McCain/Palin Competitive in Swing States

It's time to really pay attention to what's happening at the state level. National polling data are fun to watch, but presidential horse-race snapshots only tell us so much: We will have, in essence, fifty state elections on November 4, and the Electoral College outcome naturally decides the winner.

To win, Barack Obama needs to hold onto every state John Kerry won in 2004, as well as Iowa and New Mexico, two states currently leaning Democratic.

But Obama's having trouble in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two Democratic states in 2004 that combine for 38 Electoral votes.

I noted previously that Michigan's in play for John McCain and Sarah Palin, and Nate Silver argues that Obama's having trouble in this traditional Democratic stronghold:

Democrats have grown accustomed to winning Michigan by relatively comfortable margins. Bill Clinton flipped the state in 1992, bringing home the Reagan Democrats and giving the party its first win in the state since 1968. Clinton's margin grew to 13 points in 1996--five points better than his national popular vote margin against Bob Dole--and he successfully passed the torch to both Al Gore and John Kerry, each of whom also finished 5-6 points ahead of their national margins in the state.

But Barack Obama has had trouble getting traction in the Wolverine State. Although nearly all polling since the Democrats resolved the state's messy delegate situation in June has had him ahead, it has often been by uncomfortably small margins--just one point, for instance, in a Public Policy Polling survey released on Monday. For most of the election cycle, Michigan has polled no more than 1-3 points ahead of Obama's national poll standing, placing it well within the range of a potential Republican takeover.

All of this comes in spite of a seemingly favorable environment for the Democrats. Michigan, its fortunes still tied to the struggling domestic auto industry, has the nation's highest unemployment rate at 8.5 percent. Its population is 14 percent African-American, among the highest figures outside of the South. And it has two huge university towns in East Lansing and Ann Arbor, potential ground zeroes for youth voter enthusiasm.

Check the link for more, but Silver suggests that Obama's languishing in Michigan due to Democratic Party liabilites (the troubles of both Jennifer Granholm and Kwame Kilpatrick, which I mentioned previously), as well Obama's disadvantage from not campaigning in Michigan during the primaries, and the GOP's considerable advantages with Michigan voters (a large Republican congressional delegation, and the state's affinity for Mitt Romney).

Obama's also losing ground in the Keystone State as well:

Republican Sen. John McCain has closed within three points of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama in the presidential race among likely voters in Pennsylvania, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll released this morning.

Mr. Obama leads Mr. McCain 48-45 percent in the state, but Mr. McCain has received significant support among white women and independents, the poll shows.

While Joseph Biden, Obama's vice-presidential running mate, is holding down some Pennsylvania Catholics and Scranton voters for the Democratic column, Obama lost the state to Hillary Clinton in the primaries, and he dissed the state's voters at his campaign rally in San Francisco in April (Obama's "bitter" controversy), which many residents aren't likely to forget.

Meanwhile, GOP running mate Sarah Palin has helped close the gap a bit in some of the key swing states:

Sen. John McCain's vice-presidential pick, Sarah Palin, is helping the Republican candidate nationally but hasn't yet changed his fortunes in some of the largest swing states.

Sen. McCain is still trailing in Ohio - seen as a Republican must-win - according to new surveys of big battleground states by Quinnipiac University. There, Democratic nominee Barack Obama is leading by five percentage points, 49% to 44%. Last month the Obama lead was just one point.

Sen. McCain continues to trail in Pennsylvania, though Gov. Palin may be proving more helpful to him there, partially thanks to gains among women. Sen. Obama's lead has shrunk: He is preferred by 48% of likely voters to Sen. McCain's 45%, a slight improvement for Sen. McCain, who trailed by seven percentage points a month ago.

In Florida, Sen. McCain continues to lead, now by seven percentage points, up from four last month, according to a Quinnipiac survey there. The new reading has Sen. McCain up 50% to 43%.

To be sure, Alaska Gov. Palin wins positive reviews in all three states, with voters saying by significant margins that she was a good choice for the Republican ticket.

"Palin's having an impact, there's no doubt about that," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "Whether it's a lasting impact or not...we'll find out down the road."

In future essays I'll examine electoral trends in other key states. Meanwhile, check Rasumussen and RealClearPolitics for more on polling trends at the state-level.

Image Credit: Wall Street Journal

102 Minutes That Changed a Nation

Tonight the History Channel will show "102 Minutes that Changed America":

Discover rarely seen and heard archives that document the 102 minutes between the first attack on the World Trade Center to the collapse of the second tower. This commercial-free special uses unique material from sources ranging from amateur photography and video to FDNY, NYPD, Port Authority and emergency dispatch radio recordings, photography and video. Also seen is footage broadcast outside the US, electronic messages and voicemails and "outtakes" culled from raw network footage. Then, watch interviews with individuals who provided videos of the events of that day. The interviews with the filmmakers will provide context for the circumstances they were in, why they shot video, what the footage means to them, and where they were on that day.

Allapundit recommends watching early PBS "American Experience" footage of the construction of the World Trade Center as well.

There's lots of news and commentary on today's 9/11 anniversary, but check especially, Eamon Stewart's, "9/11 is a Story of People."

"Unfit" is the New "McSame," or "Bush's Third Term," or...

Here's John McCain's new ad buy, "Fact Check":

The attacks on Governor Palin have been called “completely false” … ”misleading”. And, they’ve just begun.

The Journal reports Obama “air-dropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers” into Alaska to dig dirt on Governor Palin. As Obama drops in the polls, he’ll try to destroy her.

Obama’s “politics of hope”? Empty words.

The ad comes amid increasing signs of desperation among left wing partisans. McCain, for example, is coming under fire this afternoon as "unfit for office," a meme captured in Steve Benen's post, "Unfit":

... John McCain was presented with a choice: lose the election or lose his honor. As has become painfully clear, McCain chose the latter.

Benen cites Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan for support, both of whom have been taken down themselves as unfit for blogging (by Ann Althouse and Ace of Spades, respectively).

What the "unfit" line signifies is faux-moral frustration masking the left's outrage at the McCain campaign's rejuvenation, and the flailing will only get worse before it gets better. Not only are McCain/Palin's polling numbers surging, the Obama campaign can't recapture the lead in the media spin cycle. As Soren Dayton shows, McCain/Palin's dominance of the headlines will continue at least another couple of weeks:

Tomorrow is September 11. Sarah Palin will wish her son off to war in Iraq tomorrow. Between that and Joe Biden's blunder about Hillary Clinton being more qualified, John McCain and the GOP own the rest of this week.

Time is running out on Barack Obama. The last day that they have had substantial positive control over the content of the news cycle was the day of Barack Obama's acceptance speech, two weeks ago. You can't hear him talk about CHANGE! because John McCain, Sarah Palin, or Obama's own surrogates are stepping on Obama's story every single day.

Let's look at the schedule for the rest of the election.

Tomorrow is September 11. Sarah Palin will wish her son off to war in Iraq tomorrow. Between that and Joe Biden's blunder about Hillary Clinton being more qualified, John McCain and the GOP own the rest of this week.

So they will have between Monday the 16th and Thursday the 25th to have significant impact over the news cycle. On the 26th, the first Presidential debate will happen. But between the the 16th and the 25th, there will be:

• [Charles] Gibson interview of Sarah Palin on ABC.
• Probably a significant profile or two of Sarah Palin.
• Some sort of serious debate in Congress on energy.

One can imagine that this will suck up 3 of those 8 news cycles.

It's clear now that the McCain/Palin ticket is the left's worst nightmare (Palin's turning out to be better than any possible running mate imaginable).

So, while today McCain's "unfit for office," over the next few weeks he'll be turned something even worse, some sort of abomination of GOP evil, a swastika-boasting McChimpy hulked up on some demononological, steroidal-mimicking DNA-changing gamma blasts, poised to sink the country even further into the abyss of Iraq, Katrina, and 47 million without health insurance...

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!

Obama's Veepstakes Catastrophe

I often heard, over the couple of months leading up to the national party conventions, that the vice-presidential selection by the major-party nominees amounted to the first defining test of the candidates' qualifications for the office.

If that's true, Barack Obama's selection of Senator Joseph Biden as running mate should disqualify him as President of the United States.

As the shape of the presidential horse gains clarity, it's looking like the Illinois Senator failed his first major test, the "veepstakes." As James at The Real World indicates, the selection of Biden "remains one of the great mysteries in the history of presidential campaign politics."

It really is striking, for example, that while Obama thought it wise to throw his change advantage under the bus (Biden's a 66 year-old, 35-year veteran of the Senate), the GOP nominee made a bold decision-making masterstroke in the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his veep pick.

Election pundits like to point out that voters don't vote for the vice-presidential nominees, and thus the veep pick tends to have a marginal impact on the final voting outcomes. That may be true, but 2008 has already turned out to be an election year like no other, and the decision-making going into the choice for No. 2 spot may indeed prove a more significant factor this year than has been true since Lyndon Johnson consolidated Democratic electability in 1960. The difference this year, however, is that it's the Republicans who are getting a boost from the running mate.

Bud White offers a very concise analysis as to why Obama's selection of Biden is turning out to be a disaster:

Obama’s choice of Joe Biden, I suspect, will go down as one of [the] worst political decisions in recent memory. John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin will be remembered as one of the best.

Biden reinforces Obama’s worst traits: egoism, verbosity, elitism, and D.C.-insider status.

Palin, of course, reminds us of the best of McCain: fresh, unconventional, funny, and willing to battle the D.C. insiders.

Like John F. Kennedy, Obama was suppose to represent a new generation of leadership. But Biden is a dead weight on Obama; he entered the senate before much of Obama’s base was born.

Some argue that Biden, like Lyndon Johnson, brings gravitas to the ticket. Douglas Schoen is of this opinion. He writes:

Witness the single biggest decision that Obama has made thus far: choosing Joe Biden as his running mate. The pick helped squelch concerns about Obama’s perceived lack of experience and foreign policy savvy. More importantly, it signaled to moderates that when it matters, Obama makes sensible, pragmatic choices.

What Schoen fails to note is that this is a change election. Americans aren’t looking for the presidential candidate to supplement his credentials with a Washington insider, they are looking for attainable solutions for our economic woes and a smart exit strategy from Iraq.

Biden only emphasizes Obama’s weakness on foreign affairs, and he fails to bring Obama any electoral votes. Although it’s often stated that the Daley machine won the election for Kennedy in Illinois, it was actually Lyndon Johnson who guaranteed Texas for Kennedy and thus the election. Even if Kennedy lost Illinois, he would still have become president. Biden, unlike Johnson, doesn’t heal the Party’s divisions nor does he bring votes.

White goes on to elaborate further how Johnson worked in 1960 to unite the Democratic Party's ideological and regional factions. Now, of course, it is Sarah Palin who's working in similiar fashion to consolidate the GOP coalition under John McCain.

When Obama first announced his selection of Biden my first thought was, "Oh no, Biden's a plagiarizer..." And while Biden's botched run for the presidency in 1988 hasn't been of much interest in the press, his endless bloviating and gaffe-making are proving to be the kind of liabilities that drag down a ticket.

Not only that, the controversies surrounding Sarah Palin - and the left's bitter campaign of political demonization against her - have worked to keep the media focused on the GOP campaign 24/7, essentially muzzling any attempt at positive message-making from the Obama camp.

The signs are now emerging in the Democratic Party that Biden's pick did nothing to help Obama's chances (the Politico asks, "Could Clinton Have Palin-Proofed Dems?"), and that Barack Obama - having lost the momentum - will play defense and catch-up for some time.

Meanwhile, another poll, Fox News/Opinion Dynamics, has McCain/Palin leading Obama/Biden by a statistically-signifcant margin (and the GOP lead in Gallup's daily tracking polls is holding up)..

While it's way too early to declare a meltdown for the Democrats, the despondency on the left is heavy, and for partisans who'd been coasting all year against "Old Man McSame," and ridiculing the GOP for offering "Bush's third term," it must be very painful to see Democratic fortunes looking so tentative and vulnerable.

Predictions of American Decline are Overrated

The Washington Post reports on the new U.S. intelligence assessment of America's international standing in the decades ahead.

It turns out that Thomas Fingar, who is said to be the "U.S. intelligence community's top analyst," argues that the United States is looking to a near-term erosion in its international standing, with the most significant decline taking place outside the military realm:

An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.

The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority -- military power -- will "be the least significant" asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because "nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force."

Fingar's remarks last week were based on a partially completed "Global Trends 2025" report that assesses how international events could affect the United States in the next 15 to 17 years. Speaking at a conference of intelligence professionals in Orlando, Fingar gave an overview of key findings that he said will be presented to the next occupant of the White House early in the new year.

"The U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished," Fingar said, according to a transcript of the Thursday speech. He saw U.S. leadership eroding "at an accelerating pace" in "political, economic and arguably, cultural arenas."

Fingar's thesis is the official governmental version of the academic theory of American international decline in world politics, dubbed "declinism."

This debate's been around a long time, for example, during the 1980s and the Reagan aministration, and the predictions have proved wrong time and time again.

Fingar, as noted in the Post's essay, sees a bright spot in how demographic trends will favor the United States (national strength will be propped up by high rates of immigration), as he should. Indeed, America's openness to people and ideas will continue to buoy American dynamism throughout the 21st century. Not only that, there's really no indication in Fingar's preliminary comments as to why we should see the collapse of American power relative to the other nation-states in the international system (other than the fissiparous effects of "globalization").

Robert Lieber, at World Affairs, has a penetrating analysis of why no great power will rise to topple American preponderance in the period predicted by Fingar's analysis. Lieber, after reviewing the prospects for balance-of-power equlibrium, concludes:

In the end, then, this country’s structural advantages matter much more than economic cycles, trade imbalances, or surging and receding tides of anti-Americanism. These advantages include America’s size, wealth, human and material resources, military strength, competitiveness, and liberal political and economic traditions, but also a remarkable flexibility, dynamism, and capacity for reinvention. Neither the rise of important regional powers, nor a globalized world economy, nor “imperial overstretch,” nor domestic weaknesses seem likely to negate these advantages in ways the declinists anticipate, often with a fervor that makes their diagnoses and prescriptions resemble a species of wish fulfillment.

Over the years, America’s staying power has been regularly and chronically underestimated—by condescending French and British statesmen in the nineteenth century, by German, Japanese, and Soviet militarists in the twentieth, and by homegrown prophets of doom today. The critiques come and go. The object of their contempt never does.

Predictions of America's relative economic and military decline have long been overrated. I'm sure Fingar's got good company in that respect

Palin Can Do It!

I get the morning papers delivered, I'm looking at the front cover of the hard-copy edition of the Los Angeles Times right now, which features this photograph at the top:

The photo is paired with the paper's lead story, "Palin Bounce Has Democrats Off Balance."

I've been reporting regularly on the polling trends in the presidential horse race, and the Times' suggestion that the Democrats have been caught "off balance" is putting it mildly. Frankly, as my dad used to say, the Democrats have been "hit by a Mack truck."

John McCain, in his selection of Palin as vice-presidential running mate, apparently hoped to attract disaffected former Hillary Clinton supporters. Although the data on gender voting dynamics are still coming in, we're seeing some payoff for McCain's hunch already, as seen in this repor from the Irish Times, "White Women Flock to McCain Over Palin choice, Poll Reveals."

The Washington Post looks at the question of McCain/Palin's support among women in its piece, "Palin Energizing Women From All Walks of Life":

Susie Baron is a Republican, a mother of two and a home-schooler. She voted for Mike Huckabee in the Ohio primary, but now -- because of Sarah Palin -- she thinks she is part of something much bigger.

I wouldn't even call it a Palin movement, I'd call it a sleeping giant that has been awakened," Baron, 56, said at a rally here Tuesday. She described its members as a silent majority of women in Middle America who "are raising our families, who work if we have to, but love our country and our families first."

"And until now, we haven't had anyone to identify with," Baron said, adding that traditional feminist groups such as the National Organization for Women do "not represent me."

Since her rapid transition from obscure Alaska governor to GOP vice presidential nominee, Palin has reenergized the presidential race and also further polarized it, setting her instant fan base, which sees her as a pit bull with lipstick, against those who dismiss her as just another Republican who happens to be a woman and seems intent on rekindling a culture war.

Actually, it really is a "movement" we're seeing.

As a result, the Democrats seem like they're moving through the "Five Stages of Grief." Right now, the party's faithful are either "bargaining" over whether they can stretch out their "Hillary moment" by changing horses midstream to stave off the death of leftist feminist aspirations, or they've already moved on to the "depression" stage, and some perhaps even to "acceptance" (although I'm sure most radical feminists are still in the "anger" stage, and will be for some time).

The Politico capture this sense in its story, "Could Clinton Have Palin-Proofed Dems?"

Republican Rep. Candice S. Miller says Barack Obama had only one shot at Palin-proofing the Democratic ticket — and he missed it when he passed over Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate.

“Every woman in America knows what Barack Obama did to Hillary Clinton: He looked at her and thought, ‘There’s no way I’m doing that,’” said Miller. “If Hillary was on the ticket, he’d be in a much better position to win women voters.”

Sarah Palin’s presence — coupled with Clinton’s absence — may be altering one of the great verities of American politics: that women voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats.

The article goes on the discuss some of the same data I've cited above.

When John McCain decided to focus on change over experience in his vice-presidential pick, I don't think even he realized how much the selection of Sarah Palin would upend all political calculations this year. Of course, what matters for the election now is how well Palin validates McCain's judgment and strategic decisionmaking, and so far the transference of political energy from the left to the right of the political system is nothing short of history-making.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Sarah Palin and the Frontier of American Feminism

This afternoon I confessed, "The main reason I'm so excited about Sarah Palin is in the way she's positively energized the Republican base."

While true, I should add that I'm absolutley blown away, frankly, at the radical feminist response to Palin's nomination as the GOP vice-presidential running mate.

If you haven't yet, be sure to read Michelle Cottle's case study in the depressing feminist lament, "A Bad Year For Feminism: Can Someone Please Tell Me What Happened?"

I think women of the contemporary left are feeling simply violated that a conservative mother from a non-contiguous outback state could credibly claim the mantle as America's top female politician. It has to be a shock, which explains the vehemence that accompanies attacks on any and all facets of Palin's version of the feminine mystique.

But don't take my word for it. Check out Camille Paglia's perspective, which endorses Barack Obama, but celebrates the audacity of Sarah Palin's gendered power (via Allahpundit):

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

Kay Hymowitz, who we might expect to be more favorable to a GOP-style feminism, in any case, confirms Palin's feminine muscularity:

Whatever Palin’s political impact, her cultural significance is profound. For better and for worse, she introduces a new and likely long-running cultural type to the national stage—the red-state feminist.

Of course, the feminist commentariat, primarily coastal and upper-middle-class, has been quick to deny that Palin is any sort of feminist at all. Yes, Palin can boast political success, activism, authority, and self-confidence in front of an audience of 37 million, and, though less widely discussed (perhaps because so profoundly envied), an egalitarian marriage of the sort that has become the foundational principle of feminist utopia. But in most other respects, especially her position on abortion, she has struck female media types as something more like the Anti-Feminist. She is a “humiliation for America’s women” (Judith Warner for the New York Times) and a tool of the “patriarchs” (Gloria Steinem for the Los Angeles Times).

But the crucial point here is that Palin never wanted to be part of Steinem’s club, and in that respect she speaks for many of her sex. The large majority of women—surveys have put the number at somewhere around 75 percent—shy away from calling themselves feminists, even while supporting some movement goals like equal pay. The primary reason for their coyness: feminism’s ambivalence at best, and hostility at worst, toward motherhood and marriage. The refuseniks may or may not remember that Betty Friedan described full-time motherhood as a “waste of human self” and home as a “comfortable concentration camp.” They may or may not be able to quote Steinem on fish and bicycles. But on some level they understand that the framework of establishment feminism has motherhood, and often marriage, as the menacing 300-pound security guard whom men have hired to stand in the way of women’s achievement.

Palin represents a red-state version of feminism that completely deconstructs this framework. Sure, part of the red staters’ identification with Palin is a matter of lifestyle. Blue-state feminists live in big cities and suburbs; Palin lives in South Podunk. Blue staters’ kids play soccer; Palin’s play hockey. They have WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER bumper stickers; she’s a member of the NRA. They dine on sushi; she eats salmon that she caught and gutted. If you’re an Iowa toll collector married to a refrigerator repairman, Palin may well be your gal by reason of her origin and leisure activities alone.

But let's conclude this review with Paglia once again, who nails the secular demonology theme regularly showcased here:

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

You go, girl!

Palin Attracts Women, Rural Voters, and Southerners

The impact of Sarah Palin's nomination as GOP vice-presidential running mate continues to lift the Republican Party's appeal in the electorate. A new Wall Street Journal poll indicates that in addition to consolidating the conservative base of the party, Palin is also attracting women, small-town voters to the Republican column:

Sen. John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate has shaken up the presidential race, lifting enthusiasm among his once-subdued supporters and boosting the ticket's appeal with women, rural voters and Southerners.

The new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll also shows that a majority of voters say they are comfortable with the idea of the first-term Alaska governor as vice president, despite a national debate over whether she is experienced enough for the job.

The Palin effect helps explain why Sen. McCain is now even with Sen. Barack Obama in the head-to-head race. With eight weeks until Election Day, the Journal survey found a dead heat: 46% of registered voters favor Sens. Obama and Joe Biden, and 45% favor the McCain-Palin ticket. The lift, if it grows, could also help other Republicans, particularly in close Senate races in the South.

The survey notes a number of bright spots for the Democrats (voters still know little about the Alaska Governor, in particular), but then stresses the increasing enthusiasm for the McCain/Palin ticket:

One in three voters say that Gov. Palin makes them more likely to support Sen. McCain for president, while 25% say the pick makes them less likely to vote for him. Enthusiasm among the McCain voters is way up: 34% now say they are excited about the ticket compared with 12% last month.

The bottom line is that the McCain/Palin ticket has narrowed the advantages Barack Obama once enjoyed. The GOP is looking especially good in the south, and Sarah Palin out-polls Joseph Biden among blue-collar voters.

Of course, the response of the mainstream press to the GOP's increasing gains has been to intensify scrutiny of Sarah Palin's record in Alaska, as Brent Baker indicates:

With fresh media polls showing Sarah Palin causing a sizable percent of women to shift to support John McCain from Barack Obama, CBS and NBC on Tuesday night devoted full stories to fact check examinations to discredit her, specifically on the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” even though all the newscasts have already run stories on how she was for the bridge earmark during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

While it's true that the press is playing accomplice to the radical left-wing's smear campaign against the GOP, a majority of voters perceive media bias against the GOP, and this may end up damaging the Democrats more that the ongoing anti-Palin smears.

Dreaming of Sarah Palin?

The main reason I'm so excited about Sarah Palin is in the way she's positively energized the Republican base. I still can't get over the campaign's absolute rejuvenation this last few weeks, and that's after McCain was already catching Barack Obama coming out of the Saddleback Civil Form. And while McCain's shown decisive strategic wisdom in selecting Palin, the Alaska Governor is turning out to be McCain's savior, particularly among the GOP's conservative base.

It's endlessly fascinating. Still, I do not dream of Governor Palin.

It turns out that's more than can be said for many on the left:

I rarely remember my dreams, but for the past week, GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has been haunting me. Night after night, she appears in my dreams, always as a scolding, ominous figure.....

Palin has gripped the American imagination in a way that seems designed to burrow into our dream lives. Palin's supermom abilities provoke envy and anxiety in women, especially other working mothers. Her instant celebrity and dazzling speech have panicked Obama supporters who thought they had the election in the bag. And then there's her sex appeal. A couple of conservative men I know have mentioned that they've been having sexual fantasies about the Alaska governor. I'm sure they're not alone.

Even the radical Matthew Yglesias dreams of Sarah Palin!

Thankfully, Jonah Goldberg's on the case:

Guys, push away from the keyboard and take a walk around the block.

Good advice.

Meanwhile, the McCain/Palin ticket continues to climb in public opinion, and Palin's even pulling in white women voters.

Maybe it's not just the guys who're dreaming of that moose-hunting mom of the last American frontier!

Biden Attacks Palin as "Backward Step for Women"

I imagine we shouldn't be surprised, but it turns out that Senator Joseph Biden is again slamming Alaska Governor Sarah Palin with sexist remarks, saying "I assume she thinks and agrees with the same policies that George Bush and John McCain think ... And that's obviously a backward step for women."

Recall that Biden slipped-up earlier when he said Palin was a choice running mate, "not just on policy. She’s good-looking."

Meanwhile, the lefties are trying to make at least one of their attacks on Governor Palin stick. Think Progress has started keeping track of Palin's "lies to nowhere," but Palin's statements on Alaska's "bridge to nowhere" reveal nothing out of place:

Palin did abandon plans to build the nearly $400 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport. But she made her decision after the project had become an embarrassment to the state, after federal dollars for the project were pulled back and diverted to other uses in Alaska, and after she had appeared to support the bridge during her campaign for governor.

That's not all, of course.

Now the Democratic-left is attacking Palin for her travel expenses while on state business:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

Palin's enemies on the left are outraged at the news, and gleefully hammering the Governor in their ejacultory haste to detroy the GOP ticket.

But as Allahpundit notes:

After 10 days of digging through her and her kids’ trash, here are the media’s big scoops: (a) she supported the bridge to nowhere before killing it, unlike the two tools on the other ticket who supported it consistently; (b) she sought earmarks as mayor of Wasilla, the grand total of which was a fraction of what the “Change” duo has requested in its combined 40 years in Washington; and (c) she billed Alaska for per diem expenses to which she was perfectly entitled, including travel expenses that were roughly 75% less than the previous governor racked up, and actually declined to be reimbursed for some expenses she could have claimed. If you’re wondering why the left is so heavily invested in smears, it’s because the actual “dirt” on her is an inch thin. Better to photoshop her into a picture of a woman with a rifle in a bikini and send that around than take your chances with trying to explain why the state can’t afford to cover occasional airfare for the small children of a governor who doesn’t have a team of nannies to watch them while she’s on business trips.

Neptunus Lex adds this:

The Washington press corps has spent so much time shooting itself in the foot over l’affaire Palin that they appear to need more ammunition. Not a day goes by that Some New Outrage is reported on the front page, only to be quietly deconstructed the next day ....

Had they not been in such an unseemly frenzy to slime the Alaska governor in the first days after her nomination was announced, some of this newer matter might actually stick. But anyone paying attention quickly came to the realization that the press and their enablers were acting more out of indignation at being surprised and fear of the new possibilities: The script in hand read that an honorable old war horse would fight the good fight against The New Socialist Man, lose by a respectable margin and yield the field to the forces of a resurgent Camelot. Palin’s selection tore that script up and made for an exciting, unpredictable race whose outcome is very much in doubt.

Nope, none of these smears is gaining traction.

Meanwhile, Biden's sexism gets a free pass from the press, and Obama's long history of being one of the biggest earmarkers in Congress is convenently forgotten.

At least Alaska's State Democratic Party took down their pork-barrel "Bridge to Nowhere" credits at the homepage. Isn't it amazing that when the left digs dirt, they slime their own side.

Obama Supporters Vandalize Palin Wikipedia Entry

Members of the Barack Obama’s social network community at Obama's official campaign homepage have been involved in vandalizing Sarah Palin's Wikipedia entry. William Beutler has the report, in " Who is Encouraging Obama Supporters to Vandalize Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia Article?

Beutler has traced the origins of the Palin tampering to Stephen Ewen, an Obama social networker with ties to various other social networking and online information websites:

Stephen Ewen is a sometime critic of both Wikipedia and Sarah Palin, as of recently an active opponent of the governor on Wikipedia and, as of today at least, an activist using tools provided by the Obama campaign to suggest that fellow supporters make life difficult for the dozens of editors doing real work to improve the article.

Read the whole thing, here.

Beutler has made a note of this malicious activity at Wikipedia's talk page.

So far, it looks like there's absolutely nothing morally out of bounds to left-wing backers of "The One."

Obama Blows it on Left's Anti-Palin Smears

Kristen Powers, once again, provides her keen insight into Democratic Party imcompetence:

YESTERDAY'S Gallup poll had John McCain ahead of Barack Obama by an astonishing 10 points among likely voters. A Washington Post poll had that lead at only two points, but clearly showed a McCain surge - especially among women. This wasn't what Democrats were expecting when they left Denver - yet they have nobody to blame but themselves.

Obama's toughest challenge has always been to connect with working-class swing voters. So attacking the poster child for small-town values, Sarah Palin, was a bad strategy.

No, Obama didn't engage in the mass sneering at Palin - but he did fall into the trap of disrespecting her. When McCain chose her, the Obama campaign's first response was to ridicule the size of her town. Then the candidate himself began referring to her as a "former mayor" when she is in fact a sitting governor.

When she retaliated (justifiably) by mocking his stint as a organizer, the Obama camp was clearly rattled. Obama himself actually began arguing about the importance of community organizing. His supporters amplified this cry - claiming Palin's attack was a racist slur and passing around e-mails titled "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor" ....

Most Americans think that the media are cheerleading for Obama, so they'll punish him for the reporters' and editors' sins.

So now he is weighted down with more baggage as he works to convince an important voting bloc that he and his party don't hold them in contempt.

The clock is ticking.

The smears continue this morning, with Juan Cole's extremist attack, "What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick."

The Democrats will continue to trail in the polls amid their abject desperation at the audacity of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Democrats Promote Trig Palin Listing on eBay

Via Little Green Footballs, the anti-Palin nihilists at Democratic Underground have a listing for Trig Palin at eBay:

The text of the listing reads:

Adorable special needs child desperately requires loving family. Used once as a prop during televised speech. Requires spit to style hair. Can shoot a rabbit with an air rifle at 35 feet. Mother is pushy social climber, unwilling to let pregnancy and children stand in way of ambition. Father unknown.

I thought we'd seen the depths of depravity with the "I Miss My Mommy" website dedicated to ridiculing Trig Palin, but this story sinks even lower.

Meanwhile, in Dayton, Ohio, a woman was sentenced to life in prison today without possibility of parole for microwaving to death her month-old baby after fighting with her boyfriend.

The woman's name is China Arnold.

A Google search on Arnold's background failed to turn up her party identification, although the remorseless murder of her baby, Paris Talley, was delayed only four-weeks longer that the "fetuses" who are left to die after the botched abortion procedures that Barack Obama voted to protect while he was a member of the Illinois state legislature.

At sentencing, Judge Mary Wiseman condemed Arnold, saying "No adjectives exist to adequately describe this heinous atrocity ... This act is shocking and utterly abhorrent for a civilized society."

The same could be said for the evil miscreant who put Trig Palin up for sale on eBay.

Democrats Launch Desperate Search for Scapegoats

Gripped by fear and horror now that Obamania has utterly collapsed, the hard-left partisans of the Democratic Party have launched a desperate but all-out search for scapegoats to explain the surging presidential ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

The left's massive scapegoating is the result of the latest polling numbers showing McCain/Palin generating a decent bounce from the Republican National Convention last week. Gallup's latest numbers show McCain leading Barack Obama in the presidential horse race by 5 points, 49 to 44 percent - a lead that represents a 13 percentage-point shift in Gallup's tracking data since last Tuesday (McCain is up 7, Obama is down 6).

The response on the left is approaching meltdown territory, as we're seing a growing number of angry and confused posts across the Democratic leftosphere. Here's a few:

* Sam Stein at the Huffington Post is claiming that Governor Palin mader her "first gaffe" while speaking at a rally in Colorado Springs, but Michelle Malkin indicates that Palin's suggestion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers" is accurate, noting that "these public-private hybrids are two dangerous pigs feeding at the federal trough."

* Also at Huffington Post, Adam McKay is pulling his hair out, yelling "we're gonna frickin' lose this thing." McKay's explanation? It's the right-wing media: "There is no more fourth estate ... I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country."

* Picking up with the media scapegoating is Glenn Greenwald, who argues that "The Right Dictates MSNBC's Programming Decisions," an obvious reference to Keith Olbermann's sacking by NBC executives.

* Topping it all off is Michelle Cottle at the New Republic, who is despondent that the historic legacy of Hillary Clinton's pathbreaking feminist campaign for the presidency has been "hijacked" by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whose candidacy is "a slap in the face to all women."

What's interesting about the left's desperation is that Barack Obama's nowhere near finished. We have two full months of campaigning to go, and much could happen.

That said, it's hard to resist the temptation that what we're witnessing is the beginning of the end for the Democratic electoral juggernaut of 2008.

Throughout 2007 commentators were speaking of the "GOP crack-up," with some Republicans writing off 2008 and refocusing their energies on 2012 or 2016. The Bush brand was disastrous, for example, to small-g conservatism, and the right had to get right with its roots as the party of limited government. Once John McCain wrapped-up his nomination in February, all eyes shifted to the Democrats and their epochal contest between a black and a woman candidate, with the victor emerging as the new face of the post-civil rights diversity agenda. From there it would be mostly downhill to the November election. The conflict in Iraq and the "weak" economy would lift the Democrats to victories in both the presidential and congressional elections.

That scenario, always ahistoric and epiphenomenal, is in shambles now.

In addtion to Gallup's numbers (which has McCain/Palin up 10 percentage-points among "likely" voters), the new CBS poll has McCain/Palin up 46 to 44 percent over Obama/Biden. Plus, the Washington Post's new survey has McCain/Palin leading the Democratic ticket 49 to 47 percent "among those who say they are most likely vote."

The Republicans have the momentum.

While current trends could be ephemeral, it's not often discussed that the selection of Sarah Palin as running mate comes in tandum with a number of other strategic campaign decisions - a series of savvy McCain ad buys, and the shrewed timing of the veep rollout - that provide substantial evidence for John McCain's superior judgement.

Perhaps, underneath the left's fears and scapegoating is the dreadful realization that this "old man" still got game.

Republican Enthusiasm Erupts as Democratic-Left Implodes

Gallup reports that Republicans are energized and enthusiastic on the heels of the party's rousing convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. The John McCain/Sarah Palin ticket has pulled in front of Barack Obama/Joseph Biden 50 to 46 percent in the presidential horse race:

The convention and/or McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate not only had the effect of moving the horserace needle in McCain's direction, but also increased several measures of enthusiasm for the GOP.

There has been a very substantial jump in the percentage of Republicans saying they are more enthusiastic about voting in this election, from 42% a week ago (after the Democratic convention, but before the Republican convention) to 60% today. Democrats still retain a slight lead on this measure, having increased their enthusiasm slightly this last week as well. But the enthusiasm gap, which has been so much a part of the story of the presidential election so far this year, has dwindled from 19 points in the Democrats' favor a week ago to only seven points today.

USA Today reported last night on the GOP bounce in the polls, and the paper's got a new piece this morning confirming the Republican enthusiasm: "Convention Rejuvenates GOP."

Even more interesting, which for the Democrats will be like kicking a man while he's down, is the news that NBC executives have dropped Keith Olbermann as anchor for the network's prime-time election newscasts.

It's hard to ignore the devastating psychological impact of the concatentantion of forces that has pummeled the American political left this last week and a half: McCain's selection of Sarah Palin has thown the left into fits of apoplexy. The Republicans are more fired up than they've been since Ronald Reagan was in office, and now the icon of the mass-media's combative left-wing voice on cable news - Olbermann - has been repudiated by his own network as beyond the pale of acceptable prime-time political discourse.

Texas Rainmaker quips that just like McCain announced in his acceptance speech last week, "change is coming" to Washington, and it's "apparently it’s starting with MSNBC."

Just a little over a month ago the political system will still agog over Obamania. Now the most we hear about "The One" is following an interview slip where some have suggested the Illinois Senator acknowledged his "Muslim faith."

Sarah Palin and Religious Conservatives

One of the key turning points in the 2008 presidential election was last month's candidate civil forum at Saddleback Church, in Orange County, California.

In responding to Pastor Rick Warren, Barack Obama - careful not to alienate voters on questions faith and traditional values - ended up looking like a nerdy Ivy League law professor parsing the opinion of some obscure obiter dicta from a long-lost Supreme Court ruling on the First Amendment's religious clauses.

John McCain, on the other hand, came out with such snappy minimal-syllable responses that the left went haywire with allegations of cheating, claiming that McCain was given interview questions in advance.

Now, with McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as vice-presidential running mate, the conservative base has demonstrated pure ecstasy with the GOP ticket, and the evangelical base of the party may be seeing in Palin its most significant standard-bearer since President Ronald Reagan mobilized the Moral Majority in the 1980s. Lisa Miller, at Newsweek, offers an interesting analysis of Palin's impact on the GOP's evangelical base:

Since 2004, the story goes, evangelicals have softened. Sure, they still care about abortion and gay marriage. But a new, outspoken generation also cares about global warming, Darfur, illiteracy, human trafficking, preventable disease. The era of divisive religious rhetoric, characterized by James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, is past. Eager to help care for the planet, these Christians are building bridges between left and right, between the secular and the devout, even among subscribers to different holy books. These "new" evangelicals, according to the mainstream press, are exciting now because they're politically powerful. As Frances Fitzgerald put it in The New Yorker this summer, they have the potential to "change the Republican Party beyond the recognition of Karl Rove or doom it to electoral defeat for many years to come."

Not so fast. If the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican veep candidate means anything, it's that conservative Christians—the kind who listen by the millions to Dobson's "Focus on the Family" radio program and were galvanized to vote for Ronald Reagan thanks to Falwell—are still numerous and powerful. Of the 60 million white evangelicals in this country, 60 percent of them believe the Bible is literally true. More than a third believe the end of the world will occur within their lifetimes. Palin, despite her fresh young visage, speaks directly to them. Her pro-life credentials are obvious and beyond dispute. She was raised in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination with an end-times theology that emphasizes adherence to a strict moral code: no tobacco, no alcohol, no social dancing. (Also no premarital sex, but never mind.) The senior pastor of that church, in sermons that circulated online before they were taken down last week, preaches hell for anyone who isn't saved by Jesus. America does not know enough yet about what Palin personally believes, but her church background—she now worships at a nondenominational Bible church—puts her squarely in the tradition of the old-school religious right. The media narrative about the revitalized evangelical center isn't wrong. It's just half the story.

Miller goes on to say that some younger "new evangelicals" are upset that traditional values in other areas outside of reproductive health haven't been relaxed to conform to their less structured view of faith and values. Palin's nomination is thus doubly-troubling for people of this cultural persuasion (unfortunatlely for them, as there's no halfway-station for deeply-conservative Christians).

It's not just the new evangelicals, of course. Palin's ascent to the national political stage has rekindled the culture wars like no event in decades.

I'm particularly interested to see how the issue of teenage pregnancy gets played out in the months ahead, especially if the McCain-Palin ticket wins in November. The Palins' loving response to their daughter's pregnancy - and especially Bristol's pledge to marry her partner - energized conservatives who say that the family's handling of the troubles confirms traditional values and a culture of life.

The response on the left has been almost unreal. Charles Blow, at the New York Times, attacked America's "puritanical culture," then threw up his hands to say:

We need to take some bold steps beyond the borders of our moralizing and discomfort and create a sex education infrastructure that actually acknowledges reality and protects our children from unwanted pregnancies, or worse.

Those "bold steps" include Blow's endorsement of sex education classes for four-year olds. That's bold alright, and half-baked. Others even further to the leftist extreme have basically argued that Bristol Palin should get an abortion.

It's no wonder evangelical Christians have rallied to the GOP banner!

Cartoon Credit: Michael Ramirez

Sarah Palin's Working Class Appeal

There's debate in the media today on whether Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will attract working-class voters to the McCain-Palin presidential ticket. Particularly interesting is the gender angle. The Los Angeles Times, for example, offers a front-page report entitled, "Sarah Palin's Appeal to Working-Class Women May Be Limited":

Palin, a little-known 44-year-old mother of five, burst onto the scene just days ago, presenting herself as the woman to finally shatter the glass ceiling cracked by the Democratic New York senator's historic candidacy.

But now, after a chaotic introductory week that sparked national debates on McCain's judgment, Palin's experience and even her teenage daughter's pregnancy, the initial signs are not entirely positive for the reinvigorated Republican ticket.

Interviews with some two dozen women here after Palin's convention speech found that these voters were not swayed by the fiery dramatic speeches or compelling personal biographies that marked both the Republican and Democratic conventions. Instead, they were thinking about the price of milk - nearly $5 a gallon - or the healthcare coverage that many working families here cannot afford.

Even if they admire Palin's attempt to juggle political ambition, an infant son with Down syndrome and a pregnant unwed daughter, these women say that maternal grit is not enough to win their votes.

The Times piece actually says little about how well Palin may pull working-class voters into the GOP column. The article cites some polling data indicating the Alaska Governor's generic support in public opinion (and on the abortion issue, in one example), but after that most of the evidence for estimating working-class support comes from a roughly two-dozen focus-group panel.

In contrast, Carolyn Lochhead reports that the McCain campaign sees huge potential in Palin's working class appeal, and the organization is sending Todd Palin, Sarah's husband, out onto the hustings to rally the blue-collar vote:

Democrats do not think that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's arrival in the enemy camp changes Sen. Barack Obama's path to the White House. As far as they're concerned, Republican John McCain's running mate is President George W. Bush.

As Obama told voters in Pennsylvania on Friday, "This race is not a personality contest."

That bet is about to be tested.

Independent observers in Ohio think Palin does change the race, enhancing the GOP's appeal - not among the women who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but among white men. They say Palin's most potent weapon may even be her snowmobiler, union husband, Todd.

"If you see him turning up in Appalachian Ohio and up in Canton and Warren and the old steel towns, I think he would play very, very well," said Ken Heineman, an Ohio University political analyst. "If they try to go after his DUI conviction, jeez, his whole up-from-the-blue-collar thing? He's going to resonate very well among swing voters and among male Democrats, the blue-collar Democrats that Obama did not win in the primary. He would be an incredibly appealing figure, and of course, she is herself."

Discussions are underway to deploy Todd Palin, a McCain aide said, even though he has taken leave from his oil-field job to care for the couple's five children. He joked at an event Thursday, "If I had a crystal ball a few years ago, I might have asked a few more questions when Sarah decided to join the PTA."

I'm inclined to think that McCain may gain ground not only with working class voters, but with working-class women as well, many of whom do not fit the emerging Democratic demographic of appealing to highly educated "knowledge workers" and "bobos," and that's not to mention the Democrats' traditional appeal among urban minorities and racial identity groups. As Susan Page notes:

The nation is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, a diversity that has spread across the country. Aging Baby Boomers remain the biggest generational group in the electorate, but second in size are the Millennials — 18- to 31-year-olds who have distinctive attitudes toward race and politics. In the space of a generation, Americans have seen dramatic changes in the roles of women, the structure of families and the nature of the workplace. There has been a revolution in the technology that delivers information and knits communities.

Presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama personify that changing nation in striking ways. In age, race and life experience — even in use of innovative technology in the campaign — they mirror a nation in transition.

Some analysts are predicting that the 2008 election — like the one in 1980 that brought the election of Ronald Reagan as president and set the nation on a more conservative course — looms as a landmark contest in which the country is receptive to change.

"This is a pivotal moment in the sense that the politics is catching up to the demographic changes," says William Frey, a Brookings Institution scholar who analyzes population trends.

Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin calls Democrat Obama — who's 47, biracial and multiethnic — "the face of the new generation" who has mobilized millions of younger voters this year.

But Garin notes that some, especially older white voters, find Obama's message and background — he is a first-term Illinois senator who spent nearly as long as a community organizer as he has in Congress — unpersuasive and even discomfiting.

If the clear demographic differences between the party constituencies become even more prounounced over the next two months, then the McCain-Palin ticket may end up demonstrating the kind of traction with the working-class that marked the later stages of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

But note Michael van der Galien's take on the GOP's working class appeal:

... with ‘their nomination of Barack Obama, the Democrats have intensified their image as the party of minorities and the upper part of white America. Among whites, Democrats increasingly draw their votes from the educated, from those who have enjoyed success in a destabilizing postmodern culture and global economy.’ Republicans, on the other hand, have, by choosing Sarah Palin, ‘reasserted their identity as the party of white working-class America - of those who worry about cultural and economic threats to their families.’

The result may very well be that Republicans will once again succeed in getting the support from working class America; quite possibly to the great regret of Democrats, who may find it qutie hard to win elections without it.

That's sounds like a pretty good analysis to me.

Cartoon Credit: Cincinnati Enquirer

Daily Kos and Andrew Sullivan: Merchants of Hate

Some time back, when I reported on Daily Kos' vehemently anti-Semitic essay, "Eulogy Before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel," left-wing commenters here argued that the post was "just a diary," and did not reflect the views of Markos Moultisas himself.

I utterly reject that view, of course, and I've shown here repeatedly that Kos indeed welcomes both the diary contributions AND the individual comments found in the threads to his blog's diaries and essays (commenters at Daily Kos aren't just commenters, "They are creators of content”).

These facts are relevant to the recent left-wing smear attacks against Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Almost as soon as John McCain announced Palin as his vice-presidential running mate, Daily Kos began spreading rumors that Governor Palin's 17 year-old daughter Bristol was the mother of Palin's son Trig.

In response to the backlash from the McCain campaign and conservatives, Moultisas refused to take down the allegations, telling the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that the smears were "legitimate" journalism:

The intensity of media inquiries [into Sarah Palin's background] hit a new level after an anonymous blogger on the liberal Web site Daily Kos last weekend charged that McCain's running mate is actually the grandmother of Trig Palin, the 4-month-old baby born with Down syndrome, and that the real mother is her daughter, 17-year-old Bristol Palin. That led to mainstream media inquiries, which prompted the McCain camp to disclose in a statement Monday that Bristol is five months pregnant and plans to have the baby and marry the teenage father.

The site's founder, Markos Moulitsas, said he did not know the contributor's identity but thought that the admittedly "weird" pregnancy questions were a legitimate line of inquiry that he should not suppress.

Keep in mind, that Moultisas has announced that Daily Kos represents the "mainstream" of the Democratic Party, and Moulitsas and Barack Obama openly coordinated on the publication of Obama's certification birth at Daily Kos in June.

Moultisas' key ally in spreading the anti-Palin hate rumors has been Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic, and Sullivan's in fact been the originator of some of the nastiest untruths seeking to destroy the Palin family.

Sullivan's extremism continues this morning. As Darleen Click shows, Sullivan's gone off the deep end with a post attacking Jewish influence in Sarah Palin's foreign policy coaching:

I’m posting a screenshot because I’d rather not link to RAWMUSLGLUTES more than necessary. This morning he is little more than Palin-vulva-phobia spewing. However, in one instance he likes to spread a thin film of anti-Semitism over the PDS like room-temperature cream cheese scraped across a nicely toasted bagel:

Plus, Ace of Spades takes the baton from Dean Barnett to shed additional light on Sullivan's smear merchandising:

Andrew Sullivan is known for many things -- general histrionics, "excitability," intellectual shallowness that requires him to blog about the only things he's marginally capable of discussing (emotion and scandal), unquenchable vanity, a guileless passion for conspiracy theories of all sort, "gobsmacking" outbursts of hypocrisy and inconsistency so laughable he's chiefly read for his inadvertent entertainment, casual antisemtism that was all the rage at British boarding schools but doesn't play as well in America, power glutes, seeking anonymous three-way sex, and an endless stream of insults that sound vaguely "smart" but are really just variations of "fascist" and "hater" tarted-up with a thesaurus and some memories of introductory-level college classes.

And that's the just the beginning! .

Sullivan's a mainstream journalist as well as a partisan blogger, and nowadays that's getting to be a distinction without a difference. Prominent hard-line leftist blogs and top journalists at previously respectable institutions like the Atlantic, can slime, smear, and slander, while the principle of journalistic objectivity is sacrificed upon the altar of Barack Hussein Obama, aka "The One."

There's no denying these facts.

Markos Moultisas and Andrew Sullivans are hate-filled smear merchants. Those who want to argue that Kos doesn't endorse this stuff, or Sullivan's a "legitimate" reporter, are living in an alternative reality.