Day: August 19, 2008

MSNBC Replaces Dan Abrams with Rachel Maddow at 6 P.M.

Jon Ponder

This has been rumored to be in the works for months. It’s interesting that it’s happening now, so close to the election:

MSNBC is shaking up its prime-time programming lineup, removing the long-time host –- and one-time general manager of the network — Dan Abrams from his 9 p.m. program and replacing him with Rachel Maddow, who has emerged as a favored political commentator for the all-news cable channel.

Maddow’s first show will be on Sept. 8. No word at the moment whether she’ll continue hosting on Air America, but it is unlikely.

Abrams will stay with the network and return to his role as legal commentator and will substitute for hosts on NBC’s Today Show.

Fox News Perpetuates McCain’s False Claim That He Supported GI Bill He Criticized As ‘Too Generous’ To Troops

Jon Ponder

Events in the campaign this week offer a case study in how Fox News assists the right wing — in this case, the McCain campaign — disseminate disinformation:

Monday: Speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, John McCain falsely claimed credit for supporting the 21st Century GI Bill, which was sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.):

As a political proposition, it would have much easier for me to have just signed on to what I considered flawed legislation. But the people of Arizona, and of all America, expect more from their representatives than that, and instead I sought a better bill. I’m proud to say that the result is a law that better serves our military, better serves military families, and better serves the interests of our country.

In reality, the bill McCain “sought” was not Webb-Hagel, which he opposed because its tuition benefits were “too generous” to the troops. The version he sought was a different bill that he co-sponsored:

The GI Bill as approved in no way resembles McCain’s so-called proportional proposal. The GI Bill provides 100 percent tuition payments to those who have served 36 months in active duty, and gives 80 percent to those who have served 24 months. By contrast, under McCain’s proposal, a soldier would have had to serve four times as long — 12 years in active duty – to be eligible for the most generous benefits.

If McCain’s version had passed, service members would have to wait to start college until they were 30 years old or older.

In the end, McCain did not even bother to show up on June 26 to vote on the bill, which passed the Senate 92 to six. All six senators who voted against it were Republicans. (The only other senator who did not vote was Ted Kennedy, who had recently been diagnosed with a brain tumor.)

But McCain may have been prevaricating to the wrong crowd. Turns out VFW leaders supported the Webb-Hagel bill:

VFW’s deputy director for legislative affairs Eric Hilleman: The Graham-Burr-McCain plan is “very partisan and is seen as a way to convolute the GI bill, or to slow the Webb-Hagel proposal down.”

VFW National Commander George Lisicki: “People are leaving after their first enlistment because they are tired of being shot at, and their families are tired of the frequent deployments … Whether they stay in four years or 20, we owe this newest, greatest generation the gift of education.”

Tuesday: Fox News runs with the story that McCain supported Webb-Hagel:

CAMERON: John McCain initially took some opposition to it [the GI Bill], because in McCain’s view, it didn’t proportionately give GI benefits to servicemen and women, depending on how long they were actually in active duty and service. He thought it should be a more proportionate award. He fought for it, it was inserted into the legislation, and in the end, McCain supported it.

In reality, the 12-year term was not “inserted in the legislation,” as Fox News asserted, and not only did McCain not “support” it, he didn’t even pause in his campaign long enough to vote for it “in the end.”

Either Fox did not bother to fact-check, or they were deliberately lying on McCain’s behalf.

Obama Responds to McCain at VFW Meeting

Jon Ponder

Yesterday, John McCain went before the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and lied about Barack Obama’s record, saying that Obama voted to “legislate” failure by casting a single vote against troop funding because it did not contain a timetable, despite Obama’s having voted for funding the occupation every other time. McCain continued:
“One of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can’t disagree without challenging each other’s character and patriotism.”
– Obama

“This was back when supporting America’s efforts in Iraq entailed serious political risk … It was a clarifying moment. It was a moment when political self-interest and the national interest parted ways.”

Today, speaking before the same group, Obama responded:

“Yesterday, Senator McCain came before you,” said Obama. “He is a man who has served this nation honorably, and he correctly stated that one of the chief criteria for the American people in this election is going to be who can exercise the best judgment as Commander in Chief. But instead of just offering policy answers, he turned to a typical laundry list of political attacks. He said that I have changed my position on Iraq when I have not. He said that I am for a path of “retreat and failure.” And he declared, “Behind all of these claims and positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president” — suggesting, as he has so many times, that I put personal ambition before my country. That is John McCain’s prerogative. He can run that kind of campaign, and — frankly — that’s how political campaigns have been run in recent years. But I believe the American people are better than that. I believe that this defining moment demands something more of us.”

And:

[…]

Dr. Democrat’s State of the Campaign Assessment

Dr. Democrat

Dear Dr. Democrat:

Is it just me, or is John McCain making mincemeat of Barack Obama? How would you assess the Democrat’s chances in the prez election?

Queasy in Quincy

doctordemocratsmall3.jpg
Dear Queasy:

I share your growing sense of unease.

Obama’s performance at Saddleback is getting a big thumbs down in the media. If you watch it on YouTube, you can probably see their point. He was both thoughtful AND nuanced. Sheesh! I’m convinced that McCain cheated and that “Pastor Rick” was complicit. But now the cheating story is being played as whining from our side, which is seen as evidence that we know our guy lost big time. There is truth in this.

This is similar to the mysterious bulge in the back of Bush’s suit jacket during the Kerry debates. The media is determined to avoid real investigation into the cheating allegations at Saddleback, just as they deliberately turned a blind eye to whatever device Bush was wearing.

Yesterday at the VFW convention McCain repeated his charge that Obama is treasonously bent on “losing” in Iraq in order to win the presidency. He’s getting slimier and more evil by the day. Too bad it is working so well. The polls are still roughly even in aggregate but McCain is advancing into double digits on key issues like energy and among white men, etc.

Can this campaign be saved? My honest assessment is — absent a macaca moment from McCain — we are in serious shit. There’s yet another spate of headlines out there about how Obama’s fixin’ to get ready to get started thinking about really walloping McCain. Any day now. I swear.

The Obama campaign got in “rope-a-dope” mode with Hillary where they went round after round without taking each other down. The Obamas are still in that mode, and I think what stops them from executing a coup de grace against Grampy is the reticence of the candidate to do the ugly deeds that must be done. What saved them in the primaries was a combination of Obama’s charisma — they’d send him into a state, where he would charm the liberal electorate and get them out to vote — along with the countervailing bitter taste of hardball Clinton politics.

If the campaign stays near 50-50 through October, McCain will win it on terror politics, with a classic Rovian 50+1 gambit.

The problem now is that there aren’t any more liberals for Obama to woo, while there is a simultaneous drip, drip, drip of security-conscious (read: terror-addicted) independents moving away from Obama to McCain. If rope-a-dope continues and the campaign stays near 50-50 through October, McCain will win it on terror politics, with a classic Rovian 50+1 gambit. Plus, as long as the vote is close, the Republicans can finagle the ballots in key districts, as they’ve done in the past.

The next big event will be the VP pick. Conventional wisdom has settled on Joe Biden, and the atmospherics seems to be right for him. However, if the warning bells are going off at Obama HQ, as I hope they are, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a big surprise, and, yes, I mean Hillary. Why? Because what I suspected from the outset is true: Obama can’t/won’t do the slash and burn that is required to win. The attack role traditionally falls to the VP, and obviously, Hillary can do the job.

To recap: In the early primary days, I was for anybody but Hillary and settled for Richardson until he screwed up the gay question (Is being gay a choice?) and then I drifted to Biden and eventually voted for Hillary. My prediction in February was that Hillary could beat McCain by a point or two, but Obama would lose to McCain by a point or two. I am queasily standing by this prediction as of today, but hopeful that things will change.

If Obama’s internals show him losing independents as badly as I think he is, he’d have nothing lose by putting Hillary on the ticket and would gain in solidifying the base among, shall we say, Scots-Irish Dems.

That being said, I suspect the conventional wisdom is right and Obama will choose Biden. The challenge presented by Biden is that he talks too damn much, which contributes to his status as one of the most gaffe-prone pols on the scene.

On the other hand, Biden has good foreign policy creds and solid liberal bona fides, so he’s acceptable to a wide range of folks along the lefty spectrum. He’s as good as anyone I can think of to sit in the “heartbeat away” spot.

After naming the VP comes the convention. I believe Obama approved the roll call for Hillary because a) that’s how it’s been done since the 19th century — but not in the last few cycles because the vote was not close; the last Dem roll call was Jerry Brown against Clinton in 1992; the last time a candidate was picked in a roll call was Ford in ’76), and 2) Obama has made a deal with Hillary that she will spend the fall bringing her supporters in line. I believe she will be the point person on exposing McCain’s stand on choice.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

For dull, unreflective, merely instinctive as the ordinary man may seem, he has nevertheless, as a quite indispensable appendage, a head that in some degree considers and computes; a lamp or rushlight of understanding has been given him, which, through whatever dim, besmoked and strangely diffractive media it may shine, is the ultimate guiding light of his whole path; and here, as well as there, now as at all times in man’s history, Opinion rules the world.

— Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), English writer