Volunteer for Barack Obama or give to Better Democrats. And let’s be glad the subject is the economic meltdown rather than boredom or a foreign policy crisis. It’s not so much that the public trusts McCain on foreign policy and Obama on economics as it is that clearly the McCain camp is more comfortable screaming ‘war’ and Obama’s camp is more comfortable screaming ‘technocratic reasonable solutions’.
“It is not so much his economic proposals but his economic record,” Brown said of McCain. “His main adviser is Phil Gramm — he was his mentor in the Senate — and you just tie it all together. Of course John McCain supported the oil industry, he has oil lobbyists working for him. Of course John McCain supported these trade agreements, he has got Wall Street people working for him… It is all wrapped up together. John McCain is a creature of these interest groups in Washington. He is no maverick and, from the Keating Five on, his ethics have been questionable. He’s not a maverick and Barack has got to just keep hammering on that.”
That’s good stuff.
Here’s David Plouffe’s new strategy video. The Obama campaign is spending $39 million on Florida, and assumes that 500,000 registered African-Americans and 900,000 registered young people who didn’t vote in 2004 can be turned out, and unregistered millions there can be signed up for the voter rolls. Bush won Florida by 380,000 votes.
Ted Strickland screws Ohio workers on paid sick leave.
McCain doesn’t know who the leader of Spain is.
The automakers want $25B and all three CEOs went to the Hill to get it.
The campaign is back to where it was before the convention, and McCain only has an advantage in being more perceived as a commander in chief. October surprise anyone?
This is good.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans.
We need to change the moral arguments around taxes.
Donald Trump endorses John McCain.
The S&P; is calling America’s AAA rating into question.
Gordon Smith is one point ahead of Jeff Merkley. This is great news for Merkley and Smith has very high disapprovals.
The CBC is protecting Rangel from ethical problems. That’s fine, considering he hasn’t been investigated yet. What isn’t fine is the bravado involved.
Another CBC member put it more bluntly: “Nancy won’t challenge us on this, even if she wants to,” said the representative.
That’s a great rationale for keeping what looks like a corrupt committee chair in charge of all US tax policy-making.
The ground game is going to be huge, the Obama camp apparently has 400 paid organizers in Pennsylvania just managing volunteers. Glad Obama put money into it, but I think the tools are being overlooked as the key driver of change from 2004 to this year. It’s not just that he’s a ‘community organizer’, it’s that people can, you know, cut accurate lists and stuff and they couldn’t do that before.
Today, the ACLU is calling attention to the Constitution and the need to protect it. Obviously now is a very important time to consider our civil liberties, since November will see the election of a new group of Congresscritters and of course a new President. Seeing what I saw in St. Paul, though, with an excessively militarized police arresting anyone who uttered dissent makes me think that ‘protecting the Constitution’ is not a useful phrase. Glenn Greenwald asks if the Constitution is a historic relic, and it’s a reasonable question, considering the open torture and lawless surveillance going on at the highest level of government (and no doubt the privacy violations by our commercial friends).
Of course, the Constitution isn’t a quaint representation of some wonderful time of yore, it is a living document that must be refreshed from time to time with our willingness to recreate rights against an oppressive conservative movement aided by the quislings who shout for civil liberties but are unwilling to pay any price or even consider challenging their favorite politicians to add richness to their words. It was the so called ‘liberal’ Oliver Wendell Holmes, for instance, who wrote the Supreme Court decision sending Eugene Debs to jail for speaking out against US involvement in World War I. Another way to look at it is that we’ve been in dire straights before and come back brighter than ever; the ACLU is one such reaction built as an institutional reaction to that great war.
So we have to restore our civil liberties, using, as we saw in St Paul, our own words, actions, and bodies if necessary. That’s how every generation of Americans did it before us and it’s how we’ll do it again.
Our electoral process is a start. Letters to the editor and to Congress are a start. Blogging is a start. Ultimately, the massive forces arrayed against civil liberties, including the huge sums of money designed to suppress free speech and spy on all of us in the name of Bush’s war on terror, will need to be confronted with creativity, innovation, and resolve.
So I keep hearing how AIG needs to be bailed out or else there will be financial armageddon. I heard that in 1998 during the East Asian crisis, I heard it earlier this year, and I get the sense that every policy move to socialize the losses of very wealthy Wall Street executives is going to be done under the rubric of avoiding a financial meltdown. I don’t think they are lying, of course, it’s a neat trick when you set the rules so that if you screw things up everyone suffers. I mean when someone straps a bomb to themselves the bomb does blow everyone up in the room.
And while I appreciate the quasi-optimism of Atrios and Matt Yglesias, I think it’s important to recognize that in the run-up to the Great Depression we weren’t engaged in two wars and didn’t throw a little less than trillion dollars into the military every year and have a Congressional caucus dedicated to ensuring that wars are free in the name of fiscal responsibility. Bad decision-making is everywhere, and that’s not even getting into climate change denial.
So anyway, just because it seems unlikely we’ll be able to avoid this financial meltdown forever, I’m wondering what does it actually look like? I asked Paul Krugman this question at Eschaton and he said that it’ll be really bad for a year or three, there will be a massive credit freeze as legal obligations become incredibly ambiguous, and then ‘everyone will eventually move one house to the left’.
Obviously lots of stuff goes crazy in a scenario like that, there’s a reason lots of dictators did so well in the 1930s. But seriously, what are we talking about here? Where are we headed, assuming the geniuses in charge can’t keep avoiding this meltdown? Because the alternative of ‘scary global financial meltdown’ on the one hand and on the other shoveling xyz billion to this bank or this auto company isn’t a helpful way to weigh policy options.
The Dow is down 224 points as I’m writing this. The joke I keep hearing from friends is ‘lend me $85B, I’m having a liquidity problem, I’ll get you back next week’. My friends aren’t that funny, but they do pay attention to the news.
McCain struggles when the issue is the economy.
Democrat Paul Kanjorski is in trouble. He’s pretty much the only likely incumbent loss we have right now (counter-evidence is here).
The government now owns 80% of AIG with an $85B loan. I saw the former Chairman Hank Greenberg on CNBC talk about how AIG is a ‘national treasurer’ and it’s in ‘our national interest’ to keep the company in existence. Um, ok.
Drudge is giving McCain more favorable coverage and knocking Obama more over the past month, according to self-described ‘Drudge-ologist’ Chris Cilizza.
The House voted to lift the ban on offshore drilling.
Catholics United is out with this ad hitting McCain for not being pro-life.
Mark Kirk is a Republican running in an Illinois district against Dan Seals, a good Democratic candidate in a moderate district. The DCCC released this ad on youtube, a standard ad tying Kirk to Bush using a relatively uncreative ‘Rubber Stampt Republican’ message. The Kirk campaign’s response? Mark this extremely generic inoffensive ad unsuitable for minors on youtube.
What’s next, is Kirk going to raise money via click fraud?
I just got off the phone with my friend Steve Clemons, who is hosting a discussion with General Wes Clark tomorrow at 4pm ET at the New America Foundation at 1630 Connecticut. Clark will be talking about our economy and national security challenges, and the event will be streamed on The Washington Note, on OpenLeft, and around the blogosphere.
I’m a big Clark booster and think he has a real sense of vision, something that is lacking among most luminaries in our political system right now.
In addition, journalist and friend Brian Beutler, who was shot earlier this year in DC, has reactivated his website. Give it a look.
Senator Chuck Schumer calls on McCain to release his medical records.
Senator Harry Reid calls on McCain to release his medical records.
John Aravosis noted that McCain didn’t tell anyone he had cancer surgery during the Republican primary, but waited until after he won to admit he had surgery to remove cancerous cells. 1,954 doctors have already signed the open letter to McCain asking him to release his medical records (via KathyG). And I took video of Senator Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer calling on McCain to release his medical records. Here’s the transcript:
Question: What do you think the relevance of John McCain’s cancer is on this election?
Schumer: I don’t know the relevance but I will say this. When you’re running for President everything should be public including your full medical records. I believe in the right to privacy but when you’re running for President which is such an important job the need of the public to know supercedes it.
Question: What is the relevance of John McCain’s cancer to this election?
Answer: When we’re talking about the President of the United States, health issues are extremely important. We learned that going back a long time ago, when you guys weren’t around, when Tom Eagleton because of his depression had had shock treatment. So this isn’t something we just dreamed up, it’s important, Eagleton had to drop out, and select a new Vice Presidential nominee. So I think there should be total transparency when a person is running for President of the United States. And it may be when President Bush went and had some things burned off of his head or John McCain a month ago had a little thing burned off his face. I think it’s important.
I just got back from a dermatologist for a check-up (growing up in Miami with outdoor summers requires this), and I asked her about McCain and skin cancer. He’s had various types of the disease and I wanted to get a sense of whether he’s really in danger or if this is one of those treatable forms of cancer. And she told me that basically, some skin cancers are not that bad, but malignant melanoma – the kind McCain has had in two separate places – is not one of those. It’s bad. Real bad. And unlike most cancers, it doesn’t really go away, even after years in remission. Sam Donaldson had it on his ankle, and thirteen years later it returned in the same spot. McCain has had it on two separate ‘primaries’ (not recurrences, which aren’t as bad), and you can clearly see the post-surgical scars of having his lymph nodes checked (and partially removed). This is not a healthy guy, this is a 72 year old man with a fairly high likelihood of serious illness and death within the next few years.
I asked Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican, about John McCain’s cancer, and he said that McCain is in remission. The video is above. You can see above that Kyl is taken aback, but he says that he trusts what John McCain told him. But why? That might be good enough for a Republican Senator, but why should that be the test for the voters? Why should we trust McCain on his medical past? It’s not just that McCain has stretched the truth in this campaign, as even Karl Rove noted, or that he’s acted as desperately as you’d expect a dying man to act when stretching for his lifelong dream of the Presidency, it’s that McCain has simply refused to release his medical records to the public and confined select members of the press to a three hour window with no electronic equipment to examine his records. Brave New Films is on this question, and more than a thousand doctors have signed up to ask him to release his medical records. You should sign this petition and watch the video, it is downright scary. While this race is between Obama and McCain, President Palin is not an unlikely outcome (as Matt Damon noted).
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This is the moment in the Presidential campaign where no one has any control over what’s going on in a meta sense, the public starts to tune in, and voter registration and GOTV efforts matter. So go sign up to volunteer for Obama or for some downticket Democrat. There are some great ones on our page Better Democrats.
The markets are collapsing here, and in London shares are dropping to a three year low. This looks a bit problematic, but I feel like this financial ‘meltdown’ talk is silly. I mean yeah it’s going to screw up a lot of financial flows but who is this structure helping anyway? Elites are freaking out but is that really because they are concerned about you and me and the billions of others around the world? I don’t think so.
I mean, this was predicted years ago by many many people. I could see it and I’m just a random guy with a computer. Greed and selfishness only works to a point, then it consumes itself. That should be obvious; so why wouldn’t we expect the system to collapse? The real question is what replaces it, not how to prevent it from falling apart. That question has been answered at this point, it’s done or dying.
In the Kos tracking poll, Obama is up 4. This statement from Matthew Down makes sense to me: “The only things that are going to change the equation of the election are the four debates,” Mr. Dowd said, referring to the three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate. “That’s it.”
That and the macro environment, of course. Like a financial meltdown.
This is a good piece from Brad Delong on how McCain will tax your health benefits.
Charlie Rangel continues to slide around ethical boundaries. Rangel should really retire, he’s 78, he’s obviously not able to distinguish between the public interest and his personal life anymore. I like Rangel but his time is past.
Better Democrat Alan Grayson is leading his opponent Rick Keller by 4 points.
Obama is not fundraising for other Democrats and making coordination somewhat tough. He does have a Presidential contest to win, of course.
“It is important Texans follow the rules. Stock up on food, water and ammo for an event like this.” – Texas Rep. John Culberson (R), offering his Houston-area constituents advice for preparing for Hurricane Ike during a weekend MSNBC appearance.
The public opposes giving the President more power by large margins.
Sam Graves is amusingly attacking Kay Barnes with the same crap he did earlier this year.
Less than two months before voters weigh in on the toughest challenge of his political career, Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) is escalating his cultural war with former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes (D), accusing her of pushing “a homosexual agenda” and shopping a mid-1970s magazine article in which Barnes, a former sexuality consultant, encouraged masturbation.
Now Winfrey has squared off against Coburn, who has blocked S. 1738, the Combating Child Exploitation Act.
Winfrey asked her viewers Monday to call and write the Senate to demand their support for the legislation, sponsored by Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden (Del.).
Winfrey, herself a victim of sexual abuse, has asked viewers to sign and send a letter posted on her website calling for action on the bill.
Coburn is going to fight Winfrey by forcing the addition of a poisoned pill to this bill in the form of increased police powers to snoop on suspected criminals (ie. anyone). Both Alaska Republican Senators are cosponsoring the bill, as is Norm Coleman and Kay Bailey Hutchinson.
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That’s Mitt Romney calling McCain out on lying, following on Karl Rove’s assertions that McCain has “gone too far.” This is starting to look coordinated, and Rove doesn’t speak out of turn for no reason. Either there are some very angry conservative insiders knifing McCain or this is part of some dramatic PR ploy in which McCain will somehow be portrayed as a hero.
I don’t know, it’s a little spooky.
Update: My mistake. This video is from the primaries.
In my last post on the race, I tried to trace what looks like a broken conversation about the meaning of ‘fighting’. Lots of activists are wondering when Obama will ‘go negative’ and ‘fight back’ even as he puts out negative ad after negative ad equating McCain with Bush in an extraordinarily disciplined display of campaign message repetition. Why aren’t partisan activists (generically I mean) hearing Obama fight back? And why is the Obama campaign willing to use words like ‘bedwetters’ to describe allies who are worried (as ravi smartly noted in the comments) while being unwilling to blame McCain for the financial mess he had a hand in causing (both with his 26 year record of deregulatory votes and his Keating 5 morality)?
I’ve maintained for quite some time that Obama is not a progressive and isn’t interested in pushing progressive policy, which is shocking to most Democrats. Perhaps my sentiment was excessively provocative, but behind that statement is a belief that there are strong ideological disagreements between partisan activists and Democratic leaders about where the country needs to go. There are no forums for respected ideological debate within the Democratic Party, and there are strong tendencies to equate ‘grassroots’ with progressive to avoid discussing differences openly and frankly.
And so we’re in a situation where activists can’t even hear what Democratic leaders say and Democratic leaders can’t believe that activists might have useful ideas to contribute. There are flashpoints like FISA, Roberts, the Military Commissions Act, Lieberman, etc. I guess what I’m saying is that we disagree with Democratic leaders about big important stuff and that comes out in the way we conceive of politics and strategy, and it’s easier to bitterly argue about the magical way to beat John McCain than acknowledge that we disagree with Obama and the whole Democratic political class about lots of important stuff and acknowledge that our role in this political campaign is relatively minor and best suited to following the Obama campaign’s lead on things like voter registration while providing a strong sense of outside criticism.
I don’t for instance think there’s a war on terror, for starters, something Obama said he believes in on Bill O’Reilly. We can acknowledge that Obama thinks about the world in a really fucked up way or we can bury our disagreements in cliches like ‘hold him accountable when he gets elected’ or ‘he needs to attack McCain by doing xyzd’.
He doesn’t, he’s running his campaign on the issues, which is the way he conceives of political power. To people like Obama and most Democratic leaders, name calling and character attacks against Republicans are losing strategies because they are immoral strategies.
I don’t agree with them. You probably don’t agree with them. That doesn’t make him wrong, it makes him part of a different ideological group. It’s time to start listening and spelling out these disagreements.
I’m at a Drum Major Institute event this morning with Governor Jon Corzine discussing New Jersey’s new family leave insurance bill. After a severe car accident last year, he’s now apparently running marathons and he looks slimmer and more fit than I’ve ever seen him. Corzine told a brief anecdote about how powerfully the Chambers of Commerce are opposing this bill even though it’s “not a heavy lift on a financial basis” and their arguments are “BS”.
The Paid Sick Leave/Family Care movement is working across the country, but it’s just stunning to watch a pittance fought bitterly by the “business community” while taxpayers shovel hundreds of billions to the financial community with a massive bailout that is ongoing over the past year or so.
I find current discussions about the campaign sort of strange. There are lots of people saying Obama isn’t ‘going after McCain’ or ‘going negative’ or isn’t ‘on message’. I’ve seen this piece on HuffPo passed around at least five times, which emphasizes that he must go negative and stay on message. I hear that he must ‘fight back’ against McCain’s sleaze with a consistent theme.
What’s odd about these conversations is that they don’t acknowledge that Obama is doing just that. I blogged earlier about the attack ads Obama ran against McCain, all on economic themes. Why ignore them? Why assume he’s not making criticisms when he is?
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My brother pointed out that in Sarah Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson, she empathizes with the American people by saying ‘Everybody’s got issues, everybody’s got burdens’ while standing in front of the mansion she and her husband built two years ago and her own seaplane. And it’s worth noting that she has not released her tax records, though to be fair, my guess is that Palin does remember how many houses she has.
Ah, being a member of the political elite has its rewards.
Your own private seaplane? $150k.
Mansion on a private lake? Who knows?
Being able to bill your government for a travel allowance while staying at your mansion? $16,951.
Letting your family and husband who is under investigation by the state for abuse of power charge the state for travel as well? $43,490
Covering up your own corruption and greed with lies about Barack Obama? Priceless.
An estimated 1,000 prisoners remained locked in the Galveston County Jail this afternoon, as the Hurricane Ike began battering the island city with flooding.
County officials earlier had ordered a mandatory evacuation for all residents. Sheriff’s officials insisted the prisoners and jailers were safe and sound, in a 2-year-old building designed to withstand hurricanes.
A sheriff’s office spokesman said the plan was for the prisoners and jailers to weather the storm in place – unless an evacuation took place later today. Sheriff’s office spokesman Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo told the Houston Chronicle that the reason for not evacuating the prisoners is a security issue and cannot be discussed,
Even so, he said, “the prisoners and their safety and well-being are paramount and it will be handled.”
In Austin, several legislative offices early this afternoon lodged angry complaints with Galveston County and state officials that the jail had not been evacuated – and perhaps would not be.
I don’t know why people are so shocked that McCain’s lies are working. We’ve been over this before. Here’s John Bullock, and commentary from Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias from December, 2007.
Much work on political persuasion maintains that people are influenced by information that they believe and not by information that they don’t. By this view, false beliefs have no power if they are known to be false. This helps to explain frequent efforts to change voters’ attitudes by exposing them to relevant facts. But findings from social psychology suggest that this view requires modification: sometimes, false beliefs influence people’s attitudes even after they are understood to be false. In a trio of experiments, I demonstrate that the effect is present in people’s thinking about politics and amplified by party identification. I conclude by elaborating the consequences for theories of belief updating and strategic political communication.
There’s a lot we don’t know about political persuasion, and we’re particularly in the dark about how to combat systemic dishonesty. Gossip as a social tool, true or not, works, and attaching reputations to gossip-mongers has an effect both positive and negative, as does repetition from multiple sources. Simply calling out lies doesn’t work, you have to explain why someone is lying and it has to be attached to a larger frame.
One thing that we have known for a long time is that just saying ‘she/he’s lying’ doesn’t work. People will elect dishonest politicians, knowing they are dishonest.
This is how Democratic flacks should behave. Great job, Ari Melber, in taking apart a Republican and getting him flustered.
And this ad from Defenders of Wildlife is great. Sarah Palin is the People magazine candidate, she can only be taken down by something like cruelty to animals.
Finally, here’s LesMisbarack, a cute video. Campaign workers have to blow off steam somehow.
Jake Tapper thinks this is the ‘fourth’ time Obama has taken off the glovers. Mike Allen at the Politico also reports on the story, as does Adam Nagourney of the New York Times.
Lieberman will probably join McCain’s cabinet and let the Republicans pick up another seat.
Josh Marshall unwittingly points out why Obama can’t run well against McCain-Palin.
A further point. It’s true that Obama and Biden both favor Georgia’s accession into NATO — a very bad policy position, as I’ve argued before. However, I do not think that their positions and McCain’s positions are equal. The best analogy I can point to is the nominal agreement on Iraq policy (embodied in the Iraq Liberation Act) between the Clinton administration and the most radical neocons in the late 1990s. Nominally, they shared a policy. In practice, however, it was one group that was completely nuts and gung-ho in favor of a reckless idea and another that was sort of dabbling in and passively favoring the same policy. Not that that is saying much in the latter’s favor. But there’s a big difference.
Inspiration!
Biden’s going to release 10 years of tax records, and pressure Palin to do the same.
Here’s a great profile of the CBC caucus staff.
The Senate gang on energy grows to 20. Can’t we pass a DC anti-gang ordinance?
The Washington Post has a long story out on Cindy McCain’s addiction.
The McCain campaign is sending out fake absentee ballot cards.
Norm Coleman screwed up, and it’ll cost him about a million dollars.
The DCCC expanded their Red to Blue program.
What are you reading? And man, hasn’t Iraq just come to dominate this Presidential election? I mean I know we’re in a war but seriously all I hear about from McCain and Obama is Iraq Iraq Iraq.
Jake Tapper thinks this is the ‘fourth’ time Obama has taken off the glovers. Mike Allen at the Politico also reports on the story, as does Adam Nagourney of the New York Times.
Lieberman will probably join McCain’s cabinet and let the Republicans pick up another seat.
Josh Marshall unwittingly points out why Obama can’t run well against McCain-Palin.
A further point. It’s true that Obama and Biden both favor Georgia’s accession into NATO — a very bad policy position, as I’ve argued before. However, I do not think that their positions and McCain’s positions are equal. The best analogy I can point to is the nominal agreement on Iraq policy (embodied in the Iraq Liberation Act) between the Clinton administration and the most radical neocons in the late 1990s. Nominally, they shared a policy. In practice, however, it was one group that was completely nuts and gung-ho in favor of a reckless idea and another that was sort of dabbling in and passively favoring the same policy. Not that that is saying much in the latter’s favor. But there’s a big difference.
Inspiration!
Biden’s going to release 10 years of tax records, and pressure Palin to do the same.
Here’s a great profile of the CBC caucus staff.
The Senate gang on energy grows to 20. Can’t we pass a DC anti-gang ordinance?
The Washington Post has a long story out on Cindy McCain’s addiction.
The McCain campaign is sending out fake absentee ballot cards.
Norm Coleman screwed up, and it’ll cost him about a million dollars.
The DCCC expanded their Red to Blue program.
What are you reading? And man, hasn’t Iraq just come to dominate this Presidential election? I mean I know we’re in a war but seriously all I hear about from McCain and Obama is Iraq Iraq Iraq.
Darcy Burner is now down by 10 points to Dave Reichert according to Survey USA, 54-44. JamesL points out that the cross tabs of the poll are screwed up, with younger voters going for Reichert by 16 points. Still, McCain’s rise in the state is pretty dramatic, and this is helping downticket candidates like Reichert.
Meanwhile, Alice Kryzan in NY-26 was backed by the DCCC’s Red to Blue program, and the Working Families Party switched from Jon Powers to Kryzan. EMILY’s list is looking to back Kryzan. Despite his loss, Powers has not yet endorsed Kryzan. I’m assuming he’ll do that eventually. He lost. He should endorse the Democratic nominee.
But back to Obama. Tactics aside, I’ve heard from various Congressional insiders that Obama has had a relatively muted coattail effect, which will constrain his governing options should he win. His campaign’s strategy with regards to Congressional campaigns has been to argue that Obama’s turnout operation and map-changing ability will lift all boats, so specific fundraising for candidates is unnecessary (this is the ‘glue politics’ problem institutionalized). This year, it looked like a Presidential campaign and a variety of Congressional campaigns would all succeed in a nationalized environment centered around change.
It’s looking more and more like candidates are going to be running localized campaigns where both Republicans and Democrats are running against Washington and partisanship. This is not necessarily a bad thing (though it’s not my cup of tea), and it could easily change as quickly as the environment changes. One unexpected consequence is that Congress might be a more important seat of power than we had expected next year.
Nick Juliano at Raw Story has more on the allegations coming out against McCain. There are journal entries from Gosinski and details about the McCain’s ‘marriage of convenience’. I’m still struck by the diplomatic passport for Cindy that allowed her to keep her own bags away from customs, which would have found her drug stash when she was on non-surgical trips to El Salvador and Bangladesh. This passport was procured by John McCain’s Senate office, and McCain aides Mark Salter and Torie Clarke often worked on logistics for Cindy’s charity.
I was at work at my software company when the planes hit, reading a proto-blog at the financial site TheStreet.com. One of the participants in the blog was in the twin towers when the first plane crashed into the first tower, and the blog participants – hedge fund managers, traders, etc – were first-hand witnesses. The confusion and fear was palpable, but it only became clear this was an attack and not an accident when I heard on the news that a plane had also hit the Pentagon. There were rumors of an attack on the President, and I remember thinking at the time ‘man Saddam Hussein is going down.’ The feeling I got was similar to that in watching the impeachment of Clinton – wow, this stuff really does happen.
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You can Digg this post here. I have more video from Gosinski)
A whistleblower is coming forth against John and Cindy McCain, and the picture he is painting is not a pretty one. You’ve probably heard about Cindy McCain stealing prescription drugs from her charity in the 1990s. Today, Tom Gosinski, her former employee and a close friend of the McCain’s, came out on the record about the entire sordid episode. And it appears that McCain used his Senate staff and resources to cover up Cindy’s drug use, and potentially to prevent the Drug Enforcement Agency from investigating his wife’s theft of illegal prescription drugs. John McCain certainly used his political connections to begin a campaign of intimidation against Gosinski, because at the time – this was after the Keating 5 scandal – another major scandal would have derailed his career. Gosinski stayed quiet out of fear until today; a recent fight with cancer has strengthened his resolve. As he told me today, if he can beat cancer, he can go on the record regarding how the McCain’s do business.
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Back in August, I wrote a piece on the NEA and various labor unions backing a reactionary Republican in New Jersey against progressive Josh Zeitz in NJ-04 (a winnable district).
Now Zeitz has made a video explaining the issue in his own words. It’s quite rare to have a candidate so openly discuss these kinds of political problems.
The usual caveats apply, lots of time to win this thing, etc, but this mashup is worth watching.
Update: Look, get mad at Obama, he’s the one running a campaign that is entirely bent on weak reaction. Here’s Joe Biden.
John McCain is my friend,” said the loquacious Blue Hen. “I admire John McCain. I know of no man or woman I have ever met that has more personal courage than John McCain. We have been friends for over 33 years. We have traveled together. When John was Navy liaison he staffed me for three or four years everywhere I traveled in the world.”
Biden’s the one campaigning for McCain, not me. Incidentally, I do enjoy the character attack that I want McCain to win because then I will be able to look at more pictures of my crush, Sarah Palin. That’s a new one.
I guess I should be clear that the reason I’m putting this up is because I want to point out that Obama is running the playbook of the Dukakis campaign. The incredible anger in the comments basically confirms that the criticism is on point.
Update: Patrick Ruffini at the Next Right makes some really good points about the contours of an attack and response driven campaign. I don’t agree with Ruffini most of the time, but he seems on point here.
A major scandal is brewing in Oregon, where Republican Senator Gordon Smith, who has aggressively touted his moderate credentials, was just found to have hired illegal immigrants for his frozen foods company that supplies a good deal of his multi-million dollar fortune.
Progressive stalwart Jeff Merkley is calling on Smith to release his company’s hiring records, while Smith has responded by calling the newspaper that reported the story a ‘liberal tabloid’. That’s not good rhetoric for someone running ads showing him with Barack Obama.
Merkley is one of the bright spots in the potential freshman Senate class of 2009. He’s come out against Democratic leaders for not forcing the GOP to filibuster, and he criticized Obama on FISA. He’s a Paul Wellstone type candidate.
You can help Merkley take advantage of this stumble by Smith and throw something to him at our Better Democrats page.
The only control you have in politics is over your own actions. There are no certainties, moving to the right or the left or the middle or responding in a certain way won’t necessarily work in terms of winning an election. I’ve maintained for a year or so that Obama isn’t progressive and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. When he says that he respects John McCain and his VP pick says John McCain is the bravest man he’s ever known and his advisor Tom Daschle says McCain would be a pretty good President, this is what his values are.
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