Is McCain's whipping comment just stupid or deliberately inflammatory?

Those seem to be the only choices. Talking about whipping a black opponent is brain dead. If this *is* a deliberate tactic, here are some more phrases McCain might use to pepper his salty stump:




http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmart...

I'm sure there's no limit to the post-debate spin they've prepared. I've come up with ten comments I expect to hear, but I'm sure you probably have a few of your own that I've missed.

Expect Liebermanian comments like these from the simpering contingent:

10). Sure some call blowing chunks on the moderator a "gaffe," but his distance was very manly...

9). Not many candidates can look that presidential while hurling what looked like veal piccata, fried rice, broccoli, and what might have been fruit-laden Jello."

8). When he wasn't shouting, I was impressed with his calm demeanor -- even nodding off between questions but, like a skilled leader, almost always waking up in time not to have to ask the question to be repeated.

7). I think he made a real emotional connection with Mainstream America when he broke down crying and asked his wife for one of her pills. People got to see his human side.

6). The moderators were way out of line when they corrected his statement that we must never allow the militant government of Lower Crawdekistan to gain the technology to pasteurize milk. You can nitpick all you want, but if there really were such a country, you can bet they'd already have their spies in our dairies.

5). Obama never did get around to meeting McCain's challenge for a joint commitment to submit all presidential appointees to a sobriety test at some point during their 'swearing in' ceremony. I think people will interpret that as the sort of weakness you'd expect to find in such an exotic candidate.

4). I was moved to tears when he described how lucky we are to have our homes foreclosed on... How he always dreamed of something like that happening to him during his stay at the Hanoi Hilton, back when he was a POW fighting for the freedoms we all enjoy under strict FISA supervision -- as long as we haven't done anything that would require the government to torture us.

3). You could almost feel his confidence and command of the room grow after the break in the debate to empty his colostomy bag.

2). The whole foreign policy theme was turned on its ear when McCain announced that as President, he'd fire Vladamir Putin. You could really tell that Obama was taken by surprise and didn't know quite how to respond to that.


1). Mistaking the moderator for his bus driver could happen to anybody. What's impressive is how gracefully he handled the situation when the guy refused to give him a transfer, even though he had exact change.

While I haven't liked every move Obama has made lately -- I've made several posts strongly against some of them -- I've seen the reasoning behind those decisions. There is no point in having high-minded ideals, if you get kicked to the curb before getting elected to implement them. A loser who sticks to every one of his principles is still a loser. There may be honor in that, but no honor that helps a working single mom gas up her car and feed the baby.

These are the things we recognized when Bill Clinton was President, and the country was doing well. Nobody was holding up Bill as a paragon of virtue -- they just said, "It's hard to argue with the results he's getting." Bill was more famous for his waffling than IHOP.

Earlier in this election, I was happy to see the vigorous support for Obama... But I was also a bit disturbed at the sort of posts I saw. People seemed to think that he was going to cure Cancer, end world hunger, singlehandedly create a brotherhood among all people of the world, and show up on their doorstep to take out the trash. Even as he talked about working together to solve our problems, so many seemed to expect him to solve their problems.

So, while I'm not happy with all of Obama's recent decisions, I *am* glad to see that a group I'll call the "Spoiled Brattian Contingent" has come down to Earth and realized that their problems aren't going to be dismissed by a wave of Obama's hand. I think the veggie issues Obama is serving them now might help them to be better supporters, even while they're screaming for cookies.

(And, although some of those folks try to claim that moving toward the center is not a good strategy, I'm noticing that Obama is much closer to getting elected than they are.)

I spoke out strongly against Obama's FISA support on this board right after he announced it, and took some heat for it. I also provided some scathing feedback on the topic at the Obama web site.

Now, I'd like to point out a few things about congress votes...

By the time Obama announced his FISA support, the House Dems had already waffled. The battle was already lost. While it might have been "honorable" for Obama to continue to pound his head against that wall, it would not be the smart thing to do. The smart thing is to turn that loss into a victory, by joining with the inevitable issue winners and undercutting the Republican theme that Obama is soft on terrorism. It's a Sun Tzu thing.

Without absolving Obama for capitulating, I think it makes a lot of sense to remain calm and give him some leeway on this issue -- first, because we *know* McCain loves FISA, so even a reluctantly willing Obama is better than that. We know we don't want McCain administering FISA as President, so there's that...

Beyond that, we want to keep in mind the way things work. It was not Obama who lost this battle, but the House Democrats, who have been giving Bush his way for years. Obama is mostly guilty of using political Kung Fu, to turn this issue against his opponents. He could never have overcome that House vote.

What's more, while it's nice to keep track of who stood fast to vote against FISA, this is the world of politics -- given the large majority of people who passed it, *everyone* knew FISA would make it through. That means those who voted against it knew their vote wasn't needed. Of those folks who voted against FISA, we will never know how many might have changed their decision if the vote had been closer. That's what politicians do. If you doubt that, remember that many of the FISA No voters are the same ones who have argued loudly against the Iraq war and then voted to favor Bush every time push came to shove.

So, that politician we praise for voting against FISA could well be an opportunist, while Obama seems to be acting as more of a realist -- given that this FISA battle is lost, he's giving ground to turn this loss to his advantage in the overall election war.

This isn't the best of justifications... It isn't meant to be. But it does tend to reinforce the fact that whether this was the right thing to do or not, Obama is the smartest candidate the Dems have had in quite a while.

A lot of complaints about media bias appear on this board, and just about everywhere else. There's no doubt it exists. But I see people complaining about the right wing bias of pundits who clearly come from a left-wing background, just because the don't like what the person is saying. (And, of course, there are people who make the same type of complaint from the Dark Side.)

Here's the uniform media bias that I see -- and it does work against Obama:

The media -- which, of course, doesn't include Fox News -- is biased to make this a horserace, to keep people watching and up their ratings. That bias worked against Obama in the Primary, once he had an insurmountable lead over Clinton. Now that he's mopping up McCain in the electoral college, you keep hearing pundits instead talking about his smaller margin in the meaningless overall popular vote -- the exact same thing they were criticizing Hillary for doing during her campaign.

So, get ready for a frustrating election. Obama is once again going to have the media disadvantage of being the frontrunner. And pundits on both sides of the political spectrum are going to discount his lead as much as possible, to keep viewers interested in the race.

The sponsor bias seems (to me) to be the most overpowering, ubiquitous bias of all.

Just to help make this difficult decision easier, I'd like to announce that I am another nobody who will "absolutely not" accept a VP slot under Barack Obama.

While I wholeheartedly support his campaign, I believe the people would prefer me to continue the futile pursuits of my boring, everyday existence. I don't want to let them down.

If asked, I will politely decline; if proposed to, I will not wed; if employed, I will try to get myself fired.

I don't know how much more or less entirely non-opaque I can be.

I will continue in my pathetic efforts to see Senator Obama win the election, but I feel it necessary to preemptively nix my nomination. I offer this refusal just in case the good Senator from Illinois considers nominating me based on my ability to flare my nostrils at will, stomp down a trash can that already seems to be filled, and talk a bank manager out of a bounced check fee by waving a completely unrelated utility bill while whining.

I urge other unworthy Americans to follow the example set by Governors Strickland and Warner, and myself, to help Senator Obama choose a running mate who is both willing to serve and not a total loser.

Thank you.

This is the statement she needs to make. I doubt she'll offer it on her own, so Obama's people should push that question into the media, to be asked of her:

"Senator Clinton... Given the similarity between your positions and the gaping disparity between democrat and republican positions, wouldn't you tell your supporters that to abstain or to vote for McCain in the General Election would be a betrayal of everything you were campaigning for? Yes or no."

Push back, Obama. Push back. Make her live up to her promise to "campaign her heart out" for you, starting now.

I'm going to have to go underground in a bunker for a few years after posting this, given what I've read on these boards, but here goes:

I'm an Obama supporter who has a hard time *not* liking Terry McAuliffe.

Before you go apoplectic on me, here's the pretext:

First, I'm admittedly largely ignorant of his history as DNC chair, which has obviously pissed off a lot of people. But for now, I'm only talking about his current job.

Second (and more important) I don't understand how *anybody* can do his job -- which basically requires you to frame all facts, no matter how much to the contrary, in a context that supports your candidate. Put more simply, the job requires you to lie whenever you're losing or being damaged by media coverage. How does anybody do that?

Given the fact that it's a job for liars on both sides of the campaign, Terry had the harder job, because his campaign was losing. That means he has to lie more.

The main reason I have a hard time disliking him is the way he carried off the "Yeah, I'm a political used car salesman" approach. I guess there's something appealing to me about his self-deprecating style and ability to laugh along with and then shrug off pundit questions that amounted to, "Yeah, Terry, but when you say that, aren't you pretty much full of crap?" It was water off his back when other folks would turn red, make wild accusations, and all but take off a shoe, pound it on the podium and shout, "We will bury you!"

I was often put off by other surrogates who would:

1. smile when you could clearly see they were truly seething
2. try to wrestle with commentators who gave them a strong dose of reality
3. introduce some of the most outlandish accusations and negative attacks (see "Geraldine Ferraro")

Sure, Terry did these things to some degree himself. But the differences I see, respectively, are:

1. He truly seemed happy. None of this seemed to get to him on a personal level. He had more of a "just doing my job" approach.
2. Sure, he wrestled with pundits. But he was much better at sticking to scripted talking points. When others would fold under questioning and make some of their most inane assertions, Terry would usually say something like, "But that's not the point/that's not what I want to talk about," etc. and move right back to the scripted talking points.
3. By staying on those points, he tended to make only those attacks that were sanctioned by the campaign -- granted, some of them were sleazy. But I never heard him say anything Clinton herself would not say. And yes, there are actually things she wouldn't say. (Again, see "Geraldine Ferraro," and even "Bill Clinton.")

Okay, go ahead. Flame away and tell me why he's the spawn of Satan. As a political guy, I'm sure he probably deserves it. Yet somehow, maybe even more than Bill himself, Terry is the Hillary supporter I'd most enjoy talking to over a beer.

Of course, I'd still keep track of my wallet that night.