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.)
Wonkette explains everything you need to know about the story involving Barack Obama’s aunt.
If you insist on taking it seriously, try this.
So it looks like the award for the most negative ad of the entire campaign will go to — Elizabeth Dole? Sadly, yes. Dole, fighting for her political life in North Carolina, has falsely accused her Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, of being an atheist.
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.
Some years back, the Boston Herald’s Joe Sciacca and I were standing on the arena floor at the Democratic State Convention, which was to be held the next day. It was a Friday night, a little after 9 p.m. I think it was in 1994*, and I can’t remember whether it was in Lowell, Worcester or Springfield.
As we were talking, state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, D-Roxbury, sauntered by. Sciacca and I looked at each other. At the time, Wilkerson was under partial home detention for not paying her taxes or some damn thing, and — if I’m recalling the details correctly — she had a 9 p.m. curfew.
Sciacca went tearing off to the press area. As it turned out, there was no news — he found out that Wilkerson’s punishment had just come to an end, and so there was no curfew for her to violate.
No more than a funny little anecdote on a day when Wilkerson’s political career has come to a final, sickening end.
Her arrest comes during a week when the Phoenix’s David Bernstein is reporting still more wrongdoing on her part. And at Universal Hub, Adam Gaffin explains how Wilkerson unwittingly drew the Boston City Council and Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker into her orbit.
Wilkerson’s once-bright promise flamed out many years ago. It’s amazing she lasted as long as she did.
*Update: After reading the Wednesday coverage, I now think it was 1998.
Cynthia Stead writes in the Cape Cod Times that the League of Women Voters could do — and have done — a better job of running the presidential debates than the media folks who moderated them this year. She’s right.
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.
