The Fundamentals

Reality Intrudes

It's a shame that so many will have to suffer before it is over, but the economic chickens are coming home to roost for Bush-McCain-Palin.

But even before reality intruded with a stock market crash and the fast unraveling of financial industries, there were signs that the fantasy world constructed by imagery and McCain lies was coming apart.

I noted some of the signs yesterday. Marc Ambinder sums up his list . Notably, he observes that "The Press Has Turned" against McCain, after giving him a pass on all those gaffes in the summer and the pre-conventions lies.

Given the Palin bubble, you have to wonder why they indulged in such overkill after the GOPer convention. Perhaps to score a knockout blow right away, but that didn't happen. They rose in the polls a bit, but not a lot. And now, Chris Kofinis on Keith and this guy agree with my intuition yesterday that the Palin bubble has burst. Voters are focusing on the fact that she would make a horrific commander in chief. And now Palin-McCain is refusing to cooperate with the Alaska investigation into her alleged abuse of power, which doesn't look all that good for her transparency and ethical reform image.

In the polls, the McCain bounce seems to have evaporated. At least one tracking poll shows an Obama resurgence (after being tied, he's up 3.) We'll see what happens the rest of the week.

So they've got nothing but some dwindling momentum, and a rabid right base that is more energized. As Ambinder suggests, Palin bought McCain some time.

Now the stock market crash has gotten the media's attention in a way that unemployment rising above 6%, falling production and consumer confidence apparently couldn't. Pig lipstick was more important.

Now some attention may be paid to what Obama and Biden have been saying about the economy. They both need to do a better job of more comprehensively explaining how we got into this mess, and what they will do to make things better. It's not guaranteed. But the election is theirs to win.

You Can't Run Away from Your Record, McCain

Lies Coming Home to Roost

Scared Straight

P candidate McCain didn't have a good weekend, media-wise. More of his campaign's lies were exposed by major newspapers and news services, including a whole list of them in this story. Paul Krugman had already concluded, in his column titled "A Blizzard of Lies," that "the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse." Notice that word: lies. These folks usually stay away from it. Now it's becoming the buzz.

VP candidate Palin had an even worse weekend. There were major--and I do mean major--exposes of her time as governor of Alaska (in the NY Times) and mayor of Wasilla (in the Washington Post.)

Perhaps the most devastating critique of the McCain-Palin ticket came in a column by Frank Rich: " A week ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would Sarah Palin be? It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election."

But all this means little unless there is evidence that it is making a difference in how voters view this election. That may come in the next few days--the most recent tracking polls show McCain's progress stopped and Obama gaining a bit. We'll soon see if this is a viable trend, although it looks like a stock market crash on Monday may also get a little attention and throw yet another wild card into the mix.

But what I see and sense, both online and in person, is that all this has reached one part of the electorate with major force: the people who are suddenly scared to death by the prospect of McCain-Palin.

They're coming out to cheer Obama in New Hampshire with new fervor, and they're contributing money to the Obama campaign. New 527 groups are gearing up, and there looks like a new urgency for Obama. People who loved him but were laying back, figuring this was a done deal, are getting up out of the chair. People who aren't sure they are that enamoured with him are looking at the alternative, and getting scared straight.

Add them to the 2.5 million Obama contributors, the half million who joined up just in August to break all records for campaign contributions by a healthy 11 million bucks (for an August total of $66m). And this was before VP candidate Palin. Among the new activists, about a thousand women demonstrating against Palin in Alaska.

So watch for more evidence of this in the coming week. VP candidate Palin may have galvanized some of the GOPer base, but she has also scared a lot of other people straight to Obama.

McCain Puts Country Last

Over at Dreaming Up Daily, I've posted my views on VP candidate Palin's qualifications to be commander in chief. Here I want to post some echoes of my view from a New York Times editorial today:

As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking. If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

One of the many bizarre moments in the questioning by ABC News’s Charles Gibson was when Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, excused her lack of international experience by sneering that Americans don’t want “somebody’s big fat résumé maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state.”
The interviews made clear why Americans should worry about Ms. Palin’s thin résumé and lack of experience. Consider her befuddlement when Mr. Gibson referred to President Bush’s “doctrine” and her remark about having insight into Russia because she can see it from her state.

But that is not what troubled us most about her remarks — and, remember, if they were scripted, that just means that they reflect Mr. McCain’s views all the more closely. Rather, it was the sense that thoughtfulness, knowledge and experience are handicaps for a president in a world populated by Al Qaeda terrorists, a rising China, epidemics of AIDS, poverty and fratricidal war in the developing world and deep economic distress at home.

Ms. Palin talked repeatedly about never blinking. When Mr. McCain asked her to run for vice president? “You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission,” she said, that “you can’t blink.” Fighting terrorism? “We must do whatever it takes, and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.”

Her answers about why she had told her church that President Bush’s failed policy in Iraq was “God’s plan” did nothing to dispel our concerns about her confusion between faith and policy. Her claim that she was quoting a completely unrelated comment by Lincoln was absurd.

In a dangerous world, Americans need a president who knows that real strength requires serious thought and preparation. "

Also in the Times, Bob Herbert's column asks some pertinent questions also on my mind these days:

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

John McCain, who is shameless about promoting himself as America’s ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside in making his incredibly reckless choice of a running mate. But there is a profound double standard in this country. The likes of John McCain and George W. Bush can do the craziest, most irresponsible things imaginable, and it only seems to help them politically. "

As I've written before here (and I think the American Idol line was mine as well), Barack Obama asserted last week that "The American people aren't stupid." So far, that's more of a hope than something borne out by the evidence of recent elections, or of recent days.

Palintology

There will be plenty to say about the Palin Doctrine and her approach to foreign policy, assuming she can remember what she's been told it is a little better.

But her nomination has certainly been the buzz, and is largely credited with McCain's convention bump (which, by the way, appears to have peaked.)

There are so many polls now--and there are so many news ones starting soon--that they really are on the verge of being meaningless. I suppose the folks who average them or study the internals have some idea of what they mean, but there are so many premises, which may or may not reflect reality, that to depend on them is silly. Still, what else do we have to talk about?

As for the Palin bump, Nate at FiveThirtyEight suggests there is a theme in these recent polls: And what is that theme? Well, it's that the popular vote and the Electoral College are significantly diverging. Although the Republicans seem to be polling stronger than they were in the pre-convention period almost everywhere, the differences are much larger in traditionally red states, particularly in the South and the rural West.

In other words, McCain is gaining ground among his base in places where it doesn't matter if he gains ground. He was probably going to win that state anyway.

What the aggregate of polls suggests is that this race is very close, and a lot like 2004. We know that in many respects it is clearly different, but there is the possibility that the new factors wind up bringing us to the same virtually deadlocked place. So the few points McCain has moved up in some swing states is what makes this electorally closer.

That's right now, with the Palin convention bump. We don't know if this continues, or if this is the best that ticket can do. But we do know that Obama doesn't have much ground to make up. Bill Clinton said today he believed Obama would win "handily." That may be more a hope than a prediction, but it is still very much a possibility.

Poised

It's an interesting moment in this campaign. The McCain-PALIN convention bump is likely at its height, and analysts going inside the numbers see that it may not have been much. One might infer the McCain campaign senses this because they are still acting like they're desperately behind, recycling discredited Alan Keyes gambits.

On their distortions of Obama and their own lies about themselves, they're starting to see a lot of media push-back. At this moment the Huffington Post is headlining at least 20 examples, from the leftish American Prospect and Glenn Greenwald, to the Old McCain centrists Joe Klein and Mark Halperin (both of TIME) to the conservative Jake Tapper (ABC.)

Meanwhile, VP candidate Palin has gone back to Alaska, where a world of pain awaits her, and John McCain has to figure out how to get crowds by doing more than standing woodenly beside Palin.

Obama struck just the right notes in his response to the latest McCainiac antics (in the video below), mixing humor, passion and poise : "The McCain campaign would much rather have the story [be]about a phony and foolish diversion than about the future. Enough! I don't care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies, phony outrage and swiftboat politics. Enough is enough! These are serious times and they call for a serious debate about where we need to take the nation."

Besides media pushback (NBC's Brian Williams pretty much echoed Obama's sentiments, which is pretty brave considering the hot water NBC is in with the McCainiacs) and Obama's pinpoint statement, an Obama surrogate and a woman--Stephanie Cutter, aide to VP candidate Biden--took the offensive:

I have to wonder why John McCain would want to raise something like this. And maybe [former Massachusetts Gov.] Jane Swift [who appeared earlier on MSNBC] doesn't know his record but I wonder where her outrage was when John McCain said he was going to beat Hillary Clinton like a drum. Or participated in an event where one of his participants called Hillary Clinton a bitch. Those are direct comments targeted at somebody's gender. And I didn't hear any outrage then... They are having a false offense on putting lipstick on a pig, when John McCain doesn't even stand for equal pay for women, doesn't stand for children's health insurance, thinks the economy is just going fine when millions of children are going without health care. I mean where is the offense at that?"

But at the moment my favorite analysis of where the race is was provided in a Kos diary by icebergslim. His advice: follow the money. McCain has just gone on the clock with his federal handout of $84M, and has yet to do much in organizing a ground game. The Obama campaign hasn't announced its August take, but they have said it is their largest to date, which means more than $55 million. And they've invested heavily in voter registration and get out the vote. There are more Obama offices in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh, PA--how bout them STEELERS!) than McCain has in some key states. Icebergslim:

Watch the movement. Not Barack's but McCain's. Watch what he will defend or what he will let go dark. Pennsylvania will be dropped. It cost a lot of money to defend the keystone state, along with advertising in the Philadelphia market. Keep an eye on Florida. This state has not been given much McCain love, the Florida market is expensive and you need MASSIVE offices open for GOTV. McCain will attempt to defend Virginia, but watch the ad buy for the expensive DC market. McCain will continue to campaign in Michigan, which the Detroit market is not cheap, but watch the state polling numbers. If McCain cannot pull that one from Barack, he will abandon it by mid October. McCain must defend Ohio. Ohio is the wildcard. Yes, they have a huge "fundy" base, but there are more non-fundy's who are hurting economically right now and McCain may not be their cup of tea. I look for New Mexico and Colorado to move to Barack. Yes, Colorado Springs got a lot of "fundys" but they are not the whole state, remember that. I am not sure about Montana, but a friend told me last night that Montana loves their guns, but hate the Patriot Act. This state could be Barack's.

This is what is going on. See what McCain must do? Again, folks this will be won on the GROUND."

Why Things Don't Change

Fired Up! Ready to Go!

The Numbers That Count

Obama supporters are likely in for a few bad days, as the GOPer convention bounce shows up in the polls. Based on when Obama's bounce was strongest, it could go on until Wednesday in the tracking polls. (So far, McCain has come closer but Obama is still ahead.) There's no telling when the polls will change after that, absent a precipitating event.

Truthfully, it's bewildering, because McCain crapped out with his speech. Apparently a lot of people were watching the NFL football game and then watched McCain. So we'll see.

But as comforting as it would be if McCain peaks and starts falling again immediately--and possibly as energizing--the numbers that matter are coming in now: voter registration. And Democrats continue to register many more voters than GOPers. Overall: Since the last federal election in 2006, volunteers like Graham combined with the enthusiasm generated by the Obama-Clinton struggle to add more than 2 million Democrats to voter rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation. The Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 thousand voters in the same states.

There's a reason in these numbers why the GOPer convention derided the Northeast: it's almost solidly Democratic. (Just about the only state that's still in question for Obama is New Hampshire.) New registration in PA may have put the Commonwealth out of reach for McCain.

The Obama campaign itself has registered nearly 50,000 new voters in Virgina just in August, and aims to register another 35,000 or so by October. The overall gains--with emphasis on this year's swing states--show here.

GOPer David Frum sounds the alarm--the GOP vote is vanishing. The question is whether it will be overtaken this fall, or further in the future. But demographics are such that victory in November could assure a Democratic coalition for many years to come.

Then there's enthusiasm. Despite VP candidate Palin's energizing effect for McCain, polls still show Democrats much more enthusiastic about voting for Obama than GOPers are about McCain. And Palin has energized for Obama: a 10 to 1 immediate flood of donations, and reports are coming in of unusually big crowds at the openings of Obama hqs, in L.A. and Pensacola, FLA for example.

Now that the campaign is underway in earnest, various analysts are looking at the electoral map. The New York Times notes that the Palin Drone may be putting some states more in play for McCain, but these are mostly states GOPers are expected to win. While fortified turnout from this base is probably not enough to assure victory for Mr. McCain, strategists said, it would be very difficult for him to win without it. Obama still has more paths to victory, although there are blue states that are uncomfortably close at the moment, like Michigan. The Times notes that while McCain and Palin campaigned in their base states, Obama was in Ohio (a battleground) and Indiana (rarely not GOPer, but next door to Obama's Illinois.)

Al G. at the Field's analysis has the race being decided by 8 states, and his looks to be a conservative approach. At this point, I suspect if Tim Russert were alive and holding his little blackboard, the name written on it would be "Michigan." It's at the top of McCain's wish list, but it has so far been unwaveringly in the Obama column. But apart from noting that Obama still has many more ways to win than does McCain, it's really too early to narrowly focus. That process might begin in a few weeks, when the convention noise is out of the polls, and possibly after the first (and usually most important) presidential debate.

But even then, new voter registration continues in key states into October. So no poll numbers are definitive.

Sure, it's nerve-wracking, but for most people, the worst thing would be to get obsessed by numbers. Leave them to the pros. It's enthusiasm that's going to win or lose this election. So get fired up--and ready to go!

Not Bad Enough? Just Add Obstruction of Justice

Newsweek reports:

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.

In a move endorsed by the McCain campaign Friday, John Coghill, the GOP chairman of the state House Rules Committee, wrote a letter seeking a meeting of Alaska's bipartisan Legislative Council in order to remove the Democratic state senator in charge of the so-called "troopergate" investigation.

The move underscored the huge political stakes in the outcome of a legislative investigation that is being closely monitored by both the McCain and Obama campaigns because of its potential impact on the fall election. "How can this possibly be read as anything but a partisan attempt to shut down a legitimate investigation that was approved and funded with bipartisan support?" said one state Democratic legislative aide, who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivities.

Apparently there is enough there to fear in this investigation, or why risk making the cover up so public? It's not the crime, it's the cover-up is the usual truism, along with getting caught for obstruction of justice instead of the underlying crime. But then, for the party so skilled at stealing elections, this is easy.

And it's so transparent! The McSame campaign obviously feels it can get away with everything. Even announcing that Sarah Palin, in line to be a heartbeat away from the red button, will not answer questions on her views or qualifications by American journalists.

What's next? That's obvious. Soon we'll hear: Citing Eastern liberal sexist media hostility, Senator McCain has concluded that VP candidate Palin will not participate in the vice presidential debate.

Remains To Be Seen

I'm frankly surprised that McCain's speech got such a big audience, marginally larger than Obama's. I suspect that there was little overlap in the two audiences, but I could be wrong about that, too.

However, it remains to be seen whether this audience was a plus for McCain, because the reviews on his speech continue to be bad. Joe Conason in Salon is the latest: John McCain deserved much better from his campaign staff than he got when they handed him that jumbled convention speech and set him out onto that strange stage. Even though many of the men and women who work for him undeniably belong to that "old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd" he scorns, there can be no doubt that they love him, so they should not have let him down so badly. His staff and advisors have had two years to prepare for that moment -- and they gave him words that literally put people to sleep.

The polls so far show some tightening, with Obama still ahead. Monday is the traditional day to measure the bounce. Then I guess polls taken a week after that tell us more about where the race actually is, especially the next round of state polls (the ones coming out now are quite favorable for Obama.)

Apparently Sarah Palin has some studying up to do before she meets the press. Word now that the Alaska investigation that the McCainites are trying to slow down may actually be speeded up.

This could be the beginning of a rebound for the GOPers, or it could be their high water mark, as good as it's going to get. Unemployment topped 6% today, a powerful number. It could be that the GOPer America is not just dying but dead, with just the remains to be seen.

McSame

We spent a nice, quiet evening here. Autumn is our sunny time, and we took a walk in the afternoon. While Margaret tried a biofeedback game on her computer, I shot some hoops before twilight. After dinner we watched an episode of "Mad Men" on DVD.

Then I watched the Daily Show but it's a day behind. Some brief channel switching turned up the usual smarminess, but online it was a little different. McSame's speech got panned. Greg Sergeant at TPM predicted that not only won't McSame get a bounce, reaction to his speech "will smother Palin's sizzle like a wet blanket." Ex-Bush speech writer Michael Gerson called it disappointing and tired, and Jeffrey Toobin said it was "shockingly bad."

Republicans crow that they raised $1 million since Palin's speech. Unfortunately, unless that went to the party directly, the McSame campaign can't spend it. They're now on the federal dole.

And by the way, since Palin's speech, the Obama campaign has received ten times as much in donations: $10 million in 24 hours.

Palin is the heir to Bush without the taint. The GOPer convention never identified itself as the Republican party, and they're running on a platform of change--change from the current Republican presidency. That's apparently the strategy. If McSame were more likable, it might even work. Palin will pale eventually, perhaps soon. Obama and Biden are hitting the right notes about this convention on the campaign trail. They just have to make sure that every time they mention McSame, they mention that he's the Republican candidate.

The polls should be fluid for the next week or so. There's always counter-evidence. A CBS poll showed the race tied, though the swing from their last poll was too extreme for it to seem reliable. And there's a poll showing that independents were "reassured" by Palin's speech. Whatever that means. It seems that for any number of reasons this campaign is going to look close for awhile, whether it actually is or not.

The New York Times editorialized: Thursday night, Americans mainly saw the old John McCain...But there were also chilling glimpses of the new John McCain, who questioned the patriotism of his opponents as the “me first, country second” crowd and threw out a list of false claims about Barack Obama’s record, saying, for example, that Mr. Obama opposed nuclear power. There was no mention of immigration reform or global warming, Mr. McCain’s signature issues before he decided to veer right to win the nomination.

There could not have been a starker contrast between Mr. McCain’s night on the stage and the earlier days of the convention, a carnival of partisan rancor. It was not a forum for explaining policies or defining ideals, certainly none ever associated with Mr. McCain.

On Wednesday, the nastiest night of the week, Mr. McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, and other speakers offered punch lines, rather than solutions for this country’s many problems — ridiculing the Washington elite (of which most were solid members) and Barack Obama. “Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights,” Ms. Palin said. Mr. Obama, in reality, wants to give basic human rights to prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, only a handful of whom are Qaeda members, and shield them from torture. So, once upon a time, did Mr. McCain, but there was no mention of that in St. Paul, or of the bill he wrote protecting those prisoners.

Mike Huckabee dismissed Mr. Obama, the first black candidate of any major party, as a mere “symbolic” choice for president.

At the same time, the Republicans tried to co-opt Mr. Obama’s talk of change and paint themselves as the real Americans. It is an ill-fitting suit for the least diverse, most conservative and richest Republican delegates since The Times started tracking such data in 1996. It was, in short, a gathering devoted almost entirely to the culture war refined by Mr. Rove in Mr. Bush’s two campaigns.

On Thursday, Mr. McCain said he would reach out to “any willing patriot, make this government start working for you again.” Mr. Bush, too, promised the same bipartisanship in his campaigns, and then governed in the most divisive, partisan way. Americans have a right to ask which John McCain would be president. We hope Mr. McCain starts to answer that by halting the attacks on Mr. Obama’s patriotism and beginning a serious, civil debate.

Did somebody say debate? In just a few weeks.

Big Audience, Bad Impression?

Estimates for VP candidate Palin's speech were just over a million short of Obama's record. But at least with one focus group, she made a bad impression.

The Detroit Free Press assembled another focus group: GOPers liked her, independents universally did not.

Update: other focus groups of women show Palin didn't go over with Hillary supporters.

The audience was high among over 55. I'll be interested to see that focus group.

Meanwhile, a Democracy Corps survey concludes: "Barack Obama emerged from the Democratic convention with the Democratic Party unified behind him and a solid lead in the presidential battleground states."

A "rumor" is circulating that the Obama campaign took in $8 million in the first twelve hours or so after Palin's speech.

A pretty devastating "apology" to Palin from the media in Politico.
Excerpts: On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry. We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked. We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

But where did we go wrong with Sarah Palin? Let me count the ways: First, we should have stuck to the warm, human interest stuff like how she likes mooseburgers and hit an important free throw at her high school basketball tournament even though she had a stress fracture. Second, we should have stuck to the press release stuff like how she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere (after she supported it). Third, we should never have strayed into the other stuff. Like when The Washington Post recently wrote: “Palin is under investigation by a bipartisan state legislative body. … Palin had promised to cooperate with the legislative inquiry, but this week she hired a lawyer to fight to move the case to the jurisdiction of the state personnel board, which Palin appoints.”

Why go there? What trees does that plant? Fourth, we should stop making with all the questions already. She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul.Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.”

Fifth, we should stop reporting on the families of the candidates. Unless the candidates want us to. Sarah Palin wanted the media to report on her teenage son, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, and soon will deploy to Iraq. Sarah Palin did not want the media to report on her teenage daughter, Bristol, who is pregnant and unmarried.

Sarah Palin thinks that one is good for her campaign and one is not, and that the media should report only on what is good for her campaign. That is our job, and that is our duty. If that is not actually in the Constitution, it should be. (And someday may be.)

Demonizing "Community Organizers"?



But why? Billmon has some shrewd interpretations that point to dog whistle messages to hard right GOPers that amount to racism. What a surprise.

The Big Chill

After the Palin speech and the media reception, I have little to add that I didn't write this morning, well in advance of the event. The media in general is fauning all over her, in precisely the terms I predicted.

The viewing audience may be a different story. Some will either already know or will even read stories about the many inaccuracies, which being intentional and repeated, are simply lies. But even those who just discount most of what politicians say about each other will have noted what several MSNBC panelists called sarcasm, insult and condescension towards Barack Obama. Others mentioned that it is one thing to hear this kind of rhetoric from a voice you know, and another from someone who has tried to introduce herself moments before.

So to add to the earlier list of voting groups Palin probably loses, I think she turned off independents, who are also most likely to be troubled by her lack of qualifications. Being a moose-hunting mother is not much in the way of credentials for being next in line as Commander in Chief. Her only mention of the vice-presidency was that she would be an advocate for special needs children and their families. While laudable, it doesn't bear on the vice presidency.

Where Palin obviously scored was with the people at the convention. But who are they? Many Republican office-holders and especially reelection-seekers skipped this convention. The people who are there are Bush Cheney hard right Karl Rove fans, mostly old and mostly white. The McBush people may be trying to pin sexism on liberal media, but Palin's tone and the images of that convention make you really wonder about racism.

So the hard right wing base is fired up--apparently money and volunteers are coming in. The TV audience Tuesday was a bit over the 20 million threshhold--not as big as the Dems at the start, but respectable. Palin's speech was late--she finished past 11 eastern. I'm not sure this helped with anybody other than the people in the hall, the rabid rightists at home, and of course, the media.

Tom Edsall wrote this: "John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin puts his campaign firmly on track toward a hard-edged drive to mobilize the GOP's conservative base, threatening to erase what remains of his centrist maverick image and his appeal to moderate and independent voters...McCain and Palin now head a ticket that is emerging as more red-bloodedly conservative than Bush-Cheney in 2004 -- when conservatism would have appeared to have reached its zenith -- with a platform substantially further to the right on issues ranging from education to immigration."

The gamble is that with an energized base, McBush might be able to hoodwink enough people into forgettting he's the Republican candidate and believing he's for change, too. (Though when supporting this idea, Palin used the most mean-spirited and personally insulting lines aimed at Obama: "In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.")

McCain is betting that the politics of resentment, the small politics that worked for Bush, would allow him to squeak through in another close election.

So now it's clear if it wasn't before: this election is a struggle for the soul of America.

On the Media

In defense of the media, Joe Klein wrote this, responding to the orchestrated attack by McCain and the Republican convention: "There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme. "

In his convention wrap-up Wednesday, Brian Williams of NBC quoted that paragraph in full. According to one report, when Sarah Palin criticized the media from the podium, the shouted approval from the crowd included some hostile chants of NBC, NBC.

On the minus side, and it's a big one, I was very disappointed--though not thoroughly surprised--that the media did not strongly cover the arrest of Amy Goodman and members of her reporting and production staff from Democracy Now! Whatever their politics, the media should defend these reporters, and they don't appear to be doing so. Moreover, in the absense of media outcry, felony charges against Goodman and the others are still pending, they have not been dropped.

Where Palin is Failin

Tonight she's the center of attention, and we're likely to see her whip the hard right crowd into a frenzy. But including Palin on the ticket has its costs:

1. The national security wing of the Republican party, with a VP nominee that is less qualified to be commander in chief than anyone ever within a heartbeat of that office. The "open mike" comments of a couple of longtime GOPer insiders that are making the blog rounds today is but one indication that this is being taken seriously.

2. environmentalists who thought that McCain was pretty good on the environment for a Republican. Whatever hope McCain had of picking up some college student votes is now gone.

3. Older voters who are skeptical of Obama's experience, and aren't hoodwinked by talking points saying hers is equivalent or better. They've been hearing about Obama for at least a year, and they never heard of Palin. They know all too well what that heartbeat means. They also have to wonder about McCain's judgment in doing this.

4. Women who resent the cynicism of this pick. Women who would like to have the right to choose. Women who right now are calling in to talk shows expressing their misgivings about a woman with a Downs Syndrome infant, and a teenage daughter about to give birth, who is suddenly thrown into an intense presidential campaign.

5. If today's revelation about Palin being present for an overtly anti-Jewish sermon make the rounds--and in certain parts of Florida, for instance, that's pretty much guaranteed--then Jewish voters are not going to support McCain--with Palin as the deal-breaker.


The number I'm looking for right now is the TV ratings. The preliminary indications from the rough broadcast network ratings (excluding cable, and since CNN has been beating the networks at times, that's significant) show last night's audience was smaller than for any night of the Dem convention. Everyone is expecting a big audience tonight for Palin--but how big is big? I think the ratings are going to be a more significant indicator than daily flucuations in the tracking polls.

The Real Story???

Failin but not Flailin?

Except with the very hard core Republican base, the Palin VP pick is failing. The latest to weigh in is the New York Times editorial this morning:

If John McCain wants voters to conclude, as he argues, that he has more independence and experience and better judgment than Barack Obama, he made a bad start by choosing Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

But all the revelations of the past few days, could yet be followed by redemption. And that's perhaps the scariest part of this whole repulsive episode.

Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak at the Republican convention tonight. She hasn't been heard from in days. She cancelled all scheduled interviews and appearances. So the stage is set.

If she gives a rousing good speech, will all be forgiven? Will the media as well as the GOPers in the room forget that she is the most extreme Rabid Right vice presidential candidate in history?

That she believes God makes political decisions. That she supports teaching creationism as science, and doesn't believe the science of global heating. That a librarian who wouldn't let her censor books in the public library in the town where she was mayor deserved to be fired for that. That her beliefs mean that rape or incest victims can't legally have the choice to terminate that pregnancy, that birth control should not be taught in schools, and that pregnant teenagers should not be helped if they are in need? It's her God's way--her interpretation of her God's way--or you get fired, you're on your own, or you go to jail?

The bar is now so low, and the attention so pitched, that the reviews of her speech can be written right now. She's feisty, she's funny, she's poignant, she's real, she can dish out the red meat, she's a breath of fresh air. That she's also ignorant, out of her depth, a religious zealot whose dogmatic decision-making can be masked by the apparent pragmatism of the image she assumes. Sarah Palin is not a joke. She is dangerous.

John McCain, already an old and frequently addled man with a hair-trigger temper and no center to him except blind egotism and a heart of bile and resentment he's learned to mask in affable smiles and a soft voice, has shown himself to be even more cynical than Cheney. Only a cynical opportunist and a reckless gambler would nominate a completely unqualified and unknown person for vice president, and force his party to squirm through idiotic lies and transparently dishonest gambits (every criticism of Palin is sexism--those sexist liberals! After being lambasted for decades because they promoted sexual equality, now liberals are chauvanists! These people really have no shame.)

Once again the Republican Party is the party of resentment, the party of unconsciousness and projection, of primitive rage masquerading as religion. The march to the Dark Ages could get its clarion call tonight. And the media, caring only about a sensational story line, will amplify it.

Failin





Leading the CBS Evening News tonight

Palin On

She is the governor elected to throw out the corrupt, who is under investigation for acts of corruption. She was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it. She's supposed to support McCain's supposed campaign against earmarks, and in today's Washington Post: "Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents while she was its mayor, according to an analysis by an independent government watchdog group.

In introducing Palin as his running mate on Friday, Sen. John McCain cast her as a compatriot in his battle against wasteful federal spending. McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, hailed Palin as a politician "with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies -- someone who has fought against corruption and the failed policies of the past, someone who's stopped government from wasting taxpayers' money." McCain's crusade against earmarks -- federal spending sought by members of Congress to benefit specific projects -- has been a hallmark of his campaign. "

And in the department of "Ya think?" The New York Times intones: "A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket."

Palin Pre-Panned



Two of MSNBCs more conservative commentators
are among those panning Palin as vp choice, before
McCain announced her. Several therefore were
against her before they were for her. TPM catalogs
the Palin revelations of just today.

Bounce

Update: Chris Bowers makes this point: these polls show the "undecideds" shrinking in number, so the Obama bounce is actually larger--and maybe longer lasting--than it appears at first. "Relative to the number of undecideds needed to win the election, Obama's advantage has actually quadrupled."


The standard for bounce measurement is Gallup, and today's USA Today/Gallup poll story begins like this: "The Democratic National Convention significantly boosted Americans' views of Barack Obama as a strong leader who "shares your values" and can manage the economy and Iraq, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Saturday and Sunday finds.Republican John McCain's advantage in handling terrorism was dramatically reduced and his "unfavorable" rating ticked up to its highest level this year."

On personal characteristics, Obama has eliminated McCain's advantage over him as "a strong and decisive leader." By 46%-44%, those surveyed say that characteristic applies more to Obama than McCain. Before the convention, McCain held an eight-point advantage. Obama has a 13-point advantage as someone who "shares your values," double the edge he held before the convention. He has an eight-point advantage as someone who is "honest and trustworthy; before the convention, they were ranked equally on that quality."

Obama leads by 7 points, and significantly, is at 50% (50-43%.) Crossing the 50% threshhold would be better, but this is good news. It also factors in immediate reaction to the Palin pick.

Though the CNN poll yesterday showed negligible movement, two other polls today showed Obama did get a convention bounce. The Gallup tracking poll shows a 4 point bounce, "fairly typical" of past conventions. It's Obama 49% to McCain 43%. A CBS poll gives Obama an 8 point lead, 48-40%. Obama made significant gains among women and independents in this poll.

The convention bounce is usually temporary, but I am still looking for the point where Obama consolidates a lead. It's true that these national polls don't mean a lot--state by state means more, and even those don't always reflect reality, based on models used, cell phones, etc. But people notice the national polls, if not on their own then through media coverage. And people are more comfortable with their voting decision if it is shared by others. This used to be called the bandwagon effect. It's about enthusiasm as well as numbers.

So far enthusiasm seems to be holding. The Gallup: In the poll, Democrats continue to benefit from a "enthusiasm gap." By 57%-28%, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting this year. By 47%-39%, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they are less enthusiastic than usual.

How people feel about qualities and issues can also change, but gaining ground in these areas can be like gas prices--when they go down, they don't end up where they were before they started going up.

Obama is more patient about this than I am. He doesn't expect things to take shape until mid October, according to his 60 Minutes interview yesterday.

Palin Drone

More reaction. Reported by Time correspondents: Another week, another Frank Luntz/AARP focus group of undecided voters--this one in Minneapolis and with some bad news for John McCain: they don't like the choice of Sarah Palin for vice president. Only one person said Palin made him more likely to vote for McCain; about half the 25-member group raised their hands when asked if Palin made them less likely to vote for McCain. They had a negative impression of Palin by a 2-1 margin...

This reinforces my feeling that the Palin ploy was going to work worst with the demographic that Obama seemed to be having the most trouble with: older voters. Palin may help in Alaska (but maybe not), but she may have lost Florida, and there are a lot more older voters in PA than Rabid Right true believers.

This from Joshua Green via Ambinder, reporting from the GOPer convention. These are Republicans he's talking about, remember: Most Republicans have never met Sarah Palin and are processing the news of her selection as VP with the stunned-but-well-meaning emotions you might feel toward an acquaintance who just came out of the closet. Those given to caution when discussing such things at a brunch with journalists put a hopeful, might-be-a-stroke-of-genius spin on their astonishment. Those less inhibited--who are also better people--generally see the pick as irresponsible and politically motivated (and not in a good way). No one believes Palin was fully vetted. And no one has any idea how this will play out.

The best analogy I heard came from a bright young Republican operative, who--borrowing from the sports world, as the secret Republican-operative rulebook stipulates one must--likened the Palin pick to an NFL team using the top pick in the draft to select an unheralded, but promising, player from a small college. Looks great on paper: you just hope and pray they can adjust to the speed of the professional game. It's a useful analogy because it gives a good sense of the odds--for every Phil Simms (quick: name his alma mater*) there have been countless small-college players who put up great stats but never caught on in the pros.

Palin Comparison

The reviews are coming in, decidedly mixed, trending negative. Despite some reports of an enthusiastic crowd in Washington, PA (though when Palin mentioned Hillary, the crowd booed) and among the Rabid Right, the first polls are mixed and the first editorials are negative. Historians are blown away, but not in a good way, cf: “ I think she is the most inexperienced person on a major-party ticket in modern history,” said presidential historian Matthew Dallek.

A lacerating review in Salon that begins, "It is hard to think of a more cynical and contemptuous political act this year than John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate," is one thing. But big thumbs down from the two biggest newspapers in Alaska, something else. Editorials in other newspapers were no better.

Polls show the lowest percentage ever recorded for confidence that Palin is qualified, and slightly more women seem turned off--or angered--by the choice than view it positively. 9% of female Hillary voters are more inclined to vote McCain now--but 15% are LESS likely. This political analysis in Politico about why McCain made this choice is pretty acute.

But the bigger news at this hour is hurricane Gustav, a major threat to the Gulf and zeroing in on New Orleans, though it may make landfall a little west or as far west as Texas. It doesn't necessarily get better after it hits Monday night, either. Jeff Masters at Wunderblog suggests it could go offshore again and gather strength for a return somewhere (just as Katrina did), influenced perhaps by the storm right behind it, currently tropical storm Hanna.

Sunday the Republicans will decide how best to exploit the storm for political advantage. McCain and Palin are already planning a photo op in Mississippi, and McCain's acceptance address may be a movable feast: anywhere there happens to be enough photogenic wreckage. Like everything else dramatic, this is unpredictable. The split screen coverage of the storm and the convention could get the convention more viewers than it would have alone. But how will viewers react? Will they believe the images the Republicans hope to try to manufacture, of GOPer led state and feds doing a heck of a job? Or will it look like the Curse of Katrina?

Frank Rich has outdone himself this Sunday--I can't quote this without quoting it all, so go read it. He's right that the hot air networks got it wrong about the conflict at the Dem convention--I was particularly offended by the comparisons with 1968, when some of my compatriots had their heads smashed. But the phony drama may have gotten more folks to tune in.

This is the wonderful short bio that ran before Obama's speech on Thursday.

Obamacans

While all the political calculations about Sarah Palin go on, you have to wonder what's going on in the mind of, say, Chuck Hagel. Here's a Republican U.S. Senator who seems genuinely torn on who to support for President: his old friend and fellow GOPer, John McCain, or Barack Obama, who he traveled to Iraq with, who he has defended against scurrilous attack, and who he agrees with on a number of issues.

Did Sarah Palin just make up his mind? Responsible Republicans who care about foreign policy issues, the defense of the country, the role of America in the world, must be appalled by this choice. And the judgment will come down, not on Sarah Palin, but on John McCain for choosing her to be a potential heartbeat from the presidency, when that heartbeat belongs to a 72 year old with a history of cancer.

Chuck Hagel--and Colin Powell, and perhaps others--may forgive McCain many things, but can they forgive him this?

Bush-Cheney marginalized Republicans like Hagel, Powell, Lugar. McCain, who was once closer to their point of view than Bush-Cheney's, may have pushed them completely out.

This may not matter much. I'm not sure how many votes Chuck Hagel brings with him to whoever he supports. And though he and Powell may wind up supporting Obama in public, it's not clear that many others will follow, in public. After all, responsible Republicans have stood by while Bush-Cheney have shredded the Constitution, institutionalized torture and domestic spying, and de-professionalized the Dept. of Justice and who knows how many other departments with neocon Evangelical loyalty tests. They might just stand by as John McCain demonstrates contempt for the office of President.

Then again, they might not.

so you tell me, is this a parody or not?
Because I truly can't tell. What a world.

Thirty-Eight Million

To the record 84,000 who saw Obama's acceptance speech live, add another first: the biggest television audience for an acceptance address ever. At an estimated 38 million, it was a bigger American audience than watched the opening of the Olympics, the Oscars or the finale of American Idol. It is twice as many people who watched Kerry's acceptance speech four years ago.

Sarah Palin may have turned the head of the news people today, but for most people who even heard about it, the response was more likely to be: who?

Palin

John McCain named Sarah Palin as his VP. My first thought was judging McCain's assessment of the race: he doesn't think he's close. This is a big gamble, with potentially big dividends and drawbacks. It also may be a short term gain. The one area where it can be safely predicted that Palin will have lasting benefit to McCain is with Evangelicals and other anti-choicers.

It could be brilliant, if it works. It steals the morning after buzz of Obama's speech, although 36 million Americans watched it-- a lot more than saw McCain's announcement. It's great counter-programming: an old/young ticket to go against the Obama young/old ticket, but with the wild card of a woman candidate who is anti-choice. It's going to make the VP debate quite tricky: Palin has zero foreign policy cred and Biden has a lot--can he keep from looking like he's bullying her?

She might be able to energize McCain, and give some new life to the maverick image. But longterm, her inexperience is likely to be the deal-breaker for working voters. I don't think she'll play in PA. But you have to give the McCainers credit--they've lived to play another day.

Update: Pat Buchanan, who is ecstatic about this choice since she is a follower of his politically, did say one astute thing about Sarah Palin's utility: McCain can send her to the conservative audiences he needs but isn't all that comfortable with--and they aren't all that comfortable with him. That frees him to concentrate more on swing states and independents, where he tries to revive his maverick image. The question is whether he's able to change directions of his campaign in time, after the Dems hammered him for a week about being a Bush clone. If he indeed pivots from the experience mantra, and positions himself in a more positive vein as a change candidate, then the dynamics change a bit. But enough? It depends on whether perception of him from 2000, as a maverick, can be successfully revived. Suddenly, the campaign becomes no longer about Obama as much as McCain.

After today, Palin has the potential to become this year's Dan Quayle. She has already admitted that she knows little about Iraq, even though her own son will soon be deployed there. I think most mothers of soldiers, let alone vp candidates, inform themselves about Iraq.

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek is underwhelmed: Happy birthday, Johnny Mac! You're 72 now, a cancer survivor, and a presidential candidate who has said on many occasions that the most important criteria for picking a vice president is whether he or she could immediately step in if something happened to the president. Your campaign against Barack Obama is based on the simple idea that he is unready to be president. So you've picked a running mate who a year and a half ago was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 8,500 people. You've selected a potential leader of the free world who knows little or nothing about the major issues of the day beyond energy. Oh, and she's being probed in her state for lying and abuse of power.

The problem is that politics, like all professions, isn't as easy as it looks. Palin's odds of emerging unscathed this fall are slim. In fact, she's been all but set up for failure. ..But what does she know about Iranian nukes, health care or the future of entitlement programs? And that's just a few of the 20 or so national issues on which she will be expected to show basic competence. The McCain camp will have to either let her wing it based on a few briefing memos (highly risky) or prevent her from taking questions from reporters (a confession that she's unprepared). Either way, she's going to belly-flop at a time when McCain can least afford it.

Alter also goes into detail to show how the current ethics investigation of Palin in Alaska could blow up in McCain's face as well as hers.

By the way, I just saw the PBS News Hour and interviews on the convention with several columnists from papers around the country, including Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Too bad--that paper has a number of astute writers. Kelly isn't one of them. He wasn't even well informed enough to know that nobody is yet measuring the convention bump in the polls--that won't be until Monday at the earliest. Although Obama is eight points ahead in the daily tracking today.

Young Barack may have had dreams of glory, but
probably not of the home run he hit in his
acceptance speech Thursday night before
84,000 fans at Mile High stadium.

Mile High Home Run

The TV commentators gushed, even Pat Buchanan was beside himself with enthusiasm. And now the print reviews are starting to come in, with raves like this and this and this from the New York Times, this and this and especially this (E.J. Dionne) from the Washington Post, and this from the Guardian, just to skim off the top of the list.
(A lot of them have photos and excerpts, but not as good as mine.)

The points of view are interesting. Pat Buchanan thought it was centrist, Dionne a fulfillment of Civil Rights, and Kos is thrilled that it's solidly progressive. And they all loved it. So did T. Goddard, and he supplies some other gushers.

In a way I find all this amusing, because my first impression of the speech was that it was Barack's Greatest Hits. Almost everything in it I've heard before, which supports my contention that the people braying for Obama to say this or that just haven't been listening. David Gergen likened it to a symphony, and that's a great way of describing it: it was new in its combinations, its moods and sharpened expression. It was what he chose to put in it, how he arranged it and delivered it.

With the rumor that McCain had selected Pawlenty as VP, the folks as MSNBC seemed to fear that the McCain campaign might just vaporize. The drama of the oncoming storm Gustav may be the only thing that will produce any interest in the GOP convention next week. It may not be that drastic, but I've been waiting for the point that Obama seals the deal. He may be on his way. It may not even take the debates, but I suspect it won't really be sealed until after the first one at least. But the bounce is coming, and people are going to be talking about this speech for awhile.

What seemed to interest the commentators was Obama's "new" combativeness. Some of it was new, like the word "temperament" when Obama talked about a debate on who has the temperament and judgment to be Commander in Chief. It signals an escalation--McCain campaign's attacks have been so scurrilous we may have lost track of how brutal they are. Well, temperament is a real McCain weakness (his temper or at least sourness increasingly evident to the media, as in this interview), and real weaknesses are harder to defend than fictional ones.

I've said here before however that Obama always said he would engage his opponent in the general election in ways he wouldn't engage fellow Democrats in the primary--and by the way, didn't that pay off big time? Bill Clinton, Hillary, Al Gore, John Kerry, Bill Richardson, etc. all made invaluable and specific contributions to his candidacy during this very successful convention. And Joe Biden is his running mate.

And I've pointed out that the pre-convention strategy involved organizing, fundraising and putting together the resume, from the overseas trip to rolling out economic and energy plans. The convention starts the head-to-head, and Obama took this on himself. Democrats are ecstatic, the media has a fight to cover, while the convention did a great job of telling and showing Obama's story, which he used to relate directly to voters with the issues.

Now Obama and Biden campaign together, starting in Pittsburgh. They'll hammer the economic issues, and I expect as we get into late September and October, the economic argument--barring intervening extra-campaign events--will increasingly focus on health care.

Finally, several of the NBC commentators--starting with Brian Williams--noted the notes in the speech that seem straight out of that wonderful couple of minutes in the film (that surprisingly they all knew as well as I do), "The American President." I pointed out the similarity of something Obama said to this speech before. I'll have to look for that post, and maybe post the YouTube clip. Later.

I've now posted my recollections of the March on Washington, with photos, here. If I get real ambitious I'll post it all here, too. Without photos, it also tops the Rescued list at Daily Kos.

I stayed up writing a recollection of the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, which I'll post later. Quotes and photos from Wednesday night are at Dreaming Up Daily.

What more can you ask of an evening that includes this from Bill Clinton?:

Everything I learned in my eight years as President and in the work I've done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job. Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world. Ready to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be President of the United States.

But as one of those otherwise silly commentators said, when Obama showed up (as JFK did before his stadium speech), the difference in generations was obvious, he is so clearly younger. And judging by the gambles he took in trusting these folks, pretty smart, too.

Convention Tuesday

The verdict was immediate on Hillary Clinton's speech--it was the speech of her life, and it unified the party behind Obama.

Lots of sites have the speech and the commentaries. She is certainly to be commended for doing this so well, although she could have been stronger in telling women what will happen to Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court if McCain is elected. But nobody is yet pointing out what a triumph this is for Obama. He trusted her, gave her this gig in prime time, and lots of people doubted the wisdom of it. They thought it showed weakness; he was giving the Clintons too much time and focus.

Clinton was terrific, but Barack was right. She had every reason to do what she did, for her future in the Democratic Party and her daughter's (for there were almost as many images of Chelsea in the Hillary video as Hillary), should Chelsea want one. She had lots of supporters in the hall, but even so, it was well over two-thirds Obama partisans. Still, Obama must have treated her right. He's either a magician, or a really good judge of people.

Mark Warner's keynote was pretty good--aimed at Independents, or independent minded, and on the theme of bringing people together to solve problems. Although he's from Virginia, it's a theme that plays especially well in the West.

Gov. Schweitzer was lively, Kathleen Sibelius was dull (so Barack was right about the VP too) but for all the talent, the officeholders were generally not very inspiring speakers--not like Michelle, and of course, nowhere near Barack. Somebody mentioned how far Hillary has come from being completely blown away by Bill's speaking power and style whenever they appeared together, to this speech Tuesday--very powerful, skillfully presented. So Bill has to be really good tomorrow, and Joe has to top him. And of course, Barack has to be best of all. No pressure or anything. Should be fun.

Michelle Obama showed grace, poise and star power speaking before the Democratic Convention Monday. Lots more photos at Dreaming Up Daily.

Convention Monday

It was the Kennedy family anointing the Obama family, with patriarch Teddy passing the torch. And the Obama family showing that the torch is in good hands.

The first of the Obama family to speak, and the one most ignored by commentators, was Barack's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. First of all, none of them appeared to be thrown by speaking in that huge place, with an unimaginable TV audience. Maya is a history teacher, not a public figure. But she used the one phrase I will remember: "bounteous opportunity." It's a wonderful two word description of what has become the cliche-ridden American Dream. "Bounteous" as is abundance but also suggesting beauty.

Craig Robinson is a college basketball coach, so he's also used to speaking before people, but not in anything like this setting. He, too seemed comfortable, and he was effective. No one was more effective than his little sister, Michelle Robinson Obama. She has that star quality that jumps out at you. Maybe I'm old school, but her pace didn't vary--it was full speed ahead (which apparently it had to be, as PBS brutally cut off its coverage in the middle of Barack's video appearance afterwards.) Otherwise, she was perfect. Malia and Sasha were great, too. Malia looks like she's going to be at least as beautiful as her mother. Here's a fine Salon article that describes her speech and the reception.

Michelle's mother was a prominent voice in the video about her, and once again, she was very poised and effective. A family with a great American story, but an extraordinary and admirable family, too, if that's allowed without seeming "elitist."

Earlier, Ted Kennedy rallied the troops and passed the torch. "The dream will never die" (1980, when I campaigned for him in PA) became "the dream lives on." The memories that the speech and the Ken Burns docu that preceded it inspired were just about exhausting. I do feel emotionally drained by the evening, possibly because of all the times the dream has been deferred, and derided. Just like all the carping and nonsense coming out of the media, focus groups, GOPer ads and bitter Hillaryites. Or possibly because I didn't get enough sleep, and I have a card loaded with crap for the recycling center, sitting on a flat tire I have to deal with tomorrow.

I didn't watch the gab earlier in the day, but I gather a lot was about the Hillaryites. I doubt there's going to be much conflict visible at the convention, but the prospect of it might get people to watch who might not otherwise. Good for the networks, and if things work out well, good for the Dems.

In the middle of all this I caught the story online--which was entirely ignored by TV--of the arrest of three men for drugs and weapons, who might be involved in a plot to assassinate Obama. There's a disconnect between what some are saying, what the police say, and what the coverage has been. Police have scheduled a press conference tomorrow in Denver. HuffPost has a story about assassination coming up in focus groups, and immediately turning views on Obama sour, and emboldening McCain supporters. It's obviously a flashpoint, an alternating current of alarm and denial, despair and hope, fear and courage.

JFK to Obama: Tips on the Acceptance Speech

The last time the Democratic nominee for President gave his nomination acceptance speech in a large outdoor stadium was in 1960, when John F. Kennedy spoke at dusk in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

In the previous two elections, the Democratic nominee had been Adlai Stevenson, whose speeches were intelligent and articulate, and who could make a case for the Democratic Party agenda. But though Stevenson engendered fierce loyalties in the party, he wasn’t exciting. He didn’t move large crowds. JFK knew that he could, and this event was the signal that he would in 1960.

So that’s the meta-lesson from JFK: if you’ve got it, use it. While pundits and the hot air networks counsel Obama to reign in the rhetoric and stick to laundry lists of programs, there will be 80,000 or so people in the stadium ready to rock. They want to hear what 80,000 voices chanting “Yes, We Can!” sounds like. Obama got this far by inspiring people. If he’s going to win, he needs to motivate those who got him this far. They will help him spread the enthusiasm.

We want to hear him talk about change, about hope, about the fierce urgency of now. We want a little “Yes We Can.” Democrats should go home from Denver on fire.

Sure, the context of 2008 is different: the country was uneasy but pretty prosperous in 1960, Eisenhower was still a popular President so Nixon had advantages McCain doesn’t. But JFK was new. He was younger than Obama (though he had been in the House and Senate for 14 years.) After 7 years as VP, Nixon seemed to be a known quantity. Voters were unsure: change, or experience?

The race remained pretty even, even after the debates which historians—in retrospect—often say were decisive for JFK. But in that fall, the most obvious difference was that JFK’s crowds grew and grew, not only in size but in enthusiasm. Doubts were overcome by the contagion of hope. That’s what needs to happen this fall, particularly in October.

Then there are lessons from the speech itself…


Lesson #2: Become the leader of the party. JFK began his speech complimenting the party and the platform, and with a litany of other Democrats.

Lesson #3: Confront the elephant in the room. For JFK it was his Catholic faith. For Obama, it’s race. JFK devoted about 3 paragraphs to reassuring voters that he was independent, with his first allegiance to America. Obama is speaking on the 45h anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. Obama was 2 years old. In large measure, he is a fulfillment of King’s dream, and he should own it. And he can do it within a larger context of America and the American dream.

Lesson #4: Go after the Republicans directly. JFK’s speech is remembered for introducing the “New Frontier.” (More about that coming up.) But he devoted five paragraphs in the middle of his speech to partisan rhetoric aimed at his opponent, Richard Nixon. For instance:

We know it will not be easy to campaign against a man who has spoken and voted on every side of every issue.

JFK then drew the contrast between the parties in terms that ought to be familiar today:

But we're not merely running against Mr. Nixon. Our task is not merely one of itemizing Republican failures. Nor is that wholly necessary. For the families forced from the farm do not need to tell us of their plight. The unemployed miners and textile workers know that the decision is before them in November. The old people without medical care, the families without a decent home, the parents of children without a decent school: They all know that it's time for a change.

Lesson #5: Focus on the future. That was really what distinguished JFK as a candidate, and it’s the natural move for the younger candidate to make (though in fact JFK was only 3 years younger than Nixon, and Nixon was a year younger than Obama is now.) JFK was influenced by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and his contrast of the Republicans as the party of the past and the Democrats as the party of the future. The Republicans practiced the politics of memory, he wrote in a book published a few years later, while the Democrats represent the Politics of Hope.

Here’s what JFK said:

Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.

In this section of his speech, JFK sketched some of the challenges. While today scholars like to see him as a Cold Warrior, and he did talk about the need to engage Soviet expansion, he also emphasized the need for peaceful means.

The world has been close to war before, but now man, who's survived all previous threats to his existence, has taken into his mortal hands the power to exterminate his species seven times over.

He spoke briefly about domestic challenges, including Civil Rights:

A peaceful revolution for human rights, demanding an end to racial discrimination in all parts of our community life, has strained at the leashes imposed by a timid executive leadership.

Then he reiterated the emphasis on change and the future:

It is time, in short for a new generation of leadership. ..The Republican nominee, of course, is a young man. But his approach is as old as McKinley. His party is the party of the past, the party of memory… Their pledge is to the status quo; and today there is no status quo.

Lesson #6: Articulate a vision. This is the point in the speech where JFK begins talking about the New Frontier, and he does it by anchoring it in the moment, the time and place where he is speaking:

For I stand here tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier. From the lands that stretch three thousand miles behind us, the pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build our new West…

Some would say that those struggles are all over, that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles have been won, that there is no longer an American frontier. But I trust that no one in this assemblage would agree with that sentiment; for the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won; and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier -- the frontier of the 1960's, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats.

A little later he adds:

The New Frontier is here whether we seek it or not. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.

Lesson #7: Include the audience, and ask not what you can do for them, but what they can do for their country:

But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises. It is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer to the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride -- It appeals to our pride, not our security. It holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.

It would be easier to shrink from that new frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric -- and those who prefer that course should not vote for me or the Democratic Party.
But I believe that the times require imagination and courage and perseverance. I'm asking each of you to be pioneers towards that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age--to the stout in spirit, regardless of Party, to all who respond to the scriptural call: "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be [thou] dismayed."

That is the choice our nation must make -- a choice that lies not merely between two men or two parties, but between the public interest and private comfort, between national greatness and national decline, between the fresh air of progress and the stale, dank atmosphere of "normalcy;" between dedication and mediocrity.

All mankind waits upon our decision. A whole world looks to see what we shall do. And we cannot fail that trust. And we cannot fail to try.

Give me your help and your hand and your voice.”

That last phrase would be one JFK repeated many times on the campaign trail—a call to participation in his campaign.

The acceptance speech will be the first and last time of the general election campaign that the candidate has the attention of a large chunk of the electorate at one time for an uninterrupted statement of this length.

But it’s more than speaking to millions of voters, many of whom are just beginning to focus on the election. Obama’s previous big speeches were in the context of a primary campaign, when he had to distinguish himself and his message from several other candidates, and when he had particular limits on what he said about his opponents within the Democratic Party.

Now Obama can do what JFK did, and draw a direct contrast between himself as the Democratic candidate, and McCain as the Republican candidate. He can define the choice voters have in November.

But he is also speaking to Democrats and the people who have been with him so far. He can motivate them to work for him, which is especially important this year, for Obama needs highly motivated voters in several core groups, and enthusiastic volunteers to put the ground game in motion.

JFK managed to do both. Obama can, too. JFK inspired me, at 14 years old, to work for his campaign. His acceptance speech—which I recorded on our reel-to-reel tape recorder, and played for my social studies class—was a big reason why.

The Shock Doctrine

Since this blog is supposed to also be about "world affairs" a little time out at the movies. The Shock Doctrine is a book I'm on record admiring--after all, a quote from my SF Chronicle review leads the blurbs on the back of the paperback edition. But this six minute plus video can save you a lot of reading time, or just give you a great idea of what this book is about. It's time well spent.