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.