The New Contract on America

After the 2006 midterm elections, my prediction was that Barack Obama would run against Newt Gingrich for the presidency this year. Roberk Novak reports today that I may simply have gotten the year wrong:

Gingrich is far from a unanimous or even a consensus choice to run for president in 2012. But there is a strong feeling in Republican ranks that he is the only leader of their party who has shown the skill and energy to attempt a comeback quickly.

Even one of his strongest supporters for president in 2012 admits it is a "very risky choice." But Republicans are in a desperate mood after the fiasco of John McCain's seemingly safe candidacy.

Republicans appear chastened by the failure of seeking moderate, independent and even Democrat votes. They are ready to try going back to the "old-time religion."

Strikingly, the GOP seems to have "learned" the lesson that they were not conservative enough. As I've mentioned before, generational demographics make this a serious mis-reading of the outcome.


At any rate, this will be fun to watch.

Drilling Down

All the interesting breakdowns of Tuesday's results are starting to pop up.

Mark Newman provides a nice collection of maps and cartograms for both 2004 and 2008:

In the end, he argues that a more nuanced view is better:

For the more demographic driven geeks, Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State provides some interesting trendlines. It's clear that young people are moving left:

And so is the electorate:

The Genius of Our President-Elect

I thought that I might experience post-election depression due to the lack of an outlet for my hope and enthusiasm once the campaign goal was reached. As if on cue, I received the following email from the Obama campaign last night:

*************************************
Marina --
I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.

We just made history.

And I don't want you to forget how we did it.

You made history every single day during this campaign -- every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it's time for change.

I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign.

We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next.

But I want to be very clear about one thing...

All of this happened because of you.

Thank you,

Barack
**************************************

This short note says a lot in both its words and tone. Rather than proclaiming victory or touting Obama's achievement as an individual, the message emphasizes the success of a (huge) group effort and capitalizes on the network built during the campaign to keep us engaged in the "work to do to get our country back on track."

I can't wait to continue to help Obama as he transitions from my candidate to my president. Service is the new flag pin. Brilliant.

Tracking the Data

The Huffinton Post has offered a Guide For Watching Election Night Results. It's worth poking around here, 'cause there are a lot of useful links to electoral and other maps, including the increasingly popular and aesthetically pleasing closing time map (taste the rainbow!). Based on what I've read about the questionable reliability of exit polling, I'm a bit confused as to why Team Huffington has given so much credence to this "data," but there's lots of other good stuff to peruse, too.

The first polls close in 16 minutes!

The Truth from Philly

Fox News reports on the reality of election monitor "intimidation" in Philly:

At best, this is a non-story.  At worst, it's a reflection of the honest efforts by poll workers in Philly to fight back against the GOP voter-suppression effort.  Turnout in Philly may very well determine the outcome in PA.

Andrew Sullivan's Closing Argument

Sullivan has a great summary of what's at stake in this election:

These mistakes were compounded - and in large part created - by what I believe will one day be seen as the core event of the last eight years: the collapse of constitutional order and the rule of law fomented in a mixture of hubris and laziness by the president himself. It is now indisputable that the president and vice-president of the United States engineered a de facto coup against the constitution after 9/11, declaring themselves above any law, any treaty, and any basic moral norm in their misguided mission to rid the world of evil. This blog has watched this process with increasing dismay - and watched several attempts to bring the US back to sanity foiled by a relentless and unhinged vice-president's office.

Cheney and Bush, unlike any presidency in American history, have dangerously pushed constitutional government to the brink of collapse. They did not merely assert a unified executive in which actions and regulations reserved to the executive branch were kept free from Congressional and judicial tampering. That is a perfectly defensible position, especially in wartime. They did not merely act in the immediate wake of an emergency to protect American citizens swiftly - again a perfectly legitimate use of executive power, unhampered by Congress or courts. They declared such power to be unlimited; they asserted also that it was as permanent as the emergency they declared; they claimed their dictatorial powers were inherent in the presidency itself, and above any legal constraints; they ordered their own lawyers to provide retroactive and laughable legal immunity for their crimes; they by-passed all the usual and necessary checks within the executive branch to ensure prudence and legality and self-doubt in the conduct of a war; they asserted that emergency war powers applied to the territory of the United States itself; they claimed the right to seize anyone - anyone, citizen or not - they deemed an "enemy combatant," to hold them indefinitely with no due process and to torture them until they became incoherent, broken, brutalized shells of human beings, if they survived at all. They did this to the guilty and they did this to the innocent. But they also had no way of reliably knowing which was which and who was who. Never before in wartime has the precious, sacred inheritance of free people been treated with such contempt by the leaders of the democratic West.

The entire post is definitely worth reading, but I'll cannibalize one more incisive passage:

It will not be easy. The world will soon remember why it resents America as well as loves it. But until this unlikely fellow with the funny ears and strange name and exotic biography emerged on the scene, I had begun to wonder if it was possible at all. I had almost given up hope, and he helped restore it. That is what is stirring out there; and although you are welcome to mock me for it, I remain unashamed. As someone once said, in the unlikely story of America, there is never anything false about hope. Obama, moreover, seems to bring out the best in people, and the calmest, and the sanest. He seems to me to have a blend of Midwestern good sense, an intuitive understanding of the developing world that is as much our future now as theirs', an analyst's mind and a poet's tongue. He is human. He is flawed. He will make mistakes. His passivity and ambiguity are sometimes weaknesses as well as strengths.

But there is something about his rise that is also supremely American, a reminder of why so many of us love this country so passionately and are filled with such grief at what has been done to it and in its name. I endorse Barack Obama because I will not give up on America, because I believe in America, and in her constitution and decency and character and strength.

And the world needs that America now as much as it ever has. Can we start that healing, that rebirth, tomorrow?

Yes. We. Can.

Rove's Final Map

Rove has Obama winning 338-220:

H/T: Marc Ambinder

Tuesday's Timeline

The Moderate Voice has a summary of what to watch when tomorrow. They also point to a great map of the schedule. Looks like 8PM EDT is a good time to tune in, but we'll start to see a landslide between 7 and 8 -- should there be one.

My EV Projection, Looking Good

Earlier today, I took a stab at predicting the Electoral Vote outcome:

My own map is a blowout. I'm bullish on GA, ND, NC, IN and MO. The final EV counts on that map:

Obama: 393
McCain: 145

At the time I thought it was an optimistic projection, but analysis on Pollster.com suggests that I may have drawn the line at exactly the right spot. Based on an average which adjusts for discrepancies between polls based on the use of cell-phones in a poll's sample, they get the following results for the crucial swing states:

Here's hoping!

Update: Here's my map:

The MSNBC map widget is here.

A Mercenary-Run Election?

Wired has a scary story today:

CIA-linked private military contractor Evergreen Defense & Security Services offered to post sentries at Oregon election offices on Tuesday, "detaining troublemakers" and making sure voters "do not get out of control." 

Update: More on Evergreen:

Evergreen Defense & Security Services is affiliated with Del Smith’s McMinnville-based cargo airline company. It exudes the gung-ho patriotism that is associated with the company founder, a political conservative who enjoys close ties with the federal government and military.

The company’s vision, according to its website, is “to help ensure the God-given right of peace, freedom and democracy to all people.” 

The View from One Day Out

Nate Silver is out with a few new breakdowns. First, his projection map as of Monday morning:

He also generates an interesting histogram showing the relative "biases" of polls including (yellow) and excluding (grey) cell phones in their samples:

And he provides the maps for the most likely McCain upsets:

Obama is +8 and over 50% in this weekend's NBC/WSJ Poll, so it's probably going to be a good day. I suspect the undecideds simply won't break at all, given the reporting I'm seeing on wait times at polling stations -- and some GOTV that I did yesterday. 

Early in the night, watch VA, PA and OH. In a close race, watch CO and NV. My own map is a blowout. I'm bullish on GA, ND, NC, IN and MO. The final EV counts on that map:

Obama:    393

McCain:   145

More on the End Game

Sean Quinn wraps up his On the Road series with a comparison of the two ground games:

These ground campaigns do not bear any relationship to one another. One side has something in the neighborhood of five million volunteers all assigned to very clear and specific pieces of the operation, and the other seems to have something like a thousand volunteers scattered throughout the country. Jon Tester's 2006 Senate race in Montana had more volunteers -- by a mile -- than John McCain's 2006 presidential campaign.

When Republican volunteers talk to us about how much enthusiasm and participation they notice in fellow volunteers, they mention how many people have come to pick up yard signs or bumper stickers. We haven't yet seen a single Republican canvasser. (The one in Cortez, CO was staged; she said canvassing is the kind of thing she would do, and we made a decision to do the picture because we were concerned with not presenting "balance." There is no balance in the facts.)

The Battle for the GOP

Anyone familiar with GOP politics knows that there are two main camps: the cultural conservatives and the small-government conservatives.  Of course, the real problem for the McCain campaign is that neither camp really likes him that much, maverick that he is.  But philosophically, he's essentially a small-government conservative -- with the alarmingly bombastic foreign policy instincts seen in both of the GOP camps, but more often among the cultural conservatives. Whether McCain wins or loses, there is a gigantic civil war brewing in the GOP. Indeed, the battle lines are already being drawn on the post-election terrain. 

The hard-liners (basically, anyone who still argues that Palin was a good pick) seem to be the presumptive inheritors of the post-election GOP. This group consists mostly of cultural conservatives and has been hard at work generating purge lists. This post on Townhall is typical, perhaps more civil than most I've seen:

The new conservative movement will be facing a political opponent that will reveal itself soon to be both multiculturalist and Eurosocialist. We will be engaged in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country. As I did at the beginning of and throughout the Buckley/Goldwater/Reagan/Gingrich conservative movement, I will try to lend my hand. I certainly will do what I can to make it a big-tent conservative movement. But just as it does in every great cause, one question has to be answered correctly: Whose side are you on, comrade?

As I've mentioned before, this knee-jerk purging has put the GOP on the ropes.  In particular, the small government camp has found itself largely without a home. Indeed, many have endorsed Obama -- but don't seem seriously at risk of defecting permanently to Democratic Party (yet).

Aside from the selection of the cabinet, this will be the most interesting story between the election and the inauguration -- possibly much longer. Among the important questions will be:

1. Which camp really is the presumptive flag-bearer of the party?
2. Will the "losing" camp stay on board or jump ship?
3. If the party really does split irreparably, where will the refugees go: to the new (pragmatic) Democratic Party, or somewhere else?

This is coalition building at its finest ... It will be fun to watch.

Palin on the First Amendment

ABC news reports that:

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

So does the same standard apply to ads that compare McCain to the incumbent president from his own party? Wouldn't labeling those as "negative" have a similar chilling effect?

Either way, this argument is ridiculous. Formulated in plain language it reads: "We should limit speech rights to protect speech rights."

Krugman as Pollster

Krugman on the apparent Obama advantage:

But I suspect that the main reason for the dramatic swing in the polls is something less concrete and more meta than the fact that events have discredited free-market fundamentalism. As the economic scene has darkened, I’d argue, Americans have rediscovered the virtue of seriousness. And this has worked to Mr. Obama’s advantage, because his opponent has run a deeply unserious campaign.

That's basically my own suspicion as well. Plus, there's nothing Americans like more than "common sense" and, more than anything else, that's what Obama's selling.

Godless America

So I took a day off to go see my beloved Red Wings lose to the Sharks. I have to say, the Sharks look good this year.  At any rate, please forgive me for a brief foray into a slightly-stale news story.

Elizabeth Dole has launched an ad in the NC Senate race "accusing" her opponent, Kay Hagan of consorting with atheists:

The ad then shows members of the group, which promotes rights for atheists and the separation of church and state, declaring that neither God nor Jesus exists.

"Godless Americans and Kay Hagan," the ad continues. "She hid from cameras. Took 'Godless' money. What did Kay Hagan promise in return?"

The ad ends with a picture of Hagan and a voice that sounds like hers declaring, "There is no God."

It's good to see that the Hagan camp is willing to fight back, but the way they do it feeds into the very biases that Dole is attempting to exploit in the first place:

"I think Elizabeth Dole has just gone to the lowest of the lows," Hagan said of the ad during an appearance on a talk show on WPTF-AM in Raleigh, North Carolina. "This is an attack on my Christian faith."

Hagan, who described herself as a Sunday school teacher and an elder at a Presbyterian church in Greensboro, North Carolina, urged Dole to "pull this kind of despicable ad."

Let me get this out of the way: I'm an atheist.  To be clear, I'm not a Dawkins / Maher / Hitchens anti-theist, I simply believe that there is no god.   People often ask: "Well, if you have no proof and don't want to convert others to your belief, then aren't you just an agnostic?" Frankly, no.  As I said, I believe that there is no god.  I'm not on the fence.

Those are my beliefs, and I'm aware that yours are equally personal.  So I'm not in the business of trying to interfere with people's faith or religious traditions, unless they contradict some independent moral standard -- as, for instance, a belief in human sacrifice would.

That said, I wonder when someone with a big soapbox will have a Colin Powell/Campbell Brown moment and stand up to say "so what?" What evidence do we have that atheists are immoral -- or even amoral? Why does morality pre-suppose a belief in God?  Isn't there room in our public square for those who openly admit that the world we can see contains more wonder than a single person can perceive in a lifetime; whose love for humanity stems directly from their belief that life is fleeting, profound and unique?

The simple human desire to be taken seriously as a moral agent is my only motivation to profess my atheist beliefs. Make no mistake about it, until standing up and announcing to the world "I'm a proud atheist" does not disqualify you from federal elected office, I will continue to stand regularly and announce to the world:

I am a proud atheist.

In doing so I'm not trying to take away your beliefs ... just to keep mine from being ridiculed.

Still More on ACORN and GOP Voter Suppression

The GOP and its operatives have been busily suppressing votes all over the country. The ACLU is now fighting back with a lawsuit:

Nineteen year old Francisco Martinez appeared at a press conference this morning convened by ACORN to announce a new commercial and a series of law suits filed on behalf of voters illegally targeted to have their votes suppressed by right wing xenophobes.

Martinez filled out a voter registration application during a voter registration drive organized by ACORN at his high school earlier this year, and had his registration confirmed for him by the county board of elections. He later learned that his private information, including his social security number, were violated and used illegally to target him and many others for removal from voter lists. He is a plaintiff in a class action law suit announced Monday, filed by the ACLU.

And ACORN responds to its critics with a new ad:

Greenhouse Gases Strike Again

Science Daily reports today:

The ocean has helped slow global warming by absorbing much of the excess heat and heat-trapping carbon dioxide that has been going into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

All that extra carbon dioxide, however, has been a bitter pill for the ocean to swallow. It's changing the chemistry of seawater, making it more acidic and otherwise inhospitable, threatening many important marine organisms.

Scientists call ocean acidification "the other carbon dioxide problem." They warn that because it causes such fundamental changes in the ocean, it could impact millions of people who depend on the ocean for food and resources. "The growing amount of carbon dioxide in the ocean could have a bigger effect on life on Earth than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," says JPL's Charles Miller, deputy principal investigator for NASA's new Orbiting Carbon Observatory, scheduled to launch next January.

Can we finally agree that CO2 is a pollutant?

The really big question is how much longer the ocean can continue to be a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide before becoming saturated -- a process that may already be under way. The implications for our future climate -- and the ocean -- are immense.

Fight to the Finish ... Only 6 Days Left

A quick reminder:

If you want to call voters in PA, here's the Obama phone-banking widget.

More on Generational Politics

We have only just begun:

H/T: Sullivan

Inciting to Riot 11

More of the same at a McCain-Palin rally in Pennsylvania:

Jeffrey Feldman sums it up perfectly [emphasis mine]:

As the 2008 race winds down, McCain's cynical campaign in Pennsylvania and other close states has succeeded in undermining any semblance of debate over real problems in America. In shouting violent epithets, the McCain supporters in Pottsville have abandoned any interest in real problems, choosing instead to tilt at windmills. Is America in real danger of a Manchurian candidate seizing hold of the White House by hiding his true identity from billions of people the world over for decades? Sadly, that is not even the real question that concerns the country. What we should all be asking is: Can we afford to waste even one more second on useless bigotry and fear that does nothing but prevent us from working together to solve real problems?

The answer is a resounding: No!

Imagine what it would mean for the United States and the world if the mob politics of McCain's campaign were to dominate the next 8 years. It would ruin this country--destroy it every level.

A victory for McCain delivered by an enraged campaign mob would shatter any and all possibility for deliberative democracy. Democratic government based on conversation would give way to rule by mobilizing panic. If victory comes at the hands of rage and panic, governing by the same is quick to follow.

What a world it would be. A world completely devoid of solutions to any of the problems we face. A world without healthcare. A world without retirement security. A world without effective education. A world without renewable energy. A world not fueled by optimism and American pragmatism, but by constant, never ending alarm.

The McCain campaign panic Americans see in Pennsylvania is more than just a window onto an ugly side of American life. It is a warning.

If you want to call voters in PA, here's the Obama phone-banking widget.

Ted Stevens, A Look Back

As we reflect on today's conviction of Ted Stevens, we should bear in mind his enormous contribution to our understanding of the Internet. A quick reminder of the highlights:

But this service is now going to go through the internet* and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

[ ... ]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Good times. Listen to the whole speech, it's worth it. 

Obama's Closing Argument

GOP Voter Suppression

The GOP voter suppression campaign has begun.  The Virginian-Pilot reports today that:

A phony State Board of Elections flier advising Republicans to vote on Nov. 4 and Democrats on Nov. 5 is being circulated in several Hampton Roads localities, according to state election officials.

Here's a screenshot of the flier:

As I've mentioned before, voter suppression is the heart of the GOP electoral strategy. And this is a textbook case of the GOP's voter suppression strategy. Don't believe the ACORN hype, there is only one party actively trying to steal this election.

Why Vote?

Pages all over the right-wing blogosphere are playing up a simple stat from California:

The results are simply shocking. The polls showed Barack Obama with an 18 point lead in California just a few days ago. The results thus far are the complete opposite. In the most liberal state in the entire country,the results are that 99,000 Republicans have voted and 96,000 Democrats voted. In the mail-in balloting the results so far are that 9,000 Democrats sent in their ballots and that 5,000 Republicans did so. So with nearly 210,000 people having voted,the Democrats have only a 1,000 vote advantage !

If we take the liberty of assuming that all Republicans will vote for John McCain and all Democrats will vote for Obama,then the race is incredibly close. I'm sure that Obama will eventually win in California,but if he is struggling here after he pushed so hard for early voting,then he will lose the election ! Everybody thought he would win California in a landslide,but so far anyway,it's very tight. That means that in the less liberal states he is in real trouble.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that this is a seriously bad reading of turnout data. Indeed, the GOP apologists have been cherry-picking data for weeks now in order to keep their base in the race. That said, we cannot win if we do not vote. The takeaway message: vote!

On Jobs and Taxes

So the main (policy) focus of the McCain campaign this week has been taxes. Essentially, their continued arguments are that:

1. The Obama tax plan will put the incomes of hard-working Americans a risk;
2. Progressive taxation is "socialist" and amounts to nothing other than wealth redistribution;
3. Low taxes, especially for the wealthy, are the engine of job growth (which, according to GOP orthodoxy is an indisputable a priori fact of the universe).
   

Of course (1) is a well-known lie.  If you are interested in more details about the impact of the Obama tax plan for any given income range, the campaign offers a widget to help compute it. But there is also plenty of independent reporting out there on the subject.

Argument (2) is just plain silly, but consider McCain's own comments on progressive taxation from as recently as 2000:

At an October 2000 town hall on MSNBC’s Hardball, an audience member asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about why the rich pay higher taxes than the middle class. McCain defended progressive taxation, stating, “I think it’s to some degree because we feel, obviously, that wealthy people can afford more”

Of course, this is also the substance of his argument against the Bush tax cuts. McCain has since distanced himself from this stance, which is perhaps why he doesn't bring up Teddy Roosevelt so much anymore:

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar?s worth of service rendered?not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective, a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

Even the socialists are confused by what the McCain camp might mean:

Local communists, rarely tapped as campaign pundits, say Sen. Barack Obama and his policies stand far afield from any form of socialism they know.

And the New Republic rounds out the argument elegantly:

But let’s get back to this apparently controverisal phrase--which, I gather, is going to remain prominent in McCain's campaign rhetoric over the next few days. What, exactly, is so awful about "spreading the wealth"?

Indeed.  

But what about part (3)?  Is it really the case that tax cuts are irrefutably good for job growth? Turns out, not so much:

It remains to be seen if this strategy will get any traction, but Nate Silver picks the money stat out of a recent CBS/NYT poll:

In short, it just ain't true and people aren't buying it.

The Effects of an Obama Landslide

I've argued that we stand at an important cross-roads in history; that we are on the verge a generational transfer of power; that the GOP may soon spend 30 years in the wilderness.  

My instinct always told me that I liked Jonathan Alter, but his story this week in Newsweek confirms my suspicions once and for all.  He lays out the substance of the broader argument in detail -- exploring in particular the potential impact of an Obama landslide.

Speaking of the iconic "Average Joe", he begins:

Even if Joe stays Republican, Barack Obama will still likely win. That's because he has built a huge base of non-Joes—better-educated, younger whites, as well as women and minorities. These voters are the future of the electorate and they're progressive. If they turn out in the numbers expected, they could restructure American politics for a generation.

But he goes on:

If Obama moves "smart left" next year, he will have succeeded in rewriting the American social contract—the obligations of the government to the people on the economy, energy, health care and education. But if we see a revival of the dumb left with old-fashioned capitulation to interest groups and a series of rookie mistakes on foreign policy, even a big Democratic victory next month would be a speed bump on the Ronald Reagan highway.

[ ... ]

At every campaign stop last week, McCain derided Obama's statement to Joe the Plumber that we should be "spreading the wealth around." In the old center-right world, such an idea would be offensive to many voters because it sounds socialistic—grabbing money from taxpayers and putting it in someone else's pocket. But the cold war is over (taking the sting out of cries of socialism), and a lot has changed in the past month. Using taxpayer dollars to bail out colossally greedy and incompetent bankers is "spreading the wealth around," too. Voters are beginning to figure that if banks facing bankruptcy deserve the government's help, maybe people facing bankruptcy do as well.

[ ... ]

The Schlesinger theory of the cycles of history still makes the most sense. Over the past century, we've moved in roughly 30-year cycles, from the Progressive Era to the laissez-faire 1920s to the New Deal to the Reagan years. As it happened, Arthur Schlesinger's timing was a bit off. He dated the last burst of liberalism to the mid-1960s and thus expected a revival in the 1990s. But the conservative era arguably began in 1978 when Rep. William Steiger won approval of a bill that cut the capital-gains tax from 50 percent to 25 percent. We're now exactly 30 years down the road from that.

Does that mean the country is still center-right if we fail to restore confiscatory tax levels? Hardly. Just because Democrats aren't stupid enough anymore to go the Walter Mondale route and promise to raise everyone's taxes doesn't mean they are conceding the ideological argument. In fact, Obama has neutralized or even turned the tax issue to his advantage with positions on taxing the rich that would have once been easily dismissed as class warfare. And with his hawkish comments on bombing Pakistan if necessary to kill Osama bin Laden, we are moving past the time when a credible commitment to defend the United States militarily was the exclusive province of the Republican Party.

[ ... ]

Reagan's revolution in 1980 was so striking that it conditioned a whole generation to believe it was permanent. Many scholars even believed the GOP had an "electoral lock" on the presidency—an insurmountable geographical advantage in the Electoral College. Bill Clinton's victories in 1992 and 1996 didn't do much to change the map; he won both times with less than 50 percent of the vote, thanks to the presence of independent Ross Perot in those races.

[ ... ]

If he wins, Obama could run aground in a thousand ways next year. He will have to possess all the dexterity he's shown during the campaign, and then some. If he fails to deliver, the country will go back to the center-right. But if he gets a few big things enacted in his first year, Barack Obama would have a fighting chance to move the country to a new place, or at least one we haven't seen for a while. Leftward ho!

Right on, Jonathan.  Thanks.

Inciting to Riot 10

Talking Points Memo follows-up on the the strange Todd case:

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

It seems they are determined to finish this campaign by attempting to appeal to the worst in people.  Particularly alarming is the affect this has been having on some of McCain's most militant supporters.  The Fayetteville Observer reported on Monday:

Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies are investigating. The tires were cut while people were inside the Crown Coliseum listening to speeches, said Maj. E. Wright of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.

Media Bias in the Reality-Based Community

Marc Ambinder and Andrew Sullivan sit down and talk about the importance of "fairness" in an election where the facts demonstrate a clear bias:

Richie and the Fonz Endorse Obama

The River Becomes an Ocean

The Boston Globe reports that:

Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, a Republican, is endorsing Democrat Barack Obama for president, citing the senator's steady leadership, good judgment and ability to unify Democrats, Republicans and independents.

"Senator Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who will transform our politics and restore America's standing in the world," Weld said in a statement released Friday. "We need a president who will lead based on our common values and Senator Obama demonstrates an ability to unite and inspire.

And Scott McClellan endorsed Obama yesterday on CNN:

Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary who sharply criticized President Bush in his memoir last spring, told CNN Thursday he's voting for Barack Obama.

"From the very beginning I have said I am going to support the candidate that has the best chance for changing the way Washington works and getting things done and I will be voting for Barack Obama and clapping," McClellan told new CNN Host D.L. Hughley

And Politico reports that even those still on board the SS McCain are looking for the life vests:

With despair rising even among many of John McCain’s own advisers, influential Republicans inside and outside his campaign are engaged in an intense round of blame-casting and rear-covering — much of it virtually conceding that an Election Day rout is likely.

McCain Volunteer Attacked, Malkin Shows Some Class

So the right wing blogosphere is up in arms over this story:

A campaign volunteer for John McCain told police she was robbed at knifepoint at an ATM and knocked down by a man who then carved a "B" in her face after noticing a sticker for the presidential candidate on her car.

Of course, you only need to look at the photo to figure out who put the 'B' on her face (hint: I've decided to publish the culprit's picture here as well).

Strangely, Michelle Malkin holds it together and does the right thing:

Maaaaybe the alleged robber straddled her upside-down while carving it into her face.

Maybe.

But I’ve got my doubts. 

UPDATE: Police now confirm that this story is made up.

Assessing the CW on Obama

I wished earlier this month that I had a dime for every time CW was wrong. Well, if you throw in the CW that McCain is better at Town Halls than Obama, a new post on Salon points out that I'm getting close to a dollar:

1) The Cult of Sarah Palin

2) Steve Schmidt Is a Genius
3) The Price at the Pump Will Fuel the Mood of the Voters
4) Obama Should Have Taken the Money ... and Run
5) Obama Was Guilty of Hubris in Trying to Expand the Map
6) Down-ballot Democrats Will Flee From Obama
7) The Hillary Holdouts Will Never Come Back

Of course, I think the number is much bigger than that. That said, if we don't keep up the fight, one piece of CW that will bear out is that hubris will defeat us.

More on Real America

Jon Stewart gets it right:

Where Their Heads Are At

I guess I like South Park as much as the next Gen-Xer, but here's a telling stat from Nielsen:

As might be expected, however, several programs had clear partisan bents. On Comedy Central, for example, Democratic viewers paid the most attention to “The Colbert Report,” while “South Park” was the network’s most engaging show among Republicans.

A Palin Presidency: Educating our Kids

What kind of a job would Palin do if she were put in charge of educating our kids?  Well, maybe we can tell by taking a closer look at the job she did educating her own. As Sullivan points out:

Her eldest son is a high-school drop-out. Her eldest daughter has had, so far as one can tell from press reports, very uneven attendance in high school, and no plans for college. Her other daughters seem to spend a lot of time traveling the country with their mom at tax-payers' expense. I've seen them at several rallies with the Palins this fall. Are they not in school?

The least one can say is that none of her children seems to have been brought up thinking that college is something to aspire to. And her new son-in-law just dropped out of high school as well.

Is this where America should be heading?

The New McCarthyism

It's been a long time since we last heard talk of un-American activitites. But thanks to the retro sensibilities of America's favorite lipstick-wearing pitbull, it's back. (Palin does seem to love anachronisms and seems bent on reviving all sorts of out-of-date fashions, from beehive hairdos to coat hanger abortions.) During a recent rally in North Carolina, Sarah Palin said, "We believe, we believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in the wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."

This comment was mocked in a Tina Fey parody last night on Saturday Night Live. But instead of distancing themselves from it, the GOP has embraced it. In fact, Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) has taken the ball and is running with it, urging that there be an investigation into the un-Americanism of congress members: "The news media should do a penetrating exposé and take a look. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?"

Just when I think that the GOP has exhausted my capacity for outrage, they outdo themselves. The upside is that this kind of nonsense reeks through and through of desperation, and will probably only succeed in driving more thinking conservatives and independents away from the party. (Expect more defections in the near future.)

More on Real America

Matthew Yglesias gets it exactly right [emphasis in original]:

The interesting thing about sundry rightwingers branding increasing swathes of the United States as either “unreal” or “un-American” is that I think there’s a real honesty about this. Progressives are prone to becoming upset about things that happen in our country, with people sometimes letting this boil over into hysteria and firm vows to flee to Canada. But to conservatives, it’s actually integral to their conception of the United States that it be governed by conservatives. A period of progressive political power would mean not that America had erred, but that America had somehow ceased to be America.

Mark Steyn wrote the other day that “With a few exceptions (such as Vermont), ‘blue states’ mostly turn out to be red states with a couple of big blue cities (Pennsylvania, for example, or even California).” But what does this mean? Illinois isn’t a blue state if you don’t count Chicago? New York’s not a blue state if you don’t count New York? But of course Illinois isn’t Illinois without Chicago nor is New York, New York without New York. And mutadis mutandis for the entire United States of America. The country would not be the same country without its great cities and their suburbs. To say that this hypothetical US of Ruralia constitutes the “real” country makes no more sense than to pretend that the country is “really” a small island city-state that happens to be connected to some great wild beyond.

Another Conservative Joins the Reality-Based Community

Thanks for speaking out, General Powell:

H/T: Sullivan

Inciting to Riot 9

If you are easily offended by "bad words" then this is probably a good post to skip.

Josh at Right Wing Watch has more on the racist calls and emails flooding ACORN offices across the country. I'll share the two most revealing:

“Hi, I was just calling to let you all know that Barack Obama needs to get hung. He's a fucking nigger, and he's a piece of shit. You guys are fraudulent, and you need to go to hell. All the niggers on oak trees. They're gonna get all hung honeys, they're gonna get assassinated, they're gonna get killed.”

The second:

"You liberal idiots. Dumb shits. Welfare bums. You guys just fucking come to our country, consume every natural resource there is, and make a lot of babies. That's all you guys do. And then suck up the welfare and expect everyone else to pay for your hospital bills for your kids. I just say let your kids die. That's the best move. Just let your children die. Forget about paying for hospital bills for them. I'm not gonna do it. You guys are lowlifes. And I hope you all die."

I'll put my own words elsewhere. I don't want them anywhere near this crap.

GOP Voter Registration Fraud

It seems the GOP has a problem with voter registration fraud in its activist communities as well:

Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.

[ ... ]

It is a bait-and-switch scheme familiar to election experts. The firm hired by the California Republican Party -- a small company called Young Political Majors, or YPM, which operates in several states -- has been accused of using the tactic across the country.

Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. Prosecutors in Los Angeles and Ventura counties say they are investigating complaints about the company.

[ ... ]

The Times randomly interviewed 46 of the hundreds of voters whose election records show they were recently re-registered as Republicans by YPM, and 37 of them -- more than 80% -- said that they were misled into making the change or that it was done without their knowledge.

I still believe that all these anecdotal stories about the shenanigans in voter registration are at best a distraction. The approach in this story is under-handed, but it's hard to imagine that it will have any effect on the outcome. However, I do think it pays to be even-handed if this is the story that will drive the national narrative in the coming weeks.

But that's not the worst of it. The story continues:

Civil rights activists recently filed a lawsuit in Arizona accusing YPM of deceiving residents to get signatures for a ballot measure that would have prohibited affirmative action by that state. The lawsuit was dropped after supporters of the measure pulled it from the ballot.

In Massachusetts, former YPM worker Angela McElroy testified at a legislative hearing in 2004that she had tricked voters into signing a ballot measure to ban gay marriage. She said she told voters they were signing in favor of a measure to allow alcoholic drinks to be sold in supermarkets.

That's a real story, with a potential to affect real people.

The End of the Reagan Revolution

Michael Reagan (Ronald Reagan's son) believes the Reagan Revolution can be saved, but weighs in on how the GOP got into its current mess in the first place:

It was the Republican Party that demolished the shining city on the hill my father built. It was the Republican Party that was 100 percent responsible for the end of the Reagan Revolution.

[ ... ]

Maggie was strong and Ronald Reagan was strong, but when they no longer were in power and at their prime, their followers turned into weak-kneed office seekers.

[ ... ]

They destroyed the party from within. They are the ones to blame. Not the left-wing media , not left-wing academia, not the Democratic Party but the GOP — the Grand Old Party — no longer grand, just old and scared silly.

Ronald Reagan had the same media that we have today. He had the same left-wing academia that we have today and the same Democratic Party that we have today. But when the media and the Democrats attacked him he found it invigorating, and found strength and fortitude in being under fire, and he fought back like a tiger.

The rest of the article strikes me as wishful thinking, but his main point seems to be to rally the troops. I suspect it's too little, too late.

How Not to Persuade Americans

There's an interesting story in the Guardian about how the former head of MI-5 has argued that the US response to 9/11 was an over-reaction.  I agree with the central premise that the invasion of Iraq was a bad plan -- driven through on pure emotion in the aftermath of 9/11.   Same thing with the Patriot Act.  But this is the quote that stuck in my craw:

In an interview with the Guardian, Stella Rimington calls al-Qaida's attack on the US "another terrorist incident" but not qualitatively different from any others.

"That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life and this was as far as I was concerned another one," she says.

If it's American minds you want to change, this is not how to do it.

The End Game

Reed Hundt summarizes the likely end game well:

The McCain camp is playing every divisive card they can find, or make up. Some Americans are pro-America, others are not. Anyone who wants to register everyone to vote could well be investigated by the incumbent government,even if the law doesn't permit the Justice Department to try to influence the outcome.

And the mainstream media, at the very least eager to have a close race, especially with a come-from-behind narrative, will do all it can do to intensify the wild, cruel and crazy allegations made against the Obama campaign and its allies and supporters.

The McCain plan will be to give up on the national popular vote and re-run the Bush campaign of 2000. By voter intimidation and robo-calls and litigation and outrageous allegations it will aim for victory in the states that can provide an Electoral College victory. In this case, that means McCain will focus his diminished but vigorous efforts on Florida, Ohio, Colorado, and Virginia. In each state we need hardly ask what images, stereotypes, and fears the McCain campaign will hope to evoke.

Yet another argument for everyone to vote, no matter what the tracking polls say: this strategy simply won't work in a landslide. 

Palin's Real America

The guys at 538 deliver once again.  Taking a closer look at Palin's rally schedule, they determine the racial demographics of the areas that she must be referring to when she talks about "the real America." 

They break it down for Obama's cities, too.  It's worth a look.

Staking the Moral High Ground on Voter Suppression

Remember all the hand-wringing amongst Democrats as recently as 6 weeks ago, incorrectly asserting that Obama didn't know how to win a fight?   Me too. And I argued at the time (to anyone that would listen) that it was the critics themselves that didn't know how to win a fight.

The simple fact is that the Democrats don't have the stomach to fight dirty, and it shows.  So it never works.  When they're lucky they seem whiney or petty or both -- when they're not lucky they seem angry. Americans don't like angry. McCain's learning that the hard way right now.

On Friday, the Obama camp reminded us what they're made of, by taking the fight to the GOP on the voter suppression front:

The Obama campaign charged Friday that John McCain, in concert with the Bush administration, has embarked on a studied effort to disrupt Election Day in many states and suppress the vote.

In a conference call with reporters Friday, Robert Bauer, chief counsel for the Obama campaign, suggested that a flurry of fraudulent registration complaints recently, and a subsequent leak by FBI officials that the agency was investigating the incidents, were part of a coordinated attempt by McCain and the administration of President Bush to intimidate voters.

There's a fine line between clever and stupid, and in this case that line is control of the moral high ground. Too often, Democrats are embarrassed to point out that that's where they've chosen to make their stand. Republicans never make that mistake, even when their control of that ground is only illusory.

The ACORN offensive is a text-book example of Rovian politics: hitting your opponent hardest where you yourself are the most vulnerable. The major difference between the Obama campaign and the previous two is the recognition of this approach and the strategy to defeat it. They have neutralized the Rove attack with nothing less than a new brand of political jujitsu.

At the very least, the ACORN "scandal" is a red herring.  As CNN's Martina Stewart correctly reminds us:

Voter registration fraud is not the same as voter fraud, in which individuals attempt to fraudulently cast ballots. Voter registration fraud leads to inflated voter rolls, but has little effect on voter fraud.

But that's not the whole story.  In reality, this is just the latest news in the ongoing  scandal involving the firing of federal prosecutors under the Gonzales Justice Department.  Neither side can let up. This story is not going away. This fight will be the main story through Election Day -- possibly longer. 

The GOP's Strange Obsession with Socialism

Somebody hasn't told the GOP that the Reagan Revolution is over. As of Friday, Sarah Palin was playing the socialist card:

At a Sarah Palin rally in Richmond on Monday, for instance, two John McCain supporters held up a large white banner reading: “Obama is a Socialist/Marxist.” Shouts of “Socialist!” and “Communist!” often emanate from GOP crowds when McCain and Palin speak of Obama’s tax plans.

And on Friday, Palin herself seemed to make the same charge against Obama’s plans to raise taxes on the wealthy.

And McCain jumped on board today:

"At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives," the Arizona senator said in his radio address. "They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Sen. Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway."

Not only is it an interesting time for the GOP to be throwing around terms like "socialist", but as I've mentioned before, its hardly an appropriate label for Obama's economic philosophy.

Racists in a "Christian Nation"

I can just hear the right blaming the messenger, but here's another charming series of interviews at a McCain rally, this time from Al Jazeera:



As a personal follow-up: Jefferson (whom I admire greatly) was a Deist. For those of you keeping score at home, that's 18th Century for Atheist.  

On Inflated Polls and Hope for the Future

A picture is worth a thousand words, so Stuart would put me way over quota for the day with this one:

The full story of this rally in St Louis with over 100,000 people is on MSNBC's First Read. So much for this bizarre theory.  You can find the complete speech on the official Obama site.

Never Cross the Streams

Apparently, my two main recent threads have collapsed to one.  We are now seeing inciting to violence in the context of ACORN and GOP voter suppression.  As Greg Gordon at McClatchy reports:

An ACORN community organizer received a death threat and the liberal activist group's Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized Thursday, reflecting mounting tensions over its role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month.

Attorneys for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now were notifying the FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division of the incidents, said Brian Kettenring, a Florida-based spokesman for the group.

[ ... ]

Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an e-mail that said she "is going to have her life ended."

A female staffer in Providence, R.I., got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect of "We know you get off work at 9," then uttered racial epithets, he said.

Reminds me about a post I read recently on 23/6:

On many other occasions plenty of right-wing audience members have made their displeasure known to me in ways that made me wish I had a bodyguard. When liberals get offended by a joke, they look down their noses at me, tell me I'm stupid, and offer to have a discussion where they can prove me wrong. Conservatives aren't interested in discussion. They want to take me out in the parking lot.

As someone who's disagreed with "both sides", that's been my experience, too.

Not One Innocent Life

Death is a punishment which cannot be reversed. My own philosophical stance is that the death penalty exceeds the scope of state authority, but my pragmatic stance is that we better be damn sure we never execute an innocent person.  As the New York Times reported on Tuesday, Georgia may be on the brink of doing so -- given a refusal by the Supreme Court to hear an appeal in the case:

The inmate, Troy A. Davis, 40, was convicted in 1991 of murdering Mark A. MacPhail, a Savannah police officer. The court’s decision, made without comment or explanation, allows Georgia officials to obtain a new death warrant and schedule the execution, probably in the next few days or weeks.

The case has led to an outpouring of support for Mr. Davis, largely because seven of nine witnesses against him have recanted their testimony, with two claiming that the police had pressured them to testify against him. Prosecutors presented no physical evidence and no murder weapon, and three witnesses have said another man admitted to the murder.

Why is it that cops are often more interested in closing cop-killer cases than in making sure we convict the right person? And don't get me started on "victim's rights."

Inciting to Riot 8

Like Bernie Sanders, I fear that we will have some trouble coming together after this election:



While you can't control every last one of your supporters, it seems seriously delusional to assert that the McCain/Palin campaign has no role in this rage-fest.

For example, just five minutes ago I saw John McCain appealing to a crowd in North Carolina to "stand up and fight the enemies of this country." Remember, this is a campaign speech. He can only be talking about one person (or perhaps, generously, one party). This is nothing other than playing with fire.

What's up with the Sun?

There are some amazing pictures of the sun on the Boston Globe.  In an effort to keep the focus on politics, consider this:

The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minimum - in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year - with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years.

But wait, aren't we supposed to believe that global warming is a "natural cycle" probably caused by "sunspot activity" -- as evidenced by the melting ice caps on Mars?

Reality Slips Still Farther Away

I just don't know what to say about this essay. Seriously, I'm really at a loss. I'll just quote the "highlights":

It's no longer a matter of dispute that the mainstream media, overall, very strongly leans to the left.

[ ... ]

A substantial portion of the Left's strategy during this campaign is to create the perception that as many people as possible are supporting Obama. They strive to not simply show that he has a lot of supporters (which, obviously, he has), but to purposely inflate or exaggerate the numbers in order to make his support seem larger than it really is. The drive to do this seems almost automatic; it is assumed by Obama's supporters to be the most effective campaign strategy.

[ ... ]

This essay examines the underlying faulty assumptions of this strategy -- and shows why it's not only counter-productive, but could backfire disastrously.

[ ... ]

A key component of this strategy is an over-reliance on polling, since poll numbers which show Obama apparently in the lead can be used to club undecided voters or McCain supporters into submission. You're all alone. Nobody else thinks like you. Your side is losing. You're out of touch. Change your mind -- join the winning team. But the polls may not reflect what we imagine they reflect.

[ ... ]

Will the exaggerations become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as assumed, or are Obama supporters spinning further and further away from reality, constructing one unsupportable exaggeration on top of another -- only to be stunned on election day when the actual results, once again, don't match either their pre-vote opinion polling or their post-vote exit polling?

If you want to see desperate rationalization at its finest, give it a read. There's much, much more.

Still More on ACORN and GOP Voter Suppression

Josh Marshall is all over this story:

So now we hear leaked word that the FBI is beginning an investigation into whether ACORN "helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election" and where there is "any evidence of a coordinated national scam."

Let's note a few points. DC Republicans have been aggressively lobbying the DOJ to open an investigation into ACORN in advance of the election. And leaking word of such an investigation (possibly starting the investigation at all) most likely violates DOJ guidelines about DOJ/FBI actions which can end up interfering with or manipulating an election.

But, remember, this is right out of the book of the Bush Justice Department's efforts to assist in GOP voter suppression efforts in the 2004 and 2006 elections (part and parcel of the US Attorney firing story). This is the same scam US Attorney firing player Bradley Schlozman got in trouble for pulling with ACORN just before the 2006 election. And before he got canned, Gonzales helped revise and soften the departmental prohibition on DOJ announcements, thus making it easier to play these kinds of games.

This is a big deal. It may be their last gasp to use the DOJ to help mitigate the scale of Republican defeat on November 4th.

I would stayed tuned to Talking Points Memo if you care about the latest on this story.  But a co-worker sent me the following email from a former ACORN employee:

Hello family & friends,

As most of you know the organization I used to work for, ACORN, is under a barrage of attacks in the news and by the McCain campaign for their voter registration work.  Attached is a national memo from ACORN explaining the truth behind this work.  I urge you to take a minute and read it as these attacks are really without basis and are politically focused.

Essentially ACORN recently completed a massive, national voter registration drive registering over a million voters.  In this process a small number of the many people hired to do this work did submit fraudulent cards.  In almost all cases, ACORN organizers identified these fraudulent cards, but almost every state where this work was done had legal requirements that ALL cards collected had to be turned in -- even ones that had been flagged as fraudulent.  So ACORN turned in the cards, but notified election officials of ones that were fraudulent.  Now though ACORN is being accused of intentionally trying to fraud the system.

ACORN has been through this before -- the national US Attorney General scandal with Gonzales accused of politically motivated firings came out in part of his firing of a Republican New Mexico AG who refused to prosecute ACORN in New Mexico for voter fraud because he said there was not a basis for it.  

Please read the memo and learn more about this issue.  An attack today on one key ally in the fight for social justice will likely spread to other allies and it is important that we are informed on the issue and where possible that we are educating our networks and friends on these issues.

You can find the memo here.

On Running Against the Bush Record

The Obama camp has already come out with a compelling response to McCain's big zinger last night:

I'd just like to add:

Joe the Plumber

What do we know?  

Well, for one, we know that Joe is only denotationally "blue collar" -- connotationally, that label seems inappropriate, given that, as I understand from the debate, he makes over $250K/year.

We also know that he's not the kind of growth engine that we have in mind when we talk about tax breaks: we will have plumbers proportional to demand and the number of people who are trained to be plumbers.  Joe has made some good decisions, and we should commend him for those.  But cutting his taxes will not save the economy; and it will not repair our roads, schools and air quality.

Finally, we know that Joe has made some decisions about how seriously he wants to be taken in this election cycle, specifically:

Two readers with access to the Ohio voter file say that Joe Wurzelbacher's inluence on this cycle will be limited in one way: He doesn't appear to be registered to vote.

On a related note, here's an interesting word-usage break down:

McCain:

Joe 23
Barack 0
Obama 55

Obama:

Joe 9
John 9
McCain 37

UPDATE: It turns out none of this is true. Various sources confirm today:

1. Joe does not make $250K/year the figure is actually closer to $50K/year
2. The company he's "thinking about buying" makes closer to $100K/year than $250K/year
3. Joe does not even have a plumber's license, and shouldn't even legally be working for the company 

Although I stand by my comments about the fictional "Joe the Plumber", I apologize for my role in participating in this myth.

Education is not a Commodity!

McCain teed up a perfect opportunity for Obama, and sadly he did not knock it out of the park:

McCain: Well, sure. I'm sure you're aware, Sen. Obama, of the program in the Washington, D.C., school system where vouchers are provided and there's a certain number, I think it's a thousand and some and some 9,000 parents asked to be eligible for that.

So among those parents who knew about the program and tried to get in, nearly 90% were forced to send their kids back to failing schools.  And then there's all the parents who didn't know about the plan (or didn't ask to be included).  What about them, Senator McCain?

This is not a solution. It is not acceptable.  And it's damn close to what Brown v. Board ruled unconstitutional.  I, for one, refuse to live in that America any longer!

Chuck Todd Weighs In

Chuck Todd has posted his post debate analysis.   In short, he agrees that this was no game changer.  I think one of the most interesting passages is this one:

Time and again Wednesday, Obama went out of his way to find a center-right watch word or phrase (tax cuts, life, responsibility, charter schools, tort reform) to defend himself or make a point. McCain spent a lot of time talking to his current supporters, I didn't hear him making a move to the middle on many issues. It's as if both candidates were trying to win Indiana or West Virginia tonight, that's not good for McCain.

But he also asks an interesting rhetorical question:

This is a point that I don't think we tired members of the press emphasize enough, but what does it say about our presidential election system that we spent 15 months on the primaries and approximately 75 days for the general (conventions to Election Day)? Here we are at one of the most critical junctures in American history and we're cramming six months of a general election into six weeks? Crazy.

Crazy, indeed. Thanks Chuck.