Turning Point

Much to the consternation and I'm sure shear disappointment of the McCain-loving mainstream media, what happened this past weekend with the Iraqi PM endorsing Obama's withdrawal plan is nothing short of a turning point in this campaign. While McCain and his media cohorts will continue to extol the false notion that the surge has worked--just because you say it over and over again doesn't make it true--the facts on the ground (yes, those facts) dictate that the Iraqis want us out and we want out, so why not make everyone happy and get out! Call it a time "horizon" or a timetable or whatever you want; we're done and over with Iraq.

And the McCain campaign knows it. One strategist told Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, "We're fucked." That's a simple way of putting it, but basically it's right. Especially in light of McCain saying in 2004 that if we were asked to leave he would honor that commitment. Even after the Iraqi PM's spokesman claim that Maliki was misquoted, the Times has obtained the audio version, and a straight-forward interpretation shows that there is no confusion at all. In fact, Maliki, not the magazine, brought Obama and the words "timetable" and "withdrawal" into the conversation!

With Obama in Iraq today, after having a successful trip in Afghanistan over the weekend, the media will be swirling around him like vultures, prepared to pounce at any slight mistake or even the whiff of a mistake, so that they can then run a 24/7 Obama Campaign Death Watch on the cable shows (a la Jeremiah Wright). Except, it won't matter. The pictures of soldiers cheering Obama as he enters a mess hall, coupled with presidential-like meetings with top government officials, will out shadow anything the McCain media attempts to stir up.

This is all to drum up the big finale on Friday. The speech in Berlin. They're estimating that up to 1 million people could attend. Ask yourself: can you imagine McCain getting that many to attend a speech? No, not 1 million for McCain. Maybe a thousand or a hundred. Or maybe just no one at all. The Europeans know who the next president of the US will be. And now so do we.

Veep Speculation

We're nearing the point at which both Senators McCain and Obama will be selecting their respective Vice-Presidential running mates. Both Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic and Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post have put in their thoughts. Overall, I'm not comfortable with the list presented for Senator Obama, and I certainly hope that McCain picks Romney or Carly Fiorina. Either of those two would be like manna from heaven!

As for Senator Obama's choices, here's a rundown with complimentary commentary (taken from Marc Ambinder's list):

Sen. Chris Dodd (the insurance capital of the world)--can't really seeing it happen. Although, if truth be told, it was Dodd who broke Hillary Clinton's back. Remember in November of 2007, during the now famous (or infamous) Philadelphia debate where Dodd jumped all over Hillary's bobbing and weaving over giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. It was Dodd's dirty work that did Hill in.

Gov. Tim Kaine (the DC Beltway)--won't get it, even though he was an early backer of Obama's. He's pro-life for one and two he's inexperienced--more so than Obama. And Obama is already competitive in Virginia without Kaine's presence on the ticket, although his selection may just seal the deal. But, he's experiencing some political troubles at home, which isn't a good sign, either.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (where the Wizard of Oz took place)--another early supporter of Senator Obama's, she is the female counterpart of Obama. She's center-left and appeals to Republicans because of her sensibility and practicality. She won't help Obama carry Kansas, though. Right now, he's behind by about 20 points. No running mate can solve that conundrum.

Sen. Evan Bayh (a state no one knows about)--dull, boring, stale: all words to describe Senator Bayh. Although, his political resume is quite impressive. Governor and Senator of a red state and very popular. He endorsed Hillary, but never really said anything to disparage Obama's image. This would be a "safe" pick for Obama. I don't think he's looking to play it safe. At least, I certainly hope so.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (fly over country)--this is my personal choice, although I think his chances of receiving the spot are as narrow as Hillary's, if not more so. He appeals to the Midwest, independents, and disaffected Republicans. Plus, Vietnam hero, opponent of Iraq War, he has the military and foreign policy credos which Obama currently lacks. His trip with Obama to the Middle East next week may be mere window dressing or a preview of things to come.

Al Gore (the Earth)--just threw himself out of contention, telling ABC News that he has placed on himself a term limit for the vice presidency.

John Edwards (son of a mill worker)--he may very well end up in the spot. The Edwards of '08 is not the one from '04. He's tougher, stronger, and better at campaigning. I can't imagine Edwards appeasing to the other side during a VP debate this fall, as he did with Cheney four years prior. Edwards message during this campaign was similar to Obama's, except he was never able to raise enough money or appeal outside of Iowa (he was the Dick Gephardt of the '08 campaign). Also, the Edwardses are a strong pair. Standing with the Obamas, I can see it happening.

Joe Biden (Long-Winded)--I had always thought that he would be Secretary of State, and I still think he'll be at Foggy Bottom come January 2009. His experience in foreign policy is unmatched; he would be able to go after McCain with credibility and authenticity. His most famous contribution to the '08 campaign was this line: "There's only three things [Rudy Giuliani] mentions in a sentence -- a noun, a verb, and 9/11." Although, his mouth often gets him into trouble. Lest we forget that Obama is "articulate and bright and clean."

And last but not least, Sen. Hillary Clinton (Hell)--if this happens, cue the theme from Jaws.

Questions to McCain

My Uncle Mark, God Bless him, sent a copy of George Will's May 5th column in Newsweek magazine, which, for some reason, I cannot find online, so you'll just have to trust me that it exists. His column, titled "Questions to Obama," is classic Will--all fluff and no facts. So, I decided to respond to my uncle's email with my own questions for John McCain. The follow is what I sent him--and I'm still waiting for his reply . . .

I wish the so-called liberal media had nerve to ask these questions to McCain:

1) Senator, just yesterday in your press conference, you referred to the country of Czechoslovakia, and about three months ago, while appearing on the racist Don Imus radio show you talked about working with said country. And you said it again last year in a debate. Actually, Senator, Czechoslovakia hasn’t been in existence for over 10 years. Do you know that Czechoslovakia is no longer a country? If not, how can you claim to be the foreign policy candidate when you don’t even know that a country hasn’t been in existence for more than a decade? (http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/mccain_again_refers_to_czechos.php)

2) Senator, it seems you have a problem with mixing things up, or just plainly making things up. Coincidentally, or ironically, it almost always is in relation to foreign policy, your supposed forte. On several occasions, you have referenced Sunni and Shia but incorrectly. Even your pal, Senator Joe Lieberman, had to whisper into your ear the correct answer. (http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/08/869803.aspx)
With all due respect Senator, we already have one president who didn’t even know about the sectarian tribes and rivalries in Iraq before invading, so why should we trust you as well? Oh, and one more thing: who actually jokes about killing another country’s people? (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/07/08/mccains_latest_iran_joke.html)

3) Senator, the other day, your senior advisor, ousted, fired, discredited, disrespected former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina, said that it was unfair that health insurance companies discriminate against women because they would cover Viagra for men but not birth control for women. At first, you said that you hadn’t thought that much about the issue before, yet you had actually voted in the past AGAINST a bill mandating that insurance companies cover birth control. So, Senator, have you not thought about it enough to actually vote against it before or did you just forget? Can we please have some of that "straight talk" you’re supposed to be spewing?
(http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-carly10-2008jul10,0,228806.story)

4) Senator, you said recently in an interview with The New York Times, "I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself." Um, how long should it take you to "learn" to get online? You point and click. With all due respect, even my grandmother, who is actually older than you, can use the computer and can log onto the Internet. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/us/politics/13mccain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin) And she knows what "Google" means. (http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/09/mccain-its-a-google/) Don’t you think it would be important as president of the most powerful country that you should know how to at least use a computer?

5) And Senator, who really speaks for you? You say that only you speak for yourself. Yet, your top economic advisor says that Americans paying $4 for gasoline, higher insurance premiums, and more for college tuition, are just "whiners" and they should get over it. You have even said that Americans are "depressed." Bu you disagree with him, so you must be disagreeing with yourself, or are you mixing that up, too? And, by the way, why is he still with your campaign? And, why did you send him to speak to the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board the day that you rejected his comments? Maybe you should learn how to send him a text message.
(http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/who_speaks_for_john_mccain.php)
(http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/top_mccain_surrogate_describes.php)
(http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/mccain-i-would-imagine-we-are-in-a-recession/)

They Misunderestimate Obama

Watching the Sunday morning shows has really become a dull exercise in witnessing stupidity and ignorance. Having lived near and worked in Washington, DC for a brief period of time (back in the late summer and fall of 2003), I understand well the extent to which the "beltway bubble" exists for those who reside in the District or its suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. However, having gratefully escaped these confines and now experiencing politics from outside the DC establishment but still watching its members blather endlessly among themselves, I can only shake my head in puzzlement and bewilderment. That these people get paid--and some of them, large figures--to recite the talking points of the McCain campaign is enough to lead any one watching to throw themselves at the mercy of anything more interesting, even if it is a congressional hearing repeat on C-SPAN.

My rant against the DC media elites stems from their futile attempts to discredit and perhaps in the end even destroy Barack Obama. While it is true that the media were harsher on Clinton than Obama (at least during the first half of the primary; the debate in Philadelphia moderated by Stepinfullofshit and his bff Charlie Gibson) it cannot be argued, at least convincingly and at this point in the general election campaign, that the press has favored Obama over McCain. Just the opposite, in fact. Week after week, mistake after mistake, gaffe after gaffe, the media have given McCain and his allies "Get Out of Jail Free" cards. Barack Obama and his wife exchange a "fist bump" and its the lead story on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, with one commentator even calling it "a terrorist fist jab."

Leaving aside the media's continuing meme that Obama should be polling well ahead of his current standing (as of today, according to the Real Clear Politics average, he is ahead of McCain by 7 points, which is a larger lead than even President Bush had against Senator Kerry in 2004), it has become their weekly, if not daily, ritual to deliver mulligans to McCain but beat Obama over the head with a nine iron. For example, this past week, McCain senior advisor Charlie Black received attention for saying in Forbes magazine that a terrorist attack would bolster McCain's chances in November. Outside of Keith Olbermann's show, neither CNN or FOX or the major news networks ran major stories about Black's comments. McCain supposedly distanced himself from his advisor, saying that he disagreed with them, but would not let him go from the campaign. The McCain-loving media took his answer with a spoonful of gullibility and moved on. Then, Grover Norquist, current president of the right-wing Americans for Tax Reform, described Senator Obama as "John Kerry with a tan." His remarks, made to the Los Angeles Times, didn't even warrant an actual news story; it was only posted on the paper's political blog. Again, besides Keith Olbermann's show, the MSM closed its eyes, plugged its ears, and ran screaming in the other direction, completing ignoring the general election campaign's first use of overt, blatant racism. And, just today, there is a report that McCain and his beer-magnate millionaire wife have not paid taxes on one of their seven properties. Of course, it didn't make the nightly news.

Even as the media continue to attempt to drag down Barack Obama, with the aid of the McCain campaign no less, they do so at their own peril and stupidity, for they have already lost sight of one of the most remarkable feats of this campaign season: For the first time in nearly three decades, the Clintons have been defeated, at the hands of a first-term, black Senator. That Barack Obama has accomplished what the Republicans have attempted to do at least since the early 1990s, and have spent millions of dollars while doing it, should signal, at the very least, to the MSM and the McCainites that Barack Obama and his legion of followers are a force unrecognizable to them and others who have studied American politics for the past half century. That they think they can merely use the same old Rovian tactics and scare voters with Internet smears about Obama, and that they would ironically enlist the so-called liberal MSM as their partners in these endeavors, reveals that they are still living in a fallacy. The old ways of campaigning--the textbook ways of communicating, branding, and attacking--will not work this time around. And they have not worked. If the Republicans and their media whores think that by labeling Senator Obama an elitist, urban liberal who is untested and naive and ill-prepared to answer the phone at 3am, it will break voters into submission and vote for the septuagenarian, just ask the Clintons as to how well that tactic worked out for them.

Turdblossom Strikes Again!

Today, Karl Rove reared his cytoplasmic self to spew more bullshit. He told a gathering of Republican insiders, and no doubt card-carrying members of various country clubs, that Barack Obama was "coolly arrogant" and "Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

The blogosphere lit itself on fire--and rightfully so. Jake Tapper of ABC News nicely sums it up: "Interesting that Mr. Rove would use a country club metaphor to describe the first major party African-American presidential candidate, whom I'm sure wouldn't be admitted into many country clubs that members of the Capitol Hill Club frequent." Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo agrees with Tapper's characterization of Rove's comments as subliminally "uppity" although Matthew Yglesias of The Atlantic disagrees. A reader of Ben Smith's blog hits it more directly.

Indeed, the Republicans for over a year--no, for almost a decade, at least since 2000--have been bracing to fight Hillary Clinton and now that they have Barack Obama they're just swinging at anything, hoping to land a few punches here and there to bring him down. Except, inevitably, they are bound to end up hitting themselves and knocking themselves out instead! It's more than an act of desperation: it's the sign of a truly desperate and flailing party in denial over its own failures to lead this country in a time of war and economic insecurity. That Karl Rove, whom Bush famously (or infamously) calls "turdblossom," is left preaching to a bunch of crusty, white, rich Republicans about the supposed elitism and the country club attitude of a black man is a sure sign that they are scared shitless.

Sunday Morning Show Round Up

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On Expanding the Electoral Map and Declining Public Financing

It is no accident that Senator Barack Obama's campaign decided to forgo federal matching funds, in exchange for relying on his million-plus donor base, while at the same time begin running his first national campaign advertisement in 18 states. Yes, that is right: he is running television advertisements in almost a quarter of the country, and it is only June! These two actions are not mutually exclusive and, I'm sure, were not separately reached within the Obama campaign. Instead, they tie perfectly together. By tapping into his unprecendented campaign bank account, Obama is able to run the first truly national presidential campaign. Forget the 2004 anthem of "Ohio, Ohio, Ohio!" Screw the 2000 opera called "Florida, Florida, Florida!" The 2008 campaign playbook is being rewritten. It is called, "How to Win a National Election withour Losing Your Soul."

This strategy is queerly unfamiliar to the mainstream media and to Senator McCain's campaign. Exclusive allies, McCain and his media whores on television, radio, and the internet pounced on the Obama campaign's decision. George Stepinfullofshit on ABC News called it a "flip flop" and both NBC and CBS ran fairly negative stories on it. Taking their cues directly from the McCain campaign's direction, the media pretended to act in horror and shock that Obama would even consider anything but political suicide by accepting only $85 million in federal matching funds from August through November, when it is estimated he could potentially raise more than $500 million. Of course, poor John McCain, who can only muster a couple hundred people to a campaign event, compared to Obama's tens of thousands, is forced to fund his campaign with taxpayer dollars. Isn't he the one who is supposed to support less federal spending? By my calculation, Senator Obama just saved the American Taxpayer another $85 million. No doubt, it'll find its way into the sinkhole that is Iraq, however.

While John McCain and the media continue to scream and shout and jump and up down like sore losers standing in the corner of the room, Senator Obama is preparing something unprecendented: he is running a campaign in all parts of the country, from Florida to Alaska. In addition to the traditional "big three"--Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan--Obama's campaign is running its first advertisement in states that have not voted for a Democratic candidate for president in more than a generation. States like Alaska, which Lyndon Johnson last won in 1964. Since then, not a single Democratic candidate has received more than 36% of the vote. Polls already show Senator Obama besting the previous eight Democratic nominees in Alaska. How about Indiana? Last voted for Johnson, too. North Carolina? Jimmy Carter in 1976. Virginia, the former home to the Confederacy's capital? Johnson again. Barack Obama is competitive in states that shouldn't be competitive, especially for a black man with his name, background, and voting record.

So what is happening? As the national media continue to pretend that the race is a lot closer than it really is--just look at their lukewarm response to national polls only showing Senator Obama ahead by 6 to 8 points--Obama is preparing for a fall campaign that will have him flushed with hundreds of millions of dollars of cash to run advertisements, register new voters, galvinize his base, and bankrupt McCain, Inc. To think that a first-term Senator, with no national experience, and no discernible political accomplishments, could first vanquish the most potent political force of the past two decades and then destroy an American hero who sacrificed himself for the sake of his country, in the span of less than 12 months, we must be witnessing the most talented and gifted political icon since FDR and, before him, Lincoln and Jefferson.