He is the competent, confident leader who represents the aspirations of the United States.

October 17, 2008

It is inherent in the American character to aspire to greatness, so it can be disorienting when the nation stumbles or loses confidence in bedrock principles or institutions. That's where the United States is as it prepares to select a new president: We have seen the government take a stake in venerable private financial houses; we have witnessed eight years of executive branch power grabs and erosion of civil liberties; we are still recovering from a murderous attack by terrorists on our own soil and still struggling with how best to prevent a recurrence.

We need a leader who demonstrates thoughtful calm and grace under pressure, one not prone to volatile gesture or capricious pronouncement. We need a leader well-grounded in the intellectual and legal foundations of American freedom. Yet we ask that the same person also possess the spark and passion to inspire the best within us: creativity, generosity and a fierce defense of justice and liberty.

The Times without hesitation endorses Barack Obama for president.

Pollster.com has upgraded a number of states (from my pov) in Obama's direction, and his lead in the projected Electoral College vote is even stronger:

Pollster.com

(273 EV are needed to be elected)

Given his strong performance in the third debate tonight, not to mention how erratic and at times bizarre McCain was, it's hard to imagine this lead falling away. The negative attacks regarding Ayers have backfired, and Obama owns every issue except defense. So unless al Queda attacks again, things look more than hopeful. We can't rule anything out at this point, but the Obama campaign has been, while not perfect, as perfect as it has needed to be. It's still a long slog to the finish, but we're in great shape for that home stretch.

There's a billion polls out there, and each has its own methodology, flaws, etc. I prefer to go with the composite polls, the ones that look at all the polls and find a trend line — something akin to an average poll number. And what I look at is not the national horserace — a fairly irrelevant number — but the thing that matters: the projected electoral vote count.

The two best sources for composite polls are Pollster.com & RealClearPolitics. I don't get into the mechanics and details — these are available for the more geekily inclined on the sites — I just follow the basic trends. And right now, they look good for Obama:

Pollster.com

273 EV are needed to be elected, and currently Obama is in good shape. To look at the individual states, head to Pollster (remember, if you look after the 6th, these numbers will be different).

RealClearPolitics — with toss-up states

RCP has more states in the toss-up category than does Pollster, so Obama is still short in their EV count.

RealClearPolitics — with no toss-up states

When RCP resolves the toss-ups by forcing them into whichever candidate's count they are trending, then it's an overwhelming (projected) Obama lead.

These 3 polls are, for me, a great way to sum the baseline of the campaign: where do we stand in terms of Electoral College votes? I'll update regularly until Nov 4th, when we count the damn things for real.

(Or will we? Let's not forget how many states vote with electronic/no-paper-trail/Diebold Cheat-a-matics.)

From the L.A. Times:

At one time, John McCain said the worst thing that ever happened to him, Vietnam included, was the so-called Keating 5 scandal. "The Vietnamese," he would say, "didn't question my honor."

John McCain got off easy for his part in the Keating 5 scandal, receiving little more than a slap on the hand. He showed, apparently, sufficient remorse at the time to dissuade fellow Senators from coming down more harshly on him. And with the passage of times — 17 years since he was "punished" — too many people have forgotten that he was one of Keating's Five — hand-picked Senators given donations and gifts and expected to deliver regulatory special favors. Of which John McCain was undeniably guilty.

Charles Keating went to prison. His Lincoln Savings and Loan, like so many s&l's, required a tax-payer financed bailout. Regulations had to be reinstated after being stripped out under the Reagan and Bush I administrations. And as the new website from the Obama campaign states it:

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

At 9am today, the campaign releases a 13-minutes documentary on the Keating 5, the savings-and-loans debacle, and McCain's role — and the lessons he has not learned. Coming a month from Election Day, and as his campaign tries to smear Obama with meaningless ties to William Ayers and Tony Rezko, this is an important part of recent history that needs to be considered. Yes, it will serve as, so to speak, a "hit job," but this is hardly something to blame the Obama campaign for.

John McCain brought it on himself by being greedy, corrupt and just plain stupid about the role of government and regulation. Imagine the harm he could do as president.

"Keating Economics." Watch and share.

I continue to marvel that after all this time, virtually everyone in the leftie blogosphere and even the MSM continues to think they are so much smarter than Obama, Axelrod and Plouffe. Day after day, I read analyses about what the campaign has done wrong, what they continue to do wrong and what they must — must or the country is doomed — do to rescue their campaign and keep McCain from the White House.

And I laugh, because here is what they have done:

They took a little-known but well-regarded first-term Senator and made him a contender in the race for the Democratic nomination.

They raised more money than any Democrat had even dreamed of raising — most of it from ordinary citizens donating small amounts.

They whupped the political machine everyone had believed to be unbeatable.

They took over the Democratic Party.

They brought millions of new voters into the process, most of them to vote for Obama and other Democrats.

They made a black man with a bad-sounding name into the likely next President.

They have done all this on their own terms. All through the primaries, the same doom-sayers and minds of vast political brilliance instructed them on their errors and the path they should be following — all of which the campaign ignored. And despite proving they knew how to win, too many continue to believe that they know better than the campaign how to run this thing. People who have never done anything but write about politics are telling those who are actually shaping an historic and world-changing victory how it needs to be done.

Laughable.

Sarah Palin had her chance to prove she’s more than a gimmick last night. She was not even prepared for that.

Here’s the best example.

An uncommitted independent asked her to rebut, with specifics, charges that she is unprepared to take on the major challenges of foreign policy and defense. Palin’s response:

“As for foreign policy, you know, I think that I am prepared,’’ Ms. Palin said at an enthusiastic town-hall-style meeting she held alongside Mr. McCain. “And I know that on Jan. 20, if we are so blessed as to be sworn into office as your president and vice president, certainly we’ll be ready. I’ll be ready. I have that confidence. I have that readiness. And if you want specifics with specific policy, or countries, go ahead and you can ask me. You can even play stump the candidate, if you want to.’’

And that was that. McCain jumped in with the usual bandaid replies — she is commander of the Alaska National Guard, she led negotiations on a pipeline — but Palin danced around the question and left it unanswered.

That’s what you get to do in front of a friendly, hand-picked audience that only wants to cheer you, not challenge you. I’m hoping Joe Biden can press the issue just a bit more when the two VP candidates debate on October 2nd.

The mainstream media's main task in this election year has been, when it comes to John McCain, to demonstrate that when it comes to being someone's lapdog, Tony Blair was an absolute slacker. And while I'm not overly hopeful, it's possible the media has finally had enough. Accept for the most ardent and obvious backers of McCain, the idea that Obama was using a sexist attack on Palin is just too much (and especially given the way the GOP campaign continues to use proven lies over and over, as if there will be no scrutiny from the press.... o wait...).

Anyway, here's a small sampling, served up with the tiniest bit of hope.

Jake Tapper, at Politico

A reporter then reminded Swift that in December, McCain was asked about criticisms coming his way from then-opponent Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., and McCain replied, "Never get into a wrestling match with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."

Was McCain calling Romney a pig? a reporter asked Swift.

Of course not, Swift said.

It seems to me we should have one rule. If Obama was calling Palin a pig, then McCain was calling Hillary Clinton one. If McCain wasn't, then Obama wasn't.

Noam Scheiber at the New Republic online:

What I love about the breathtakingly dishonest McCain ad about Obama's lipstick remark is that it so completely inverts the traditional elites-versus-Middle-America dynamic. If you didn't know anything about who said what, you'd probably assume it was some good ole' boy who alluded to lipstick on a pig and some liberal women's group that took offense. Instead it's basically the opposite.

Which makes me wonder if the McCain campaign isn't being too clever by half here.

Of all the great lines and exciting moments at Obama’s Invesco Field speech, none was a bigger “Amen!” moment to me than when he said, “It’s never been about me. It’s always been about you.” To those on the outside of the Obama movement, this sounded like cheap theatrics. The spotlight was on Obama, wasn’t it? He was the big star of the night, the center of all the glory. We were his groupies, the Cult of Obama.

Those were the cheap and easy lines: cultists. The actual fact of the matter is that what he said was the truth: His campaign might feature him as candidate, but he won the nomination because of us, the supporters who decided he was the right person to support. He may become the next president, but that won’t change the fact that we did it. He just got to go along for the ride.

The same thing happened in 2003. Howard Dean, with national name recognition around 2%, decided to run for president (rather than sit around and gripe about Bush). As more and more people heard him speak out strongly, fearlessly and relentlessly against the things they opposed — the Iraq War, above all else — and speak for their beliefs, he found himself riding the crest of a wave. Never did he claim that he did anything more than be himself. He always gave credit for his campaign’s success to the supporters across the country who made that success happen. (The failure of his campaign he owned entirely.)

When Barack Obama announced his candidacy last year, he was given no hope of winning. He had entered too late, had too little experience, and was up against a “real” populist and the greatest political machine of the modern era. And yet he vanquished both. Yes, he ran a smart campaign, along with David Plouffe and David Axelrod. But more important, and more key to his success, was that thousands, and then hundreds of thousands, of ordinary citizens decided he was their candidate — and we took control of the campaign.

Not the message, of course; the big brains at Obama HQ ran the program itself. But those of us in communities across the nation who saw something special — and necessary — in Barack, we are the ones who provided the energy, the funding, the urgency and the votes. Yes, he is an extraordinary speaker, but his words, like those of any great leader, belong not to himself but the people who stand behind him and give him his legitimacy.

Back in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton tried to demean Obama’s experience by saying all he had done is make a speech. With Obama prevailing over Clinton despite the so-called experience gap, the Republicans must have figured their new candidate needed to get on the level with Obama. So now Sarah Palin has made a national speech. It’s not exactly 2004 Democratic Convention quailty, to put it mildly. But it does prove one thing: Gov Palin can read her lines well enough.

Not exactly what the Founders had in mind for the office of Vice-president, however.

Nominating Sarah Palin was a joke, pure and simple. Not a funny joke, mind you, but not a serious effort at governing, either. But that’s to be expected from the GOP. Let’s review.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan, sill held in saintlike adoration by base Republican conservatives, choose George Bush the Elder for his running mate. Poppy had never accomplished much in his career, his accomplishments being handed to him by power-brokers who knew he’d do their bidding. The base hated and distrusted him.
In 1988, Bush picked featherweigh Indiana Representative Dan Quayle who would go on to glory by arguing with a schoolchild about spelling “potato” (Quayle was wrong), scolding Murphy Brown as if she were a real person and not a tv character, and giving Lloyd Bentsen the opportunity to use a line being brought back to thump on Palin: “You’ne no Jack Kennedy.”

in 2000, Dick Cheney was taskd to find Dubya’s running mate. After a long, thorough and wide-ranging vetting process, Cheney, of course, chose Cheney.

Now McCain, unable to pick Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge or anyone else he wanted to pick, has selected Sarah Palin, without doubt the least qualified person to be nominated for vice-president by a major party — ever.
But she has made her speech. And isn’t that all tha Obama ever did?

I was there. Wow.

(ps. Look for Oregonians, including Deschutte County's Pat Ackley, at the 1:30 mark, just after Michelle cheers Barack's acceptance.)