Maybe McCain really *is* a maverick, and he's bucking the Republican Party that screwed him over so badly in 2000 by playing to lose, and taking down as many of them as he can.

Okay, maybe I don't really believe he'd do that consciously. But unconsciously?

Peace,
Paul

Posted at September 2, 2008 2:30 PM in response to More And More Polls Show Obama's Lead Expanding

Still bupkes, even if it's in favor of our guy. The polls won't mean squat until mid-September, after the convention bounces have played out, and even then the only ones worth paying attention to are the polls in individual states. Watch places like Indiana and the Dakotas; if, in mid-September, they start trending for Obama, then things will look good.

Until then, it's all bupkes.

Peace,
Paul

Posted at August 29, 2008 1:49 PM in response to Another Big Tracking Poll Shows Obama Convention Bounce

This is excellent news!! For Hillary!!!!

(Sorry -- somebody had to say it.)

Posted at August 23, 2008 3:11 AM in response to Report: Obama Picks Biden

I repeat what I said earlier: national polls are pretty meaningless, and any polls taken before the conventions are totally meaningless. Or, to use a better word, they mean bupkes.

After the conventions are over, the post-convention bumps have passed, and the campaign has actually begun, *then* the polls might mean something. Might. At least the state-by-state electoral-college polls. Otherwise, and until then, bupkes.

Peace,
Paul

Posted at August 21, 2008 1:19 AM in response to CNN Poll Of Polls: Obama's Lead Is Gone

Why does Andrew Sullivan keep bashing Jimmy Carter? I can't answer for Mr. Sullivan, but I can think of good reasons to bash Carter, who made a much better ex-president than president. The reasons ought to act as a warning to Obama.

President Carter's administration was, by and large, a failure. In my mind there were two major reasons for this:

1. Carter came into office as an arrogant, "anti-Washington" candidate. He'd been a governor; when he and his associates came to DC, they assumed that the national government would work the same way as the state government -- and if it didn't, they'd bend it to their will. It didn't happen; Carter and his people quickly alienated both Congress and the "permanent government", the civil-service bureaucracy that does most of the day-to-day work (or can stop it from being done). Within six month, Carter couldn't get anything through Congress, despite Democratic majorities in both houses.

2. Carter came into office having run on a platform that was essentially "feel-good". After the scandals of the Nixon administration, Carter ran on the platform of being "a president as good as the American people". There were few concrete positions; basically Carter ran as a smile and a shoeshine, or a new incarnation of Mr. Rogers (who actually had rather more seriousness to him). Having promised something close to the second coming, Carter unsurprisingly failed to deliver.

Sen. Obama should study the Carter administration carefully.

Peace,
Paul

Posted at August 18, 2008 2:26 PM in response to A Purpose Driven Event

Transformational shmansformational. He's a competent politician in the Democratic Party. That in itself is transformational.

Listen, folks, forget the package. That's the window dressing. Barack Obama is a product of the rough-and-tumble politics of the Chicago South Side, where I grew up, and he figured out how to win the support of both Hyde Park progressives and the Daley machine. He, and his staff, know how to count votes, staff precinct offices, send volunteers door-to-door. I'm told (I don't know if it's correct) that McCain has one district office in Iowa at the moment, while Obama has nineteen.

He's also running what is, for a Democrat, a very unusual campaign. Most Dems rely on their core states (California, Illinois, New York and the New England states), then battle in the traditional swing states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan). Obama's not neglecting those states, but he's also putting resources into some non-traditional places, like the Dakotas, Virginia, Georgia (helped by Barr's Libertarian candidate, which will pull votes from McCain). A few electoral votes here, a few there, and pretty soon you're talking about real victory. It's worked for Republicans for decades, and it worked just fine in the primary campaign, when Obama pieced together a lead Hillary could never overcome.

So I think he has the stuff to get elected. What kind of president would he be? His instinct is centrist, without question. (I don't think the country is willing to elect anyone to the left of centrist, and won't be for years.) So was Roosevelt's, until events (the banking and unemployment crises) and individuals (Huey Long, Francis Townsend)pushed him into liberalism. A similar convergence could push Obama the same way, if progressives are well-organized and not too busy kneecapping each other.

Obama will never be the darling of the Left. Anyone who thinks he's the Progressive Knight in Armor will wind up with a broken heart. But he might do some good things, and avoid doing some horrible things, and I suspect he has the political talent to push decent legislation through Congress. That's reason enough to support him, with eyes open. Oh yeah, and the Supreme Court, too.

Peace,
Paul

Posted at August 15, 2008 3:29 PM in response to Obama: The Style, the Thought, the Rhetoric

Roadkill writes: "At the risk of seeming naive, how can they even get away with it? Isn't what Corsi et al are doing libelous and if so subject to legal action? I mean he can't simply back his claims up with bogus sources and say it's legitimate. Can he?"

Yes, unfortunately, he can. Multiple court cases have established that libel laws do not protect public figures to any significant degree.

In other words, if I write that Charlie Shmidlap is a chickenf--ker, Charlie can sue the pants off me. If I write the same thing about Barack Obama, or John McCain, or any figure who's significantly in the public eye. it's almost impossible for them to win any kind of judgement against me.

Peace,
Paul

Posted at August 14, 2008 3:40 PM in response to Obama Campaign Mapping Out Aggressive Counter-Attack Against Swift-Boating

Obama is playing it smart, I think: he's defining himself as the serious candidate, and McCain as a joker. That's actually a classic Karl Rove move: attack your opponent's perceived strength (in this case McCain's supposed greater experience). Every chance he gets, he paints McCain as frivolous.

Obama's not on the defensive. He's planting an idea that he's going to hammer home over and over again: he's presidential timber, the other guy isn't.

Peace,
Paul

Posted at August 5, 2008 7:41 PM in response to The Tire-Gauge Dust-Up And The Politics Of Mockery

Obama is in fact pushing the "McCain = Bush" meme very often and effectively. Right now he's also pushing a different meme, a continuation of the European trip: "You can take me seriously, and you can't take McCain seriously." In other words, he's using a classic Rove technique of attacking the other candidate's perceived strength.

Obama's going after McCain's alleged experience and gravitas with both guns blazing. The message of the Europe trip? "Obama should be taken seriously on foreign policy, while McCain's a dilettante." McCain just played into that meme perfectly with the Spears/Hilton ad -- "See, my opponent is spending his time putzing around with stupid ads while I'm doing the real stuff." Hit 'em where they think they're strong.

It worked well for Karl Rove over the years, and I suspect it will work well for Barack Obama, a Chicago pol who learned to co-opt opposition strategies a decade ago. Combine that with extremely professional organizational work, and you win the election.

Peace,
Paul

Posted at July 31, 2008 6:13 PM in response to McCain's Britney-Obama Ad Turning Off The Right?

A movement to do...errrr, what? Bring fundamental change? What kind?

I frankly don't think there's the slightest chance of building *A* movement for fundamental change. Too much dissension, too many arrows pointing in too many directions. You don't believe me, spend a day reading the comments sections of TPM and CommonDreams.org. There isn't a Left, but two, three, many Lefts.

What I think is possible, and not particularly related to the ups and downs of MoveOn.org, is the building of groups doing organizing around particular issues. Yes, you say, we've already got that, and look what good it's done. Well, those groups have been, for the most part, ineptly organized and badly run; either they're so establishment that their alternatives aren't really alternatives, or they're so alienated that they daren't support anything practical for fear of outraging their members. So we get nothing.

Al Gore, for all the criticisms one can make of him, did something very smart: his proposal to get off carbon energy in ten years was bold and galvanizing, echoing as it did JFK's challenge to put astronauts on the moon by the end of a decade. It's the kind of thing bold political organizers could use to build pressure on a putative Pres. Obama (if he wins) to move the country's energy policies in progressive directions, or on Democratic legislators to resist the machinations of a Pres. McCain (shudder).

A similar, *concrete* proposal on health-care, with numbers, charts, blueprints, circles and arrows on the back, could be similarly galvanizing. Likewise on international law. Likewise on housing and the banking crisis (and the perp-walks that should be happening regarding all of those).

In short, I don't think an umbrella movement is possible right now. But I do think individual movements could achieve some important political goals; Obama, while no raging progressive, is enough of a political blank slate that he could conceivably be pushed to the left in the same way Roosevelt was. Note that there wasn't a single progressive movement which pushed Roosevelt (the Communist Party tried and struck out), but individual movements such as the Townsend pension movement, Huey Long's challenge, and the CIO applied leftward pressure. It could happen again.

Peace,
Paul

Posted at July 30, 2008 1:07 AM in response to MoveOn is No Movement, It's a Powerful Democratic Marketing and Fundraising Tool