This is going to be a short diary, so forgive me, but this is getting too pathetic, seeing everyone convinced we're gonna lose. It's sad when I see Michael Moore and Bill Maher and the Huffington Post go into panic mode as well. It's even sadder that some find it so gosh-darn difficult to do a little volunteer work for the campaign, but it's much easier to scream and cry as if you all were Corporal Hudson from Aliens.
It's become very aggravating to come on here or Huffington and see headlines about how we're all screwed and whatever the hell else.
Has anyone forgotten that our lives are at stake here? This isn't sports standings. This is our futures, and we have to work for it as if those were the stakes here.
Northwest Airlines serves Minneapolis-St Paul in a big way. It's no wonder they tout themselves as "The Official Airline of the Republican National Convention," and they're concerned about the comfort of Republicans. That's why NWA fired off a demand to Clear Channel Communications that the mega-media company take down a billboard they thought carried a "strong anti-McCain message" that was in the Minneapolis-St Paul airport.
Northwest worried that the thousands of Republican delegates, officials, and members of the media would find the ad "offensive" and "scary" and insisted that it come down immediately.
Well, Rudy -- straying dangerously into non-9/11 territory -- has really stuck his foot in it this time...
Rudy Giuliani's appearance on a McCain conference call got off to a rocky start when Ron Kampeas, the Washington, D.C. of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, compared an Obama advisor's trip to Syria -- the subject of the call -- to Giuliani's and McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann's paid work on behalf of Georgia (in Scheunemann's case) and Venezuela's Citgo and the Saudi government (in the case of Giuliani's law firm).
In his glory days as heavyweight champ, Muhammed Ali perfected a technique known as the "rope a dope" in which he would allow an opponent to repeatedly punch him in the mid-section while Ali guarded himself against the ropes. Then, when the opponent tired from punching Ali, the champ would move in for the kill and finish off his winded opponent. This was a great strategy for boxing. It is a sure loser in politics.
While troubled to see McCain ahead in the latest Reuters/Zogby poll, I was even more surprised at the media's reaction. First of all, this is not the latest nationwide poll. It was conducted August 14-16. The latest nationwide poll is LA Times/Bloomberg, conducted August 16-18 (with a larger sample size), which has Obama leading by 2.
Second, Reuters/Zogby is most likely an outlier. Unless, of course, you're willing to believe that he's lost the support of 12 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 in the last week.
But far more worrisome than Obama's performance in recent national polls are the numbers coming out of battleground states, particularly Ohio.
The hot topic lately seems to be how and why Barack Obama should be hitting John McCain with every negative attack imaginable. The logic goes that while we all despise negatives, they work. It is said that we may be the party and people of high minded ideals, but to succeed we need to get down in the gutter with Republicans and tear down John McCain.
Republicans are playing to their base by being crass and combative. Neocons are all about picking fights to further their own cause. I hope that isn’t what we are becoming. I hope to bring my kids into a world where pride, greed, and religion aren’t bringing about the deaths of millions of innocent people. We are rewarding a strategy of bluster and aggression. As long as we judge people by who has the biggest pair, hate and aggression will permeate to every aspect of our global society.
Barack Obama talks about the politics of raising everyone up, rather than tearing them down. If you really believe this is the man who best represents your ideals then let him lead the country and party on the path he has chosen rather than push him and us to be something we are not.
Obama is now presented with the biggest political opportunity of this campaign and his single best prospect for defining John McCain for what he is – a no-hold-barred Rovian political opportunist who is willing to engage in hyperbole, misrepresentation and outright lying to question the patriotism of his political opponents. Americans do not like people like John McCain. Generally speaking, Americans are skeptical of people like John McCain who habitually tout their own patriotism while questioning the patriotism of others. And more importantly, Americans have been forced to endure the last 8 years of failed government under George W. Bush, a person who, just like John McCain, is willing to lie about the patriotism of his political opponents.
There's an amazing article in The New York Times. A true must read.
Obama and McCain’s "Slur du Jour"
Barack Obama faces a quandary: how to respond to the McCain campaign’s Niagara Falls of negative attacks, a "slur du jour" since Steve Schmidt took charge that pummeled Obama’s lead.
If this was preconcieved, I must admit that it was executed brilliantly. Here's how the plot went.
It was understood that McCain will benefit from internation crisis this Fall.
It was also understood that he will not get much mileage out of Iraq/Pakistan/ Afganistan conflict. At very least, Obama will tie him there.
A new international crisis needed for November. Not any crisis, but serious one, one that will capture Americans' fears once again.
How about Cold War II vs. Russia, asked McBush?
I know, now that you've gotten nauseous, hear me out. And yes this is another suggestion from a nobody but it dovetails with what Josh Marshall has argued about how Obama needs consistent arguments.
Flame me if you want. Call me a concern troll. But I see what McCain is doing and Obama is not doing and something really needs to be done about it.
And here's the Rove recipe. Attack in 3s. Sounds simple. It is.
I witnessed Bush beat Ann Richards for governor and he did it by picking three issues which were weak about Richard's past 4 year term. He repeated these three over and over and over. Soon the campaign became about those three arguments. I believe one was a rise in teenage crime. There was so little to criticize her on but he found three. Soon the campaign becamse about those three issues and Richards was forced to play defense. And despite great popularity, she lost to Shrub.
It was Karl Rove who did this and he laughed about it later. Americans have such a short attention span, they won't spend time disecting issues. Pick three points and run with them. That's all you need. Three weaknesses of your opponent.
Why threes? It works. When writing persuasive papers or making a closing argument, uses threes. It works. Simple. Direct. Repeatedly.
From the August 18th speech to the National VFW convention by John McCain: "Behind all of these claims and positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president."
So, can we agree that it is wrong to have the ambition to be president? McCain certainly states it as a negative in this case. Let's assume for the moment that this is actually what he meant, and see where it takes us.
In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?
According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.
Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."
No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?
That's the date that I and many here will probably have a more clear picture of the electorate landscape and how the Obama campaign is doing. I've tried to be patient and will continue to be patient. I think polls after the Democratic and Republican conventions plus two or three weeks will provide us with a more clear landscape on where the electorate is going. However, there are a few things that are bothering me now and I would just like to share.
Yesterday, MoveOn and the Center for American Progress teamed up to call out Senator McCain and Congressional Republicans for pretending that handing out huge sacks of cash to Big Oil constitutes an energy policy. CAP released a report estimating the value of subsidies and tax breaks McCain supports for Big Oil over the next five years at $39 billion. Local MoveOn volunteers around the country released the report, and called for those tax dollars to be spent on clean energy alternatives, including wind and geothermal power, home weatherization, conservation and public transit.
It has become a constant theme in McCain’s speeches. Taxes are not too low; spending is too high. If we just eliminate “pork barrel spending” we can cut taxes and balance the budget – “no pain, all gain.” Republicans have long loved claiming that the budget can be balanced without any sacrifice on the part of anyone. In order to make his point, McCain has taken to constantly referring to 3 million dollars spent to study the DNA of bears in Montana as an example of government waste. So what are the facts about this study?
