Classic Posts: Grant Park Last Night

TW: Well we made it to Grant Park and were of course glad we did. You can see us clearly in the big crowd photo, we were right below the "USA" sign surrounded by a few thousand people. We went obviously to say we were there and plug into the energy of the night. Walking down Michigan Avenue afterwards with thousands of folks was one of those things one will remember for a long time. The crowd was joyous, but the memorable part was the diversity. As I reflected in my mind on the monochrome crowds at most of the McCain/Palin rallies, it was clear Obama had put together a broad coalition- young/older, multi-ethnic, wealthy and less so. This has many implications which I will discuss later. If only we got along so well more frequently.

One Year Ago

TW: As you will have heard ad nauseum, today is the one year anniversary of 2008 election. Some are disappointed, I am not. I will take Obama as our leader any day. He is not perfect but I do not hold him to that standard especially within the context of how our political system is designed and within the context of many of my fellow Americans holding very different opinions than me. There is no one else I would rather see in that office at the moment. Some folks think we pull the lever once and things just happen. It does not that way.

Obama's Acceptance Speech Nov 2008

European Schadenfreude

TW: I am not a fan of chest-thumping Americans. Chest-thumpers are insecure. I am, however, a nationalist. I like it when our friends and enemies are worried about US hyper-power. I would just walk softly with it while appreciating the big stick. In other words the opposite of George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and even at times John McCain.

It is time for a change, and thumping our chests harder is not the answer. Yes the world is not all about fighting "terror", the US needs to lessen the focus on its own navel and evolve our policies as world wealth and power dis aggregates across the world. Certainly the US must get its economic house back in order as the financial problems are not merely a "Wall Street" problem but a "Main Street" problem fueled by too much debt and too little savings.

Many of us have been embarrassed by our country's policies but not our country over the past eight years sometimes this differentiation is lost in translation. But what will happen when we are no longer embarrassed but looking for aggressive partners in place of snarkers.

The schadenfreude emerging from Europe and elsewhere relative to the US' latest crises is annoying, if expected and even understandable. If Rush Limbaugh were to comment on the attached article, he would inevitably rant for three hours about those bastard Europeans. I say lets get our act together first.

If Barack Obama becomes POTUS things will have to change on the Europeans end as well. To a certain degree they have received a pass. Due to the increasingly universal derision associated with Bush they have been able to snipe endlessly about Bush and American policies generally without offering much in the way of alternatives. Come February 2009 much will be expected not only from the US in re-building its image and policies but it will also be time for the Europeans to leave the snark behind. They will need to figure out whether they want to merely recede like meek puppies in the face of the Putin's and Taliban's of the world or engage fully alongside in the US in attacking the political, military and economic challenges we all face.

From Der Spiegel (the major German news magazine)
"George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly..."Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN...the ridicule was a new thing. It marked the end of respect.

And now, of all times, the world is faced with a preeminent power that no longer seems capable of leading and a US president who is not even able to unite his divided country in an hour of need...A new America is on display, a country that no longer trusts its old values and its elites even less: the politicians, who failed to see the problems on the horizon, and the economic leaders, who tried to sell a fictitious world of prosperity to Americans.
Also on display is the end of arrogance. The Americans are now paying the price for their pride.

For far too long, the Americans and the British made fun of the Germans for their risk-averse, savings-oriented mentality, says Bernd Pfaffenbach, Merkel's chief negotiator on foreign trade issues. But now the relative conservatism that Germans have shown in financial matters is paying off. "One can see that we are on a more solid base," says Pfaffenbach, who refers to the crisis as a 'purifying storm...'

...In the past, the US government's solo efforts provided the Europeans with an all-too-comfortable excuse for simply doing nothing. But that excuse is no longer valid."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-581502,00.html

538 Silver's Take On the Wall Street Turmoil

"People...seem to think that this will be some sort of linchpin event in the campaign. I don't necessarily buy that, because I think that most voters grasp intuitively that markets are markets, and that policymakers have less to do with their direction than they might with something like job creation.

To the extent there are opportunities, however, you'd think they'd favor Obama. He should have the much easier time of things, because people naturally associate Wall Street with the Republicans, and because he can simply link the troubles to the failures of the status quo under George W. Bush.

McCain, by contrast, is under more pressure to actually propose solutions, which is difficult because there aren't a lot of good ones here. He certainly needs to improve his messaging over where it was in his morning appearance in Jacksonville today, where he was borderline incoherent on the subject of the financial crisis."

The WSJ Sure Surfaces Some Interesting Comments

From the comments section of a story about the Lehman Brothers situation in the Wall Street Journal today, the logic is so...interesting (beginning with its utter lack of relevance to Lehman)...that I thought I would share:

"This election mirrors the gubernatorial election in Louisiana in 1991. At that time, Edwin Edwards ran against David Duke. Edwards ran as a Democrat. Duke ran as a Republican
.===Duke is also a racist and a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. For decades, he attended a separatist church preaching White empowerment.
===Duke was so disgusting that most Republicans actually supported Edwards. Both Republicans and Democrats united to defeat Duke.
===The equivalent of Duke is Barack Hussein Obama. Obama is a racist and a Black-power advocate. For decades, he attended a separatist church preaching Black empowerment.
===Many Democrats, like Joseph Lieberman, actually support McCain. Both Republicans and Democrats must unite to defeat the Black-empowerment racist — Barack Hussein Obama.
Comment by grizzly bear - September 13, 2008 at 1:09 pm "

Time: Obama's Ground Game (Source of Hope for the Good Guys)

TW-For those of you interested in the art of political ground games. This is a nice article on how Obama is attacking voter turnout. They are clearly banking on big numbers and with the addition of Palin the Republicans themselves are energized especially their social conservative base so we shall see...

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1840141,00.html

A Video Sent by a Friend: Obama Rebuts the Sludge

kinda hard to keep up since the McCain campaign has turned into a sewage factory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH0xzsogzAk

Newsweek Quindlan: A Man With Character Is Running For President

Quindlan:
"'As good as the best of them' might well have been Barack Obama's slogan as he rose to be editor of the Harvard Law Review, faculty member at the University of Chicago Law School, state representative and U.S. senator. It is easy to see all the ways in which his race could have played a part in his rapid rise, but not necessarily in the way his opponents might suggest. Being an outsider probably taught him how to work well in two worlds, the world of those who take their place of primacy for granted and the world of those who have no such place, or who have to fight for it twice as hard.

Much has been made by Senator McCain's supporters of his history as a survivor of a Viet Cong prison camp, of the broken bones and psychological onslaughts that he withstood for five long years. They argue that such an experience builds character. They should also take note of the challenges faced by a black man in America, challenges that have built Senator Obama's character. These may be harder to quantify than imprisonment and torture, but they are onerous in a different and inescapable way."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/151725

NYT: Sarah "Dave" Palin Is In Fact Learning Her Lines

TW: To follow-up on my "Dave" storyline for Ms. Palin, we see the McCain campaign making steady progress...

"With new reports coming out daily about Ms. Palin’s record in Alaska, and a more aggressive offensive from Senator Barack Obama’s campaign, Mr. McCain’s team has issued a partywide, all-hands-on-deck...

The McCain campaign is regularly battling reports from news organizations that have the potential to undermine the image that it has presented of Ms. Palin as a reformer.On Wednesday, a new report on Politico.com detailed Ms. Palin’s requests for federal appropriations as governor, including money for studies on the mating habits of crabs and the DNA of harbor seals, the very sorts of pet spending projects Mr. McCain has lampooned...

Three {advisors} were on the plane to Alaska with Ms. Palin: Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mr. McCain’s economic adviser; Steve Biegun, a former staff member of Mr. Bush’s National Security Council who has taken leave from his Ford Motors job to advise Ms. Palin; and Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser.

Aides have developed a set of presumed questions and answers that they are walking Ms. Palin through. Aides traveling with Ms. Palin have reported back to associates that she is a fast study — asking few questions of her policy briefers but quickly repeating back their main points — who already has considerable ease and experience before cameras. A former aide in Alaska who had helped prepare Ms. Palin for her campaign debates there said she had a talent for distilling information into digestible sound bites. The aide said she generally prefers light preparatory materials to heavy briefing
books"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/us/politics/11palin.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1221152528-wLodLGV/UYTSmF9Ng0vJhg

Barack Obama's Very Mature Response to the Inanity

Some call this type approach too cerebral, they may be right. But I want him as our next President, amongst other reasons, because of simple little spiels like these which put things in perspective

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upLPLb4h_yg&eurl=http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/09/obama_serious.html

The Willie Horton Ad

Friends my age likely recall the infamous Willie Horton ad from 1988 which George HW Bush used so effectively against Mike Dukakis. In the ad Bush successfully tied Dukakis to a released Massachusetts, African-American inmate who committed heinous crimes post release from his initial incarceration.

McCain has issued his 2008 incarnation in the form of an ad portraying Barack Obama (no need to use a surrogate since he is already black and all) as a proponent of teaching presumeably creepy sex ed to kindegartners.

I have attached some commentary from various sites who are more articulate than moi, I will note only the supreme hypocrisy of McCain. The same John McCain who was portrayed in the Spring of 2000 by his now close political ally, W. Bush as the illegitimate father of a black child prior to the then crucial South Carolina primary. Since the McCains had adopted a dark skinned Bangladeshi the Bushies saw an opening to take facts and utterly mis-construe them.

Would love to hear one of my Republican friends defend the ad.

From the Economist:
"Ah, but there is low and there is looooow...the McCain campaign released an ad yesterday that I can only describe as one of the sleaziest political spots I have ever seen. (The first time I saw it I actually thought it was a "Daily Show" spoof.)

The ad says Mr Obama voted to teach "comprehensive sex education to kindergartners." But what the referenced legislation actually would've done (it never came up for a full vote) is to allow schools to teach "age-appropriate" sex education and tell young children how to guard against sexual predation and inappropriate touching. (McClatchy has a factcheck here—it's something even the Cub Scouts do.) This, of course, makes Mr Obama a pervert in Mr McCain's world.

It's all too easy to blame such dirty tactics on Steve Schmidt, Mr McCain's Rovian chief strategist, or some other campaign hack, but in the end this is John McCain's show and he's turned it into low-brow burlesque theatre. It's a parody of the dirty campaigns that preceded it, with many of the same cast and crew. Mr McCain's campaign was supposed to be different, wasn't it? Win or lose, it's somewhat tragic to see a once-honourable man sink this low."

From Anne Marie Cox at Time:
"A different category of dumb charge. This one very much intentionally ginned up by the McCain camp, and the Obama camp is justified in being outraged over its implication that Obama is some kind of deviancy advocate. It was just as dumb and just as calculated when the Romney people were pushing it during the primaries. And the same argument for Obama's ACTUAL position still stands: “Child predators really prey on the ignorance of children. And the kind of education that Obama’s supporting is something that would actually put weapons in the hands of children in the form of knowledge.” In this case, however, I doubt that anyone will turn up proof -- as they did with Romney -- that McCain was once in favor of the same kind of education. As that would suggest McCain once was in favor of SOME kind of sex education.

The actual ad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVLQhRiEXZs&eurl=http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2008/09/they_cant_be_serious.cfm

WaPo: Republicans Want the Election To Be About Personality Since the Issues This Year Are Pretty Tough For Them

From TW: It has to be frustrating for Obama that he still- after almost 2 years of 24/7 coverage- must read even from pundits inclined to support him that "America still does not know who he really is?", while after one speech, a couple of gushing newscycles so many Americans seem to think Palin is the 'everymom'

From Politico:
"In the duo's new stump speech and their first post-convention ad, the impression campaign strategists hope to leave is unmistakable. McCain is the war hero. Palin is the Every­mom. And together, they will rattle Washington."

From Chris Cillizza at WaPo:
"The rise of the Republican ticket in recent weeks is due in large part to this personality frame that the GOP has imposed on the race. While McCain's story of personal heroism was known -- almost verbatim -- to political insiders, large numbers of average voters knew next to nothing about the torture and suffering the Arizona senator actually endured during his imprisonment. The telling of that compelling story coupled with the star turn by Palin, a mother of five whose oldest son is headed to Iraq and whose youngest is a special needs child, made for a powerful -- and personality-heavy -- convention.
Can Obama win a personality-focused election? Sure. He has his own powerful personal story -- the son of a mixed race parents, educated at Ivy League institutions, a community organizer etc. -- that, during the Democratic convention, was presented as the flesh-and-blood realization of the American Dream.
But, there's little question that Obama would be far better served by turning the race into a referendum on the policy differences between him and McCain rather than the personality differences. McCain's resume -- from a personal and a political perspective -- is as deep and emotionally resonant as any in American politics. The more this race becomes about that resume, the better Republicans have to feel about their chances."