Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Stepping up the Republican ticket’s attacks on Senator Barack Obama, Gov. Sarah Palin on Saturday seized on a report about Mr. Obama’s relationship with a former 1960s radical to accuse him of “palling around with terrorists.”
“This is not a man who sees America as you see it, and how I see America,” Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said in Colorado, according to a pool report. “We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for all of us.
“Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
The Alaska Governor lays it out plain and simple: Barack Obama is at home with those who have sought to destroy the nation. Leftists can squirm and spin the Ayers connection any and every which way, but the association is real, and Obama's efforts to suppress any discussion of his Chicago radicalism is a real indicator of how damaging greater public knowledge of his terrorist ties will be.
There was a time, back in the mid-1990s, when it struck me one day that almost all of my then-favorite musical artists were women.
I don't know what it was, exactly, but I think I was listening to Cheryl Crow, Jewel, and Sarah McLachlan ... all the time (and I had a serious infatuation with Dolores O'Riordan, as well).
I'm reminded of those times whenever Christine McVie, one of my favorite female vocalists, comes on the radio - especially when she sings "Over My Head," with Fleetwood Mac:
I don't really know McVie's critical acclaim. But I do know that there's something about her voice that's spine-tingling ... she's just wonderful.
I wanted to post Fleetwood Mac YouTubes back in the spring, around the time John McCain won the GOP nomination. Other things came up, and different things got posted. When "Over My Head" comes on the radio, I'm reminded that I've gotten behind in my "Lightening Up" series. Notice the two videos, however: The first is from 1977, when I was in high school. My big sister was way more hip and into Fleetwood Mac, listening to "Rumours" all the time when that was the hot LP. "Over My Head" came out a little earlier, but whenever I hear the song I'm also reminded of those days as well. Lindsay Buckingham plays electric guitar in the 1977 concert above, with a longer instrumental introduction to the song. The second video is from the hyped tour in 1997, a reunion if I recall correctly, that got big television play on VH1 and so forth. I watched the concert a couple of times, if I recall. Buckingham plays acoustic, and McVie looks stunningly beautiful. Times go by so fast sometimes ... it's amazing.
Christine McVie retired from Fleetwood Mac in 1998, after the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I always wondered about that. It's hard to think of a band continuing when one of the core members leaves the ensemble. In any case, please enjoy. I'll have more later...
StanleyKurtz, who is at present probably the foremost expert on the Obama-Ayers relationship, called the Times' article a "white-wash":
... as New York Times reporter Scott Shane puts it ... since an initial lunchtime meeting in 1995, "their paths have crossed sporadically ... at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project (i.e. the Chicago Annenberg Challenge) and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors."
There is nothing "sporadic" about Barack Obama delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of many years to fund Bill Ayers’ radical education projects, not to mention many millions more to benefit Ayers’ radical education allies. We are talking about a substantial and lengthy working relationship here, one that does not depend on the quality of personal friendship or number of hours spent in the same room together (although the article greatly underestimates that as well).
Shane’s article buys the spin on Ayers’ supposed rehabilitation offered by the Obama campaign and Ayers’ supporters in Chicago. In this view, whatever Ayers did in the 1960's has somehow been redeemed by Ayers’ later turn to education work. As the Times quotes Mayor Daley saying, "People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life." The trouble with this is that Ayers doesn’t view his terrorism as a mistake. How can he be forgiven when he’s not repentant? Nor does Ayers see his education work as a repudiation of his early radicalism. On the contrary, Ayers sees his education work as carrying on his radicalism in a new guise. The point of Ayers’ education theory is that the United States is a fundamentally racist and oppressive nation. Students, Ayers believes, ought to be encouraged to resist this oppression. Obama was funding Ayers’ "small schools" project, built around this philosophy. Ayers’ radicalism isn’t something in the past. It’s something to which Obama gave moral and financial support as an adult. So when Shane says that Obama has never expressed sympathy for Ayers’ radicalism, he’s flat wrong. Obama’s funded it.
Obama was perfectly aware of Ayers’ radical views, since he read and publically endorsed, without qualification, Ayers’ book on juvenile crime. That book is quite radical, expressing doubts about whether we ought to have a prison system at all, comparing America to South Africa’s apartheid system, and contemptuously dismissing the idea of the United States as a kind or just country. Shane mentions the book endorsement, yet says nothing about the book’s actual content. Nor does Shane mention the panel about Ayers’ book, on which Obama spoke as part of a joint Ayers-Obama effort to sink the 1998 Illinois juvenile crime bill. Again, we have unmistakable evidence of a substantial political working relationship. (I’ve described it in detail here in "Barack Obama’s Lost Years.")
The Obama-Ayers connection is so damaging that the Obama campaign launched totalitarian efforts to suppress discussion of the evidence, for example, by issuing "Obama Action Wire" reports ordering supporters to shut down Chicago-area radio stations that had scheduled interviews with Kurtz and David Freddosso; and by attempting a cover-up of the intimacies of the Annenberg Challenge program.
The left's dismissal of the relationship as "guilt-by-association" is ludicrous. Over and over again, throughout the campaign, Barack Obama has had to defend his patriotism while simultaneously cutting ties to controversial America-bashers such as Jeremiah Wright. As Professor David Demming noted recently:
Obama is a vapid demagogue, a hollow man that despises American culture. He is ill-suited to be president of the United States.
As a rule, I don't use sources from the Associated Press (for obvious reasons), but their article on Iraq's role in stabilizing American power in the Middle East is noteworthy, "Stable Iraq Could Influence Mideast" (alternative link here):
Iraq is likely to play a significant role in America's Middle East policy for decades — even as the Pentagon scales down military operations here and ramps them up in Afghanistan.
The Middle East has long confounded forecasters, and the rosy predictions from the Bush administration that Iraq would emerge as a beacon of Western-style democracy in the Arab world have been long discredited.
However unlikely it may seem today, a relatively stable Iraq would have all the cards necessary to emerge as a major player in the Persian Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and Iran are competing for leadership.
JulesCrittenden's blown away, frankly, at AP's confirmation of the basic neoconservative argument on Iraq all along:
The news agency that more terrorists prefer you’ll recall was rather late to the surge table, if not nearly as fashionably late as Obama. The Associated Press and the scribbler of this particular analysis, Robert H. Reid, were still neck deep in body counts and failure-mongering when al-Qaeda was out of Anbar and on the run in Diyala in mid-2007. AP’s Baghdad bureauistas were asiduously scribbling everything they could to avoid or obscure the terrible truth of the surge’s growing success. But despite its shortcomings, Reid’s latest analysis does a relatively good job of laying out our vital interests in Iraq.
I'll update when we see the terrorist-enabling Newshoggers cover this story - it's going to be tough to clinch the argument that the Bush administration "paid for" this narrative.
The New York Times has a big front-page story on the the intersecting lives of Barack Obama and William Ayers, the former Weatherman bomber who's now a radical professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
At a tumultuous meeting of anti-Vietnam War militants at the Chicago Coliseum in 1969, Bill Ayers helped found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and United States Capitol.
Twenty-six years later, at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors.
Their relationship has become a touchstone for opponents of Mr. Obama, the Democratic senator, in his bid for the presidency. Video clips on YouTube, including a new advertisement that was broadcast on Friday, juxtapose Mr. Obama’s face with the young Mr. Ayers or grainy shots of the bombings.
In a televised interview last spring, Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, asked, “How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?”
More recently, conservative critics who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers, whom the candidate has dismissed as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know.”
A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”
Of course, everyone knows the Times is in the tank for Obama. But you've got to hand it to Bill Keller for his innovative in-text ad placement for the Illinios Democrat.
The piece is a joke.
Crossed paths? It's more like comrades-in-arms. Here's Captain Ed:
How close does Obama have to be to make this connection a valid point? The two men worked together on political projects in Chicago. The issue has nothing to do with the quality of their friendship, if one exists (and there seems to be some evidence of one), but with the kind of work the two men did together. Ayers still agitates for the overthrow of the capitalist system, and his educational project was designed to create little charter schools for churning out radicals.
The American public ought to be ashamed at the distrastrous journalism it's getting from the country's "unofficial newspaper of record."
With Sarah Palin's dramatic comeback performance in last night's debate, radical leftists will be redoubling their efforts to attack, demonize, and destroy the Alaska Governor with everything they've got. Nothing will be considered beyond the pale, absolutely nothing.
So it goes with TBogg, the notorous demonic conservative ridicule machine, and his post tonight, "F-Me Pumps," an abbreviation of the Amy Winehouse namesake number:
If she did anything last night, it was to salvage some of her reputation but that's not going to get her and the "First Dude" out of Alaska unless it's to star in a sitcom ( I Love Lucy meets The Beverly Hillbillies).
This slime is to be expected, it seems, especially when that's all you're packing.
The left is supposed to be all about tolerance and difference, but as soon as someone comes along to break out of the pc-straightjacket, out come the big guns of villainy.
TBogg's trying to take down Palin, obviously, as if she's a slutty piece of white trash, a slur common among leftists blinded by Palin derangement:
This family is basically white trash ... Alaska Hillbillies ... as opposed to the Beverly Hillbillies who as the TV story went, actually did strike it rich with oil. No one in the Country Club/Wall Street Republican crowd would ever want anything do with a redneck family like the Palin's [sic] except to exploit them to win an election. Can't you just picture the entire Palin clan sitting down at a White House State dinner and opening their mouths to say something? You can only dress up a "redneck" to a point with expensive clothing and stylists. Despite all of the preparation and memorization and high end grooming, Sarah's ... still an ignoramus.
Sorry, but I'm not buying it - it just keeps comin' from the left side of the spectrum, like a sewage storm drain unplugged.
The Palins are not "hillbillies" - or if they are, so is the great majority of middle Americans; and thus Barack Obama's dismissal of working class Pennsylvanians as "bitter," clinging to "guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them," really is representative of the elitist big-city mandarin mindset that seeks totalitarian control of state and society come January.
Lorie Byrd argues that John McCain has one month remaining to make the case to the nation that a Barack Obama presidency will be the most extreme left-wing administration in our lifetimes:
It should be obvious to voters that an Obama presidency along with a Democrat-controlled Congress would result in the most liberal policies many of us have seen in our lifetimes or imagined in our wildest nightmares. Add to that the very real possibility that a President Obama would appoint two or three Supreme Court judges. There would be virtually no check on the power held by liberal Democrats and they would feel emboldened by the election to claim a mandate for anything they proposed.
This is a scenario that should frighten all but those in the most extreme left wing of the Democrat Party, but I don’t think it is a scenario that most voters have really considered....
It would be no mystery to voters that an Obama presidency would be dominated by a far left liberal agenda if they were looking at the track records and associates of the candidates. Instead they are largely being shown an illusion of a modern day Messiah who is ready to unite the country and solve all its problems. They are being shown images of adorable children singing songs of worship and praise to Obama who is going to “rearrange” things to make them right. They are being given fluffy, puffy stories about the candidate by those who profess to be news reporters. The veil is so thin, really, if you know what stands behind it. Whether or not the McCain campaign can lift that veil in the final month of this campaign will determine the course of the country in ways we can only now imagine.
It's likely that most rank-and-file Obama supporters do not appreciate the genuine radicalism inherent in Barack Obama and his campaign for the White House (see youth indoctrination video, here). Of course, his most fanatical supporters worship Obama for exactly this reason - he's the change agent to shift the United States to a "progressive"-socialist political economy, with an agenda so radical that the administration in practice will have no enemies on the left.
The wingers think Palin was a smashing success because when you pulled the string in her back, she looked down at her cue cards and recited her talking points perfectly.
Frankly, the Democratic-left is deeply disappointed the Palin didn't crash and burn (the leftist wet dream these last few nights saw Palin tearfully withdrawing after the debate).
We simply haven't had an overtly fecund, butch, straight-woman sex symbol in so long. She's like Annie Oakley with her six-shooters and her polar bears, her caribou dressing and her moose stew. She's got five kids hanging off of her, and you're like "Hells bells, that woman can f**k in the morning, go out for a long hike on the Arctic tundra, take down a polar bear or two, and be back in time to pass some new creationist legislation." She just kicks ass. I mean, she's just so — mmm. So like a powerful woman.
It's exciting, isn't it?
That one's pre-debate, actually, but certainly a tasty appetizer before the maincourse:
The point is, she doesn’t know s**t about s**t ...
Look for more of this slime going forward, especially after the polls show the race tightening up over the weekend.
The House today approved a $700-billion financial rescue plan - sweetened by $110 billion in tax cuts - on a 263-171 vote four days after rejecting it in a move that stunned both Wall Street and Washington.
"We've made this bill better," said House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio. "Is it perfect? No. But it clearly is better than it was a week ago."
House leaders were stunned Monday when members rejected the plan, 228-205, with Republicans charging that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) had politicized the issue by blaming President Bush's policies for the financial mess on Wall Street that has brought the economic system to a tipping point.
President Bush, in a Rose Garden comment after the vote, pledged to sign the legislation when it reaches his desk. He doled out praise to Democratic and Republican leaders alike. "By coming together on this legislation we have acted boldly," he said. "We have shown the world that the United States of America will stabilize our financial markets and maintain a leading role in the global economy."
I know many conservatives will rise up in outrage over the "bailout," and I'll have more on the partisan and practical implications of the legislation in upcoming essays.
However, readers should check out Kimberley Strassel's essay at today at the Wall Street Journal, "What Leadership Looks Like." Strassel discusses Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, a GOP fiscal conservative who voted for the bill after of years of dissent in Washington over Congress' Fannie and Freddie enablers:
The congressman was no fan of Mr. Paulson's plan, and initially rallied conservatives around a rival approach. When it became clear that the administration's approach was the only thing going, he spearheaded negotiations to rid it of its worst liberal elements and to include more taxpayer protections.
As credit spreads widened, he said he also realized this was a "Herbert Hoover moment, where he sat by and let a Wall Street crash turn into a Great Depression . . . There are times when free-markets stop and rational thinking goes out the window. It then isn't enough to be a laissez-faire conservative and let Rome burn . . . This bill is not perfect, but doing nothing is far worse than passing this bill."
Compare this to Mr. Ryan's GOP colleagues in Wisconsin. Jim Sensenbrenner and Tom Petri were among those 162 Republicans that let Fan and Fred bust the bank. Yet when this week's day of reckoning came, Mr. Petri complained it was a "half-baked plan," while Mr. Sensenbrenner declared he wouldn't "subsidize Wall Street." Oh, for this righteousness during the half-baked Fan-Fred subsidy days. And this from two guys in safe seats.
This has left Mr. Ryan alone to defend his position back home. It hasn't helped that his colleagues are spinning this as bravery, crowing that it was they who listened to constituents and they who acted on free-market principles. Never mind that these principles were nowhere in evidence back when it mattered. And never mind that should America crash, it will be the free market offered up as sacrifice to the regulatory mob.
I need to state, right away, that I respect Senator Joseph Biden. He's a good man, who, unfortunately, made licentious mistakes earlier in his career, especially on questions of serial plagiarism. Yet, if the Obama/Biden ticket wins in November, frankly, the Delaware Senator's more qualified to serve in the Oval Office than is Barack Obama.
I mean, let's face it, things were going along routinely, with each candidate holding their own on taxes and domestic policy, until (alleged) moderator Gwen Ifill shifted topics to foreign policy. Biden went off on how Barack Obama's on the same page as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, blah, blah ... and then, Ifill turned to Governor Palin, asking for her response on Iraq, to which the Alaska Governor replied, directing her answer to Senator Biden:
Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that's for sure. And it's not what our nation needs to be able to count on. You guys opposed the surge. The surge worked...
Wham!
I kept noticing, throughout the debate, the big smiles Senator Biden kept flashing - helpless smiles indicating that he was getting hammered!
There was a point, moreover, earlier in the debate, where I think Governor Palin set concrete parameters: Senator Biden was trying to set the record straight on Barack Obama's record on regulatory policy, where he says:
Gwen, the governor did not answer the question about deregulation, did not answer the question of defending John McCain about not going along with the deregulation, letting Wall Street run wild.
But check out Sarah Palin in response, and with EMPHASIS:
I'm still on the tax thing because I want to correct you on that again ... I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let themmy track record also.
Wham!
Beyond this, I think the debate was pretty much thrust and parry.
Senator Biden knows what he's talking about. But throughout I was wondering if he actually prepped for this: I mean, really, it was Governor Palin who delivered the memorable lines. I especially thought the "Say it ain't so, Joe!" line, delivered late in the debate, when Biden was riffing about the middle class, was killer:
Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.
These are the exact moments that hit home with Main Street Americans.
Governor Palin made no gaffes. She was in command of the facts and was careful to redirect the debate to talking points comfortable to her experience.
But most of all, Senator Biden seemed on defense through most of the night. At first, it seemed, Governor Palin was nervous ... on edge even. But as she got going, her comfort level heightened dramatically, and toward the end she was relishing her rejoinders - I mean nothing - nothing - was out of her league! Iraq? Iran? Show me what you got!
It was an unabashedly, one might even say relentlessly folksy and down-home Palin that greeted Americans Thursday night, with phrases like "Doggone it," ''You guys," ''Darn right" and, one she must have been saving 'til the end, "Say it ain't so, Joe!" You became "ya," change was "comin'" and a class of third-graders even got a "shout-out" from the Alaska governor.
You can bet Barack Obama was biting his knuckles, stressing in his campaign's inability to put McCain/Palin away.
I'll have more over the next few days ... but I can say now: Expect a decent Palin bounce in the polls. The Alaska Governor exceeded expectations by miles. I mean, c'mon, even Markos Moultisas' initial evaluation (subject to immediate revision) suggested Palin won. Further, even RawMuslesGlutes was restrained, conceding, "Palin didn't collapse ... " (and that's considering RMG's "Trig-trutherism"!).
Governor Palin captured the essence of complete authenticity in the debate, especially at the conclusion, where she noted:
We have to fight for our freedoms, also, economic and our national security freedoms.
It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.
These are the bedrock values to which middle Americans can relate. We'll see if she gets a bump, but at the end of the day, Sarah Palin demonstrated that she's ready to step in as chief executive in an emergency. The McCain campaign did themselves proud in their work preparing Governor Palin for her key moment of the presidential debates.
She exceededexpectations, and the American people saw it, live, large, and down home, baby!
The Paulson plan isn't what we would have drawn up. It will not by itself inject capital into troubled banks, and it carries risks in how Treasury will price toxic assets when it buys them. But it is one more policy tool at a time when something needs to be done, and it is the only one currently up for a vote. Passing it won't by itself revive the banking system, but defeating it will guarantee far more damage to far more Americans.
Jason Pappas has a nice roundup of articles debating the issues.
Political activists are increasingly creating their own campaign advertisments and distributing them via YouTube.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the campaign for California's Proposition 8, which would authorize a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriages, has seen the creation of a number of citizens' ads, like this one from Grant Johnson:
The key text suggests:
The historic purpose for governmental recognition of marriage has been about children and society, not the relationship of two adults.
That message is remarkably similar to an opinion piece in the Times a couple of weeks back by David Blankenhorn, "Protecting Marriage to Protect Children" (this is the best commentary I've read on gay marriage, so please read and distribute widely).
By chance, I was just thinking about citizens' YouTubes yesterday while visiting Mr. RawMusleGlutes, who posted this "No on 8" video.
It turns out that support for Proposition 8 is trailing in the polls, a trend so far attributed to the opposition of young voters (which consequently means that voter turnout is likely to be significant in determining the measure's fate).
Robert Sanchez, the Metrolink engineer who was piloting the train that crashed in Simi Valley on September 12, had sent a text message seconds before the crash that killed at least 25 people and injured 135, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed that Sanchez had been text-messaging, but withheld additional information pending further investigation. The Times story, however, cites the reports from academic research on the crash:
Investigators have not said whether they think the text messages played any role in the crash or affected Sanchez's ability to operate the train. But the two USC academics calculated for The Times what may have happened just before the crash.
Using the NTSB figures that Sanchez's train was traveling 42 mph in the area from the red signal to the collision point and correlating the times of his text messaging, Najmedin Meshkati, a USC engineering professor and veteran transportation safety expert, estimated that the last text message would have been sent about five seconds after Sanchez sped past the signal.
Gokhan Esirgen, laboratory director for instructional physics at USC, also calculated that Sanchez would have sent the last message just after the light. He believes this timetable provided little or no time for Sanchez to react after he saw the oncoming train.
Even if Sanchez wasn't sending a text message at the exact moment of the crash, he may have had "inattention blindness," said David Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor who's studied cellphone use's effect on motorists.
"If you're busy text messaging and you're taking a minute or so to key in a message, you're obviously not going to see the things that go by when you're looking at the keyboard and screen," said Strayer, adding that it often takes motorists five to 10 seconds to readjust their focus to the road.
I followed the story closely the first couple of days after the crash, although I hadn't seen any formal confirmation of the text-messaging story beyond the first day's reporting (my wife first mentioned that the engineer had been sending text messages, which she had learned on the radio).
The Times ran an interesting graphic a couple of days after crash, which explained the deadly nature of the impact. It turns out that the two front engines of the freight train, which was heading southbound at about 41mph, weighed nearly twice as much as the entire Metrolink commuter train (545,000 each). The freight train's head-on impact drove the Metrolink locomotive back into the first passenger car of the commuter train, killing the occupants.
This story is devasting. My heart goes out the families and the survivors.
Congress will require that all train track-systems in the country will have smart technology to stop trains heading for collision by 2015. The systems are now in use in other parts of the country, but not California.
Expectations are high for tonight's vice-presidential debate, and I'll have analysis on the event later today (but note for now that Gwen Ifill has permanently tarnished her reputation as an objective journalist, as she's blatantly in the tank for Obama).
Steely Dan is one of the great FM drive-time favorites, although I like the studio version of "Rikki" better than the live take here, particularly for its guitar solo (available here).
The New York Times reports that Barack Obama leads John McCain 48 to 42 percent in the latest NYT/CBS News poll.
The findings come as a number of other surveys also see Obama emerging as the frontrunner. Today's Pew Research poll, for example, finds Obama taking a 49 to 42 percent lead among registered voters, and CNNreports that the Illinois Senator's pulling ahead in a number of key battleground states (Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada and Virginia).
The contest between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama is far from over. It is being fought against the continued uncertainty over the turmoil on Wall Street and in the bailout negotiations in Washington. There are three potential turning points ahead — a vice-presidential debate on Thursday night and two more debates between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama — and this election has regularly been shaken up by outside events that have tested both candidates and altered voters’ views.
Still, the trends signaled by this new wave of polls — coming at what both sides view as a critical moment in the contest — suggest that the contours of this race are taking form, and in a way that is not encouraging for Mr. McCain’s prospects.
The election cycle is entering a time when voters historically begin to make final judgments; this year, in fact, many of them are actually beginning early voting in states. What is more, the poll suggests voters have been guided by how Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama did in their debate last Friday, and also how they have responded to the crisis on Wall Street and the resulting deadlock in Washington about how to respond to it.
Note that we could indeed see some kind of "October Surprise" that dramatically reshapes the race, but it does appear at this point - with five weeks left in the season - that the Democrats have turned a corner.
If there's a bright side for the McCain camp it's that the remaining debates may help the GOP regain some momentum (and that includes the vice-presidential debate tomorrow, which is highly anticipated); also, if Congress can reach a respectable bailout bill on Capitol Hill this week or next, the sense of economic crisis may subside just enough for the race to tighten back up in the last couple weeks of the campaign.
The Politico reported this week that Republicans are getting worried and are urging McCain to go on the offensive against Obama. They're right to be concerned, and I'm a little surprised that we haven't seen more of an effort among conservatives (or a more coordinated effort) to define Obama more forcefully.
Of course, one of the big unknowns at this point is whether the considerable shock and outrage during the primaries over Obama's ties to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, as well as to the remaining rogue's gallery of Obama's radical friends, has dissipated enough for the Democrats to slide into a win on November 4, to elect the most liberal presidential candidate since George McGovern.
**********
UPDATE: As a reminder of the era of partisanship that we're in, here's Markos Moulitsas' take on recent polling trends:
Many people will warn against "getting complacent". I like to approach this potential problem differently - we have a chance to rip out the GOP's jugular. We can throw them an anvil. We can kick them while they're down. No matter the metaphor, the underlying meaning remains - we can destroy the Republicans. Now's not the time to slack, it's the time to pick things up. We've got them in a near rout. Let's destroy them.
The word "campaign" has a military etymology, which comes through loud and clear with Kos' comments. I don't make predictions, but I can say that if the GOP turns it around, I'm won't be holding back from laying down some reciprocal phraseology.
I'll be watching the Angels-Red Sox opener of the ALDS tonight, so political blogging might be light.
In meantime, please enjoy Joe Jackson's, "Breaking Us in Two," a song that popped into my mind yesterday morning for no particular reason:
I saw Jackson in concert at least three times in the 1980s, upon release of Night and Day, the chart-topping album featuring the hit "Stepping Out," in addition to "Breaking Us in Two."
Choosing the right Justices is critical for America. We don't know who Barack Obama would choose, but we know this: He chose as one of his first financial backers a slumlord now convicted on 16 counts of corruption. Obama chose as an associate a man who helped to bomb the Pentagon and said he "didn't do enough." And Obama chose as his pastor a man who has blamed America for the 9/11 attacks. Obama chose to associate with these men, while voting against these men.
See more from the Judicial Confimation Network at the link.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought partisan political gains for the Democratic Party, not economic rescue for the American people, in the vote on this week's Wall Street bailout bill. The Los Angeles Times reports:
When Nancy Pelosi was sworn in as the first Democratic House speaker in 12 years, she promised to reach across the aisle to Republicans, to be "speaker of the House -- the entire House." In tribute to that spirit, she dressed in purple -- blending the red and blue that are symbols of partisan division.
But she did not look like a speaker of the whole House this week, as the financial industry bailout she helped negotiate was unexpectedly defeated. Republicans deserted in droves, Democrats were split, and Pelosi ended the floor debate before the vote with a passionate critique of Republican economic policies.
The Wall Street meltdown is among the biggest issues to face Congress in decades, and it posed a daunting test of Pelosi's leadership abilities: Hardly anyone in either party wanted to vote for the bill to spend $700 billion to shore up ailing financial firms, but most everybody worried about the economic and political consequences of failing to act.
The bill's narrow defeat was in part a tribute to political forces far beyond Pelosi's control: The deep-seated mistrust between the parties has made it increasingly difficult for the House to address major national problems that cry out for bipartisan solutions. Her GOP counterpart, Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), is considered a weak minority leader, and President Bush's leverage within the party has all but vanished.
Still, Pelosi's handling of the issue provided a window onto her leadership style -- revealing the limits of her ability to win the trust of Republicans, to lean on her own rank and file, and to dispel her reputation as a polarizing figure.
Her closing speech was an assault on the Bush-era economic policies that Pelosi said had fueled the current financial woes. Some Republican leaders said Tuesday that her tone had cost them votes and contributed to the bill's defeat.
In truth, there was little in the San Francisco Democrat's speech that she had not said before. Brendan Daly, Pelosi's spokesman, said she intended it as a last-ditch effort to increase support from balky liberal Democrats.
Still, some analysts said that Pelosi's onslaught may have been ill-timed and reinforced Republicans' view of her as too partisan.
"The moment to make that speech is after the vote, not before it," said Leon E. Panetta, a former House Democrat from California. "It's obviously a sensitive moment when you have a close vote on your hands."
"It was very provocative," said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist who has worked as a Senate staffer. "When the issue is still in doubt, you don't poke a stick in the eye of the opposition."
After the bailout plan failed, Pelosi blamed Republicans for not having lived up to an agreement -- designed to give bipartisan cover to incumbents -- that each party would deliver half of its members in support of the bill. In the end, 60% of Democrats but only 33% of House Republicans voted for it.
Congressional leaders usually will not bring legislation to the floor unless they are sure it will pass -- especially when the stakes are so high.
Some critics now are asking whether Pelosi had faulty vote-counting intelligence. GOP leaders who were urging the rank and file to support the bailout plan said they told Democrats in advance that they did not have a lock on their votes but did not ask them to delay the debate. Democrats believed that Republicans were lowballing the count and that the measure would pass.
Others have questioned how committed Pelosi was to passing the bill because, once it became clear that it was failing, she made only limited efforts to change minds. She asked members of the Congressional Black Caucus, a bastion of opposition to the deal, to change their votes -- but did not deploy the kind of hardball tactics that leaders often use to win close contests.
There's enough blame to go around for the causes of the Wall Street collapse, and I have avoided taking a partisan approach to the issue. And while conservatives are pleased with the initial bill's defeat, the failure of the legislation also represents the hyper-partisanship of recent years, and in this instance the Democratic leadership's attempts to exploit and profit from it.
There'ssomebuzz this morning over GOP running mate Sarah Palin's debating style.
It turns out that Governor Palin's a confident debater who doesn't fluster easily. She's said to turn potential liability into strength with an ability to remain unruffled on issues of less familiarity. And on social policy - especially the value of human life - Palin speaks with authority and without hesitation, as seen in her Alaska gubernatorial debate in 2006:
Compare Palin's responses on the question of rape and abortion to Democrat Tony Knowles, who is completely flustered on his response to such a tragedy.
As this morning's Wall Street Journal indicates, Palin's a formidable debater:
There are two things people here remember about Sarah Palin's debating style during her race for governor two years ago.
One is the stack of color-coded cue cards she took to the podium for help whenever she was asked a policy question. The other is how quickly she was able to shuck those props, master the thrust-and-parry of jousting with her opponents and inquisitors, and project confidence to an audience of television viewers watching from home.
That's the Sarah Palin I remember from the 2006 debates: positive, confident and upbeat," recalls Libby Casey, an Alaska public-radio reporter who served as a debate moderator on two occasions that year.
Even the New York Times concedes Palin's no lightweight:
A newcomer to the national scene, Ms. Palin has given little indication that she has been engaged in a serious way in the pressing national and international issues of the day.
But a review of a handful of her debate performances in the race for governor in 2006 shows a somewhat different persona from the one that has emerged since Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, named Ms. Palin as the vice-presidential nominee a month ago.
Ms. Palin, a former mayor who had become a whistle-blower about ethical misconduct in state government, held her own in those debates.
Note too that while Democrats are hoping to raise expectations for Palin in tomorrow's debate, Joseph Biden himself is reportedly planning a low-key strategy, where's he's likely to go easy on Palin should she make a gaffe.
Palin may well end up meeting - even exceeding - expectations, and Biden's fear of coming on too strong - i.e., contemptuous and sexist - will rebound the the advantage of the GOP ticket (as some on the radical left have noticed).
Even more importantly, as ABC News reports, Palin's small-town charm and outsider status may provide a winning angle amid the financial crisis, allowing Palin to "field dress" a new set of expectations on the direction of the presidential race.
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