please email them the URL to this post and tell them they don’t even have to get off their lazy butts to find the details. Just click. Do it for America.

Post-Debate Thread

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Flipping back and forth between CNN and MSNBC, it seems on the whole a consensus is forming among the bobbleheads that this debate was not a “game changer.” McCain needed a “decisive win,” Wolf Blitzer says, and he didn’t get it.

McCain was less dismissive of Obama as in the first debate — I don’t believe he said Obama “didn’t understand” this time — but he still seemed condescending, and I don’t think this is helping him.

Taegan Goddard gives it to Obama.

Tonight’s debate wasn’t even close. Sen. Barack Obama ran away with it — particularly when speaking about the economy and health care. Talking about his mother’s death from cancer was very powerful. On nearly every issue, Obama was more substantive, showed more compassion and was more presidential.

In contrast, Sen. John McCain was extremely erratic. Sometimes he was too aggressive (referring to Obama as “that one.”) Other times, he just couldn’t answer the question (on how he would ask Americans to sacrifice.) And his random attempts at jokes (hair transplants?) were just bad.

Update: From the Right — Andrew McCarthy at The Corner —

We have a disaster here — which is what you should expect when you delegate a non-conservative to make the conservative (nay, the American) case. We can parse it eight ways to Sunday, but I think the commentary is missing the big picture. …

…Now, as the night went along, did you get the impression that Obama comes from the radical Left? Did you sense that he funded Leftist causes to the tune of tens of millions of dollars? Would you have guessed that he’s pals with a guy who brags about bombing the Pentagon? Would you have guessed that he helped underwrite raging anti-Semites? Would you come away thinking, “Gee, he’s proposing to transfer nearly a trillion dollars of wealth to third-world dictators through the UN”?

This view of Obama is a complete fantasy, of course, but let’s go on …

Nope. McCain didn’t want to go there. So Obama comes off as just your average Center-Left politician. Gonna raise your taxes a little, gonna negotiate reasonably with America’s enemies; gonna rely on our very talented federal courts to fight terrorists and solve most of America’s problems; gonna legalize millions of hard-working illegal immigrants.

McCain? He comes off as Center-Right .. or maybe Center-Left … but, either way, deeply respectful of Obama despite their policy quibbles.

McCain was hardly “deeply respectful” of Obama.

Great. Memo to McCain Campaign: Someone is either a terrorist sympathizer or he isn’t; someone is either disqualified as a terrorist sympathizer or he’s qualified for public office. You helped portray Obama as a clealy qualified presidential candidate who would fight terrorists.

The plain fact is that Obama is no terrorist sympathizer, and I think the American people finally are getting a close enough look at him to know that. However, they are also getting a close enough look at McCain to know he is an asshole.

If that’s what the public thinks, good luck trying to win this thing.

With due respect, I think tonight was a disaster for our side. I’m dumbfounded that no one else seems to think so. Obama did everything he needed to do, McCain did nothing he needed to do. What am I missing?

What the Right is missing is that the rest of the country, finally, is moving on from the fantasyland they live in

Live Blog

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Whew! I fell asleep and just woke up in time. Here we go.

First question about economy. Fastest solution to bail out retirees?

McCain wants to buy and renegotiate all bad home loans. He’s going to pay for this?

I think Obama is going to have to be careful not to get sucked into spending all his time defending his past record from McCain’s, um, imagination.

McCain has figured out that the financial crisis has something to do with bad mortgages. Swift.

Now he is going on about how great American workers are. So get them jobs, John.

McCain a “consistent reformer”? Please. Does anyone believe that?

I’ve just switched to CNN to watch the wiggly lines. McCain is speaking. The line is flat.

Will McCain please be asked to explain his health care “plan.”

Obama is speaking, and Miss Lucy (my feline roommate) just went crazy running around the room. I think she is an Obama fan.

Someone asked which sacrifices citizens can make for their country, and McCain goes on about earmarks and cutting government programs.

Obama speaks up about a call to service. The American people want to engage in meaningful change. Save energy in your home. Fuel-efficient cars. Peace corps.

Revealing, I think, that McCain only thinks in terms of what Washington does, not what Americans can do.

McCain comes on and says Obama is going to raise taxes.

He wants a commission on Medicare. To do what? He’s not making sense.

Climate change — McCain says the best way to fix it is nuclear power? That’s it?

Obama — calls climate change an opportunity; new technology can help grow economy. Government working with private sector.

I never know how these guys are coming across to undecided voters.

Obama brings up McCain’s health care “plan.” I think most people understand that $5000 for a family can’t buy health insurance. Ooo, he brought up “gold plated” health care.

Obama – we need the money we’re spending in Iraq here in the U.S. This needs to be repeated, repeated, repeated.

McCain is going on about Iraq and Petraeus and the line goes flat.

Now McCain isn’t making sense. Obama didn’t say he would attack Pakistan. We’re going to succeed in Pakistan the way we succeeded in Iraq. I’m not sure he understands that most people don’t consider Iraq a “success.”

He keeps saying Obama is going to attack Pakistan, which he clearly didn’t do.

Once again, McCain talks about General Petraeus. General Petraeus is beloved on the Right but I don’t think the majority of the American people feel anything about him one way or another. Throwing the name “Petraeus” around just doesn’t sing for most people.

The BooMan: “McCain sucks harder than a vacuum.”

McCain’s “league of democracies” idea is just surreal.

Passing on the American Dream to the next generation. Good closing statement. Not exactly answering the question, but good closing statement.

McCain is talking about a “steady hand at the tiller.” That would be Obama.

OK, it’s over. Now we’ll hear the bobbleheads talk about how McCain was so much better this time and probably won the debate.

Rachel Maddow: McCain was swinging and missing. Obama seemed more relaxed than McCain.

Pat Buchanan thinks McCain won the debate. Big surprise.

Update: The CNN quickie poll is coming through — Obama won.

The Base, Debased

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Dana Milbank provides an up-close-and-personal look at Palin-McCain supporters:

In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

Palin’s hatespeech doesn’t always work:

The angry GOP vice presidential nominee even found a way to blame the market decline on the yet-to-be-enacted tax policies of the yet-to-be-elected Obama.

“If you turn on the news tonight when you get home, you’re gonna see that, yah, this is another woeful day in the market, and the other side just doesn’t understand — no!” she said at an afternoon fundraiser at the home of mutual fund giant Jack Donahue. “Especially in a time like this, you don’t propose to increase taxes. The phoniest claim in a campaign that’s full of them is that Barack Obama is going to cut your taxes.”

Of course, Obama never promised to cut taxes for people at $10,000-a-plate lunches in air-conditioned tents on waterfront compounds. And the crowd — among them New York Jets owner Woody Johnson — reacted without applause to Palin’s Joe Six-Pack lines. After they didn’t strike up the usual “Drill, baby, drill” or “USA” chants, Palin, rattled, read hurriedly through the rest of her speech.

Josh Marshall reports Palin-McCain rally attendees yelling “terrorist!” and “kill him!” at mention of Obama’s name, “though it’s not clear whether the call for murder was for Bill Ayers or Barack Obama. It didn’t seem to matter.”

“These are dangerous and sick people, McCain and Palin,” Josh says. Yes. As are the mobs who support them.

Serious

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As I keyboard the NYSE hasn’t opened yet this morning, but word is that stocks are dropping hard in Europe and Asia. Little Lulu is whining — Wasn’t the bailout supposed to calm the financial markets? The magnitude of what’s happening in Economyland hasn’t sunk into her overheated little head.

The wingnuts are pushing the usual nonsense and trivia they use to derail elections. Little Green Footballs (to which I would rather not link) displays a photo of Bill Ayers standing on a flag that was taken in 2001, at a time that Barack Obama and Ayers were both serving on the board of the Woods Fund, a philanthropic organization in Chicago. This is the Right’s idea of a Serious Issue. (BTW, the photo, which was used with a feature on Ayers in the August 2001 issue of Chicago magazine, no doubt was a pose the magazine requested. That’s how these things usually work.)

For the remaining month of the campaign the names Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko and Rev. Wright will be chanted fervently on television and radio. They will slide into our email boxes and consume vast amounts of ink on newspaper op ed pages.

Oh, and taxes! liberal! boogaboogaboogabooga!!!!!

Even now top-level Republican strategists are meeting to discuss why Sarah Palin’s winks and “you betchas” are not moving the polls for McCain. It’ll be fun to see what they try next. Will they tone Palin down or ramp her up into an even more garish cartoon than she already is? Will Joe Lieberman be videoed crying real tears?

Michael Tomasky writes at The Guardian,

Pssst. Don’t spread it around too much, because there’s still a month to go and I don’t want to jinx things – but substance is in this year. …

… We are a country in decline. The decline is the result of the policies of the last eight years. Everyone outside of hardcore conservatives knows this. No candidate for president can utter the sentence “we are a country in decline”. America’s central myth about itself is that, unlike Rome or Austria-Hungary or (sorry) an earlier Britain, we are impervious to time’s vicissitudes and will always be numero uno. People now are worried that underneath that bravado, maybe we won’t be.

And so, substance matters. The public responses to the financial meltdown and the first two debates make this evident.

Howard Wolfson:

Why won’t the swiftboat tactics work this year?

Its easy to lose sight of it in the day to day coverage, but the collapse of Wall Street in the last weeks was a seminal event in the history of our nation and our politics. To put the crisis in perspective, Americans have lost a combined 1 trillion dollars in net worth in just the last four weeks alone. Just as President Bush’s failures in Iraq undermined his party’s historic advantage on national security issues, the financial calamity has shown the ruinous implications of the Republican mania for deregulation and slavish devotion to totally unfettered markets.

Republicans and Democrats have been arguing over the proper role of government for a century. In 1980 voters sided with Ronald Reagan and Republicans that government had become too big and intrusive. Then the economy worked in the Republicans’ favor. Today the pendulum has swung in our direction. Republican philosophies have been discredited by events. Voters understand this. This is a big election about big issues. McCain’s smallball will not work. This race will not be decided by lipsticked pigs. And John McCain can not escape that reality. The only unknowns are the size of the margin and the breadth of the Democratic advantage in the next Congress.

A lot can happen in a month, so it’s no time to get complacent. The election still will be closer than it ought to be because of racism. But over the next four weeks expect the Right to spin faster and further into utter irrelevance. They are starting to sound like a steward on the Titanic, shouting that if people don’t stop this nonsense about rowing out to sea in lifeboats they’ll miss out on dinner with the Captain.

See also — Roger Cohen has a genuinely awesome column today.

What’d I Miss?

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I’ve been at a retreat and haven’t seen the news since Friday morning. I take it the polls say a majority of veep debate viewers who were polled favored Biden. I agree with Bill Curry:

Why then did Palin take a drubbing in the polls? It may have to do with the very personality that brought her to the ball. You may recognize it: it’s Marge Gunderson, from the darkly comic Coen Brothers film “Fargo.”

For her portrayal of the small-town sheriff forever saying “golly” and “you betcha,” Frances McDormand won an Oscar. So should Palin. The resemblance is uncanny. Some reporter should find out if Palin talked that way before the movie came out.

Palin also draws on goofy neighbor characters from old situation comedies. I watched the debate on CNN, which had hooked undecided voters up like hamsters to a machine. As the night wore on it sunk in that her impersonation was really of them and more condescending than any they’d suffered at the hand of Harvard.

Not every Palin cliche is borrowed from show business. She calls herself both “Joe Six Pack” and a “Hockey Mom,” labels spawned by political consultants. The people she patronizes don’t really talk that way. With their homes and retirements threatened, they are less easily amused. That Biden cleaned up may indicate that the crisis bearing down so hard has put us all in a more serious frame of mind.

I don’t know that Palin is impersonating Marge Gunderson (one of the all-time great film characters) as much as she and Frances McDormand are/were evoking a generic woman of the Frozen North. But Marge Gunderson is less of a caricature than Sarah Palin, IMO. Palin’s “by golly” and “you betcha” stuff is just too contrived.

I see also that the McCain-Palin campaign is still trying to scare voters with the alleged Bill Ayers-Obama connection. CNN does a good job explaining that there is no “there” there.

It’s striking to me that the Right continues to flog the Ayers (non)issue, even though they’ve been at it for months and it has gotten them nowhere. I don’t think most people give a bleep about former 1960s radicals, frankly. Especially since Obama himself was born in 1961 and, obviously, was a small child when all this radical-ness was going on.

in the tank!

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So I get to live blog, I suppose to give my perspective as both a Young Person and as a debate expert. (I have 12-some years of experience with policy debate, as a participant, judge, and coach, most recently affiliated with the University of Massachusetts. See, once upon a time, people payed me to judge debate. I’m like Gwen Ifill. Only, you know, pastier.)

Last Friday, I watched the debate from the comfort of one of my favorite bars, and tonight, I’m at a small gathering of friends at an apartment in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn for extra Young People Cred. We’re eating fondue and drinking lambic (a Belgian beer brewed with fruit). My friend who’s hosting (Olga) just informed all assembled that there is plenty of alcohol, so this could get entertaining.

The pundits are all basically that if Sarah Palin doesn’t fall on her face, it’ll be a success. So, let’s get to it. Get out your bingo cards.
Continue reading →

Maha’s Way Cool Debate Live Blog

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Watch this space!

Oh, that’s cute. Can I call you Joe? Nice.

Palin is looking at the camera and Biden did not.

OK, we’ve got the canned remarks out of the way.

She’s pointing at predator lenders and corruption. Personal responsibility.

Joe is getting in the quote about deregulating health care.

Palin: Taxes taxes taxes booga booga booga

As mayor she left her city in crippling debt. Someone should bring that up.

Biden is repeating the middle class tax cut. There you go Joe, look at the camera.

Palin: Redistribution of wealth. I hate that term.

Government is the problem.

Crossing state lines to buy insurance; I still don’t believe that’s possible.

Biden — ultimate bridge to nowhere. Good line.

Energy plan — Palin had to take on the oil companies. She broke up a monopoly?

Ooo, the bankruptcy bill. Greed and corruption don’t have anything to do with the bankruptcy bill. But Biden wasn’t on the side of the angels with that one.

We don’t have enough fossil fuel resources to eliminate dependence on foreign oil.

Don’t care as much about the climate than we do? Foreign countries will laugh.

OK, guys, how do you think it’s going so far?

Same sex versus heterosexual couples, no discrimination, says Biden. Hospital visitations, life insurance, benefits. Property.

Ooo, she just glows when she talks about the surge.

Funding the troops.

Ooo, white flag of surrender! Here we go!

I think she’s losing it. She’s repeating her talking points and not responding to what Biden said.

Al Qaeda is defining our war.

At least she can pronounce the name of whozits of Iran.

We’re in favor of diplomacy but not with people we don’t like.

McCain has pain and won’t sit down in Spain.

I honestly don’t know how this might be going over.

Here you go, Joe! No different from George Bush’s.

Um, little girl, Kim Jung Il already has nuclear weapons.

Ooo, we’re building schools in Afghanistan. Sure.

Bosnia. Kosovo. Bosnia.

She still sees like a ditz to me, but how will an independent voter see this?

The SNL writers are taking notes.

Pointing backward.

I just flipped to CNN to see the focus group line. The gang at MyDd says the squiggly lines like Biden.

Ooh, they’re right. As soon as Joe talks the lines swing up. Women like him especially.

She’s not answering the achilles’ heel question.

Palin speaks, the squiggly lines are nearly flat. This is fun.

Joe almost choked up.

Maverick maverick maverick. Oh, and the lines just went flat. Wheee!

Joe is challenging the “maverick” thing. The squiggly lines go up.

She appoints people of all parties in Alaska, as long as they are her friends.

OK, what did you think?

Y’all go ahead and talk among yourselves.

Enough With the Gamblers

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A Boston-area Republican strategist explains in the Boston Globe why he thinks McCain would be a better president than Obama. His arguments are, IMO, silly, and a denial of reality. I just want to look at some of his language (emphasis added):

John McCain is a gambler and knows that just because the odds are against him doesn’t mean he can’t win. Maybe an ace will fall from his sleeve. …

…McCain wasn’t successful in the bailout crisis either, but he’s proven that he can forge bipartisan alliances and persevere even when mocked by insolent bystanders. More than any other senator, he has proven that he’s not afraid to take risks for his country.

At least the strategist didn’t once use the word “maverick.” However, I don’t see any “bipartisan alliances” that McCain himself forged lately, and whatever risks he took these past few days were for his political career, not his country.

I say being unafraid is greatly overrated. Being unafraid is not the same thing as being courageous. Courage is doing something you know has to be done, even if you are terrified to do it. The absence of fear, especially when there are real dangers to be faced, usually is the mark of a fool.

Consider the words of Sarah Palin:

“I didn’t hesitate, no,” she told ABC’s Charlie Gibson in her first televised interview since accepting the Arizona senator’s invitation to be on the Republican ticket two weeks ago.

“I answered him ‘yes’ because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink. So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate,” said the 44-year-old Palin, a governor who has been in office less than two years.

Asked if she felt ready to step in as vice president or perhaps even president if something happened to the 72-year-old McCain, Palin said: “I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, we’ll be ready. I’m ready.”

A wiser person in her position would have hesitated. A very wise person would have said no, I’m not ready for that kind of national exposure. I’ll stay in Alaska. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Sometimes risks have to be taken. Leaders often have to make decisions and take actions when outcomes are uncertain, because hesitation would lead to worse outcomes. But where did we get the idea that there’s virtue in risk for its own sake?

Probably we got that idea from the same place we got the idea that there’s something weak about doubt. We’ve bought into a caricature of leadership that values absolute self-assurance — well, OK, arrogance — and recklessness over good judgment, patience, and intelligence.

We ain’t supposed to think things through, buckaroos; just come out shootin’.

Our country is in a very precarious place right now because of fearlessness. As Roger Cohen wrote, “the Bush crowd has gambled the future of this country with abandon.”

I know one thing: this is no time for further gambling. John McCain rolled the dice on Sarah Palin. I’m grateful to Bob Rice of Tangent Capital for pointing out that the actuarial risk, based on mortality tables, of Palin becoming president if the Republican ticket wins the election is about 1 in 6 or 7.

That’s the same odds as your birthday falling on a Wednesday, or being delayed on two consecutive flights into Newark airport. Is America ready for that?

The lesson of the last eight years is this: when power is a passport to gamble, people can end up seriously broke or seriously dead.

Come to think of it, my birthday fell on a Wednesday this year. Hmm.

John McCain is a gambler. It is said he has spent 14 hours straight playing craps in Las Vegas. I don’t know if McCain has a gambling addiction; perhaps he can walk away from it when he wants to. But my understanding is that people who are serious gamblers tend to be impulsive people with poor emotional coping strategies, as the psychologists put it.

A tendency to gamble is a sign of emotional weakness, in other words, not strength.