By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Joe the Plumber: “There’s too many questions with Barack Obama and his loyalty to our country, and I question that greatly…. His ideology is completely different than what democracy stands for.”
Pretty nasty stuff. Is the McCain campaign going to say anything?
POLK CITY, Florida (CNN) — At a boisterous Sarah Palin rally in Polk City, Florida on Saturday afternoon, one name was surprisingly absent from the campaign décor — John McCain’s…. [T]he GOP nominee’s name was literally nowhere to be found on any of the official campaign signage distributed to supporters at the event.
Literally! Oh, wait — never mind. (Via Jay Rosen’s Twitter feed.)
Why would the Los Angeles Times accept a videotape of Barack Obama praising Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi under the condition that the paper not actually show it to anyone? Are the editors in the business of reporting news, or do they like collecting stuff for their own personal amusement?
And why would the Times then turn around and report on John McCain’s criticisms without noting that McCain helped funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to Khalidi?
I understand that everyone at the LA Times is spending most of their waking hours faxing out their résumés, but this is ridiculous. I guess this is the new definition of even-handed journalism: covering up for both candidates.
In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that liberals would be nuts if they start banking on an Obama victory. There are just too many things that could go wrong: Republican-led voter suppression, the Bradley effect and the possibility that the McCain campaign’s fear-and-smear efforts will finally catch fire.
Strip away all the side issues (and there are many, and they are important), and the essence of Sarah Palin is this: She is an extraordinarily gifted political performer. And she knows nothing — zippo — about the national and international issues with which any national political figure needs to be conversant.
Which brings me to the latest on the increasingly public mud-slinging between the Palin and McCain camps, written up in loving detail by the Politico’s Ben Smith. Given her freakish and unwarranted self-confidence, it’s not surprising that she believes she could talk her way out of the mess she’s in if only her handlers would let her. And given her long string of boneheaded (and worse) statements, it’s not surprising that the McCainiacs just want her to shut up.
It is nothing short of astounding that Palin’s supporters, according to Smith, point to the Katie Couric interview as something that was mishandled by the McCain forces. We all saw Palin babble about how Alaska’s proximity to Russia has given her foreign-policy experience — a softball do-over from Couric, given that Palin had had time to think about it after answering Charlie Gibson’s identical question the same idiotic way. We all saw that she couldn’t even say what she reads, leading to the not-unreasonable conclusion that she doesn’t.
If Barack Obama wins on Nov. 4, it’s going to be a long winter for the Republican Party. Among the party’s many problems is that Palin has signaled she intends to be a player. Given that she has what’s left of the Republican base in her thrall, and that she is a huge negative among everyone else, Palin, for Democrats, may be the gift that keeps on giving.
If Barack Obama wins the presidential election, he’ll be able to thank John McCain for embracing the Republican right just as it was losing its strangehold on American politics. Or so I say in the Guardian.
Everyone being polled could be lying. John McCain could pull Osama bin Laden’s head out of a bag and hold it up before the TV cameras the weekend before the election. Sarah Palin could be replaced on the Republican ticket by Warren Buffet, who — along with Colin Powell — will renounce his previous endorsement of Barack Obama. So no predictions from me.
But good Lord. John Zogby, whose methodology may understate support for Barack Obama, now has him leading McCain by 10 points, 52 percent to 42 percent. And Pew has Obama up by 14 points among both registered voters (52 percent to 38 percent) and likely voters (53 percent to 39 percent).
Posts on polls are kind of useless, and I apologize. But the campaign has taken over most of my brain cells. I thought it was interesting that what seemed like a slight shift toward McCain a few days ago appears to have been stopped and is now being reversed.
I still think it’s going to be close.
I’m allergic to math, but even I can understand why Barack Obama’s eight-point lead in the Zogby tracking poll is bigger than it looks.
Zogby has consistently had John McCain doing better than in many other polls. As Nate Silver explains, it’s because Zogby weights party affiliation based on exit polls from the previous election.
So if the electorate is more Democratic today than it was in 2004 — and it is, by quite a bit — then Obama’s lead is actually understated by Zogby. That is, if the tracking poll is accurate in the first place, which is always a question worth asking.
Josh Marshall writes: “I don’t think there’s any question that McCain’s is the dirtiest and most dishonest campaign, certainly in the last 35 years and possibly going much further back into the early 20th century.”
By invoking the 35-year rule, Marshall is leaving open the possibility that Richard Nixon’s re-election effort in 1972 was worse. I’d agree with that. Worse than anything since? Yes, I think so. The worst I can remember George W. Bush doing against Al Gore was taking credit for a children’s health measure in Texas that had passed over his veto. George H.W. Bush ran some notably dirty campaigns in 1988 and ’92, but I think McCain has set a new standard.
Last night Mrs. Media Nation and Media Nation Jr. came back from a trip to the in-laws and reported that several members of the family had asserted that Barack Obama is “a terrorist.” Not even that he “pals around with terrorists.”
You can argue all day that neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin has said anything quite that breathtakingly brash. But they set it in motion, and let pre-existings fears about a black man with a Muslim-sounding name do the rest.
Anticipated for weeks, if not months, former secretary of state Colin Powell has finally endorsed Barack Obama. Is this as big as everyone thinks it is? My suspicion is that it will prove to be the single most important endorsement of the campaign, yet still fall short of being a transcendent moment.
Powell is a flawed figure tied to the past, and there are those who will discount this on the grounds that both Powell and Obama are African-American. On the other hand, Powell crystallizes principled conservative discomfort with the McCain-Palin ticket.
But it’s certainly bigger than any newspaper endorsement.
