2008 Election

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First take on Colin Powell

So just over two weeks to go.  Newpaper endorsements are going Obama’s way.  His campaign got $150 Million in contributions in September.  The polls are tightening.  If you are a Democrat or an Obama supporter from any party, it is as I wrote a few days ago, time to be anxious.

The big, big, endorsement was from Colin Powell.  Thoughtful and reasoned, General Powell made points about the Republican campaign, Bill Ayres, and accusations that Barak Obama is Muslim.  Powell is the first person I’ve heard say basically, “So what if he were Muslim?”  The story he told about the mother at her son’s grave with the Star and Crescent was very moving.  I also liked his comment on the 7 year old Muslim child who wants to grow up to be President.

Here, in case you haven’t seen it is the Meet the Press link. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27265369/

I know that some who are against the war will not think highly of this endorsement because of General Powell’s presentation at the United Nations about weapons of mass destruction.  To me the endorsement is almost as important for Powell as a war to rehabilitate his own reputation.

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Two Reasons to be Anxious

I’m feeling a little anxious this Saturday morning.  If you’ve visited before you may notice I’ve changed the look.  Surfing around the various themes is a little like what I should be doing – some house cleaning – keeps one occupied so you don’t have to think about the Red Sox and the election.  But now that I’ve finished fiddling, I’m back to worrying.

As Andrew Ryan writes in today’s Boston Globe

The same hopeless grief gripped viewers in couches across New England, where fans gave up on their Red Sox, turned off televisions in disgust, and tromped off to bed.

That was me turning off the radio in the 5th.  Then listening to the news before getting out of bed, I heard they had won.  So now instead of being resigned to not making the World Series this year,  Red Sox fans need to live though at least one more game.  Opinion among the sports fans I know is divided:  Some think the inevitable was just put off, while others think the young Rays will not react well to the improbable loss.

And then there is the election.  I was happy to see that the Obama campaign is actually fighting back on the voter suppression issue before the election.  I worry that the Republicans will manage to steal this election as they did in 2000 and 2004.  I keep my fingers crossed that the smears of the McCain campaign will not work.  How can he have enough nerve to say during the debate that he doesn’t care about Bill Ayres and tell people at his rallies that Obama is not a terrorist and then run the robo-calls implying that his is?

Mike Memoli wrote on MSNBC’s First Read  about Joe Biden’s speech in New Mexico yesterday,

“Folks, it doesn’t matter where you live, we all love this country,” he said. “One of the reasons why Barack and I are running is that we know how damaging the politics of division that continues to be practiced by the McCain campaign, how damaging this policy of division has been for Americans over the last decade or more.”

Raising his voice, Biden said Americans “are all patriotic, we all love our country.” He added, “And I’m tired. I’m tired, tired, tired, tired of the implications about patriotism.”

Biden was referring to Palin’s comments last night in North Carolina, where she celebrated campaigning in “pro-America” areas of the country. (That remark prompted the Obama campaign to ask: Which parts of the country aren’t pro-America?)

I’m looking forward to what the Obama campaign will do with the half hour on the 29th – and to Colin Powell’s possible endorsement tomorrow.

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Anger: Can it win the election?

I think John McCain was projecting his own anger at the debate when he kept saying that Americans are angry.  I don’t think we are angry but we are frightened and anxious.  Harold Meyerson writing in the Washington Post called McCain an angry white man.  http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2008/10/the_final_debate_angry_white_m.html?

I thought for a while that McCain was going to trounce Obama with Joe the Plumber, but then he got angry and millions heard the names of the others that also served on the Community board with Barak and Bill Ayres.  And then when John McCain dismissed concern over the life of the mother and the protections that were being sought for her, I knew that he had lost the Clinton supporters who were still insisting they were voting for McCain.

I can’t really understand why McCain is behaving in what for him seems to be such an unnatural way.  If you look at his performanace on Letterman or clips of him at the Al Smith Dinner, he is quite funny.  But that’s not what you see on the campaign trail.  Obama, on the other hand, was self-deprecating and also funny at the dinner before moving into great remarks about the importance of service.  One gets the feeling that Obama knows who he is and is comfortable “in his own skin” as the saying goes.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/mccain-and-obama-palling-around-must-be-the-al-smith-dinner/#comment-642815

In the end, I don’t think the anger does anyone any good.

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Batman and Penguin Debate – my pre-debate comment

The Nation introducing this video writes

In preparation for this week’s debate The American Prospect‘s Ezra Klein put up a terrific debate night video clip on his blog. Striking similarities abound between McCain’s rhetoric about Obama’s “ties” to domestic terrorists, and the Penguin’s defamatory statements about Batman on the clip. As Klein put it in his blog, McCain could take a few pointers…

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081027/penguin_video

This is really funny.  And Obermann is now playing it on Countdown.  Saying it is the debate pre-recorded.

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Donkeys, Elephants and your money

I’m  still struggling to understand basic economics, but the New York Times had an op-ed chart today which was very revealing:

Since 1929, Republicans and Democrats have each controlled the presidency for nearly 40 years. So which party has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole? Well, here’s an experiment: imagine that during these years you had to invest exclusively under either Democratic or Republican administrations. How would you have fared?

As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index* would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover’s presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.

See the graphics here.  The author, Tommy McCall, used to work for Money  Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/14/opinion/20081014_OPCHART.html

So who has the better economic ideas?  Can it just be an accident that the Democrats do better even forgetting about poor Herbert Hoover?  I somehow don’t think so.  I think this means that a vote for Barak Obama is a good idea.  I’m starting to look at quarterly statements and see retirement fading off into the distance.

On a totally personal note, I had the closest brush with fire this afternoon that I’ve ever had in my 60+ years.  The house next door – separated by a narrow grassy area and a tree – caught fire this afternoon.  I had been at a conference and after a late afternoon meeting was cancelled decided to just drive home and stay there taking a personal hour.  Suddenly the doorbells to the house starting ringing frantically.  It was a neighbor trying to find someone to call 911.  There were flames shooring out of the roof of the house next door.   We rounded up our four cats and put them in carriers.  I found our passports and then went out into the park across the street to watch.  I have to say the Boston Fire Department was pretty amazing.  They wet down our house, the house on the other side which was attached to the one on fire and put out the active fire.  It took a suprisingly long time as they had to tear the parts of the neighboring roof and attic area apart to find all the fire.  I think they considered this pretty minor and routine, but I certainly didn’t.  I couldn’t even count the fire trucks on our little one-way street – 7, I think.  So three families are temporarily homeless…  The whole thing was really, really scary.

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Columbus Day Musings

The economic crisis is driving the election and Paul Krugman, a self-labled Liberal, has won the Nobel Prize. Is this an omen?  Slate Magazine has just republished a old column of his which explains liquidity in terms that even I can understand.  http://www.slate.com/id/2202165/

John McCain was supposed to deliver a new economic plan today, but instead decided to talk about how

“We have 22 days to go,’’ he said. “We’re six points down. The national media has written us off.’’ (At this the crowd booed loudly.) “Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq.’’

In a stump speech notable for large paragraphs of pessimism, Mr. McCain said: “These are hard times, my friend. Our economy is in crisis. Financial markets are collapsing. Credit is drying up. Your savings are in danger and your retirement is at risk. Jobs are disappearing. The cost of health care, your children’s college, gasoline and groceries are rising all the time, with no end in sight, while your most important asset — your home — is losing value every day.’’

Mr. McCain then said that he, not Senator Barack Obama, had the experience to turn the crisis around.

He offered no specifics, but at least he didn’t mention Bill Ayres and blame him for the economic crisis

Meanwhile Obama was giving a speech in Toledo, Ohio (the home town of the character, Klinger, from MASH) with a detailed plan of what happens next – after the rescue plan is implemented. 

Senator Barack Obama on Monday expanded his economic platform, including proposals to spur new jobs, to give Americans penalty-free access to retirement savings to help them through the downturn, to urge a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures and to lend money to strapped local and state governments.

During his remarks here, Mr. Obama gently scolded all Americans for “living beyond their means — from Wall Street to Washington to even some on Main Street.” His audience of supporters applauded as he said it was a moment in the nation’s history to pull together and sacrifice.

(The McCain and Obama quotes are all from the New York Times)

So the big questions remain:  Can McCain once again be the Comeback Kid?  What role will race play?  Will the debate on Wednesday night make the race closer or seal McCain’s fate?

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Ayres, Keating, and Todd Palin

The Boston Globe had a very interesting little piece this morning in which they outlined the stories of Bill Ayres and Charles Keating.  http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/10/07/character_and_ethics_issues_come_to_the_fore/

Read it and decide which you would rather associate with.  Bill Ayres, like a number of ’60’s radicals, including Bobby Rush who is now in Congress and Tom Hayden who served in the California legislature, became a productive and contributing member of society.  How better to make a contribution than to teach teachers?  And Charles Keating?  He went to jail.

I don’t think Sarah Palin has any clue as to what she is being asked to say.  She doesn’t know Bill Ayres and has no clue about what happened in the 1960’s.  If I wanted to get really exercised about her statements, I would point out that her own husband is/was a member of a radical political party.  Is Todd Palin a terrorist? It appears that the founder of the Alaska Independence Party is.  This quote is from an article today by David Talbot in Salon.com:

“My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.”

This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.

Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that’s the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. (“Keep up the good work,” Palin told AIP members. “And God bless you.”)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/10/07/palins_unamerican/

My take is that trying to associate Barak Obama with terrorism is coded racism. Don’t trust the black man with the funny Muslim sounding name because he secretly is out to hurt you.  I don’t know where this new Republican tactic is going, but I hope and pray it doesn’t lead to an unfortunate violent act.

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Rachel Maddow deconstructs Palin and other thoughts on the election.

Watching this segment on the VP Debate is well worth anyone’s 7 minutes.  Maddow skillfully looks at the quotes Sarah Palin attibuted to others (and throws in one John McCain quote from the first Presidential debate).  Maddow has found the quote from Ronald Reagan for example and puts it into context playing the actual quote.   Palin’s nice speech about losing freedom with the Reagan quote turns out to be Reagan speaking against Medicaid.  Did the McCain Camp really think that no one would figure it out?  And the McCain quote from the first Presidential debate in which he said that Eisenhower left a note offering to resign if the invasion of Normandy failed – not true.  And there is more. Check out this impressive job by Maddow. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032553/

This morning’s Boston Globe has an op-ed by Ellen Goodman reminding us that the Supreme Court, which opens for the new session on Monday is at stake in the election:

In the cold world of actuarial tables, the next president is certain to have one choice and probably more. Candidates for retirement are Stevens, the 75-year-old Ruth Ginsburg, and the homesick David Souter. That’s three of the four moderate and liberal justices on a bench that has made an art of 5-4 decisions.

You do the math. If Obama is elected, the court will stay pretty much the way it is. If McCain is elected, Katy bar the door.

McCain, who plays a maverick on TV, promised the court to the right wing. He told the women of “The View”: “I want people who interpret the Constitution of the United States the way our founding fathers envisioned for them to do so.” This prompted Whoopi Goldberg to ask if she should worry about being returned to slavery.

 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/10/04/supreme_court_at_stake/

I’m pretty sure we don’t have to worry about a return to slavery, but we do have to worry about women’s right to choice and more executive power grabs with Supreme Court approval.

A lot of the Electoral College Maps have Obama at 264 – just 6 votes away.  So he needs one more large state like Virginia or Ohio or Florida or Wisconsin – all states in which he is trending higher.  On the other hand, McCain now needs all the toss-up states in order to win.

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Morning After Reflections on the VP Debate

I’m had about five and a half hours of sleep and when I woke up, it came to me:  Sarah Palin is like one of those yappy, little dogs with lots of energy that look cute.  Ok, Palin is shrewed, but she, unlike that little dog, is really, really scary.  This is a woman who wants to have more power than Dick Cheney.  From the nonrelease of her tax returns to what appear to be abuses of power both as Mayor and Governor (think Troopergate and the Wasilla Librarian), she would be another Dick Cheney.  Even Kit Bond, a Republican, appeared a little startled last night when asked about her statement about wanting more power.  I hope that the Obama campaign takes that and does an ad contrasting her to Cheney – currently one of the most, if not the most unpopular figures in American politics. 

Dana Milbank has an interesting piece in the Washington Post  this morning.  After discussing her need to show that she could answer questions following her horribly funny Katie Couric interviews, Milbank writes,

On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly a confidence-builder. Palin, in her 90 minutes on the stage Thursday night, left the firm impression that she is indeed ready to lead the nation — with an unnerving mixture of platitudes and cute, folksy phrases that poured from her lips even when they bore no relation to the questions asked.

“Let’s commit ourselves just everyday American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation,” she proposed when asked about the mortgage crisis.

“I want to go back to the energy plan,” she said when asked about the federal bailout plan.

“Let’s commit ourselves just everyday American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation,” she proposed when asked about the mortgage crisis.

“I want to go back to the energy plan,” she said when asked about the federal bailout plan.

Biden grew frustrated. “If you notice, Gwen, the governor did not answer the question.”

Replied Sarah Six-Pack: “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/02/AR2008100204250.html?hpid=topnews

Pretty scary.

In the New York Times, Adam Nagourney observies:

“This is going to help stop the bleeding,” said Todd Harris, a Republican consultant who worked for Mr. McCain in his first presidential campaign. “But this alone won’t change the trend line, particularly in some of the battleground states.”

Short of a complete bravura performance that would have been tough for even the most experienced national politician to turn in — or a devastating error by the mistake-prone Mr. Biden, who instead turned in an impressively sharp performance — there might have been little Ms. Palin could have done to help Mr. McCain. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/us/politics/03assess.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Of course, these are two Eastern papers who don’t understand drilling in Alaska.

So I run off to work with two polls.  The Newsvine unscientific poll on MSNBC has Biden winning the debate by 78.2% and InTrade odds are Obama to win the election at 65 to 33.8 for McCain.

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The VP Debate – some initial thoughts

Exactly an hour into the debate, Joe Biden began an answer by saying, “Facts matter, Gwen.”

To him, maybe. To Sarah Palin, maybe not. The pattern, so far, has been one of Biden presenting facts and Palin countering with… saying stuff. Sometimes she throws in a fact, but mostly she seems to be offering a string of approximate policy positions, encomiums to the American spirit, disputed interpretations of Barack Obama’s record and anecdotes from Alaska.

She has a certain charm, but I wonder how viewers are reacting to the way she just declines to answer the question at hand and pivots to more solid ground. I had forgotten how effective Biden can be in these debates. So far, he hasn’t been patronizing or insulting. In terms of working-class street cred, Palin is in a league – or a universe – of her own. (Don’t ya think?) But Biden holds his own.

I confess, though, I don’t know what anybody is making of this. I don’t even know what I’m making of it. This is the strangest debate I’ve ever seen. It seems like an interplanetary exchange, with poor Gwen Ifill trying to keep the Enterprise from falling into the wormhole.

That was Gene Robinson in the Washington Post

Pat Buchanan has just dismissed Sarah Palin’s saying she wanted to expand the role of the Vice President.  I agree with Joe Biden that given the example of Dick Chaney – we need to be very frightened.  I’m with Rachel Maddow who thought that Palin was not very coherent and made a couple of mistakes.