One Year Ago Tonight

Can one be both an atheist and a messiah?

Josh Marshall, on the Obama portrayed on Fox news and other Republican propaganda outlets:

Barack Obama is noted for his powerful intellect, but I don't think he gets nearly enough credit for the mental dexterity it takes to be simultaneously an Islamic theocrat, atheistic communist and national socialist while posing as a center left candidate. Those must be the compartmentalization skills they taught him at that Manchurian madrasah in Indonesia.

Billmon's Right, as Usual

Billmon hits the nail on the head, Knocks it out of the park, connects with a long bomb deep in the other team's territory, sinks a three pointer from... If I hear one more pundit use a sports metaphor to describe the presidential race (oops, now I'm invoking NASCAR...) my head is going to explode. Anyway, Billmon names the unspoken boogie-man of the Republican Right.

But I think by now it's also very clear that the GOP high commmand -- as far back as the Twin Cities white power rally, if not before -- deliberately adopted the demonization of ACORN/community organizers/the poor as a proxy for the hatred that no longer dares to speak its real name (except at the occasional Sarah Palin rally).

I think this strategy serves two purposes. One is obvious: to play upon traditional racial and class resentments to try to win back middle-class and working-class voters who might otherwise be waivering as they watch their jobs, their homes and their already inadequate retirement savings go spinning around the hole in the bottom of the economic toilet bowl.

We can take a page from John Lewis and call this the George Wallace gambit -- not the Wallace of the stand in the schoolhouse door or the bridge at Selma, but rather the Wallace who ran for president in 1968, '72 and '76 and managed to attract quite a few Northern Democratic votes with his attacks on school busing, affirmative action, fair housing laws and other examples of "social engineering" foisted upon Regular Joe (Joe Sixpack's dad and Joe the Plumber's granddad) by Ivy League professors and pointy-headed government bureaucrats.

Exactly who was supposed to benefit from all that social engineerin' was left unsaid, just as it is today.

Students of American politics know that Wallace's populist rabble rousing was quickly expropriated by the GOP and -- watered down for respectable middle-class consumption -- became one of the weapons used by Richard Nixon and his pit bull of a running mate, Spiro Agnew (Sarah Palin with jowls) to crack open the New Deal coalition.

The ACORN monster, in other words, is a stock character out of a play the Republicans have been performing with mind-numbing efficiency for the past 40 years -- making it the political equivalent of what The Fantasticks is for suburban dinner theater.

Given that the same attacks have been used, in some form or another, against a long line of lily white Democratic candidates, it would be unfair to characterize them as coded attempts to make an issue of Obama's race per se. That's a line the GOP high command apparently is still not willing to cross, even as coded attacks on Obama's alleged "foreignness" (i.e. his middle name) have become the order of the day. It is, however, an obvious coded attack (and very lightly coded at that) on the inner-city poor. And in American political slang, "inner-city poor" is simply a five-syllable substitute for "black".

Morning's Minion's response...

To Dr. Stockpole's reaction to my abortion post, can be found here, and is worth reading. An excerpt:

The fundamental problem with Stackpole's analysis is the following statement: "[to support Obama] you would have to show that McCain supports equivalent intrinsic evils, at least the moral equivalent of Obama's support for abortion."

This would only be the case if voting for a person who supported intrinsically evil acts. To vote for a person who supports an intrinsically evil act while supporting that position oneself is always formal cooperation in evil. But if you do not intend that evil, then you can apply the principle of double effect and vote for that person for proportionate reasons. This is spelled out quiote clearly in the Faithful Citizenship document.

Abortion, the Election, and the Republicans

Via Angela in the comments, Dr. Robert Stackpole posted a series of essays...

http://www.thedivinemercy.org/news/story.php?NID=3248& PLID=75
http://www.thedivinemercy.org/news/story.php?NID=3265& PLID=75
http://www.thedivinemercy.org/news/story.php?NID=3258& PLID=75

...which contain his thoughts on how Catholics ought to vote, given Obama's unreserved support for abortion rights and McCain's problematic positions on other issues.

I come to a different conclusion than Dr.Stackpole, but I respect his decision and don't question the sincerity of his arguments.

As one of the commenters to part 3 said - there is plenty of reason to be skeptical of Republican's true commitment to opposition to abortion, leaving aside the notion that opposing abortion does not, in and of itself, make one "pro-life." They've had 8 years: remember the big push to pass a constitutional amendment protecting all life from conception until natural death? Neither do I.

For that matter, after Roberts and Alito took their seats on the Supreme Court, why didn't the Republican-controlled Congress itself pass a law outlawing abortion, so that the "Pro-Life" Bush administration could then send the Solicitor General to argue for it in front of the Supreme Court? Republican Congress, Republican Administration: why no real action?

I'm convinced it's because they don't want to actually settle the abortion question - firstly because there is (unfortunately) a clear majority of public opinion that abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances, and thus actually outlawing it would present huge problems for them in terms of a backlash ( I have read some of the contingency planning the pro-choice movement has done for the event that Roe is overturned; the backlash would be absolutely massive, trust me); and secondly because that would deprive them of an issue they can use to get elected. "Just give us the chance to nominate one more justice, and then - then! - we'll finally be able to outlaw abortion. I know you Pro-Life liberals hate our other policies, but you're morally obligated to vote for us because of this one over-riding issue."

Disingenuous in the extreme, in my view.

Ponder this: It occurs to me that real and substantial progress might be made on the abortion issue if pro-lifers did more outreach to Liberals (beyond just telling them to vote for Republicans - an obvious non-starter.)

Pro-lifers don't have a lot of growth potential with Republicans and conservatives: the ones who can be convinced, have been. So, why doesn't the Pro-Life movement reach out to liberals? You know, have a fellow liberal explain opposition to abortion in a way that makes sense to the world-view of your typical Democrat, using progressive world-views and framing. I do this myself: there is lots of growth potential here, believe me. (Note the link to the right to Democrats For Life.) Support for abortion is pretty soft among lots of the rank and file Democrats I'm acquainted with.

McCain's Heroism

MJ Rosenberg, in an essay at TPM Cafe, describes something that's been eating at the edge of my consciousness:

You would never know it from the media coverage but John McCain is not one of America's greatest war heroes. He is a former POW who survived, heroically. He deserves to be honored for that heroism.

But one thing distinguishes McCain from other war heroes, the kind whose heroism changes history rather than their life stories.

America's two greatest war heroes were Ulysses Grant and Dwight Eisenhower. Grant saved the union. And Ike saved civilization.

And neither one ever bragged about their experience. (Can you imagine Ike smacking down Adlai Stevenson by saying that while Adlai ran a nice medium-sized state, he was the Supreme Allied Commander who ran D-Day, defeated Hitler, and liberated Europe?).

Impossible. Like Grant, Eisenhower did not brag.

Good For Him

Obama has told his campaign that anyone who discusses Palin's family is going to be immediately canned.

Part of his statement:

"I have said before and I will repeat again: People's families are off limits. And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor and/or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."

Can you imagine a Rove-advised candidate issuing a similar statement? Neither can I.

Via The Swamp Blog at Time...

...comes this indication that McCain is less than a true believer in the pro-life cause:

The McCain campaign welcomed delegates to Denver with a new ad Monday, showing Debra Bartoshevich, a self-described "proud Hillary Clinton Democrat," announcing that she opposes Barack Obama and will vote for John McCain. To back up the message, Republicans arranged a press-conference in Denver Monday morning with Bartoshevich and other Clinton supporters, who are all now backing McCain.

Midway through the event, Bartoschevich was asked if she was concerned about McCain's pro-life voting record. At a podium paid for by the Republican National Committee, with McCain aide Carly Fiorina standing nearby, Bartoschevich said this:

Going back to 1999, John McCain did an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle saying that overturning Roe v. Wade would not make any sense, because then women would have to have illegal abortions.

For all the Hand-Wringing...

..by some of my fellow Democrats, I think it is clear to anyone watching that McCain is going to get his clock cleaned in November.

The only question in my mind is whether it will be an overwhelming, tsunami-grade landslide or a smaller but still convincing win.

Obama losing? I suppose I can summon a scenario where he loses the election (involving being caught...Well, what would it take? Incinerating puppies to heat his house?) but...no, he's pretty much got it in the bag.

"To Think I Was Once A Republican" department

Josh Marshall on the new line of attack the McCain camp is flailing with:

I note with interest today, John McCain's new tactic of associating Barack Obama with oversexed and/or promiscuous young white women. (See today's new ad and this from yesterday.) Presumably, a la Harold Ford 2006, this will be one of those strategies that will be a matter of deep dispute during the campaign and later treated as transparent and obvious once the campaign is concluded.

But what I'm most interested in today is the new meme the McCain campaign has been pushing for the last few weeks that Obama is presumptuous, arrogant and well ... just a bit uppity. Ron Fournier picked the ball up early in his reporting for the AP. And John King was pushing it over the weekend on CNN. Is it arrogant or above Obama's station for him to meet with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve? If I'm not mistaken he is a sitting United States senator and also the presidential candidate of the Democratic party. Such meetings are actually the norm.

Oh, This Is Good...

Republicans are fleeing the, um, Republican National Convention with both feet. Seems like no Republican Senators in close races want to be seen in Minneapolis. The Republicans would probably prefer that GW Bush were, I don't know, out in the Rockies someplace, preferably lost, during their powwow. I almost feel bad for those boys.

Almost.

Obama's Appeal

A commenter named "phoenix a stepinac" gets to the core of why Obama's so appealing to me and many others:

Beyond his intelligence, what appeals to me about Obama is his apparent zeal for aggressive statesmanship. While McCain claims to hold the mantle of foriegn policy, he always appears dismissive when asked about diplomatic, multilateral foreign policy issues, and seems unwilling to think extemporaneously about evolving events. This lends him an air of obstinance; it feels as if he has no desire to truly know more about the parties in a conflict, no desire to triangulate a solution. He has all too willingly embraced the anti-intellectualism of the Bush White House, the distrust of nuance and conflicting opinion that has us mired in a disgusting war.

I find a lot of things alarming about Obama's recent foreign policy statements. For one thing, his proposal for dealing with Afghanistan seems a bit short sighted and politically expedient. Regardless of this, he appears possessed of a certain drive, an embrace of thoroughly caucused factuality, and a willingness to shift his views with the times without the egomaniac's obsession with constant justification and calibration.

I feel that this goes a good deal of the way in explaining why his popularity has soared all over the world. Most people, world leaders and myself included, have not deluded themselves into believing Obama will work entirely in favor of their specific interests all of the time. Obama has proven, however, that he will elevate the position of the Presidency back to that of a world statesman, and weigh all sides of his decisions with the gravity and seriousness they deserve.

I could not have put it better myself (and I share Phoenix's apprehensiveness at some of Obama's recent rhetoric concerning Afghanistan.)

Obama's Electoral Vote Projection Rising

You may have noticed my Electoral Vote counter (courtesy of electoral-vote.com) in the upper right. Things are looking pretty good for Obama right now, and he is becoming competitive in some surprising places: Georgia?

Something enormous is happening in the country when a deep-red dixie state that George W won in 2004 by almost 20 points (58% to 41%) is now a tie between Obama and McCain.

Hunter Dissects Hillary's Loss...

...and gets it exactly right in my view:

That is not to say that there were not good points to be made in "electability" -- but her spokesmen made them shabbily. In the end, it was not an argument that could convince.

But Clinton would never have been in such a position had she not fallen behind to begin with, and that is where I think the more damning mistakes of her campaign lie. If I could wrap all critique of the Clinton campaign up into a single sentence, it would be this: her campaign did not campaign.

In this, I think her early anointing by the media did her campaign a disservice. She campaigned as the frontrunner from the outset, and as a Democratic frontrunner at that, and the age-old Democratic mandate for running campaigns has been one of excruciating timidity. The goal of most recent high-profile elections, the Kerry campaign included, the Gore campaign included, and several dozen other campaigns besides, has not been to win, but to simply avoid losing.

Towards that end, no large issues are addressed with too much passion, and no stances are taken with too much vigor, and for the love of God nobody is made to feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. It is playing to the middle writ large, and in crayon, and with big block letters. The goal is to assemble the broadest coalition possible -- by saying nothing that could possibly offend anyone. The premise is to appeal to "independents", and "centrists", and most of all the "undecided", that group of people so uninterested in politics that they cannot fathom the difference between the parties, but who allegedly can be mobilized into action if only you do absolutely nothing that will get them the slightest bit worked up. It is a cynical, wretched excuse for leadership, but more to the point it provides absolutely no room for error: it is an all-defensive strategy. If your opponent is a block of wood, incapable of making any positive plays on their own, you may pull it off; but if your opponent scores any point, you are left unable to answer it.

Obama, bless him, has noticed the poverty of the "not losing" approach, and is doing everything possible to win.

Hunter at Daily Kos has a great idea

I think for 2012, Californians should unilaterally decide that our state will be worth 5,000 delegates. Sure, it'd be against one piffling party rule, but I fail to see why the voters of California should be disenfranchised by not seating them all.

We're a democracy, so not seating them would be like enabling Hitler.

Also, our delegates will have the power of tagsies, which means that if they touch a delegate from another state while shouting "I AM THE HIGHLANDER", that other delegate has to give them their lunch money. Deal with that, Rules Committee.

Monster Voter Registration Drive

Barack Obama's organization is undertaking an absolutely gigantic voter registration drive, especially in the South, as part of its preparation for the General Election.

500,000 newly registered Democrats...in Georgia! This is very, very smart of Obama, and I think reflects his background as a community organizer. Republican voter-suppression efforts will come up far short in the face of such organization.

Republicans Bracing for Electoral Ruin

In the wake of recent Congressional losses in reliably Republican districts, it is a near certainty that the Republicans are going to get their clocks cleaned come November - and Republicans are in full panic mode. Here's Minority Leader Boehner:

The election "should serve as a wake-up call to Republican candidates nationwide."

"As I've said before, this is a change election, and if we want Americans to vote for us we have to convince them that we can fix Washington," Boehner said. "Our presidential nominee, Senator McCain, is an agent of change; candidates who hope to succeed must show that they're willing and able to join McCain in a leading movement for reform.

Please, Republicans, Run More Ads Like This

The Republicans ran the ad below against Travis Childers in Mississippi's 1st Congressional District. They have said they will tie Obama to every Democrat running this year.



Tonight, Childers won this district by 8% of the vote, in a district Bush carried in 2004 by 63 to 37 percent.

Heck, I'll contribute money to finance ads like this.

Oh, Snap!

The Text of a memo sent out by the Clinton campaign, as annotated by the Obama Camp, whose responses appear in brackets[]:

To: Interested Parties

From: Clinton Campaign

Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Re: Keystone Test: Obama Losing Ground [Get ready for a good one.]



The path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue goes through Pennsylvania so if Barack Obama can't win there, how will he win the general election?



[Answer: I suppose by holding obviously Democratic states like California and New York, and beating McCain in swing states like Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin where Clinton lost to Obama by mostly crushing margins. But good question.]



After setbacks in Ohio and Texas, Barack Obama needs to demonstrate that he can win the state of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the last state with more than 15 electoral votes on the primary calendar and Barack Obama has lost six of the seven other largest states so far - every state except his home state of Illinois.



[If you define "setback" as netting enough delegates out of our 20-plus-point wins in Mississippi and Wyoming to completely erase any delegate advantage the Clinton campaign earned out of March 4th, then yeah, we feel pretty setback.]



Pennsylvania is of particular importance, along with Ohio, Florida and Michigan, because it is dominated by the swing voters who are critical to a Democratic victory in November. No Democrat has won the presidency without winning Pennsylvania since 1948. And no candidate has won the Democratic nomination without winning Pennsylvania since 1972.



[What the Clinton campaign secretly means: PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT WE'VE LOST 14 OF THE LAST 17 CONTESTS AND SAID THAT MICHIGAN AND FLORIDA WOULDN'T COUNT FOR ANYTHING. Also, we're still trying to wrap our minds around the amazing coincidence that the only "important" states in the nominating process are the ones that Clinton won.]



But the Obama campaign has just announced that it is turning its attention away from Pennsylvania.



[Huh?]



This is not a strategy that can beat John McCain in November.



[I don't think Clinton's strategy of losing in state after state after promising more of the same politics is working all that well either.]



In the last two weeks, Barack Obama has lost ground among men, women, Democrats, independents and Republicans - all of which point to a candidacy past its prime.



["A candidacy past its prime." These guys kill me.]



For example, just a few weeks ago, Barack Obama won 68% of men in Virginia, 67% in Wisconsin and 62% in Maryland. He won 60% of Virginia women and 55% of Maryland women. He won 62% of independents in Maryland, 64% in Wisconsin and 69% in Virginia. Obama won 59% of Democrats in Maryland, 53% in Wisconsin and 62% in Virginia. And among Republicans, Obama won 72% in both Virginia and Wisconsin.



But now Obama's support has dropped among all these groups.



[That's true, if you don't count all the winning we've been up to. As it turns out, it's difficult to maintain 40-point demographic advantages, even over Clinton]



In Mississippi, he won only 25% of Republicans and barely half of independents. In Ohio, he won only 48% of men, 41% of women and 42% of Democrats. In Texas, he won only 49% of independents and 46% of Democrats. And in Rhode Island, Obama won just 33% of women and 37% of Democrats.



[I'm sympathetic to their attempt to parse crushing defeats. And I'm sure Rush Limbaugh's full-throated endorsement of Clinton didn't make any difference. Right]



Why are so many voters turning away from Barack Obama in state after state?



[You mean besides the fact that we're ahead in votes, states won and delegates?]



In the last few weeks, questions have arisen about Obama's readiness to be president. In Virginia, 56% of Democratic primary voters said Obama was most qualified to be commander-in-chief. That number fell to 37% in Ohio, 35% in Rhode Island and 39% in Texas.



[Only the Clinton campaign could cherry pick states like this. But in contrast to their logic, in the most recent contest of Mississippi, voters said that Obama was more qualified to be commander in chief than Clinton by a margin of 55-42.]



So the late deciders - those making up their minds in the last days before the election - have been shifting to Hillary Clinton. Among those who made their decision in the last three days, Obama won 55% in Virginia and 53% in Wisconsin, but only 43% in Mississippi, 40% in Ohio, 39% in Texas and 37% in Rhode Island.



[If only there were enough late deciders for the Clinton campaign to actually be ahead, they would really be on to something.] Note from The Hopeful Populist: Ouch!



If Barack Obama cannot reverse his downward spiral with a big win in Pennsylvania, he cannot possibly be competitive against John McCain in November.



[If they are defining downward spiral as a series of events in which the Clinton campaign has lost more votes, lost more contests and lost more delegates to us - I guess we will have to suffer this horribly painful slide all the way to the nomination and then on to the White House.]



[Thanks for the laughs guys. This was great.]

Geraldine Ferraro: Obama Winning Because He's Black

The Clinton campaign is setting some sort of record for tone-deaf cluelessness. Geraldine Ferraro, today:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

That is just...that is just...there are no words.