Not a Big Truck

As Obama continues to hold onto his leads in national and swing state polling and expands the playing field into what were expected to be solid GOP states, the emails from the Obama campaign pleading for money are starting to make me chuckle. See this bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping email from yesterday evening:

Our spending plans have been stretched by John McCain’s negative attacks and the overwhelming resources of the Republican National Committee. … [J]ust this week, we’re facing new and unexpected spending against us in Montana and West Virginia.

Oh no!  The Republicans are having to defend Montana and West Virginia, states that the Democrats never expected to have much of a chance of winning!  I’m surprised they didn’t mention that McCain is having to spend money on robocalls in Arizona now.

Saw this at the Dish.

Obama was strong here, starting at the 4:50 mark.  “You were wrong.”

James Fallows makes a subtle but insightful point about the debate: Obama looked at McCain numerous times and addressed comments directly to him.  McCain did not look at Obama once.

I think this will prove advantageous to Obama in the coming days as clips of the debate are replayed, as is happening already.  It’s much more compelling to see a clip of Obama addressing criticism directly towards McCain, in a “2-shot” with both candidates in the picture, than to see McCain talking only to the camera.  It makes Obama look tough and confident.

Matt Drudge is continuing his pattern of ignoring negative stories about McCain and highlighting even the silliest of stories that make Obama look bad.  Here’s a current example: Drudge links to this article, entitled “Joe Biden loses Barack Obama the Catholic vote.”  This article, from The Telegraph, is utter garbage.  The author argues that Biden is costing Obama the Catholic vote, because Catholics were split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans before Biden joined the ticket, but now that he is on the ticket, Catholic leaders are heavily criticizing him and other pro-choice Catholic politicians.  The author claims that this increased attention means Catholics are going to turn away from the Obama-Biden ticket, even though he cites no statistics to support this conclusion, and even though one would assume that the 50% of Catholics who were supporting Obama were already aware of the fact that he and most other prominent Democrats are pro-choice.

Yet as Drudge links to tripe like this, he ignores McCain’s incompetent, bumbling response to the ongoing crisis on Wall Street, in which the Arizona senator has said he would fire the SEC chairman (the president can’t do that) and has confused the SEC with the FEC.

I’m pretty close to the point where I will start boycotting Drudge.

This movie was on TV tonight.  One of the great sports movie speeches.  And, hey, if there are any down Obama supporters out there, maybe it will get them fired up again.

Over the years, and particularly during the 2000 and 2004 election seasons that featured Karl Rove at the helm of the GOP nuclear campaign submarine, I have had many discussions with friends about the nastiness of political campaigning.  Often, these conversations have concluded with some variation on the theme, “Sure, the Republicans are experts at mudslinging and dirty tricks, but the Democrats do their share of that stuff too.”

I guess that is probably true, especially if you take a step back and look at the broader sweep of history, not just a few elections.  But in recent years, and in this election, I think the Republicans really are worse.  Dishonest.  Shameless.  Relentless.

The McCain camp has made a big deal of Michelle Obama’s “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country” comment, and in recent weeks of Barack Obama’s remark that for the McCain-Palin ticket to claim the mantle of change is like putting “lipstick on a pig.”  Any reasonable observer will acknowledge that Obama was not calling Sarah Palin a pig, but rather saying that the policies of McCain (and by extension Palin) are the pig that cannot be dressed up to masquerade as change.  But the Republicans will not shut up about it.

On the other hand, Meghan McCain went on the Today Show and said, “No one knows what war is like other than my family, period!”

I don’t need to harp about how awful that is.  But what has the Obama campaign’s response been, as far as I know?  To their immense credit: nothing.  They are not trying to make an issue out of what a member of McCain’s family said.  Meghan McCain isn’t on the ticket.  The Obama campaign wants to have a discussion about the issues and not about the silly, thoughtless, ultimately insignificant remarks that are inevitably made by people on both sides.  Maybe that’s “soft,” but it makes me proud to be affiliated with the Democrats and not with the GOP of Rove, Atwater, and their disciples.

Obama had a good line today on education. In his education speech he said that “if we want to out-compete the world tomorrow, we must out-educate the world today”. Solid line that brings a sort of national security feel to the education issue. I wonder if Obama could benefit by more clearly tying domestic concerns (energy, education, infrastructure) to national security issues. Build on the Thomas Friedman idea of nation-building here in America to maintain our competitiveness internationally.

This beauty from Senator Jim Inhofe.  Here is what he said:

Do you really want to have a guy as commander in chief of this country when you can question whether or not he really loves his country?

Democrats say some awful things.  And I’d like to think that I call them on it.  I probably don’t do it enough. But to suggest that a candidate doesn’t love his country seems a bit beyond the realm of normal politics.  Makes you really wonder about these “value” conservatives when their values are so devoid of common decency and respect for other human beings.

Interesting article from the hometown newspaper. 

Sarah Kugler, Anchorage Daily News, writes:

Obama hasn’t asked for any earmarks this year. Last year, he asked for $311 million worth, about $25 for every Illinois resident. Alaska asked this year for earmarks totaling $198 million, about $295 for every Alaska citizen.

Palin has cut back on pork project requests, but under her administration, Alaska is still and by far the largest per-capita consumer of federal pet-project spending.

Even The Wall Street Journal (a part of that elitist liberal media?) has an articlechallenging Palin’s claims about the bridge.  It reads:

But Gov. Palin’s claim comes with a serious caveat. She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006. And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere.

I don’t blame Palin for trying to do everything she could to represent her constituents by battling for federal aid. That is a reasonable role for a mayor or governor.  But lying about her record to fit some fictional narrative that more easily applies to a national campaign is a different matter.  Hopefully the media and the Obama campaign will expose the facts.