Should you use your head or your heart when picking a presidential nominee?

Michelle Goldberg writes this in the New York Times, after talking with people at a Joe Biden rally in Philadelphia:

“My heart still belongs to Howard Dean because of his passion, but my head says Kerry is the one who can get elected,” a voter told The New York Times in 2004, when Democrats were desperate to unseat George W. Bush. Many Democrats thought that John Kerry, a war hero, could puncture the puffed-up commander-in-chief aura that surrounded Bush, who’d kept himself out of Vietnam. It didn’t work out that way.

Four years later, Democrats decided to follow their hearts and nominate Barack Obama, who spoke to their most sublime hopes for their country. Republicans, meanwhile, went with John McCain, who’d often infuriated the party’s base, but whose campaign emphasized his general election viability. A poll in January 2008 showed that he was seen as the most electable of the Republican candidates, and one of his advertisements claimed that he could “rally the conservative Reagan coalition while appealing to independent voters to win in November.” He picked the risible Sarah Palin as a running mate to whip up energy on the right, but still lost.

By the time of the next presidential cycle, Republicans were even more obsessed with besting Obama, leading them to once again put a premium on electability. “The only reason I’m supporting Romney is because he can win the election,” a conservative voter in Iowa told The Washington Post in 2011. Romney, of course, couldn’t win the election.

It wasn’t until 2016 that a plurality of Republican voters defied the electoral wisdom of party elites, nominating a clownish demagogue who channeled the id of the far right and was supposed to have no chance of victory. We all know what happened next.

Democrats are now in a complicated spot as they make their electoral calculations. If what you care about most is a candidate’s chances next November, then pretending otherwise is an artificial exercise, particularly if it’s just in the service of making a better judgment about electability. And some enthusiasm for Biden is genuine, if not passionate; often, when people I spoke to at the rally described him as “safe,” they meant both as a candidate and as a potential leader. “I don’t want an exciting president,” said Sue Kane, a 58-year-old commercial real estate appraiser. “We have a lot of excitement right now, in a bad way.” . . .

Given the existential stakes in 2020, it’s tempting for Democrats to put their own preferences aside and strike mental bargains with groups of people they may have never met. But being attentive to how candidates make us feel gives us valuable information. . . .

During the 2004 Democratic Convention, I wrote this in an email to my mom, Ann Althouse:

You wrote about how everyone watching the convention is imagining how the speeches will seem to someone else, even though it might be that none of those "someone elses" are actually watching the speeches. The same thing happened when Kerry won the primaries. Everyone was voting for him because they thought he would appeal to someone else. And those voters believed at the time that that was the politically savvy thing to do. But it was actually politically disastrous: if everyone was just voting for him because they thought someone else would like him, then NO ONE ACTUALLY LIKED HIM.

One problem is that if you're trying to choose the most "electable" person, I would imagine that you'd be likely to do it by process of elimination -- by ruling out all the candidates with obvious political liabilities. I think this is the number-one reason why Kerry won the primaries: he was the only candidate who didn't seem to have anything particularly wrong with him. Edwards was too inexperienced; Clark was a poor campaigner; Dean seemed kind of insane; Gephardt was too liberal; Lieberman was too conservative. So they choose the one candidate who has no qualities that would really make anyone hate him. The problem is that he also has no qualities that would really make anyone like him either.

Democrats and elections

Democrats during the 2008 general election: "Who cares about having a long record of experience? What really matters in a president is the ability to give soaring, inspiring speeches. And if you disagree then you're racist."

Democrats during the 2016 general election: "Who cares about soaring, inspiring speeches? What really matters is for the president to have a long record of experience. And if you disagree then you're sexist."

Have moderate Republicans been losing the presidency because conservative voters stayed home in protest?

Ramesh Ponnuru says no:

Conservatives sometimes argue that Republicans lost the last two presidential elections because they nominated moderates who did not inspire conservatives to vote. On NRO today, Bernard Goldberg places blame on those conservatives who stayed home. He writes that “millions of the ideologically pure — who normally would vote Republican — did in fact sit home, if not handing the elections to Barack Obama, at least making it a lot easier for him to win.”

The premise of both arguments–Republicans shouldn’t have nominated moderates because they can’t turn out conservatives, and conservatives shouldn’t have sat out the elections–does not appear to be correct, based on the exit polls. There was no drop-off in conservative turnout in either 2008 or 2012. Conservatives were 34 percent of the electorate in 2004, 34 percent in 2008, and 35 percent in 2012. They voted Republican at a normal rate in 2012 too: Romney got 82 percent of them, a bit lower than George W. Bush’s 84 percent in 2004 but higher than his 81 percent in 2000. (McCain did a bit worse in 2008, with 78 percent.) Goldberg’s argument could end up being true about 2016, but it has not been true in the last two elections.

Why did President Obama do so badly in the first debate?

An article in The New Yorker quotes Laurence Tribe, who mentored Obama at Harvard Law School, responding to the debate:

“Although I would have been happier with a more aggressive debate performance by the President, I’ve had to remind myself that Barack Obama’s instincts and talents have never included going for an opponent’s jugular. That’s just not who he is or ever has been.”

Whether Obama's "instincts" are to go for the jugular might be impossible to know. But he seems to be capable of going for the jugular — when he's motivated to do so.

Remember when he said this?

While I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shipped overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Walmart!

I'm surprised that in the whole New Yorker article, which is all about what kind of a debater Obama is, there isn't a single mention of Hillary Clinton.

Gauging the liberal mood on Obama's jobs speech

See if you can detect a subtle change in Ezra Klein's mood based on two of his articles about speeches by Barack Obama.

The first is from January 3, 2008, the night of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, after Obama gave his first victory speech of the campaign:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

In the days to come, just as in the days that have passed, I'll talk much more about Obama's policies. About his health care policy, and his foreign policy, and his social policy, and his economic policy. But so much as I like to speak of white papers and scored proposals, politics is not generally experienced in terms of policies. It's more often experienced in terms of self-interest, and broken promises, and base fears, and half-truths. But, very rarely, it's experienced as a call to create something better, bigger, grander, and more just than the world we have. When that happens, as it did with Robert F. Kennedy, the inspired remember those moments for the rest of their lives. . . .

The politician who gets the most votes merits our congratulations. But the politician who enlarges our politics and empowers more Americans to step forward into the public square deserves our gratitude.

Now, here's Ezra Klein writing a few days ago about President Obama's upcoming jobs speech to a joint session of Congress:

I’ve stopped pretending that the president’s jobs speech scheduled for next week is going to matter. I’m tired of speculating about what it will contain and whether its proposals will be big or small, bold or timid.

Here is what will actually happen: President Barack Obama will give a speech. It will include a mixture of ideas the administration has pushed for some time (extending the payroll tax cut, investing in infrastructure, passing trade agreements) and some modest new additions (a tax cut for companies that hire new workers, for example). Relatively few people will tune in to the speech; of those who do, most will be either committed Obama supporters or equally committed detractors. . . .

Obama’s speech will achieve nothing. It will go nowhere because it has nowhere to go. . . .

The interest in the president’s speech is just a function of the fact that people who discuss politics and policy for a living need to seem like we’re doing something through the long summer months. The administration needs to look like it’s acting to create jobs, the media need to appear to be reporting news, the pundits need to generate opinions about it all.

This is the part of the column where, as a pundit, I lay out my three-point, politically implausible plan to turn the situation around. This is where I tell the president to fight harder, or take his message directly to the people, or fire up the lethargic Obama for America organization. This is where I remind the Republicans that they supported tax cuts as stimulus all through the last decade and even into 2009; where I beg them to put country before party; where I warn them that everything they are doing unto the Democrats today will be done unto them tomorrow. This is where I summon history to show how FDR or Reagan or Truman broke a similar logjam.

But such exhortations -- and I am guilty of writing variations on these many times over -- are pointless today. The facts are what they are. And what they are is depressing and unlikely to change.

So, it's safe to say Ezra Klein isn't predicting that President Obama's big speech on jobs in the middle of the primary campaign season is going to be one of his finest speeches?

But wait, Jonathan Chait at The New Republic does have a plan for Obama to accomplish something with his jobs speech. It's summed up in the headline of his article:

Obama's Best Hope on the Jobs Crisis: Convincing Us He's Not in Charge

Notice that Chait isn't saying Obama should be worried that his speech might give the impression that he's feckless on the economy. He says this is the best-case scenario for Obama.

In another piece, Chait points out that the White House's supposed interest in historical analogies to presidents who won reelection while unemployment was high — FDR and Reagan — "sounds like pure delusion":

Roosevelt in 1936 and Reagan in 1984 had high unemployment, yes. But they also had very rapid economic growth. . . .

These were situations where the public could discern rapid improvement from a bad situation. No such thing is likely to be the case next year. 1936 and 1984 are not good lessons. They're counter-examples . . . .

Americans are very, very unhappy. Obama's task is to persuade them to blame Republicans. Running an election taking credit for, well, anything is a terrible idea.

Does Mitt Romney have a good chance at being the Republican presidential nominee?

An ongoing discussion between two New Republic writers. One of them, Jonathan Cohn, thinks Romney has a good chance, while the other, Jonathan Chait, thinks he's doomed by the health-care issue.

One factor I don't see either of them bring up: the conventional wisdom is that Republicans prefer a candidate who's run for president in the past. (I suppose Republicans would say they like to see someone diligent and battle-tested, who's paid their dues — and Democrats would say Republicans are uncomfortable with newness and youth.)

Of course, this isn't an ironclad rule. George W. Bush's nomination in 2000 might seem to be a counterexample since he hadn't run before. But the main other strong candidate, John McCain, hadn't run before either, so this wasn't a factor as between those two. OK, Pat Buchanan had run in the past, but he never had a chance. The general rule isn't a silver bullet that renders all other factors irrelevant.

John McCain's nomination in 2008, on the other hand, is a clear example of the general rule. None of the other plausible candidates (Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson) had run for president before.

You might think 2012 doesn't even offer an opportunity to test the theory, if you think Romney's record on health care makes him an implausible candidate off the bat (along with his flipflop on abortion, his general reputation as a flipflopper, and the fact that he was governor of a state that Republicans view as ultra-liberal). If health care is truly a deal-killer for most Republicans, then it doesn't matter if Romney's record as a candidate in 2008 is an advantage; he has no chance anyway.

Well, I'm not convinced. Everyone knows health care is a major obstacle for Romney. But every presidential candidate faces obstacles. You generally can't completely rule out someone who would otherwise be a formidable candidate based on a single issue. McCain got the nomination despite a very long list of issues on which he had flipflopped and/or taken liberal positions. He was on record attacking the Bush tax cuts on first principles, saying they were unfairly tilted toward the rich. Sure, he later tried to characterize his past position as narrowly as possible (by saying he objected to the tax cuts only if there continued to be excessive spending), but this was as disingenuous as Romney's attempt to distinguish health care as a national issue from the decision he made at the state level: it's hard to imagine any voters actually basing their vote on such transparently post hoc line-drawing. McCain simply took the hit on taxes and other issues, but he ended up getting enough votes to be the nominee. And aren't tax cuts at least as defining an issue for Republicans as health care?

Rejected Obama '08 (O8ama?) logos

Here are the images they didn't want you to see before November 4.

#1 is especially clever, but maybe too clever.

#2 makes you go "ooo..."

#5 is insane!

Nice presentation, starting with some of the less plausible ones and leading up to three "finalists." The last finalist looks so familiar you'd mistake it for the real thing. As explained in the post, though, something was a little off.

Includes commentary by Sol Sender, who was in charge of the Obama logo design team.

He says: "The strongest logos tell simple stories."

2 sets of statistics that startled me

1. Obama's "army of small donors" was barely any change from 4 years ago:

[O]nly 26 percent of the money [Obama] collected through Aug. 31 during the primary and 24 percent of his money through Oct. 15 came from contributors whose total donations added up to $200 or less. ...

Those figures are actually in the same range as the 25 percent President Bush raised in 2004 from donors whose contributions aggregated to $200 or less, the 20 percent Senator John F. Kerry collected from such donors and Senator John McCain’s 21 percent from the same group. -- NYT

2. $700 billion has suddenly turned into $7 trillion:

The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis. -- Bloomberg

3 thoughts on Election Day 2008 (with photos of the Obama family watching the results)

(All these photos are from Obama's election night Flickr set.)


1. Considering that I've been supporting Obama since he announced his campaign in early 2007, I was surprised that my own reaction on the night of Election Day was muted. I had to tell myself, "You should be really excited." 

Maybe this is because I assumed he'd win, so I'd already gradually absorbed the news. 

Maybe it felt wrong to be gleeful about how America is transcending its history of prejudice on a night when California, of all states, deprived people of their right to marry who they want regardless of gender.

Maybe it's that Obama has such a facility at making you feel like you really know him personally that seeing him win was like seeing your friend become president. Sure you'd be happy for them, but you'd also be nervous about all the things that might go wrong.

2. Naturally, conservatives are debating what caused McCain to lose. This conversation between Jonah Goldberg and Ross Douthat -- taped a few days before Election Day under the assumption that Obama would win -- is a particularly thoughtful example.

How can they possibly figure this out? Wouldn't you need to run numerous experiments to determine what really caused the outcome? But since the circumstances of this election are unique, there's no way to perform even an approximation of a controlled experiment.

If you want the GOP to stay tethered to the right, you'll say McCain lost because of his history as a centrist maverick, which cast a shadow over any of his attempts to position himself as more traditionally conservative. If you'd like the GOP to become more moderate, you'll say he lost because he played too much to the Republican base; he should have just been his old self. You can avoid critiquing McCain in either direction by blaming it on all sorts of other factors -- the Bush administration's incompetence, the financial crisis, Obama's dastardly scheme to get young people excited about participating in democracy...

How can you choose between these theories in an intellectually honest way? Exit polls? But even those are flawed and offer only hints about how voters actually made up their minds.

People love to feel like they know why things happen. But can you really assume this when minds are involved?

3. No one again will be able to seriously doubt that America is ready for a black president -- or a female president.

Oh, people will make the same old, tired complaints. They'll say it doesn't count because he's not a "real" black person, whatever that means. And they'll play up Hillary Clinton's defeat as a crushing blow for women.

So let's remember that Obama won a decisive victory including would-be deep-red states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana. This happened despite massive race- and religion-based attacks on Obama that make the Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis in 1988 seem dignified by comparison. (I'm including not just the official McCain campaign but also outsiders' campaigning that McCain tolerated.)

As for Hillary Clinton -- if you believe in treating women as adults who are the equals of men, then please give her enough respect to say she failed. She wasn't a passive, helpless victim. Out of the whole field of 20+ presidential candidates, who were mostly white men, she came in 2nd or 3rd overall. That's no injustice -- that's just the rough, adult world, where you try really hard and risk failure if you make too many mistakes. 

There are still groups that probably can't expect to have a fair shot at the presidency for a while -- gays, atheists, etc. But in the future, when a woman or a black person runs for president, we can fairly assume (without knowing to an absolute certainty) that the candidate himself or herself is the one who's responsible for the outcome, whether it's bad or good.

And this one's pretty good.

Obama !!!

Time to feel good about America again.

Why I'm voting for Obama

A few weeks ago, I did a series of posts called "How Obama lost me." The basic premise: I was a big fan of his during the primaries, but during the general election I came to realize that he's not a particularly better candidate than any generic Democrat would have been.

Some people who read that series seemed to think it was important for me to also explain why I was still voting for him or why I was so supportive of him in the first place. I disagree — I don't think it's very important for me to explain why I'm voting for him. There's no shortage of newspaper and magazine endorsements of Obama, and there must be thousands of blog posts extolling his virtues. But if one more blogger's reasons for voting for Obama don't matter much in the grand scheme of things, then I might as well give them.

First, let's get McCain's negatives out of the way. Here's what I said at the conclusion of my "How Obama lost me" series:

Every candidate has a slew of flaws, and I think McCain's are worse. There are the staggering self-reinvention and flip-flops, which dwarf anything I've seen from Obama. There's his refusal to admit that invading Iraq turned out to be a bad idea. There's his painfully shallow understanding of economics. There's his "How dare you question my integrity or righteousness — I was a POW!" attitude, which makes Bush look humble by comparison.

And yes, there's his age. Of course I think people in their 70s can handle serious jobs. I have no problem with, say, an 80- or 90-year-old judge, as long as they're able. But being president is a uniquely stressful and demanding job, so I do have a problem with an 80-year-old president (which is what McCain will be if he has a full, successful presidency). The idea that this is somehow offensive or taboo is ludicrous. The stakes are just too high to worry about offending people.

Now onto Obama's positives. Since this is pretty well-tilled soil, I'll mostly rely on snippets from other people's endorsements that happen to reflect my thinking:

The Economist (which has endorsed Democrats and Republicans for president):

Merely by becoming president, he would dispel many of the myths built up about America: it would be far harder for the spreaders of hate in the Islamic world to denounce the Great Satan if it were led by a black man whose middle name is Hussein; and far harder for autocrats around the world to claim that American democracy is a sham. . . .

A man who started with no money and few supporters has out-thought, out-organised and outfought the two mightiest machines in American politics—the Clintons and the conservative right. . . .

In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait. He has campaigned with more style, intelligence and discipline than his opponent. Whether he can fulfil his immense potential remains to be seen. But Mr Obama deserves the presidency.

The Chicago Tribune (which has endorsed Republicans since Abraham Lincoln and had never endorsed a Democrat until now):

We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party's nominee for president. We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready. . . .

We know first-hand that Obama seeks out and listens carefully and respectfully to people who disagree with him. He builds consensus. He was most effective in the Illinois legislature when he worked with Republicans on welfare, ethics and criminal justice reform.

The Washington Post (which seems to mostly endorse Democrats for president, but also supported the Iraq war):

Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. . . .

On most [foreign] policies, such as the need to go after al-Qaeda, check Iran's nuclear ambitions and fight HIV/AIDS abroad, he differs little from Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain. But he promises defter diplomacy and greater commitment to allies. His team overstates the likelihood that either of those can produce dramatically better results, but both are certainly worth trying. . . .

Mr. Obama's temperament is unlike anything we've seen on the national stage in many years. He is deliberate but not indecisive; eloquent but a master of substance and detail; preternaturally confident but eager to hear opposing points of view.

The New Republic (which always endorses Democrats for president, but endorsed McCain in the 2000 primaries and supported the Iraq war):

Obama will work to achieve an ambitious agenda but will revise his opinion when the evidence dictates a different course. He is a sincere liberal but without the temperament of an ideologue. His health care and environmental plans are broadly progressive but make concessions to the free market and do not fit the platonic ideals of the left. He doesn't intend to create a single-payer system (alas) and expresses openness to nuclear power. His recent education rhetoric has incorporated the best of the reform movement.

In the middle of this recession, the national mood will run raw. Major policy changes, now inevitable, will exacerbate the anger. . . . Fortunately, Obama has a fetish for data and the company of social scientists, as Noam Scheiber has shown in his reporting. And, just as important, he has the soothing demeanor that might calm tempers and the gift for language that could make necessary, but not necessarily popular, policies more palatable.

Individual Slate editors (each paragraph is an excerpt from a different editor's explanation of why they're voting for him):

I'm a liberal person and I usually vote for Democrats, and while I'm not proud of being a totally predictable voter in this election, I don't mind admitting it. Any further justification would be post facto reasoning for a decision I made by default a long time ago.

As for the accusation that he doesn't have enough experience: No one has enough experience. Nothing prepares you for the presidency. Nothing can. But Obama has the temperament and the humility to surround himself with smart people and let them do their jobs.

It's important not to ratify failure, and the current Republican administration is a failure.

I'm choosing Obama for one main reason: He's the smarter candidate. I don't just mean he's got smarter policies, though he does. I mean he seems to have the higher IQ. His books and speeches suggest deep intellectual curiosity—a calm, analytical, rational mind of the sort we haven't seen in the White House in years.

Obama seemed an implausible candidate when he first announced because he was so short on experience. But . . . Obama's disciplined and level-headed campaign style and his commonsensical grasp of domestic and foreign policy proved his mettle. It doesn't hurt that along the way he gave at least one speech that my grandchildren will study in school. Obama ain't the messiah, but I think he'll be a good president and maybe a great one.

I admire Obama's quality of balance: between attention to details and grasp of ideas; or to put that somewhat differently, between politics and ideals. Beyond that quality of balance, he has demonstrated in action an impressive ability to keep his balance through two challenging, stressful campaigns, for nomination and election.

I like his obvious inner calm. It suggests that his decisions will come from somewhere other than expediency, anger, or fear.

For his charisma, his cautiousness, and his cool. In a time of high stakes, we need someone who can sort out the best course of action without bridling in anger. A candidate who actually nods when his opponent makes a powerful counterargument—as Obama did several times during the last debate—is a rare bird.

Fareed Zakaria:

Let's be honest: neither candidate has past experience that is relevant to being president, except that they have now both run large, multiyear, multimillion-dollar, 50-state campaigns. By common consent, McCain's has been chaotic and ineffective, while Obama has run a superb operation, and done so with little of the drama and discord that usually plague political machines. . . .

I admit to a personal interest. I have a 9-year-old son named Omar. I firmly believe that he will be able to do absolutely anything he wants in this country when he grows up. But I admit that I will feel more confident about his future if a man named Barack Obama became president of the United States.

Well, I don't have much more to add to all that. A few more points, though:

You might notice that some of these excerpts cite superficial qualities like his "style," "cool," and "charisma." But wait — shouldn't we be focusing exclusively on "the issues" instead of superficialities? I don't think so. The superficialities matter too.

Does anyone really cast their vote based on reading the candidates' bullet-pointed position statements on "the issues," subjecting them to rigorous intellectual and empirical scrutiny, and finally tallying up the strengths and weaknesses of each candidates' policies to see which one is stronger overall on "the issues"? Kudos to you if that's how you make your decision, but I don't think people are that rational.

I wish I could figure out how to solve the credit crisis, but I just don't know enough. None of us really knows enough to cast a fully informed vote. So we have to focus on what we are capable of perceiving. It's easier to perceive character, habits, and personality than to predict the consequences of whatever legislation the president might end up signing by extrapolating from the promises on the candidates' websites.

So, what traits do I care about? Intelligence. Open-mindedness. Cautiousness vs. recklessness. Humility vs. arrogance. Pragmatism vs. dogmatism. Is there any serious doubt that Obama trumps McCain on all of these traits?

The president isn't just the top bureaucrat or policy wonk. Our president is the equivalent of Britain's Queen and Prime Minister smooshed into one person. The president needs to encapsulate the spirit of the nation and speak for all of us.

Don't you feel like we don't quite have a leader right now? Don't you feel like our country is missing its voice? It's not a very good feeling, is it?

86-year-old Charles Alexander meets Barack Obama.

"My God, all these young people, they're tomorrow's future. I'm dying off. Everybody my age is dying off. Everybody. Next 4 or 5 years, I probably won't be around."

More greatest moments from the 2008 presidential race (up to 120)

This should conclude my list of moments from the presidential race. I hope that this year is different from 2000 and 2004 in that there won't be any more surprising moments from now through Election Day.

100. "The fundamentals of the economy are strong."
[video]

101. "Would you like to ask him a question?" "Uh, no. I would like to mention that a couple days ago Senator Obama was out in Ohio and he had an encounter with a guy who's a plumber, his name is Joe Wurzelburger."
[video]

102. "Quite frankly, um, it might have been a better pick than me."
[video]

103. "It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to our state."
[video + transcript]

104. "I am surprised ... that he wasn't willing to say it to my face."
[video]

105. "You know who voted for it? You might never know -- that one!"
[video]

106.



107. "There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women."
[video + transcript]

108. "Senator Obama doesn't understand ..."
[transcript]

109. "No coal plants here in America. Build 'em, if they're gonna build 'em, over there."
[video + commentary]

110. "We need a steady hand at the tiller."
[video]

111. "Here's what you do if you're running a campaign in the middle of an economic crisis.... You go back to Washington. You handle what you need to handle. Don't suspend your campaign! You let your campaign go on, shouldered by your vice-presidential nominee. That's what you do. You don't quit! Or is that really -- is that really a good thing to do?"
[video at 2:55]

112. "I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."
[video]

113. "You like to pretend the war started in 2007."
[video] + [transcript]

114. "We'd be happy to get to Michigan and walk through those plants of the car manufacturers. We'd be so happy to get to speak to the people in Michigan who are hurting because the economy is hurting. I want to get back to Michigan and I want to try."
[story]

115. "The more I'm in public, the more I don't even want to pick my nose."
[video]

116. “I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”
[video at 0:25] + [story]

117. "I can't trust Obama . . . . He's an Arab." "No, no, no ma'am, no ma'am, he's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues."
[video at 0:50]

118. "Zero!" "Zero?!"
[video] (watch McCain's face)

119. "Health of the mother . . . that's the extreme pro-abortion position -- quote, 'health.'"
[video]

120. "Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. . . . Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. . . . Gird your loins."
[story]

The 120 greatest moments on the path to the White House

Here's the list:

1 - 44

45 - 77

78 - 99

100 - 120

Live-blogging the last Obama vs. McCain presidential debate

Keep reloading for live updated commentary.




9:01 - Starting.

9:02 - Oh yeah, this is the "domestic policy" debate.

9:03 - A forced, perfunctory "good to see you again" from McCain to Obama, after McCain's been roundly criticized for his supposedly contemptuous demeanor toward Obama.

9:07 - I'm finding it impossible to focus on the recitations of their policy prescriptions. Does this stuff really sway anyone? ... Ah, this is more like it: a story about Joe, a plumber.

9:09 - Obama says, looking at the screen, "95% of ya out there will get a tax cut." This kind of thing seems to have been pretty effective: surprisingly, more voters think McCain than Obama will raise taxes on "people like you."

9:13 - The last 5 or 10 minutes have been all about Joe the Plumber. Apparently he's the new Joe 6-Pack.

9:17 - My mom says: "Generally, Obama seems much more fluid and complex, and McCain is wooden and overprepared, unwilling to react on the spot."

9:19 - McCain is back to his trusty "overhead projector" distortion from the second debate.

9:20 - McCain whips out a scripted attempted at a strong moment: "Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run against him 4 years ago." [UPDATE: Here's the clip.]

(Note: quotes in this post are approximate, since I'm typing in real-time.)

9:22 - Obama boasts that he hasn't "made [himself] popular with environmentalists."

9:25 - Good question from Schieffer (after listing inflammatory quotes from both campaigns' ads): "Are each of you willing to sit across the table and say to each other's face what your campaigns have been saying?" McCain says he "regret[s] some of the negative aspects of both campaigns." Oh, and it's all Obama's fault for not agreeing to more town-hall debates.

9:27 - For the first time in the debates, McCain is bringing up Obama's breaking his pledge to accept public funding. "You broke your word."

9:28 - Responding to McCain's comment that Obama has spent more money on negative ads than any other campaign in history, Obama says: "100% of your ads have been negative!"

9:31 - Obama brings up the McCain fan yelling, "Kill him!" in the middle of a Palin speech, with no response from Palin.

9:33 - Ah, a twist! Obama is the first one to bring up Ayers, albeit allusively: "pals around with terrorists."

9:34 - McCain speaks out against "very unacceptable" t-shirts at Obama rallies.

9:36 - "Mr. Ayers has been the centerpiece of Senator McCain's campaign for the last 2 weeks." Obama gives the full-fledged defense of his association with Ayers -- excellent.

9:45 - Best word of the night: "cockamamie."

9:51 - McCain admires Obama's "eloquence." How nice of him. Kind of like Obama praising Palin for being a "capable politician."

9:53 - McCain is back to the "he doesn't understand" line against Obama, this time about Colombia trade policy. Obama: "Actually, I understand it pretty well ..." Oh, but how can that be? He's never traveled south of the border!

9:57 - Ramesh Ponnuru over at the Corner gives a snapshot of the conservative response to the debate: "A couple folks here have been saying that McCain is doing better than in the previous two debates. I wish it were true, but I just don't see it."

10:00 - McCain is back to the "fine" that he railed against in the previous debate. "He'll fine you!" McCain needs to know whether you'll fine Joe! Obama responds, looking straight at the camera: "Joe, if you're out there [!!!] ... here's your fine: zero!" McCain is taken aback. [UDPATE: Here's the clip.]

10:07 - McCain incorrectly says that Obama voted against Justice Breyer.

10:08 - The same old question about whether they'd apply a litmus test to Supreme Court nominees. The answer is always no.

10:12 - Obama: "If it sounds incredible that I would vote to withhold life-saving treatment from an infant, that's because it's not true."

10:16 - The last question is about education. That means it's time for both candidates to tell you how fundamentally important education is and how passionately they feel about it, and then proceed to sway not a single voter based on their education policies.

10:23 - McCain is frankly surprised that Obama didn't pay more attention.

10:26 - I know I'm going to base my vote on whether the Washington, DC school superintendent supports vouchers or charters -- aren't you?

10:27 - The closing statements.

10:28 - McCain has been stumbling over his words like crazy tonight.

10:28 - "There's a long line of McCains" who have served their country. That's the first time I've heard McCain invoke his aristocratic lineage. Is that really going to win over many voters?

10:31 - McCain to Obama right after the debate: "Good job! Good job! Good job!"

10:40 - That's it. We're almost there.

My mom, listening to the closing statements, says:

McCain sounds over-rehearsed and he stumbles over many things. He says "abased" for "based." I think he knows he hasn't done enough tonight. He hasn't rattled Obama, not enough anyway. Obama is doing his final statement now. It's not particularly interesting, but it's filling the space, and we're probably not listening, because we know, he's survived the final ordeal. He will be our President, I think, and I think they both know that.

Getting ready for the last Obama vs. McCain presidential debate

Go here for the live-blogging.


Other live-bloggers:

• Althouse
  
  
• The Stump + The Plank (The New Republic)
  
  
• The Corner (National Review)
  
  
• Talking Points Memo
  
  
• Ambinder
  
  
• ThinkProgress (by Matthew Yglesias and others)
  

On the other hand...



(That's my mom and Ana Marie Cox, the founder of Wonkette.)

Crowd control

Glenn Reynolds, a.k.a. Instapundit, says (via my mom's blog):

So we've had nearly 8 years of lefty assassination fantasies about George W. Bush, and Bill Ayers' bombing campaign is explained away as a consequence of him having just felt so strongly about social justice, but a few people yell things at McCain rallies and suddenly it's a sign that anger is out of control in American politics? It's nice of McCain to try to tamp that down... but, please, can we also note the staggering level of hypocrisy here?

Does Reynolds (who's single-handedly responsible for a lot of the traffic this blog has received) really not see any distinction?

There might be a genuine parallel if McCain and Palin hadn't actively attempted to stoke hateful feelings toward Obama. But they have.

Or there might be a parallel if Obama had been conducting his campaign by insidiously playing on "lefty assassination fantasies." He hasn't.

Palin deliberately caused people to associate the word "terrorist" with "Obama." As just about everyone has now heard, she says Obama likes to "pal around" with terrorists and hang out in their "living room." The McCain campaign put out a press release last week referring to "the terrorist group founded by Barack Obama's friend William Ayers." Those are just a couple examples of many. While none of that is literally calling Obama himself a terrorist, any competent politician understands the effect of repeating two words or phrases together over and over. (See Bush's constant repetitions of "Saddam Hussein" and "September 11" in rapid succession.)

All of that rhetoric is carefully constructed to avoiding mentioning that Obama has only associated with Ayers long after he became a reformed, productive member of society. Even the lead prosecutor who prosecuted Ayers said, in a letter to the New York Times:

I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.

Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.

Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.

I've seen this ad in my web browser countless times (the screen shot is from this blog post):

Clearly someone at the McCain campaign noticed that Obama and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have the same light-brown skin tone (if the lighting is just right) and that their faces are vaguely similar (at just the right angle, in carefully cropped photographs, etc.). Then that person decided to track down photos of them that would highlight this resemblance, and placed them right next to each other. I have to assume McCain knows what he's doing with this ad.

I know that many people who read this post will dismiss my suggestions. I understand that there's a deep human impulse to vehemently deny that subliminal messages are effective or even being attempted. The notion that our thoughts are susceptible to being manipulated makes people mad.

Keep in mind that the McCain campaign has been flinging the "terrorist" language at Obama for months and months (going back to the days when McCain used to have the nerve to say this out of his own mouth rather than cowardly saying it through his surrogates). The Obama/Ahmadinejad ad has also been showing up on the internet for months and months.

None of this is an accident.

If you use those kinds of images and buzzwords over and over, trying to firmly implant them in Americans' minds, you shouldn't be surprised if the language at your rallies starts to run along the lines of: "Terrorist!" "Kill him!" "We're scared, we're scared of an Obama presidency." "I can't trust Obama ... he's an Arab." And so on.

UPDATE 1: According to a commenter on my mom's blog responding to this post, I am "a very callow youth with a limited understanding of American political campaigns." I would like to respond to this, but I'm only 27 years old so I'm not smart enough to know whether he's right.

UPDATE 2: Lots of comments on this post (over 40 right now). Most are vigorously disagreeing with me. I always welcome vigorous disagreement.

"Who is your mom going to vote for?"

I've been asked that a few times.

My mom, who lives in Wisconsin, has been undecided for this whole presidential race.

If you're at all familiar with her blog, Althouse, you know she's been paying attention to the race every day and subjecting it to her famous "cruel neutrality." There's another blog that's been entirely devoted to keeping track of this since March: Monitoring the Cruel Neutrality. (For a little while there was even a blog keeping track of the blog that kept track of the cruel neutrality -- Monitoring Monitoring the Cruel Neutrality -- but that was ridiculous.)

Anyway, when she woke up yesterday morning, she decided to clarify her thoughts on who won the second presidential debate and how it might affect her vote.

And when she thought about that, she decided to give up her vow of cruel neutrality.

Oh, she still doesn't know who she's going to vote for. And she's still going to observe the race with neutrality.

But it won't be cruel neutrality anymore. It will be "slouchy neutrality," and it won't be based on a vow.

So, who won the debate for her?

She wasn't very impressed with McCain's performance.

And she wasn't very impressed with Obama's performance.

"But you see the trend, and the destination is almost inevitable."

Live-blogging the second Obama vs. McCain presidential debate

Get ready! I'll be live-blogging tonight's debate in this post, so keep reloading for live updates.

UPDATE: The debate:

The New York Times not only has the full video, but also lets you search for any phrase, see a graph of when the phrase was said (and by whom), and jump right to that phrase in the video.

UPDATE: The debate in 10 minutes:

My pre-debate analysis.

Other live-bloggers (greyed-out links are obsolete):

• Althouse
  
• The Stump (The New Republic)
  
• The Corner (National Review)
  
• ThinkProgress (by Matthew Yglesias and others)
  
• Talking Points Memo
  
• Ambinder
  

9:02 - Starting!

9:06 - McCain walks over to the man who asked the first question and gets surprisingly close to him. He's pacing and self-consciously shifting his body position as mediocre actors often do.

9:10 - I can't remember seeing another debate with such an awkward note-taking set-up. I feel sorry for McCain having to reach over to that tiny table next to him.

9:11 - Yikes, McCain walks over to Obama and stands right in front of him while giving his answer.

9:15 - Obama gives a much more thorough answer to the man who asks how the bailout is going to help him.

9:16 - Strong moment from Obama: Brokaw asks, "Are you saying the economy is going to have to get worse before it gets better?" Obama: "No. I am confident about the economy."

(Disclaimer: since I'm doing this on the fly, the quotations in this post aren't necessarily verbatim, but I'm trying.)

9:19 - Obama grants an audience member's premise that both parties share the responsibility for the financial crisis.

9:20 - Obama: "I'm proposing more spending cuts than spending."

9:22 - McCain, showing his nervousness: "I have voted against excessive spending and outrageous." Outrageous what?

9:24 - McCain name-drops my old Senator (from when I lived in Wisconsin), Russ Feingold -- the actual "most liberal Senator" (besides Bernie Sanders).

9:25 - Josh Marshall asks: "Can't we have the angry McCain?"

9:27 - Obama will eliminate everything that doesn't work and make sure that everything that does work works even better. Sounds great!!

9:29 - McCain is really going after the anti-overhead-projector vote.

9:30 - I'll give McCain credit: he's probably giving the most impassioned, empathetic performance he has in him.

9:30 - Cringe-inducing word choice from Obama: "A lot of you remember the tragedy of 9/11..." He can safely assume we all remember.

9:34 - I think the town-hall format is flattering to both of them. Obama can be underwhelming in the conventional debates because he's soft-spoken (completely different from his speeches), so the more intimate, informal setting puts him in a better light. And everyone knows McCain loves town halls. Since the race is a zero-sum game, anything that "helps" both of them actually helps Obama and hurts McCain.

9:37 - Brokaw inappropriately refuses to let Obama rebut McCain's allegation about Obama's tax policy.

9:39 - Jon Cohn (not to be confused with me) says that CNN's instant graph of voter reactions to the debates seems to show that McCain's attack on Obama for excessive spending -- McCain's signature domestic issue -- got no response.

9:44 - We already heard from both candidates on nuclear power at the first debate, but McCain apparently thinks we need to hear more. At the first debate, Obama clearly said he's never been against nuclear power. (And he just said it again in this one.) So McCain knows he can't get away with outright saying Obama's against it. But he takes a more nuanced and sarcastic approach: "Senator Obama says he's for nuclear power but it has to be 'safe' ... or something like that..."

9:55 - Tom Brokaw asks: "Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?" Are single-word multiple-choice answers in a presidential debate simplistic, patronizing, or ridiculous?

10:01 - Obama reprises McCain's attack on him from the first presidential debate: "There are some things I don't understand..." [UPDATE: A theory.]

10:06 - Mickey Kaus says:

McCain rails against Obama's "$860 billion" in proposed "new spending," yet he just said he wants the government to buy up all the bad mortgages in the country, give all homeowners new purchase prices and protect them from their ill-advised decisions? Sounds expensive.

[UPDATE: McCain changed that proposal within 48 hours after the debate.] 

10:10 - A woman in the audience essentially asks both of them whether they agree with Obama's famous comment that he would order unilateral strikes against al Qaeda in Pakistan if necessary, which would seem to put McCain in an awkward position: either he doesn't answer her question, or he contradicts himself. He doesn't answer the question. Predictably, he takes the opportunity to falsely claim that Obama is in favor of "attacking Pakistan," which prompts a huge grin from Obama.

10:14 - Obama: "McCain wants you to think I'm green behind the ears ... he's somber and responsible ..." McCain: "Thank you very much!"

10:15 - McCain's defense of singing about bombing Iran: "I was joking with a veteran." That's why it helps to understand how the internet works -- if you're a presidential candidate, you are never just talking to someone; you're talking to America. And if you say things like that, you'll be talking to the world, because people around the world are going to see it. And they're going to draw their own conclusions without getting the benefit of McCain explaining it away with "context."

10:21 - Good point over at TNR:

McCain vows that he'll get bin Laden because "I know how to get him." If that's really the case, maybe he could just tell Bush when he gets home tonight? That would save some time.

10:24 - Brokaw: "Is Russia today an evil empire?" McCain: "Maybe!"

10:26 - All of the first 3 debates have included the phrase "stinking corpse."

10:27 - Obama needs to be coached to stop beginning so many of his answers with dead air while he thinks of what to say: "Uhhh ... ehhh ..."

10:29 - The last question "has a certain Zen-like quality, I'll give you fair warning. 'What don't you know, and how will you learn it?'" Obama: "Here is what I do know..." He's pulling Sarah Palin's trick from the VP debate: "What's your greatest weakness?" "Well, let me tell you about how experienced I am!"

10:34: Worst breaking-the-fourth-wall moment: Brokaw to Obama and McCain: Hey, you're blocking my teleprompter!

10:35 - It's over. In my pre-debate blogging earlier tonight, I wrote:

I assume McCain is going to flail away, trying to throw a bunch of guilt-by-association slime over Obama in a desperate attempt to avert electoral disaster.

I'm glad to know I was wrong.

Getting ready for the second Obama vs. McCain presidential debate

As I've done with the previous two debates, I'm planning on live-blogging tonight. Keep reloading this page for more updates.

---> UPDATE: Go to this post for the live-blogging.

I assume McCain is going to flail away, trying to throw a bunch of guilt-by-association slime over Obama in a desperate attempt to avert electoral disaster.

And I assume Obama is going to make sure to pointedly say: "He wants to slash Medicare."

Pre-debate analysis from others:

McCain's two narrow options tonight.

McCain's two challenges tonight:

[1.] Town halls invite civility. That's one of the reasons McCain proposed doing a series of town halls with Obama over the summer and fall. It was, his advisers know, his hope of conducting a different kind of campaign, one in which the two nominees might even share a meal after their joint performances. ... The irony now is that, when McCain finally gets Obama on the stage for a town hall style debate, the pressure on him is to discard his traditional instincts and go after his opponent. ...

[2.] The other challenge for McCain is finding ways to raise the questions he wants to raise about Obama during a debate in which the all-enveloping economic crisis demands serious attention and discussion by the candidates. Obama mocked McCain's campaign advisers on Monday for suggesting they wanted to turn the page on the economic crisis and move to character issues.

And watch out for that ponytail guy!

Here's a very useful device if you want to know which buzzwords the candidates use most often in the debates, and jump into the middle of the debate right when one of those buzzwords is being uttered: MSNBC's video player lets you do just that. You can do this with the two debates that have already happened (that link goes to the most recent debate -- there are links at the top to switch to a different debate). I assume they'll have tonight's debate posted later on, though presumably not live.

National Review's Andrew McCarthy is nervous about tonight:

This is McCain's shot — maybe his last one — to make his case to the country, not just look good to the immediate audience. He's got to speak above that audience to everyone who may be listening. If he doesn't get it done, the next debate might not matter. He's gotta understand: this could be it.