It isn't "way too early" to think about who the Democratic running mate will be

People say it’s “way too early to be thinking about” [NYT link] who’ll be the vice-presidential nominee when we haven’t even started voting for the person who’ll make that decision. But wait, shouldn’t we think about what the ticket might be before choosing the nominee, while it could still inform our votes in the primaries? I don’t like the idea that we must follow a certain schedule about which questions to think about when, or that we can’t think more than one step into the future.

Those who say the choice of running mate doesn’t matter very much are wrong. It can matter a lot. A good running mate can smooth over some of the nominee’s weaknesses (that’s been true of at least the last 3 running mates to win, who all eased concerns about the future president’s experience and competence). A weak choice can raise serious questions about the nominee’s judgment (Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle); it’s our only chance to see what kind of person the president would hire for their administration before we cast our votes.

So, what are some of the plausible Democratic tickets for 2020? Any nominee will want a ticket with diversity. We can assume it won’t be two Straight White Men; it’s highly unlikely that the ticket will be, say, Biden/Bennet or Bernie/Beto.

If Elizabeth Warren is the nominee, I could see her choosing Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, or Julián Castro. Each would add a different and significant kind of diversity. All of them have been generally performing well in the debates. I can’t see any glaring, irreconcilable differences that would stop her from choosing them — they’re not Delaney, who Warren ridiculed as running for president just to say what he “won’t fight for.”

Buttigieg and Castro would love us to think they’d flip their states in the Electoral College (as unlikely as it might seem for Trump to lose his vice president’s state of Indiana or deep-red Texas). But a successful running mate generally isn’t picked as a tactic to win just one state. Obama didn’t choose Biden to win Delaware; same with Dick Cheney’s two states of Wyoming and Texas; Paul Ryan didn’t manage to win Wisconsin for Romney, etc. Warren surely knows all this.

The running mate could be someone who isn’t running now; for instance, Warren might choose Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. But there are so many Democratic presidential candidates that it would be surprising if they all got passed over for VP.

If Pete Buttigieg wins the nomination, it’s easy to see him going for gender diversity by choosing Elizabeth Warren or Tulsi Gabbard, who were both outstanding debaters this week. Warren would excite progressive voters, but the last thing Buttigieg needs is more race-related concerns about his campaign, and he could count on Trump to make a big issue out of Warren’s past representations of being Native American. This couldn’t be dismissed just by calling out Trump’s crude word choice in bringing it up.

Buttigieg and Gabbard would be two young veterans who both speak compellingly about their military experience. Buttigieg might want to accentuate this side of his background, along the lines of Bill Clinton choosing Al Gore to emphasize that they’re a new kind of Democrat. Journalists would have their work cut out for them just listing all the ground Tulsi Gabbard could break as a 30-something, Hindu, American Samoan, vegetarian, surfing martial-arts instructor who took her congressional oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita instead of the Bible.

Buttigieg/Booker could also be appealing, but they’re both male. And unfortunately, Buttigieg has to worry about bias against him as a gay man, so even if this shouldn’t matter, he probably wants a running mate with a relatively traditional personal life; Booker has never been married and doesn’t have kids. Kamala Harris also doesn’t have kids, but more importantly, I don’t expect any nominee to choose Harris with all the questions about her record, in these days of increased interest in criminal justice reform.

I have a harder time speculating about who Joe Biden would choose, since he seems generally unpredictable and erratic. So I have no guess for him — and even if I did, I’d expect him to choose someone else!

That leaves 2 other candidates in the top 5, but I don’t expect them to be nominated so I’m less interested in guessing who their running mates would be. Kamala Harris’s image as a tough prosecutor is ill-suited to the current political moment, and her response to Gabbard’s attack last night wasn’t confidence-inspiring on that front. Self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, who’d be in his 80s for most of his presidency, is even more of a long shot now than last time.

No one else seems likely to win the nomination, but that could change. Almost every presidential race gives us at least one huge surprise . . .

Dreams From My Father, by Tripp Johnston

The memoir about his gradual discovery of his lost father, Levi Johnston, circa 2056.

Sarah Palin and the Thanksgiving turkey slaughter

My mom has a perfectly apt post about Palin giving an interview with slaughtering going on in the background. Here's the post in its entirety:

HuffPo is aghast that turkey-killing doesn't faze Sarah Palin.

Deal with it, you candy-asses. If you eat meat, something like that is going on in the background for you too.

I followed her link to HuffingtonPost and noticed that the post has an amazing 4,000+ comments. And based on skimming through some of them, it looks like HuffPo's commenters are more intelligent than HuffPo's writers.

One good point from the comments section:

Newsflash: Farmers kill animals. Then they sell them. Grocery stores package them. Meat-eaters buy them and eat them. Apparently people in the Ivory Tower think meat just appears, much like manna from Heaven. This is odd, considering their general distaste for all things religious--especially Christian.

And here's one more (slightly edited):

You people don't understand Alaska.

If you've ever been there, it really is America's last frontier populated with rugged people.

Actually seeing the reality of the facts of life and death (whether human or animal) is NOT uncommon there as it is in the lower 48. I think this is mostly a good thing. Here in Brooklyn, there's lots of people who eat chicken every day, but have never seen a live chicken running around the yard. You just go buy it at the supermarket. Not good.

Sarah grew up in Alaska and is used to these things. I'll give her that. Alaskans probably laugh at the lower 48's squeamishness.

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]

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.

Live-blogging the vice-presidential debate - Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden

Click here to jump down to the live-blogging.

UPDATE: The debate:



UPDATE: The debate in 10 minutes (thanks to TalkingPointsMemo):




Other live-bloggers

• Althouse
  
  
• Talking Points Memo + cont'd
  
  
• The Corner (National Review)
  
  
• The Plank + The Stump (The New Republic)
  
  
• Wilkinson

Pre-debate points

1. I'm expecting a comeback. The expectations are so abysmally low for Palin that it's hard to imagine she won't impress.


2. What should you eat during the debate? Here are some suggestions.

My favorites (I usually go out of my way not to promote meat on the blog, but these are too good not to use):

• Lipstick (Ketchup) on a Pig in a Blanket
  
  
• Sloppy Joe
  
  
• Put some white Russians on the other side of a window. Close enough to see but not close enough to know anything about how they actually taste.
  

3. This debate is taking place in the shadow of seriously bad news for the McCain campaign today.

In addition to the McCain campaign's general doldrums and the various Palin embarrassments, the state of the race changed today -- Politico reports:

John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states...

A McCain aide confirmed the move and chalked it up to the state's Democratic tilt and the resources Obama had put in place there.

Now, you might say: "He's just moving his resources from one state to other states, so couldn't that be a wash?"

Well, no. Michigan is special. According to fivethirtyeight.com, which specializes in crunching the poll data and predicting elections, there's almost no chance (less than 10%) that either candidate could lose Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan but win the election.

And where is he increasing his resources? The above-linked article mentions a few states, but this seems especially significant:

[T]he McCain campaign also announced yesterday that he's adding a dozen new offices in Virginia, where Obama has gained in recent days. If nothing else, Obama is forcing McCain to spend more money in a state that hasn't voted for a Dem for president for 44 years -- LBJ in 1964.

Big things happening.

I emailed A____, who lives in Michigan, about this development, and he emailed back this dispatch:

it's actually pretty shocking now that i think about it. we've been absolutely bombarded with McCain stuff even before Hillary conceded. my sense is that the poll numbers probably paired poorly with what have been absolutely MASSIVE voter registration drives in A2 [Ann Arbor] and Detroit...you literally cannot walk more than two blocks here without running into someone with a clipboard.

4. As far as the speculation about whether Joe Biden will be sufficiently "respectful" in how he interacts with Sarah Palin, I don't have much to add to what Tena Hollingsworth, had to say in the Talking Points Memo comments section today (in response to this report about how they're prepping Biden):

This coaching of Biden cause she's woman?

Sexist.

Just treat her like anyone else- that was the point that we women fought for.

This is so stupid.

Schrodingers Cat responds:

Couldn't agree more. Any woman who would stand back and say "Biden is picking on Palin" is an idiot. Did you hear anyone say "Biden was picking on Giuliani" after his famous quip?

If women expect to be treated equally in this society then we need to get over the victim-thing. Women shouldn't demand to play this game and then be expected to be treated differently. If you're a woman and you ... attack your opponent, you should expect the same in return.

Tena responds:

I'm so glad you agree. Frankly this ticks me off because I see it as a full on set back for women. Thank you Sarah for making us look different and stupid and in need of help from men.

I'm thrilled about it.

9:02 - Starting!

9:03 - They both tell each other, "Nice to meet you." I guess they'd never met.

9:05 - Biden is kind of hanging his head, and he's not making good eye contact. And like Obama in the first debate, he's talking a bit too fast. Nervous. 

9:06 - One of the first words out of Palin's mouth is "barometer," and she uses it a couple times in her first answer. Probably a poor choice of words, not based on meaning but just sound -- Barack Obameter!

9:09 - If this is about eye contact, Palin is winning.

9:09 - Both of them have sent the message loud and clear in the first 10 minutes: they really respect each other.

9:10 - Palinism: Darn right it was the predator lenders!

9:10 - Palin could hardly be coming across as more poised and confident so far.

9:13 - Again: Darn right we need tax relief!

9:13 - Even as an Obama supporter and no fan of Palin, I'm finding it hard not to root for her after everything she's been through in the last few weeks.

9:14 - Biden accuses Palin of using "a bogus standard" for gauging tax cuts, and says quite firmly that she was wrong in her previous answer. Glad to see that he's not afraid to debate her the way he would any other candidate. [As another example, a few minutes later he begins a rebuttal to Palin, "I don't know where to start!"]

9:15 - Palin: "I may not answer the questions the way you or the moderator want to hear..." Take that, Gwen Ifill!

(Note that I'm just writing down quotes as I go along, so the quotes in this post aren't necessarily accurate.)

9:20 - Biden clearly noticed that even though McCain doesn't usually give policy specifics, you can find them out on his website!

9:21 - Ifill notes that neither Obama nor McCain "quite answered" Jim Lehrer's question last week about what they'll have to change about their proposed policies in light of the financial crisis.

9:23 - Palin: One nice thing about running with McCain is that he doesn't tell one thing to one group and then another thing to another group. Oh, really?

9:27 - Palin is against corruption and greed on Wall Street.

9:33 - Apparently, each debate has one incongruous sexual word to jolt you to attention. In the first presidential debate: "orgy." In this debate: "raping."

9:34 - Needless to say, Palin is happy to be talking about energy.

9:35 - "Senator O'Biden!"

9:37 - Biden says -- correctly -- that the Constitution requires treating opposite-sex couples the same as same-sex couples.

9:38 - Palin is conspicuously brief in noting that she doesn't want to overly expand the definition of marriage, not even specifying what would be going too far. But she says no one would even propose limiting hospital visitation or any other such rights. Huh? I'm not sure how this isn't a bald-faced lie.

9:40 - Biden responding to Palin's answer on Iraq: "With all due respect, I didn't hear a plan."

9:42 - Unfortunate phrasing from Biden: "The only odd man out on Iraq is John McCain." (Are there any odd women out? Like, maybe...the one who's standing...right across from you...)

9:44 - Biden laughs warmly at Palin's remark that Biden once said he'd be happy to run against or with McCain.

9:44 - "John McCain voted to cut off funding for the troops. Let me say that again..." And you know he will.

9:47 - Palin says "nucular." If that's her worst gaffe tonight, it's a small miracle.

9:50 - Biden: "That's just simply not true about Barack Obama. He did not say he'd sit down and meet with Ahmadinejad..." Again, Biden is giving his normal debate performance and not holding back from criticizing Palin. Good for him.

9:52 - Palin is against a second Holocaust.

9:52 - Palin gives an extra ounce of pizzazz: "Build that embassy in Jerusalem!"

9:55 - Palin is glad to agree with Biden on Israel. Should Obama run an attack ad based on this admission?

9:55 - Biden, stop the sighin'!

9:58 - My mom was probably right when she said, about half an hour ago:

I'll bet a lot of people are tuning out about now, satisfied that Palin is competent and smart, but pretty bored.

10:03 - Someone should have coached Biden that when he mentions his work with Dick Lugar, it's not too effective to just say he "worked with Dick Lugar!" Many Americans are not a walking "Who's Who" of Republican members of Congress.

10:04 - Palin: "Oh, man, it's so obvious that I'm a Washington outsider and just not used to the way you guys operate!" And then, Biden pats down his brow. On sheer theatrics, Palin definitely won that moment.

10:07 - Palin tells us that tomorrow we'll find out which of them was right about Biden's position on Iraq because the "pundits" will tell us! So I guess she trusts the media elites on some things.

10:08 - Responding to Ifill's question about the possibility of Obama dying in office, Biden avoids becoming the next Michael Dukakis.

10:10 - Palin on her differences with McCain: "Whatdaya expect -- we're a team of mavericks! ... I'm gonna keep pushing him on ANWR." This is after she repeatedly raked Biden over the coals for arguable differences Biden has had with Obama. So I guess it's OK if the running mate and nominee disagree, as long as they ... what? Do it with a certain "can-do" attitude?

10:12 - "Oh, there you go, Joe ... now doggone it! ... I know your wife is a schoolteacher -- now God bless her, her reward is in Heaven!" Palin is going into Palin-overdrive!

10:18 - Palin apparently missed the fact that Ifill was asking her not whether her experience is valuable, but what her "real Achilles' heel" is.

10:19 - Palin used to not have health insurance, so she knows what that's like. Well, that's the problem with the excessive focus in this race on empathy. Anyone can have it. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your policies.

10:21 - Biden starts to choke up talking about how even though he's a man, he knows what it's like to raise kids on his own (which he did after his first wife died). [Added: Video -- near the end of this short clip.]

10:23 - Biden on McCain: "I love him!" The McCain attack ad practically writes itself!

10:24 - Biden on McCain: "Maverick he is not." Syntax Biden has.

10:30 - Palin gently alludes to the enormous disparity between her performance in interviews and in this very debate: "I like being able to talk directly to the American people, without the filter of the media telling people what they're about to hear."

10:33 - Biden ends on a chilling note, referring to the fact that both he and Palin have sons who are being deployed to Iraq: "For both of us, selfishly, may God protect our troops."

10:34 - Palin to Ifill right after the debate: "'Preciate that! That was very helpful!"

10:34 - OK, so she's not that bad...

Sarah Palin — engaged in world affairs, just doesn't want to leave anybody out

A new snippet from Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin just came out, and it should resolve any question about whether Palin has had a long-standing interest in the issues facing our country and our world (scroll down for the transcript):



Transcript:

Katie Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious: what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Sarah Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

KC: But, like, what ones specifically? I'm curious.

SP: All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years.

KC: Can you name a few?

SP: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where, it's kind of suggested and it seems like, "Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C. may be thinking and doing when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

Michael Crowley reacts:

"All of them"? Not just Commentary but Dissent, too? Impressive!

(And have you heard that they've merged to form Dysentery?)

Well, I don't know if she's been reading those, but I have a feeling she's a fan of Seinfeld -- particularly the episode called "The Red Dot," where George is sucking up to Elaine's boss, Mr. Lippman, to try to get a job:

MR. LIPPMAN: So, have you ever done this kind of work before?

GEORGE: Well, you know, book reports — that kind of stuff.

MR. LIPPMAN: Who do you read?

GEORGE: I like Mike Lupica.

MR. LIPPMAN: Mike Lupica?

GEORGE: He's a sports writer for the Daily News. I find him very insightful...

MR. LIPPMAN: No, no, no — I mean authors.

GEORGE: Oh! Lot of good ones ... lot of ... good ones. I don't even want to mention anyone because I'm afraid I'm going to leave somebody out.

MR. LIPPMAN: Name a couple.

GEORGE: Who do I like? ... I like ... uh ... Art ... Vandelay.

MR. LIPPMAN: Art Vandelay?

GEORGE: He's an obscure writer. Beatnik, from the Village.

MR. LIPPMAN: What has he written?

GEORGE: Venetian Blinds.

UPDATE: Palin was asked the same question in an interview today (Oct. 3). Now that she's had weeks to think about it, she has some specifics. See the last minute of this YouTube clip.

More of the greatest moments from the 2008 presidential race (up to 99)

And now: the latest installment of my ongoing list of the greatest moments from the 2008 race for president.

In case you missed them the first time, here are the previous installments:
1 - 44 (on the path to becoming #44)
45 - 77

As always, I've mostly given just quotes without attributions so that the list can double as a fun trivia game to test your campaign knowledge, if you so desire.

The new ones are mostly from the general election, with a few stragglers from the primaries that were just too good not to include:

78. "Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."
[blog]

79. "Did I mention he's black?"
[video]

80. Obama kicks off the general election by reaching out to whites
[video]

81. "We should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies."
[video] + [commentary]

82. "How do we beat the bitch?" "... That's an excellent question."
[video]

83. "That's not change we can believe in!"
[video, starting at 1:20 and interspersed with commentary]

84.  "[She] came to us with news that, as parents, we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned."
[story]

85. "That old Beach Boys song, 'Bomb Iran'? Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb..."
[video]

86. "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?" "In what respect, Charlie?"
[video + transcript]

87. "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
[story]

88. "I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere."
---> "I was for infrastructure being built in the state, and it's not inappropriate for a mayor or a governor to request and to work with ... their Congressmen, their Congresswomen, to plug into the federal budget ... a share of the federal budget for infrastructure. What I supported was a link between the airport and the community, and we have found that link now."
[video]

89. "I just gotta make clear: I got tested with Michelle."
[video]

90. "Learning about sex before learning to read?!"
[video]

91. "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession."
[video]

92. "I wanna cut his nuts off."
[video]

93. awkwardest pause ever
[video]

94. "He's the biggest celebrity in the world."
[video]

95. "I think -- I'll have my staff get to you. It's condominiums where ... I'll have them get to you."
[audio] + [story]

96. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American, who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
[story]

97. "I've been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years, as anybody who's been around us knows. ... So the story's just false."
[video]

98. "Suppose for example you're a voter. And you've got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don't think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom would you vote? [pause] This has nothing to do with what's going on now."
[story]

99. "I want you to ask yourselves: were you just in this campaign for me?"
[video + transcript]


(Photo of the Obamas and Bidens from Obama. Photo of Palin with troops originally from a government site and preserved by A Second Hand Conjecture. Photo of McCain on TV by sloomis08.)

Thanks again for the bridge to nowhere

Yesterday I pointed out that, as the New York Times apparently didn't realize, Sarah Palin is still supporting the so-called bridge to nowhere.

But I also said something is bothering me about what the whole bridge-to-nowhere debacle says about the state of the race.

This Slate article is a good starting point: even discussing earmarks at all could be implicitly forfeiting a more important argument to McCain:

The Obama campaign has been working hard to make an issue of the Bridge to Nowhere, and the McCain campaign doesn't mind. Aides believe any discussion about earmarks is one McCain is winning. Instead of talking about taxes or the larger economy and whether McCain's policies will be a change from Bush's, Obama is arguing over a $16 billion portion of the budget where McCain has actually been a force for change. Arguing over earmarks shrinks the field of debate into one where he has a long track record. Obama has waged no significant battles with Democrats.

Of course, almost any issue is an issue Obama has no "long track record" on, because Obama doesn't have much experience, period. But that obviously can't be much consolation for Obama supporters (of whom I am one).

I have to wonder: could it be that Obama just isn't very comfortable talking policy specifics, and that's why he's chosen the easier tack of pointing out the falsehoods in McCain/Palin's assertions instead of questioning their basic economic premises?

Jon Chait has pointed out that (1) earmarks just aren't very important, and (2) the McCain campaign seems unwilling to single out specific earmarks for criticism aside from the bridge to nowhere. Presumably that's because if voters were faced with the reality of what earmarks are really about, their reaction would be, "Hey, that actually sounds pretty good!" (That's why earmarks increased when they became more transparent.)

Big picture: McCain's position on this is pretty weak, and Obama himself has procured a lot of earmarks. So why doesn't Obama proactively admit this and justify his position to the people?

To be clear, I'm not accusing Obama of being deceptive on this, since he's actually been forthcoming in divulging the relevant information about his record. A couple examples chosen semi-randomly from his website:

AIDSCARE, Inc., for general operating support, $750,000 -- AIDSCARE is a non-profit, non-sectarian organization that provides housing and care for homeless children, families and adults living with advanced HIV/AIDS in the Chicago Area. ...

Chicago State University, for research into unmanned aerial systems, $5,000,000 -- Funding will be used to improve the effectiveness of the military's unmanned aerial systems by replacing conventional power supply systems with fuel cell technology packages specifically made for mobile robotics systems.

How hard could it be for the Obama campaign to talk about federal funding of these programs in a positive light?

(A caveat: without having scoured through every single one of Obama's statements, I can't say for sure that he hasn't made the argument I'm describing. But I assume the campaign hasn't emphasized it, since I haven't heard it. Also, he was asked about his record on earmarks in one of the primary debates, and I vaguely remember thinking his answer was weak.)

There's a broader point in all this: why does Obama keep letting his campaign get lured into quicksand by McCain? It's seeming more and more like every time Obama tries out some new initiative or campaign strategy, McCain takes it and turns it into something negative. Off the top of my head: the choice of setting for his convention speech ... the emphasis on his "community organizer" background ... the "lipstick on a pig" critique of McCain's message ... the decision to choose Joe Biden over Hillary Clinton ...

For each of those cases, you can easily defend Obama's decision if you want to. But isn't there an undeniable pattern? (1) Obama does something that seems like a good idea; (2) McCain gets the better of him somehow; (3) the Obama campaign uses up a lot of energy and media coverage reacting to McCain; (4) the whole thing ends up looking like a big mess that neither candidate really won or lost.

Could it be that Obama is just not such a great candidate, and that if the nominee had been one of any number of other Democratic primary candidates (including "candidates" who didn't even choose to run but surely considered it), that person would have been as effective in the general election if not more so? I've resisted this conclusion for a long time, but I've been increasingly thinking that it's simply too obvious to ignore. More about this soon ...

Hey, thanks for the bridge to nowhere!

I usually stay away from rank punditry and campaign-related error correction on this blog, but I have to point this out...

The New York Times had a story on Friday that seemed to be very hard-hitting against Sarah Palin and John McCain's stormy relationship with the truth. Most of the article was about McCain's lying ads, but there was also this:

[W]hat Ms. Palin has often told audiences about pulling the plug on the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, an expensive federal project to build a bridge to a sparsely populated Alaskan island that became a symbol of wasteful federal spending. “I told Congress, ‘Thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska,” she said this week in Virginia.

But her position was more like “please” before it became “no thanks.” Ms. Palin supported the bridge project while running for governor, and abandoned it after it became a national scandal and Congress said the state could keep the money for other projects. As a mayor and governor, she hired lobbyists to request millions in federal spending for Alaska. In an ABC News interview on Friday with Charles Gibson, Ms. Palin largely stuck to her version of the events.

Here's the problem: while that appears to be the NYT going after Sarah Palin and McCain for their lies about Palin's record, the Times is actually going too easy on them.

All the Times says is: she originally supported the bridge, before she rejected the earmarks.

That itself would be bad, but that's not the whole story.

Assuming that this news story is accurate (link via TPM), Palin is still, to this day, supporting the bridge to nowhere:

Gov. Palin’s administration acknowledges that it is still pursuing a project that would link Ketchikan to its airport -- with the help of as much as $73 million in federal funds earmarked by Congress for the original project.

"What the media isn't reporting is that the project isn't dead," Roger Wetherell, spokesman for Alaska’s Department of Transportation, said. In a process begun this past winter, the state’s DOT is currently considering (PDF) a number of alternative solutions (five other possible bridges or three different ferry routes) to link Ketchikan and Gravina Island.

The DOT has not yet developed cost estimates for those proposals, Wetherell said, but $73 million of the approximately $223 million Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Rep. Don Young (R-AK) earmarked for the bridge in 2005 has been set aside for the Gravina Access Project.

So, this is yet more fuel for the argument that the Obama campaign seems to be testing out, albeit somewhat haltingly so far: "John McCain would rather lose his integrity than lose an election." [UPDATE: Right after I posted that, this Obama ad debuted.]

You know, I'm all in favor of them making that argument ... but at the same time, there's something about this whole focus on earmarks that doesn't inspire me with tons of confidence in Obama. Stop back tomorrow, and I'll explain ...

UPDATE: Continued here.