This chart from a recent Pew report about the youth vote is fascinating. We’ve all seen the numbers on the growing Obama and Democratic edge among voters under 30 repeated ad nauseam. But it’s interesting how closely various subgroups of voters over 30 divided.

2008 would have been a nail biter without 18-29 year olds.

McCain and Obama split independents, college-educated voters and non-college-educated voters almost evenly. McCain also experienced the traditional gender gap--winning men by 4 points and losing women by 6 points. And each candidate drew an overwhelming number of self-identified partisans.

It’s just hard to win an election when you lose 18 percent of the electorate by more than a 2-1 margin (18-29 year-olds split 66 percent-31 percent for Obama)

Research suggests getting some of these young voters back will be difficult but not impossible. Despite all the hype surrounding this election, young voters are still less interested and engaged in politics than older Americans. We also know partisan bonds are weakest at an earlier age. So if you can get younger voters to pay attention long enough to a new GOP message, I suspect that in a post-Bush world and with a lot of hard work, Republicans will be able to trim this deficit. But challenges abound in finding new messengers and crafting a more appealing message. To paraphrase Vince Lombardi, it’s not what you say that is important, but what people hear.

Dave Barry's pre-election post-election column is a great way to start your weekend. It's extremely funny - but it's also extremely wise:

You know what I miss? I miss 1960. Not the part about my face turning overnight into the world's most productive zit farm. What I miss is the way the grown-ups acted about the Kennedy-Nixon race. Like the McCain-Obama race, that was a big historic deal that aroused strong feelings in the voters. This included my parents and their friends, who were fairly evenly divided, and very passionate. They'd have these major honking arguments at their cocktail parties. But unlike today, when people wear out their upper lips sneering at those who disagree with them, the 1960s grown-ups of my memory, whoever they voted for, continued to respect each other and remain good friends.

What was their secret? Gin. On any given Saturday night they consumed enough martinis to fuel an assault helicopter. But also they were capable of understanding a concept that we seem to have lost, which is that people who disagree with you politically are not necessarily evil or stupid. My parents and their friends took it for granted that most people were fundamentally decent and wanted the best for the country. So they argued by sincerely (if loudly) trying to persuade each other. They did not argue by calling each other names, which is pointless and childish, and which constitutes I would estimate 97 percent of what passes for political debate today.

What I'm saying is: we, as a nation, need to drink more martinis.

Is political polarization directly related to increased levels of sobriety and caffeinated beverage-consumption among the American body politic? Just asking.

Krauthammer:

With [Obama] we get a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin. (I say this admiringly.) With these qualities, Obama will now bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.

But before our old soldier fades away, it is worth acknowledging that McCain ran a valiant race against impossible odds. He will be -- he should be -- remembered as the most worthy presidential nominee ever to be denied the prize.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

As President-elect Obama told the world on Election Day, his girls will finally get that puppy they've been wanting for so long. (Even though Obama's daughter Malia has allergies.)

The selection of the presidential pooch is no laughing matter. Obama must demonstrate his commitment to change while also reaching across the aisle. Lucky for him, I have the perfect solution. Let Malia and Sasha pick out the pup they desire. There's your change. But also keep Barney, the Bush family dog. There's your bipartisanship and continuity in a turbulent world.

Barney is, after all, probably the most popular member of the Bush administration right now. He's spunky. And he likes to showboat for the press. America deserves better than to see him go back to Texas.

As Paul Mirengoff points out, Obama's selection of Illinois Democrat Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff is yet another sign that the president-elect intends to govern from the center of the center-left: "I suspect ... that it is Democratic heads Emanuel will be knocking. Republican heads don't count for much on Capitol Hill these days, and the Obama administration won't be in much of a position to knock them, in any case."

Democratic heads like the liberal barons who rule Capitol Hill. They are the subject of today's lead editorial in the Journal:

All of these feudal lords -- and many others -- also come with their own private armies: the interest groups that compose the money and manpower of today's Democratic Party. The American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch and others on the anti-antiterror left want Mr. Obama to limit the surveillance and other tools that have prevented another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense will insist on onerous caps -- that is, taxes -- on coal and other carbon energy. Those won't help Mr. Obama carry Ohio and Indiana again in four years.

Nor North Carolina or Virginia. Obama will want to strengthen his gains in these new blue states, while deepening his support in places like Missouri, Georgia, and Montana.

The Times reports on some potential lower-level officeholders in President-elect Obama's cabinet:

For national security adviser, Mr. Obama might pick between James B. Steinberg, a former deputy national security adviser, and Gregory B. Craig, a former State Department official. Mr. Danzig and Dennis Ross, a longtime Middle East envoy, are also mentioned. Susan E. Rice, a former assistant secretary of state and early Obama adviser, is often described as a possible deputy national security adviser or ambassador to the United Nations.

Democrats said they had heard that Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, who is a doctor, might be a candidate for secretary of health and human services; Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina may be considered for secretary of housing and urban development; and Penny S. Pritzker, a Chicago business tycoon and Mr. Obama’s national finance chairwoman, could be tapped for commerce secretary.

If Rahm Emanuel accepts Obama's offer to become chief of staff - and why hasn't he already? - the number of Clintonites in the next White House will increase by one (of many to come). We're starting to see how Obama's first term will really be Clinton's third, minus the forty-second president's manifold personal failings. That looks like a recipe for success.

Todd Gitlin on Barack Obama's 2008 victory party in Chicago's Grant Park, where student protests turned violent during the Democratic National Convention 40 years ago:

“He stands on the shoulders of the crowds of four decades ago,” Mr. Gitlin said. “His rebellion takes the form of practicality. He has the audacity of reason.”

The first person to decipher Gitlin gets a pat on the back.

Phoenix, Arizona -- A somber mood here at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, where Republicans, dressed in their best Indian summer cocktail attire, are gathering to hear John McCain concede to Barack Obama. Jim Woolsey was seated below a mounted television in a crowded bar when Fox News projected Obama as the winner of Ohio. The crowd let out an audible gasp and lots of head-shaking ensued.

Fifteen minutes later, after many of those seated on an outside patio had ordered another round of drinks (if you are drinking beer, you are drinking a Budweiser product) an effusive young McCain supporter was watching an outdoor television with strange attentiveness. Someone asked him what he was doing. "I'm waiting for them to reverse Ohio," he said with misplaced optimism.

McCain advisers I've talked to have been matter-of-fact about the situation. They're plainly disappointed, but they're sad about it in much the way that one might expect at the loss of a loved one after a long illness. It was certainly expected.

In the summer of 2007, Jonathan Rauch published an article in The Atlantic making the case for a long presidential campaign. The long campaign would be a test for the candidates, Rauch argued, and would also allow the parties to form U.K.-style "shadow governments" ready to take over on January 20, 2009. Here's Rauch:

“Transition,” as a description of what happens in the 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day, is the most optimistic euphemism in American politics. What really happens is a chaotic scramble to fill dozens of top government jobs. During this bumpiest passage in American governance, the ride would be smoother if a slate of senior officials—secretaries of state, defense, and treasury, the chief economic adviser, and so on—were standing by on the day after the election.

As it turns out, Obama has run an excellent campaign, making very few mistakes. (He's been helped by a press that has not scrutinized him all that thoroughly.) Obama 2008 joins George W. Bush 2000 and 2004 and Jimmy Carter 1976, among others, in the pantheon of well-run campaigns. We know how Bush and Carter turned out. As far as a shadow government, it is true that there are plenty of Democrats standing at the ready to staff an Obama administration. But that would have been true no matter how long the campaign had lasted. Both parties have a more or less permanent class of appointees and bureaucrats who rotate from government positions to roles in think tanks or nonprofits. Yes, if he upsets tonight, McCain probably would have trouble staffing his administration - at least with Republicans. But I have a feeling a McCain administration would be filled mostly with Democrats and independents.

It's worth revisiting why this has been a long campaign. The reason has nothing to do with when the primaries were scheduled. The early primaries were a symptom, not a cause. The cause is Bush. Starting with Hurricane Katrina, a large portion of the country simply wrote off Bush's presidency. That grew worse as the Iraq war worsened and the Democrats took Congress in 2006. As Jeffrey Bell has pointed out, Bush's dismal popularity has driven all politics ever since. It is the country's desire to move beyond Bush, as well as his lack of a successor, that has made this election last so long and propelled Barack Obama to the edge of the presidency. For these reasons alone, George W. Bush is one of the most consequential presidents in history.

No matter who wins today, Bush has only two-and-a-half months left as president. The Bush effect on American politics will vanish. His successor will determine the next debates, issues, controversies, and scandals. And he will likely be far more popular than Bush 43. The next campaign will not be as long as this one.

In 2006, "Maestro" Alan Greenspan leveraged his wildly exaggerated reputation into an $8 million book deal with Penguin Press.

Around this time, Greenspan gave interviews in which he suggested a "well-financed independent presidential candidate" would emerge in time for the 2008 ("or 2012") presidential election.

Greenspan was probably referring to New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire independent who is long rumored to have designs on the presidency. Of course, Bloomberg decided not to run in 2008, opting instead to change the rules so that he can be mayor of New York for as long as he wants. Also, today is Election Day 2008, and Greenspan's prediction stands absolutely no chance of becoming true.

(HT: Gregg Easterbrook.)

You can read Andrew Ferguson's takedown of Greenspan's memoirs here.

Mickey Kaus argues here and here that Democrats ought to be grateful John Kerry lost four years ago.

Kaus: "What would have happened if Kerry had won? 1) He would have presided over a slow motion loss, or continuing stalemate, in Iraq. No way Kerry would ever have approved the "surge." 2) He would also have presided over the current housing and financial collapse that has both broken economic growth and, apparently, destroyed any chances of the incumbent party retaining the White House. Democrats don't bear the main blame for this crisis, but is there any reason to think they would have prevented it? I can't think of one."

Nor can I! Sure, hindsight is twenty-twenty, history is filled with contingencies, blah blah blah. But it's certainly unlikely that the Democrats would have taken Congress in 2006 had Kerry been presiding over a bloodbath in Iraq.

Also, Kerry should be happy with the fact that he lost. Because he was an Obama early adopter, he stands a good chance of becoming the next secretary of state. That's probably not good for America or the world. But it is good for Kerry's resume.

Arrived at the office this morning to find a voicemail waiting for me from the Obama campaign. Their get-out-the-vote effort is so extensive that they had a live person calling me work. Even the volunteer seemed a little surprised. Here's the message she left me:

My name is Caroline, I'm a volunteer with the Obama campaign in DC. I see you work with The Weekly Standard, so you may be covering this election, but if you'd like to volunteer with the campaign to help get out the vote in Virginia, we'd love to have you work with us. Just give us a call at . . .

At first this struck me as a little absurdist. But of course, lots of journalists covering the election have already done their best to work with the Obama campaign.

There are a few liberals who have been mocking the idea that the incoming Democratic Congress, or an Obama FCC, may try to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, a Truman-era regulation governing political content on the airwaves that could effectively shut down talk radio. This, despite the fact that Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and Richard Durbin (who may make a play for Senate majority leader) have all voiced their support for such a rule.

This morning, New York senator Charles Schumer also made the case for the Fairness Doctrine to Fox News:

Sounds like Schumer takes it pretty seriously, doesn't it?

This is a political fight that the Democrats are likely to lose, however. Talk radio has a huge constituency that was able to kill two immigration bills during the last two Congresses. Couldn't it also be mobilized against the Fairness Doctrine? And don't forget that liberal talk radio, though nowhere near as popular as its conservative cousin, would also be upset if the Democrats try to shut it down. What are the chances that Ed Schulz will be complicit in ending his own career?

(A tip of the homburg to Michelle Malkin.)

The wizards at The Onion are covering the election. Here's today's top headline:

"Voting Machines Elect One of Their Own as President".

And here's the report:

What happens when the machine activates Skynet?

From Andrew B. Wilson's "Five Myths About the Great Depression":

Far from a free-market idealist, Hoover was an ardent believer in government intervention to support incomes and employment. This is critical to understanding the origins of the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt didn't reverse course upon moving into the White House in 1933; he went further down the path that Hoover had blazed over the previous four years. That was the path to disaster.

Hoover, a one-time business whiz and a would-be all-purpose social problem-solver in the Lee Iacocca mold, was a bowling ball looking for pins to scatter. He was a government activist fixated on the idea of running the country as an energetic CEO might run a giant corporation. It was Hoover, not Roosevelt, who initiated the practice of piling up big deficits to support huge public-works projects. After declining or holding steady through most of the 1920s, federal spending soared between 1929 and 1932 - increasing by more than 50 percent, the biggest increase in federal spending ever recorded during peacetime.

Read the whole thing, as they say. For further reading on the Depression, try Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man and Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz's Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960.

Eugene Robinson's last two columns have been very good. Here he is today on Obama's - and America's - achievement:

Even if John McCain somehow prevails, that won't change the fact that Obama won all those primaries, or that he won the Democratic Party nomination, or that he raised more money than any candidate in history, or that he rewrote the book on how to run a presidential campaign. Nothing can change the fact that so many white Americans entrusted a black American with their hopes and dreams.

We can all have a new kind of pride in our country.

And here he is last week on Sarah Palin's future:

I thought Palin was a lightweight; she's not. I thought she was an ingenue; she is, but only as long as her claws are sheathed. I thought she was bewildered and star-struck at her sudden elevation to national prominence; if she ever was, she isn't anymore. I thought she was nothing but raw political talent and unrealistic ambition; it turns out that she has impressive political skills. I thought she was destined to become nothing more than a historical footnote; I now think that Democrats underestimate her at their peril.

He's right.

Bret Stephens's excellent column today is worth quoting at length:

The animating impulses of Mr. McCain's life have always revolved around the act of confrontation: against the traditions and methods of the Naval Academy; against his captors in Vietnam; against "special interests," especially those connected to his own party; against Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin and the general threat posed by radical Islam. Most, though not all, of these were fights worth having, and 9/11 is a reminder of what happens when they are avoided.

By contrast, Mr. Obama's candidacy rests on the promise of transcendence, though in practice that often seems like a form of slipperiness. He has campaigned on the theme that the old categories no longer apply: not of race or class, or of blue and red states, or of left and right. And in the matter of race, the transcendence Mr. Obama offers is genuinely wonderful.

But not everything is susceptible to transcendence. Terrorists will not be less dangerous by being contextualized in a matrix of threats that includes climate change and global poverty, or because they will be mollified by Mr. Obama's middle name. Nor will Iran be deterred from developing nuclear weapons because a President Obama will restore faith in "brand America."

Remember, though, that Obama has not ruled out the military option with regard to the Iranian nuclear program. He calls for a broadening and a deepening of American involvement in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war with no clear exit strategy. And I believe he is likely to embrace an agenda of humanitarian intervention, in Darfur and the Congo in particular. If elected, Obama will be less of a dove than his supporters, and his opponents, believe him to be.

Peter Baker:

In 16 of the 17 presidential elections since the Redskins moved to Washington in 1937, the incumbent party has kept the White House if the team won its last home game before the election while the out-of-power party has taken over if the Redskins lost. (The only exception came four years ago, when the Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers but President Bush won reelection.)

Washington lost last night, 23-6, in a game that was difficult to watch.

However: As Baker notes, the curse of the Redskins didn't keep Bush from winning in 2004. Did he break it permanently? We'll see.

Be sure to check out Robert J. Samuelson's Newsweek cover story on the financial crisis. Warning: It's not a pick-me-upper.

Here's a key quote:

[T]he long-term problem is ... to mediate between all the competing demands on the nation's income and to expand the economy's capacity to produce the output that satisfies those demands. The closer the economy comes to stagnation, the more Americans will succumb to distributional struggles - not just between the rich and the poor, but also between the young and the old and between immigrants and natives.

Down that path lies "affluent deprivation." To use an old but apt cliche: people will fight over pieces of a fairly fixed economic pie rather than sharing ever-larger pieces of an expanding pie. The winners may be pleased, but the losers will feel short-changed - and so the conflicts may intensify, with yesterday's winners possibly becoming tomorrow's losers. Politics, which is often about rewarding some and punishing others, may become more so. Nor is this prospect merely theoretical. Already, Americans face far more claims on their incomes than can be easily met.

This dovetails somewhat with Peter Beinart's analysis that the culture wars are over:

Today, according to a recent Newsweek poll, the economy is up to 44 percent and "issues like abortion, guns and same-sex marriage" down to only 6 percent. It's no coincidence that Palin's popularity has plummeted as the financial crisis has taken center stage. From her championing of small-town America to her efforts to link Barack Obama to former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, Palin is treading a path well-worn by Republicans in recent decades. ...

Palin's attacks are also failing because of generational change. The long-running, internecine baby boomer cultural feud just isn't that relevant to Americans who came of age after the civil rights, gay rights and feminist revolutions. Even many younger evangelicals are broadening their agendas beyond abortion, stem cells, school prayer and gay marriage. And just as younger Protestants found JFK less threatening than their parents had found Al Smith, younger whites - even in bright-red states - don't view the prospect of a black president with great alarm.

A couple of caveats. First, there's always a rush to pronounce this-and-that political era "over" before the results are in. Also, analysts tend to, well, over-analyze. There's a pretty simple explanation for why economic concerns are at the top of voters' priorities. The economy stinks. Voters will be concerned about the economy for as long as it stinks. When it no longer stinks, cultural issues will return to the fore. Or, when a significant national security event occurs - as usually happens when the economy stinks for an extended period - voters are going to start worrying about national security. This isn't rocket science.

Second, Palin is not exactly the culture warrior liberal analysts make her out to be. She rarely mentions social issues on the stump. If you read this piece in today's Times, you learn that, on the trail, Palin is most passionate about special-needs children. That isn't a divisive issue. Palin, moreover, mentions her faith far less than some pundits do. And during the vice presidential debate, she implied that there was almost no difference between the two tickets on the issue of same-sex marriage.

Palin has not hesitated to go after Obama's associations and his economic policies. But to ask why Obama would associate with Bill Ayers is not necessarily to engage in a high-minded discussion of the "legacy of the sixties." Rather, it is to raise questions about the character of the Democratic nominee. After all, Bill Ayers isn't a fashionable painter or photographer. He's not Jane Fonda. He's a former domestic terrorist. Can we at least agree on that?

The GOP ticket's embrace of Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder also has little to do with the culture war. It is, instead, an embrace of populist economics. It's a signal that the GOP is aligning with tradesmen against professionals, who are overwhelmingly pro-Obama. This type of distributional politics is what Samuelson is talking about in his article and new book.

Values politics may take shelter during this economic storm. But the new politics of class resentment won't be any prettier.

Fishbowl NY has a new online poll: "Both Senator Barack Obama and William Kristol made appearances on the Daily Show this week. Who was better?" As I type, Obama is losing 64 percent to 36 percent.

This is one election I'm sure we can win. Vote here.

John Podhoretz gives 10 reasons why McCain might win.

Krauthammer on the election:

The national security choice in this election is no contest. The domestic policy choice is more equivocal because it is ideological. McCain is the quintessential center-right candidate. Yet the quintessential center-right country is poised to reject him. The hunger for anti-Republican catharsis and the blinding promise of Obamian hope are simply too strong. The reckoning comes in the morning.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Part one of Krauthammer's case for McCain is here.

I’m sure the thought has crossed your mind: What happens if, just if, Obama loses? It is certainly something that has haunted überfeminist Erica Jong. In an interview in Corriere della Sera, and as noted in the New York Observer, Jong’s fear is that “if Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it's not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets.” Highlights, provided to the Observer’s Jason Horowitz by Christian Rocca of Il Foglio include:

"My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can't cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves."

"My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium."

"After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…"

"Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act."

Jong also fancies herself and Michael Chabon as the intellectual heirs to Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer.

A scary Halloween indeed!

Sitting through the Very Special Episode of Obama for President tonight felt awfully familiar. It's like one of those required assemblies from middle school: hectoring, tedious, and transparently silly. But it did have one unexpected effect on me. Never before have I noticed how wonderful commercials are. It's not until you're forced to go without the Geico cavemen for 30 straight minutes that you realize how much you appreciate them.

The LA Times's Andrew Malcolm reports that the FBI caught Massachusetts Democratic state senator Dianne Wilkerson "on videotape stuffing numerous $100 bills into her bra as alleged bribe payments during a meeting in a fancy Boston restaurant."

You know, it's 2008. Isn't it about time female politicians feel free to carry their bribes in briefcases just like their male counterparts?

The Gormogons point us to this fantastic bit of parody: What it would look like if John Woo, Kevin Smith, and Wes Anderson directed attack ads for McCain. Really top-notch stuff.

As the presidential campaign winds down, an important question toward predicting the outcome is how undecided voters break. For years now, the conventional wisdom has held that these voters are unhappy with the incumbent (or his party) and most will vote for the challenger when they enter the polling booth. In the Democratic primaries however, it seems that undecided voters broke heavily away from Barack Obama and toward Hillary Clinton; they viewed the election as a referendum on him. And when he never 'closed the deal,' most voted against him.

So as this election comes to a close, will Obama be able to assuage the concerns of those who still aren't backing him? It probably depends to a large degree on whether the cycle closes with a series of stories that reassure them that Barack Obama and the Democrats can be trusted with both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

For those who wonder whether it's a good idea to elect a Democratic president who's likely to green-light the liberal agenda of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, it might be alarming to hear that they are considering killing 401k accounts:

House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers transfer their dough into government-created "guaranteed retirement accounts" for every worker. The government would deposit $600 (inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the government would pay a measly 3 percent return. Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, said that since "the savings rate isn't going up for the investment of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax breaks], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that's not generating what we now say it should."

Given the long-term Social Security insolvency problem, private retirement accounts have become far more important to working Americans. Why would senior Democrats want to confiscate these retirement contributions and replace them with a program that is almost the same is the insolvent Social Security program?

Obama at a press conference yesterday:

In 2002 I said we should focus on finishing the fight against Osama Bin Laden. Throughout this campaign I’ve argued that we need more troops and more resources to win the war in Iraq. But we also need a new strategy that deals with Pakistan that deals with issues of corruption that deals with issues of narco-terrorism. We need a comprehensive strategy and approach to confront the growing threat from al Qaeda along the Pakistani border.

Did Obama forget which war he doesn't mind losing? Obama usually says he wants to "end" the war in Iraq and "win" war in Afghanistan. Throughout the campaign he has argued that more troops and resources would lead to success in Afghanistan, but he said that that same policy would lead to failure in Iraq. He must have meant to say "Afghanistan" instead of "Iraq." That's a pretty big mixup. As far as I can tell, this false impression Obama gave voters about his position on Iraq has gone uncorrected.

Good video--except for this line: "We are close to making that $250,000 mark, and we shouldn't be punished for succeeding." Is the McCain campaign conceding that Obama won't raise taxes on any one making under $250K? What happened to the argument that, based on Obama's record and his spending proposals, he's going to raise taxes on the middle class? Bill Clinton abandoned his middle class tax cut campaign proposal. Why do we expect anything different from Obama?

Even if you take Obama at his word, it might be more effective to point out that McCain's tax proposals, including his health care plan, would leave most middle class people better off.

The World Series starts tonight. Ken Levine's take is extremely enjoyable. He laments the fact that baseball games seem to be growing longer and longer, while network executives schedule them later and later:

"This year’s All-Star Game was a thriller. The American League won in a five hour, 15 innings affair. The dramatic ending was seen in the east by eight 7-11 clerks (five. Three were robbed and tied up in the back)."

And:

"Baseball is a sport that is passed down from generation to generation. It needs to attract kids to ensure its future. Name me one kid who fell in love with the grand old game by watching Jeannie Zelasko’s pre-game show with in-studio analysts Kevin Kennedy and Mark Grace. Children have bedtimes and they’re usually not 1:37 AM."

Levine is always worth checking out.

Politico reports that the RNC has spent $150,000 on clothing, accessories, hair care, and makeup for Sarah Palin. McCain-Palin spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt responded to the story, writing in a statement: "With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it’s remarkable that we’re spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses. It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign."

According to Marc Ambinder, Republicans are "disgusted" with the expenditures:

There is already an attempt to blame the media -- as in, the liberal media would have looked askance at Palin if she wasn't clad in Neiman Marcus, but this won't wash. Republicans, RNC donors and at least one RNC staff member have e-mailed me tonight to share their utter (and not-for-attribution) disgust at the expenditures.

This sort of spending is without precedent -- the closest approximation for any campaign I've ever covered is make-up expenses for television interviews and commercial shoots -- , and Schmitt's weakly defensive response tonight indicates that the campaign is deeply embarrassed by it and has nothing to say in their defense.

Is attacking Palin or the RNC going to have the kind of punch that, say, mocking John Edwards's haircut did? I don't think so. As the breadwinner of a family of seven, Palin is the only one on either ticket who isn't wealthy. Obviously she hadn't built up the kind of wardrobe that a woman in the national spotlight has. What's a reasonable cost for a woman on TV almost everyday? I have no idea, but it would be helpful to know how much Hillary Clinton's entire wardrobe is worth as a point of reference.

At any rate, if RNC donors are upset that the clothes are going to charity, here's an alternative suggestion: Sell the clothes on eBay, and turn a nice little profit. If copies of Obama's the first edition of book are going for $12,000, I'm sure that the jacket Palin wore at the RNC could be sold to a collector for a lot more than the original price.

In response to Republican demands that Congress investigate how Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae imploded, Barney Frank said today:

“In an unusual event, even by this year’s standards, House Republicans appear to be demanding a criminal investigation of their failure to legislate,” said Frank in a statement.

“The Republican demand that their legislative record of non-action be investigated appears to be the political equivalent of the note left to the police by serial offenders: stop me before I do not legislate again.”

This is the same Barney Frank who said in 2003:

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.'

Perhaps it would have been reasonable for Frank to argue that the GOP-controlled House should have been able to pass reform legislation with or without Democratic support if congressional Democrats hadn't just blamed Republicans for scuttling the first bailout bill vote.

Exit question: Wouldn't it be nice if the congressional Republicans had money to run this ad?

A statement from McCain-Palin spokesman Michael Goldfarb:

"Joe Biden's commented on Sunday that Barack Obama's election as President would, within six months, result in 'an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.' Biden further added that the American people would not perceive Barack Obama's response to this crisis as correct. 'It's not gonna be apparent that we're right,' he said. Biden's remarks capture perfectly the message of this campaign: Barack Obama is too risky, too inexperienced, to serve as commander in chief--that his election by itself will provoke our enemies, and that his brief record raises serious questions as to how an Obama administration would respond to such a challenge.

"This campaign highlighted Biden's remarks throughout the day yesterday. We held a conference call with Mayor Giuliani who asked what Joe Biden meant. We released a statement highlighting Biden's remarks and asking what kind of crisis his unconditional meetings with the leaders of rogue states might provoke. Our surrogates and spokesmen also noted the comments in radio and TV appearances. Yet on NBC Nightly News last night, when Andrea Mitchell reported on Biden's remarks, she failed to play the relevant portion--the portion that this campaign and a variety of news outlets had found controversial, or revealing as the case may be. Instead, Ms. Mitchell played a tape of Joe Biden talking about how Barack Obama has 'steel in his spine.'

"This morning, on MSNBC, the network again aired the tape of Biden, and again they aired the segment in which Joe Biden heaps praise on his running mate. But Joe Scarborough noted that the network had played the wrong clip, and that what Joe Biden said directly reflects the central criticism this campaign has made of Barack Obama: that his inexperience, his poor judgment, and his foreign policy proposals will, in Joe Biden's words, 'guarantee' a crisis.

"So how is it that NBC repeatedly failed to play those remarks?"

Here's the video of Scarborough on MSNBC:

I still remember when parents worried their kids watched too much TV. Never mind. The Internet solved that problem.

Pew released an interesting new report this week called “Networked Families,” exploring how technology affects family communications and lifestyles. It looks at how the proliferation of cell phones, computer ownership and broadband access impacts our daily lives.

One of the most fascinating parts of the study focuses on how increased Internet usage decreases television viewership, with the largest drop among adults 18-29 years old:

Most internet users say that the internet has not changed the amount of time they spend with friends, with family, and attending social events or activities. However, 25% of online adults say that the internet has decreased the amount of time they spend watching television. Especially among younger adults the importance of television has diminished while the internet has gained enhanced importance.

You can view the entire Pew report here.

John McCain took note Monday of Joe Biden’s remarks the day before at a Seattle fundraiser (where Biden apparently didn’t realize at first there were media present). But there’s more McCain could say.

Here’s McCain, in Belton, Missouri:

Just last night, Senator Biden guaranteed that if Senator Obama is elected, we will have an international crisis to test America’s new President. We don’t want a President who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars.

What is more troubling is that Senator Biden told their campaign donors that when that crisis hits, they would have to stand with them because it wouldn't be apparent Senator Obama would have the right response.

Forget apparent. Senator Obama won’t have the right response, and we know that because we’ve seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign. He opposed the surge strategy that is bringing us victory in Iraq and will bring us victory in Afghanistan. He said he would sit down unconditionally with the world's worst dictators. When Russia invaded Georgia, Sen. Obama said the invaded country should show restraint.

McCain is right that the last part of Biden’s statement is the most troubling--that when Obama is tested, it won’t be apparent that his response is correct. But what does Biden mean by this? What kind of response by Obama is Biden forecasting?

Take another look at what Biden said:

It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.... Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy....

I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.

So Biden expects a test of the kind Kennedy faced after his disastrous meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June, 1961, less than five months into Kennedy’s presidency. Biden’s presumably thinking of the Soviet-backed construction of the Berlin Wall a couple of months later. Kennedy did nothing, and was criticized for his weakness back home.

So--leaving aside the merits of what Kennedy did or didn’t do in 1961--Biden is forecasting that Obama will have what seems to be a weak response to a provocation from, say, Iran or Russia, and he’s urging the liberals of Seattle and elsewhere to stand with Obama against the expected domestic criticism.

In other words, Biden is forecasting inaction by Obama in the face of testing by a dictator. I suspect he’s right in this forecast. McCain might want to clarify this point. It’s not just that Obama’s own running mate expects an international crisis early in his presidency. It’s not just that Obama has a weak foreign policy record. It’s that Biden himself expects what will appear to be a weak response from Obama to testing by a dictator.

Now Biden presumaby thinks such an apparently weak response would be in our long-term interest. But McCain needs to force that debate: “Sen. Obama, will you in fact do nothing in response to a Putin provocation against Ukraine or a final push by Ahmadinejad toward nuclear weapons? Isn’t that what your running mate has forecast? Isn’t it awfully dangerous to forecast weakness on the part of an American president?”

After watching Penn State cream the Wisconsin Badgers a couple Saturdays ago, I caught the local DC metro newscast (which covers Northern Virginia) for perhaps the first time ever. In the two minutes the program dedicated to the presidential campaign, the news anchor slipped in the critical facts that someone had yelled "terrorist" in reference to Obama at a McCain rally and that McCain had shifted from his series of "personal attacks."

Now, the American News Project has a video of McCain supporters confronting a couple of nutjobs preaching the "Obama's a Secret Muslim" line at a McCain rally in Woodbridge, Va. Hopefully this video will help put to rest the notion that McCain rallies have a disproportionate number of crazy people. But for some reason, I doubt it will get much, if any, air time.

(Hat tip: Ben Smith.)

A growing number of Americans now cast their ballots early. In 2004, more than one out of five voters (22.5%) cast ballots either through absentee or some other form of early voting. That number is expected to rise even more in 2008--maybe as high as 25% nationally, and in some states, even higher. For example, four years ago, early voting accounted for nearly half of Colorado’s turnout (48%) and a third of California’s (33%).

George Mason University political scientist Michael McDonald recently started a blog devoted to monitoring and reporting on early voting. As McDonald notes, some states, such as Georgia, have already surpassed their 2004 early voting totals. He presents state-by-state data analyzing 2004 patterns and the early results for 2008 here.

There are a lot of people, apparently, who really, really dislike Sarah Palin. Fine. They are entitled to their opinion. But their visceral distaste obscures the fact that the public remains fascinated with the governor of Alaska. Consider:

1) Palin's speech at the Republican convention was the highest rated convention speech in history.

2) Palin's debate with Joe Biden was the most-watched of this year's presidential debates, the highest-rated veep debate in history, and drew more viewers than the 1992 three-way presidential debate between Bush 41, Clinton, and Perot.

3) Palin's appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend gave the show its highest ratings in 14 years.

Shouldn't pundits be spending less time dismissing Palin, and more time investigating the strong pull she exerts on the public?

Joe the Plumber has helped give the McCain campaign its closing economic message. Now Joe the Senator has pitched in by helping frame the national security message. And the McCain campaign needs to get the national security issue back front and center--at least close to the front and near the center--in the final two weeks.

Here's the ad, simply quoting Joe Biden, speaking at a fundraiser in Seattle Sunday:

Mark my words...It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama...Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy....And he's gonna need help....Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right.

ABC News reports that Joe Biden said the following at a fundraiser in Seattle yesterday: "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. ... Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

Translation: Electing Obama guarantees an international crisis. And this is an argument for Obama?

Actually, Biden is probably right. But, if Obama is elected, the question isn't what form that crisis will take. It's when Obama drops Biden from the 2012 ticket.

Joe Biden warns his supporters:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

Not only will the next administration have to deal with foreign affairs issues, Biden warned, but also with the current economic crisis.

"Gird your loins," Biden told the crowd. "We're gonna win with your help, God willing, we're gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It's like cleaning the Augean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy."

But don't worry. Joe Biden says he'll be Obama's foreign policy tutor: "I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I'm not being falsely humble with you. I think I can be value added, but this guy has it."

I don't think anyone has ever accused Joe Biden of being "fasely humble", but at least he has a high enough IQ to realize he ought to shut up after he saw a reporter in the back of the room: "I probably shouldn't have said all this because it dawned on me that the press is here."

Then again, I probably shouldn't give Biden such a hard time. Perhaps he just helped sound the alarm for voters to take another look at Obama and let pre-election buyers' remorse set in. Is Obama really the one we want facing down these threats?

In his comments at New York's Al Smith Dinner, McCain had the audience in stitches from start to finish. My personal favorite line: "It's gonna be a long, long night at MSNBC if I pull this off."

HT: Ace

During last night's debate, Obama claimed that all of John McCain's ads have been negative:

Obama: And 100 percent, John, of your ads -- 100 percent of them have been negative.

McCain: It's not true.

Obama: It absolutely is true. And, now, I think the American people are less interested in our hurt feelings during the course of the campaign than addressing the issues that matter to them so deeply.

But professor Ken Goldstein of the Wisconsin Advertising Project issues a statement that the candidates have aired about the same amount of negative ads:

from June 4 to October 4, we found that 47 percent of the McCain spots were negative (completely focused on Obama), 26 percent were positive (completely focusing on his own personal story or on his issues or proposals) and 27 percent were contrast ads (a mix of positive and negative messages).

But what about Obama? Our analysis reveals that 39 percent of all general election Obama TV ads have been positive (solely about his record, positions or personal story), 35 percent have been negative (solely focused on McCain) and 25 percent have been contrast ads - mixing a bit of both. So, on a proportional basis, the McCain campaign is and has been more negative than Obama.

But, Obama has aired over 50,000 more ads than McCain. So, hasn’t he simply aired more of everything - including negative ads - than McCain has this year, or than anyone in history, as McCain may have alleged?

If one just looks at pure airings of negative ads, McCain has aired more than Obama. If one allocates contrast ads as half positive and half negative or considers contrast ads as negative - as the Advertising Project does - the tone of the McCain and Obama campaigns has been absolutely identical.

An interesting take from Windsor Mann in the Examiner today.

Why is Obama, who spent the first half of 2008 denouncing the politics of fear, all of the sudden trying to scare voters? The candidate of change changed his mind, I suspect, because he decided it was time to face reality.

He recognized a basic truth: Fear is what successful campaigns are all about, and pretending otherwise is stupid and naïve. Candidates can’t be scared of scaring voters if they want to win. There’s a reason politicians use fear: It works.

So, Mann argues, Obama is practicing "the economics of fear."

In a speech last week, Obama suggested that, without him in the White House guiding the economy, “it will be harder for you to get a mortgage for your home or the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college…. Thousands of businesses could close. Millions of jobs could be lost. A long and painful recession could follow.”

Not exactly a message of hope.

An avid reader of old Democratic playbooks, Obama is doing his best to scare the bejesus out of old people. His campaign is running ads warning seniors that John McCain’s Social Security policies will “gamble with your life savings.”

Another Obama ad says McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half”—a claim that FactCheck.org called “a falsehood sure to frighten seniors who rely on their Social Security checks.”

I'm not sure, tactically, that it makes sense for the McCain campaign to use the Bill Ayers attacks against Barack Obama. But I do think it's a perfectly legitimate issue and one that has been sidelined by the news media who have refused to ask what I consider to be a pretty obvious question: If Chicago Mayor Richard Daley says of Barack Obama and Ayers "they're friends," why is it improper for Sarah Palin to call them "pals?"

I put this question to David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, two of Obama's top two advisers, in the spin room after the debate.

Here is the Axelrod exchange:

TWS: If Mayor Daley has said that they're friends -- quote, unquote -- about Ayers and Obama, why is it out of line for Sarah Palin to say that they're pals? What's the difference there?

Axelrod: Well, I think Senator Obama explained what the relationship was. He served on boards -- on school reform boards with him, along with the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the head of the biggest business organization in the city, some of the corporate leaders there, and so on, and if they were guilty of "palling around" under the Palin -- then Senator McCain should say so. Several of those people were Republicans. I would daresay some of them are supporting him. I don't -- let's call this out for what this is. It is exactly what the McCain campaign said: They don't want to talk about the economy because they feel if they have to talk about the economy, they will lose. And the problem is that the American people are losing every day and they need us to discuss the economy.

TWS: But how do you explain Mayor Daley's comments. I mean, why would he say that they're friends if you say that they're not?

Axelrod: Well, I don't know. I can't speak --

TWS: That's a direct quote.

Axelrod: Ask Mayor Daley about that.

And Gibbs:

TWS: On Obama and Ayers. You've got Mayor Daley saying they're friends. Why can he describe Barack Obama and Bill Ayers as friends but Sarah Palin can't say they're pals? What's the discrepancy there?

Gibbs: Well, I -- now I -- I don't want to -- I don't know what Mayor Daley said and I don't want to get into the business of parsing the words of Governor Palin. I think what you heard tonight and what you've heard for the last two weeks is Senator Obama describe -- describe what he knows and describe what John McCain says the American people need to know. And I think -- then he went on to talk about the issues that the American people care about. You know, I think if you look at some of the national polling -- not just he negative attacks -- most people are satisfied with his answer.

(Ed: At this point a second Obama campaign adviser stepped in an said: "We've got to get somewhere." Gibbs, to his credit, answered the follow up.)

TWS: Do you dispute what Mayor Daley says?

Gibbs: I've got to be honest with you, I haven't seen Mayor Daley's --

TWS: That's what he said. He said: 'They're friends.'

Gibbs: I haven't seen his quotes or anything like that, so I'd have to see, you know, his -- if you've ever been to a Mayor Daley press conference, it's good to see the question in the context.

Hempstead, New York – In a final showdown of an historic election – complete with a perfect storm of voter anger and an economic crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Great Depression – John McCain and Barack Obama spent much of their 90-minute debate here looking for a game-changer and arguing about which candidate would throw Joe the Plumber under the bus.

The big loser in tonight’s debate might well have been the English language.

The winner, and in my view quite decisively, was John McCain. From the very first question, McCain seemed certain of himself and his answers. While he wasn’t as polished and articulate as Obama has been in the first two debates, I thought McCain had several winning moments.

Most interestingly, at several points McCain managed to turn the debate, however briefly, to a discussion of national security and foreign policy. He used a question about Joe Biden to criticize his colleague for being “wrong” on so many of the issues on which he is supposedly an expert. He used another question to criticize Obama on NAFTA, pointing out that any US pull back could mean that Canada would sell its oil to China. And on another, McCain pointed out Obama’s opposition to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement and suggested that this position, together with his willingness to meet with the world’s bad guys like Hugo Chavez without preconditions, demonstrates Obama’s misplaced priorities on foreign policy.

By doing this, McCain is laying the groundwork to reincorporate at least some discussion of national security and foreign policy issues into his final campaign push. And he managed to do it without making it seem like he was forcing the discussion.

Among the other highlights for McCain were the repeated references to “Joe the Plumber” – certain to be mocked on Saturday Night Live this weekend. At an Obama campaign stop in Toledo, Ohio, earlier this week, Joe Wurzelbacher wanted to know whether Obama’s tax plan was going to keep him from buying the business where he has been employed for several years.

"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" he asked the candidate.

Obama explained the various marginal rates and said:

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you that they've got a chance at success, too." And in a line that McCain campaign is seizing on to demonstrate Obama’s redistributionist tendencies, Obama added: "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.”

McCain raised the exchange several times, and after Obama’s suggestion that only wealthy business owners would pay higher taxes McCain looked into the camera and declared: “Hey Joe, you’re rich!”

Judging from his facial expressions, Obama had been expecting that McCain might make use of the exchange from Toledo. It’s hard to know what viewers made of it, but Obama’s look of bemusement, if that’s what it was, could easily be mistaken for an arrogant smirk. Either way, it’s probably not the kind of look you want voters to see as your opponent makes a serious (and effective) point about your tax policies.

More important for McCain, all of this discussion about Joe the Plumber at the debate ensures that the original Obama-Joe exchange will be in news stories tomorrow. As McCain adviser Matt McDonald put it in the spin room, it’s a moment that will last well beyond Wednesday night.

McCain seemed sharper than he had been in the first two debates, often picking up on something Obama had said and quickly turning it against him. So when Obama noted that he’d consider further offshore oil exploration, McCain pounced. “I admire his eloquence, but you really have to listen carefully,” McCain declared. “He said he’d ‘look at’ offshore drilling. Look at.”

It wasn’t just that McCain had many good moments; Obama had several bad ones. Bob Schieffer asked the candidates which programs they would scrap given the hard economic realities facing the country. Although it’s a question that has been asked in previous debates, Obama gave the same worthless answer he has given before: “Programs that don’t work we should cut. Programs we need we should make better.” It was the debate equivalent of voting present.

Obama contradicted himself on the magnitude of the current economic problems, at one point saying that “the fundamentals of the economy were weak even before this crisis” and later downplaying the “immediate” economic issues and arguing that energy independence “is the most important issue that our economy is going to face.”

And did I hear Obama say that the right to privacy is found in the Constitution in much the same way as the First Amendment? I would guess that even most of those who buy the “privacy” argument would concede that a “right to privacy” is not in the Constitution in the same way as the Bill of Rights.

Obama’s best answer came when he pointed out that McCain’s spending freeze would likely mean that a Vice President Palin would not be able to increase funding for special needs children, as she has suggested on several occasions that she’d do if elected. It was an effective example of the scalpel-not-a-hatchet approach to spending cuts.

In the end, there probably was no “game-changer” – the measure by which many analysts will judge the outcome of the debate. And it may well have been John McCain’s last chance to generate one with such a major audience.

But he won the debate and if it doesn’t change the game, it might be enough to change some minds or at least get voters to give him another look.

Did either candidate want to debate tonight? Obama seemed tired of it all, wandering through his talking points on the economy and listlessly responding to McCain's attacks. And McCain seemed spastic and grouchy, throwing everything he could in Obama's direction: ACORN, Ayers, negative advertisements, John Lewis, Hugo Chavez, etc. McCain wasn't just throwing the kitchen sink at Obama. He was throwing the dish-washer, the blender, the cutlery, the laundry, the flatware, anything he could get his hands on. All to seemingly no effect. You got the feeling at times that McCain wanted to lunge across the table and slap Obama silly. McCain may not have looked at Obama during the first debate, but throughout tonight he kept giving his opponent this laser-death-ray stare that could melt iron ore.

Meanwhile, there was Joseph "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, whose exchange with Obama in Ohio earlier this week was apparently the most important encounter of the 2008 presidential campaign to date. Wurzelbacher kept popping up so much that by the end of the night I was wondering why the McCain campaign hadn't flown the Wurzelbachers to New York and had Joe debate Obama instead of John. Now that would have made for some interesting exchanges. Expect Wurzelbacher to get a cabinet appointment if McCain wins. And if McCain loses, Joe the plumber has easily established himself as the frontrunner for Sarah Palin's running mate in 2012.

Gallup released a report today highlighting some of its recent polling on issues and candidate evaluations before tonight’s final presidential debate.

The stability of certain dimensions of the race is striking, given the big shift in the horserace polling numbers in the last few weeks.

For example, American opinions about Obama’s readiness and experience to be president remain low and have not changed. Nor have views about whether John McCain would pursue the same policies as President George W. Bush. Even favorability of the two candidates continues near parity. But if these important considerations have remained constant, why have the head-to-head polls changed so much?

Many believe the changes result from the recent financial market volatility. Is American anger and angst about dwindling retirement and college savings accounts the real culprit here? This chart posted on Pollster.com tells the story in a picture.

Could a stock market reversal improve John McCain’s fate just as quickly? You can read the full Gallup pre-debate report here.

The McCain campaign issued this statement by foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann:

"According to a prominent Democratic supporter of Barack Obama, the 'Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades' will 'lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.' It should not surprise anyone that Obama’s supporters see what others, from the terrorist group Hamas to Iranian President Ahmadinejad, have seen: an Obama presidency would bring real change to America’s policy of support for Israel. Barack Obama has claimed that nobody has suffered more than the Palestinians, praised a former spokesman of a Palestinian terrorist group for reminding him of his own 'blind spots' and 'biases,' and told the New York Times that Hamas and Hezbollah have 'legitimate claims.' Barack Obama expressed support for Jerusalem being the undivided capital of Israel and switched his position 24 hours later in the face of criticism from Palestinians. Barack Obama has said it is a “disgrace” that the United States has not met unconditionally with leaders committed to Israel’s destruction. Now, Barack Obama claims to be a strong supporter of Israel but his supporters -- here and abroad -- know better."

Princeton professor Robert P. George has an excellent essay that spells out just how extreme Obama's position on abortion is.

What kind of America do we want our beloved nation to be? Barack Obama's America is one in which being human just isn't enough to warrant care and protection. It is an America where the unborn may legitimately be killed without legal restriction, even by the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion. It is an America where a baby who survives abortion is not even entitled to comfort care as she dies on a stainless steel table or in a soiled linen bin. It is a nation in which some members of the human family are regarded as inferior and others superior in fundamental dignity and rights. In Obama's America, public policy would make a mockery of the great constitutional principle of the equal protection of the law. In perhaps the most telling comment made by any candidate in either party in this election year, Senator Obama, when asked by Rick Warren when a baby gets human rights, replied: ''that question is above my pay grade.'' It was a profoundly disingenuous answer: For even at a state senator's pay grade, Obama presumed to answer that question with blind certainty. His unspoken answer then, as now, is chilling: human beings have no rights until infancy - and if they are unwanted survivors of attempted abortions, not even then.

Read the whole thing.

John McCain gave a very interesting interview to CNN's Dana Bash today. The most provocative part, in my view, came when McCain refused to engage on a question about Jeremiah Wright and used his answer instead to intensify his critique of William Ayers at a time when many critics believe he should drop it altogether. McCain said that "Ayers is a unrepentant terrorist and that's a unique individual in American history. A person who still wants to destroy America. He and his wife who both want to still destroy America. That's an unusual breed of cat."

The issue, says McCain, is that Obama hasn't been honest about the relationship.

The entire exchange follows:

Bash:I'm going to ask you about Jeremiah Wright. You have made it very clear in your advertisements and even on the stump that you believe that associations with regard to Barack Obama are fair game. And you have specifically been talking about William Ayers . Many Republicans, I’m sure you have heard this, have said to me and to others, why is William Ayers fair game and Jeremiah Wright, who has a much more clear, established relationship with Barack Obama, in your view, is off the table?

McCain: Well because William Ayers was an unrepentant terrorist. I mean, he is a person who on 9/11 said that he wanted to set off war bombs. I mean this is a very big question that I think people have to ask and clearly Senator Obama said he was, quote, a guy in the neighborhood.

Bash: Why not Wright?

McCain: Because Mr. Ayers is a unrepentant terrorist and that's a unique individual in American history. A person who still want to destroy America. He and his wife who both want to still destroy America. That's an unusual breed of cat. And so- and the fact is, Senator Obama was not truthful in telling the American people about his relationship. Very frankly Dana, I don't give a damn about an old unrepentant terrorist, but what I do care, is telling the truth to the American people. Senator Obama didn't tell the truth to the American people when he signed a piece of paper, back when he was a dark horse, that said he would take public financing if I did. That's his signature on a piece of paper. He wasn't telling the American people the truth. When he told them that he would quote sit down with John McCain, he looked right in the camera during his debates with Senator Clinton, sit down and negotiate with John McCain before he made a decision on public financing.

The follow-up question concerned claims that those attending McCain rallies are particularly angry or unruly.

Bash: Whether this is a coincidence or not, I know you’ve heard this during your rallies, since you have been talking about Ayers and your running mate has also, we've heard people in the crowd screaming out terrorist, traitor when you've talked about Senator Obama, and worse.

McCain: I've heard same thing unfortunately at Senator Obama's rallies being said about me. There is always the fringe element that’s in politics in America. The overwhelming majority of the people that come to my rallies are good and decent and patriotic Americans. And if they're worried about this country’s future- that's correct. But to somehow intimate that of the 1000 people, 17 ,000 people who were just with us in Virginia, and to somehow intimate that the overwhelming majority of those people, with rare exception, are somehow not good Americans or are motived by anything but the most patriotic motives is insulting and I won't accept that insult.

I will tell you right now, I'm proud of my supporters. I'm proud of the people that come. I'm proud of those veterans that have served our country that come to my rallies and fire me up. I love them. And for anybody to intimate that the overwhelming 99 and 99/ths percent is anything but patriotic and good americans is frankly unacceptable. And I won't stand for it.

So reports Chris Cillizza at The Fix.

My question: Who are those eight percent and what are they smoking?

Nothing to see here:

After McCain’s rally here in the Tar Heel State, Barack Obama and McCain supporters engaged in some verbal taunting outside the Cape Fear Community College after one Obama supporter began repeatedly yelling “McCain is a murderer.”

“He fought for your right to say that,” one woman yelled.

McCain's remarks on health care in his speech today are worth highlighting: “I will provide every single American family with a $5000 refundable tax credit to help them purchase insurance. Workers who already have health care insurance from their employers will keep it and have more money to cover costs. Workers who don't have health insurance can use it to find a policy anywhere in this country to meet their basic needs.”

I'm told this is the first time that McCain has made the point that you can keep your employer-based insurance under his plan. As Yuval Levin writes in this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Obama and his campaign have been dishonestly implying that

McCain's plan would unravel the system and cause workers to be dropped from their employers' health plans. "Twenty million of you will be dropped," Joe Biden said in the vice presidential debate. In fact, the McCain plan does not alter the basic financial incentives facing employers. Workers might choose to leave employer coverage, but the McCain plan would not force them out.

Via Jonathan Martin, Gateway Pundit has the details.

According this post at the the New York Times hockey blog, Sarah Palin was booed loudly as she dropped the puck at the Philadelphia Flyers-New York Rangers game last night. (H/T Powerline.)

And then there was this -- some hard core left-wing anger at McCain supporters who had the temerity to march down the street in New York City.

You don't have to agree with all of the text to appreciate the rage. After the outpouring of anti-McCain sentiment at yesterday's Obama rally in Philadelphia I'm sure David Gergen is going to call for the Democrat to tone down his rhetoric. And the mainstream media will start reporting on the dangerous left-wing "rage" that's taking over the campaign in its final weeks.

Davenport, Iowa The emerging media narrative on the 2008 presidential campaign is simple, as media narratives always are. Republicans, egged on by the the McCain campaign, are angry. Maybe dangerous. With furrowed brows media big-shots are wondering aloud if John McCain should "tamp down" -- new cliche alert -- his supporters before they begin to physically harm their political foes.

The new media narrative was born after McCain's town hall in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Thursday, where several voters voiced the frustration and, yes, anger in questions to McCain. And several voters shouted their criticism of Obama, echoing McCain from the stage.

And from that, we were told, Republicans are filled with "rage." Of course, there were 5,000 people at the event; maybe two or three dozen shouted criticism of Obama. The vast majority never shouted criticism.

But in the last 36 hours, we've seen three examples of real anger on the left. And as the old media axiom has it, three makes a trend.

This morning at a McCain rally here, a bearded young man in the crowd responded to a McCain critique of Barack Obama by shouting: "You're a liar John!" He then hoisted a young woman with an antiwar poster onto his shoulders and began yelling antiwar gibberish as McCain tried to continue his speech. When McCain supporters ripped up the woman's sign, she unfolded another one and the spectacle continued.

Earlier, at a rally in Philadelphia, Obama praised John McCain's service to America and called for a civil debate over the final days of the campaign. He was lustily booed by his angry supporters.

And yesterday, at a McCain rally in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, another angry heckler shouted "Liar" and other insults at McCain from the crowd.

Can we expect stories on this disturbing trend? Don't bet on it.

Via Jonathan Martin, Joe Biden cuts an ad defending Obama against attacks on his associations with Wright, Ayers, Rezko, etc.

"And if you want to know what kind of people Barack will consult as president, well, you're looking at him," Biden says as he flashes a smile. Does that mean Obama will pack the executive branch and the Supreme Court with repeat-plagiarists who graduated from law school in the bottom 11 percent of their class?

We have detailed in this space many times the Bush administration's thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another diplomacy on North Korea. The more provocative and defiant North Korea acts, the more likely a State Department concession or even reward. And so it goes over the last 48 hours.

BBC headline two days ago: "North Korea 'Building Atomic Warhead." AP headline yesterday: "Diplomats: North Korea Bans United Nations staff from Yongbyon Nuclear Complex. Boston Globe headline yesterday: "North Korea reported to fire short-range missiles into the sea."

And the "consequences" for such defiance and provocation? BBC headline today: "US-North Korea nuclear deal close." And from the AP: "Sources: US nears removing North Korea from terror list."

Embarrassing.

Waukesha, Wisconsin -- One of the highlights of the McCain-Palin rally here today came when Scott Southworth, an Iraq War veteran from Mauston, Wisconsin, stood and told McCain that he was personally offended by Barack Obama's suggestion, recently amplified by the McCain campaign, that the US military was just bombing civilians in Afghanistan. The most important issue, Southworth said to loud applause, remained winning the war on terror. Southworth then introduced his son, A'laa, who was sitting in his wheelchair next to his father and who, he said, had been brought to the US from Iraq.

McCain asked Southworth to tell the story of the adoption and Southworth explained that he adopted A'laa from the Mother Theresa orphanage in Baghdad after he learned that A'laa was to be transferred to a state-run facility, which Southworth believed would be unsafe. As he told the story, several women in the audience wiped away tears. It was, for the audience at least, a powerful moment.

Reporters were more skeptical, in part because it came just minutes after Sarah Palin fielded a question from a young woman who runs a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children with Down Syndrome. She thanked Palin for her example and for promising to speak out for special needs children in a McCain White House. Several reporters in attendance immediately suspected that the McCain campaign had planted the questioners and that the candidate had called on them for effect.

After the rally, Southworth laughed off any suggestion that he was a plant. "I had my hand up for the entire time," he said. Sarah Jordan, a friend from college who accompanied Southworth and A'laa to to the rally, seemed surprised when I asked her whether they had had contact with the McCain campaign before the event and, in a perfect Wisconsin accent, dismissed the claims. "If I had any idea that was going to happen -- that I was going to be on TV, I would have applied more make-up," she said.

Waukesha, Wisconsin -- In response to a broad question about how Barack Obama "got here" -- presumably got his lead -- John McCain didn't name Bill Ayers but spoke of him directly. McCain said "We don't care about an old washed up terrorist and his wife" who said earlier this decade that he wished they were more successful. (Several in the crowd chanted: "Yes we do!")

McCain noted that Obama had referred to Ayers as "just a guy in his neighborhood," and said "we know that's not true. We need to know the full extent of that relationship to know whether he's telling the truth to the American public."

Sarah Palin, following up, took a shot at the media. "Mainstream media isn't already asking all these questions, you guys have to help us....When will the questions be asked and when will we get answers?!"

UPDATE: The next question came from a black McCain supporter, who reminded McCain of the candidate's plea at the convention for his supporters to do everything possible to ensure a victory. The supporter said: "I doubt that anyone has taken, pardon me, the ass-whoopin' I have taken for doing that." He then implored McCain to go after Barack Obama at the next debate and asked him to raise ACORN and Reverend Wright. "I am begging you, sir," he said, as the crowd stood and applauded.

"Yes, I'll do that," McCain responded, before promising to offer "a positive plan for America's economy."

Since August, Gallup has presented its tracking polls broken down by voter subgroups. With two months of data collected, some interesting trends emerge. One of the most troubling for the McCain campaign is the shift among seniors. McCain supporters had hoped older voters would offset his deficit among the under-30 crowd. Not only were elderly Americans more supportive of the Republican nominee, but they historically turn out in higher proportions.

Back in early August, McCain held an eight-point lead (47%-39%) among those age 65-plus. He also trailed by a small margin with the 30-49 group (-3) and those between 50-64 (-4). Among younger voters 18-29 years of age, McCain trailed by nearly 30 points (-29).

The most recent polling shows little movement in the three under-65 age groups. McCain “improves” to -26 points among the under-30 crowd, slips to -6 among those 30-49 and moves up to -2 with the 50-64 year olds. But it’s within the 65-plus crowd where the most significant movement occurs. McCain support among seniors slips from +8 to -1.

The net shift of nine points among seniors is the biggest move among any subgroup, meaning seniors account for a major part of McCain’s slump in the overall numbers. This is not welcome news for Team McCain following a lot of other negative polling trends in the past two weeks.

But this election has been filled with surprises. And a few more in the next month would keep things normal.

Strongsville, Ohio -- Before a joint rally here this afternoon featuring John McCain and Sarah Palin, the crowd spontaneously broke into chants of "Sa-rah! Sa-rah! Sa-rah!" Lots of random "We Love You Sarah" shouts from the crowd. Many of the women in attendance are sporting large black buttons with red lettering, saying: "Read my lipstick." As Cindy McCain introduces the two speakers Palin looks into the crowd, winking.

She opened her speech with a reference to the Cleveland Browns, and after the crowd barked its approval -- in a way familiar to anyone who has seen Browns play. And at the end of her remarks, she introduced Joe Thomas, the starting left tackle for the Browns (and a Pro-Bowler in his rookie year, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin) and Brady Quinn, the backup quarterback for the Browns (who should soon be the starter). "We need heroes like this," Quinn said, pointing to John McCain. "We need heroes to inspire us to remind us that we are the greatest nation. Senator McCain embodies the American spirit."

Last night, when Tom Brokaw asked whom he might appoint as secretary of the Treasury, John McCain's answer was Warren Buffett. A couple weeks ago, when CBS correspondent Scott Pelley asked him whom he might appoint as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, McCain's answer was New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo. And it is well known that McCain's first choice for vice president was Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, who is almost certain to be appointed secretary of Defense or State in a McCain administration.

Those are the only three McCain appointments we can be relatively sure of (so far!). All of them are liberal Democrats. Think about that for a moment. McCain has gone out of his way to say Democrats as well as Republicans and independents will staff his administration. This is what he calls "reaching across the aisle." This is what he believes. And he gets absolutely no credit for it.

Change is in, as you may have noticed. Last night Barack Obama spoke often about how the United States needs "fundamental change." Newt Gingrich's most recent megaseller was called "Real Change." John McCain felt left out of all this change, so around the Republican convention he began telling audiences that "change is coming."

Except it probably won't, at least when it comes to politics. Author Bill Bishop lists the ways in which our politics haven't changed on his entertaining Slate blog. Let us count the ways: Churchgoers are still Republicans, women still vote Democratic, there are fewer truly "independent" voters than you think, and so on. Bishop explains here why, despite this lack of change, the Democrats were able to win big in 2006, and will probably win big again this year:

[T]he tale of 2006 wasn't about big changes. Instead, the election was decided by small shifts that reached across the board. Democrats picked up three points, five points, seven points among each of the demographic or geographic subgroups of the American electorate. Gallup found the 2006 vote to be a 'rising Democratic tide that lifted support in almost all key subgroups.'

BIshop's book is here.

A presidential debate at its best gives voters a glimpse of a candidate’s personality, quick-wittedness, likeability, sense of humor, judgment, basic honesty, knowledge, even character. If the debate is a success, voters get a sense of whether they’d be comfortable with the candidate in the White House for the next four years.

Voters got none of that in last night’s so-called town hall debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. What they saw instead were two presidential candidates mostly on autopilot, repeating whole paragraphs from their stump speeches in response to policy questions. Spontaneity was absent. So was lively discussion.

The problem was the questions, chosen from thousands on the Internet and others from the 80 undecided voters assembled in a college arena in Nashville, Tennessee. No doubt there were some questions that would have surprised McCain and Obama or caught them off-guard or forced a moment on candor. But those weren’t asked.

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

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

Not surprisingly, only two new items came up. McCain announced a plan for the federal government to buy mortgages of homeowners about to lose their homes. This would allow the homeowners to keep their houses. Of course, McCain could have announced this anywhere. He didn’t need a town hall session to disclose his plan.

Obama’s only unexpected statement dealt with spending. He said his administration would, despite its new programs, produce a net spending reduction. This goal was new, or at least sounded new.

It’s true that presidential debates usually don’t generate campaign breakthroughs--gaffes maybe, but not moments that change the course of a campaign. But with the right questions, they can be a lot more interesting than last night’s drowser in Nashville. As imperfect as debates are, they can help voters gain some insight into the candidates.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t a journalist who staged the best debate between McCain and Obama. It was an ordained minister, Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California, the author of best-selling The Purpose-Driven Life. In separate sessions, he asked the same questions, first of McCain, then of Obama.

Their answers gave voters a far better idea of what makes the two candidates tick than all the policy-reality questions asked in the two official presidential debates and one vice presidential debate.

What did Warren ask? Questions like, who is the wisest person you know and do you listen to that person? And what is your greatest moral failure and what is America’s.

Here are more Warren questions: What have you changed your mind on? What was your toughest decision? What does your faith and your trust in Jesus Christ mean to you on a daily basis? When does life begin? What’s your definition of marriage? Does evil exist? What is worth sacrificing American lives for? How do you define “rich”? What would you do as president for the millions of orphans in the world?

In an hour with each candidate, Warren managed to draw more out of McCain and Obama than either Brokaw did last night or Jim Lehrer did in the first presidential debate. There’s a lesson in that that the media professionals would be wise to learn.

John McCain had a very strong debate tonight. It’s too bad for him that it came on a night when Barack Obama was nearly flawless.

The debate began with questions on the economy and for thirty minutes Obama answered those questions with the kind of substance that I suspect anxious voters wanted to hear and with exactly the right tone – empathic, aggravated and determined. Most important, he spoke to voters in their own language. In his first answer, in response to a question about things the government can do to help average Americans through these tough economic times, Obama spoke of a $400,000 junket that AIG executives took after the government bailed them out. “Treasury should get that money back,” he said, “and those executives should be fired.” Sure, a little demagoguery. But it’s exactly the kind of story – in a debate that included back-and-forth accusations and lots of statistics – that voters will remember and talk about tomorrow with their neighbors.

McCain took that first question and he turned immediately to energy. “Americans are angry, they’re upset and they’re a little fearful. And it’s our job to fix the problem. Now, I have a plan to fix this problem and it’s got to do with energy independence.”

It didn’t work. Two months ago, when gas prices were nearing $5 and the cost of oil dominated the headlines, the McCain campaign deftly used anxieties about energy as a proxy for anxieties about the economy. So when McCain proposed to lift the ban on offshore drilling, voters responded positively and the polling reflected their enthusiasm.

But while energy issues remain important and cannot be separated from the broader economic picture, the convulsions in world markets over the past two weeks and the need for a $700 billion federal bailout have rendered worries about gas prices and energy independence to second-tier status. It’s not that these issues don’t matter, it’s just that they matter less now than they did over the summer. He later broadened his answer to include spending, tax cuts and his jaw-dropping plan to have the federal government buy up “the bad home loan mortgages in America” to “let people make those payments and stay in their homes.” So bigger government is bad, quasi-governmental entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “ignited” the current economic crisis, too much government spending is leaving us broke and we want the U.S. Treasury to renegotiate individual home mortgages? Seriously? No thanks.

Obama’s advantage continued with the next question, when Tom Brokaw asked about possible Treasury secretaries in a McCain or Obama administration. McCain, no doubt to bolster his bipartisan bona fides, named Warren Buffet, an economic adviser to Obama.

Both candidates gave good answers to Brokaw’s question inviting them to rank health care, energy and entitlement reform as priorities. “We have to prioritize just like a family would,” Obama said, one of many answers he gave meant to communicate that he understands what families are going through.

After Obama offered his ranking, McCain strongly took issue with it. “Frankly, I’m not going to tell that person without health insurance that you’ll to have to wait. I’m going to tell you Americans that we’re going to get to work right away. And we’ll get to work together and we’ll get them all done,” he said.
The middle third of the debate – with discussions about Social Security, the environment and health care – was unremarkable and, if I can speak for the millions of Americans who fell asleep during those 30 minutes, boring.

But viewers who woke up for the final thirty minutes saw some sharp differences and sharp exchanges on foreign policy. The most memorable came after McCain noted that his hero, Teddy Roosevelt, advised that Americans “talk softly and carry a big stick.” He said of Obama: “Senator Obama likes to talk loudly” and criticized Obama’s views on Pakistan.

But in his best answer of the night, Obama calmly explained his position on Pakistan – which strikes me as a very reasonable one – and turned the charge back against McCain.

I want to be very clear about what I said. Nobody called for the invasion of Pakistan. The audience here today heard me say, which is that if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to hunt down bin Laden and take him out then we should. Now that, I think, has to be our policy because they are threatening to kill more Americans.

Now Senator McCain suggests that you know I’m green behind the ears and that I’m just spouting off and that he’s somber and responsible. Senator McCain – this is the guy who sang Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran. Who called for the annihilation of North Korea. That I don’t think is an example of speaking softly. This is the person who after we hadn’t even finished Afghanistan where he said – next up, Baghdad. So I agree that we have to speak responsibly.

McCain began his next response by explaining and defending his joke on Iran. Anytime McCain spends time on the defensive about foreign policy, he is losing.

McCain had several very good answers – on Russia and on the question of whether Russia is the new Evil Empire. “Maybe,” he said. “If I say yes that means we’re reigniting the Cold War. If I say no, it means we’re ignoring their behavior.” That might have seemed like a dodge to people watching, but it was the correct answer – some straight talk, if you will.

And if Obama was nearly flawless, he wasn’t flawless. One bad moment came when he told Tom Brokaw that he was doing a good job as moderator. It was a joke, of course, but as one friend emailed: “His default is condescension.” He also suggested that his proposals would result in a “net spending cut,” which is preposterous. There were other places where Barack Obama made dubious claims – some of which might even get “fact-checked” by mainstream media outlets.

Obama’s test in the first debate was to present himself as a plausible president, as a guy who didn’t seem out of place on stage at a presidential debate and wouldn’t seem out of place delivering a State of the Union address. Much as I’d disagree with the policies in such a speech, it was clear that he passed that test. Tonight, his job was to persuade voters – particularly independents – not only that he could be president but that he should be president. I suspect polling in the next couple of days will provide evidence that he passed that test, too.

Via Ed Morrissey, behold a priceless Sarah Barracuda moment:

John Dowd, the lawyer who successfully defended John McCain during the Senate Ethics Committee investigation of the Keating Five scandal, spoke to reporters on a conference call earlier today. After a nearly two-year investigation, the committee exonerated McCain and Democratic senator John Glenn, who, it just so happens, spoke at an Obama rally yesterday.

Dowd emphasized that McCain fully cooperated with the investigation and went to great lengths to remain above reproach. McCain joined a meeting with regulators in order to make sure that his Arizona constituent, Charles Keating, was being treated fairly by federal regulators. McCain now says he agrees with the opinion of the ethics committee that he exercised "poor judgment" because a meeting with a group of senators could be viewed as intimidation by federal regulators.

Dowd said that when McCain "discovered that Keating was pushing too hard, he kicked him out of his office and cut off relations with him." Dowd suspects that the committee kept up its investigation for political reasons since McCain was the only Republican senator under investigation, calling it "a classic political smear job on John." A 1995 New York Times article concurs with that assessment:

During the Keating Five scandal, committee Democrats resisted dropping the case against John McCain, the Arizona Republican, because that would have left only Democrats accused of improper dealings with Charles Keating, the savings and loan executive.

With the Obama campaign sending out surrogates and spokesman to make the case that Barack Obama's ties to William Ayers are not important, it worth remembering that less than six weeks ago the Obama campaign sent out an email claiming that ties to Ayers were important. In what remains the funniest campaign email distributed this cycle, the Obama campaign sent out a Huffington Post article laying out supposed "ties between Republicans and Bill Ayers." Of course, there were no significant ties at all.

Remember this now as the Obama campaign downplays the relevance of ties to Ayers. They were relevant six weeks ago.

More here.

The Obama campaign stepped up its rhetoric against the McCain health care plan over the last week with a new series of ads.

But leave it to Paul Krugman at the New York Times to confuse, twist and misrepresent the McCain proposal. In today’s column, “Health Care Destruction,” Krugman writes:

Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.

Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.

Krugman distorts the impact of McCain’s plan by confusing two tax concepts: the “employee exclusion” and the “employer deduction.”

McCain’s plan eliminates the exclusion but does nothing to the deduction. Here’s how it works:
Say you’re a family of four making $80,000 per year and your employer provides health insurance valued at $10,000 per year. By eliminating the exclusion, you now owe taxes on $90,000 instead of $80,000 (because your health benefit in now included as income). In the 25% tax bracket, you owe $2500 in additional taxes on the $10,000 in extra income.

But McCain’s plan also gives that same family a $5,000 health care tax credit, leaving them with an extra $2500 in their pockets.

At the same time, employers still get to deduct the costs of providing health insurance, just as they do today.

That sounds more like helping middle-class tax payers than “health care destruction.”

Karl Rove:

Biden has 35 years in the Senate, yet his record on national-security issues during that span has been atrocious. He might be able to name Germany's chancellor, but he was wrong in his fierce opposition to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and to the surge in 2007. Even Democrats don't see Biden as president. He got 0.9 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses. Forced out of the 1988 White House race for plagiarizing, he is that blend of longevity and long-windedness that Washington accepts as statesmanship.

Only Biden, as Charles Krauthammer put it in Fred Barnes's piece this week, can make "seven errors in 60 seconds" responding to a question on a topic - foreign policy - on which he is supposedly an expert.

Ad guru Evan Tracey describes the state of the race with less than a month to go:

The reality of this race is that Mr. Obama is in control. His nationwide buys have been climbing a systematic 20% a week since the beginning of September, while Mr. McCain's have flatlined. The Arizona senator's strategy was to devote the lion's share of his early ad resources to the established battleground states and some to Obama-leaning states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. His hope was to translate those buys into early leads that would have given his campaign a fighting chance against the looming Obama ad onslaught.

Unfortunately for Mr. McCain, Mr. Obama successfully expanded the battleground into red states. The McCain campaign and the RNC are now spending ad dollars in three states -- Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana -- and they expected to win with some ease. While the McCain campaign is playing defense with valuable resources, the Obama camp is spending more and more money on ads in some of the key media markets in states such as Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Mr. Obama has spent a staggering $97 million since June while Mr. McCain, with the RNC, has spent a respectable $76 million. The Obama campaign upped its daily spending to more than $2.8 million, almost double what the McCain team spends daily now. It appears that Mr. McCain is trying to conserve his resources now so that his buys can remain competitive in the last two weeks of this race.

GOP strategist Mike Murphy says McCain needs a message:

For the last nine weeks the McCain campaign has tried win by raising Obama’s negatives. Ads have attacked, McCain and Palin have attacked. This has failed. Over the top negative attacks and a campaign message that too often seems to be little more than sarcasm and suppressed anger has damaged McCain’s priceless and hard earned “brand” as a different kind of Republican. McCain’s best option now is to ditch the chainsaw and offer a scared and angry country what it badly wants; hope and leadership.

Meanwhile, McCain has abandoned Michigan as Obama campaigns in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana this week. Those aren't battleground states. Those are Republican strongholds. It's either an extraordinary act of hubris--or another piece of evidence that Obama is on the march.

Via Allahpundit, the latest from SNL:

Lots of harrumphing this weekend in the media about Sarah Palin's claim that Barack Obama has been "palling around" with terrorist Williams Ayers. There is this asinine "analysis" from someone named Douglass K. Daniel and fact-check style articles from CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

The AP's Daniel writes: "Her reference to Obama's relationship with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground, was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were 'pals' or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career."

That assessment in consistent with the others. I haven't looked into the Obama-Ayers relationship as closely as some others, but these attempts to distance Obama from Ayers seem a bit too eager and they rarely mentions facts that point in the other direction, such as Obama's praise for Ayers very radical writings.

But my big problem with these supposed "fact-check" articles is this: If Obama could never be accused of "palling around" with Ayers, why would Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who is close to both men, describe them as "friends?"

"They're friends," he said. "So what?"

Two questions: Shouldn't Mayor Daley's comments be included in articles assessing the relationship between Ayers and Obama? Are "friends" different than "pals"?

Jules Crittenden has an excellent post on the AP's latest analysis of Iraq: AP Goes Neo-Con.

Ross Douthat and Yuval Levin explain why the Obama-Biden campaign's attack on McCain's health care plan is deceptive.

Ed Morrissey has more on Joe Biden's foreign policy brilliance.

Stanley Kurtz examines the New York Times's whitewasing of Obama's relationship with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers.

The Palins have given much more money to charity than the Bidens.

Jennifer Rubin wonders what's the matter with Harry Reid.

Alec Baldwin blames Barney Frank and the Democrats as well as Republicans for the financial crisis.

An American Carol is now in theaters. Read Steve Hayes's behind-the-scenes cover story on the movie here.

Nielsen reports:

* 69.9 million people watched the debate, tying it for second place among all Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. (The second Bush/Clinton/Perot debate of 1992 also have 69.9 million. The all-time debate leader is the Carter/Reagan debate of 1980.)

* This is 17.5 million viewers more than the McCain/Obama debate last Friday.

* More women (35.7 million) watched the debate than men (30.4 million)

The National Republican Congressional Committee is hitting the Democrats on Fannie and Freddie:

Hat tip: John Henke

CNN reports that it's "misleading" to say that Barack Obama pledged to meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "While Obama has said he wouldn't rule out meeting with any foreign leader, he never specifically said he'd meet with the Iranian president."

CNN misses what Obama said during a September 2007 press conference:

Reporter: Senator you've said before you'd meet with president Ahmadinejad...

Obama (nodding): Uh Huh

Reporter: ... would you still meet with him today?

Obama: Nothing’s changed with respect to my belief that strong countries and strong presidents talk to their enemies and talk to their adversaries.

Watch it:

Politico breaks down the numbers by party:

The GOP promised 80 and delivered 91.

Dems promised 140, delivered 172.

Many independent women are still up for grabs in the last month of the election, making this cohort a critical target group for both campaigns.

According to a new Gallup report released today, Obama draws significant support among some in the independent woman subgroup:

• those with no religious identification
• those aged 18 to 34
• those with college educations
• those who seldom or never attend church

But McCain does well with some independent women too:

• those who attend church weekly
• those who are married
• those aged 55 or older

So who is up for grabs? Gallup reports independent women that are Catholic, middle aged, not college graduates, of average religiosity, and of mid-range incomes--nearly evenly divide between Obama and McCain and could easily shift in the remaining weeks.

As I argued in my post yesterday, independent voters in general will decide later and exhibit more volatility in their political choices. Gallup agrees and notes independent women represent a swing group worth watching particularly closely in the days following last night’s vice presidential debate, especially compared to self-identified partisans. Gallup writes:

It's a reasonable assumption that changing minds among partisan Democratic and Republican women will be difficult, although these groups remain highly important in terms of turnout. Indeed, motivating the "base" is a key dictum of modern-day politics. It has been argued that one motivation behind McCain's choice of Palin as his vice-presidential running mate may have been to increase enthusiasm among Republican women.

But it is the group of independent women who -- based on the fact that they are currently about evenly divided between the two candidates -- were perhaps the most important viewers of Thursday's debate, at least in terms of the possibility that their voting preferences will change

Read the full Gallup analysis of independent women here.

I thought Joe Biden was surprisingly bright, clean, and articulate during last night's debate with Sarah Palin. Okay, he wasn't always so bright--and his willingness to fudge the facts wasn't exactly the cleanest politics--but he was definitely articulate!

So articulate, in fact, I think Biden covered up at least one gaffe. After Palin mentioned Obama's pledge to meet with Ahmadinejad, Biden said:

This is simply not true about Barack Obama. He did not say sit down with Ahmadinejad.

The fact of the matter is, it surprises me that Sen. McCain doesn't realize that Ahmadinejad does not control the security apparatus in Iran. The theocracy controls the security apparatus.

Got that, America? It's not Ahmadinejad who's in power, it's "the theocracy." So Obama won't have a presidential summit with an Islamist nut job bent on getting nukes. He's going to meet, without preconditions, a whole bunch of Islamist nutjobs bent on getting nukes "the theocracy". What a relief!

The moment when Sarah Palin knew she was winning last night’s debate with her vice presidential opponent Joe Biden came after the subject had turned to nuclear weapons. Palin had talked about nukes as a deterrent and said it was important to keep them out of the hands of dictators who are enemies of America. Then she turned to moderator Gwen Ifill and asked, “Can we talk about Afghanistan real quick?”

Afghanistan? The impression Palin had left in television interviews with ABC’s Charles Gibson and CBS’s Katie Couric was that she was ill-equipped to discuss issues like that. She just didn’t know enough to talk about foreign policy and other weighty matters with even a minimal level of comfort. And this meant she simply wasn’t up to being vice president should John McCain win the presidency.

But by that point in the debate--two-thirds the way through--Palin was brimming with self-confidence. She knew she could handle any issue likely to be thrown at her by Ifill. She knew Biden would not outmatch her. So she purposely tackled an issue on which he was expected to have an advantage.

He didn’t. She insisted the “surge principles” that had proved effective in Iraq would work in Afghanistan. Biden claimed the commanding general in Afghanistan disagreed. Then Palin said, no, the general didn’t disagree, and she spelled out how “the counterinsurgency strategy” favored by McCain (and her) would work.

If that episode didn’t demoralize Biden, a senator from Delaware for 35 years, it should have. For it showed she had passed the biggest test any vice presidential candidate faces--a test the media was ready to declare she’d failed. Was she capable of being vice president? Based on her debate performance, the answer was yes.

Not that she came close to matching Biden’s experience or extensive knowledge of issues, especially foreign policy issues. But she was conversant with every issue, domestic and foreign, that came up in the 90-minute debate and talked with seeming confidence about them.

She may have passed two other tests as well. Did she once more energize the conservative base of the Republican party as she had when McCain picked her a month ago? Probably. And was her performance strong enough to change the direction of a campaign that has seen Barack Obama widening a lead over McCain in recent weeks? Maybe.

For sure, she did one remarkable thing aside from handling Biden with ease. She undid the negative impression that had been created by her avoidance of most of the media and hardened when the two TV interviews went poorly. Her image was that of someone unqualified to be vice president and uninformed on major issues.

Changing an image overnight is difficult. Ronald Reagan managed it when he debated President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and blew away the widespread notion that he was a warmonger. But I can’t think of other examples of this, at least in presidential or veep debates.

Two more things. Palin appeared to be in a good mood during the debate, just as she was when delivering her acceptance speech at the Republican convention four weeks ago. That made her more appealing than Biden, who came off, at times anyway, as less cheerful than he normally is.

And Palin wrote her own closing statement, or so I was told. It included what seemed like an invitation to Biden to have more debates. “I would like more opportunity for this,” she said. I suspect Biden wouldn’t.

After a dreadful three weeks for the McCain-Palin ticket, Sarah Palin came through--big time--Thursday night. She stopped the McCain campaign’s slide and set up a rebound...if.

If House Republicans follow through Friday by passing the bailout bill.

The McCain-Palin ticket’s slide over the past three weeks hasn’t been primarily due to various McCain-Palin campaign missteps--though there have been plenty of those. It’s happened as a result of the meltdown of the financial markets. The McCain campaign’s fall coincides with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and everything that follows. The financial crisis was inevitably going to hurt the candidate of the incumbent party. The situation was made worse by the perception that the GOP (the Bush administration) was both presiding over a financial meltdown and obstructing efforts to deal with it (House Republicans). Republicans lost both ways. If you disliked the bailout, you were angry the Bush administration--and if you thought the bailout necessary, you were angry at the House Republicans. All in all, it was a bad three weeks for the Bush administration and congressional Republicans--and the Republican presidential ticket suffered.

Now there’s a chance to halt the political bleeding--and even to turn things around. The House has to pass the bailout bill. It’s too late to get an alternative solution considered (and I say this as someone who might well prefer various alternatives). It’s now the Senate bill or nothing. And doing nothing risks--I’d say invites--economic and political disaster. Passing the Paulson plan won’t solve all the financial problems we face--but failing to pass it will exacerbate them, and will keep the markets in a state of roiling uncertainty at best, and meltdown at worst. Passing the bill may at least offer some surcease--and will alleviate the sense that on the Republicans’ watch, everything is simply falling apart and the Republican party can’t get its act together to do anything.

So House Republicans should help pass the bill. I think it’s the only responsible thing to do in terms of the economy. But I also think it’s the only way McCain has a chance to win. To those House Republicans who care about conservative principles, about limited government and free markets--I’d ask this: How much damage will a president Obama and a Democratic Congress do to the causes you care about? Electing McCain gives us the best shot at solving this crisis in a way that doesn’t lead to a permanent and perhaps irreversible expansion of the size and scope of government. Following up on Sarah Palin’s victory, principled House conservatives should vote yes tomorrow. Passing the bailout would give McCain a fighting chance to win, which in turn provides the best chance--the only chance--for conservative principles to prevail in the next few years.

Round 1: Forget the bailout, what's up with the bailout process?
Ifill, not the most competent moderator in the world, opens by saying that the House passed a bailout bill this week. She corrects herself.

Biden says that he and Obama will fundamentally change the focus of economic policy to the middle class. Palin says you should measure economic health by asking people on the sidelines of a youth soccer game what they think about their financial positions.
Round to Biden

Round 2: Biden, how will you solve the partisan rancor in Washington?
Biden says that some of his best friends are Republicans! But going back to the first question, he hits McCain for saying that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

Palin says that she and John McCain are mavericks and that John McCain has made a career of reaching across the aisle.
Round to Biden

Round 3: Whose fault is this sub-prime mess, anyway?
Palin says that predatory lenders and greedy Wall Streeters are at fault and that Joe Sixpack and Hockey Moms need to band together to say "never again" by taking personal responsibility and living within our means. She uses "heck" and "darn" in the same answer.

Biden says that Obama warned about the sub-prime problem two years ago. And that McCain is beholden to deregulation, while Obama will introduce all sorts of new regulation in our economy. He demagogues the free market. These, evidently, are selling points.
Round to Biden

Compared to self-identified partisans, independent voters march more to the beat of pop culture and the dominant news narrative. They pay closer attention to Tina Fey’s weekly lampooning of Sarah Palin than the speeches or policy positions of the presidential campaigns. Independents are also among the most volatile groups in tracking surveys because they lack party attachments and listen to the “loudest voice in the cafeteria,” as University of Maryland political scientist Jim Gimpel likes to say.

So it comes as no surprise that some of the biggest moves in Diageo/Hotline poll occurred among those the survey calls “suburban sprawlers” (college educated independents). For example, it found McCain losing this group by only 3 points following the GOP convention. But in the latest track, Obama leads by 19.

The news is not all bad for McCain. The same poll shows him moving from a 5 point deficit among Whole Foods Women (white, married, college educated women) to a 3 point lead.

McCain could win some of these “suburban sprawlers” back--because they are easily swayed by events. Many will switch back and forth until Election Day. But the question is what will have more impact: news about Palin’s performance tonight or Fey’s next round of pummeling on Saturday?

So it turns out Gwen Ifill never told the Commission on Presidential Debates about her book Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, which is to be released on Inauguration Day. When she's asked if her book creates a conflict of interest, Ifill suggests that such concerns might be motivated by racism.

But, as Andy McCarthy demonstrates, Ifill and her colleagues at PBS have been quite concerned about conflicts of interest involving public figures.

In fact, during the 2004 vice presidential debate, Ifill insinuated that Dick Cheney may have opposed trade sanctions against Iran because he was the CEO of Halliburton:

IFILL: Mr. Vice President, in June of 2000 when you were still CEO of Halliburton, you said that U.S. businesses should be allowed to do business with Iran because, quote, "Unilateral sanctions almost never work."

After four years as vice president now, and with Iran having been declared by your administration as part of the "Axis of Evil," do you still believe that we should lift sanctions on Iran?

Keep in mind that during this debate, John Edwards was hammering Dick Cheney on Halliburton, mentioning the company by name eight times.

To be fair, Ifill did bring up Edwards's work as a trial lawyer. But she framed the issue as a "personal attack" on John Edwards rather than a conflict of interest.

She asked Cheney:

President Bush has derided in John Kerry for putting a trial lawyer on the ticket. You yourself have said that lawsuits are partly to blame for higher medical costs. Are you willing to say that John Edwards, sitting here, has been part of the problem?

And then asked:

Senator Edwards, new question to you, same topic. Do you feel personally attacked when Vice President Cheney talks about liability reform and tort reform and the president talks about having a trial lawyer on the ticket?

This isn't to say that Ifill went easy on Edwards. She certainly asked him some tough questions, especially on foreign policy. Still, Ifill was and is a liberal, and her choice of questions reveals a subtle liberal bias. She asked Cheney and Edwards about AIDS and poverty, but not about abortion. Moving the "values" debate "beyond abortion" has been the Democrats' long-standing strategy to win over religious voters.

Of course, the main concern with Ifill's moderating tonight's debate is not merely that she's a liberal, but that she stands to make a tidy profit if Obama wins the election.

Do you ever get the sense that if North Korea actually used a nuclear weapon in an offensive attack that Chris Hill and the State Department would still be trying to make a deal?

In response to the latest provocation from the North Koreans, Hill and his colleagues are proposing a new "choreography" for the futile negotiations. Dancing seems somehow appropriate at this stage, given the stories about Hill's collegial drinking with his North Korean counterparts and his friendly toasts to honor them. ("We pulled out all the stops," one US diplomat told author Mike Chinoy about the festivities.)

It's hardly worth going back over all of the twists and turns of US-North Korean nuclear diplomacy in order to look at the Bush administration's current embarrassing position. The pattern has been set, with relatively minor interruptions of sanity, since 1994: the US makes tough-sounding threats, North Korea cheats/provokes/lies, the US expresses disappointment and then offers second-chances accompanied by generous concessions.

So they detonate a crude nuclear device in the fall of 2006 and the Bush administration offers a bilateral meeting. They ship nuclear technology to Syria, a leading terrorist state, and the Bush administration (after first trying to keep that worrisome development a secret) offers to take North Korea off the state sponsor of terror list and to lift some key sanctions. Now, after the North Koreans fail to deliver a verifiable accounting of its nuclear programs, as they had promised, and after the North Koreans refuse to submit to serious inspections of their nuclear facilities, as they had promised, and after the North Koreans break the IAEA seals on its nuclear facilities, a clear provocation, the Bush administration proposes that the North Koreans submit a list of its nuclear facilities to China rather than the US.

Because, you know, then the North Koreans will be cooperative.

If the current US-North Korea relationship follows the trajectory of a Hollywood romance, we are in trouble. First comes drinking, then dancing. And finally, well...let's just say we'll all be screwed.

Two days after George W. Bush criticized Syria as a state sponsor of terror in a speech at the United Nations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem in New York. The meeting was first reported in the Syrian state press which noted that it took place at Rice's request. Mouallen told Al Hayat that the meeting represented a softening of the US position on Syria.

It's a fair reading. Long gone are the days of George W. Bush's "with us or against us" approach to terrorism. Rice has made it clear through her dealings with Iran and Syria that terror sponsoring states can be with us on some days and against us on others. In fact, in an interview with TWS back in May, she said this rather directly. "Syria can't decide which camp it's going to be in, you know. Maybe it's fitting that they came at the deputy foreign minister level at Annapolis, because one day they're going to be part of the solution and the next day they're going to be a part of the problem. I think, on balance, they're more part of the problem."

So do the State Department terrorism analysts, at least officially. "Iran and Syria routinely provide unique safe haven, substantial resources and guidance to terrorist organizations," they wrote in the State Sponsors of Terror Overview. "The Syrian Government continued to provide political and material support to both Hizballah and Palestinian terrorist groups. HAMAS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), among others, base their external leadership in Damascus. The Syrian Government insists that the Damascus-based groups undertake only political and informational activities. However, in statements originating from outside Syria, many Palestinian groups claimed responsibility for anti-Israeli terrorist acts. Syria's public support for the groups varied, depending on its national interests and international pressure. In 2003, these groups lowered their public profile after Damascus announced that they had voluntarily closed their offices in Syria. In September, however, Syrian President Bashar al-Asad held a highly publicized meeting with rejectionist leaders, and a month later the rejectionist leaders participated in a meeting in Damascus with the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel. Syria continued to permit Iran to use Damascus as a transshipment point to resupply Hizballah in Lebanon."

The new Bush Doctrine: You are either with us or against us. Or both. Whatever.

That, at least, seems to be the version of the Bush Doctrine preferred by Condoleezza Rice, who has pushed for warmer relations with Axis of Evil nations North Korea and Iran, and Iranian satellite Syria. By most accounts, President Bush still believes in the original Bush Doctrine and continues to articulate his views forcefully in meetings with members of Congress, in off-the-record sessions with journalists and sessions with foreign dignitaries.

With less than four months left in his term, the question of this: Is the president in charge of his foreign policy or has he completely handed it off to his Secretary of Stae?

Roll Call reports that Congressman John Shadegg -- former chairman of the Republican Study Committee -- has signalled that he's likely to support the Senate market rescue bill when it comes to the House for a vote:

Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) signaled Wednesday that changes being discussed for the Wall Street bailout could prompt him to change his vote and support it.

Shadegg, interviewed on Arizona radio station KTAR, said raising the FDIC insurance cap from $100,000 to $250,000 and suspending the SEC’s mark-to-market accounting rules would likely win his vote. “If they make both of those changes, I’d be inclined to vote for the bill, assuming there have not been any bad things added to it,” he said.

The switch would be a major boost for Republican leaders — Shadegg is a former chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the conservative wing of the conference that helped sink the bill on Monday when 81 of its 106 members voted against it.

In the interview, Shadegg said he is “highly optimistic” the package will pass on its second try this week.

Shadegg is likely to bring the votes of several conservative House Republicans, significantly improving prospects for passage. With Senator Tom Coburn already on board, the package now has the support of two of the strongest pro-market, pro-Main Street, anti-big government Republicans in Congress. If the bailout is somehow defeated again, it's far more likely to be the result of more apathy from the House Democratic leadership, combined with happy talk from the liberal Democrat rank-and-file.

John McCain fielded some hostile questions from the Des Moines Register editorial board yesterday. Watch a few of his responses here (HT: Marc Ambinder):

Good for McCain. I was pleased to see him push back against some stupid and tendentious questions, particularly the notion that his ad about Obama's vote for sex-ed for elementary school children was a lie. But did this help advance his campaign?

Mike Murphy wonders:

What the Hell was McCain even doing there in the first place?

1.) Obama is going to win Iowa.

2.) Editorial board meetings are usually pure trouble to begin with and result only in newspaper endorsements that persuade very few voters beyond the immediate family members of the editorial board.

3.) Within the rarified category of newspaper editorial boards, the Des Moines Register is one of the most liberal in the country. I'm rather surprised that halfway through the McCain interview they failed to switch over to Esperanto, the peace-loving language of all nations.

So, 35 days left and McCain is in Iowa? Why put McCain in the wrong state, at the wrong place? No surprise the result is the wrong message and the wrong tone.

Jay Cost diagnoses McCain's problem:

I think McCain has suffered a deterioration in his poll position for a simple reason: he's the Republican. George W. Bush is the President of the United States. He is responsible for the state of the nation. He's not held in good esteem right now, and he's a Republican. From a public opinion perspective, it does not matter so much that the Democrats control Congress. The buck stops with Bush; Bush is a Republican; McCain is a Republican; McCain suffers. I think that's all there is to it.

A related factor could be that Bush is simply more noticeable than he was a few weeks ago. The President has done a good job hiding himself during the presidential campaign. Presumably, he knows that his presence hurts McCain, so he's taken himself out of the public's view. But now he's back on the television, on the front pages, giving prime time speeches, and so on. I think this has hurt McCain's numbers as much as anything.

Across the country, McCain supporters are asking: Is there any way Bush can skip the election? Or maybe just the month of October?

The New York Times:

"Mr. Biden describes himself as blunt."

That's one word for it.

Vets for Freedom is spending $2.2 million to broadcast its hardest hitting ad yet. The ad, just released today, focuses on Obama's failure to hold hearings on Afghanistan and his vote to cut off funding for the troops.

Vets for Freedom executive director Pete Hegseth will be on the Ed Morrissey Show over at Hot Air at 3 p.m. to talk about the new spot.

Jonathan Martin reports the Judicial Confirmation Network will spend $1 million airing this ad in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania:

Jeff Dobbs over at the excellent Voice in My Head blog makes a great catch. Here was Barack Obama on “60 Minutes” a full nine days ago:

KROFT: Why you? I mean, why do you think you would be a good president?

OBAMA: Well, I was going to get to that.

KROFT: Go ahead.

OBAMA: You know, I’m a, I’m a practical person. One of the things I’m good at is getting people in a room with a bunch of different ideas who sometimes violently disagree with each other and finding common ground and a sense of common direction.

Now here he was yesterday, explaining why he eschewed playing a leadership role during the current crisis, and never considered sullying his hands with something as quotidian as “finding common ground” with Republicans on the Hill:

"I don't think me calling House Republican members would have been that helpful. I tend not to be that persuasive on that side of the aisle."

By this point in time, we’ve all come to understand that most Obama promises and pledges come with a built in expiration date. But eight days from being the guy who brings together violently disagreeing people to not being “persuasive” on the other side of the aisle? That’s got to be a new record.

This transformation is rather sad. The post-partisan Obama that we saw many months ago in Iowa was an appealing guy. Obama 2.0, the one who relies on class warfare rhetoric and mouths silly rhetoric about the gulf dividing Wall Street and Main Street, is a considerably less attractive persona. And obviously a far less constructive one as well.

North Carolina, a traditional Republican stronghold, took a sharp turn toward Barack Obama in the last several weeks. It’s no secret GOP political strategists had sought to lock up the Tar Heel state early--it’s voted Republican in 9 out of the past 10 presidential elections (Jimmy Carter, the last Democrat to prevail, won the state in 1976). But right now it’s like a real nail biter.

I’ve looked at some independent tracking polling conducted in battleground states between 2004 and 2008. While the generic Republican brand deteriorated in the past four years in all of them, North Carolina witnessed some of the most significant slippage in the percent of voters who self-identify as Republicans. So point one is this: The GOP generic environment in the state has been sinking for the past couple of years.

But in the last few weeks, that weakness accelerated. This chart at Real Clear Politics shows the race clearly trending away from John McCain since the end of the Republican convention.

Democrats have also dominated in new voter registration this. This post at the Democratic Strategist sums up the latest numbers:

Democrats have registered 194,000 new NC voters since January, compared to 28,500 for Republicans. An estimated 1/3 of all new voters are African Americans. NC voter registration ends 10/10, but voters can register and vote at the same time at "One-Stop Voting Sites" across the state between 10/16 and 11/1.

The political environment problems are affecting the Senate race in the Tar Heal state as well. The two latest surveys (one is a Democratic poll) now show challenger Kay Hagan in the lead leadand the Real Clear Politics overall average--and other analysts like Charlie Cook--now list the race as a toss-up.

Why the tightening? North Carolina is a major U.S. financial center, the headquarters of Bank of America and the recently acquired Wachovia. I talked to a friend in the banking business in Charlotte yesterday who said this: “To say people are stressed down here due to the financial meltdown is an understatement. That anxiety is hurting John McCain and Elizabeth Dole.”

I know many who count electoral votes put the Tar Heel state in the GOP column based on history and August polling. Time to move it back to undecided.

In response to Joe Biden's exaggerations about being "shot at" in Iraq and having his helicopter forced down in Afghanistan, the McCain campaign released this statement by Michael J. Durant, the Black Hawk helicopter pilot who was shot down in Mogadishu in 1993 and held captive:

"Senator Biden claimed at a debate last year that he'd been 'shot at' while visiting Iraq. And he has claimed repeatedly, most recently last week, that his helicopter was 'forced down' in Afghanistan -- leaving his audience with the impression that it was fire from the Taliban which had grounded the aircraft. Neither of these stories appears to be true, and Senator Biden has never accounted for the discrepancies.

"I've been on a helicopter that was 'forced down' by enemy fire, and I've been 'shot at.' Neither is easily confused with being caught in a snow storm or awakened by a loud bang in the night. Senator Biden has a responsibility to come clean on what actually happened, and explain why he would ever say such things to the American people. And with the Vice Presidential Debate coming up on Thursday, it is incumbent on the news media to ask Senator Biden the tough questions -- as they have so far failed to do -- and examine his responses closely for inconsistencies of the kind we've witnessed in recent months.

"The American people expect and deserve leaders who tell the truth about their record and their experiences, and a news media that holds all candidates -- no matter their party -- to the same standard."

The latest Washington Post/ABC poll shows Obama leading 50 percent to 46 percent. Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics notes:

According to the poll, McCain has regained the lead among key swing groups: Independents favor McCain by 3 (48-45), white women by 11 (54-43), and white Catholics by one (47-46). McCain is still holding on to 20% of Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries, while 70% are supporting Obama.

You can listen to Sarah Palin on yesterday's Hugh Hewitt show here.

The McCain campaign has a new "web ad" out that mocks Barack Obama for a comment he made yesterday. After weeks of mocking John McCain for his claim that the fundamentals of the American economy are strong, Obama said yesterday:

"After this immediate problem, we've got the long-term fundamentals that will really make sure this economy grows."

It's not surprising that he would say this. Although his political advisers have urged him to use McCain's words on the campaign trail, his economic advisers have been saying, in effect, that McCain was right. And sometimes they say it in public. Last week, Obama economic adviser Jason Furman told the Washington Post: "This is a major fiscal problem in the short run, but it doesn't alter the long-term fiscal picture."

Sounds a lot like "the fundamentals of the economy are strong."

Here's the ad script:

ANNCR: Who's Barack Obama?

First, Obama attacked McCain.

Then said:

BARACK OBAMA: "We've got the long term fundamentals that will really make sure this economy grows."

ANNCR: Strong fundamentals?

Is Obama saying McCain's right?

Or is Obama saying his own attacks are shameless?

Either way, Obama's a hypocrite.

JOHN MCCAIN: I'm John McCain and I approve this message.

I'm eager to read the lengthy, front-page story in tomorrow's New York Times on the mixed messages from the Obama campaign and how such poor communications reflects a campaign in disarray.

With an assist from Bill Clinton:

On MSNBC this morning, John McCain said: “I think Americans have yet to fully understand this [bailout] is not in the interests of Wall Street or Washington insiders." During his remarks today in Des Moines, McCain provided a couple examples of how the credit crunch affects ordinary voters: keeping businesses and students from getting loans. Policy wise, McCain said the Treasury should exercise its recently granted authority to purchase mortgages and use the Exchange Stabilization Fund as "creatively as possible to provide backstop for accounts across our financial system to maintain confidence on the part of savers and investors." He also endorsed raising the FDIC deposit insurance cap to $250,000.

Full remarks here:

We are in the greatest financial crisis of our lifetimes. Congressional inaction has put every American and the entire economy at the gravest risk. Yesterday the country and the world looked to Washington for leadership, and Congress once again came up empty-handed.

I am disappointed at the lack of resolve and bipartisan good will among members of both parties to fix this problem. Bipartisanship is a tough thing; never more so when you’re trying to take necessary but publicly unpopular action. But inaction is not an option.

Businesses all over the country cannot borrow to finance their own operations and pay their bills. If we do nothing, many may fail.

Sonic Corporation, a drive-in restaurant chain based in Oklahoma, learned on Thursday that one of its lenders, GE Capital, had stopped extending new loans to the chain's franchisees. That will block plans to rebuild restaurants, add equipment and open new locations. When small businesses like Sonic franchisees can't borrow, contractors don't get the remodeling work, equipment-makers lose sales, and restaurants go out of business. It hurts the entire community.

When financing dries up, students can’t get loans.

In Wisconsin, more than 100 Milwaukee Area Technical College students couldn’t access private loans to fund their education. Fortunately the school was able to come up with emergency loans, but this temporary arrangement cannot continue. Markets need to work so that people can get financial help and students can be educated.

Via Drudge, children are taught to sing praises of The One:

Creepy.

The presidential race remains highly volatile. A recent Diageo/Hotline poll found 23 percent of voters are undecided and another 9 percent saying they still might change their minds.

Now, that doesn’t mean over a third of the electorate are truly swing voters. Partisans in this crowd will probably vote for the party they have supported in the past. But even half that number could swing the race from nail-biter to landslide depending on how these voters break.

Second, we probably won’t know much about these voters for several more weeks. Research indicates a high percentage of self-identified independents, often one-fourth or more, won’t decide until the last two weeks before the election or even Election Day.

Finally, undecided voters harbor very different questions about the two candidates. Mark Blumenthal posted this interesting nugget yesterday:

The results I found most interesting involved the voters that are undecided or uncertain about Obama and McCain:

[T]hese voters harbor doubts about the shortcomings they perceive in Obama and in McCain. By a 34-point margin (52 percent to 18 percent), they see McCain as "more prepared to lead the country" than Obama. And by a nearly opposite 31-point margin (50 percent to 21 percent), they say that Obama "better understands the needs and priorities" of people like them.

The key difference, omitted from the print piece, is that the Obama numbers on the "prepared" question was much lower among the uncertain voters than among all voters. Similarly, the McCain number on the "understands" question was lower among the uncertain voters than among all voters on the full sample.

In the end, these swing voters will have to pick which of these two questions--“who is better to lead” vs. “who understands people like me”--matters more. That choice will decide the next president.

Drop what you're doing and read Republican consultant Mike Murphy's extremely entertaining column in this week's Time magazine. It's about the strange rituals associated with prepping candidates for debates. Here's a taste:

It is vital that your candidate not hear your opponent's answers for the first time onstage, since that will often lead to panic if a candidate feels the opponent's answer is far better than his or her own. Hmmm. Great answer. I've got nothing like that. I'm a loser. I'm going to lose this debate. In high school, Belinda would have wanted to go to the prom with him, not me. Anger. MUST ... ATTACK ... NOW!!! At that point something very bad usually happens.

Classic.

Marc Ambinder notes that both Obama and McCain now favor raisng the FDIC cap from $100,000 to $250,000.

Jonathan Martin reports the RNC will spend $5 million airing the ad in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Indiana.

The Sunday Times reports that over the weekend book publisher Martin Rynja had his London home firebombed by three Muslims who found one of the books his firm is publishing to be blasphemous:

Security officials believe Rynja was targeted for assassination because his firm, Gibson Square, is preparing to publish a romantic novel about Aisha, child bride of the Prophet Muhammad. The Jewel of Medina, by the first-time American author Sherry Jones, describes an imaginary sex scene between the prophet and his 14-year-old wife.

It was withdrawn from publication in America last month after its publisher there, Random House, said it feared a violent reaction by “a small radical segment” of Muslims. It said “credible and unrelated sources” had warned that the book could incite violence.

Random House reacted after Islamic scholars objected to its contents, saying it treated the wife of the Prophet as a sex object. One of them, Denise Spellberg, of the University of Texas at Austin, described the novel as “soft-core pornography”, referring to a scene in which Muhammad consummates his marriage to Aisha. She called it “a declaration of war” and a “national security issue”.

At the time, her warnings were dismissed by the author. “Anyone who reads the book will not be offended,” said Jones. “I wrote the book with the utmost respect for Islam.” However, Jones admitted receiving death threats after the book was withdrawn.

It would have been perfectly reasonable for Random House to spike this book if it had a general policy against publishing smut or religiously insensitive material. But how shameful is it that a major American book publisher openly admits it decided not to publish a book simply because it feared the violent reactions of radical Muslims? How shameful is it that an American author has to travel overseas to exercise her First Amendment rights?

Post-debate “snap” surveys aimed at determining a “winner” are in vogue given the proliferation of polling by media outlets this election cycle. But what do the results really mean for the November election?

Pollster.com summarizes the five post-debate polls (and a focus group) from last Friday night and provides several points to consider in interpreting these numbers. Read the full analysis here.

Two of the five surveys, Gallup/USA Today and CNN, gave the edge to Obama on the question of “who did a better job.” Two others, Los Angeles Times and Zogby reported much closer results in their surveys. The CBS/Knowledge Networks poll was a little unique, focusing only on “uncommitted” voters in its sample. It also gave the advantage to Obama on the “who performed better” question. (Democrat Stan Greenberg conducted a focus group with “undecided” voters in Missouri, and his results are also discussed in the Pollster.com post).

The first question anyone should ask when reading these results: Does “who did a better job” contain any real electoral consequences? Mark Blumenthal sums it up well:

What does "winning" a debate mean? Is it about which candidate "did a better job" as perceived by the voters? Or is it about which candidate made the most progress in growing or solidifying their support? While most of the pollsters have emphasized their results on the "who did a better job" question, what most of us want to know is whether the debate made a difference in overall vote preference. That latter issue is much harder to gauge from these first "snap" surveys.

Post-debate polls often just reflect partisan predispositions and don’t mean the candidates changed a lot of minds. Blumenthal points out the configuration of the underlying survey samples shapes the results. A couple of the polls noted more self-identified Democrats than Republicans watched the debates, another likely producing a pro-Obama tilt. CNN notes this, for example, about its survey:

The results may be favoring Obama simply because more Democrats than Republicans tuned in to the debate. Of the debate-watchers questioned in this poll, 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans and 30 percent as independents.

No doubt the media will report at least this many polls picking the “winner” of Thursday night’s vice presidential debate (and the two remaining presidential debates). Blumenthal raises some important caveats about how we interpret these results, especially when it comes to their ultimate electoral implications.

And it's a whopper! Jules Crittenden provides the report:

Washington Post’s live fact check finds Obama out-and-out wrong on several counts but has to parse and pick apart assiduously to find McCain at fault. Whatever. A telling exercise. Where it gets bizarre is in the grand finale, this astonishing McCain bash:

"John McCain kicked the evening off with a wild exaggeration by describing the allied invasion of Normandy as “the greatest invasion” in history.

"Such historical comparisons are always dangerous. In scale, the D-Day landings were far exceeded by Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, in June 1941, and the Soviet invasion of Germany at the end of World War II.

"A total of 326,000 allied troops took part in the initial D-day Landings in June 1944. By comparison, Hitler’s sent an army of 4.5 million men into the Soviet Union in June 1941along a 1,800 mile front."

If you really want to get into it, the Siegfrieds and the Ivans did it across land. The western allies did it over water. Universally regarded as the greatest sea invasion of all time, in contention for the greatest single technological and organizational, a massive, highly complex operation conducted under strict secrecy, cloaked by highly successful deception. Different. Greater. And on unconditional greatness alone, it’s important to note that the jackbooted sausage-eating bucketheads, several months in, when it started snowing and they were all still in their summer uniforms and not in Moscow as planned, weren’t feeling so great any more. The Soviets didn’t launch an invasion of Germany as much as they pushed multiple fronts forward over a period of two years. Sort of like we did after we invaded Normandy.

Far be it from me to differ with the punditocracy’s mainstream, but I happen to feel that last night’s debate was a pretty big win for John McCain. I’m aware that most observers have called it a draw, agreeing that both men performed rather ably. I’m also aware that the polls show a majority of watchers thought Obama “won.” But still, it was a big night for McCain. Or more precisely, it was a bad night for Obama.

Judging these things like a high school debate is a fool’s (or CNN’s) errand. Who cares who “won” the debate? We’re not electing a debater-in-chief. A more probative inquiry is who won more votes. Or to ask a related question, who lost fewer votes.

I agree with the multitudes of analysts who say that both men performed ably. The strength of Obama’s performance, especially in the debate’s first half, came as something of a surprise. He must have cut his normal quotient of “ums” and “ahs” by at least 50%, and he put himself across in a relatively forceful manner. At the other end of the stage, McCain’s competence in this kind of forum came as no surprise to people familiar with John McCain’s skills. (As a Romney supporter during the primaries, McCain’s supple mind and command of details constantly provided frustration.)

But again, you don’t determine the winner of these things by calculating who most skillfully evaded taking a position on the Paulson Plan. We might as well skip ahead to the real goal which isn’t winning a debate but rather winning votes.

Like I said, McCain came across well as he always does at these things. Low end news gatherers who were expecting a doddering old warmonger got a surprise. McCain looked and sounded presidential.

McCain’s running attack on Obama did serious damage, especially given the way Obama’s behavior played right into the attack’s theme. Throughout the evening, McCain said that Obama “didn’t understand” things. The message was as subtle as a Howard Dean scream – on one part of the stage you had the old Warhorse who has been around the track; on the other end of the stage, according to McCain, you had a neophyte. McCain was making a frontal assault on Obama’s maturity and judgment.

The assault only directly drew blood in a couple of instances. Obama looked silly when he couldn’t distinguish between “tactics” and “strategy,” and his endless parsing on preconditions and preparations came across as patently disingenuous. But the real damage came with the debate’s optics. Having his maturity frontally challenged, Obama by his own creative antics often came across as childish, petulant and a little odd.

Let us count the ways:

1) Several times during the debate, Obama would smirk and laugh while McCain spoke. The optics of this were just awful. If Obama had wanted to come across as an arrogant jerk, this is the strategy he would have chosen. Frankly, it’s rather shocking that Obama repeatedly made such a mistake. Al Gore cost himself the 2000 election with his first debate performance where he derided everything George W. Bush said with a series of sighs and smirks. Oh yeah – the polls and the pundits said Gore “won” that tussle right after it concluded, although history has rendered a different verdict.

Gore’s antics were completely unprecedented. Up until that time, every other presidential candidate had managed to comport himself in a reasonably mature fashion while doing a televised debate. And yet in 2004, George W. Bush took the Gore tactics out for a test drive during his first debate with John Kerry, scowling virtually every time Kerry spoke. Bush’s lead in the polls quickly evaporated.

The voters expect a certain level of decorum from their candidates. Obama didn’t demonstrate that decorum last night. While he debated more effectively than he has in the past, he came across poorly.

2) On a related note, Obama kept referring to McCain as “John” while the older candidate referred to his foe as “Senator.” Again, I don’t understand the thought process here. Maybe Obama thought he would appear more presidential and less a lightweight by treating his more seasoned opponent in an overly familiar manner. But the difference in the two candidates’ approaches grated as the evening wore on.

3) Obama often refers to himself as “we.” What’s up with that?

4) Obama pronounces Pakistan like a high school civics teacher trying to show of his erudition – “Pah-kee-stun.” Whenever he does this, he comes across as a smarty-pants showoff. Besides, I would argue that in America, we know and commonly refer to the country in question as, you know, Pakistan, not Pah-kee-stun. Obama is only right on this if he also calls Spain “la España.”

5) The “two bracelets” moment showed Obama at his “I have to be the smartest guy in the room” worst. This could emerge as the signature moment of the debate, where Obama’s insecurities and insincerity combined to create a perfect storm. (Apparently, he couldn’t recall the name of the soldier he was purportedly honoring until he looked it up on his bracelet.)

America is still getting to know Barack Obama. Last night, the candidate did himself no favors. Mind you, I’m not a habitual hater of Obama. I’ve never called him “despicable” or “evil,” the terms most currently in vogue on the left to describe John McCain. In fact, as I’ve written many times, from everything I’ve heard Barack Obama is a good guy. But he didn’t come across as one last night.

John McCain said several times during last night's debate that Barack Obama simply doesn't understand many of the subjects at the heart of the presidential race. It was quite clear that McCain was trying to paint Obama as naive and risky and he hammered that theme -- Obama "doesn't understand" -- again and again through the 90-minute affair.

After the debate, Linda Douglass took great offense on Obama's behalf, calling the language "insulting." Then she used it to describe McCain. Here is the exchange with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.

Rachel Maddow: “We’ve heard a phrase repeated ad nauseum tonight from Senator McCain – Senator Obama didn’t understand, that he didn’t grasp the issues. What’s the rejoinder to that from the Obama side?”

Linda Douglass: “I would say that Senator McCain doesn’t get it. He’s demonstrated in every way that he’s completely out of touch. He’s somebody who’s giving tax cuts to the wealthy when it’s the middle class who needs tax cuts. He is somebody who doesn’t understand that Americans need to be free of their dependence on foreign oil – he’s talking about just drill, baby, drill. He’s demonstrated that in so many ways. He thought the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Just last week he thought the fundamentals of the economy were strong. So, he doesn’t get it. That’s what he has demonstrated. He’s out of touch. And when you try to use sort of insulting language as he did tonight it doesn’t really appeal to voters who are looking for a positive solution to their own lives and the struggles that they’re going through.”

Got that? The Obama campaign can say that John McCain "doesn't get it" but McCain's language is "insulting" when he says that Obama doesn't understand.

Douglass will not find herself in any trouble with her boss on these kinds of attacks because he said the same thing in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. "It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it."

Perhaps the Obama-Biden campaign would be better off accusing McCain of plagiarizing their rhetoric. Then again, maybe not.

Jim Lehrer asks the candidates what spending programs, if any, they might limit or cut in light of the $700 billion bailout and other budget constraints. John McCain suggests a partial budget freeze. Barack Obama responds: “The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel. There are some programs that are very important that are under-funded. I want to increase early childhood education....”

We’re in a major financial crisis, and Barack Obama wants to increase spending in an area where there’s notoriously little evidence that spending has paid off, an area that in any case isn’t a primary responsibility of the federal government (or perhaps of any level of government). Obama’s ritualistic invocation of early childhood education as deserving ever more funding is a reminder, one might say, of the deep childishness of contemporary liberalism.

Round 1: Where do you stand on the Paulson bailout plan?
Obama says that Main Street was suffering long before Wall Street and that we have to move swiftly and wisely. Also, he says that he's put forward proposals to make this plan work better, most importantly to make sure we bail out the deadbeats who are being foreclosed on, too, and not just the Richie Riches at Lehman. Oh, and by the way and Bush and McCain caused this whole thing.

McCain opens by saying that he wishes Ted Kennedy all the best, signaling that he believes Sarah Palin has brought the GOP base onboard for good. He then points to the bipartisan nature of the modified Paulson package. And says that this is only the end of the beginning of the financial crisis. Neither guy answered the question, prompting Lehrer to re-ask.

On redirect, Obama says he can't say whether he's for it or not because he hasn't seen the details. But that it's important to remember that he warned of the crisis two years ago. Which kind of leaves one wondering why, if he knew that the "worst economic crisis since the Great Depression" was coming down the pike, all he did was write a letter to Paulson instead of acting to head it off.

McCain says that he is going to vote for the bailout and then talks about how important it is to hold people accountable for their actions. This is a close one since neither guy conveys any deep understanding of the situation or insight into the solution.

Round to Obama

Round 2: Are there fundamental difference between your two approaches to the crisis?

McCain goes right after spending, hitting his reform theme and blaming Republicans for their earmarks, out of control spending, and scandals. It's like he's daring Obama to be harder on the GOP than he is.

Obama says that earmarks are bad--though not as bad as "the special interests"! But Obama maintains that McCain's tax cuts for evil corporations and the rich are a worse source of waste than earmarks. Standing traditional supply-side economics on its head, Obama says he wants to grow the economy from the "bottom up."

The two then go back and forth on McCain's business tax cuts, culminating in McCain pointing that the U.S. business tax is 35 percent, Ireland's is 11 percent, and that lowering business taxes is one of the ways you keep businesses in America and create jobs. When Obama challenges this, he says that all of the "loopholes" actually make business taxes too low--suggesting that he'd like to make the U.S. less hospitable to businesses. Then McCain hits Obama for talking and not doing. Obama looks peevish.

Round to McCain

Round 3: As president, what will you give up to pay for the $700 billion bailout?

Obama says, quite nonsensically, that he's going to give up foreign oil by turning to wind, solar, and alternative fuels. He then goes on to talk about all the other things he is going to spend money on. If you were at all concerned that Obama's "no new taxes" pledge might not be written in stone, he isn't setting your mind at ease.

McCain says that we have to get spending under control and that he'd examine every agency of the government. Then, just throw an elbow at Iowa voters, he says that the first thing he'd do is cut the ethanol subsidy. Also, in an attempt to drive Michael Goldfarb from his staff, he singles out the DDX program in a long list of government waste that he'd go after.

When asked again what he would give up, Obama ducks the question, saying, again, that he will invest in ending our dependence on foreign oil. Not to pick nits but technically, that's new spending. Lehrer seems perturbed.

McCain then goes on the offensive saying we ought to consider a spending freeze (minus defense, entitlements, and veterans affairs). Thinking he has an opening, Obama pounces, saying that he wouldn't endorse a spending freeze because there are lots of under-funded programs that need more money from the federal government. It's not clear how this is helping reassure people that he won't raise their taxes.

Round to McCain

Round 4: What are the lessons of Iraq?

McCain says that you need to be mindful that strategies can fail and that flexibility is important. He says that we're winning in Iraq and that we will come home with victory and honor and a newly-minted ally in the region. He gives Gen. Petraeus and the troops all the credit.

Obama says that this is a fundamental difference between the two men because six years ago he stood up the salons of Hyde Park and bravely opposed the war. He then paints a picture of American defeat around the globe and claims that al Qaeda is stronger than it's been at any time since 2001. For whatever it's worth, this last assertion is counter to recent analysis of al Qaeda's strength. It betrays a staggering ignorance on Obama's part; his position deteriorates from there.

Round to McCain

Round 5: About that Afghanistan . . .

Obama says we need more troops in Afghanistan, which is why we need to pull out of Iraq and get tough with Pakistan.

McCain says that he regrets the mistake we made by neglecting the Afghanis after they drove the Soviets out, allowing the Taliban to take hold. He then paints Obama as reckless for wanting to cut off aid to a tottering nuclear power. The knowledge gap is beginning to show and it gets worse when Obama mangles pre-Musharraf Pakistani history.

As the exchange goes on it becomes clear that these guys like each other about as much as Ali and Foreman did.

Round to McCain

Round 6: How big a threat is Iran?

McCain says that a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel and a strategic threat to the stability of the region. He notes that Russia is blocking action at the U.N. and touts a "League of Democracies" which could implement serious and tough sanctions on Iran. But "have no doubt," he's ready to throw down. He gallantly doesn't mention that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to prefer Obama.

Obama says that we need Russia and China to help with sanction. But the real thing we need with Iran is--hold on to your seats--tough, direct diplomacy!

McCain hits Obama for pledging to talk with Ahmadinejad without preconditions. Obama should just take his lumps here--this is the cost of winning the Democratic nomination. But instead he tries to weasel out of it, saying that he'll "sit down with anybody" but that there have to be "preparation." Then he tries to get cute by saying that Ahmadinejad may not be the most important person in Iran.

It's a weird pride that keeps Obama committed to a losing position when he should just find different ground to fight on. You'll notice, by the way, that whenever he loses his way, he blurts out "President Bush."

McCain says that his opponent's views aren't "just naive, but dangerous." Obama isn't doing anything to dispel this notion.

Round to McCain

Round 7: Russia. Competitor? Enemy? Partner? Discuss.

Obama says that the evidence of recent weeks says we need to reevaluate our relationship with Russia and that we should start expanding NATO immediately. But that we can't return to a Cold War posture.

McCain says that Obama's first reaction to the Russia-Georgia conflict was to urge both sides to show restraint, evincing further "naiveté." It's pretty rough, particularly when he starts talking about the specifics of South Ossetia.

Round to McCain

Round 8: What is the likelihood of another 9/11?

McCain says it's "much less than it was the day after 9/11" and that we are a safer nation, even though we are not safe. He talks about how he pushed for the creation of the 9/11 Commission against the wishes of President Bush and how he worked with Democrats to pass most of the Commission's recommendations. Most gratifyingly, he talks about how important it is to bolster American intelligence capabilities, particularly in the area of HUMINT.

Obama says that we are safer in some ways, but still have a long way to go. He smartly points out that we have yet to harden transportation points (excluding airports), chemical facilities, and other attractive targets. He also talks about the need to focus on nuclear proliferation, in order to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists. This is the most comfortable and commanding he's been all night.

McCain goes back to Obama's desire to withdrawal from Iraq, saying that Obama doesn't realize how interconnected Iraq is to the wider terrorist threat. Obama responds that Iraq is a huge disaster and hindrance to everything America needs to do in the world.

Then McCain throws down the gauntlet with what I suspect will be the only line people take away from the night: "There are some advantages to experience and knowledge and judgment. And I honestly don't believe that Sen. Obama has the knowledge or experience and has made the wrong judgments in a number of areas."

Then he takes another big swing: "You know we've seen this stubbornness before in this administration, to cling to a belief that somehow the surge has not succeeded and failing to acknowledge that he was wrong about the surge shows to me that we need more flexibility in a president of the United States than that. . . . I don't think I need any on-the-job training."

This round is a Rorschach. If you love Obama, he acquitted himself well. If you have questions about Obama, you found McCain's assault devastating. The big question is how undecideds will see this last exchange.

Round to McCain


My scorecard says that McCain won the night 7-1, which frankly surprises me. On paper that looks like a rout, but McCain didn't seem that dominant as it was happening. Certainly there was nothing in the debate that Obama will worry about as having been a big blow. I saw McCain winning the debate pretty handily, but I doubt he scored any larger strategic victory.

Henry Kissinger believes Barack Obama misstated his views on diplomacy with US adversaries and is not happy about being mischaracterized. He says: "Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree that any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality."

There's been a bit of back and forth between McCain and Obama on Obama's failure to hold any hearings on NATO or Afghanistan in the foreign relations committee. Obama pointed out that he's merely the subcommittee chairman; Joe Biden is the chairman. But Biden slammed Obama during the primaries for his failure to attend committee hearings on Afghanistan:

Biden's letter brought attention to the fact that Obama did not attend two of those three hearings -- and for the third, on March 8, 2007, Obama only asked one question, one unrelated to Afghanistan.

How do I know the latter fact? From an August 2007 press release from Biden himself, when he was running for president.

"BIDEN CAMPAIGN CONGRATULATES SEN. OBAMA FOR JOHNNY-COME-LATELY POSITION," it read. Noting that at the March 2007 hearing, "Sen. Obama asked one question that was unrelated to Taliban or Afghanistan."

Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center argues 2008 is the most unpredictable election in decades. “In every recent election the public has accurately picked the winner by this time in the cycle,” he wrote yesterday. And as the chart below demonstrates, since 1992, by pretty healthy margins:

Not so this year. When Pew asked voters two weeks ago to put aside their own preference and just crystal ball the winner, 39 percent picked Obama and 39 percent predicted McCain.

Why all the uncertainty? Kohut writes this:

For starters, voters are unsure whether John McCain, if elected, would govern differently from President Bush: 44% think he would, but an equal number think he wouldn't. And opinion about this basic question has not changed at all since March.

Second, while the country leans Democratic because of strong discontent with President Bush and the condition of the country, only 47% of the electorate thinks that Barack Obama is well qualified to be president.

Both of Kohut’s explanations suggest unease with the candidates. But I also believe most undecided voters also like both Obama and McCain, which leads to additional fluidity in public opinion.

Voter uncertainty about the outcome is validated by yesterday’s Gallup poll finding the race back to a 46 percent to 46 percent tie.

Read the full Pew report here.

There aren’t many outfits as arrogant, self-important, and aggrandizing as the unelected Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), sponsor of tonight’s debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. When John McCain said Wednesday the debate might have to be delayed so he could work on the financial bailout, the commission responded, in effect, “Sorry, John, the debate must go on, whether or not financial markets collapse. The debate is more important.”

That was just the latest example of high-handedness by the commission, which has hijacked the debates from the candidates, the campaigns, and the news media. The commission picked the sites for the debates (three presidential, one vice presidential) and charged the colleges involved $1.5 million for the honor. Then CPD announced the moderators for each debate without consulting with Obama or McCain campaigns or even informing them ahead of time.

The moderators are all nice people: Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill, Tom Brokaw, Bob Schieffer. But all four of them are liberals, more or less, of the mainstream media variety. Plus, the commission picked no one from cable news, where millions of people who follow campaigns and elections most closely go for their political news.

The McCain and Obama campaigns had little trouble working out their own differences on debate format. Their negotiations were amicable. When the commission stepped in, the talks became less friendly.

Getting the commission to go along with the format agreed upon by the candidates was a problem. In fact, the McCain campaign was so upset by the commission’s overbearing attitude that it briefly considered dumping the commission and finding another vehicle for the debates. But the Obama campaign wasn’t interested and the McCain folks dropped the idea.

The commission had its own plans for the format. The CPB honchos--Republican Frank Fahrenkopf, Democrat Paul Kirk, and who-knows-what Janet Brown--wanted Obama and McCain to be seated for tonight’s debate. The campaigns wanted them to stand, and prevailed on this point. Representatives of Obama and McCain also forced the commission to allow the first debate to be on foreign policy, not domestic issues. And they insisted, against the commission’s wishes, to have more questions asked at the town hall presidential debate.

But those changes came about only after a struggle. The commission was set on imposing its own preferences. After all, the commission regards the presidential debates as its property now and forever.

The CPB took over the debates in 1987 after the League of Women Voters was sacked as the sponsor. The league had often irritated the campaigns, especially the campaign of President Carter in 1980. Carter aides privately mocked the league as “the plague of women voters” and “the league of women vultures.”

The commission ran the show in 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. One of the biggest complaints this year was the selection of sites in Mississippi, Tennessee, and New York--not battleground states. The vice presidential debate is scheduled for next Thursday in St. Louis, Missouri.

Harry Reid on Tuesday:

"We need the Republican nominee for president to let us know where he stands and what we should do."

Reid on Wednesday:

“it would not be helpful at this time to have [Barack Obama and John McCain] come back during these negotiations and risk injecting presidential politics into this process or distract important talks about the future of our nation’s economy. … We need leadership; not a campaign photo op.”

Reid on Thursday afternoon:

With the economic news only getting worse each day, I call on the President, Senator McCain and Congressional Republicans to join us to quickly get this done for American families.

Reid on Thursday afternoon

Harry Reid says he’s not scheduling any votes in the Senate for Friday.

The reason: He says he wants to give John McCain “no excuse” for missing Friday night’s presidential debate.

Reid on Thursday night:

“I would suggest that anyone in that meeting who tried to understand what John McCain said at that meeting, couldn’t,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada told reporters Thursday evening.

McCain was the last one to speak at the White House meeting, Reid said, and he “didn’t say anything substantive. ... John McCain did nothing to help, he only hurt the process,” Reid said, further chastising McCain for calling for a delay in Friday’s presidential debate in Mississippi. “We should not let this little effort to avoid participating in the debates sidetrack this most important issue,” Reid said.

Is it just me or is Harry Reid cynically trying to score points against John McCain in a time of national crisis?

But there really isn't much of a record of Harry Reid placing partisan politics above the national interest, right? So maybe it's not about politics. Maybe it's just about Reid's petty personal dislike for McCain. As Reid said on August 21: "[Sen. Lieberman] has a close personal relationship with John McCain. I don't fully understand why he does. ... I can't stand John McCain."

That statement sheds a little more light on the classiness of Reid's reference on Wednesday to his "friend John McCain."

I can't stand Harry Reid.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to CNN to talk about bailout politics. When I arrived, I was surprised to learn from the other two panelists -- CNN's Gloria Borger and the Washington Post's Dana Milbank -- that a deal on an amended version of the Treasury Department's $700 billion bailout plan was close. I was surprised because I had been hearing the opposite -- that House Republicans were increasingly opposed to a deal and that such a deal seemed less likely yesterday than it was when the plan was originally proposed. But others, including the Associated Press, were reporting that a deal was imminent.

Then, earlier today, the AP reported that such a deal had, in fact, been reached. The Washington Post soon followed, in an article that strongly suggested McCain was irrelevant to the process and reported that he had arrived after a deal had been struck.

McCain's "Straight Talk Air" landed at National Airport just after noon, and McCain's motorcade sped toward the Senate. But by then, senior Democrats and Republicans colleagues were already announcing that a deal in principle had been reached.

The Obama campaign gleefully sent the Post story out to reporters at 4:22 and affixed its own headline: "'Straight Talk Air' lands after deal was announced."

So what happened? I'm not sure anyone knows the full story, but here is my take. When John McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign, Democrats moved quickly to portray the decision as strictly political. (Senator Chuck Schumer said as much in an interview on CNN.) An important element of their case was convincing reporters that a deal was close and McCain presence was (a) unnecessary, (b) potentially detrimental, or (c) both.

But that's a hard case for them to make for two reasons. First, Harry Reid. On Wednesday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had explicitly called for McCain to use his influence as party leader to bring House Republicans along. "We need, now, the Republicans to start producing some votes for us," Reid said. "We need the Republican nominee for president to let us know where he stands and what we should do." Reid explained that McCain was crucial to any deal because his approval of a deal would give congressional Republicans political cover necessary to sign on to a bipartisan agreement. The second reason: House Republicans were never on board. Earlier this week, they gave Vice President Dick Cheney an earful about their opposition to the deal. Yesterday morning, a group of about 50 conservative House Republicans got together and when one speaker asked for a show of hands from those who support the bailout, less than a handful said they were likely to support it. One staffer for a Republican in House leadership said: “Understand one thing. House Republicans were never on board.”

By this morning, Senator Christopher Dodd and Representative Barney Frank -- the two lead congressional Democrats on this issue -- were telling reporters that a deal was close. But according to House sources, those claims were nonsense. "This was a smart political move by Senator McCain -- working in a bipartisan fashion to try to get something done," says a senior House Republican aide. "It's something he's done in the past." Democrats, this Republican says, immediately began plotting to deny McCain credit for a deal if one was reached and to blame him if a deal was not reached.

At least temporarily, we are seeing an interesting partnership between House Republicans and John McCain. When I asked one GOP Hill staffer whether McCain was serving as a proxy for House Republicans, I was told that such a claim would be too strong but that McCain is, at the very least, trying to give voice to House Republicans skeptical of the bailout. And if that's true, McCain will have an opportunity to bring them along -- or some of them -- to get a deal.

The real question, in the face of increasingly intense media hostility, is whether he’ll actually get credit for doing so.

The Obama campaign's legal counsel has demanded that radio and TV stations ban anti-Obama ads produced by the NRA.

Mark Blumenthal updates his battleground state poll of polls this morning. Like Real Clear Politics, he loads new surveys in his modeling every day to produce a new “average” result by state. According to Blumenthal, 12 states now fall into the “toss-up” category:

Four show a statistically insignificant Obama lead: Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania. And in the remaining eight, McCain holds a statistically insignificant lead: Virginia, New Hampshire, Nevada, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and West Virginia.

Mike Allen writes that over the past week Obama has opened up a lead in the presidential horserace.

But as the McCain campaign argued yesterday, averaging a number of polls – like Blumenthal does – gives a more accurate picture of the race.

And here’s something to think about. Just for fun, I plugged Blumenthal’s winner for each of the 50 states into The American Research Group’s electoral calculator, allocating toss-ups based on the albeit “statistically insignificant” leads. Using Blumenthal’s estimates, and comparing them to 2004 results, it looks like Colorado, New Mexico and Iowa switch from Republican to Democrat. New Hampshire is the only state that moves from Democrat to Republican.

The result: a 269-269 Electoral College tie.

A few weeks ago I suggested to my blog friend Kathy Nelson that she read the excellent SNL oral history, Live From New York, as it contains some revealing bits about Al Franken. I had read the book years ago, however, and had forgotten how damning some of the stuff in it was. Kathy has the goods. Here are a couple choice excerpts which seem to point to defining character traits of Franken's:

Franken: There was not as much cocaine as you would think on the premises. Yeah, a number of people got in trouble. But cocaine was used mainly just to stay up. There was a very undisicplined way of writing the show, which was staying up all night on Tuesday. We didn't have the kind of hours that normal people have. And so there was a lot of waiting until Tuesday night, and then going all night, and at two or three or four in the morning, doing some coke to stay up, as opposed to doing a whole bunch, and doing nitrous oxide, and laughing at stuff.

People used to ask me about this and I'd always say, "No, there was no coke. It's impossible to do the kind of show we were doing and do drugs." And that was just a funny lie that I liked to tell. Kind of the opposite was true, unfortunately, for some people, it was impossible to do the show without the drugs.

And then there's this:

Franken: I had heard Spiro Agnew was going to be on Tom Snyder's show, so I just wanted to meet him and harass him a little bit. I brought a tape recorder and went down to their studios on six. Agnew was in the makeup room, so I sat down in the next makeup chair as he was getting made up and I said something like, "You called student protesters bums, and aren't you the bum?--I think that's what I said--"because you took money?" And he just said, "I never called them bums. That was Nixon." It was like beneath his dignity to address this kid with long hair and to spend too much time on it.

I thought I'd pressed the button to start the tape recorder, but I didn't. I'd had it on and turned it off or something. So I didn't get it on tape. And then I also felt stupid because I checked it out and I was wrong: Nixon had called students bums. At least I did get to say to Agnew that he was a bum.

Leave aside the cocaine and the unpleasant image of a 23-year-old employee running around confronting people who are guests of his employer. What's striking is Franken's casual disregard for the truth. He didn't just use drugs, he also admits to lying about not using them. (But it was a funny lie?) Then Franken accuses Agnew of saying something that he didn't say. Agnew calls him on it. Yet when Franken later realizes his mistake he revels in having made the false accusation anyway.

Here’s the situation we McCain-sympathizing/Paulson-plan-skeptics/populist-inclined/but we’ve-got-to-be-responsible-in-a-crisis types face:

1. Something probably needs to be passed soon.

2. There are almost certainly superior alternatives to Paulson or even (especially?) to Paulson-as-modified (see, for example, this).

3. There’s not enough time to write a new plan, get a consensus behind it, etc.

So: 4. We need to pass Paulson-as-modified ASAP.

McCain will throw his weight behind it and help get it through. But he will also makes clear that, as president--while of course standing behind all obligations incurred and transactions committed to under the Paulson regime--he’s going to take a fresh look. He’s going to convene the best people, he’ll take a look at all the best ideas that have been put forward (ranging from Hillary Clinton’s to Newt Gingrich’s, from direct aid to housing to rights offerings by banks to changing accounting rules, etc.), and he will then plan on modifying/improving/adding to the Paulson plan going forward. This is delicate: McCain needs to reassure markets about the current commitments as well as promise further and better reforms. But this is the right position substantively and, I think, politically. It combines the best of McCain’s impulses, and the twin requirements of presidential leadership: taking responsibility for what has to be done now, and committing to energetic and bold reform in the near future.

Jim Treacher has a fall-over-funny, Onion-esque item:

Misspelling Found in Palin's Personal Journal
By Markos Moulitsas
Special to the New York Times
Saturday, September 20, 2008; A1

Media Bubble, Sept. 20 -- John McCain's presidential campaign is reeling this morning upon allegations that his running mate, Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin, is a poor speller. The charge stems from a passage found in her personal journal, which was obtained by the New York Times via an anonymous source.

"Trig was born one week ago today," the journal's Apr. 25, 2008 entry reads. "I love him so much. This is such a joyus [sic] time for our family."

Merriam-Webster.com has no entry for "joyus." However, "joyous" is defined as "joyful." Palin has ignored all requests for comment on the controversy which has been dubbed "Dummygate."

"I am gobsmacked," said the NYT's source. "Little did I realize when I bought a plane ticket to Alaska, broke into the governor's house, and vetted through her personal belongings that I would find such a startling, stunning bombshell."

There's more!

I can't believe it.

Bob Schieffer reports:

I am told, Maggie, that the way McCain got involved in this in the first place, the Treasury Secretary was briefing Republicans in the House yesterday, the Republican conference, asked how many were ready to support the bailout plan. Only four of them held up their hands. Paulson then called, according to my sources, Senator Lindsey Graham, who is very close to John McCain, and told him: you've got to get the people in the McCain campaign, you've got to convince John McCain to give these Republicans some political cover. If you don't do that, this whole bailout plan is going to fail. So that's how, McCain, apparently, became involved.

It's Joe Biden spokesman David Wade's thankless job to defend his garrulous gaffe-master of a boss. Here's Wade in action:

"Joe Biden is getting the job done every day, and I guarantee Joe Biden will be Mr. October. He's a closer. He's the vice presidential nominee you want slugging it out in the late innings when proven campaign skills, intestinal fortitude, expertise, and experience matter most. In a big issue election where the small bore ghosts of elections past seem trivial, this is about substance not splash, steak not sizzle."

Obviously, Mr. Wade gets paid by the mixed metaphor. Shouldn't Biden slug it out in the late rounds rather than the late innings? And don't closers pitch rather than slug? Ow - my head hurts. And my heart goes out to poor David Wade, the most underpaid man in America regardless of whatever financial remuneration he receives.

There's a reason voters in presidential races tend to shy away from electing senators. The primary skills of a legislator--talking, compromising, "representing"--are different from those of an executive--deciding, choosing, "executing." There are individuals who have the ability both to deliberate patiently and act energetically--but it's a rare combination. The best legislators tend not to be great executives, and vice-versa.

This year, for the first time in U.S. history, both major party nominees for president are sitting senators. The winner may be the one who can convince some portion of the electorate that he's less "senatorial," and more "presidential," than the other.

That's why McCain's action Wednesday--announcing he would come back to Washington to try to broker a deal to save our financial system--could prove so important. The rescue package that was so poorly crafted and defended by the Bush administration seemed to be sliding toward defeat. The presidential candidates were on the sidelines, carping and opining and commenting. But one of them, John McCain, intervened suddenly and boldly, taking a risk in order to change the situation, and to rearrange the landscape.

Of course his motives were partly election-related. But "the interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place." If candidate McCain, for whatever mixed motives, ends up acting in a way that results in a deal that is viewed as better than the original proposal, and that seems to stabilize the markets and avert a meltdown--he'll benefit politically, and he deserves to. For McCain will have acted presidentially in the campaign--which some voters, quite reasonably, will think speaks to his qualifications to be president.

As for the question of Friday night's debate, which some in the media seem to think more important than saving the financial system--if the negotiations are still going on in D.C., McCain should offer to send Palin to debate Obama! Or he can take a break from the meetings, fly down at the last minute himself, and turn a boring foreign policy debate, in which he and Obama would repeat well-rehearsed arguments, into a discussion about leadership and decisiveness. And if the negotiations are clearly on a path to success, then McCain can say he can now afford to leave D.C., fly down, and the debate would become a victory lap for McCain.

So the action of these few days becomes more important than the talk of that hour and a half Friday night. One could even say the contrast between the two men in action becomes the true debate over who should be president. The media, being talkers and debaters, love debates, overestimate their importance, and are underestimating the possible effect of McCain's dramatic action. In the debate itself, McCain should mock the media's greater concern for gabbing than solving our economic problems, and should associate Obama with such a talk-heavy media-type approach to politics. If the race is between an energetic executive and an indecisive talker, the energetic executive should win.

John Podhoretz takes on the already congealing conventional wisdom that McCain suspended his campaign in response to a couple of bad polls.

From the Boston Globe:

In response to a question from an American student about whether he supports Democratic nominee Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, Ahmadinejad did not explicitly name Obama but said: “The American government 28 years ago decided on its own to cut its ties with Iran . . .We do prefer to have relations, whereas one of the candidates in this election would prefer that.”

This is what playing the race card looks like:

Rep. Alcee Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin because “anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks.”

“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

John McCain is suspending his campaign and wants to delay the first debate (now scheduled for Friday night) in order to focus on the financial crisis. Here are McCain's remarks as prepared for delivery in New York City today:

America this week faces an historic crisis in our financial system. We must pass legislation to address this crisis. If we do not, credit will dry up, with devastating consequences for our economy. People will no longer be able to buy homes and their life savings will be at stake. Businesses will not have enough money to pay their employees. If we do not act, ever corner of our country will be impacted. We cannot allow this to happen.

Last Friday, I laid out my proposal and I have since discussed my priorities and concerns with the bill the Administration has put forward. Senator Obama has expressed his priorities and concerns. This morning, I met with a group of economic advisers to talk about the proposal on the table and the steps that we should take going forward. I have also spoken with members of Congress to hear their perspective.

It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the Administration’s proposal. I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time.

Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. I have spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me.

I am calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.

We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved. I am directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the commission on presidential debates to delay Friday night’s debate until we have taken action to address this crisis.

I am confident that before the markets open on Monday we can achieve consensus on legislation that will stabilize our financial markets, protect taxpayers and homeowners, and earn the confidence of the American people. All we must do to achieve this is temporarily set politics aside, and I am committed to doing so.

Following September 11th, our national leaders came together at a time of crisis. We must show that kind of patriotism now. Americans across our country lament the fact that partisan divisions in Washington have prevented us from addressing our national challenges. Now is our chance to come together to prove that Washington is once again capable of leading this country.

Update: An announcement from Obama spokesman Bill Burton:

At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama’s call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details.

Update II: Obama's campaign says the debate is on.

In response to Joe Biden's statement that he and Barack Obama are not supporting clean coal because it's "killing" Americans, the McCain campaign produced this ad:

Very nicely done.

Via Ben Smith, Bill Clinton tells CNN's Larry King in an interview about his plans to help Obama win Florida:

"You know, they think that because of who I am and where my politic[al] base has traditionally been, they may want me to go sort of hustle up what Lawton Chiles used to call the 'cracker vote' there."

Is Clinton intentionally trying to stir up racial resentment by saying that "they" (presumably the Obama campaign) want him to "hustle up ... the 'cracker vote'"? According to a search in Nexis, Clinton has never publicly used the phrase "cracker vote" before now. Lawton Chiles did use the word "cracker" in a non-pejorative manner, once during a campaign event with Clinton in 1996 according to a Hearst newspapers story:

"I know this fella from Arkansas," boasted Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles as he introduced Bill Clinton to a Democratic fund-raising reception in this GOP stronghold. "And I can tell you he knows how to speak cracker."

There's been a lot of paranoid speculation in this election that certain people are trying to play the race card. Clinton's usage is the latest evidence that it's the Democrats who are the race-obsessed party in this cycle.

McCain-Palin campaign lead pollster, Bill McInturff, and Director of Strategy, Sarah Simmons, conducted a conference call this morning in response to the ABC News/Washington Post poll released today showing Barack Obama opening up a 52 percent to 43 percent lead over John McCain. McInturff sees the national numbers very differently, arguing the race overall and in the battleground states is relatively stable--particularly when many polls are averaged. Even looking at just the last week, an average of the public polling suggests the campaign is within the margin of error, and has basically been that way for the month of September.

McInturff believes the ABC News/Washington Post poll is clearly an outlier. He reminded listeners that survey samples are within the margin of error 95 percent of the time; 5 percent of polls are just out of whack. This is one of those, he said. McInturff argues the 16-point Democratic party ID advantage in the poll is the root of the problem. There is no evidence of a party ID shift that would justify that much of a Democratic edge. He said this survey reminded him of a Los Angeles Times survey conducted in June that similarly overestimated the percent of Democrats in the electorate. This poll is also out of line with additional polls McInturff says his company (Public Opinion Strategies) conducts every night for other political campaign clients.

A couple other points:

This Friday night John McCain and Barack Obama meet in the first presidential general election debate in Oxford, Mississippi. The subject: national security. The stakes are high for both camps--or are they?

Political scientist Tom Holbrook argues that despite all the emphasis on the debates, these events move the numbers less than many might think. Analyzing movement in national polls following debates in the past five presidential elections (1988-2004), he writes:

These data suggest that the norm is for very little swing in candidate support following debates. Across all thirteen presidential debates the average absolute change in candidate support was 1 percentage point. There are a few notable exceptions, of course. Two that stand out are the second debate in 1992, following which George H.W. Bush lost 2 points, and first debate of 2004, after which George W. bush lost 2.26 points. Other debates with above average (but still small) vote shifts are the first debate in 1996 and the second debates in 1988 and 2000.

However, Holbrook also notes the “cumulative” effect of all three debates might produce more movement in the polls.

Focusing on single debate bumps may be obscuring a more general, cumulative effect of debates. The last column in the table

shows the change in candidate support from one week prior to the first debate to one week after the final debate. Here we see that the debate period generated a 2.42 point bump for George H. W. Bush in 1988, cost Al Gore 3.52 points in 2000, and cost George W. Bush almost 2 points in 2000

Bottom line according to Holbrook:

I don't expect to see large swings in candidate support following the individual debates, barring something really spectacular happening. However, even relatively small shifts in the same direction over the three debates could make this relatively tight race even tighter (if the shifts favor McCain), or could blow it open (if the shifts favor Obama).

I don’t care; I’m still watching!

Read Holbrook’s entire post here.

A Democratic legislator in Alaska who sponsored a bill to require the state to pay for the cost of examining the victims of rapes and collecting evidence has told the press that Wasilla, the town where Sarah Palin was mayor, resisted this measure:

"It was one of those things everyone could agree on except Wasilla," Croft told CNN. "We couldn't convince the chief of police to stop charging them."

CNN cites a report that Wasilla's police chief said he wanted to charge the rapists rather than the taxpayers for these bills. But Jim Geraghty reports there appears to be no evidence that victims were actually billed. He writes: "in six committee meetings, Wasilla was never mentioned, even when the discussion turned to the specific topic of where victims were being charged." Also:

The deputy commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Public Safety told the State Affairs Committee that he has never found a police agency that has billed a victim. In light of Wasilla’s low number of rapes according to available FBI statistics (one to two per year, compared to Juneau’s 30-39), and the fact that the Wasilla Finance Department cannot find any record of charging a victim for a rape kit, it is entirely possible that no victim was ever charged.

Del Smith, the state’s deputy commissioner at the Department of Public Safety, testified in support of the rape-kit-charging-ban legislation during multiple hearings. During one, state representative Jeannette James asked if she “understood correctly that Mr. Smith is saying that the department has never billed a victim for exams.”

Smith replied that “the department might have been billed, but he has not found any police agency that has ever billed a victim.”

To clarify: In preparation to attend a hearing and support the bill, one of the state’s top law-enforcement officials found no case of a rape victim ever being charged. And roughly a month after 30 Democratic lawyers, investigators, and opposition researchers, not to mention reporters from every major news agency in the country, landed in Alaska, we still have no instances to consider.

The allegation against Palin in the nation’s most widely distributed paper a couple weeks ago — “An aide to a Democratic state legislator tells USA Today that women in Wasilla did pay out of pocket for their rape kits” — is clearly not sufficient, considering the gravity of the charge, the obvious motive to paint Palin badly, and the lack of any corroborating evidence.

There is no indication that Sarah Palin was aware that these costs weren't already covered by the government by law, but if CNN and USA Today want to write this kind of story, perhaps these news outlets should cover reports that in 2004 there were cases in Barack Obama's Illinois of caseworkers "reporting that rape victims continue to be charged for their forensic exams."

Mark Steyn has some rather pointed observations regarding John McCain’s political maneuvers during the economic crisis:

I dunno about a nine-point lead, Kathryn, but clearly the Obama campaign self-destruct effort managed to stall during Bailout Week.

As a general rule, when economic matters are in the news, I would recommend Senator McCain go to Bermuda for a few days and play canasta on the veranda until everything quietens down. Obama and Biden are just as witless on the subject but at least their platitudes and class warfare don't actively depress their base - unlike McCain's nutty improvisations re Andrew Cuomo*. If only we could get back to the heady days when the Democrat-media axis was demanding Sarah Palin's obstetrician produce the birth video.

(*By the way, this is what I loathe about long-serving senators: Politics is all Rolodex.)

The nine-point lead Steyn references is in regards to a new ABC poll that shows McCain trailing Obama by – you guessed it – nine points. Like Steyn, I also “don’t know” about the nine-point lead that ABC finds. With the reliable Rasmussen and more volatile Gallup tracking polls both showing a tightening race over the past week, the ABC effort seems like an outlier.

But that surmise shouldn’t obscure what a dismal week it’s been for the McCain campaign. For reasons of space, I won’t document all of the Maverick’s pratfalls since the Lehman bankruptcy, but I will observe that McCain sure has shoved a lot of campaigning clumsiness into ten short days. It’s hard to believe a candidate not named Biden could produce twin whoppers along the lines of Chris Cox being the economy’s grand villain and Andrew Cuomo being its savior in such a brief span of time.

So what has happened politically in the week and a half that we’ve danced along the cusp of financial calamity? The past fortnight has been the equivalent of the Olympics – no one has paid any attention to the presidential candidates or their increasingly tiresome race. Low end news gatherers (i.e. normal people) will only tackle so much news at one time. Obama’s equivocations and McCain’s serial stumbles happily haven’t made the cut with the Great Depression redux looming. That’s why we’ve seen the race revert back to its historic mean of Obama holding a very slight lead.

But the game will likely resume on Friday with the first presidential debate. If Warren Buffet’s show of support combined with the looming passage of some governmental plan settles the markets by the end of the week – admittedly a big “if” - Obama and McCain will have the stage to themselves when they tangle on Friday. Even though the debate is supposed to focus on foreign policy, I have a feeling the economy will come up. Obama will doubtlessly offer up some palaver about Main Street and Wall Street – I love it when he talks about those two places since he understands neither.

As for McCain, who knows what he’ll say? We can only hope and expect that he’ll improve on his efforts of the past ten days.

Jason Furman, a senior economic adviser to Barack Obama, didn't use those exact words. But how else to interpret this comment about the current financial mess that he gave the Washington Post?

"This is a major fiscal problem in the short run, but it doesn't alter the long-term fiscal picture."

Following the July 2007 Democratic debate during which Barack Obama said that as president he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea without precondition, Joe Biden told National Review's Byron York that Obama's statement was "naive":

Sen. Joseph Biden, who has emerged as the clear-eyed antiwar realist in the Democratic race, told National Review Online that the idea of a president meeting with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and others was “naïve.” “World leaders should not meet with other world leaders unless they know what the agenda is, so you don’t end up being used,” Biden said. “When I went to meet with Milosevic before the war, the condition I met with him was that no press would be available, I’d only meet him in his office late at night, and I wouldn’t dignify being seen with him.”

The last 24 hours have amounted to Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day for Joe Biden, so I doubt anybody in the press corps would be so cruel as to ask Biden if he still stands by his words.

But hopefully John McCain will remind everyone of Biden's assessment of Obama's "naive" foreign policy during Friday night's debate.

...wolves are more equal than caribou, says the Humane Society in its endorsement of Barack Obama. The Humane Society Legislative Fund's president writes that the group has never before endorsed a presidential candidate, but Sarah Palin simply poses too great of a threat to animals:

While McCain's positions on animal protection have been lukewarm, his choice of running mate cemented our decision to oppose his ticket. Gov. Sarah Palin's (R-Alaska) retrograde policies on animal welfare and conservation have led to an all-out war on Alaska's wolves and other creatures. Her record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to animals than any other current governor in the United States.

Palin engineered a campaign of shooting predators from airplanes and helicopters, in order to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters. She offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf as an economic incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more of the animals, even though Alaska voters had twice approved a ban on the practice. This year, the issue was up again for a vote of the people, and Palin led the fight against it -- in fact, she helped to spend $400,000 of public funds to defeat the initiative.

As noted earlier on the blog, the program Palin supported killed 124 wolves and saved an estimated 1,500 moose and 3,000 caribou. Granted, the program's intent was to provide more caribou and moose to be hunted by Alaskans, but I'm guessing that not all of those 4,500 moose and caribou not killed by wolves were shot by hunters.

Accompanying the endorsement are these Obama and Palin photos:

Given the Humane Society's decision to veer off into PETA territory, I wonder what the group thinks of Obama's admission than he's gone spearfishing.

Via Ben Smith, another brilliant Biden quote from his interview with Katie Couric:

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed," Biden told Couric. "He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

As Reason's Jesse Walker footnotes it: "And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, 'Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'"

Can you imagine the commentariat's reaction if Sarah Palin had made this gaffe?

Pollster Steve Lombardo makes some noteworthy points about the presidential race in a post yesterday at Pollster.com. First, he argues the contest is “on the verge of becoming a single-issue election.” Lombardo cites the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll showing “economy and jobs” (48%) trumps terrorism and national security (14%), gas prices and energy policy (10%), healthcare (10%) and the war in Iraq (8%) as the most important issue to voters.

While this issue matrix would seem to benefit Obama, it’s unclear that it does. Lombardo writes:

Obama has failed to convert the nation's deep economic anxiety into an electoral advantage (yet). The same CBS-NYT poll gave Obama a five-point lead (48% to 43%). While this is a modest lead it is surprisingly shallow given the Democratic lead in party identification and on the generic ballot. It certainly means (without benefit of the cross-tabs) that a large chunk of voters who think the economy is the most important issue are voting for McCain.

He also references some comparable Gallup data from this point in September 2000 and 2004 that underscores the closeness of the 2008 race and how it could still significantly shift.

Sept 16 - 18 2008: Obama 48%, McCain 44%

Sept 13 - 15 2004: Bush 52%, Kerry 44%

Sept 16 - 18 2000: Gore 49%, Bush 41%

Lombardo observes, "In 2000 the debates and intervening campaign events turned the tide; in 2004 they did not. McCain needs to do well in the debates or it will be very difficult to buck the current environment." Finally, he points to the pivotal nature of Colorado:

In 2004 Bush beat Kerry in Colorado by 52% to 47%. He beat Gore by ten points in 2000 (Nader had a sizable impact, garnering five percent of the vote in the state).

There has been a lot of talk about Colorado being the new Florida. Several smart political commentators have suggested that the race may come down to this one state. It is an interesting analysis. Certainly the state has moved from a "safe red" to a toss-up. Here are some demographics to consider:

o Only 41% native to the state, so the electorate is shifting with new arrivals
o 75% white, 4% black, 17% Hispanic
o 14% military vets is high, not to mention lots on active duty, especially in Colorado Springs
o Thought of as a rural state, but population is actually 85% urban, mostly in Denver and its suburbs
o Colorado Springs is the state's second-largest city
o 33% of state is college graduates, a bit below the national average
o 21% blue collar, 65% white collar, 15% gray collar, so, again, it defies traditional perception as blue-collar/rural

I disagree with Lombardo on one point. He believes McCain can’t win without Colorado, and thinks the election might come down to Virginia.

Yes, Colorado is important and is truly a toss-up in this election. But it is no more important than Ohio, Virginia or Florida. Given the recent historical presidential voter pattern, if this state moves into Obama's column it will mean an electoral blowout for the Illinois senator. Virginia is more likely to be the state that settles this race.

I see a McCain path to victory even if he loses Colorado, but that makes Virginia a must-win.

Read Lombardo’s full post here.

Joe Biden issued a pretty muddled statement walking back his remarks that this Obama campaign ad mocking John McCain's inability to send an email was "terrible":

“Having now reviewed the ad, it is even more clear to me that given the disgraceful tenor of Senator McCain’s ads and their persistent falsehoods, his campaign is in no position to criticize, especially when they continue to distort Barack’s votes on an issue as personal as keeping kids safe from sexual predators.”

So does Biden think that mocking McCain's inability to email--something that is difficult for McCain because of his war injuries--isn't terrible? Or just that it's fair game because the McCain campaign has supposedly distorted Obama's votes?

Patrick Healy of the pro-Obama advocacy organization New York Times explains that Biden "was referring to a McCain campaign ad that distorted Mr. Obama’s position on sexual education; that ad asserted that Mr. Obama favored sex education for little children, based on his support for a comprehensive sex education bill as an Illinois legislator. As for kindergarten students, the bill was intended to teach them about sexual predators, and parents of children of all ages would have been allowed to withdraw their children from the classes."

Actually, that's Obama campaign spin. The text of the sex-ed bill Obama supported reads: "Each class or course in comprehensive sex education in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV." But it's probably not fair to blame the Times for ignoring the text of the bill. Really, we should blame the McCain campaign for the media's decision to lap up Obama's talking points.

The NRA has released four new ads attacking Obama. This one takes aim at Obama's remarks about folks bitterly clinging to their guns and religion:

Hat tip: Hot Air

John McCain said last night on 60 Minutes that he would consider nominating Clinton Administration HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo to chair the Security and Exchange Commission in a McCain administration.

This may be the dumbest single thing John McCain has said during the course of the 2008 presidential campaign and suggests he simply wasn't paying attention during Cuomo's corrupt tenure at HUD. Cuomo's tenure was marked by shady business associations, the deeply politicized use of taxpayer dollars that John McCain criticizes in his stump speech, and, worst of all, the kinds of high-risk loans schemes that have characterized the current housing and economic crisis.

Cuomo, who announced his run to be governor of New York just nine days after he left HUD, used the federal housing bureaucracy as his de facto campaign headquarters. HUD pumped out slick, high-dollar brochures that touted his "accomplishments" in areas that had nothing to do with housing. The photos for some of those taxpayer-financed brochures ended up on Cuomo's campaign website.

As it happens, I looked carefully at Cuomo's HUD tenure back in the spring of 2001.

As HUD secretary, he paid lavish attention to New York. He showered his home state—particularly the electorally important upstate region—with federal dollars, and essentially used HUD as his gubernatorial campaign headquarters.

In his final 13 months as HUD secretary, Cuomo made 46 official trips. More than half of those—25—were to New York. California, his second favorite destination, saw Cuomo 4 times in the same period.

"I did more for upstate New York from Washington than the [Pataki] administration has done from Albany," Cuomo said in February. And locals, at least in the short term, are grateful.

But New York housing officials are worried that Cuomo’s self-promotion could have negative, real-dollar consequences for the upstate economy. Some of the money for HUD’s $100 million Erie Canal Corridor Initiative came as so-called Section 108 loans. Through the program, small cities and towns put up future HUD allocations as collateral for present loans. If the loans go bad, the future money is lost.

"HUD has, in effect, mortgaged our future money," says Joseph Lynch, New York’s top housing official, whose career spans four decades. "There are probably more [Section] 108 loan guarantees in New York than in the entire country." Another high-ranking New York housing administrator agrees. "We’ve got a black cloud over us for the next 18 years, all so [Cuomo] could issue press releases."

Worse news for Cuomo: A report this spring from HUD’s New York-based inspector general’s office rips the entire Erie Canal Corridor project and claims, "While the Initiative has produced limited successes by means of public improvement projects, most activities have been slow moving; thus, compromising the Initiative’s ultimate success."

Cuomo frequently criticized New York Governor George Pataki for using taxpayer funds for his campaign. On the surface, it was political hypocrisy at its worst. But it was smart. By leveling those charges against his opponent -- and doing so first -- Cuomo inoculated himself from the same claims. Still, when I asked him about a congressional report detailing his misdealings, he first disputed its findings and then explained them.

"That was incorrect. That was incorrect," he said, of the congressional report. "First of all, I represented every—the airplane is different. The airplane is, look at the specifics. You say one thing, and you do another. That’s what the airplane is. You say one thing and do another. The advertising, you say one thing and do another. Vieques, you say one thing you do another. And that’s troubling. I don’t care what you believe, but believe something and then be consistent. And I can disagree with you, but at least stand in front of me and be honest.

"As far as my coming to New York, first of all I worked in every state," he explained. "Second of all I was from New York, and anyone who understands how government and politics works, knows when you’re a cabinet secretary from a certain state, the administration tends to use you in that state. That’s why you have a cabinet secretary from all different parts of the country. And when you need to communicate in that state, you use that cabinet secretary. So that’s sort of a silly, silly point. When I was HUD secretary I went into a lot of houses. Yeah, but that sorta goes with the construct."

This is the exchange McCain had with Scott Pelley last night.

Scott Pelley: I'm curious. If you wanna fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the SEC, who would you replace him with?

McCain: This may sound a little unusual, but I've admired Andrew Cuomo. I think he is somebody who could restore some credibility, lend some bipartisanship to this effort.

Pelley: He's a Democrat.

McCain: Oh, yes.

Pelley: He served in the cabinet of President Clinton.

McCain: Yes. And he did a good job. And he has respect. And he has prestige.

A good job? Now that is bad judgment.

Remember that sneaking suspicion the media was swooning over Barack Obama this summer? Time magazine covers, coverage of Obama with Germans rediscovering their love for mass rallies, etc. Turns out, based on media mentions, the Democratic nominee did get a lot more attention. The chart below developed by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political scientist Tom Holbrook provides some nice visual confirmation. Looks like things evened out during the Republican convention and look a lot more balanced in September. Holbrook reminds us his data do not evaluate the content or tone of the media coverage (positive or negative), just the amount.

Read Holbrook’s full post here.

The Wall Street Journal's Laura Meckler reports:

Don’t be shocked if you see the McCain campaign pull the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright out of mothballs in new attacks against one-time parishioner, Barack Obama.

McCain advisers say that they see “attack by association” as fair game now, arguing that Obama’s campaign has been using that technique to go after McCain. In particular, the Obama campaign has hammered McCain on the stump and in TV ads on the number of one-time lobbyists working for his campaign. (The McCain campaign is also angry about a Spanish-language TV ad that ties McCain to Rush Limbaugh on immigration, without ever saying that McCain took on Limbaugh and others to fight for comprehensive immigration reform.)

“They played it one way, we played it another way,” said one of McCain’s top advisers, Mark Salter. “Now we’re both going to play it the same way.” [...]

Asked whether to expect attacks involved Wright, campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb said: “We’ve seen all throughout the (Democratic) primary this guy has a lot of associations that are very problematic.”

In April, McCain said that he did not believe that Obama shared Wright’s controversial views and said he opposed an anti-Obama advertisement that invoked his name run by the North Carolina Republican party. But he also suggested that the subject was fair play after Obama said that questions about Wright were “a legitimate political issue.”

“If he believes that,” McCain said in April, “then it will probably be a political issue.”

Do we have to wait until October to get the Ahmadinejad version of this?

John McCain said today that if he were the president, he would fire SEC Chairman Chris Cox. Some Democrats have made hay of this statement, asserting that because the SEC is an "independent agency," the president can't fire the chairman. For examples of that criticism, see that ABC blog post linked above, or ABC's subsequent "Fact Check," or the folks at Daily Kos.

Daily Standard contributor Adam White, an attorney, writes in explaining that McCain's critics are completely wrong:

It's true that the SEC is an "independent agency," and that the statute creating the SEC (specifically, Section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934) doesn't expressly state that the president can fire SEC commissioners. But the law on this point is well settled: As the D.C. Circuit reiterated as recently as last month, in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, 537 F.3d 667, 668-69 (D.C. Cir. 2008), "[m]embers of the Commission, in turn, are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate and subject to removal by the President for cause; its chairman is selected by and serves at the pleasure of the President."

The courts have never said that Congress can completely prevent a president from firing officials of an independent agency. At best, Congress can limit the president to firing such officials only "for cause," and the term "for cause" is generally interpreted pretty broadly.

Today wasn't the first time Barack Obama asked his supporters to "get in the face" of people who disagree with Sen. Obama. In fact, yesterday's Chicago Tribune carried an illuminating story on the "Obama Action Wire"--Obama's flash-mob tool designed to disrupt media criticism of the candidate in real time. (h/t Steve Sailer)

Here's how the Obama Action Wire Works: The campaign has a large database of supporters. When the campaign gets wind of something in the media it doesn't like, for instance, a radio interview with an Obama critic or a TV ad being run critical of Obama, the Action Wire directs people in the database to flood the offending media outlet with phone calls and emails. Many times, this is done while the interview is being conducted on air.

It did so as recently as Monday night, when it orchestrated a massive stream of complaints on the phone lines of Tribune Co.-owned WGN-AM in Chicago when the radio station hosted author David Freddoso, who has written a controversial book about the Illinois Democrat. . . .

Zack Christenson, executive producer of "Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg," said the response was about the same. "It's just constant, constant phone calls, and the e-mails are pouring in," he said, adding that the extra volume of calls made it more difficult to run the show.

The effect of the Action Wire seems to be to create something like a Denial of Service Attack. Now, DoS attacks aren't illegal (at least not in the United States; they are in the U.K.).

But surely it says something about the Obama campaign's commitment to free and fair exchange of ideas that his campaign actively prods people into disrupting the airing of views it finds displeasing. It wasn't always that way. During the primaries, part of Obama's stump speech was about the need to listen to your political opponents and to interact with them politely. Obama didn't mean for this dialogue to result in the compromise of liberal ideals, of course. He explicitly meant that in order to achieve liberal political ends it would be necessary to appear collegial and open-minded in order to persuade independents to join the movement. Here's how he put it in New Hampshire:

[I]n my own life, I've discovered that if you really know what you stand for, if you know what you believe in, if you know who you are fighting for, if you know what you care about and cannot be compromised--then you can afford to reach out across the aisle. You can talk to people who don't agree with you. And you do so not just because you think that you're always going to persuade them, but because people out in America, outside of Washington, are listening.

And they want to see that we can--that we don't have to agree on everything to work on something. That we can disagree without being disagreeable. That's how we can attract independents [to the] change agenda. That's how we can attract some Republicans. That's how we build a working majority for change. .  .  . And you can afford to be courteous. And you can say, "Yes, sir." And "No, sir." "Yes, ma'am." "No, ma'am." But if you're going to be in the way of change, get out of the way--we're pushing you aside. Very politely of course.

As the Action Wire show's Obama is still all for pushing people aside. But he no longer sees the necessity for politeness.

Exit Question: I suppose it's one thing for a candidate to issue orders for what amounts to a DoS attack on media he dislikes. But would President Obama keep the Action Wire up and running?

For all of the paranoid Democratic huffing and puffing that Republicans' are supposedly questioning their religious faith, it's surprising that Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) said at a "roundtable discussion on faith" this morning that “I think the Republicans, frankly, in many ways, have not — do not meet the moral test”.

A Fairbanks TV anchor records a catchy little ditty about Sarah Palin titled "I'm a Sarah-ist."

Barack Obama has released a new two minute commercial in which he looks seriously at the camera and drones on about how he’ll provide serious leadership for our serious financial crisis. The heart of the ad refers the viewer to his Plan, helpfully posted at his website.

Given the Plan’s utter vacuity, I assume the Obama campaign figured no one would actually click on it. The Plan makes twelve promises - none of them have anything to do with Wall Street, investment banking or the general financial crisis. Instead, the much vaunted Plan just offers the chewed Wonder Bread of previous Obama plans like “enact(ing) a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills.”

Hey, if President Obama’s going to give me $1,000, I won’t complain. I bet I’ll even be able to spend the money on something fun like a new hi-def TV rather than my rising bills.

But the Plan, like virtually everything that spins out of the Hope/Change vortex, lacks seriousness. I especially liked Obama’s pledge to “create 5 million green jobs.” That’s just the kind of hard-headed realism we need during challenging times like these! Since Obama is promising the ridiculous, I think he should go all the way. Why not just pledge to issue every American family a unicorn as a household pet? Nothing helps you through troubled times like the love of a faithful unicorn.

Reading the Obama Plan, which his serious commercial treats as a serious blueprint, it becomes painfully obvious that Barack Obama has nothing constructive to say about this week’s events. But maybe I’m jumping the gun. Perhaps his campaign will complete its polling and Obama will soon know whether he approves or disapproves of the AIG bailout.

When the Fannie/Freddie crisis simmered over a few weeks ago, I dismissed the possibility of it making a significant dent on the public consciousness. I figured Fannie and Freddie were too opaque for the common person to understand. After all, even genius congressmen like Barney Frank found the twins inscrutable after having decades to unwind their mysteries. Then again, Fannie and Freddie gave Barney lots of reasons to stifle his normally insatiable curiosity. But now I’m reversing myself – Fannie and Freddie should earn the same level of infamy that Enron did earlier in the decade. The opacity of Enron’s operations certainly didn’t shield the energy giant from public opprobrium.

For years before Fannie and Freddie’s ultimate meltdown, observers warned about the dangers that the renegade twins represented. These observers routinely pointed out how Fannie and Freddie purchased the obedience of congress, especially Democrats in congress. Who were these observers sounding these alarms? In the media, there was the Wall Street Journal editorial page. And in congress, there was John McCain. The Journal put itself on the Fannie beat six years ago. John McCain began screaming for Fan and Fred reform in 2005.

When Barack Obama came to congress in 2005 with his extraordinarily inquisitive mind, he had every reason to know that Fannie and Freddie were bad news. So what did the relentless agent of change blessed with the magnificent judgment do? He instantly became the twins’ favorite kissing cousin in congress. Since 1988, only Chris Dodd has raised more money from Fannie and Freddie than Obama, and Dodd had 20 years to shake down the twins where Obama has had only four.

But Obama’s relationship with the twins runs still deeper. The two Fannie CEOs who did the most to corrupt the company, Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, have close ties with Obama. Raines is one of Obama’s ranking economic advisors. Jim Johnson was actually in charge of vetting Obama’s potential running mates until Obama responded to public pressure and threw Johnson under the bus where he now resides comfortably with Tony Rezko.

Obama’s dealings with Fannie and Freddie are consistent with his pattern. He talks a big game about change, and yet his actions belie the bravado. It’s not that Obama merely fails to live up to his reformer rhetoric. Both in Chicago and in Washington, he somehow wound up keeping close company with the least desirable denizens. In both locales, he showed a bewildering combination of poor judgment and rank hypocrisy.

Please understand – I’m not a big fan of the “Change! Change! Change!” mantra that both candidates have adopted. And I certainly don’t think that whichever candidate manages to say the word “Change!” the most times between now and Election Day deserves to win. If either candidate actually had any ideas on the economy besides chanting “Change,” I’d be much happier to debate those ideas. But since the debate for the moment anyway has boiled down to who is the real agent of change, Barack Obama’s relationship with the twins that have wrought so much damage to our economy is extremely relevant.

In the week to date, the Obama campaign has badly beaten the McCain campaign. McCain’s “planned” gaffe on Monday where he praised the fundamentals of the economy harmed him. I can forgive that error – McCain was doing the responsible thing, trying to help soothe a crisis rather than exploit it.

But since Monday, the McCain campaign has allowed Obama and his surrogates to make a big issue of the fact that some former lobbyists work for the Maverick. The charge is ludicrous but fair enough. The question, however, is why hasn’t the McCain campaign hit back? In the coming days, the McCain campaign should make Fannie and Freddie synonymous with Enron; the only ethical problem in doing so will be the gross unfairness to Enron’s memory.

And then, the McCain campaign should make Obama’s deep connections with the twins famous. The press lampooned George W. Bush for playing golf with Ken Lay and having a nickname for him. Barack Obama’s ties with Fannie and Freddie run considerably deeper. And George W. Bush never had “Change!” as his mantra.

The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe reports on a new Spanish TV ad produced by the Obama campaign:

"They want us to forget the insults we've put up with, the intolerance," the television ad's announcer says in Spanish as a picture of Rush Limbaugh appears onscreen with quotes of him saying, "Mexicans are stupid and unqualified" and "Shut your mouth or get out."

"They made us feel marginalized in a country we love so much," the ad continues. "John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote and another, even worse, that continues the failed policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families."

ABC's Jake Tapper reports that those Limbaugh quotes have been horribly ripped out of context by Obama. Really, you have to read all of Tapper's post to see how utterly dishonest the Obama campaign is.

Just in case Joe Klein, E.J. Dionne, and Michael Crowley don't provide the McCain campaign with any money quotes denouncing this ad to use in a video press release, I'm going to give it a whirl: This is the sleaziest, most despicable and dishonest ad ever, thus leading me to conclude that it's the unholy handiwork of Obama's three closest friends: former business partner and convicted felon Tony Rezko, flag-desecrating unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, and his racist America-hating pastor of 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright--who may or may not be the true father of Michelle Obama's daughters. Have you no shame, Mr. Obama?

(Team McCain should feel free to attribute the above comment to CBS News--they once reproduced an article that I wrote.)

...this is what it would have looked like.*

In reality, Babs helped Obama bank $11 million last night. While addressing the Hollywood crowd, Obama blamed his campaign's difficulties on ... the American people.

“A lot of people have gotten nervous and concerned. Why is this as close as it is? And what’s going on?” Mr. Obama said, speaking to about 300 people over dinner at the Greystone Mansion. “We always knew this was going to be hard – this is a leap for the American people.”

Hmmm, why does Obama think that voting for him "is a leap from the American people"? Is he not-too-subtly pinning his problems on his racist countrymen? Or is he referring to legitimate anxieties Americans might have about their president meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions?

*(The video is from an old McCain appearance on Saturday Night Live.)

As John points out below, John McCain has released a commercial on the economy. The ad is titled “Enough is Enough.” Did I miss the memo that says whichever candidate says this cliché the most times automatically wins? The video and the text follow:

JOHN MCCAIN: The economy is in crisis. Enough is enough. I’ll meet this financial crisis head on.

Reform Wall Street. New rules for fairness and honesty. I won’t tolerate a system that puts you and your family at risk.

Your savings, your jobs … I’ll keep them safe.

ANNCR: Experience and leadership in a time of crisis.

On a related note, McCain has suggested that we form the equivalent of the 9/11 Commission to inquire into how this mess came about. Big hint to any future commissioners: It happened primarily because we have a free market economy! I like this idea a little better than the commercial because I guess it’s a theoretical possibility that the Commission could conclude that in a free market economy, stuff happens. Yes, it’s more likely that the commissioners will suggest a ghastly equivalent of Sarbanes/Oxley for the banking industry, but you know me – I love hope. By the way, if you like what’s happened to your home prices the past 18 months or so, just wait until the government gets around to strangling home demand by making credit even tougher to come by. You’ll love that.

For his part, Senator Obama showed his trademark ignorance of even basic history and absolutely no hint that he understands what’s happening on Wall Street. (He was probably absent the day they taught mortgage backed securities at community organizing school.)

Obama rejected McCain’s call this morning for a national commission modeled after the bipartisan panel that investigated the 9/11 attacks as a desperate ploy, labeling it “the oldest Washington stunt in the book.”

“You pass the buck to a commission to study this problem,” Obama said, rejecting the measure as unnecessary. “We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that get us out. I’ll provide it. John McCain won’t.”

Obama sought to burnish his credentials as a leader who could face tough crises and make deadline decisions. “History shows us that there is no substitute for presidential leadership in a time of economic crisis. FDR and Harry Truman didn’t put their heads in the sand, and hand accountability over to a commission,” Obama said. “Bill Clinton didn’t put off hard choices.”

The Illinois senator said that the events of the past few days have delivered “the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed.” He compared the current crisis to the Savings and Loan failures of the 1980s, which he said resulted in risky financial gambles that failed and required massive taxpayer-funded bailouts. “Does that sound familiar?” Obama asked a crowd of 2,100 in Colorado.

But Obama demurred in endorsing a rescue similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation created in the aftermath of the S&L crisis to bring an end to the banking crisis. One of his top economic advisors, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, has been a leading advocate for a similar government led intervention to buy up and restructure mortgages.

Everyone says I shouldn’t worry about Obama because he’ll have smart advisors. His smartest advisor is probably Paul Volcker, but Obama is apparently perfectly comfortable ignoring his advice. Why? Because Barack Obama will provide “leadership.” Who needs a knowledge of high finance when you have such magnificent leadership in the Oval Office?

The last several weeks of any campaign are bound to be a silly season. And I understand that knee-jerk populism from the candidates probably focus groups better than “stuff happens.” My big concern is that neither candidate has the private sector experience to understand the most basic facts of our economy. In a free market economy, some market players will inevitably make mistakes. Big ones. Those market mistakes will lead to corrections. Painful ones.

Any discipline will come, indeed it must come, from market forces. Lehman Brothers went bankrupt yesterday. The last two men standing in Lehman’s industry, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, surely took notice of this event. To say it is unlikely that they will repeat Lehman’s errors is an understatement.

The political misunderstanding comes here – out of their arrogance and hubris, certain lawmakers think they can provide better discipline than the market. They can’t. The best they can do is toss monkey-wrenches into the market that make it function less efficiently. For the purpose of this metaphor, please consider Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac T-Rex sized monkey-wrenches. The second best Washington can do is put hurdles in the market that the far more agile-minded people who work on Wall Street will glide over, but not without passing the expense of those hurdles onto consumers.

While McCain’s commercial doesn’t float my boat, the appeal for a Commission is at least serious. Let’s pray he leaves it there. If you ask anyone on Wall Street about politicians and how they might relate to the current situation, they’ll say the same thing – they’ll make it worse. Barack Obama got a head start on that yesterday when he tried his best to whip up a panic. Fortunately, everyone knows Obama has no insights on the economy and dismisses any comments he might make on the subject as purely political.

What’s happening on Wall Street right now is actually quite complex and delicate - simple slogans won’t help, and knee-jerk demagoguery will hurt. Unless something more constructive occurs to them, I urge the campaigns to return to lipstick and pigs.

It looks like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has succumbed to the pressure of expectations. After months and months of speculation over whether Democrats would gain 15 seats this year or 30, recent polls now suggest their gains may not even be that high. And according to veteran campaign watcher Stu Rothenberg, the DCCC has just made a huge blunder that could further undercut their effort:

In a curious coincidence of timing, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has added a number of Congressional districts to its various lists of competitive contests at exactly the same time that Republicans are seeing an uptick in their poll and fundraising numbers and an improved political landscape...

Given that, it certainly appears that the DCCC is running a risk by promoting some candidates who have little or no chance to win in the fall, and by lumping together very strong contenders with second-tier campaigns...

Rothenberg points out that the DCCC is now highlighting literally dozens of races where their candidate has little or no shot to win. Their priority races now include the opponents to Charlie Dent, Frank Wolf, Shelley Moore Capito, Steve Scalise, Chris Smith, and Steve King. Election analyst Charlie Cook currently rates two of these seats as 'Likely Republican,' one as 'Lean Republican,' and the rest are not even included on his list of competitive races.

The goal seems to be to prove that the playing field isn't shifting, and that Democrats are still on a roll. Presumably the media and the donors are supposed to be intimidated by the Democrats' "expanded playing field" and think that Democratic gains will be even greater than previously expected, thus squelching funds for GOP candidates.

But if people realize what's going on, this move is more likely to cost seats than gain them. Formerly, the DCCC designated relatively few 'Red to Blue' candidates. The designation was very valuable to challengers, since it signaled to donors should focus their efforts on these races. Now the brand is being devalued, and donors will also be more likely to dissipate their funds over dozens of races -- only a few of which are likely to be competitive. That's another bit of good news for the GOP.

David Brooks adds to the conservative oeuvre of Sarah Palin doubt this morning:

If the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.

And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.

What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events — the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.

How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.

Since the left will imminently exalt this column as supreme wisdom, I guess we can conclude that we are all experience advocates now. Bad news for Obama, no? Even though Brooks offers the semi-ludicrous fig-leaf for Obama that one can gain experience not just by doing things but also by studying history, that favor still doesn’t help Obama very much. Let’s recall that the Democratic nominee thought America liberated Auschwitz and JFK and Khrushchev sat down for a confab at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Obama has made a study of history, his efforts there have met with even less success than his community organizing endeavors.

But what of Brooks’ elevation of “prudence” to such a pedestal? This is an obviously friendly formulation for a guy like Obama, who evidences a supremely cautious nature with nearly every move. And every non-move. Obama is a guy who prefers dithering to action. Remember, it took him over a year to address the Jeremiah Wright issue that threatened to derail his campaign.

But is prudence the mark that distinguishes great leaders? Virtually every conservative would agree that Ronald Reagan was the best president of the past 50 years. “Prudence” is not the word that leaps to mind to describe the Gipper. Barack Obama’s defenders have enjoyed pointing to Abraham Lincoln’s thin background as a defense for their own hero’s lack of portfolio. But is “prudence” really the best word (or even a good word) for the man who boldly fought one of history’s most destructive wars to save the Union?

What Reagan and Lincoln and all other great leaders had in common were the proper convictions and the courage to stand by those convictions. Reagan by the standards of his time was in fact legendarily imprudent. The ever-prudent foreign policy establishment of Reagan’s era wanted to make nice with the Soviet Union. Reagan’s philosophy was simpler and more direct – “We win, they lose.” Similarly, Lincoln chose the bold course that his convictions dictated. The course he chose cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and no one today says he was wrong. The Copperheads, however, took a much more “prudent” view of things.

Again comparing Palin to Obama since they’re the two parties most relevant to this conversation, do we know what their convictions are and whether they’ll have the courage to stick to them? Obama’s convictions have been a moving target to date. I’m hardly the first to notice that many of his purported convictions, be they in regards to FISA reform or accepting public financing for his campaign or negotiating with Ahmadenijad without preconditions, seem to expire when they become inconvenient. As far as Palin is concerned, her instincts for small and responsible government seem sound and have a track record. But the public is curious about Palin’s convictions on a wide range of subjects including foreign policy matters. The McCain campaign should allow the vice presidential nominee to satisfy this curiosity.

Of course, it almost goes without saying that the top of the Republican ticket, John McCain, has made his convictions well known over the past four decades. No need for guesswork there.

BROOKS DID HINT at a key thing to successful governance – having the skills to actually get the job done. It’s a wonder why he didn’t explore this avenue in more detail. Sarah Palin has actually been a successful governor. Barack Obama has been an unsuccessful community organizer, a law school lecturer, a junior associate at a law firm and a non-entity state senator who perfected the art of voting present. (Prudence!) Many Obama supporters blithely posit that Obama has the skills necessary to successfully govern. It would be refreshing if just once they acknowledged that they reached this conclusion not because of any actual Obama accomplishments but because of the chill he sends up their legs when he reads from a teleprompter.

Once again, Palin by this metric comes out not just ahead of Obama but way ahead. She has proven a capable governor, one who got things done. Even the Democrats in Alaska concede as much. True, extrapolating from Alaska to the White House is a big jump. But why does every commentator who highlights the length of this jump ignore the fact that the Obama campaign is asking the voters to make a much longer leap of faith?

Watch it:

The spot was produced by the 527 BornAliveTruth.org, which will spend $350,000 airing the ad next week in Ohio and New Mexico. The narrator of the commercial, Gianna Jessen, a woman who survived an abortion 31 years ago, was on Hannity & Colmes last night:

Harvey Mansfield has a short, brilliant piece on Sarah Palin, Simone de Beauvoir, and feminism, at Forbes.com.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

Was feminism necessary to produce Sarah Palin's fine performance at the Republican Convention? She is of course no heroine to radical feminists, who disliked everything she said, but could one rightly say--could they say--that she is indebted to their brand of feminism for the opportunity she used so successfully? I'm speaking of the feminism that says that women can be equal to men only when they are held to be the same as men.

Sarah Palin was appealing and accomplished, with the force of a man and the grace of a woman. But while reaching another, higher first for women, she expressed no gratitude to the women's movement. She has had good words for women politicians like Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton, but she showed none of the features that betray the feminist in action. On the contrary: She spoke proudly of "my guy," grateful to the man who was hers--implying that she needed him, and that any woman needs a guy of her own. She introduced her children, especially little Trig, the one with Down's syndrome. She was displaying a mother's unconditional love, as opposed to the conditional love that insists on a "wanted" child. She did these things unapologetically, quite unafraid of seeming to be a normal, healthy sexist female: one who knows what it is to be a woman and enjoys it.”

Read the whole thing. Twice.

By the way, I hope I get to be there when the Palins have Mansfield over to dinner at the vice president’s residence.

David Gibson wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Friday:

Mr. Biden, the Delaware senator and now Barack Obama's running mate, has a more sophisticated understanding of Catholic tradition, as well as a mixed record on abortion rights (opposing public funding and late-term abortion, for instance)

But in 2007, Biden voted in favor of taxpayer funding for abortions. According to the National Right to Life Committee, Biden has not voted to restrict funding for abortion since 1999. Barack Obama has said that that the Freedom of Choice Act is the first bill he would sign upon entering the White House. That bill would strike down all federal and state restrictions on abortion, including the Hyde Amendment which prevents federal tax dollars from paying for abortions.

In a 2004 Zogby poll commissioned by the NRLC, voters opposed taxpayer funding for abortion 74 percent to 22 percent. I'm willing to bet that most voters don't know that an Obama-Biden administration plans on spending their taxes on abortions. The McCain campaign might want to inform them.

Hat tip: NRO

In light of the reports of voter fraud being committed in Michigan by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a reader sends along this story from a few weeks ago reporting that dozens of ACORN workers are similarly under investigation for voter fraud in Milwaukee:

• Seventeen apparently filled out voter applications and then signed the cards themselves. That involved two to four cards in each case.

• Twelve submitted cards for individuals who later told ACORN they never filled out an application. That involved one card in each case.

• One submitted a card for a dead voter. That was the second such case; a Voters Project worker previously submitted a card for a deceased voter.

• One was apparently making up driver’s license numbers for an unknown number of voters.

• One submitted about a half-dozen applications for already-registered voters.

In 2004, ACORN-related voter fraud plagued Milwaukee County. Bush lost Wisconsin that year by 11,000 votes.

The Obama campaign continues to struggle gaining significant support among white working class voters. Ron Brownstein writes in his most recent piece:

In the Diageo/Hotline daily tracking survey this week, Obama was winning just 30 percent of white men without a college education, even lower than the meager 35 percent share that exit polls recorded for John Kerry in 2004. Among white noncollege women, Obama was attracting just 37 percent, down from Kerry's 40 percent. Among "waitress moms" (married white women without college degrees), Obama was polling just 33 percent in the Diageo/Hotline survey, no improvement on Kerry's anemic 32 percent.

Anemic popularity with blue-collar whites could haunt the Democrats through November. Do you tone down liberal cultural rhetoric and policy to attract a greater share of moderate-to-conservative low-income white voters? Or do you just minimize losses among the blue collar voters and try to convince upscale swing voters McCain/Palin are out of touch? Brownstein captures the dilemma:

Economic hard times may indeed allow Obama to regain some ground among working-class whites by November. But given Obama's previous difficulties with that group--and the power of the cultural connection that Palin is establishing--some analysts wonder whether he might be better served by shifting his focus toward upscale voters more likely to recoil from a Republican ticket that wants to ban abortion and has praised the teaching of creationism.

The folks who write at The Democratic Strategist provide a window into their party’s thinking about how to handle this problem in the remaining weeks of the campaign:

In the long run there is no question that Democrats must develop a strategy for winning a substantial group of working class voters if they wish to create an enduring Democratic majority. But, in the next six weeks, it may be that the heaviest emphasis should be put on winning the growing number of thoughtful middle of the road voters who were initially attracted to John McCain but who are increasingly appalled by the kind campaign he has chosen to run.

The angry and vocal left exacerbates this problem for Obama. Instead of building a winning coalition, it appears the Democrats are plagued by zero-sum politics when it comes to appealing both to liberals and lower-income whites. Successful elections are about addition, not subtraction. Strategic dilemmas like this are difficult to fix in the last seven weeks of a campaign.

Jeffrey Feldman is one of the savvier Daily Kos diarists. In a post today, he offers some advice to the moribund/struggling/bumbling/incredibly lame Obama campaign and the campaign's destructive supporters:

STEP 1: STOP WITH THE ENDLESS PALIN DIARIES
I'm talking to you, friend. That's right. You--the diarist who thinks he/she has found the fact or scandal that definitively proves why Sarah Palin will be a bad Vice President, and who thinks he/she has found the most clever and convincing way to present that utterly devastating fact. Stop, already. We have seen it. No more. There are enough 'Sarah Palin is Corrupt, Stupid, Dangerous, and Not Ready' diaries to fill a thousand blogs. We get it!

But even 10,000 more diaries like that will only help McCain--only help him...

STEP 2: TAKE A MINUTE TO REMEMBER OBAMA'S VISION
We can only win this election if the majority of voters in this country (A) know what Obama's vision for America is and (B) agree with it.

Newsflash: People do not hear Obama's vision for the country when we say that John McCain is a 'liar' or that Sarah Palin is 'stupid...'

STEP 3: REMEMBER THE POWER OF REPETITION
If you remember one thing from the last four years of blogging about election debate rhetoric and what it takes to win, remember this: WHAT WE REPEAT IS WHAT THE PUBLIC REMEMBERS.

If we repeat 'Palin, Palin, Palin,' over and over again between now and November--

STEP 4: WRITE IN A WAY THAT STOPS THE FEAR HEMORRHAGING
At the core of this whole obsessive meltdown is a very basic human reaction: we are afraid that the American public will once again be confused by the Republican smear machine and elect yet another dangerous President who will drive this country deeper and deeper into a hole. We. Are. AFRAID.

These are all excellent tips. Well the last one is a little loopy, but why split hairs? But are Obama-supporting communities like the Daily Kos capable of following them? For years now, the central aspect of the left's worldview has been its hatred for George W. Bush and everything else that bore the Republican taint. Now that the chips are down along with Obama's polling numbers, breaking this habit is proving nearly impossible. No one worships Obama more than the Atlantic Monthly's lead blogger, but even he has allowed his disgust and loathing for all things Republican to completely subsume his work as of late. It's a fact of human nature that when we're pushed, we scurry back to our comfort zones. For the modern American left, passionate loathing of its political opponents has long been its virtual barcalounger.

And that's to say nothing of the Obama campaign's problems. The hope/change thing has run its course, and Obama will have to say something different to cut through the campaign din. That's why I never worried about all the money the Obama campaign might have on hand. The money only matters if you have something worth saying. Since the Obama campaign's message the past week has been "We Don't Like Sarah Palin" and "John McCain is Old," we can assume the campaign's well of meaningful content has run dry. (Of course, they will be able to use all that money to make sure they lose North Carolina by only 15 points, but that's another dubious expense.)

Although the left will doubt my sincerity on this score, I find the devolution of the Obama campaign depressing. Obama was always too liberal for me, and there was frankly no imaginable way I would have voted for him. But back when he was riding high in January, I found him a tremendously attractive figure; I said as much both in print and on the radio. For what it's worth, I still think he's a decent man, albeit one who's greatly unqualified for the presidency. That his followers' bile has so thoroughly drowned out his personal decency and whatever may have been uplifting about the Obama campaign is thoroughly dispiriting.

One last point: A couple of years ago, I called erstwhile Netroots heartthrob and failed congressional candidate Paul Hackett "as mean-spirited a politician as I’ve ever seen...He has shown little except a mean streak. He relishes insulting others. He delighted in calling George W. Bush a chicken-hawk S.O.B. Sort of like a crude political version of Madonna, he loves to shock." Hackett was back in the news this week offering free and frankly disastrous advice for the Obama campaign:

The Palin/McCain ticket reflects a course of action on the part of the Republican party that deftly understands both the strengths and weaknesses of the Democratic ticket and aggressively attacks both. The only antidote for such an assault is a comprehensive and aggressive personal attack on the Republican ticket focusing on how the personal lives of Palin/McCain evidence their personal unreliability and therefore their lack of character and values to lead America coupled with an aggressive defense of the Democratic central theme of Change...

The message is simple and the professionals can refine it but essentially it should contain these elements:

"Sarah Palin? Can't keep her solemn oath of devotion to her husband and had sex with his employee. Sarah Palin? Accidentally got pregnant at age 43 and the tax payers of Alaska have to pay for the care of her disabled child. Sarah Palin? Unable to teach her 16 year old daughter right from wrong and now another teenager is pregnant. Sarah Palin? Can you trust Sarah Palin and her values with America's future? John McCain? Divorced from his first wife one month and marries a billionaire influence peddler and convicted felon. John McCain, a record of rash and impulsive decisions. That’s not change that’s more of the same.”

Ennobling, no? It sure is more of the same, but not the way Hackett intended it to be.

I can tell the Obama campaign that this is a disastrous strategy. So too can the savvy Kos Diarist Jeff Feldman. But even if the Obama campaign wants to follow our sage advice, it may well not matter, The bile and unrestrained fury of the modern left will make much more noise than anything Obama has to say. This particular genie popped out of the bottle years ago, and it's a little late for the apparently few smart Democrats to begin plotting how to shove her back in there.