Election ‘08

I‘m watching MSNBC and David Shuster asks if Obama is just playing politics as usual because he’s attacking McCain on energy.

So, is Obama supposed to just do nothing?  He’s not allowed to point out the differences between himself and McCain?  Give me a break.  Obama calling out John McCain for McCain’s bullshit energy solutions (offshore drilling is a good example), is not Obama playing politics as usual.  It’s Obama telling the truth to voters and trying to take our country towards real energy independence.

Barack Obama will be in South Bend, Indiana from 6:30pm Tuesday until 3:25pm on Wednesday.  As MSNBC points out, this is quite a long stop in one place.  Could there be a VP announcement in South Bend this week?  The Obama campaign is making a big play for Indiana, and as Nate Silver notes, the McCain campaign seems to be taking the state for granted despite polling indicating a close race.

Obama/Bayh ‘08?

I don’t even know what to say anymore…

Barack Obama’s well known campaign message is “Yes We Can.”  John McCain, however, seems to be saying “No We Can’t.”  Why can’t we?  Well, because McCain has no plans.  The McCain campaign is seriously lacking in the planning department.

Analysts caution that both McCain and Barack Obama have produced policy pronouncements that are just as much election documents as workable proposals; after all, that is what presidential candidates do. But when it comes to the metric of paper produced, McCain trails Obama in spelling out the nitty-gritty.

“The Obama people are much more detailed,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan advocacy group dedicated to balancing the budget.

That’s just what we need, a president with no plan.  Let’s say, for example that you want to know McCain’s plan for Social Security.  Good luck figuring that out.  The Wall Street Journal noticed that John McCain himself doesn’t seem to be quite sure:

On Sunday, he said on national television that to solve Social Security “everything’s on the table,” which of course means raising payroll taxes. On July 7 in Denver he said: “Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I won’t.”

This isn’t a flip-flop. It’s a sex-change operation.

He got back to the subject Tuesday in Reno, Nev. Reporters asked about the Sunday tax comments. Mr. McCain replied, “The worst thing you could do is raise people’s payroll taxes, my God!” Then he was asked about working with Democrats to fix Social Security, and he repeated, “everything has to be on the table.” But how can . . .? Oh never mind.

Yesterday he was in Aurora, Colo., to wit: “On Social Security, he [Sen. Obama] wants to raise Social Security taxes. I am opposed to raising taxes on Social Security. I want to fix the system without raising taxes.”

Great, let’s elect the guy who has no idea what he’s going to do when he gets into office.

Oh but I forgot!  McCain does have a plan for our energy crisis.  He’s going to make sure we drill offshore.  What are economists saying about that plan?

When McCain has focused on domestic policy, it has generally been to offer headline-grabbing plans, such as his proposal for a gas tax holiday and his claim that allowing offshore drilling could have an immediate effect on gas prices, both of which were almost universally derided by economists across the ideological spectrum. [The Politico]

And Paul Krugman says:

Most criticism of John McCain’s decision to follow the Bush administration’s lead and embrace offshore drilling as the answer to high gas prices has focused on the accusation that it’s junk economics — which it is.

A McCain campaign ad says that gas prices are high right now because “some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America.” That’s just plain dishonest: the U.S. government’s own Energy Information Administration says that removing restrictions on offshore drilling wouldn’t lead to any additional domestic oil production until 2017, and that even at its peak the extra production would have an “insignificant” impact on oil prices.

What’s even more important than Mr. McCain’s bad economics, however, is what his reversal on this issue — he was against offshore drilling before he was for it — says about his priorities.

How are so many people even considering voting for this guy?

Walmart is apparently pressuring its employess to vote for Republicans in November.  The company has held meetings with employees where it tell them that a Democratic win in November could harm their jobs.  They say Democrats will pass union legislation that will force employees to join unions, costing them expensive union dues and possibly forcing them to strike against their will.

Though Walmart claims that it is not telling employees to vote for Democrats, that is exactly what it is doing:

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don’t specifically tell attendees how to vote in November’s election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

“The meeting leader said, ‘I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won’t have a vote on whether you want a union,’” said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. “I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote,” she said.

Walmart is actively misinforming its employees about unions, and is trying to scare them into voting for Republicans:

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.

Walmart has been a longtime enemy of organized labor.  It once closed a store in Canada when the employees there voted to unionize.  The company will do anything to prevent unionization.

The New York Times Editorial Board has responded to John McCain’s latest race-baiting tactics.  And they are not at all happy.  Here it is in full:

We know that operatives in modern-day presidential campaigns are supposed to say things that everyone knows are ridiculous — and to do it with a straight face.

Still, there was something surreal, and offensive, about today’s soundbite from the campaign of Senator John McCain.

The presumptive Republican nominee has embarked on a bare-knuckled barrage of negative advertising aimed at belittling Mr. Obama. The most recent ad compares the presumptive Democratic nominee for president to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton — suggesting to voters that he’s nothing more than a bubble-headed, publicity-seeking celebrity.

The ad gave us an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives, some of whom work for Mr. McCain now, ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006. That assault, too, began with videos juxtaposing Mr. Ford with young, white women.

Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain on the ploy, saying, quite rightly, that the Republicans are trying to scare voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills.’’

But Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, had a snappy answer. “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’

The retort was, we must say, not only contemptible, but shrewd. It puts the sin for the racial attack not on those who made it, but on the victim of the attack.

It also — and we wish this were coincidence, but we doubt it — conjures up another loaded racial image.

The phrase dealing the race card “from the bottom of the deck” entered the national lexicon during the O.J. Simpson saga. Robert Shapiro, one of Mr. Simpson’s lawyers, famously declared of himself, Johnny Cochran and the rest of the Simpson defense team, “Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck.”

It’s ugly stuff. How about we leave Britney, Paris, and O.J. out of this — and have a presidential campaign?

McCain’s dirty tactics may be backfiring on him.  Serves him right for trying to stoke the fires of bigotry and racism that should have no role in this campaign.  Let’s see if the rest of the media has the integrity to call McCain’s latest strategy what it is: disgusting race-baiting.

The Presidential race is taking an ugly turn today.  McCain campaign manager Rick Davis is accusing Obama of playing the race card:

John McCain’s campaign manager is accusing Barack Obama of unfairly using the issue of race, a significant accusation in a campaign featuring the first African-American major party nominee.

“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” said Rick Davis, in a statement issued from the McCain campaign.  “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

What the McCain camp is doing here is pretty disgusting, and they might just get away with it.

The strategy is this: the McCain campaign can’t appear to attack Obama because he’s Black.  That would quickly alienate large numbers of voters and let Obama win easily.  But they do have an interest in portraying Obama as the “scary black man.”  So how can they achieve that without appearing racist?  Accuse Obama of playing the race card, and hope he takes the bait.  If they can draw him into a fight over whether he played the race card or not, they will effectively drive the narrative.  The news story will be (at best) “Did Obama Play the Race Card?”

And so it doesn’t matter that Obama didn’t play the race card, and is in fact running a campaign about ideas and the future of this country.  The voters will start to question whether we can have a President as divisive as Obama.

The Obama campaign has to play this one very carefully.  I think their best option is to be direct and to the point.  Call the McCain camp out on the tactic.  Don’t address the race issue, address the campaign tactic of making the election about race.

The Denver Post says that McCain can gain in the West by picking Mitt Romney as his Vice President.  This might be true, but I question the likelihood of the point.

A Washington outsider who co-founded a private-equity firm and served as Massachusetts’ governor, Romney is viewed as balancing the perceived shortcomings of McCain, who has been an Arizona senator for 22 years and has admitted that economic issues aren’t his strength. Prior to dropping out of the campaign, Romney was substantially vetted, and he knows how to throw — and take — a punch.

Those factors alone might help a McCain-Romney ticket in the West. But Romney’s ties to the region, which include attending Brigham Young University in Utah and rescuing the 2002 Winter Olympics, could reap big political gains for McCain.

It was Romney, after all, who beat McCain in five Western primaries.

Yes, Romney beat McCain in those primaries.  But a large reason for that was the large Mormon percentage in the Republican primaries.  McCain is going to win those voters with or without Romney.  LDS voters are overwhelmingly Republican, and very unlikely to vote for Obama no matter who McCain puts on his ticket.  It might slightly increase LDS turnout with Romney in the VP spot, but I honestly don’t think it’d have a major effect.

There is also the question of Romney’s drawbacks in other areas.

Not that Romney doesn’t have negatives. Though he may help McCain in Michigan, where Romney’s father was governor, he could be a liability in the South.

He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, considered a cult by some evangelical Christians and Southern Baptists. Despite his central-casting good looks, he often comes across as aloof. And he and McCain taunted each other in the primaries, which could be exploited by Democrats.

The Evangelicals have had a tenuous alliance with the Mormons.  Both groups advocate the same socially conservative positions (pro-life, anti-gay rights, abstinence only sexual education, school prayer, etc.).  At the same time however, many evangelical Christians see Mormons as part of a cult; they have a very negative view of Mormons overall and will not want a Mormon President (or Vice President).  Despite Obama’s attempts to court these voters, I don’t think they will go Democratic.  But I do think Romney as VP might cause many of them to just stay home.  They weren’t too pleased with McCain in the first place, and Romney could just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  Will that put any states in play for Obama?  I think that’s unlikely, unless Obama really starts to pull away; but in that case no VP would save McCain anyway.

And then there is Michigan.  Romney has a good chance at bringing in Michigan for McCain.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Michigan could easily outweigh any other concerns.  With such an unfavorable electoral map for McCain, having a shot at Michigan’s 17 Electoral Votes may just be too enticing to pass up.

The other factor for McCain is that there really don’t seem to be a whole lot of other good options.  McCain needs someone to help energize the campaign and Romney just might be able to do that.  At this point I’ll be pretty surprised if Romney isn’t selected.

UPDATE: Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics Says McCain should pick Romney.  Dan Schnur disagrees.

Barack Obama hit back against McCain’s childish, misleading, and incredibly silly ad.

I do notice that he doesn’t seem to have anything very positive to say about himself, does he.  He seems to only be talking about me.  You need to ask John McCain what he’s for, not just what he’s against.

Exactly what he should be saying.  McCain’s so focused on trashing Obama, he isn’t spending any time talking about what his plans for the country are.

McCain’s campaign responds:

“This is a typically superfluous response from Barack Obama. Like most celebrities, he reacts to fair criticism with a mix of fussiness and hysteria,” says McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, before trying to link the attack back to offshore drilling.

That doesn’t even make sense.  But they sure are focused on this “Barack Obama is a celebrity” idea.  And that somehow ties to offshore drilling….  Jesus, the McCain campaign is really pathetic.

And the Obama Campaign releases it’s own ad: