What Happened to Sociotropic Voting?

I remember a funny term in graduate school called "sociotropic voting."

The notion is that voters look at the economy's performance and evaluate their electoral choices with the goal of maximizing "social welfare" in mind. With the current economic turbulence - housing and the subprime collapse, the Wall Street financial crisis, sustained high gas prices and inflation at the grocery store checkout line, etc. - it seems we'd be seeing more discussion along the lines of public interest voting, and thus signs of political rewards for the party out of power.

If one clicks on the Huffington Post, as I have the last few days, the website has adopted the old newspaper rack headline strategy of crisis. Clicking right now finds the blaring topic headline, "BLACK MONDAY." I checked over there last night to find Huffington Post trumpeting the recent Alan Greenspan quote, "ONCE IN A CENTURY ECONOMIC CRISIS."

As bad as things are, the feeling on the street is nowhere near that proportion. I'm seeing less "bank owned" for sale signs as I was at the beginning of the year, and even as national unemployment numbers edge up, the Southern California economy appears robust, with firms hiring and the morning crush on Los Angeles freeways signaling as big a traffic commute as ever (impressionist data to be sure, but nevertheless good indicators of a vigorous local marketplace).

Indeed, as tough as the economy seems objectively, individual concerns about market instability have been declining, as seen in a recent Gallup report, "Pessimism Declines Despite Job Woes."

So, where's the attention to sociotropic voting?

The Monkey Cage has a research update, "A Different Take on Sociotropic and Pocketbook Voting":

Dozens – hundreds? – of research studies have explored one particular aspect of the economic basis of electoral behavior: the issue of whether “pocketbook” considerations (one’s personal financial situation) or “sociotropic” ones (one’s assessment of the state of the broader economy) are more important. The standard modus operandi in such research is to pit these two possibilities against one another in horse-race fashion and determining which comes out ahead. Or, in more comprehensive treatments, the two possibilities might be included additively in models of voting, to try to assess the overall impact of economic conditions on voting behavior.

Mitchell Killian, Ryan Schoen, and Aaron Dusso (political science graduate students at, ahem, George Washington University) have a somewhat different take on this issue. In a piece that will appear in an upcoming issue of Political Behavior, they examine the possibility that “pocketbook and sociotropic economic assessments are not independent and alternative sources of voter turnout, but operate in tandem to shape electoral behavior.”

A draft of the research is here (in pdf).

The paper's blending macro- and micro-economic concerns among voters, synthesizing two strands of reseach. The dependent variable is "likelihood of voting," rather than "voting for policies that maximize 'social welfare,'" which is considered the main hypothesis in sociotropic models.

Still, the Killian, Schoen, and Dusso paper finds that:

The perception that one is falling behind economically relative to the rest of society spurs those individuals to vote more than individuals who perceive that they have been reaping relative economic gains.

Taking this logic further, perhaps current polling data predicting a large turnout in November's election can be correlated to feelings of "not keeping up with the Jones" among American voters; and if so, from a sociotropic perspective, we might expect the party out of power to benefit.

In other words, the Democrats should be pulling away in public opinion polling.

But they're not, at either the presidential or generic congressional level.

So, what happened to sociotropic voting?

Who knows?

The Politico reports that the "banking meltdown" is going to wallop the presidential campaigns, but frankly, the Democrats are facing an uphill battle in making the case for "Bush's third term."

Maybe Barack Obama needs to replace Joseph Biden with Hillary Clinton as running mate (so the Democrats can capture more of those "bitter" voters).

But I'll leave it the political science voting experts to sort it all out.

What if Obama Loses?

Consider this a perfect follow-up essay to my earlier entry today, "Voter Disenfranchisement as Racism Against Obama?"

It turns out that Harvard's Randall Kennedy has written about the potential reaction among black Americans at the loss of Barack Obama in November.

Before leaving a quote, I must say I'm intrigued that Kennedy's publishing his piece right now. I don't remember him writing anything on Obama all year (and I like Kennedy, too, an atypical scholar of black law and politics, who often questions the reigning shibboleths); so perhaps his post is one more tiny inkling of how poorly things are going for the Democrats - or perhaps it's another indicator of how far Obama's fallen, like Icarus, from the lofty clouds of messianic inevitablity.

But here's Kennedy:

After he was nominated in the week marking the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, Obama became the focus of millennial aspirations. "Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime black candidate," wrote a black student in a memo for my course, "our one shot, probably the only real contender that my parents and grandparents will ever see, and maybe the only contender my generation will see. All my hopes ride with him." Imagine the pain of such hopes dashed.

Black America, of course, is diverse. Some black conservatives -- columnist Thomas Sowell or Ken Blackwell, former secretary of state of Ohio -- will undoubtedly be delighted by an Obama defeat; he is, after all, their ideological foe. But there are also black leftists who oppose him. Writing in the Progressive magazine, Prof. Adolph Reed of the University of Pennsylvania urges voters to reject Obama (as well as McCain) because he is a "vacuous opportunist" who, like Bill Clinton, conservatizes the leftward end of the American political spectrum. A close variant is the camp of blacks who will be relieved by an Obama defeat because they fear that his victory would misleadingly suggest that America is no longer in need of large-scale racial reform. Still others, who believe that Obama has hurt himself by seeking the political center and declining to be more forceful in voicing a progressive alternative to the Republican ticket, would feel somber vindication.

There are blacks who'll be indifferent to an Obama defeat because they don't think that the outcome of the presidential race will have any real effect on their miserable fates. Others, protecting themselves against the pain of disappointment, have systematically repressed expectations. My mother will be sorry if Obama loses, but she won't feel disillusioned, because she hasn't allowed herself to get her hopes up. She has insisted throughout that "the white folks are going to refuse one way or another to permit Obama to become president." That she says this is remarkable, given the success of her three children, all of whom attended Princeton and became attorneys (one is a federal judge). Still, even though she has seen many racial barriers fall, she's simply unwilling to make herself vulnerable to dejection by investing herself fully in the Obama phenomenon.

If Obama loses, I personally will feel disappointed, frustrated, hurt. I'll conclude that a fabulous opportunity has been lost. I'll believe that American voters have made a huge mistake. And I'll think that an important ingredient of their error is racial prejudice -- not the hateful, snarling, open bigotry that terrorized my parents in their youth, but rather a vague, sophisticated, low-key prejudice that is chameleonlike in its ability to adapt to new surroundings and to hide even from those firmly in its grip.
If Obama is defeated, I will, for a brief time, be stunned by feelings of dejection, anger and resentment. These will only be the stronger because the climate of this election year so clearly favors the Democrats, because this was supposed to be an election the Republicans couldn't win, and because in my view, the Obama ticket is obviously superior to McCain's.

But I hope that soon thereafter I'll find solace and encouragement in contemplating this unprecedented development: A major political party nominated a black man for the highest office in the land, and that man waged an intelligent, brave campaign in which many millions of Americans of all races enthusiastically supported an African American standard-bearer.

Note first, if Obama loses, and the election's close, the Democrats will have attorneys flaring out around the country - to Florida, Ohio, and other states - amid a national outcry on the left alleging "Rovian" fraud and "racist" ballot irregularities. The anger will be of the intensity following Al Gore's loss to G.W. Bush in 2000, with some added outrage on the scale seen on the African-American street after the white officers' aquittals in the Rodney King beating trial in 1992 (no prediction on rioting this time, but who knows?).

But I haven't actually thought that far ahead.

Barack Obama's already achieved history by winning the nomination of his party for President of the United States. Unfortunately, the Democrats need a "black Bill Clinton," that is, they need an African-American "New Democrat" who is willing to break free from the party's debilitating focus on identity politics and racial grievance. They also need, actually, someone's who's less about "hope and changiness" and more about patriotism and traditionalism.

That said, as readers know, I've been pumping up John McCain all year, and if Obama loses it'll seem a bit miraculous, given the Obamania of just a few months ago. Like Kennedy, I'll reflect on the history-making nature of Obama's quest, and I'll long marvel over the "millions of Americans of all races enthusiastically supported an African American standard-bearer."

But I'll simply be glad he lost, knowing that our country will be safer and our that our political culture and traditions will not only be preserved by a McCain/Palin presidency, but rejuvenated with the kind reformist, new-feminist change that's a wholly more refreshing kind of radicalism than anything the Democrats had to offer.

Voter Disenfranchisement as Racism Against Obama?

A couple of weeks back, Jacob Weisberg argued that racial prejudice in the electorate "could be large enough to cost Obama the election."

Weisberg's piece was widely slammed as over-the-top victimology. Still, of all the frenzied attacks we're now seeing on the McCain/Palin ticket, continued allegations of racism might be the only smears likely to gain genuine traction among voters - ironically, since polling data show that Americans overwhelmingly reject racial discrimination. Still, for the left, "thar's gold in them thar hills." As Peter Kirsanow, at the National Review, noted during the primaries:

The tendency of Obama supporters to see racist impulses behind every criticism of their candidate has evolved into absurdity.

Nevertheless, the left's racism charge is the smear against white voters that just won't go away. In fact, Larisa Alexandrovna makes the case this morning that the Republican Party is essentially a party of white supremacy:

Their values are simply this: hate black, hate liberals, hate Jews who are not part of the end of times scenario, hate women and above all, declare an all out war on anyone who disagrees with them. These people are in fact the horror of the worst kind that is plaguing America.

John McCain's new "Disrespect" ad is allegedly more evidence of this:

Ordering a black man to show you respect you is pretty over the top in 2008. I'm sure McCain's constituency in the South and perhaps right here in Indiana will recognize the terminology from their (thankfully) long ago heydays of sundown towns and lynch mob gatherings, though, and respond accordingly.

The political problem with these allegations is that they're easily dismissed as sour grapes and hypocritical rants. The Democrats ran an ugly primary campaign, with top party members from Bill Clinton on down recycling common racial stereotypes from earlier decades.

If, however, it can be shown that whatever racism exists today is not isolated to the narrow fringes of the political spectrum, that racism, in fact, provides an apartheid structure of great white political hegemony, then Obama supporters may find a big enough payoff in pandering to the racial guilt of the post-civil rights white majority.

For example, the New York Times offers a dramatic look at the question of black felon voter disenfranchisment in its piece, "States Restore Voting Rights for Ex-Convicts":

Felony disenfranchisement — often a holdover from exclusionary Jim Crow-era laws like poll taxes and ballot box literacy tests — affects about 5.3 million former and current felons in the United States, according to voting rights groups....

Muslima Lewis, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida, said: “Really, you’re not having a full participatory democracy if you disenfranchise so many people. It weakens the whole system and, in particular, communities of color.”

The Times suggests that of the two major-party presidential campaigns, only the Obama organization has shown a direct political interest in bolstering the push to restore felons' voting rights (with the implication being that the GOP doesn't care about mobilizing black voters).

The clearest statement on the relationship between black voter disenfranchisement and election 2008 is Andrew Hacker's new piece a the New York Review, with the front-page title in the hard-copy edition blaring, "Prejudice Against Obama" (the online version is here). Hacker's introduction lays out the political implications of the institutional suppression of black voters:

Barack Obama can only become president by mustering a turnout that will surpass the votes he is not going to get. This may well mean that more black Americans than ever will have to go to the polls, if only because the electorate is predominantly white, and it isn't clear how their votes will go. Obstacles to getting blacks to vote have always been formidable, but this year there will be barriers—some new, some long-standing—that previous campaigns have not had to face.

For many years, the momentum was toward making the franchise universal. Property qualifications were ended; the poll tax was nullified; the voting age was lowered to eighteen. But now strong forces are at work to downsize the electorate, ostensibly to combat fraud and strip the rolls of voters who are ineligible for one reason or another. But the real effect is to make it harder for many black Americans to vote, largely because they are more vulnerable to challenges than other parts of the population.

Hacker is a careful scholar, so despite his leftist agenda, I take his work seriously. He is at pains, for example, to avoid cries of "racism" in his piece. The problem, however, is not so much institutional prejudice (there are indeed lingering strains), or voter biases found in hard-to-measure phenomena like the "Bradley effect," but the inability of the Democrats to move beyond the image of a grievance-based party out to distribute racial reparations to its multicultural constituencies.

Not only that, the fact itself of Obama's historic nomination as the Democratic Party's standard-bearer makes cries of "racism" appear trite. Sure, we know the Stormfront-types will never accept a black candidate (believe me, I know, as I'm being attacked right now as "F**king N....." at a pro-Confederacy white supremist blog), but the overall trend in voting rights since the 1960s has been toward the expansion of the vote and the empowerment of previously disadvantaged groups.

As Abigail Thernstrom noted recently:

We've come to the end of a remarkable journey. In the early 1960s, most Southern blacks were barred from voting. Yet today, just over four decades later, blacks and whites from across the country have selected an African American man as the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

The United States has undergone an extraordinary, awe-inspiring transformation -- particularly so for those who remember what the South was like not so long ago. In 1964, the right to vote remained a white privilege, despite the promise of the 15th Amendment. Blacks were routinely kept from the polls by fraudulent literacy tests, violence and intimidation. Without the franchise, they had little or no say in what policies their "representatives" in Congress might support, where state health dollars would go or which local streets would get sidewalks. To have the vote was to belong to the American community; the disfranchised had been stripped, in a fundamental sense, of their citizenship. There were, of course, no black elected officials from the South....

But in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 63% of blacks answered "yes" to the question: "Do you think it's possible your child could grow up to be president or not?" - a higher figure than that for whites.

Whatever your politics, Barack Obama's moment is our moment too - the end of one story and the beginning of another. A moment in which to celebrate.

Arguments and statistics like this won't likely satisfy race-conscious "Blood of Martyrs" activists in the current Democratic Party base, but notwithstanding remaining problems concerning the voting rights of ex-convicts, the United States today is living the dream that Martin Luther King envisioned during a long, hot summer 45-years ago.

Photo Credit: New York Times

The Democrats and the Antiwar Movement

One of the most interesting political developments over the last few years has been the growing fusion between the Democratic Party and the hardline radical elements of the contemporary antiwar left.

Determining which groups and individuals actually comprise "the left" is difficult, but as I've argued numerous time, the radical left today is increasingly an online advocacy and electoral mobilization movement. From the netroots blogs such as Daily Kos, Firedoglake, and Open Left, to the various iterations of online interest groups, such as MoveOn.org, the movement for a progressive overthrow of the hegemonic, imperialist right-wing establishment (BushCo and the neocons, basically) has been the driving ideological program of today's left.

Note, of course, that with the Barack Obama phenomenon we did see members of the '60s protest generation endorse the Illinois Senator (and Obama himself has long been dogged by his own ties to domestic terrorists and his unorthodox upbringing in Marxist ideology).

I identified the hardline radical support for the Obama campaign with the notion of "no enemies on the left." While Obama's a pragmatic politician who's been known to shift to the center for electoral expediency, on the issue of Iraq he's been a godsend to the left's radical antiwar constituencies. Indeed, Barack Obama provides a near-perfect fit for the left's template of postmodern, anti-military moral relativism seeking to rein in American power and put international interests above those of the American state.

The background on the antiwar movement is told in David Horowitz's recent book, Party of Defeat: How Democrats and Radicals Undermined America’s War on Terror Before and After 9-11, which is reviewed by Bruce Thornton at City Journal. Here's Thornton on the Democratic Party's antiwar politics:

Party of Defeat opens with the Vietnam War-era hijacking of the Democratic Party by antiwar radicals, whose ultimate purpose wasn’t so much to end the war, but to discredit and weaken the political, social, and economic foundations of America. For the radical Left, then and now, “no longer regards itself as part of the nation ... “This Left sees itself instead as part of an abstract ‘humanity,’ transcending national borders and patriotic allegiances, whose interests coincide with a worldwide radical cause.” As such, it must work against America’s interests and success, disguising its activity as “dissent” or a more general antiwar sentiment.

This stream of today's Democratic Party is either not appreciated by many or flatly denied (for further elaboration of the theme, see also, John Tierney, "The Politics of Peace: What’s Behind the Anti-War Movement?").

With the exception of some mainstream outlets like International Business Daily and National Review (who explicitly identify the Obama phenomena in class-analysis terms), and a few top bloggers like Jim Hoft and Tom Maguire, Obama's mostly discussed in terms of the mainstream social identity of the Democratic Party as a pro-capitalist, center-left catch-all party of enemy-combatant rights, diversity, and organized labor.

I haven't written much lately on the Democrats and the extreme left factions, largely because the Palin phenomenon has completely dominated the news media. But as we move into the remaining weeks of the campaign, it's important for conservatives not to lose sight of this year's epochal battle in American politics between the GOP's vision - embodied best by President Ronald Reagan, and now Sarah Palin - of peace through strength and the embrace of American exceptionalism in foreign policy, and the left's agenda of multicultural liberal internationalism (including Obama's initial call for international diplomacy without preconditions).

What stoked my reflection on the topic was an article I read earlier tonight in the International Socialist Review, while out at Borders with my son.

The piece, "Which Way Forward for the Antiwar Movement?", actually repudiates the electoral mobilization strategies of hard left organizations such as United for Peace and Justice. But the author's agenda for rekindling the currently moribund protest movement (an effort to draw on the lessons of the Vietnam-era antiwar successes) reminded me of the alliance between socialism and radical Islam that's one of the most significant threats to American national security in the current age:

To really understand the kind of mass struggle we must aim to build, we should draw on the lessons of the movement against the war in Vietnam. It was not the president or Congress that ended that war. Instead it was the dynamic interaction of 3 militant mass struggles. The mass civilian antiwar movement staged mass marches, mass civil disobedience, and a wave of campus strikes that shut down the universities and colleges of the United States.

On top of that, the U.S. troops revolted against the war. As David Cortright’s Soldiers in Revolt describes, civilian activists in collaboration with vets and GIs set up coffeehouses where soldiers could organize their antiwar movement and build Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In Vietnam itself, the U.S. troops refused to fight, organizing “search and avoid” missions and even threatening their officers with fragmentation grenades to prevent officers from sending them into combat. This GI rebellion essentially paralyzed the American military in Vietnam.

Finally, and most importantly, the Vietnamese people themselves forged the National Liberation Front that fought for their own emancipation. They proved, especially after the Tet Offensive in 1968, that the United States and its puppet government had no support in Vietnam, and that the people were committed to driving the U.S. out of Southeast Asia. This three-dimensional, militant movement won the liberation of Vietnam.

Okay, pay attention to that last paragraph: The implication there is that the contemporary antiwar movement needs to back indigenous resistance forces against "American imperial agression." Today, such a drive would translate into ideological and material support to al Qaeda in Iraq, Hamas in the West Bank, Hezbollah in Syria, and the Taliban in hills of Tora Bora - and that's not to mention the emerging Iranian-Venezuelan anti-US axis of evil (for more on that, see "Anti-Americans on the March").

There are some in the radical netroots - like the extremist Newshoggers - who have already mounted a campaign of ideological support for America's defeat. Others, like many Barack Obama supporters, simply fail to make the connection between unlimited face-to-face diplomacy with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and threats like the explosively formed penetrators that have killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers in Iraq in the last few years.

Now's the time to return to the issues of Barack Obama's radical ties. While the explicit relationship between the Democratic Party and the contemporary antiwar left is complicated, there's no doubt that many outside the realm of doctrinaire Leninist cadres seek a progressive alliance between the hardline antiwar groups and the top echelons of the Democratic Party's organization.

Panic Sets in for Democrats

I've highlighted previously the desperate search for scapegoats on the left amid Barack Obama's fall from grace. Yet, I'm also careful to note that we still have a long way to go in this election, and it's too early to get cocky about GOP prospects.

Jim Wooten, at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, doesn't seem too worried about that:

Barack Obama knows it. The election he had in the bag is slipping away.

The selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate has so thrown him off stride, as it has most other Democrats, that all the momentum he had has vanished. He’s getting panicky advice from everywhere. He intends to launch more and sharper attacks, abandoning any pretense of a new and different, more civil campaign.

Democrats know something, and desperation is setting in. They have a novice campaigner who wanders off message. With every advantage in the primaries, Obama couldn’t win the big states — New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania — against Hillary Clinton, even when he got to define the rules for running against him. She could never risk alienating the base she’ll need in 2012; John McCain and Sarah Palin have no such constraints — hence the panic.

For a “change” candidate, Obama appears to be a man locked in time, unable to move past criticism, unable to move from the grip of the Democratic left, unable to adapt to the changed reality that the campaign is not the referendum on the war in Iraq or on the administration of George W. Bush that he’d envisioned.

He’s begun to sound dated. Last week, for example, he devoted valuable campaign days — less than two months remain — into explaining a silly “lipstick on a pig” line. The McCain campaign had reacted, accusing him of making the reference to Palin. “I don’t care what they say about me,” Obama responded. “But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and ‘Swiftboat politics.’ Enough is enough,” he said. (The Swiftboat reference is from the 2004 campaign of John Kerry).

The Democratic left is still seething from the Kerry campaign’s loss and is determined to see Bush expelled from the White House in disgrace — the reason it is locked in to making this a referendum on the administration now ending.

It barely worked when the maverick McCain, no darling of the Bushites, got the nomination. With Palin, the Washington outsider, the “third term” argument is plainly absurd. But Obama can’t let go, just as the lefties can’t let go of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth defeat of Kerry. He can’t move on.

Obama has the habit, too, of reminding voters of their doubts about him, as he did in reminding a Detroit audience that he’s been accused of being less interested in protecting you from terrorists than reading them their rights. And, when he professes love of country as his basis for refusing to allow the McCain campaign to attack his words, he raises questions about why he finds the affirmation of love necessary.

Obama will lose because with less than two months remaining voters won’t be able to get comfortable with him. He can’t stay on message and he can’t avoid sending signals that interfere with the message when he does.

There's more at the link, here.

A check over at Talk Left indicates the folks there haven't read Wooten ("McCain = Bush's Third Term").

There may be something to Wooten's hunch, in any case: The news around the country today was good for McCain/Palin, as it looks like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are trending toward the GOP in state-by-state polling (see here and here).

Plus, McCain/Palin still hold a small lead in Gallup's daily tracking numbers, 47 to 45 percent, while Rasussen has McCain up three points over Obama, 49 to 46 percent.

Obama still hasn't been able to recapture the momentum he enjoyed coming out the Democratic primaries. He needs a strong performance on the hustings this next few weeks, and the Obama/Biden ticket needs to perform well in the presidential and vice-presidential debates.

My prediction is that McCain/Palin will hold their own on the campaign trail at during the debates, and the presidential horse will settle back down close to the 45-45 range. I doubt the Obama can recapture the brief bounce he received coming out of Mile High, however. Realistically, the only hope for the Democratic-left is for its relentless barrage of allegations, attacks, and smears to wound the GOP ticket enough to reclaim the mantle as a the election's agent of "change," with a resultant improving in the national polling picture.

On the change issue, however, so far the polls show a surprising toss-up even on that question.

Leftist Depravity Continues with Accusations of Palin Pedophilia

Randi Rhodes has claimed that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is "friends with all the teenage boys" in town, and parents can't let their kids "sleep over" at the Palin home:

Brian Maloney offers some background:

Just how far are lefty pundits willing to go to smear Sarah Palin? On behalf of the "progressive" movement, libtalker Randi Rhodes seems determined to sink to new depths of moral depravity, with the limits of imagination as her only impediment.

Less than a week after her wildly dishonest claim that John McCain was "well-treated" during his wartime imprisonment in Vietnam, Rhodes is at it again, this time making a strong inference that Palin likes to sleep with teenage boys.

It's further evidence of a widespread smear campaign that involves lefty bloggers, libtalkers and the mainstream news media. With this gang, the ends apparently justify the means. That there isn't a shred of evidence to back up any of their claims is irrelevant: this is full-scale character assassination.

I'm having an ongoing debate with Dan Nexon at Duck of Minerva over the relative extremes on the right and the left of the spectrum. Dan argues, essentially, that the continuous examples of left-wing depravity are isolated instances and cannot be generalized to "the left."

But as regular readers know well, I've chronicled example after example of the left's intolerance and evil found throughout the netroots, including top members of the leftosphere who coordinate closely with the Democratic Party and the Barack Obama campaign.

Yesterday, for example, Daily Kos had this image posted in a now-deleted comment thread:

You can still read, however, the Kos-hosted diary, "Eulogy Before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel":

As Israel reach the milestone of the 60th anniversary commemoration, its legacy will be showered not with peace and goodwill but revulsion of conscience and damnation.

I could continue around the horn of the leftosphere all afternoon finding examples of Palin derangement, left-wing nti-Semitism, Bush-Cheney demonization, and so forth. But there's no need. I've written about the issue many times, for example, in my essay, "Surrendering Reason to Hate?":

This quest for enemies consumes far left-wing partisans. It is an endless search seeking to delegitimize and dehumanize those who would threaten the safety of a secular, redistributionist world of exclusive false brotherhood and psychological security.

This is why I think there are variations in the propensity to surrender to hate. The left's psychopolitical agenda is "clothed in darkness." It is this very difficult for them to find that "one good thing" about those with whom they differ.

I wrote that over a month ago, but just this week Camille Paglia made a similar point in discussing the Democratic-left's response to the Palin phenomenon:

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.

None of this is statistical confirmation for a generalized hypothesis on the hard-left's secular demonology. But it's demonstrably clear that folks from top bloggers like Markos Moulitsas and Andrew Sullivan to the nihilists at Sadly No! to TBogg's demonic conservative ridicule-machine are on an endless quest to destroy their enemies with a venomous brew of hate and intolerance.

Barack Obama's collapse from the heights of "Oneness" has only added to this zealotry.

*********

UPDATE: TBogg's here to correct me:

Randi Rhodes left Air America back in April after being suspended by the network. So you just set a new land speed record by being wrong four words into your post.

Yet, TBogg's got no problem with Rhodes' Palin derangement, and of course, no word on the demonic conservative ridicule machine.

McCain Has No Need to Apologize

An emerging meme taking hold on the left is that the netroots has been had.

The strong version is that the McCain camp has "taken over" the liberal presence online, and that McCain's "manipulated" the press. An extension of this "we won't be fooled" discourse is that McCain's tactics are all lies, "Rovian" in nature. There's even a self-incriminating whininess to it, for example, in Kyle Moore's response to having the wool pulled over his eyes:

If the concept of the liberal blogosphere is to push back against the Mainstream Media, and much like conservative talk radio, force narratives into the main; we as a whole have embarked upon perhaps the biggest epic fail of the election season.

Instead, we have been little more than spectators with soapboxes, and from these soapboxes we have done little to elect the right candidate to the Oval Office. Compare this to the conservative side of the blogosphere which engaged in a non stop full frontal assault from day one. They didn’t even like McCain (and to a degree still don’t), and that didn’t stop them from doing their part; if they didn’t have anything nice to say about McCain, at least they could heap big old buckets of mud onto Obama.

By contrast, we rise and fall with whatever narrative we are being asked to eat, and we do this with unGodly high standards. For instance, I thought the Democratic Convention was executed to near perfection, but it took much of the blogosphere until Wednesday, and some even Thursday to catch up. Likewise, the past two weeks that have been largely beneficial for McCain seems to have sucked the life out of the netroots.

See, it's McCain who's "sucking the life out of the netroots," of course, like a "Rovian" vampire.

Chris Bowers, taking a timeout from the Rovian blame game, expresses his frustration and ignorance at McCain/Palin's success:

I feel very frustrated right now because I have a difficult time pinning down the cause of McCain's continued polling increase. Obama peaked toward the end of June, and apart from the Democratic convention, has been on a slow, downward trend ever since. I want to know why this is the case, because I want to understand how this trend can be reversed. It is only from that point that I believe I can develop better ideas on what I can do personally to help positively influence the result.

Bowers proposes that McCain's attacks are more effective (is Obama even attacking?), the impact of Sarah Palin, or even racism as explanations for Obama's collapsing polling lead. He then adds:

The truth is, it is probably a combination of several factors. The frustrating aspect is that we don't know which ones are the more important factors, and we don't know what message or strategy will turn the campaign around. This is highly aggravating, and tensions over this are boiling over online.

Talk Left even has an essay titled, "How the Media and the Left Blogs are Allowing McCain to Escape the Bush's Third Term Label."

I'm betting psychologists would call all of this psychological displacement: "One way to avoid the risk associated with feeling unpleasant emotions is to displace them, or put them somewhere other than where they belong."

The real problem, frankly, is the left itself.

Noemie Emery, in response to Joe Klein's demand for an apology from John McCain, explains the hypocrisy in all the McCain attacks, and why the Arizona Senator has no reason to apologize:

First is the fact that given the built-in media bias, complaints by the press about "mean" campaigning are a reliable sign to Republicans that their tactics are working. Democratic slurs of conservatives as liars, bigots, and warmongers, cruelly indifferent to the needs of the poor, are described as "spirited," "red-blooded," and proof that the speakers are tough enough to be leading the country. Republican attacks on liberals as arrogant, out-of-it, and too weak to be leading the country are--well, you know, mean. Not to mention that most of these "savage" attacks consist of drawing attention to things said and done by the Democrats that the media would rather ignore: Michael Dukakis defending an insane furlough program for prisoners, John Kerry testifying to Congress that his own former shipmates were criminals, Dukakis looking goofy in a tank, that he climbed into of his own free volition, Kerry saying of himself that he had voted for Iraq war funding before voting against it, Obama condescending to Pennsylvania voters who supposedly cling to guns and God out of bitterness, Kerry windsurfing in shorts . . .. Embarrassing a Democrat with his own words and actions is just--sleazy. How low can you go?

Second is the fact that the press loved "the old McCain" of 2000 for only two reasons: He ran against George W. Bush, and he lost. The best Republican of all is one who nobly loses, which is what McCain looked like doing until he picked Sarah Palin, at which point most of the media exploded in fury. How dare he pick someone who might help him win? How dare he excite the public, when he was supposed to be boring? How dare he raise up a rival to The One? Face it: The reason they loved McCain in 2000 was that his zingers were aimed at Republicans and social conservatives who were not then his constituents. But had he made it into the general, and been aiming his fire at Al Gore and at the pro-choice extremists, the press's ardor for him would have died eight years earlier, and they would have denounced him as . . . mean. McCain hasn't changed: He was always a maverick, but a center-right maverick, a Republican maverick, an American exceptionalist, a security hawk, and a social traditionalist. Against George W. Bush and others, his digressions from dogma stood out more in contrast, but against a Democrat such as Barack Obama, he stands out as the center-right hawk that he is. The press wanted him to fight against other Republicans and to lose, or, barring that, to lose to a Democrat. He isn't complying. That's their problem, not his.

Third, McCain owes the press nothing, as its treatment of him has verged on sadistic or worse. In late July in the first flush of Obama's Grand Tour of the Near East and Europe, (when it still looked like a master stroke, instead of a misstep), McCain's old admirers in the media depicted him as a loser, so old, so befuddled, so hapless and helpless, compared to the luck, poise, and grace of The Star. "You could see McCain's frustration building as Barack Obama traipsed elegantly through the Middle East while the pillars of McCain's bellicose regional policy crumbled in his wake," Klein wrote on July 23. McCain "has appeared brittle and inflexible, slow to adapt to changes . . . slow to grasp the full implications not only of the improving situation in Iraq but also of the worsening situation in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan. . . . McCain seems panicked, and in deep trouble now."

Howard Fineman in Newsweek sounded an even more ominous note. "You can't make up how bad things are going for McCain," he intoned on July 22. "As Barack Obama embarks on his global coronation tour, it's hard to imagine things looking bleaker for his Republican rival...

There's more at the link, here.

You can't make up how bad things are going for Obama and netroots, but McCain's has no need to apologize.

The Day After September 11, 2008

Yesterday didn't feel like earlier anniversaries of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

There seemed, simply, less urgency about what the day signifies in American life. The presidential election has soaked up almost all of the media energy. Consequently, less attention has been paid to the losses of seven years ago, and to the recovery process here at home for so many who still grieve at their losses. Online, bloggers are caught up in the moment, either infatuated or enraged with Sarah Palin - and thus we saw less of the 2996-style commemorations we've had in earlier years. Major news stories stressed the fading of terrorism as a political issue this year, and the interminable delays in getting a memoral built at Ground Zero. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not events of national mobilization, on the scale of World War Two (the "Good War), or even Vietnam (the "Not-So-Good War"). And Hurricane Ike in the Gulf of Mexico has rightfully generated concern for the safety of those down Texas-way.

But mostly, I think the political system appears to be moving on, overall.

I don't think this is a good thing, the seeming collective indifference to the memory of our largest mass-scale terrorist event, and the one that punctuated the true end to America's post-Cold War sensibility.

Sure, the cry "Never Forget" is heard here and there, for example, on well-intentioned yet hate-filled reactionary blogs. We also had, fortunately and more genuinely, the urgent exhortation from Debra Burlingame - our most articulate spokeswoman for the historical memory of 9/11 - that "we must always remember." At the same time, we saw left-wing extremists decry the "jingoism" of any type of national commemoration. But mostly, the "life goes on" psychology among some journalists looked to capture the business-as-usual aura of the day.

At home, I woke up thinking of where I was on September 11, 2001. I never forget, seven years ago, the surreal nature to the attacks for many of us on the West Coast, who witnessed the event on television screens 3,000 miles away. At work, on my campus, there was no moment of silence around the school's flagpole yesterday, as there had been in years past - or at least if there was, I don't recall getting a viral announcement in my in-box.

I spent the evening last night with my sons, having dinner and watching the news of Sarah Palin's first interview. But I made it a point to watch the History Channel's "102 Minutes that Changed America" with my boys. I took my oldest son to New York last summer, and he watched the documentary with me in earnest, as we listened to the cries of despair, the cries of help, and most common, the cries of "Oh, my God," as people at the scene took in the horror with disbelief, and occasional anger. My youngest son just turned seven, and he's still not quite fathoming the enormity of the terror America witnessed that day, but I'll take him to New York in a few years, along with the rest of my family, and perhaps we'll all get to say a prayer at the finally-completed September 11 memorial at the World Trade Center.

In remembering the attacks, I'm almost always most fascinated by those who leapt to their deaths rather than succumb to the heat and smoke of the fires. The image of the "falling man" is perhaps most striking, in his placement of meeting fate head on, with wings of control and resolve:

If seeing this image doesn't rekindle some of the outrage of our day of infamy, I don't know what will. For my own part, to be honest, it was more the Iraq war than September 11 that radicalized me against the radicals, but I thank goodness for folks like Dr. Sanity, who captures the true essence of what 9/11 means for American politics today:

I started to write this blog because I could no longer ignore the left's political insanity which seemed bent on destroying my country and appeasing its enemies. I believed (and still do) that the threat of Islamic terror is a grave and imminent danger to the free world and I had to speak up. I do not intend for my daughter to inherit a world of sharia and oppression. Nor do I intend to let the political left and the unrecognizable cowardly modern Democratic Party allow this scenario to happen. Right now, both the left and most of the Democrats remain in full psychological denial and have (consciously in some cases, but mostly unconsciously) formed a convenient partnership with the very people who attacked America and left 3000 dead on 9/11. I simply could not believe it at first; but now, I have no illusions about either the left or Islam any more.

I too write to resist the left's historical indecency and ideological nihilism.

But not today.

When I dropped off my youngest boy at his school this morning, I sat on the lunch benches waiting for his teacher to come and fetch his class. All around I saw young families, of tremendous energy and diversity, and I just thought how great it is to be among a single nation, among an exceptional people drawn together by common values of liberty and inalienable rights. I'll have more moments like that this year, when politics floats away in the background, and I enjoy just sitting and taking in my own little corner of Americana, with my boy, my little all-American boy.

And then I pledged to never let it slip away, the promise of America, and that's why we must never forget September 11, 2001.

Sarah Palin Sparks Fashion Frenzy!

If we should take public opinion polls with a grain of salt, cognizant of sampling variation and error margins, what should we make of the consumer marketplace?

Well, when it comes to Sarah Palin, market trends may be leading political indicators. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the Alaska Governor's setting off a fashion craze, from upswept hairdos to Naughty Monkey pumps (shown in photo below):

Fashion companies have discovered a lucrative new marketing vehicle: Sarah Palin.

Since John McCain chose her last month as his running mate, Gov. Palin's personal style has sparked a buying frenzy. Many women are snapping up her choices of shoes and eyeglasses and blogging about which brand of lipstick she wears. Hairstylists and wig sellers report sudden demand for her trademark up-dos. Indeed, the brands behind Gov. Palin's fashion taste have gone into overdrive seeking to cash in on the association.

Palin's choice of footwear appears to be especially significant:

Jay Randhawa, a brand director at House of Brands Inc. in San Diego, says he was surprised to learn that Gov. Palin was introduced as Mr. McCain's vice-presidential choice wearing a red pair of peep-toe pumps with 3½-inch heels. The shoes, marketed by his company's Naughty Monkey line, generally are geared to women in their early to mid-20s who go clubbing, he says.

"The age bracket we target is a little younger. It's a very edgy, very hip, very street brand," adds Mr. Randhawa.

Celebrities like Paris Hilton had been photographed in the brand's shoes, but seldom, if ever, a 40-something politician.

Mr. Randhawa says he realized that Gov. Palin's footwear choice offered the chance to pitch the Naughty Monkey line to a new demographic. The company quickly sent out emails to its retailers with a photo of the Alaska governor wearing the shoes and the slogan "I vote for Naughty Monkey!"

Checking around online turned up a blog post titled, "Sarah Palin Knows How to Work a Sexy Pair of Red Shoes."

I keep shaking my head about all of this.

For many, Palin's fashion sense may be more important than ideology, which in turn may help the GOP capture the youth vote, a demographic analysts thought Barack Obama had all sewn up.

Photo Credit: "For her debut beside Senator McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin chose a slim black skirt suit with surprisingly sexy shiny red heels adorned with some serious hardware. Check out the French manicured toes! Her one accessory? An American flag pin, what else," Los Angeles Times.

Washington Post Smears Palin on Page One

The fight for meme control over Sarah Palin's ABC News interview last night is already at battle pitch.

Andrew McCarthy takes direct aim at the left's attack on Palin's response on the Bush Doctrine, for with various understandings of the doctrine's full nature, "It was utterly reasonable for Gov. Palin to press Charlie Gibson on what Gibson meant by the Bush Doctrine."

Richard Starr concurs, indicating:

Palin was well within bounds to have asked him to be more specific. Because, as it happens, the doctrine has no universally acknowledged single meaning. Gibson himself in the past has defined the Bush Doctrine to mean "a promise that all terrorist organizations with global reach will be found, stopped and defeated" - which is remarkably close to Palin's own answer.

I noted last night that Palin's underlying ideological foundation puts her squarely in line with our nation's tradition of international exeptionalism.

As that's a stance at odds with Palin's enemies, they'll be in full attack mode throughout the weekend distorting her record, and portraying her as a sinister force of ignorant fundamentalism. In fact, Anne Kornblut, at today's Washington Post, is already smearing Governor Palin statements on al Qaeda and pre-2003 Iraq.

Palin, of course, is not claiming Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, as William Kristol clarifies:

Here are the headline and the first two paragraphs from an article posted online that apparently will be on the front page of Friday's Washington Post:

"Palin Links Iraq to 9/11, A View Discarded by Bush"
By Anne E. Kornblut 
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2008; A01

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 -- Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that Iraq shared responsibility with al-Qaeda for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. On any other day, Palin's statement would almost certainly have drawn a sharp rebuke from Democrats, but both parties had declared a halt to partisan activities to mark Thursday's anniversary."

Kornblut's interpretation of what Palin said is either stupid or malicious. Palin is evidently saying that American soldiers are going to Iraq to defend innocent Iraqis from al Qaeda in Iraq, a group that is related to al Qaeda, which did plan and carry out the Sept. 11 attacks. It makes no sense for Kornblut to claim that Palin is arguing here that Saddam Hussein's regime carried out 9/11--obviously Palin isn't saying that our soldiers are now going over to Iraq to fight Saddam's regime. Palin isn't linking Saddam to 9/11.

Video Hat Tip: Wolf Howling

Sarah Palin, Neoconservative

I just watched the first installment of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's interview with Charles Gibson, on ABC's World News Tonight.

Palin gave a confident, intelligent interview. She appeared cool, calm, and perfectly comfortable responding to Gibson's line of questioning.

Yet, the emerging meme on the left is that Palin was "stumped" on the Bush Doctrine. Granted, Palin seemed to search for a response, but if that's what Palin's critics want to focus on, so be it.

The greater significance of Palin's talk is the way the Alaska Governor offered a ringing confirmation of the basic, underlying ideals that have guided not just the Bush administration's forward policy of preemptive defense and democracy promotion, but that of America's foreign policy tradition historically. This came at Palin's response on the question of God's will:

I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That, in my world view, is a grand - the grand plan.

This is, in essence, Reaganite neoconservatism. It is an affirmation of the "shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere."

It is, moreover, why the left wants to destroy Governor Palin.

Neoconservatives initially had their biggest successes in American domestic culture and social policy. Neoconservatives, starting with Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, attacked the debilitating effects of the welfare state on the traditional nuclear family. Neocon big-shots like Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz, among others, took aim at New Left orthodoxies, from affirmative action to radical feminism. More than any other strand on the right, neocons built on the moral firmament of the ideology's social model, and then consolidated the concepts of American's international exceptionalism to shape a consistent vision of U.S. leadership and power in the world. In that tradition, Sarah Palin radically repudiates the domestic postmodernist culture, and adds the flourish of moral clarity in foreign policy to boot.

Palin's got what it takes, with or without an academic familiarity with concepts like "anticipatory self-defense." The Alaska Governor, with her frontier conservatism and a doctrine of inalienable rights worldwide, embodies the tradition of robust assertion of might and values that has been a hallmark of the Bush administration's post-9/11 foreign policy, and now John McCain's.

**********

P.S. There's some broader debate afoot among conservatives indicating how Charles Gibson distorted some of Palin's comments on God and American troops in Iraq. Betsy Newmark's on the case, and she notes, "I think she did just fine, especially considering that this was her first such interview on foreign relations."

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!!