The Anonymous Liberal

Palin's Magical Mystery Tour

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:58:00 +0000

Matt Yglesias is puzzled:

Sarah Palin going on a bus tour to West Virginia is a puzzling move. Obviously, if West Virginia is in play, then the McCain-Palin ticket is doomed. There’s no point in focusing on the states that are actually close at the moment, you need to focus on the states that would be close if the election were close and then hope that events and your national media strategy can make the election close.

I agree with Matt's logic, but it relies on an implicit assumption. It assumes that Palin is actually an asset to the campaign. What if the McCain campaign has concluded that Palin is a liability among independent and swing voters and that it actually hurts McCain when she visits a state? The polls seem to suggest that's true. And the latest news from Alaska can't help.

If they've reached that conclusion, it makes perfect sense to send Palin to places like West Virginia and Nebraska. She's far less likely to do harm in those places, and there's at least a superficially plausible reason for her to be there. If they sent her to Oklahoma or Utah, on the other hand, it would be too obvious that they were trying to hide her. So they're having her spend as much time as possible in the "lean McCain" states and hoping to minimize the damage. It's a "hide in plain sight" strategy.

We're All Terrorists Now

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:09:00 +0000

Via TPM:

The McCain campaign is now broadening their attack on Obama's past association with William Ayers to include Michelle Obama -- even though McCain has repeatedly said spouses should be off limits during the campaign.

The attack? Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers' wife and fellow former Weatherman, went to work in 1984 for the major Chicago-based national law firm of Sidley & Austin, and three years later, Michelle joined the mega-firm as well.

That's the entire attack. We wish we were joking. But we aren't....

The firm's Chicago office currently employs more than 500 lawyers. Murtagh didn't even bother alleging that the two even knew each other, instead suggesting that they might have. If so, he said, the Obamas have known the two longer than suspected.

"If it is true" that the two women knew each other, Murtagh said, "the relationship is almost a decade older than Senator Obama has acknowledged. And that can very easily be resolved by Senator Obama, by Mrs. Obama, by Mr. Ayers and by Ms. Dohrn."

"And incidentally, I would emphasize that we've all been focusing on Senator Obama," said Murtagh. "I think we need to speak to his wife."

Keep in mind that this wasn't any surrogate speaking off the cuff. He was on a call organized by the McCain campaign, and he was apparently reading from a prepared statement, which would of course have been vetted by McCain aides.

I don't work for Sidley Austin, but I did interview with them after law school and was offered a job. I suppose that makes me a terrorist too.

This expansion of the guilt-by-association game ends up netting some unusual suspects. For instance, the man who briefly replaced Alberto Gonzales as Acting Attorney General, Peter Keisler, worked at Sidley during the 1980s (and is currently a partner there). He was the guy who prosecuted the Hamdan case for the Bush Administration. I'm sure he'll be surprised to learn that he's a terrorist-sympathizer.

Bradford Berenson is also a partner at Sidley. He was Associate White House Counsel to President Bush from 2001 to 2003. According to his bio, while at the White House, he worked on "the USA Patriot Act, the Military Order authorizing the use of military commissions, detainee and anti-terrorism litigation, presidential action against terrorist financing, and the creation of the new Department of Homeland Security."

The terrorists have infiltrated everywhere. We've got terrorists writing anti-terrorism laws and prosecuting terrorists. This is madness! Somebody alert the McCain campaign.

Revisiting the "Race Card" Dispute

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:34:00 +0000

(updated with video)

Back in July, Barack Obama said the following at a campaign event in Springfield, Missouri:

“So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.”

Even though this comment wasn't directed at the McCain campaign specifically, the McCain campaign reacted aggressively. Rick Davis issued an angry statement saying:

“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

McCain himself later echoed this charge, and every Republican surrogate joined in, claiming that it was outrageous and racist to suggest that John McCain would ever employ such a strategy.

But look at where we are now. Over the last week, the McCain campaign itself, including all of the principals (John McCain, Sarah Palin, Cindy McCain) have done all of the things Obama warned about in his July comment. Let's go line by line.

[W]hat they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me.

Check. That's definitely been the theme of the week. Who is the real Barack Obama? What do we know about this guy. He's friends with terrorists, etc., etc.

You know, he’s not patriotic enough.

Check. Cindy McCain has accused Obama of putting her son in danger by voting against troop funding. She said it "sent a cold chill down my spine." Sarah Palin has flat out accused Obama of not sufficiently loving his country. McCain has suggested that we don't really know who Obama is, where he's from, or what his allegiances are. They're running ads playing up Obama's "friendship" with a domestic terrorist.

He’s got a funny name.

Check. Speakers at McCain/Palin rallies are now routinely referring to Obama by his full name, with emphasis on the middle name.

You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know.

They haven't literally said this, but that was definitely the gist of this McCain ad that was released on Wednesday (and appears to have been pulled due to copyright issues). The ad concluded with a picture of Obama and big words on the screen saying "Not Presidential."

He’s risky.

This is something they are explicitly saying. McCain himself has used the phrase numerous times and the campaign has released ads that explicitly call Obama "risky."

So everything Obama said in July has come to pass. Indeed, it's probably fair to say that Obama understated how ugly it would be. At the time, though, Republicans all claimed that Obama was being paranoid and racist. Now they're urging McCain to take these attacks even further.

UPDATE: No sooner had I written this post than I saw the McCain campaign's latest web ad. It is easily the most naked play to racial resentment made so far in this campaign. The basic gist is that Obama is some sort of inner city rabble-rowser who worked with ACORN to intimidate banks into making risky loans to shiftless minorities, setting the state for the current financial crisis. It uses still pictures of Obama from the 70s to make him seem like some sort of Black Panther-ish militant. It asks "who is Barack Obama" and claims that he had a "political baptism performed at warp speed" (i.e. he's not who he appears to be). It implies that ACORN and Obama and trying to steal the election by committing voter fraud in key swing states. Finally, it ends by calling Obama "too risky."

This is, without question, a Willie Horton-esque ad. In fact, it may be worse. McCain and the Republicans are not only trying to play up Obama's "blackness," but they're pushing the growing (and horribly inaccurate) meme that our current economic crisis is largely the fault of minorities. That is an incredibly dangerous and divisive thing to do.

Every day McCain descends further into the abyss.

UPDATE II: Wow, I don't know how I missed this earlier, but Jed Lewison beat me to this point big time. He even made a video. Take a look.

The Bush Boom: Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:31:00 +0000

Now that the stock market is several thousand points below what it was when George W. Bush took office, it's probably worth revisiting some past commentary by our conservative friends. I'll start with this book:

In case you can't read that, the title is "The Bush Boom: How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy." You can buy it at Amazon for only $5.77 (a steal!) The book's author is Jerry Bowyer, who presciently wrote the following in June of 2007:

. . . so first there's Lehman bros income up, Goldman did okay and now we see that Morgan's doing well. All of these guys were fingered as threatened by the 'sub-prime-contagion-apocalyptic melt-down. Well it looks like not so much. Sure, they got hit a little in the fixed income divisions but what the press missed is the tremendous benefit of deregulation.

In 1995 Clinton and the Rs in Congress, dismantled FDRs banking regulation regime, allowing commercial and retail banking in the same entities. A wave of mergers (along with a wave of media handwringing about them) followed. Now they're diversified. The guys doing mortgages are under the same roof as the guys doing big corporate deals, so if mortgages get a little dicey, that's okay, because mergers and acquisitions business is making up for it.

Deregulation is the driver of banking resiliency and is, I think, the missed angle of this story.

Indeed. That's from an email Bowyer wrote to Larry Kudlow and which Kudlow promptly posted on his blog and described as "very insightful."

Speaking of Kudlow, has anyone in the history of punditry been more catastrophically wrong about everything (except maybe Bill Kristol)? Check out this now classic bit of triumphalism from October of 2007:

If things are so bad, why are they so good? . . .

Yes, there is home deflation on Main Street and loan deflation on Wall Street. It will continue. But what about the rest of the story? When you listen to the hedge-fund short-sellers and the liberal politicians as they attempt to discredit the Bush economic boom, you could almost fall for their bear-market seduction. But the seductress turns out to be an economic harlot — not a beautiful woman.

The true message of the strong economy is that we’re virtually guaranteed of a Goldilocks soft landing or better — and certainly not a recession. . . .

The print and broadcast media do not give President Bush much credit for his economic policies. But somehow I have to wonder whether low unemployment, strong growth, negligible inflation, and record stock markets do not deserve just a bit of praise.

It is still the greatest story never told.

And here is Kudlow again, in December of 2007:

There is no recession. Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S economy continues moving ahead—quarter after quarter, year after year—defying dire forecasts and delivering positive growth. In fact, we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.

The pessimistas are a persistent bunch. In 2006, they were certain a recession was just around the corner. They were wrong. Instead, the economy posted two consecutive quarters of near or above four-percent growth.

Earlier today, a doom and gloom economic forecast from Macro Economic Advisors was released predicting zero percent growth in the fourth quarter. This report is off by at least two percentage points. These guys are going to wind up with egg on their faces.

Whoops! It gets better, though:

I believe the economic pendulum will soon swing in favor of the GOP.

There's no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It's not going to happen. . . . The Bush boom is alive and well. It's finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come. Yes, it's still the greatest story never told.

I'm really not being selective here. I literally chose the first two Kudlow articles that showed up when I googled him. The rest are just like this. For the last 6 years he's been screaming from the rooftops that we're in the middle of the Bush Boom and it's "the greatest story never told." In particular, he's repeatedly cited the stock market as being the ultimate barometer of the success of Bush's economic policies.

Today the market closed at 8579. It closed at 8545 on February 27 . . . 1998.

Look, I've been wrong before. Who hasn't? But if I had been this consistently and embarrassingly wrong about something over a six year period, especially about a subject on which I hold myself out to be an expert, I don't think I'd be able to show my face in public any more. Sorry, Larry, it's time to pack up your bags and find something else to do with your life.

A Golden Opportunity For Obama

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:55:00 +0000

Though the roll out didn't go quite as well as planned, John McCain clearly intends to make his new mortgage buyout proposal one of the centerpieces of the remainder of his campaign. But as I explained in my last post, it's just not good policy.

Not only that, but it doesn't strike me as being particularly good politics either. I was pleased to see Obama economic policy director Jason Furman issue a statement criticizing the plan:

It turns out it’s even more costly and out-of-touch than we ever imagined. John McCain wants the government to massively overpay for mortgages in a plan that would guarantee taxpayers lose money, and put them at risk of losing even more if home values don’t recover. The biggest beneficiaries of this plan will be the same financial institutions that got us into this mess, some of whom even committed fraud.

I think this proposal presents Obama with a golden opportunity to co-opt some traditionally Republican themes and really deliver a knock out blow to McCain.

First, as Furman explains, this proposal amounts to a straight taxpayer give away to financial institutions. And no one likes that.

But more importantly, I think, this proposal is fundamentally unfair. While it would certainly help many homeowners, the help would necessarily be distributed in a very arbitrary and uneven way. It would help those who are delinquent in payments at the expense of those who have sacrificed and suffered but continued to make their payments. It would help people who purchased houses at the height of the bubble while doing nothing for those who borrowed against their home equity during the same period (and are now hurting just as bad). It would help people in certain regions of the country at the expense of taxpayers in others. It would help those who can't pay their prime mortgages while doing nothing for those who were victimized by predatory sub-prime lenders.

What this plan does is use taxpayer money to compensate people directly for the fall in the value of their homes. People's current mortgages would be purchased at face value and reduced to reflect the current value of their homes--a pretty sweet deal. But we just don't have the resources to do that for everyone. So what you're left with is an impossible line-drawing exercise. How do you decide who gets compensated and who doesn't? However you end up drawing that line, those on one side of it are going to receive a massive benefit while those on the other receive nothing. Moreover, once those necessarily arbitrary lines have been drawn, who makes the determination whether you're on one side of the line or the other? Who's going to be making that very individualized assessment? What kind of process will be afforded? Will people be allowed hearings? Appeals? What kind of bureaucracy will be needed to administer this and to comply with constitutional due process requirements?

These are questions that McCain and his policy advisers haven't even begun to grapple with. And I think Obama needs to ask them. This is an opportunity for Obama to show that he actually cares much more than McCain does about spending taxpayer money in a responsible way. He can co-opt one of McCain's signature issues.

It's also a chance for Obama to make clear that he believes in fundamental fairness and that any programs we undertake should be designed to help everyone who needs it. It's amazing to see a Republican endorse a plan that basically amounts to a massive and haphazard redistribution of wealth from some people to others. Again, this offers Obama an opportunity to co-opt some traditionally Republican themes in pursuit of good policy.

I do think the government needs to step in and address some of the problems in the housing market more directly. But there are much smarter and fairer ways to go about it, ways that offer assistance to a wider range of people and at less cost to taxpayers, ways that don't offer windfalls to financial institutions or penalize those who have acted the most responsibly. These are all points that Obama should be making over the next few weeks.

McCain's New Plan

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:06:00 +0000

I'm not an economist, so maybe I just don't understand its true brilliance, but the new McCain plan for buying up mortgages doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Here's what CNN says:

Under a mortgage rescue plan announced at the debate Tuesday night by Senator John McCain, much of the burden of paying to keep troubled borrowers in their homes will shift to taxpayers.

McCain's original plan called for lenders to write down the value of these mortgages, and take those losses. McCain unveiled the new $300 billion plan in response to the first question of the debate.

He said, "I would order the Secretary of Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes, at the diminished values of those homes, and let people make those - be able to make those payments and stay in their homes."

The government would convert failing mortgages into low-interest, FHA-insured loans.

So the government would be buying up troubled mortgages at full face value with the taxpayers covering the difference between the loan amount and the new home value. That makes no sense to me. Under the bailout plan as currently contemplated, the Treasury would be buying up mortgage-backed securities at far less than face value and forcing financial institutions to take losses. And they should be taking losses. They made bad bets. Why should they get full face value for these loans?

Moreover, this approach creates a horrible line-drawing problem. Nearly all Americans who own homes have suffered as a result of the bursting of the housing bubble, not just the ones who are currently delinquent on payments. Equity they thought they had has vanished. Their homes are worth much less than they were two years ago. What this plan does is it takes this loss of equity and transfers it to the taxpayers--but only for certain homeowners.

Who would qualify? According to McCain's chief policy advisor:

To qualify, homeowners would have to be delinquent in their payments already, or be likely to fall behind in the near future. They would have to live in the home in question - no investment properties would be eligible - and have had demonstrated their credit-worthiness when they purchased the property by putting down a substantial down payment and by providing documentation of their income and assets - no liar loans.

First, I don't know how the Treasury is supposed to determine which homeowners are "likely to fall behind in the near future." And however you draw that line, those on one side of it are going to receive a massive windfall while those on the other receive nothing. And that's problematic both politically and morally given that the homeowners who acted the most responsibly are much more likely to get the short end of that deal.

And on the other end, if you exclude those people who did not "demonstrate their credit-worthiness" prior to purchase, you are excluding a large percentage of the problematic mortgages that are at the heart of our current problems.

Much of the current financial crisis stems from leveraged bets that were made on the very worst mortgages. If you leave them out of your solution, you're not really dealing with the problem.

I sympathize with the desire to go to the root of the problem and help actual homeowners (as opposed to financial institutions), but this doesn't seem like a good way to do it. It's too uneven a solution and it rewards financial institutions at taxpayer expense. Refinancing programs, like the ones that have already been passed, are good ideas, but it becomes problematic when the government steps in and reduces the amount of principal owed (especially when the banks don't have to take the hit). I think bankruptcy judges should have the authority to reduce principal owed, but that's very different. No one wants to declare bankruptcy. It's a last resort, so there's little risk of manifest unfairness or moral hazard.

But if the government just starts buying up people's mortgages and reducing the amount of principal they owe, you run into massive administrative and fairness problems. It just strikes me as a really bad idea.

UPDATE: Okay, the economists are backing me up. Both Krugman and Delong say this is bad idea.

When Conservatives Come to Believe Their Own Propaganda

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:26:00 +0000

Today's debate over at the National Review is both hilarious and deeply disturbing. It was kicked off by David Frum, who wrote the following in a post yesterday:

My pals over at the Corner are very excited by the last-minute attempt to transform Bill Ayers into the Willie Horton of 2008. Well, good luck

In 1988, crime was a huge and rising problem - and Democrats still by and large resisted the effective crime control policies being developed at places like the Manhattan Institute and that would achieve such great results in the 1990s. So Willie Horton, the furloughed rapist and murderer, symbolized in very graphic terms something important and significant about Michael Dukakis the candidate.

But Bill Ayers? Does anybody really seriously believe that Barack Obama is a secret left-wing radical? And if not, then what is this fuss and fury supposed to show? It's like Ronald Reagan's opponents trying to beat him by pointing out that Birchers once supported him.

This set off The Corner crew--most of whom have now managed to convince themselves that Barack Obama is in fact a secret left-wing radical and terrorist sympathizer. First there was Mark Levin:

With all respect, I don't think this — "Obama is not some wild-eyed radical. He's a normal Chicago politician. That's the problem." — is a fair take at all. How can anyone who actually follows this stuff, who reads Freddoso, Kurtz, and scores of other reliable sources of information, conclude that Obama is not some wild-eyed radical?

Then came Peter Kirsanow:

Obama consorted with a terrorist who brags about planting bombs and whose organization planted hundreds of bombs. Some were meant to kill cops. Some were meant to kill soldiers. Some were meant to kill civilians.Let's put this quite simply: This is an abomination. This alone disqualifies Obama from being president. Even if he can heal the planet. Even if the Dow tanks to 5000. Even if he puts a unicorn in every garage. A majority of Americans will not vote for a candidate who they know has had a working relationship with a terrorist — foreign or domestic.

And then the most unhinged person of all, Andy McCarthy, chimed in:

"Does anybody really seriously believe that Barack Obama is a secret left-wing radical?"

You're right, David. Why would anyone think this guy is a left-wing radical? Just because sought (and got) an endorsement from the Chicago branch of the Socialist International, got his training from ACORN and a Saul Alinski outfit, wanted to surrender to terrorists, thinks the Constitution vests alien combatants with rights against the American people, fought a law prohibiting infanticide, praises Bill Ayers' views on education and the criminal justice system, approved millions in subsidies for hard Left education "reform" projects, wants to nationalize the healthcare industry (for starters), wants to transfer $850B to the international community through the good offices of the UN, and (having voted against Roberts and Alito) says he thinks the key qualifications for a Supreme Court justice — after considering a candidate's positions on affirmative action, reproductive rights, and the rights of the disabled — are "empathy" and "what is in the judge's heart"?

What on earth was I thinking?

The degree to which conservative "intellectuals" have thoroughly succumb to their own propaganda is downright scary. No rational human being could look at Barack Obama's career in politics and conclude that he is anything but a mainstream center-left politician. Even during his law school days, well before he entered the national scene, everyone who knew him described him as an open-minded pragmatist. That was how he was able to win the support of conservatives on the Harvard Law Review and become its Editor in Chief:

“I saw no evidence of a radical streak, either overt or covert, when we were together at Harvard Law School,” said Bradford A. Berenson, who worked on the Harvard Law Review with Mr. Obama and who served as associate White House counsel under President Bush. Mr. Berenson, who is backing Mr. McCain, described his fellow student as “a pragmatic liberal” whose moderation frustrated others at the law review whose views were much farther to the left.

The notion that Obama has ever been some kind of fire-breathing radical is just not supported by any actual evidence. Even the Ayres connection can be easily put in perspective. In 1995, Obama served with Ayres on a six member board dealing with education reform. Ayres is a professor of education at the University of Illinois. It was a part of a project established by the Annenberg Foundation, an organization established by a former Nixon administration official. There were Republicans on the board as well. In 2002, Obama served on another charitable board with Ayres (and several conservatives). No one has put forth any evidence that Obama had anything other than a professional acquaintance with Ayres (something that was true of most Chicago area politicians, Republican and Democrat).

Yet from this we are supposed to infer, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary from the rest of Obama's well-document public career, that he is actually some sort of closet radical and terrorist-sympathizer.

I understand why Republicans want to convince gullible voters that this is true, but I can't for the life of me understand how they've managed to convince themselves that it's true. These folks are far dumber and more paranoid than I ever appreciated.

Immediate Debate Reax

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:40:00 +0000

It seemed like McCain missed a bunch of opportunities. He was asked what should have been his dream question, about sacrifice. And he ended up talking about earmarks. That's just political malpractice.

My sense is that Obama did at least as well as McCain on most issues and much better on certain ones, particularly health care. So I don't see this moving public opinion much (at least in McCain's direction).

The one big news item out of the debate was McCain's announcement, in the first few minutes, that he supports a plan to buy up American's mortgages and refinance them at their current prices. I'm guessing the McCain campaign was rolling that out as the Big Issue he intends to focus on for the remainder of the campaign.

It will be interesting to see how Obama responds to that. It strikes me as bad policy, something that couldn't possibly be administered fairly, at least without completely bankrupting the government. Whether it's good politics is another question. It's definitely gimmicky, but sometimes people like gimmicks.

Finally, I predict the clip that will be played the most over the next few days is McCain calling Obama "that one." That was just weird.

UPDATE: Obama won the CNN poll handily. 54% to 30%.

Dumber than Dirt

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:12:00 +0000

Know-nothing politics has reached its zenith [or nadir?] with Sarah Palin. It's amazing to watch her in action. She has no clue what she's talking about, ever.

For instance, in Florida today, she lashed out at Barack Obama for his claim that he didn't know about Bill Ayres' background when he first met him. Because Palin is clairvoyant, she knows that this is a lie. And she continued from there:

You know, what's next? Claiming that he didn't know two of his biggest supporters were running Fannie Mae, the sub-prime mortgage giant?

This is so dumb. First, and most obviously, Fannie Mae is not a "sub-prime mortgage giant." Sub-prime mortgages are, by definition, those that do not conform to Fannie and Freddie's guidelines. That's the whole point.

Second, John McCain has received far more money from Fannie and Freddie executives and lobbyists than Barack Obama ($169,000 to $16,000, according to the New York Times). And McCain's campaign adviser was on Freddie Mac's payroll until last month. He provided no services to the company, but his consulting firm was paid $180,000 a year for the sole purpose of maintaining access to John McCain.

I'd say that Palin is lying here, but I honestly don't think she knows enough to be lying. I guarantee you she has no clue what Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac actually do or how they fit into the current crisis.

A Moment That May Come to Define John McCain

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:14:00 +0000

In the long history of democracy, there have been countless examples of politicians who have mortgaged their integrity in order to win an election. Rarely, however, have we been able to witness the precise moment in which a once respected politician cashed in his last remaining shred of integrity. But today such a moment occurred, and it was captured on film.

Today, John McCain delivered what I'm fairly confident historians will someday refer to as his "Manchurian Candidate" speech. Following in the footsteps of his running mate--who over the weekend accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists"--John McCain gave a speech today in which he went out of its way to imply that Barack Obama was some sort of secret Islamist candidate. Here are some of the key points he made:

-"I didn’t just show up out of nowhere – America knows me. You know my strengths and my faults. You know my story and my convictions. . . . You need to know who you’re putting in the White House – where the candidate came from and what he or she believes."

-"Even at this late hour in the campaign, there are essential things we don’t know about Senator Obama or the record that he brings to this campaign."

-"Senator Obama has taken in over 200 million dollars from undisclosed sources. We have already seen the potential for fraud because of his refusal to disclose his donors. His campaign had to return $33,000 in illegal foreign funds from Palestinian donors, and this weekend, we found out about another $28,000 in illegal donations. Why has Senator Obama refused to disclose the people who are funding his campaign?"

-"My opponent’s touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who’s already authored two memoirs, he’s not exactly an open book. It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that. Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama?"

While the implications of this speech couldn't have been clearer, it was written so as to provide McCain plausible deniability. McCain did not himself mention Obama's supposed "terrorist ties" (leaving that to his surrogates and running mate). And he phrased most of his accusations in the form of rhetorical questions. Unfortunately, in an unscripted moment, one of his supporters took it upon himself to answer McCain's rhetorical question, to take the argument McCain was making to its logical conclusion. When McCain asked "who is the real Barack Obama?", a man shouted out "a terrorist!" As you can see in the video below, McCain clearly heard what the man said. It startled him and caused him to pause momentarily and make a strange expression. Though you can never truly know what is going on in someone else's head, I wonder if McCain wasn't thinking to himself--for at least a moment--"what am I doing? How could I have stooped this low?"

But if those thoughts did occur to him, they were fleeting. McCain gathered himself and continued with his speech. Tellingly, he passed on the opportunity to clarify that his opponent, a fellow United States Senator and the nominee of the Democratic Party, is not in fact a terrorist. If John McCain goes on to lose this race, I suspect that moment will come to be seen as the moment when he cashed in his last remaining shred of integrity. Here's the clip, for those of you who haven't seen it:

There's another element of this line of attack that isn't being commented on enough. Not only is this Manchurian Candidate argument morally repugnant, but it's highly reckless as well. It's one thing to convince your supporters to hate your opponent. That's all but unavoidable in politics. But this particular argument does more than invite hate; it invites vigilantism. To the extent people internalize this message--that Barack Obama is some of sort of dangerous impostor, a terrorist in disguise--won't at least some of them conclude that it is their patriotic duty to protect American from that threat? Indeed, at Sarah Palin's rally in Florida this morning, a member of the audience shouted "kill him!" as Palin again mentioned Obama's "terrorist ties." There are plenty of nuts out there, and this kind of rhetoric is exactly the sort of thing that could incite some of them to violence. It's beyond reckless. I honestly don't know how McCain can look at himself in the mirror at night.

A Tour de Force in Projection and Hypocrisy

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:21:00 +0000

John McCain's speech today is, hands down, the most shamelessly hypocritical political speech I've read in my lifetime. It's beyond parody. Here are a few choice excerpts (via Halperin), with my commentary:

My opponent has invited serious questioning by announcing a few weeks ago that he would quote — “take off the gloves.” Since then, whenever I have questioned his policies or his record, he has called me a liar.

This is from a man whose campaign, just this weekend, announced in all the major newspapers that they were "taking the gloves off" in order to "turn the page" on the unfolding financial crisis. And the reason everyone (not just Obama) has been calling McCain a liar is because he and his running mate have made a habit lately of lying rather egregiously and unrepentantly about everything.

Rather than answer his critics, Senator Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. But let me reply in the plainest terms I know. I don’t need lessons about telling the truth to American people. And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn’t seek advice from a Chicago politician.

Obama's trying to distract people? Again, this is a man whose campaign announced to all the world just this weekend that the plan for the remainder of the campaign was to distract people from the economic crisis by going after Obama personally.

My opponent’s touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who’s already authored two memoirs, he’s not exactly an open book. It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that. Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama? But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.

McCain calling Obama "touchy" is just too rich. Obama has been the measure of calm this entire campaign. McCain has been erratic as hell. Just last week he gave two interviews where he appeared to be on the verge of a Colonel Jessup moment. And just what is McCain implying when he asserts that Obama's is not an "open book" and that we don't know who the "real Barack Obama" is? Could he possibly be trying to capitalize on scurrilous rumors that have been circulating for the last year about Obama? Could he be playing to people's prejudices? Nahh. McCain is way to honorable for that.

Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed.

The chutzpah of that statement is pretty stunning. This is, in a nutshell, the central Republican political strategy of the last 20 years. And McCain has been one of the worst offenders. How many times has he claimed that Obama will raised taxes on those making over $42,000?

But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place.

No, the truth is that McCain is a career deregulator. Moreover, Fannie and Freddie were not the cause of the current crisis and the regulations McCain is talking about would have done nothing to stop what has happened.

As recently as September of last year he [Obama] said that subprime loans had been, quote, “a good idea.” Well, Senator Obama, that “good idea” has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

This is just flat out ridiculous. Obama wrote a letter to Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson in March 2007 warning about the problems with subprime loans. And Obama wasn't even in Congress during the crucial periods of this crisis, when subprime loans were proliferating and trade in CDOs and credit default swaps was taking off (thanks in large part to the actions of Phil Gramm, McCain's chief economic advisor).

To hear him talk now, you’d think he’d always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions. But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did. He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem. The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign. He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them. Did he ever talk to the executives at Fannie and Freddie about these reckless loans?

This is where the hypocrisy meter goes completely through the roof. McCain has much closer links to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than Obama does. His campaign is littered with ex Fannie and Freddie lobbyists, including his campaign manager, who was on their payroll until last month. And contrary to McCain's claim, McCain has taken WAY more money from Fannie and Freddie executives and lobbyists than Obama has ($169,000 to $16,000, according to CNN). And finally, it wasn't the loans that Fannie and Freddie were issuing ("prime" loans) that were the heart of the problem here. It was the subprime loans. Those were being issued by Fannie and Freddie's competitors.

I could go on, but it's just too exhausting. This is the speech of someone who longer has any self-respect and is willing to literally say anything in order to win. John McCain is a disgrace.

The Sad Demise of Joe Lieberman

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:41:00 +0000

It's amazing how circumstances have conspired to make Joe Lieberman a chief surrogate for those who would stand in the way of the very ideas he spent his life fighting for. I've never much liked Joe Lieberman, but at least once upon a time he was an advocate for progressive economic and social policies, things like universal health care, fairness in the tax code, sensible regulation, a woman's right to choose, civil rights, etc.

When Lieberman decided to cross parties and endorse John McCain back in December of 2007, he justified his action by saying that he considers McCain "the most capable to be commander in chief on day one of his administration, and the most capable of uniting the country so that we can prevail against Islamic extremism." In other words, Lieberman essentially conceded that his decision was all about foreign policy. He might disagree with McCain on most domestic policy issues, but his top priority at this point was the War on Terror.

I wonder what Lieberman would have thought that day if he had been told that less than a year later, he would be stumping in Florida for a half-term Alaskan governor with no foreign policy experience (or knowledge) and far right views on social issues, and that he would be doing so in an environment in which differences over economic policy have become far more significant and pronounced than differences over foreign policy.

This morning in Clearwater, Florida, Lieberman introduced Sarah Palin at a campaign rally. Here's Michael Crowley at TNR:

It was jarring, however, to hear Lieberman's full-throated endorsement of Sarah Palin, a woman with whom he has no prior relationship, and whose policy credentials you have to think the wonky 20-year Senator would find suspect in any other context.

"She's so strong, she's so capable, she's so competent," Lieberman told the cheering crowd. Emphasizing her "faith," he added that she is someone who "with your help--and God's help--will be the next vice president of the United States." More big cheers.

The religiousity continued when Palin bounded onstage. She commented right away on the number of American flags in the crowd, declaring: "God bless America--you guys get it!"

It really is sad. I have no doubt in my mind that Lieberman considers this woman to be a joke. No one as manifestly unqualified to be president has ever come this close to the White House. Indeed, Lieberman's stated rationale for supporting John McCain in the first place only underscores the absurdity of putting Palin on a national ticket.

Not only that, but it's unlikely Lieberman and Palin share even a single similar view on any major domestic policy issue. Yet here we have Lieberman trying to convince wary Jewish voters in Florida to vote for a painfully inexperienced and unknowledgeable christian fundamentalist.

And all this is happening amidst an economic crisis the likes of which America hasn't experienced in many decades. An election that Lieberman thought would be about foreign policy has become almost exclusively about domestic policy. And yet Lieberman is put himself in a position where he is stumping for the ticket that shares almost none of his views on the transcendent issues of the day.

Regardless of how this election turns out, Lieberman will fade into history as a much diminished figure, a man who placed personal allegiances ahead of core beliefs and ended up becoming a spokesman for the very ideas he spent most of his career fighting against. What a sad, pathetic figure.

Playing the Muslim Card

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 02:55:00 +0000

Douglass Daniel of the Associated Press wrote in article today that Sarah Palin's latest attack on Barack Obama--in which she claimed that Obama was "palling around with terrorists"-- "carried a racially tinged subtext."

This sent right wing bloggers, even the least crazy among them, into fits of rage. How, they ask, can there be anything "racially tinged" about pointing out Obama's association with Bill Ayres, a white guy?

I realize that in the middle of a hard-fought presidential race it can be hard to see things objectively, but this really isn't all that complicated. Yes, Bill Ayres is a white guy. And the activities that he and his fellow 60s radicals engaged in four decades ago undoubtedly fit the definition of terrorism. But context matters here. Palin's statement wasn't made in a vacuum.

This is 2008 and we live in the era of the War on Terror and 9/11. These days, when people talk about terrorists, they're talking about people who look like Osama bin Laden. We're at war with organizations like al Qaeda, not the Weather Underground.

And the Democratic nominee--to whom Palin's attack was directed--just happens to be a dark-skinned man with a Muslim-sounding name, a man who has been the subject of endless scurrilous rumors claiming that he is some sort of Islamist Manchurian Candidate.

Into that context, Sarah Palin took the stage and accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists." While those who follow the news closely knew that this was a reference to Bill Ayres, she never mentioned Ayres or clarified that she was referring to the acts of a 60s-era radical (acts that took place when Obama was eight years old).

I know that many McCain supporters genuinely believe that Obama's association with Ayres is "fair game," and I don't dispute that in the narrow sense (though I question it's importance). But the McCain campaign isn't just playing the Ayres card here. They're playing the Muslim card. They're using Ayres as a pretext for implying that Obama has terrorist ties in a general sense.

Why else would Palin be so vague? Why else would she not refer to Ayres by name? Why else would she use the word "terrorists"--clearly a loaded word in the post 9/11 era--without any additional modifiers or adjectives? These aren't difficult questions, even if McCain supporters want to pretend they are.

Palling around with criminals and sleeping with separatists

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:28:00 +0000

The McCain campaign is telegraphing to everyone who will listen that it's about to embark on an eleventh hour swift-boat campaign. In tried and true Republican fashion, they've decided that they can't win on the issues and so they're going after Obama's character. From the Washington Post this morning:

Sen. John McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character, believing that to win in November they must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat's judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said. . . .

Two other top Republicans said the new ads are likely to hammer the senator from Illinois on his connections to convicted Chicago developer Antoin "Tony" Rezko and former radical William Ayres, whom the McCain campaign regularly calls a domestic terrorist because of his acts of violence against the U.S. government in the 1960s.

Sarah Palin got the ball rolling this morning when she accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists." Very classy.

I know this association game only works one way, but let's imagine for a moment that Republicans actually held themselves to the same standards.

In light of Palin's past association with the Alaskan Independence Party, for instance, couldn't she just as easily (and more fairly) be accused of "palling around with separatists"? Indeed, her husband's a card-carrying member of that party, so she could even be said to be "sleeping with separatists."

And as for John McCain, if we're going to talk about past associations, let's compare Bill Ayers with Charles Keating. Ayres is an english professor who last engaged in illegal activities when Obama was 8 years old. His association with Obama is tenuous at best. They live in the same neighborhood and have served together on a few charitable boards. There is exactly zero evidence that Obama shares any of Ayres' radical views (and not much evidence that Ayres still does either).

Charles Keating is a convicted felon who swindled tens of thousands of people--mostly elderly--out of their life savings and cost the federal government billions of dollars. McCain and Keating were not mere acquaintances (like Obama and Ayres), but had a close personal relationship. Keating befriended McCain in 1981 and helped him launch his political career. He contributed $112,000 to McCain's first two congressional campaigns. While in Congress, McCain took nine trips to the Bahamas with Keating on Keating's dime. He didn't report any of these trips as he was supposed to under congressional rules. And most importantly, when Keating's savings and loan was under federal investigation, McCain and four other Senators went to bat for him and held highly improper meetings with federal regulators.

So let's recap: Obama served on a charitable board with a guy who committed crimes when Obama was 8 years old (and is now an unassuming english professor). McCain's chief political benefactor and good friend bilked thousands of McCain's constituents out of their life savings while McCain was in Congress. While this was happening, McCain was going on undisclosed junkets with him and attending improper meetings with regulators at his request.

I believe in Palin-speak that's called "palling around with criminals."

Palin and the Pundits

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:49:00 +0000

I don't want to dwell too much on the Vice Presidential debate, largely because I don't think it's going to end up being all that important in the long run, but I just can't get over the commentary I'm seeing on TV about it. It's like television pundits live in some parallel universe. Even Chris Matthews, who was otherwise pretty critical of Palin's performance, kept praising her ability to deliver memorized talking points. If I hadn't actually watched the debate myself, but had just heard the coverage of it, I'd think that she had delivered a very polished performance, that she had at least been articulate and engaging.

But by any objective standard, that just wasn't the case. The proof is in the pudding. Here are just a few gems from the transcript.

In response to Biden's discussion of taxes:

I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you.

On whether she supports the 2005 bankruptcy bill:

But here, again, there have -- there have been so many changes in the conditions of our economy in just even these past weeks that there has been more and more revelation made aware now to Americans about the corruption and the greed on Wall Street.

We need to look back, even two years ago, and we need to be appreciative of John McCain's call for reform with Fannie Mae, with Freddie Mac, with the mortgage-lenders, too, who were starting to really kind of rear that head of abuse.

And the colleagues in the Senate weren't going to go there with him. So we have John McCain to thank for at least warning people. And we also have John McCain to thank for bringing in a bipartisan effort people to the table so that we can start putting politics aside, even putting a campaign aside, and just do what's right to fix this economic problem that we are in.
It is a crisis. It's a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that's affecting Wall Street.

When asked whether it’s true that she and McCain oppose giving bankruptcy judges the power to adjust mortgages:

That is not so, but because that's just a quick answer, I want to talk about, again, my record on energy versus your ticket's energy ticket, also.

On climate change:

Yes. Well, as the nation's only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it's real.

I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts? We have got to clean up this planet.

On when the use of nuclear weapons is justified:

Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period.

Our nuclear weaponry here in the U.S. is used as a deterrent. And that's a safe, stable way to use nuclear weaponry.

But for those countries -- North Korea, also, under Kim Jong Il -- we have got to make sure that we're putting the economic sanctions on these countries and that we have friends and allies supporting us in this to make sure that leaders like Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad are not allowed to acquire, to proliferate, or to use those nuclear weapons. It is that important.

Can we talk about Afghanistan real quick, also, though?

On something:

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?

On whether the Vice President is part of the executive or legislative branch:

Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

This is pathetic. It makes George W. Bush look like a wordsmith. Just about any college grad could do this well given the same amount of preparation and coaching.

I'll leave you with this rant from Chris Matthews:

Harris and Allen Nail it

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:45:00 +0000

For once, The Politico's founding duo get it exactly right. Their take on the debate last night is the fairest I've seen. Here are some excerpts (with an emphasis on Palin's performance):

Millions of Americans were watching Thursday night’s vice presidential debate, waiting for a demolition derby moment — another crash by GOP running mate Sarah Palin, another serving of raw material for the writers at "Saturday Night Live." By that standard, she got out alive, though there were white-knuckle moments along the way: questions that were answered with painfully obvious talking points that betrayed scant knowledge of the issue at hand and sometimes little relevance to the question that had been asked. . . .

[I]t is hard to count any objective measures by which Biden did not clearly win the encounter. She looked like she was trying to get people to take her seriously. He looked like he was running for vice president. His answers were more responsive to the questions, far more detailed and less rhetorical. On at least 10 occasions, Palin gave answers that were nonspecific, completely generic, pivoted away from the question at hand, or simply ignored it: on global warming, an Iraq exit strategy, Iran and Pakistan, Iranian diplomacy, Israel-Palestine (and a follow-up), the nuclear trigger, interventionism, Cheney's vice presidency and her own greatest weakness.

Asked which is a greater threat, a nuclear Pakistan or a nuclear Iran, Palin seemed to be stalling, or writing a term paper, when she said: “An armed, nuclear armed especially Iran is so extremely dangerous to consider.”

Biden was crisper, with a dose of realism: “Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be very, very destabilizing. They are more than — they are not close to getting a nuclear weapon that's able to be deployed.” Biden relentlessly and clearly delivered a specific message he had been assigned to hammer home: McCain-Palin would be four more years of Bush-Cheney. Biden mentioned President Bush more than a dozen times. "Look, past is prologue, Gwen," he said at one point. "The issue is, how different is John McCain's policy going to be than George Bush's? I haven't heard anything yet."

By contrast, Palin was in much more of a survival mode, barely delivering on her advisers' hopes that she would be aggressive with Biden, throwing gaffes and policies back at him. For the Alaska governor, it was policy as a second language — adequate but not enlightening. She twice referred to the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, as "McClellan." Biden did not correct her.

Washington power lawyer Robert Barnett, who helped Biden prepare, said viewers would come away with the sense that Palin "is a nice person, an interesting person but not a qualified-to-be-the-president-of-the-United-States person." Biden, he said, "was anecdotal, was a little bit emotional" and showed "professionalism, preparation and knowledge." . . .

The Obama campaign got a good laugh out of her answer about when nuclear weapons should be put into play: "Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period."

The "be-all, end-all" is already a punch line around Washington. Asked about the role of the vice president, Biden was comfortable, after discussing the issue with the boss, to say: "I would be the point person for the legislative initiatives in the United States Congress for our administration."

Palin's answer was more abstract and obscure: "We have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation." And she had at least a couple of harp-seal-on-the-ice moments, as when she wandered into this sentence when trying to rebut a point Biden had made on energy: “That is not so, but because that's just a quick answer, I want to talk about, again, my record on energy — your ticket's energy ticket also. I think that this is important to come back to, with that energy policy plan, again, that was voted for in '05.”

Technical Difficulties

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:52:00 +0000

I've been having trouble publishing via FTP today. Nothing was working, so I temporarily transferred the blog over from my own hosting account to Blogger's free hosting (hence the bar at the top of the screen). If you know anything about this stuff, feel free to offer suggestions as to what might be the problem.

Also, if you notice that something isn't working on the site, leave me a comment and let me know. Thanks.

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:12:00 +0000

I know of no other way to explain the general response from the punditry to last night's debate. As someone who follows politics closely (and as a litigator), I can honestly say that I have never seen a worse performance in a presidential or vice presidential debate than Sarah Palin's last night. I doubt there has been a worse performance in the television era.

If you doubt this, take a look at the official transcript. Most of Palin's answers, even when they were responsive (which was rare), were devoid of substance and mangled on delivery. She was transposing words frequently (on at least one occasion she reversed Wall Street and Main Street) and using prepositions and transition phrases in ways that made no sense. Her responses to several direct questions, most notably the one on climate change and the one about the use of nuclear weapons, were completely incoherent.

If we hadn't just lived through a week in which news channels played some of Palin's most embarrassing interview moments over and over again, I really think the story tonight would have been how badly she did in the debate. But because expectation levels were so low, she necessarily exceeded them. She did better than an average hockey mom plucked off the street would have, and therefore, we're supposed to believe that she "held her own."

But think about this. If a member of Congress had been selected at random and put on stage with no prep time at all, would that person have done better than Sarah Palin did last night? The answer is almost surely yes. Palin's understanding of the issues was clearly confined to a handful of (poorly) memorized talking points. She often had to change the subject because she couldn't answer a question. She almost never responded directly to the points Biden was making, and showed no ability whatsoever to engage in actual spontaneous thought or argument.

Even her emotional instincts were suspect. She blindly opened the door to Biden's response about his own personal tragedy, and when he choked up, she responded in a weirdly disconnected way by smiling and saying something about how mavericky John McCain is. It was an odd moment, to say the least.

What's saddest I think is that Palin is getting much better reviews than she would have if she were a man. Let's face it. The press is holding her to a much lower standard for fear of being called sexist by Republicans. Dan Quayle did much better than Palin did in his 1988 debate and he didn't get nearly the praise she has. I think Joe Biden did an excellent job last night, but at times I almost wished that Hillary had been up on that stage, if for no other reason than to remind people what an intelligent, knowledgeable, competent woman looks like in a debate. If Hillary had demolished Palin in the way Biden did (and she would have), the press would have been much less reluctant to call a spade a spade.

In that sense, I really think Palin is setting the women's movement back. There's no reason that her threshold for competence should be so much lower than everyone else's.

Initial Debate Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:41:00 +0000

Good lord, that was a pathetic performance. Palin was completely all over the place. She almost never responded directly to a question. She kept following tangents and taking the conversation to places that had nothing to do with the subject at hand. She would hear a key word and then spit out a talking point, even if she'd already said it moments earlier. Nothing she said revealed more than an inch deep understanding of anything. And she didn't even deliver her lines eloquently. If you look at the transcript, most of what she said was just incoherent rambling, devoid of any real sentence structure or grammatical flow.

Honest to G-d, that was the worst debate performance I've ever seen from a major party candidate. Admiral Stockdale was better.

But sure enough, no one on television seems to have the courage to say that the Emperor has no clothes. Everyone is insisting that she "held her own." No she didn't. Biden wiped the floor with her. He was WAY better.

I'll be really curious to see what the focus groups say. I think the media had such low expectations (and are so afraid of incurring Republicans' wrath) that they're giving her much more credit that she deserves. I've watched a lot of debates and that was easily the worst performance I've ever seen. She makes George W. Bush look like Cicero (I think I stole that line from someone).

Whatever threshold there is for being seen as presidential, I can't imagine too many people thought she passed it.

UPDATE: CNN's poll of debate watchers gave the victory to Biden by a 51 to 36% margin. They didn't say what the partisan breakdown was.

The CBS poll gave it to Biden 46 to 21%.

UPDATE II: The pundits keeps saying that Palin didn't have any "Couric moments" during the debate. I don't know what debate they were watching. Off the top of my head, her answers to both the climate change question and the use of nuclear weapons question were completely incoherent. It was just verbal diarrhea. And on several questions she just completely changed the topic and refused to give an answer. I've never seen anyone do that before.

And is anyone a more massive tool than Roger Simon of The Politico? He was just on MSNBC saying that Palin clobbered Biden (just like McCain clobbered Obama). He doesn't care what the polls say (literally, that's what he just said).

Potential Game Changers

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:27:00 +0000

Over at Swampland, Joe Klein ponders several scenarios under which the dynamics of the election might swing back in McCain's favor:

1. McCain finds a gut-bucket issue that works--my personal suspicion is that it will be immigration demagoguery, even though he wrote the comprehensive bill. Obama's position in favor of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants is an area of legitimate disagreement between the candidates and an obvious target.

2.Osama Bin Laden weighs in: He did it last time, releasing a tape hammering Bush on the last weekend of the campaign. The CIA assessment was that bin Laden wanted Bush--whose policies had brought many new recruits--reelected. This time, you could see Osama "endorsing" Obama...

3. McCain does better in the next two debates--one of them is a town meeting, his favorite format. Another possible opportunity for McCain is that the first debate was watched by a mere 50 million, probably because it was held on Friday night. The town hall debate audience will be much larger, I suspect, giving McCain a second chance to make first impressions.

4. Obama screws up somehow--yeah, yeah, highly unlikely. But not impossible. After all, he did make the "cling to religion and guns" comment. More likely, will be a revisitation of a past screwup--Jeremiah Wright inserts his humble presence into the campaign. Some youthful political indiscretion is unearthed.

5. The economic issue recedes and national security comes to the fore. Iraq blows up again (the Shi'ites diss the Sunni Awakening), Pakistan disintegrates and the disposition of the nukes is unclear--and then there's always the not-so-unthinkable...another terrorist strike. (Although given McCain's erratic behavior in the past month, I'm not so sure this would be an advantage for him.)

Of all these scenarios, the only one that really concerns me is #2. I actually mentioned that exact fear to a friend of mine yesterday. But before I get to that, let me explain why the other possibilities don't really concern me.

As for #1, I don't think McCain has either the time or the capacity to make this election about some new pet issue (like immigration) this late in the game. As we get closer to the election, it becomes increasingly hard to steer the media discussion. The race has a momentum of its own at this point and you can't just suddenly make it about some new issue that you haven't been talking about before. Plus, McCain has boxed himself in on the immigration issue. He's even been running Spanish language ads criticizing Obama for getting in the way of comprehensive immigration reform. If he starts running hard right on immigration, he'll look like an opportunist and hypocrite of the first order and he'll alienate millions of hispanic voters that he's counting on in places like Florida.

As for #3, I find it unlikely that McCain will derive any significant advantage from the remaining debates, which are likely to focus heavily on economic issues. He gave a good performance (better than I've ever seen him give) in the first debate and it didn't help him.

As for #4 and #5, anything's possible, but it would take a fairly major Obama slip up or a major world event to significantly change the dynamics of the race, and there's only a month left in the campaign. The odds greatly favor the month passing without either happening (I do, however, agree with Joe that there is a decent chance of Reverend Wright making a cameo, a possibility I discussed earlier in the week).

But back to #2. Given that Bin Laden released a video just before the 2004 election, it's certainly possible (likely even?) that he will try to influence this election as well. And the most obvious way to do so would be to "endorse" Obama. There's no question that if that happens, every Republican will immediately hyperventilate and scream from the rooftops that Osama wants Obama to win. The question is whether voters are intelligent enough to see such a move for what it is--i.e. an attempt by Bin Laden to hurt Obama, not help him. I'd hope that at least a majority of people would be smart enough to see that. But then again, they weren't in 2004, so who knows. If I were running the Obama campaign, I'd have a detailed game plan in place to deal with this contingency.

Pernicious Nonsense

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:52:00 +0000

(updated below)

The emerging right wing narrative about how our country came to be embroiled in the current economic crisis is not only completely inaccurate, it's downright insidious. It needs to be nipped in the bud right away.

Jim Geraghty at the National Review sums up the emerging narrative pretty well:

[T]he market wasn't running free; the government, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, loaned billions of dollars to people you wouldn't loan $200 to because you didn't trust them to pay it back. Then, through the Community Reinvestment Act, they punished banks that didn't make enough loans to people who do not have the credit, assets, income, or down payment to qualify for a normal mortgage, a.k.a. the subprime market.

No one in their right minds loans money to somebody who they think won't pay it back. But the government said banks had to, for reasons of "fairness".

There is so much inaccuracy here that it's hard to even know where to begin. But let's start with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which was passed in 1977, almost 25 years before the housing bubble started to form. The purpose of the CRA was to eliminate discrimination in lending practices. It didn't force or require financial institutions to make risky loans. Moreover, the law only applies to banks and thrifts. As Tim Westrich points out:

[W]hen CRA was passed in 1977, it was designed to cover only depository institutions—commercial banks and savings-and-loans institutions, or thrifts—that made the lion’s share of home mortgages back then. As subprime lending exploded in this decade, CRA lost its relevance because it doesn’t cover the more loosely regulated non-bank mortgage companies, which increasingly took the mortgage market away from banks and thrifts.

The notion that the CRA pushed financial institutions into the subprime market is just not remotely accurate.

Even more pernicious, though, is the implication that our current troubles stem from an obsession with political correctness, that financial institutions were somehow guilted or prodded into making risky loans to minority communities. This is nothing but despicable racial scapegoating and it has no basis in fact.

First, the bad loans at issue here weren't just made to minorities. They were made across the board. And the folks who contributed most to the growing housing bubble were not the people trying to buy their first homes, but the speculators who started buying and "flipping" houses and condos for investment purposes.

Second, the focus on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is also misguided. While there were problems with those institutions, most of the bad loans at issue were originated in the subprime market--i.e., outside the Fannie/Freddie box. Fannie and Freddie were largely reacting to their market share being taken away by a new breed of lenders.

A lot of factors contributed to this mess, but by far the biggest were 1) the Fed's monetary policy--keeping interest rates abnormally low for an extended period of time, and 2) the failure of the government to step in and regulate the mortgage industry and the emerging market for mortgage back securities and similar collateralized debt obligations. That, combined with the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall--which freed the way for banks to engage in more risky investments--led us down the road to where we are today.

The bottom line, though, is that nobody forced these financial institutions to do anything. They all freely rushed into this market, disregarding all the warning signs along the way. And for a while, it was insanely profitable. That's how bubbles form.

To attempt to pin all the blame for this calamity on minority home owners--many of whom were badly victimized by this process and are now losing their homes--is nothing short of vile. History has shown over and over again that when banking practices and markets are not regulated in a sensible fashion, things eventually get out of control. On a macro level, there's not much difference between what happened here and what happened in the lead up to the Great Depression. Following that calamity, we stepped in and imposed a number of laws and regulations that should have been there in the first place. We created the FDIC and imposed capital requirements on depository institutions. We restricted the types of investments banks can make with depositors' money. In the wake of the current crisis, similar steps are going to have to be taken in the areas not covered by existing laws.

This really isn't rocket science. When markets fail, free market ideologues search for scapegoats. That's what is happening now. It's understandable. But that doesn't make it any less pernicious.

UPDATE: Barry Ritholtz writes the definitive take down of this nonsense. If you really want to understand this stuff, go read this post. Here's an excerpt:

CRA is not remotely one of the proximate causes of the current credit crunch, Housing collapse,and mortgage debacle. As I detailed in Barron's, there is plenty of things to be angry at D.C. about -- but this ain't one of them.

If you were to ask me to reveal the prime causative factor for the Housing boom, I would point you to Fed Chairman Greenspan taking rates to 1%, and then leaving them there for a year. The prime factor in the bust was nonfeasance on the Fed's part in supervising bank lending, allowing banks to give money to people who couldn't possibly pay it back.

The root legislative cause of the credit crisis was excessive deregulation. From exempting derivatives from regulation (2000 Commodities Futures Modernization Act) to failing to adequately oversee ratings agencies that slapped a triple AAA on junk paper, the pendulum swung too far away from reasonable oversight. By taking the refs off of the field and erroneously expecting market participants could self-regulate, the powers that be in DC gave the players on Wall Street enough rope to hang themselves with -- which they promptly did.

There are too many people who are trying to duck responsibility for the current mess, and seeking to place blame elsewhere. I find this to be terribly important, as we seek to repair the damage amidst an economic crisis. Rather than objectively evaluate the present crisis in an attempt to craft an appropriate response, the partisan hacks are trying to obscure the causes of the current situation. Like burglars trying to destroy the surveillance tape, they are all too aware of their role in the present debacle.

Shame on them for their foolishness or cowardice.

The Fate of the McCain Campaign in Palin's Hands

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:45:00 +0000

Vice Presidential debates are generally inconsequential affairs that are almost immediately forgotten. And despite all the hype, tomorrow's debate is unlikely to be an exception to that rule. All Sarah Palin has to do is turn in a mediocre performance (which will easily surpass expectations at this point) and then fade into the background for the next month.

That said, for the first time that I can remember, there is at least a non-negligible chance that a candidate on a major party ticket will crash and burn during a live debate. Palin is clearly suffering from a political version of performance anxiety. She's lost her confidence and is having trouble answering even the easiest of questions. If that happens tomorrow night, if she manages to psyche herself out up there on live TV, it would be absolutely calamitous for the McCain campaign, which is already on the ropes. It could be the knock out blow.

I wonder how many antacids McCain and his campaign staff will be popping tomorrow night while Palin's on stage.

Honestly, though, I don't expect Palin will be as bad as she was with Couric. What made the Couric interviews so devastating was Couric's tendency (which is actually rare among reporters) to ask follow up questions when she got a non-responsive answer. When Palin would filibuster, Couric would repeat the question or press her for specifics. That's what elicited her most embarrassing responses.

But the format of the debate won't allow for those kind of follow up questions. Palin can be as non-responsive as she pleases. Moreover, on at least half the questions, Biden will have to answer first, which will give Palin time to think about her answer and allow her to build off whatever Biden says. And finally, the questions aren't likely to be out of left field. There's a lot of ground to cover and not much time to do it, so it's very likely that all of the questions she'll be asked will have been anticipated by her coaches and she'll have set answers ready.

In other words, unless she completely psyches herself out and blanks out up there, she's likely to turn in at least a mediocre performance. But given her performance over the last week, I wouldn't completely rule out the crash and burn scenario either. And if she flames out, the McCain campaign is going to flame out with her. I'm betting McCain wishes he picked someone like Mitt Romney right about now.

P.S. This is just painful.

The Failure of the GOP Attack Machine (At Least So Far)

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:48:00 +0000

Though we still have a month to go--and anything can happen between now and then--there's no question that Barack Obama is in a much stronger position right now that John Kerry was four years ago. There are a number of reasons for that, but one of the ones that's not being discussed enough is the failure of the GOP attack machine.

If there's one thing that Republicans can usually be counted on to do effectively, it's attacking the character of their opponents. They're usually pretty good at convincing a large swath of the electorate that the Democratic nominee is The Worst Person Ever. Indeed, in most campaigns, the Republicans spend virtually the entire pre-debate period of the campaign single-mindedly pursuing this goal. The idea is to make independent and swing voters personally despise the Democratic nominee to the point where they can't bring themselves to pull the lever for him, even when they generally agree with him on the issues.

That was certainly the case in 2004. Going into the first debate in 2004, the CBS/New York Times poll found that John Kerry had a favorability rating of just 32% and an unfavorability rating of 44%. This was the end result of a relentless months' long effort to portray him as an effete, out-of-touch flip-flopper.

But this time around things are very different. Going into the first debate, the CBS/New York Times poll found Obama to have a favorability rating of 43% and unfavorability rating of just 30% (John McCain, by comparison, was at 38/35). That's dramatically better than Kerry.

The 30% unfavorability rating is particularly significant. It means that the only people whom the Republicans have convinced to hate Obama are the true partisans, the same folks who still think George W. Bush is doing a heckuva job.

What explains the lack of success in demonizing Obama? Part of it is that Obama is a skilled politician, a likable guy who is good at deflecting character-based attacks. But part of it is also due to the fact that the Republicans never really settled on a narrative about Obama. In 2004, they labeled Kerry a flip-flopper very early in the contest and consistently hammered that narrative home for the rest of the election. But this time around, there's been no such consistency or discipline. The closest they've come to a consistent negative narrative is the "celebrity" charge, but they haven't really stuck with that, and I'm not sure it was all that effective an attack to begin with.

To put it another way, they haven't managed to define Obama in the way they've defined past Democratic nominees. He has (at least so far) survived the demonization process relatively unscathed. Which is why I expect that the GOP will devote much of the remaining month of the campaign to attacking Obama in ways they haven't really tried yet. Most likely, they'll try to radicalize him by associating him with people like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. The real question is whether it's too late for that to work. Obama is not the unknown commodity he once was. It may be too late to redefine him. Let's hope so.

UPDATE: The first post debate CBS/New York Times poll is out. Obama now has a 48% favorability rating, with 32% viewing him unfavorably (that's +16). McCain is at 39% favorable, 42% unfavorable (-3).

By comparison, following the first debate in 2004 (in which Kerry clobbered Bush), Kerry was at 40/41 and Bush was at 44/44.

You're No Joe Sixpack

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:00:00 +0000

In a propaganda interview with right-wing gasbag Hugh Hewitt yesterday, Sarah Palin said the following:

I think they're just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying you know what? It's time that normal Joe six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency, and I think that that's kind of taken some people off guard, and they're out of sorts, and they're ticked off about it.

Given Palin's penchant for repetition, I think there's at least a 75% chance she uses the phrase "Joe Sixpack" at some point during the debate. If she does, Biden should pounce (with a smile on his face):

Governor, I know Joe Sixpack. Joe Sixpack is a friend of mine. You're no Joe Sixpack.

After the laughter dies down, he can launch into a discussion about the problems everyday Joes face in this economy and how Republican policies have made things worse.

Has the Republican Party Written Off John McCain?

noreply@blogger.com (A.L.) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:19:00 +0000

The more I think about the events of yesterday, the more I'm convinced that a substantial faction of the GOP has essentially written off John McCain and instead has its eyes on a 2010 and 2012 resurgence. How else can you explain the RNC releasing an ad attacking the very bailout bill that John McCain is trying to rally support and take credit for?

Ben Smith reports that the ad was cut and released before the House voted yesterday, at a time when everyone thought that the bill would pass (albeit narrowly). The goal of the House Republicans was not to kill the bill. The plan was to have enough Republicans (mostly retiring Republicans and those in very safe seats) vote for the bill to allow it to pass, but have every other Republican vote against it. Once the bill was safely passed, the RNC and those in the House who voted against the bill could then turn around and stoke public resentment of it.

This strategy--had it worked--may well have helped the GOP in the long term and allowed them to reinvent themselves for 2010 and 2012. It would not, however, have helped John McCain.

But guess who was a big advocate of this plan? Newt Gingrich. Andrea Mitchell reported the following this morning:

I’m told reliably by leading Republicans who are close to him [Gingrich], he was whipping against this up until the last minute when he issued that face-saving statement. Newt Gingrich was telling people in the strongest possible language that this was a terrible deal, not only that it was a terrible deal, that it was a disaster, it was the end of democracy as we know it, it was socialism.

Newt Gingrich isn't just a concerned bystander here. He clearly has presidential aspirations of his own. And the best case scenario for him is that John McCain loses, and he can lead the Republican party back into power in 2012.

Gingrich is clearly a much more influential figure among House Republicans than John McCain is. The movement conservatives in the House have never liked McCain and will not be heartbroken if he loses. They are plotting for the long term right now.

And what's astounding is that the RNC seems to be doing the same thing. It's hard to believe that anyone in the McCain campaign would have approved of the anti-bailout ad. It doesn't help McCain at all. So the only conclusion I can reach is that the RNC is openly hedging its bets. That's something I never thought I'd see one month before a presidential election.

UPDATE: On a tangential note, watching the House Republicans and their ideological comrades at places like the National Review denounce Nancy Pelosi's display of "partisanship" is just more than I can take. The House Republicans are the most partisan group of politicians to have ever existed. They ran the House of Representatives for 14 years in the most partisan way imaginable. And just yesterday, the vast majority of them were plotting to run against this very bill; they even had an ad produced and ready to go, blaming the Democrats for trying to fix a problem that happened on their watch. What a disgraceful bunch of hypocrites these people are.