Graham and McCain Exploit Boston Tragedy

After the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in connection with the Boston bomb attacks, the nation's top unrepentant neocons --  John McCain and Lindsey Graham -- are currently engaged in a high-profile demonstration of grandstanding. The purpose of this posturing seems to be to showcase how Very Important and Serious they are, why you should have them on Meet the Press, and why you should vote for Graham instead of whatever random Tea Party nutjob the far right base will try to primary him with.

Graham and McCain would very much like Tsarnaev to be charged as an enemy combatant. Slate's Emily Bazelon spells out exactly why this is all pretense -- Graham knows this can't happen because "he helped write the 2009 law [pdf] that says Tsarnaev may not be tried as an enemy combatant and thus points away from holding him as one. But that’s not stopping Graham and the others from trying to score terror points—and, of course, trying to make the president appear weak. This isn’t about actually fighting terrorists. It’s about running for election."

So far, the rightwing blogosphere is following along like a brainless puppy. Mostly because they too are more interested in embarrassing Obama than rights or justice. After all, it was just weeks ago that half of them where defending the right of suspects like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to due process in the case of drone attacks on American citizens. But that was because the Obama administration held the opposite view, not because they gave a damn. Now that an American citizen is not in the sights of a drone hitman, they're all wondering why anyone would be at all concerned about due process for terrorists. As always, consistency is not their strong point.

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McCain Holds Nation Hostage to a Grudge

As anyone who tries to remember will remember, "Benghazi-gate" was a trumped up scandal designed to deny President Obama reelection. Obviously, it failed. The story was that the White House covered up certain facts that would hurt Obama on the campaign trail. So a narrative was cooked up to explain why this was all a big scandal that the media should give wall-to-wall coverage.

The way the narrative was supposed to go was that the President saw electoral doom in a terrorist attack on a consulate in Benghazi. Why this was supposed to sink his chances isn't clear nor was it ever explained. It just would, OK?

So anyway, the White House colluded with the State Department to hide the terrorist attack and blame it on anti-American rioters -- as if there's any substantial difference here. The scandal's narrative arc had it that a terrorist attack would mean the president would have trouble being reelected, but a riot would mean he wouldn't. Why? Because stop asking so many sensible questions, that's why.

Of course, the president won reelection fairly easily and decisively, despite the fact that this whole terrorist/riot thing was cleared up long before election day. Despite Republicans' best efforts to churn up a big, scary scandal, young "Benghazi-gate" had died. It now exists solely as a zombie. It has to. The problem with made up scandals is that they have to be played out to the bitter end, lest the scandal-mongers be exposed as con artists, charlatans, and liars. The problem with "Benghazi-gate" is that it's shambled along in undead pointlessness far beyond even that end stage -- which, for all practical purposes, it entered when Barack Obama was reelected back in November. It continues to lurch around only because the GOP refuses to bury it, as John McCain demonstrated so well this weekend. Steve Benen has the skinny:

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Budget Politics and Chicken Game Theory

Think of budget politics as a game of chicken. In chicken, the player most willing to accept the consequence of not veering off is the player who will win -- every time. In other words, the one most willing to destroy themselves is the one most certain to win. In budget politics, this has been Republicans. They've been willing to drive the nation off a cliff rather than accept compromise, while Democrats have been unwilling to let disaster happen. So dems caved to Republicans every time.

The problem for Republicans is that this strategy has burned them once. They have destroyed themselves. Crack up like they did with the debt ceiling and you start to lose your nerve. "All or nothing" doesn't seem as smart after you've learned that the alternative to all is nothing plus a busted nose. Party discipline begins to fray and those who question the wisdom of kamikaze politics begin to break ranks. Meanwhile, the other player becomes emboldened.

Washington Post:

Democrats are making increasingly explicit threats about their willingness to let nearly $600 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts take effect in January unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher taxes for the nation’s wealthiest households.

Emboldened by signs that GOP resistance to new taxes may be weakening, senior Democrats say they are prepared to weather a fiscal event that could plunge the nation back into recession if the new year arrives without an acceptable compromise.

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Why Republicans Suck at Outreach

I try not to make political predictions. There are just too many variables most of the time to be able to see all that far ahead. When you're this far out from an election, it's a little soon to start thinking you're seeing anything with any amount of clarity. When you're even farther out, it's an exercise in futility, as Ed Kilgore points out today:

A year ago, one of the most commonly discussed scenarios for an Obama defeat in 2012 was his potential weakness among Hispanic voters, an important part of his 2008 coalition (and crucial in several battleground states) that had suffered disproportionately from bad economic times and whose leaders were tangibly unhappy with the president for failing to pursue comprehensive immigration reform.

Today an oversample of Hispanic voters in a NBC-Wall Street Journal survey supplies the latest evidence that Obama may be on track to match his 2008 performance among Hispanic voters: he currently leads Romney by a 61-27 margin, within range of his 67-31 margin over McCain in 2008. Romney’s famously hard-line position on immigration, which he used to great effect in the primaries to validate himself among conservatives (and to dispatch Rick Perry), is presumably a factor in his poor standing among Hispanics (outside the Cuban-American and Puerto Rican communities where there is relatively little concern about immigration policy).

Ironically, the punditry failure on this prediction was utterly predictable. Seriously, was there any chance in hell that today's Republican Party would nominate a candidate who was more progressive on immigration than Obama? The ad above -- run by PAC+, a lefty Super PAC -- could've been made no matter who won the primaries. But it fits Romney especially well, since -- as Kilgore noted -- he engaged in anti-immigrant demagoguery during the primary campaign.

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Logically Speaking, the War on Women Must Be a War Without End

I think I've narrowed down the reason for the War on Women -- this whole childbirth thing freaks conservatives right out. Watching the video above, I can't come up with a better explanation. In it, Republican consultant Alex Castellanos denies that women are paid less than men, despite the plain, indisputable fact that they are. As always, Republicans hate math and math hates them right back.

But Castellanos backs up his assertion with creative accounting -- women run off and do crazy things like have babies, so if you count that time off, the pay gap disappears. Therefore, women should take the hit for their frivolous hobby of, you know, perpetuating the human race. You don't see men running off and having babies. Because men are serious and grown up.

This is all about as silly as it gets and it demonstrates how weak the conservative arguments are in defense (and denial) of their War on Women. But consider this argument in relation to the other fronts in the war -- abortion and contraception. In Conservative World, women should be punished by law for avoiding childbirth and punished economically for engaging in it. Republicans are busy reinforcing a no-win situation for women, where both pregnancy at its avoidance have negative -- but in their minds, completely justified -- consequences. We've already established that women who use birth control are sluts. The less said about women who seek abortions the better. And women who get pregnant are bad workers. I guess the logical conclusion to all this is that women are just naturally bad people.

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Confronted With His Secrecy, Romney Plays the Victim Card

A few days ago, I wondered if anyone actually knew who Mitt Romney really was. Was he the moderate governor of Massachusetts? Or was the centrism an act to win in a blue state? Is he the far-right Tea Party type he seems to be now -- or is that an act to win the GOP primaries? We have no way of knowing, other than to take Mitt's word for things. And that'd be a lot easier if Mitt's presentation of himself weren't constantly changing.

As the DNC video above demonstrates, these questions have occurred to more people than just myself. Not only does Mittens have secret plans for after the elections, he has a secret ideology, a secret past, and secret wealth.

Steve Benen:

Mitt Romney appears rather desperate to shield his tax returns from public scrutiny. He has the materials -- when Romney was considered for John McCain's 2008 ticket, the former governor turned over 23 years worth of returns -- he just doesn't want to share the materials.

The Romney campaign, however, has a new line it hopes will put a stop to the questions. Ed Gillespie told Fox News the other day, "In 2004, John Kerry as a Democratic presidential nominee, released two years of tax returns. In 2012, Governor Romney will release two years." Romney himself repeated this on CNBC yesterday, saying, "John Kerry released two years of taxes."

The problem, of course, is that the talking point isn't true. Judd Legum explained that Kerry, by the time of his 2004 presidential campaign, had actually released 20 years of tax returns.

Romney was only off by a factor of 10.

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Sweeping Up After Iowa

I'm tempted to say that the big winner in last night's Iowa caucuses was not-Romney. Newt Gingrich -- the old not-Romney -- got 16,251 votes. Rick Santorum -- the new not-Romney -- pulled in 30,007. Mitt Romney barely won, with 30,015 (we won't include Ron Paul as a not-Romney, because Paul voters were almost certainly voting for Paul, not against Romney). It's probably too simplistic to say that, had there been a single not-Romney, he would've won with by 16,000 or better, but I don't think Mittens would've won. I doubt anyone on Team Romney is feeling extremely triumphant today. The phrase of the day is probably "a win is a win." They're probably right. The Iowa caucuses aren't even representative of Iowa.

A few other observations from around the web:

Michael Li: Wow. Paid media $/vote so far: Santorum $1.65, Bachmann $8, Romney $113.07, Gingrich $139 Paul $227, Perry $817. [Numbers calculated last night with about 80% of the vote in]


Associated Press: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has won most of the delegates in the Iowa Republican caucuses, edging former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Romney won a projected 13 delegates and Santorum won 12. Texas Rep. Ron Paul was shut out.


Paul Begala: The Romney-inevitability stories will now be tempered by chin-stroking about the candidate's weakness. He is basically tied with a guy who supports banning contraception and another guy who attacks the 1964 Civil Rights Act. If Mitt Romney can't beat them, he ought to find another party to run in.

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Well, At Least it's Not a Buck and a Half's Worth of Arugula!

In 2008, Barack Obama was an elitist. This was the worst thing ever. He supposedly ate in fancy restaurants and ordered unearthly foreign delights like arugula. This meant he was out of touch with the average person, unlike his opponent John McCain who -- as you might remember -- couldn't remember exactly how many houses he owned.

Human Events, 2008:

John McCain may be gaining what Obama is losing among women because of Obama's "Arugula Gap."

"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" Obama asked an Iowa crowd in 2007. I had to Google "arugula" to discover it's a leafy substitute for lettuce in trendy restaurant salads. Most people don't shop at Whole Foods (which specializes in "organic" foods and other environmentally-fashionable products). And most women, I suspect, aren't looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of their high school French teacher than of John F. Kennedy.

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The Party of Recycled Ideas

Remember John McCain? He was that one guy who ran against Barack Obama. You know, the one who thought the moose lady would be a good pick for running mate. The one who admitted he couldn't remember how many homes he owns. The one whose big idea on dealing with the economy was to put together a 9/11 commission-style blue ribbon panel to study the problem. That panel idea struck a lot of people as an insanely and needlessly slow response to an economic crisis, so then McCain decided what the economy needed was a government spending freeze. The inevitable comparisons to Herbert Hoover followed.

You might remember that these great ideas were rejected by the voters and John McCain lost. But, as they say, if at first you don't succeed, try again -- fail better. The rudderless Republican party needs a captain -- there's noise that Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele may face a no confidence vote -- and Baghdad Johnny seems to believe that he's the man for the job. Not the official leader, mind you -- that job comes with some accountability. No, John's eyes are on Rush Limbaugh's position as the perceived leader of the GOP.

Huffington Post:

Sen. John McCain is putting together a major economic plan that will be structured, in some ways, off of Newt Gingrich's famous Contract With America.

In an email obtained by the Huffington Post, the Arizona Republican's chief of staff, Marc Buse, asked an outside adviser for help with a "ten principles" program that the senator could use as a "definitive" platform.

"We are looking for some guidance on a definitive plan (aka contract with america style) on the economy...principles," writes Buse. "Ten principles that JSM [John Sydney McCain] could point to on what MUST BE DONE to address the problems our nation faces."

Unfortunately, McCain seems to be stuck at the first bullet point. The email doesn't list any of this principles, according to the report, "save 'NO TAX INCREASES.'"

What a fresh and compelling message. You wonder why Republicans didn't think of that one decades ago.





There are a few problems with McCain's idea of a new Contract With America. First and foremost, it'll force comparisons to the original. For the most part, that document consisted of gimmicky stuff that never actually saw the light of day. The highest profile points of the contract -- congressional term limits and a balanced budget amendment -- went nowhere. Other proposals, like welfare reform, turned out to be a real bad idea.

But Republicans only say they're the "Party of Ideas" -- not that they're the party of especially good ideas. So any right wing wishlist dressed up as populism will do. Expect lots of recycled rhetoric like "freeing America's entrepreneurial spirit," when they really mean removing regulations from Wall Street. Like the original Contract with America, success will be measured by how many Republicans it gets elected, not by how effective the points in that contract are.

And this particular list of bad ideas would probably come at a particularly bad time. As early as July of 2008, Republican leadership had ruled out trying the contract strategy again. "There will be no effort to try to nationalize the elections," said House Republican leader John Boehner. "Nationalize" was the operative word. It was pretty clear that Republicans were on the outs and candidates stood a much better chance of being elected if they portrayed themselves as running against their party, rather than as a loyal GOP foot soldier -- why do you think McCain-Palin abused the word "maverick" so often? The 2008 campaign would not be a national contest of Republicans v. Democrats -- few Republicans could possibly win that fight.

And now, with Obama enjoying a 61% approval rating (Reagan had 60% at this point), McCain wants to make it Republicans v. Obama. That really doesn't seem to be the wisest way to go. Republicans are already suffering under the label of the "Party of No." Congressional Republicans have a 58% disapproval rating. But then again, the Republican rule of thumb seems to be "if something's not working, do more of it."

So John McCain can draft his new contract. He can throw in a bold new stance against tax increases. I'd be willing to bet good money he's planning on throwing in his spending freeze -- which conservative columnist David Brookes calls "insane." There will probably be some sort of top-heavy tax cut in there -- say capital gains -- because "we shouldn't be punishing investors right now." Maybe even recycle some failed catch-phrases, like "Drill baby, drill," throw a lot of money at nuclear power, and "get tough" with some scary non-threat like Iran.

But, in the end, all it'll be will be a sales pitch. There will be no solutions, no new ideas. Just a promise to return to the party's roots, to be the party of Reagan again. When a Republican says they want change, it means they want to change things back -- it's the nature of conservatism to be resistant to real change. It is, in fact, the basis of the word "conservative."

And that's McCain's and his party's biggest obstacle right now. We need real change -- forward change -- not restoration. Republicans keep going back to the same well they've poisoned, offering the same non-solutions to every new problem. The magic words don't work anymore. People don't fall into a trance at the mention of tax cuts.

We don't need a "Party of Recycled Slogans," we need some actual ideas and only one party is offering them. It's not the GOP.

-Wisco


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2008 All Over Again

Last night, I wrote that I hate year-end lists. I knew this would somehow come back to bite me, but in my defense, I don't give myself a lot of space to explain myself in the roundups. What I meant was the typical news media lists, which almost always consist of pop culture fluff bound to be completely forgotten as early as the very next year. The other kind of list is the Roster of the Fallen. I hate these, too. Yes, it's sad that we lost people like Studs Terkel and Paul Newman, but their memories are polluted when we pretend that Paul Weyrich was a wonderful and loving lamb of God and that Charlton Heston was anything other than an actor with his emotional meter pegged at "histrionic" and his volume cranked up to eleven.

That said, here's my year end list of things during the presidential campaign that are actually noteworthy. Besides, it's pretty short. As year-end lists go, this one isn't much work for the reader.





Worst presidential candidate
A man so bad that you probably forgot he ran -- if you even knew he ran. No, I'm not talking about some third party lunatic, but a major party candidate. A former Governor of a fairly consequential state. I'm talking about Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson -- not to be confused with sleepy actor Fred Thompson.

Thompson put all his chips on Iowa, hoping to win that contest and launch himself to national prominence. But, as a former Bush administration official (Thompson headed Health and Human Services), Tommy already had one strike against him. Those strikes started piling up fast. First, in a speech to the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Thompson congratulated Jews on being good at making money; "I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money. You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition, and I do not find anything wrong with that. I enjoy that."

According to that report, "The remark caused some murmurs and disbelief in the room, according to some who were present." He ended his speech, someone talked to him, and he returned to the podium to apologize. He did it poorly.

"I just want to clarify something because I didn't in any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things," he said. "What I was referring to, ladies and gentlemen, is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. You have been outstanding businesspeople and I compliment you for that and if anybody took what I said wrong, I apologize. I may have mischaracterized it. You are very successful. I applaud you for that."

Congrats on being Jewish stereotypes! That's just awesome...

Thompson further blundered when he answered in a debate that, yes, he it would be fine for an employer to fire someone for being gay. As governor, Thompson had signed a first-in-the-nation anti-discrimination law that included gays. He later retracted the answer and blamed it on "a dead hearing aid and an urgent need to use the bathroom."

In the end, not a single person voted for Thompson. He dropped out after a poor showing in the Iowa straw poll and never even made it to the caucuses.

Runner up: Alan "I'll draft myself to run" Keyes.


Worst political ad
"Obama wants to teach sex ed to kindergarden students." This McCain ad mischaracterized a vote for a common sense, anti-predator bill that would require schools teach the difference between "good touching" and "bad touching" to kids and tell kids who to report pedophiles to. The McCain ad included this quote; "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

It was an awful, awful lie. Awful because, as TIME's Joe Klein put it, "[McCain] is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I've ever seen in presidential politics." But double-awful because it's a bad lie -- why on Earth would anyone want to teach sex ed to kindergardners? Just to be evil, I guess. Otherwise, what the hell would be the point? All in all, this sucked on many different levels -- including its eventual ineffectiveness. Only gullible morons believed it.

Runner up: Barack Obama wants babies to be hit by trains.


Biggest political surprise
Sarah Palin. No one guessed that McCain would select the Mayor of Santa's Village to become his running mate. She re-energized the Republican base, but quickly was exposed as an intellectual lightweight, a political opportunist, and a complete demagogue. McCain got a quick bounce in the polls after the selection -- at one point leading Obama slightly -- but it all went to hell when McCain's response to the economic crisis was to run around like a chicken with his head cut off, while Palin toured the country trying to convince everyone that Barack Obama was a terrorist.

Despite her popularity among Republican diehards -- Pat Buchanan, for example, has an almost literal hardon for her -- she quickly alienated everyone but the conspiracy theorists and racists she attracted. Some on the right believe she's the best hope for the glorious rebirth of the GOP and lefties everywhere can be thankful for that.

Runner up: Obama chooses Clinton as Secretary of State. Seriously, you would've never guessed that just months earlier.


Biggest relief
George W. Bush will really go away soon.

Seriously, do I have to explain this one?

Runner up: Dick Cheney will really go away soon.


Dead president of the year
Ronald Reagan. During the Republican primaries, candidates went to ridiculous lengths to out-Reagan each other -- going so far as staging one of the debates at Reagan's grave.

This turned out to be a bad idea when the market crash could be traced back to the philosophy of deregulation and Ronald Reagan became the only president to die twice; first as a man, then as an economic theory.

Runner(s) up (tie): Kennedy, Lincoln.


That's it. There are many more of these I could write, but it's hard to boil these down to just blurbs and neither of us wants to sit here all day. So long, 2008. It'll be hard to miss you.

-Wisco

Learning from Hoover

There's been some worry that Barack Obama would have to put aside his middle class tax cuts to help pay for an ambitious economic stimulus package. The budget deficit would be too big, the argument goes, and this will cause the economy to suffer. You wonder where all these deficit hawks have been for the last eight years. Bush spent money like a drunk in a strip club on his big pet project of rebuilding the middle east in the neocons' image, driving deficits up to historic levels. In return for this massive investment, we've got pretty much nothing. We might as well have piled up money on the capital mall and lit it on fire.

And now that the failures of the new Republican fiscal policy have destroyed our economy, we're being asked to return to those same policies to fix it. It was John McCain who proposed cutting spending (domestic spending, that is -- we'd still shoveling money into Iraq) in response to the market downturn. In fact, he promised a balanced budget. You know who the last president was who decided to balance the federal budget in a recession? Herbert Hoover. It didn't work.

McCain, more concerned with attracting conservatives than dealing with reality, made a politically motivated choice to run on reducing spending and eliminating earmarks. Nothing could've been worse. "If we were as ignorant as we were in the 1930s, I think we could be facing a second Great Depression," economist Paul Krugman said in a interview on CBS's Face The Nation Sunday. "Really, the only reason that we're not headed for Great Depression II -- at least I don't think we are -- is that we think we learned a few things since then. So we're not trying to balance the federal budget in the face of a recession. But this is big stuff. This is the worst thing, you know, in two lifetimes." In other words, we've learned from Hoover's mistakes -- at least, some of us have.





All of which makes it no surprise that the Obama tax plan is set to go ahead as promised.

Los Angeles TImes:

President-elect Barack Obama's top advisors said Sunday that they wouldn't back away from a promise to cut taxes on the middle class and raise them for the wealthiest Americans, as they made the case for a massive new stimulus package geared toward reviving the slumping economy.

Speaking on Sunday talk shows and in a newspaper opinion piece, Obama aides stepped up a drive to build a broad political consensus behind Obama's core economic proposals: a two-year spending package that could exceed $775 billion, coupled with tax policies weighted in favor of the middle class.

Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, David Axelrod, a senior advisor to Obama, said, "We have to act. Every economist from left to right agrees that we have to do something big in terms of job creation, but we want to do it in a way that will leave a lasting footprint."

In fact, the package will be job one -- Obama wants to sign a bill shortly after he takes office January 20th. The Reaganite supply-side economics will be reversed, with the top earners paying more, while everyone else pays less. Some have said this would hurt jobs, since employers are the ones who create jobs and wealth.

But they're not. Demand creates jobs and wealth -- in other words, consumers. Wealth moves up the economic ladder, not down. If there's no demand for a product or service, you could create all the jobs you wanted and you'd never make a dime. So much for the employer creating wealth.

See, the economy works by having people spend money. And the best way to get money moving is to get it to people who actually need it. No billionaire ever looked at his Bush tax cut and said, "Hey honey, we can finally afford that new refrigerator we've been needing now!"

"[T]he Obama administration... inherits an economy with great potential for the medium and long terms. Investments in an array of areas -- including energy, education, infrastructure and health care -- offer the potential of extraordinarily high social returns while allowing our country to address some long-standing national challenges and put our economy on a solid footing for years to come," wrote Lawrence Summers -- former Treasury head under Clinton and Obama's incoming director of the White House National Economic Council -- in the Washington Post.

Summers says that Obama aims to create 3 million new jobs with his stimulus package. "The Obama plan represents not new public works but, rather, investments that will work for the American public. Investments to build the classrooms, laboratories and libraries our children need to meet 21st-century educational challenges," he writes. "Investments to help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil by spurring renewable energy initiatives (many of which are on hold because of the credit crunch). Investments to put millions of Americans back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges and public transit systems. Investments to modernize our health-care system, which is necessary to improve care in the short term and key to driving down costs across the board."

"If only because of all the money that the Obama administration is going to spend, I expect to see some pickup late 2009," Paul Krugman agrees. "But I think we're going to be in trouble for several years. This is going to be a tough, long-term slog." This isn't a problem that's going to be dealt with by minor tweaks to economic policy, it's a problem that will have to be dealt with by rebuilding America. The supply-side fantasy will have to be abandoned and hard-headed realism will have to be put in its place.

Even Republicans see the stimulus package as pretty much inevitable. "Regardless of whether I support it or not, a stimulus package is coming," says Senator Bob Corker. "There's too much momentum right now to envision that something isn't going to happen. We can only hope that whatever does happen is something that advances the country's interests." That "something that advances the country's interests" seems to be an end to Republican ideology and waking up from the dream about "self-regulating markets."

In any case, we can be glad we didn't elect Herbert Hoover again.

-Wisco

The Terrorist Candidate

During the election campaign, it definitely got out of hand. Losing and desperate, the McCain campaign tried to capitalize on Barack Obama's weak connection to '60s radical William Ayers. That people confused this attack with a separate email smear campaign saying that Obama was a Muslim and, perhaps, a terrorist himself was probably less than coincidental. Barack Obama was the "soft on terrorism" candidate, which in turn became the "terrorist candidate" in many people's minds. The far right and the racist crowd aren't known for their deep intellect. I know that most people immediately suspect claims that are too good to be true, but I'll never understand how people can fall for claims that seem too bad to be true. If a claim about a candidate is so bizarre that it seems absurd, then guess what? It probably is.

Still, as I said, there are always plenty of dopes who'll fall for anything and it's probably safe to assume that most of those people voted McCain-Palin. But the McCain campaign needed every vote they could get and they weren't extremely picky about where they came from. If someone would cast a ballot for McCain-Palin because they were terrified that Barack Obama was going to sell out America to al Qaeda, then so what? A vote's a vote.

But they were playing with fire. Stupid people can be brutal people and gullible people are about 90% stupid people. The decision to believe that Barack Obama was an actual, honest to goodness terrorist betrays a bad decision-making impulse that goes farther than just that one choice. That decision led to other decisions and those decisions were just as idiotic. Earlier this month, the Telegraph reported that, as the William Ayers talk increased on the stump, there were entirely predictable consequences.

Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

It got so bad that Michelle Obama asked a campaign aide, "Why would they try to make people hate us?"





The answer is simple -- that's just what Republicans do. They can't win the debate if it's based on policy, so they make it about personality. Listen to right wing talk radio any day of the week and you'll hear it. They don't just misrepresent facts, they make stuff up. During the campaign, Team McCain tried to paint Obama as a supporter of infanticide. Again, the concept of "too bad to be true" is completely foreign to many minds. They believed that Barack Obama was a secret Muslim terrorist who supported killing babies without reason. There is no lower limit as to how stupid and gullible some people are willing to be. Al Qaeda openly hoped McCain, not Obama, would win. But that didn't bother these chumps, who couldn't possibly have been paying attention to the real world.

So it's more than a little ironic that and a lot less than surprising that al Qaeda came out with an attack against the President-Elect.

In a propaganda salvo by Al Qaeda aimed at undercutting the enthusiasm of Muslims worldwide about the American election, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy condemned President-elect Barack Obama as a “house Negro” who would continue a campaign against Islam that Al Qaeda’s leaders said was begun by President Bush.

Appealing to the “weak and oppressed” around the world, the Qaeda deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, said in a video released Wednesday that the “new face” of America only masked a “heart full of hate.”

It's less than surprising, because al Qaeda would've launched a propaganda attack against any of the candidates. But it's ironic because Barack Obama -- painted as the "terrorist candidate" -- turns out to be al Qaeda's worst nightmare.

"While it’s a bit irritating to have an atavistic mass murderer presume to dictate appropriate politics for a black American, Zawahiri’s diatribe is good news," writes the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker. "In fact, it may be the best news we’ve gotten in the struggle against al Qaeda since the so-called Sunni awakening in Iraq. Zawahiri and his fellow jihadists are clearly worried both about the symbolic power of an Obama presidency and about the smarter strategy against terrorism that Obama has laid out."

Bush's strategy in fighting terrorism has been idiotic. Invading Iraq was a pointless distraction and treating al Qaeda as a military problem, rather than a criminal problem, is using the wrong tool for the job. We've been treating a loose association of religious nutjobs like a foreign power. Tucker describes these actions as "a gift to al Qaeda and its recruiting efforts."

"They allowed bin Laden and Zawahiri to paint the U.S. government as an imperial power bent on a 21st-century crusade against Islam," Tucker writes, "However, that’s a more difficult argument to make when the Oval Office is occupied by a black man whose Kenyan grandfather was Muslim and who played with Muslim friends during his childhood years in Indonesia."

The things we were all supposed to be suspicious of are the things that makes him a huge problem for terrorists. It was easy to accuse Bush of prosecuting a racist crusade to wipe out Islam, but Barack Obama? Yeah, that doesn't fit as well. They're reduced to racism.

Of course, the people who fell for the "Obama's a secret terrorist" lie are no dumber than those who care what al Qaeda thinks. But it's the broader message that causes them trouble and the lie is much harder to swallow this time around. Obama's plan to withdraw from Iraq doesn't help any, either. Al Qaeda wanted McCain because they could count on him to foolishly continue the occupation until time stopped, if that's how long he thought it would take. Nothing would make terrorists happier. The United States' greatest military victory may have been a war with two fronts, but it's the sort of thing you want to do only if you absolutely have to. Many in al Qaeda see Afghanistan as being what brought the USSR down -- the expense of the invasion bankrupting the invaders. This was their greatest victory and they probably hope to be able to use the same strategy twice -- keep the enemy shooting until they can't afford bullets anymore.

But they know Barack Obama won't fall for that. So they try to provoke him with taunts worthy of a racist schoolyard bully. Sadly, this sort of thing probably worked with Bush, but "no drama Obama" is a leveler head. He won't be insulted into making a stupid decision to prove his tough guy bona fides. The days of having a reliably violent fool in the White House are nearly over.

Likewise, closing Guantanamo will be a blow against terrorism. Ending torture will be a blow against terrorism. Restoring justice and constitutional principles will be a blow against terrorism. Everything Bush argued we absolutely had to do to fight terrorism was an overreaction. You don't have to commit crimes to fight criminals. If the United States once again becomes a just nation, it's a lot harder to convince people that we're evil. It's a lot harder to convince people we're crazy when our approach to fighting international criminals is rational and measured.

It may be that there was no more crippling blow to terrorism than the election of the "terrorist candidate."

-Wisco

Pro-Lifers Discover Reality

The right has been stringing their voters along for decades with the wedge issue of abortion. Few Republican candidates get their campaigns off the ground without taking a position as close to the right pole of the issue as they can get away with. Even John McCain, who didn't seem comfortable with the issue, described himself as "proudly pro-life" and expressed a desire to overturn Roe v. Wade. In the final presidential debate, McCain treated the question of a woman's health as an excuse to get an abortion. "That's the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, 'health,'" McCain said, making air quotes with his fingers.

But the thing is, Republican candidates have talked a good game on abortion. While Bush claimed to want to foster a "culture of life" in America, he got right to work creating a culture of death. We absolutely needed go to war and kill people and, if you wanted to stop killing people, it would be an insult to those who had died. If we quit after it became clear the Iraq war was pointless, Bush argued, the dead would have "died in vain." Not only did we have to spread death and misery around the world, but we then had to worship that portion of the dead who were American. The glorious culture of life was only mentioned when throwing a bone to the anti-abortion folks, mostly through actions that wouldn't reduce the number of abortions performed in any way -- a ban on funding embryonic stem cell research, for example. The ban didn't stop a single fetus from being aborted. Not one.





Of course, it was never designed to. It was designed to create another wedge issue between the anti-abortion types and the rest of us, just in time for the 2004 election. Bush had "discovered" one more way that the secular forces of science had come up with to kill babies. In the end, Bush accomplished nothing but getting re-elected. Stem cell research was set back, no abortions were avoided, and the war over abortion was fresh as a daisy and basically unchanged -- just the way the Republican party likes it.

It's been sort of an ongoing theme of mine that the GOP uses the pro-lifers as pigeons. They use abortion to get people to vote for them, then don't do much to address it. Republicans are pro-life activists on the campaign trail and pro-corporate politicians in office -- it's all about abortion on the stump and all about capital gains tax cuts and deregulation once in office.

It's also been my long-standing argument that sooner or later these voters are going to wise up. You can only pull the same trick over and over so many times before people stop falling for it. But these are mostly people of faith -- with "faith" meaning "unquestioning belief despite evidence to the contrary" -- so it takes a while for them to catch on. In this case, about four decades. Remember, many of these people are still fighting over the 150 year-old theory of evolution. This process of enlightenment takes a while.

But, in the case of abortion, it seems to be taking about forty years. The Washington Post's Jacqueline L. Salmon reports that some of these pro-lifers are changing their tactics to match reality.

Frustrated by the failure to overturn Roe v. Wade, a growing number of antiabortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions.

Some of the activists are actually working with abortion rights advocates to push for legislation in Congress that would provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education -- services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies.

Actually working to reduce abortions. What a novel concept. Well, it would be a novel concept if the pro-choice movement hadn't beat them to it. Making abortion illegal would never have eliminated abortion; the way to do that is to make it unnecessary. As Bill Clinton once put it, the goal should be to make abortion "safe, legal, and rare."

"Abortions did become rarer during Clinton's time in office, dropping by 11 percent," columnist E.J. Dionne wrote last week. "But since Clinton made no major public moves on abortion reduction, many pro-lifers who had been inclined his way felt he ignored the third word in his motto." If they had watched the numbers, rather than anti-abortion propaganda, they'd have had reason to celebrate Bill Clinton's accomplishment. Instead, they considered him the devil. And some see this new approach as equally evil.

"It's a sellout, as far as we are concerned," said Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League, told Salmon. "We don't think it's really genuine. You don't have to have a lot of social programs to cut down on abortions." Others see a reasoned approach to abortion as problematic as well.

The Archbishop of Denver Charles J. Chaput says that these new efforts to reduce abortions "undermined the progress pro-lifers have made and provided an excuse for some Catholics to abandon the abortion issue." Excuse me, but what progress? Roe v. Wade has practically become a founding document and most Americans want it to remain that way. A July Quinnipiac poll asked respondents "In general, do you agree or disagree with the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that established a woman's right to an abortion?" 63% agreed, 33% disagreed. There hasn't been any progress for the anti-abortion types.

I suppose the lesson here is that some people will wise up after being played for chumps for decades. They'll abandon a total ban and work with reality.

Others won't and will continue to devote their lives to a fight the Republican party has no interest in letting them win.

-Wisco

Rebuilding the Republican Party

After Tuesday's rout, the Republican party finds itself in pretty bad shape. Beaten and bloodied, rejected and discredited, the task for them is to make the party viable again. The swings states have swung blue and Democratic party head Howard Dean's fifty state strategy saw many of the reddest states turn a little more purple. In John McCain's home state of Arizona, Republicans saw Barack Obama come within shouting distance of winning. At the end, the battleground states weren't the midwest, but in traditionally conservative states. Republicans could take nearly nothing for granted.

So today, top Republicans are meeting to sort out what to do. Rebuilding the party is going to be a long, hard slog, but rebuild it they will try to do.

Jonathan Martin, Politico, Oct. 28:

Two days after next week’s election, top conservatives will gather at the Virginia weekend home of one of the movement’s most prominent members to begin a conversation about their role in the GOP and how best to revive a party that may be out of power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue next year.

The meeting will include a "who’s who of conservative leaders -- economic, national security and social," said one attendee, who shared initial word of the secret session only on the basis of anonymity and with some details about the host and location redacted.

The decision to waste no time in plotting their moves in the post-Bush era reflects the widely-held view among many on the right, and elsewhere, that the GOP is heading toward major losses next week.

Nothing better than to get all the people who screwed everything up in the first place together to find a way to straighten it all out. So far, their band-aid solution has been to repeat that the US is a "center-right" country ad nauseum. Barack Obama -- formerly accused by these same people of being Marxist -- has supposedly won the election by running as a conservative. This new line is everywhere on cable and op-ed pages.

If this is any indication of what they'll come up with from their strategy meeting, then we can expect them to assume that their previous line of BS wasn't any good; they need a new line of BS.





If we look at some of the attendees of the big GOP strategy summit, we see a list of old dogs unlikely to learn new tricks. The meeting will be at the Virginia home of long time rightie Brent Bozell, a full-time BS artist. Arranging the meeting is "longtime GOP strategsist and conservative PR executive Greg Mueller." Those names alone cement my assessment that the meeting will only produce new lies.

And a more recent piece by Martin gives us glimpse of how the old Republican party is seeking only to rebrand itself:

In addition to Mueller and Bozell, other conservatives attending the private session will be: Leonard Leo, executive vice preident of the conservative Federalist Society, and a leading figure in the movement on judicial and Catholic issues; Grover Norquist, the anti-tax crusader who heads Americans for Tax Reform; and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Center and one of the most high-profile social conservatives.

In other words, the nuts who screwed everything up in the first place. You've got two religious right figures and a de facto anarchist. In fact, anti-government activist Norquist is a figure in the Abramoff money-laundering scheme.

These guys, being what's wrong with the Republican party, are getting together to figure out what's wrong with the Republican party. How do you think that'll pan out?

Meanwhile, a coalition of younger conservatives are organizing a coalition to rebuild the GOP in a saner image. Erick Erickson, the managing editor of RedState.com, Patrick Ruffini, a former RNC eCampaign director, Justin Sayfie, a former spokesperson for Jeb Bush, and others have launched a website to generate ideas -- RebuildTheParty.com.

The coalition's mission statement has some bad news for people like Sarah Palin. "[W]aiting for a political savior to materialize out of thin air is not an option," they write. "Eventually, strong new leaders will emerge. And when they do, they must inherit a party stronger than the one in its current state."

In my opinion, job one for a new GOP should be to drop the anti-intellectualism. Appealing to the lowest common denominator worked for a while, but eventually the message of "don't trust smart people" brought dopes to power and they wound up with candidates like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin. Driving the brainiacs away wasn't the wisest long-term strategy.

This being a new-media movement, the coalition has launched an interactive site -- Ideas.RebuildTheParty.com -- where users can vote up what they believe are good suggestions. Some of these ideas are just stupid. One genius suggests they get all Christian; "Christians need to realize that the Democratic stance is almost entirely un-Christian," they suggest. This is a new message how? They tried that and they failed.

Another is pretty vacuous; get "cool." "Build an exciting, inspiring and charismatic party that captures young hearts and minds and reminds them why it's 'cool' to be Republican and people can proudly say we are Republican AND educated AND informed AND caring AND diverse AND forward-thinking," this rebuilder writes. A little detail would be helpful here. Why not just suggest "win more?"

But some of the most popular suggestions are damned good ideas. "Realize that the biggest problem with the Republican party is that it is no longer about personal freedom, but about trying to dictate one perfect way of life..." writes one. "The Republican party turned into stricter government. This is not good."

"The party must return to its roots of small government and personal freedom," writes another. "The current platform of exclusion and moralism is unacceptable and will result in the destruction of the party."

"Keep the religious right in a position of power and you will continue to lose people like me; pure moderates who are fed up and disgusted with the Republican party -- whom I used to identify and vote with," one GOPer says. "I will never support a Republican candidate who pledges to keep marriage from gays or overturn Roe v. Wade. The government has no vested interest in defining social norms, and as long as the dogma continues to trend towards Talibanesque doctrine, I won't come back to the party."

Looking through the top ideas, we see bad news for that brain trust in Virginia; lose the religious right, stop being dicks about everything, stop being the authoritarian party. The good news for Democrats is that Republican party leadership isn't going to go for any of this stuff. The bad news is that they don't have to. If the coalition gets some traction, they'll rebuild the party on their own.

For myself, I'm looking forward to a future where the differences between Democrat and Republican are policy based. I'm looking forward to a future where speculation about "what would Jesus do?" isn't part of the national dialogue. I'm looking forward to a time when Republicans aren't spending all their time representing the worst of Americans -- the bigoted, the willfully ignorant, and the authoritarian.

It's an open question as to whether the Republican party can be sane anymore and still survive -- they've been home to nuts for far too long -- but I'd sure like to see them try.

-Wisco

Yes We Did

The world is celebrating this morning. In Kenya, there's dancing in the street and a national holiday. In Japan, the toast of the day is "President Obama, Banzai!" (I say we take that one). But it's Chicago that's the temporary center of the universe and they were cheering last night as Barack Obama and Joe Biden lost the title "Senator" and became "President-Elect" and "Vice President-Elect."

The fight didn't last very long -- when Ohio went Obama, it was over. He had more than 200 electoral votes in his pocket at that point and a solid 77 west coast votes in the bank. When Virginia went blue, the extremely improbable became the all-but impossible. AP gave Obama Florida, McCain conceded, and it was over.





In his victory speech, President-Elect Obama praised his supporters, his detractors, his opponent, his staff, his family, his running mate, and democracy.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer...

It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

"There will be setbacks and false starts," he said. "There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand."

I'm tempted to go looking through the right wing blogosphere for sour grapes, but we've got four years -- at least -- to talk about that. Those "many who won’t agree" have already decided they hate Obama. Convinced he'll raise everyone's taxes, give all that money to Africa and terrorists, institute communism, and destroy America, they're beyond reason. The right used to talk about "Bush derangement syndrome" -- wait until you get an eyeful of anti-Obama delusion. All those people who believe he really is a terrorist, a Marxist, and the anti-Christ weren't shocked back to sanity last night. They won't be any time soon, either. They're completely insane and happy with that.

When all is said and done, we did this. You and me and everyone else who stood in line, who made phone calls, who kept up the fight. The voters who had a hard time and the voters, like me, who got in and out no problem.

And all those nuts, they did it too. With every cry of "KILL HIM!" and every dumbass who insisted a black man couldn't be allowed in the White House, another ten, twenty, one hundred votes went to Obama. Hate and paranoia aren't an attractive platform. Division, racism, and lies aren't the most appealing vision of the future. In their panic to avoid an Obama presidency, they practically guaranteed it. The thrashing of the drowning man exhausted him and he went under. The nuts on the other side did a lot to elect Obama, but we don't have to thank them for it. We only need to acknowledge it.

This isn't done. Not by a long shot. None of those people are going away and they'll fight the new president every step of the way, neutered as they are. When the battle's won, the winners tend to go home, but the losers are still ready to fight. Don't go home. In democracy, there is no decisive victory and, if that seems like bad news to you right now, remember the last eight years. That was the good news then. Nothing is irreversible in America. If you can't lose hope when things seem hopeless, then neither can you quit while you're ahead. This whole nation is a work in progress, never finished, never unchangeable, and never safely in the right hands. Victory is temporary, just as defeat is fleeting.

But right now, take five. Take a moment to remember what you did and where you are. "Yes we can" becomes "Yes we did." It's not over, but take a breather and pretend it is. You've earned it. Pour a glass of your favorite drink and make the toast of the 21st century.

President Obama, Bonzai!

-Wisco

What Did You Do Today?

It's one of those election day traditions. Every four years, a bunch of media remote trucks show up at Dixville Notch, New Hampshire to report the earliest election results in the nation. The polls open at midnight and everyone in town casts their votes right away. The results? Barack Obama by a nearly three to one margin. Every single Dixville Notchian -- or whatever the hell you call them -- has voted and the results of this 100% turnout is McCain 6, Obama 15. It's the first time in forty years that the town has chosen a Democrat. Only a gazillion more votes to go.

Dixville Notch always has 100% turnout -- I think if you don't show, the Children of the Corn come by your house and stone you. The media gods must be appeased. Nationwide, many have already cast their ballots in early voting. Voice of America reports that "more than 28 million people in 34 of the 50 states" have already voted. The turnout for election day is expected to be even bigger.

"We have statistics that we can point to right now that suggest that 28.8 million people have so far voted in this election," Michael McDonald, an elections expert at George Mason University in Virginia told VOA. "We are expecting 40 million people when all the numbers are compiled. And that will be about 30 percent of the 136 million people that we are expecting to vote." If that 136 million figure is correct, that would represent a turnout of 64% of all eligible voters.

"We may quite literally see turnout of a magnitude that we have not seen in a century of American politics," he said.





All that early voting has gone heavily for Obama -- 60% -- which helps explain why Team McCain didn't vigorously break out a new attack on Obama over the weekend. For as much as a third of voters, it would've come too late to make a difference. Instead, both campaigns have spent the last few days oiling the gears of the get out the vote machines.

While some of the early voting had unreasonably long lines, McDonald says this was the nature of the early voting mechanism in most municipalities. "What's happening here is that local election officials only have a limited number of polling places available for early voting in person," he said. "And those polling places seem to be completely overwhelmed. As we look from state to state where they do have these polling places, in many places they have had to extend hours. They have had to open up additional polling places to accommodate the demand for early voting."

Here in Madison, Wisconsin, for example, long lines for early voting had been reported. But this was because early ballots had to be cast at the city clerk's office. One polling place for an entire city means long lines. If there have been reports of hours long lines in your area, don't expect them to be nearly as long today.

I guess what I'm saying is don't let a long wait scare you off. Ask yourself this question; how long would you have waited in line in 2000 if you knew you could avoid what happened over the last eight years? If you're really worried, bring a headset, a book, and a lunch. If you're lucky, you'll have time to eat the lunch on the way home.

If you're in line when the polls close, you get to vote. Don't let them send you away. If you need another incentive to stick it out and vote, remember, George W. Bush is voting today and for once you get a chance to veto him. Cast a ballot to cancel out the vote of your least favorite rightwinger; Cheney, Bush, Bill Kristol, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, etc. Sponsor a nut and cancel out their vote.

If you have any problems voting, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Report it, get advice from volunteer election lawyers, and protect your right to vote. Anyone who would deny you that right, anyone who stands in the way of democracy, is not a friend of this nation and our principles. Don't let them get away with it. Write that number down and take it with you -- 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

I'm going to do what I always do on election day, take a nice autumn walk to the polls at the nearby high school. It's an unbelievable beautiful day here -- an indian summer day very late in the season. I'll vote, go home, and watch the returns all damned night -- I don't think the presidential race will remain undecided that long, but I want to see how Prop. 8 turns out in California.

It's all over now. The endless polls, the stupid, distracting non-issues, and the crappy media obsession with those stupid, distracting non-issues. With any luck, we'll soon stop hearing about made-up demographics like "hockey moms" and "Joe Six-Pack." It'll go on for a while, as the pundits either try to explain why they were wrong or capitalize on the fact that they were right. But there will be two speeches tonight; one a concession and the other a victory speech. We decide which is which.

But only if we go vote. I'm an atheist, so whenever I'm asked for my religion, I say "none." But if someone really pinned me down and required me to state some sort of religious belief, I'd have to say "democracy."

You're going to remember this day for the rest of your life and you're going to remember what you did today. If you haven't voted already, you can take your place in history or you can polish that chair your sitting in with your ass. There are no other chances, there are no more days. You're choice today isn't just between the candidates, school funding, amendments to state constitutions. Your choice today is between the most basic of all democratic actions and undemocratic inaction.

Which do you want to remember doing today?

-Wisco

The Right's Stealth Campaign

The final USA Today/Gallup poll is out today and Barack Obama holds a national lead of 11 points. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll puts it closer, with an 8-point lead for the Democrat, 51% to 43%. Gallup also gives it to Obama by a pretty wide margin, 55% to 44%. We can pretty safely say that the consensus is that Obama's walking away with this thing tomorrow. In fact, networks will probably call it for Obama before the Mountain Time zone polls close. But, just between you and me, you can write McCain off if he loses Virginia. If that happens, the race is over early for most of the nation -- 8 p.m. Eastern at the latest. And it's looking like that's the way it's going to go.

For Republicans and rightwingers in general, looking for good news will mean looking elsewhere -- the national race is all but officially over. Where might they find these little rays of sunshine? In statewide victories for Republican Jesus. Down ticket races seem to be trending Democrat, so they're prepared for big congressional losses as well as the big one in the electoral college. They can't lose every race, but the wins will be nearly meaningless, given the lopsided nature of the next Congress.

No, the wins for the right will come in ballot initiatives. The stealth campaign for control of the nation comes in the form of control of the states through direct democracy. If they can't rule by elected office, they can rule by referendum. The highest profile referendum is Proposition 8 in California, which would amend the state's Constitution to ban same sex marriage. The good news there is that the proposition looks to be headed for a loss. The bad news is that it exists at all and that the loss looks to be a narrow one.

Los Angeles Times:

The Field Poll of 966 likely voters, conducted between Oct. 18 and 28, shows 49% opposed to the measure, 44% in favor and 7% undecided. The race is narrowing. A September Field poll showed the measure trailing by 14 points, 52% to 38%.

The new poll also found that "significant proportions" of voters on both sides are conflicted about the issue.

Women are more likely to oppose Proposition 8 than men, the poll reports; 51% of women and 47% of men surveyed oppose the measure. It also found that respondents who said they personally knew a gay person were more likely to be opposed than respondents who said they did not.

The problem here is that this ballot initiative, like similar discriminatory referenda, isn't only designed to change California's Constitution -- it's also an organizational tool. All those petitions become mailing lists, all those volunteer canvassers and phone bankers don't go away after they lose. They'll be told they'll keep up the fight and that Jesus will eventually prevail in California's battle with the Homosexual Menace. If they win -- which is still a very real possibility -- then they'll use that energy to move forward with other "pro-family" issues.





But the fact is that a loss is almost better than a win -- at least in terms of organizing. When the battle's over, people on the winning side tend to go home. When the culture war continues, the culture warriors fight on. This is where the Republican base will rebuild -- not around failed candidates, but around wedge issue ballot measures.

Arizona and Florida will both be voting on referenda similar to California's Prop. 8. In Florida, it seems close. Although polling shows the voters approving the ban 56% to 37%, Florida requires a super-majority of voters -- 60% -- to pass such a measure. This one's a nailbiter, but leaning the right way. Organizing after losing this one will be a pretty simple matter, since they can use that majority to claim "mainstream" status and because Florida conservatives tend to be pretty insane anyway (see Katherine Harris).

To give you an idea of how powerful these referenda become as organizing tools, we can look at Arizona. In 2006, Arizona became the first state to defeat an anti-marriage equality measure. The groups opposing marriage kept working, turned their petitions into mailing lists, and now a second attempt looks likely to pass -- 49% to 42%.

In Arkansas, voters will be asked to bar gays from adoption or foster parenthood. Thankfully, this looks like a big loser -- 55% oppose the measure, while 38% support it.

Don't get the idea that the right's stealth campaign is all about hating on the gays. It's just mostly that way. In South Dakota, it's about hating on the women. An initiative there asks voters to make abortion illegal in almost every circumstance. A similar ban lost last time around, but these people aren't taking no for an answer. Where the original ban had almost no exceptions, the current measure would include "limited exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the pregnant woman." That brought it much closer to winning. In fact, it's a tie -- 44% to 44%.

The S. Dakota measure is certainly unconstitutional and is meant only to challenge Roe v. Wade. There's absolutely no guarantee that it'll ever make it all the way to the Supreme Court, but it's all about the PR anyway. They're building the groundwork for a propaganda campaign to energize the crazies.

Want a reason to vote? There you go. And it's important to remember that these don't represent the right going away next year -- so neither should you. That's the danger of a successful presidential campaign, people go away. In a democracy, the fight is never over, by design. Wins must be defended.

No matter what's on your ballot, vote. But remember, democracy doesn't end on November 5. The religious right isn't going away on that day, so neither should you. We've got to win the big one and keep fighting the other ones. Democracy means that the fight never, ever ends.

-Wisco

Vote or be Dicked

Some endorsements mean more than others. For example, I don't know who Jay Leno is voting for and that's probably because I'm just like everyone else -- I don't care. Celebrity endorsements don't mean too much, because anyone who looks to celebrities for guidance is probably not going to vote. Other endorsements may help a little, because it bumps the candidate up in the news rotation. The more a candidate is mentioned in a positive light, the better.

But some endorsements can't possibly be seen positively. For example, John McCain scored the less than coveted al Qaeda endorsement. Turns out that having the US dumping money and blood down the drain in Iraq is pretty much exactly what the terrorists want. "Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," reads an internet posting from the organization. "[We] will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America."

But it seems that Americans are done with giving a damn what terrorists want. Good on us. They're freakin' insane. We should've stopped making decisions based on what crazy people want or don't want a long time ago. Al Qaeda's endorsement probably didn't do much to change anyone's mind. In fact, most media sources reported it as a "News of the Weird" piece, if at all. It wasn't the sort of thing that anyone really took seriously.





But another endorsement may be the final nail in McCain's electoral coffin. Yesterday, a certain Vice President made this statement:

I believe the right leader for this moment in history is Sen. John McCain. John is a man who understands the danger facing America. He's a man who has looked into the face of evil and not flinched.

Mr. Helpful also had nice things to say about Sarah Palin, saying McCain had "chosen a running mate with executive talent, toughness and common sense, our next vice president, Sarah Palin." The McCain campaign will not be sending a thank you note to Dick Cheney's office. In fact, this endorsement -- and its timing -- are widely seen as so damaging that many are openly wondering why Cheney hates McCain. There's no law that says the Vice President can't just shut the hell up, not endorse anyone, and hope everyone forgets about him.

Oddly -- but not surprisingly -- Cheney's endorsement is getting a bigger negative reaction than al Qaeda's. And Obama was quick to jump on it:

That endorsement didn’t come easy. Senator McCain had to vote with George Bush 90 percent of the time and agree with Dick Cheney to get it.

George Bush may be in an undisclosed location now, but Dick Cheney’s out there on the campaign trail because he’d be delighted to pass the baton to John McCain.

He knows that with John McCain you get a twofer: George Bush’s economic policy and Dick Cheney’s foreign policy – and that is a risk that the American people cannot afford to take.

Obama said that McCain deserved Cheney's endorsement, because he "really earned it." Ouch.

Dick's the heart of the neocon wing of the White House. Dick's the dark stain that will color our national self-perception for decades. The head liar, the chief crook, the author of torture, the despiser of law, the tapper of phones. Dick Cheney is everything that brought the GOP to this point in history, reviled and discredited, ruined and wrong.

Does Dick Cheney want McCain to lose? I doubt it. He doesn't really strike me as a big fan of hope and optimism, so Obama's not his guy. But, at this point, it's pretty clear McCain's screwed regardless, so Cheney couldn't resist the sadistic impulse to sucker punch Bush's old rival just one last time, in public, while he's already down. Of Obama and McCain, there really shouldn't be any doubt who he would've preferred, but America's Blofeld doesn't allow failure, so McCain must be thrown into the shark tank.

But McCain isn't without hope himself. And that hope is that you think this thing's in the bag, stay home, and don't vote. Whatever motive Cheney had for endorsing McCain, we can safely assume that he wanted him to win. After all, Bush endorsed him as soon as he was the presumptive nominee.

So let's look at some of John McCain's endorsements; George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and al Qaeda. If that doesn't get you up off your ass before the polls close Tuesday, nothing will.

-Wisco

All the Smart Kids Vote

I said I was going to continue to post reasons to vote until election day and that includes the weekend. I'm not going to knock myself out with a real long post, but I'm putting aside my writer's sabbath nonetheless.

So, here's today's good reason to vote -- you're not stupid.

ABC News:

Early voting and absentee ballots are a hot topic this political season, but scientists say some folks are laying the groundwork for voting really early -- say from kindergarten.

"Little is known about the association between measured intelligence and how people participate in democratic processes," says a current Intelligence journal study led by Ian Deary of Scotland's University of Edinburgh, in a wee bit of an understatement. "There is debate about the importance of intelligence in relation to whether people vote in elections, and there is currently little information on how people with different levels of intelligence choose to vote in elections," according to the report.

So Deary and company took a look at a decades long study of 17,200 people born in 1970. According to the article, "The researchers check up on them every few years and included intelligence tests at age 5 and 10, as well as voting affiliation and occupation at age 34."





Turns out that those who are the smartest vote most often. The average IQ is 100 and, for every 15 points above the average, a person is 35% more likely to vote. "People who took part in a political meeting or rally in the last year, those who took part in a public demonstration, those who signed a petition, and those who were fairly or very interested in politics had higher mean intelligence test scores at age 10," the study found.

So voting doesn't actually make you smart, but it's what smart people do. Turns out that being politically active doesn't hurt any either. So who's the smarter voter, the leftie or the rightie?

"Childhood intelligence is associated with how and how much people engage in the democratic processes, and with support for political ideologies that are based on ecological sustainability and social liberalism," the study found. Let me translate that for McCain voters -- not you. All those smartypants kids grow up to be fancypants liberal elitists.

And does the fact that the study was based on UK politics, not American politics mean anything? Not really, say the authors. "Although these data apply to one country's political system, there are broad similarities in political parties across Western democracies, and so these data might have wider relevance beyond the UK." That means you, commie Obama backers. You're the brainiacs.

Now go out and prove it.

VOTE!

-Wisco