Day: October 17, 2008

The Hate Just Keeps Coming from McCainers

Buck Banks

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The McCain campaign office in Pompano Beach, Fla., has been sporting this cute little poster on its wall, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. In case you can’t read the yellow highlighted quote at the top, it says:

This is the greatest nation on the face of the earth. Join with me as we change it. — Barack Obama 2008

The poster then goes on to draw a parallel between Obama and Karl Marx, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Fidel Castro because they allegedly all said the same kind of thing to young people in their nefarious careers as dictators. Except for Marx, of course, who never led anything or anybody, but why let your message of hate get all bogged down in the facts.

Of course, the local Republican Party responded in the usual manner:

Shown a picture of the sign Thursday night, Broward [County] Republican Chairman Chip LaMarca said he was “disgusted” and would immediately go to the office and remove it.

“I’m speechless at the ignorance,” LaMarca said. “It’s not something we can condone.

“I’ll find out who put it up there, and maybe they’ll volunteer somewhere else.”

Attaboy, Chip, you tell ’em! But really, the depth of the outrage is, well, “outrageous”:

Jeffrey Sanders, 23, a Palm Beach Community College student from Boynton Beach, said he saw the sign earlier Thursday when he stopped to pick up tickets for today’s McCain rally at Florida International University.

“To label someone as the next Hitler is beyond outrageous [and] offensive. And it needs to be addressed. And if Barack Obama does the same thing to McCain, I would expect the same reaction,” he said.

Yeah, well, Jeff, if your party was not so blinded by anger, racism and venom, maybe you’d be able to see that Obama would never do something like that to McCain. See, he’s not a hater, he’s a creator; he’s not a dictator, he’s a debater.

Letterman Shocks McCain by Confronting Ayers Claptrap

Trish

Hands-down, my favorite part of Letterman’s interview with John McCain was when he asked the lying bastard about pallin’ around with G. Gordon Liddy, convicted Watergate burglar and rightwing whack job. Watch McCain’s reaction, which went from, “Oh shit!” to “I’ll pretend I’m not sure,” to “I can lie my way out of this.”

McCain, as usual, is lying like a sisal bath mat. Vietnam War protester and 1997 Chicago Citizen of the Year William Ayers served his debt to society just as much as Liddy did, and he never said he “wished he’d bombed more.” The Stonecipher Report:

McCain was lying like a sisal bath mat

[Ayers] issued a memoir in 2001, released just before 9/11, which resulted in interviews with him that came out right after the tragedies.

The resulting articles from those interviews were notable – and, to many, notorious – because Ayers not only talked about regrets, but also expressed the thought that “We didn’t do enough” during the Weather days – meaning (he later explained) that he believed they could have worked harder and in different ways to oppose the war…NOT that he thought they should have done more bombings.

I think twisting the truth with those, “but it makes a better story if we tell it this way” sound bites have become so second nature to McCain that he no longer bothers to remember the facts. It’s satisfying to (occasionally) watch people like David Letterman confront him with them anyway.

Bonus Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

I was shocked that it got so much attention. It certainly wasn’t because of me; it had a big impact because it said what most people thought but were afraid to say. They are vindictive, and people were afraid of being excluded. They’re tough. I think it’s part of the reason they lost. You want to love people, not be afraid of them.

— David Geffen, in a forthcoming issue of GQ, talking about his high-profile defection from the Clinton inner circle last year when he called Sen. Hillary Clinton “a polarizing figure” and her husband “a reckless guy.”

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Fifty percent of small business income taxes are paid by small business.

— Sen. John McCain, during the third presidential debate.

Michael Kinsley: “Although I really should run this past Paul Krugman before going public, the evidence seems to suggest that as much as 100 percent of small business income taxes are paid by small business.”

The Early Line 10/17

Buck Banks

Obama/Biden 50%
McCain/Palin 40%
Undec 7%

– Obama’s 10% lead in today’s Diageo/Hotline release equals his largest advantage ever in the tracking poll. The Dem nominee also led 50-40% in the poll completed 10/10.

– Obama now leads 50-37% on who would do the best job handling the economy, the fifth consecutive day he has led the issue by double digits. 66% of LVs and 67% of Indies believe the economy is the most important issue facing the U.S.

– The candidates meanwhile remain basically deadlocked on energy issues. 43% think Obama would do the best job managing U.S. energy policies, while 42% say McCain. Neither candidate has had a statistically significant lead on energy since the survey completed 10/10.

Today’s Diageo/Hotline tracking poll, conducted 10/14-16 by FD, surveyed 804 LVs and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5%. Party ID Breakdown for the sample is 41%D, 36%R, 18%I.

Ask Dr. Democrat: Assessing the McCain Campaign

Dr. Democrat

Dear Dr. Democrat:

I’m scared. Is John McCain going to win the election?

Worried in Walla-Walla

Dear Worried:
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If John McCain loses, in his post-campaign career he could be the next George Burns. Like Burns, he’ll probably live forever and could be wheeled out to do his schtick on important occasions.

What’s going here, of course, is two things and both are a bit remarkable because, for the first time since Karl Rove’s boy Steve Schmidt signed on, the campaign is pursuing strategies rather than short-lived tactics designed to win news cycles.

First, McCain is laying the groundwork for losing. If there is a landslide and if he does not rehabilitate his image before Nov. 4, his entire career before this campaign will be trashed by the choice of Sarah Palin and the ugliness that she has unleashed. By showing his inner George Burns at the Al Smith dinner and on Letterman last night, he’s reminding his friends in the media of his old self with the hope they’ll help him regain some of his dignity. (It’s a cinch that they will.)

I expect we’ll see very little of the snarling Grampy character and much more of amiable Mr. Moderate

The other, much more difficult strategy at play is to an attempt to reverse the polls and win the election. This strategy has two opposing parts: First, regain the high ground in his public performances and, second, simultaneously pursue nasty tactics under the radar, like the robocalls going on in Virginia and elsewhere that claim Obama had “close ties” to Ayers.

I expect we’ll see very little of the snarling Grampy character Schmidt and others created and much more of amiable Mr. Moderate, whom he reintroduced in New York last night.

To make this work, they will have to muzzle Palin — their only big draw — by making it increasingly difficult for the press to cover her. Expect to hear her stump speeches softened to pablum and to see her sent to increasingly remote venues. There were reports yesterday that campaign operatives are preventing reporters from interviewing ruffians in her audiences, which is an alarming development, and that they are even using the Secret Service to keep reporters at bay.

It’s hard to say what’s worse here — the fact that the campaign is restricting reporters’ access to crowds or that the reporters are such cattle that they allow themselves to be restrained

The problem with bringing back Mr. Moderate now is that it is probably too late. McCain’s campaign has had the extreme right-wing base sewn up since Palin made her Gidget-at-the-Reichstag speech in St. Paul. Just about every tactic they’ve deployed since then has alienated moderates and driven them to Obama — where, frankly, most of them don’t want to go. There are still plenty of undecideds and squishy lean-Obamas in Florida and Ohio who could change this thing at the last minute. All McCain has to do is give them a rationale to come back to him.

So what we should expect for the next 14 days or so is much more of Mr. Moderate (and less and less of Reichstag Barbie) on the stump, and a simultaneous surge in nastiness underground like the robocalls in red states where Obama is doing well. We probably won’t know the full extent of the dirty tricks until after the election.

It may well work. But if McCain is elected, he’s going to have a problem few presidents other than Bush in his second term have had: He will enter office with the absolute loathing of at least half the citizenry. Worse for him than Bush is the fact that he’ll face a solidly Democratic Congress (although if he wins, there won’t be super-majorities in either house).

There will be no honeymoon for President McCain.

Poll: McCain Pulls within 2 Points of Obama in Gallup Daily Tracking

Jon Ponder

Obama is right — don’t get complacent:

A new Gallup Poll of likely voters has Democrat Barack Obama with a 49 percent to 47 percent lead over Arizona Sen. John McCain.

That puts McCain closer in the presidential race than other polls, which have Obama with leads of between 3 and 14 percentage points, according to Real Clear Politics.

McCain has sought in recent days to sharpen his economic message and questioning Obama’s ties to 1960s radical Bill Ayers. The Gallup poll was conducted among 2,100 likely voters.