Category: Politics & Elections

Most descriptive line of the day, so far

“Even the most hardened cynics find themselves continually surprised by the ability of Rove and his minions to always hit that evasive new low, coming up with things that would shock a 60-year-old Greyhound-station hooker.”

Matt Taibbi

And the best analysis of the day, also from Taibbi:

Rove is not a genius, or even very clever: He’s totally and completely immoral. It doesn’t take genius to claim, as Rove ludicrously did last fall, that it was the Democrats in Congress and not George W. Bush who pushed the Iraq War resolution in 2002. It doesn’t take brains to compare a triple-amputee war veteran to Osama bin Laden; you just have to be a mean, rotten cocksucker.

The reason Rove continues to survive is the same reason that Johnnie Cochran was called a genius for keeping a double-murderer on the golf course — because this generation of Americans has become so steeped in greed and social Darwinism that it can no longer distinguish between cheating and achieving, between enterprise and crime, and can’t bring itself to criticize winners any more than it knows how to be nice to losers. He survives because an increasing number of Americans secretly agree with Rove’s vision of rules, laws and “the truth” as quaint, faintly embarrassing rituals that only a sucker would let hold him back.

Best line of the day

OK, NewMexiKen has decided to cut back on the political stuff somewhat, but I can’t pass on Gail Collins, from her terrific column today:

Remember how we used to joke about John McCain looking like an old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn? It’s only in retrospect that we can see that the keep-off-the-grass period was the McCain campaign’s golden era. Now, he’s beginning to act like one of those movie characters who steals the wrong ring and turns into a troll.

During that last debate, while he was wandering around the stage, you almost expected to hear him start muttering: “We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious.”

Best line of the day, so far

The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.

David Brooks (of all people)

McCain changes homeowner plan

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made an overnight change in the homeowner bailout he proposed at Tuesday’s presidential debate, making it more generous to financial institutions and more costly for taxpayers.

McCain’s staff says it was always meant that way.

The Washington Post

60 million people watching and McCain — seemingly — just makes shit up. Is he a liar or does he just not know what he’s talking about?

That One

The notion that people don’t know who I am is a little hard to swallow. I’ve been running for president for the last two years. I’ve campaigned in 49 states. Millions of people have heard me speak at length on every topic under the sun. I’ve been involved now in 25 debates, going on my 26th. And I’ve written two books which any — everybody who reads them will say are about as honest a set of reflections by, at least, a politician as are out there.

Barack Obama

Transcript: Gibson Interviews Barack Obama

Between a rock and a hard place

An Obama supporter, who canvassed for the candidate in the working-class, white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, sends over an account that, in various forms, I’ve heard a lot in recent weeks.

“What’s crazy is this,” he writes. “I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are f***ing undecided. They would call him a n—-r and mention how they don’t know what to do because of the economy.”

Ben Smith’s Blog

The McCain that always was

A good correction to the McCain myth from the Daily Howler:

For the record, McCain wasn’t exactly “driven out of the 2000 Republican primaries by this sort of smear.” The editors seem to refer to the South Carolina primary, which featured a great deal of nasty, underground sliming. But McCain continued campaigning after that, winning subsequent primaries in six states (including Michigan and Massachusetts), losing primaries in eleven others (including a 61-35 drubbing in California). … McCain got waxed in a string of states—but there was never any particular claim that “smears” decided those races. McCain was substantially outspent by Bush, and Republican voters tended to prefer Bush’s more conservative posture. (In most of those states, independents couldn’t vote, unlike in New Hampshire, where they’d given McCain his big win.) But in the press corps’ treasured novel, a deeply noble, wonderful man was driven from the race by a goon squad.

Somerby goes on to list some of the negative crap McCain and his campaign pulled in 2000. He’s not some changed McCain eight years later as the media myth would have us believe. McCain has always been an ass, only now he’s a doddering old ass.

27 days

FiveThirtyEight.com projects 345.4 Obama to 192..6 McCain. Probability of Obama win, 89.2%.

Are West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota and that district in Omaha within reach?

A state’s electoral vote consists of one per congressional district plus two others. Nebraska and Maine apportion electoral votes by congressional district with the overall state winner getting the two “at large” state electoral votes.

Wyoming has one electoral vote for every 174,000 people. California has one electoral vote for every 665,000 people. New Mexico one for every 394,000.

Four weeks to go

October 6 (FiveThirtyEight.com)This morning FiveThirtyEight.com projects Obama to garner 343.8 electoral votes to McCain’s 194.2. Obama wins 51.7% of the popular vote, McCain 46.7%. Obama’s chances of winning are 88.5%. Missouri and Indiana now lean to Obama.

Polls tell you how the public feels at the time the poll was taken. FiveThirtyEight projects the results of the election based on a systematic analysis of the polls.

The Bradley effect — lying to pollsters to disguise racial bias — appears, by all measures, to no longer be a factor. (It primarily applied to exit polls anyway.) People who won’t vote for Obama or any candidate because they are African-American feel no need to hide their bias. The current estimate is that Obama would be up an additional six points if race were not a factor. That is, the election would be a landslide.

After this election there will be a phenomenon known as the McCain effect — voting for McCain but telling the exit pollsters you voted for Obama because you are embarrassed to have voted for a erratic, angry, seemingly demented old man.

Imagine that

Jack Bogdanski (Lewis & Clark) & Bryan Camp (Texas Tech) have independently reviewed the tax issues raised by the release of Gov. Palin’s 2006 and 2007 tax returns and financial disclosure form, as well as the remarkable opinion letter issued from Washington D.C. tax lawyer Roger M. Olsen.  Jack and Bryan conclude that there are serious errors in Gov. Palin’s returns as filed and that she and her husband owe tens of thousands of dollars in additional taxes.

TaxProf Blog

29 days to go

FiveThirtyEight.com now projects the popular vote in 29 days to be Obama 51.5%, McCain 47%. The electoral vote projects to 340-198. Obama wins 87.4% of the projections.

Virginia, New Mexico and Colorado are no longer in play.

North Carolina is leaning Obama. Missouri and Indiana are leaning McCain. At the moment, these are the only contested states.

Obama and Biden’s favorables out poll their unfavorables. McCain and Palin’s unfavorables out poll their favorables.

Watch Palin. She’s given up on McCain and is in the running for 2012.

And, while I think of it, thank you Hillary Clinton. You may not have broken the glass ceiling yourself, but by 2012 I don’t think gender will be much of a factor.

DJIA 9864.