Month: October 2008

Video Bonanza

 A few morning videos, just because I haven’t had the time to give each their own post.

Obama PWND McCAin on foreign policy, Marty McFly-style.

One of the most creative, effective ads I’ve seen this cycle, courtesy of the Courage Campaign and the NO on Prop 8 crowd in California (which would ban marriage equality).

Finally, what I think is the best attack ad I’ve seen anyone make on Palin. It needs a couple tweaks in verbiage, but I’d love to see a 527, the DNC, or even the Obama campaign making this hit. It is a winner and it’s time the Palin’s ties to the Alaska Independence Party receive top-line attention. It could finally put this campaign to bed.

The Palin Amendment

From James Fallows, we have the 28th Amendment, to be filed under Wishful Thinking:

“No Person shall be elected President or Vice President without accepting a session of questioning by the press, such session to last no less than one hour and to be open to normally accredited members of the press in the same fashion as at Presidential news conferences. The questioning shall occur and the results shall be made freely available to the public at least one week before an Election is held.”

As great as it would be to have an amendment in the US Constitution to ensure that candidates for President and Vice President is scrutinized directly by the Fourth Estate, it would be a lot easier if presidential nominees simply picked running mates who were capable of holding a press conference and did not to be sequestered from the media to avoid politically damaging moments.

Inciting Violence Against Obama

The McCain campaign has puffed up its chest recently about its headfirst dive into the mud. Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment last night provides as concentrated a deconstruction of this strategy as I’ve seen in any medium.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/27057346#27057346

Going beyond Palin’s role as a mud slinger, in the past few days rhetoric coming from McCain and Palin has lead to multiple instances where audience members volunteer that Obama is a “terrorist” and the response should be to “kill him,” Jeffrey Feldman takes a look at the consequences of the words Palin and McCain are using.

The ‘dangerous road,’ however, is not just a generic attack on Sen. Obama’s trustworthiness or honesty. Rather, the McCain campaign has chosen to stand before campaign rallies and accuse Sen. Obama of hiding sympathies with domestic terrorists–to accuse their opponent, essentially, of being a terrorist.

With the McCain campaign now using the Palin stump speech to accuse Sen. Obama of hiding a terrorist agenda, the McCain campaign has staked its future on rhetoric that skirts the boundary between character assassination and incitements of actual violence against their opponent.

Meanwhile, while McCain is not yet accusing Obama of terrorism in his own stump speech, the crowds at his rallies are.

In a recent video clip from MSNBC, McCain asked a rally, “Who is the real Barack Obama?” In response to McCain’s rhetorical question, a voice from the crowd can be clearly heard to shout in response, “Terrorist!” (link)

Since the start of the election campaign well over a year ago, voters have been subject to ongoing smear campaigns in emails and push polls accusing Sen. Obama of ties to and sympathies with domestic and foreign terrorist groups. No matter how many times these smear campaigns have been exposed, they continued. Now that John McCain and Sarah Palin have echoed these accusations–the idea that Sen. Obama is secretly a terrorist has the stamp of approval of a presidential campaign, but of a multi-term U.S. senator and a U.S. governor.

One wonders at this point how the various agencies charged with the responsibility of protecting the Presidential candidates from violence will respond to this latest tactic from the McCain campaign. If, for example, a McCain supporter threatens the life of Sen. Obama by shouting ‘Kill him!’ at a Palin rally, should Sen. Obama’s Secret Service contingent launch an investigation? Having been accused of terrorist ties by the McCain campaign, will Sen. Obama’s name be put on the ‘No Fly’ list, effectively making it impossible for him to engage in normal airline travel?

I don’t think it’s possible to understand how dangerous the line McCain and Palin are walking is, especially as Palin in particular deliberately crosses it. While free speech is protected in the Constitution, the Supreme Court has ruled that no protection exists for yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. What we’re seeing from McCain-Palin is approaching such a situation. Words mean things and when we are a country in two wars — one in response to terrorism, the other marketed as a response to terrorism — the word “terrorist” is one of the most potent words, to be used in the most particular situations, grounded in fact. As McCain and Palin play the fear card, their diction speaks more to their reckless desperation than to any meaning connected to the words they use have to reality.

Update:
Naturally the Obama hatred hasn’t stopped today. Huffington Post has the details.

Ted’s Been Preparing for Jail for A While

The prosecution in Theodore Stevens’ federal corruption case has played audio tapes of Stevens talking about the possible consequences of what he was under investigation for. The transcripts are remarkable. Reuters:

“These guys can’t hurt really us. They’re not going to shoot us. It’s not Iraq. What the hell?,” Stevens told Bill Allen, founder of the former VECO Corp. oil-services firm based in Alaska.

Stevens is charged with lying on Senate disclosure forms from 2001 to 2006 to conceal more than $250,000 in renovations to his property and other gifts provided by VECO.

“The worst that can happen to us is we run up a bunch of legal fees, and might lose and we might have to pay a fine, might have to serve a little time in jail. I hope to Christ it never gets to that, and I don’t think it will,” Stevens said.

It’s harder to adequately state how remarkable it is that a sitting Senator would casually discuss the likelihood that his behavior would lead to “a little time in jail.” I suppose if it’s just “a little time” it’s not bad, right? I mean, if they’re not shooting Stevens (like they would in Iraq???), it’s hardly anything to worry about.

I’ve been following this case closely for a long while, but this strikes me as some of the most damning evidence against Stevens. He knew he could go to jail for what he did. If you know you might go to jail for your actions, it’s hard to plead ignorance when asked about your actions. Stevens is in deep trouble.

Disclosure: Most readers of Hold Fast likely know this, but until recently I served as Online Communications Director for Mark Begich, Ted Stevens’ opponent for the Alaska Senate seat. I am no longer connected to the Begich campaign in any way; these views are mine and mine alone.

Keating Economics

Great job by the economy campaign. Their documentary on the Keating-McCain savings and loan scandal is insightful and informative. Most importantly, it’s accessible and succeeds at tying McCain’s actions on behalf of his friend and political contributor Charles Keating to McCain’s current failed approaches to the subprime mortgage crisis and economic troubles. I’m not sure how aware people are of McCain’s guilt in connection to the S&L scandal, but this should go a long way to increasing that awareness.

Watch the video then pass it along…

Also, Billmon’s take on the Keating-McCain scandal is instructive:

But I was around, and following congressional politics rather closely (by which I mean professionally) when McCain first popped up on the political radar screen in 1986 during the so-called Keating Five scandal. In exchange for various regulatory favors, Keating, a wealthy and politically, um, generous, S&L executive, turned himself into the special friend of a bipartisan group of sleazebag Senators, with five in particular, including McCain, reaping most of the benefits. By modern standards (i.e. Jack Abramoff’s and Ted Steven’s standards) it was actually pretty tame stuff, but it was considered a big deal at the time.)

In a sense, the scandal marked the birth of the McCain “brand,” because unlike the other four of the Five, he stood up in the Senate and more or less admitted he was guilty (not nearly as guilty as the others, he hastened to point out – but still, he felt bad about what he had done.) This went over really big with the media (“Senator admits guilt” outranking even man bites dog on the news-o-meter.)

Now, if you go back and look, you’ll see that if Keating didn’t comp McCain as generously and vigorously as he did the other four, it was probably because McCain was a very junior senator at the time, with relatively little influence to peddle. But it wasn’t because Honest John was shy about accepting the favors that were offered him. If John McCain had a problem with the way lobbying (i.e. legalized prostitution) was being done in Washington, you definitely won’t find it in the record of the Keating investigation. McCain’s fit of Puritan self-righteousness (or political calculation, depending on your view) came after the fact, once he’d already been caught. And yet, from that single Senate speech sprang the shoot that eventually grew into the sturdy tree of John McCain’s media image.

You have to admit it was a neat trick: Happily accepting the naughty goodies while they were being handed out, but then winning brownie points for admitting he took them – after the world had already found out he took them. But that’s precisely what McCain did. He’s never looked back since.

The lesson he learned, I think, is that pseudo-candor (truthiness) usually trumps the genuine article (McCain was way ahead of his time on this) And so he hasn’t hesitated to flip and flop shamelessly if (and these are the key points) it is in his interest and he thinks he can get away with it.

Now the Obama campaign is calling him on it. I think a full-scale reversal of public, documented history by the McCain campaign today will also lead the media to call McCain on it, too, especially as Obama turns up the heat on McCain on this issue.

“John McCain Has”

Steve Benen inadvertently writes the script to an ad I’d love to see the Obama campaign running.

Americans need to ask themselves if they’ve ever befriended a convicted felon who advised his supporters on how best to shoot federal officials in the head. John McCain has.

Americans need to ask themselves if they’ve ever used the money of a convicted criminal to help them buy their house. John McCain has.

Americans need to ask themselves if they’ve ever befriended a radical televangelist who has lashed out at the Roman Catholic Church, calling it, among other things, “the great whore” and “a false cult system.” John McCain has.

Americans need to ask themselves if they’ve ever sought economic advice from a far-right former lawmaker who “has diminished American solvency and power beyond the wildest dreams of anti-American terrorists.” John McCain has.

Americans need to ask themselves if they’ve ever befriended a radical televangelist who blamed the attacks of Sept. 11 on Americans. John McCain has.

The Obama campaign has made a big step forward in hitting McCain for his Senate-disciplined connections to and actions on behalf of Charles Keating.

Benen makes the case that both campaigns should put aside the tit-for-tat attacks, as both pols are equally vulnerable to this sort of hit. But that’s not precisely true. The McCain campaign is launching weak attacks on Obama in areas that he has more direct vulnerabilities.  McCain’s campaign isn’t going to stop launching these attacks and because Obama hasn’t taken the shots that were available to him until recently, these attacks have some salience in the media narrative on Obama’s vulnerabilities.

I’d love to see an issue oriented debate, but I think Steve and I both know it’s not going to happen. But as long as we’re playing in the muck, the Obama campaign’s new info site and video on McCain’s Keating 5 connections is a huge step in the right direction. And Benen has provided them with another ad script, if they care to use it.

One last thing on the new Keating 5 site. For a campaign that has shown itself tremendously competent in message discipline, internet strategies, and voter outreach, it is no shock that when they decide to throw a serious punch, it lands so soundly. Good job Team Obama.

Funny In A Car Crash Sort of Way

More Palin-Couric:
http://www.cbs.com/thunder/swf/rcpHolderCbs.swf?partner=userembed&vert=News&autoPlayVid=false&releaseURL=http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=sByat0WiIVNB84uEvP1glblHkJ_wqTc4
Not much to add other than to say that, well, this is beyond painful. Not only is Palin incapable of distinguishing the merits in naming an actual vice president versus a candidate, but she picks one of the most recent Republican VP outside the current administrations and only cites Bush Sr. because he succeeded in moving from VP to President. So she’s a dim bulb with aspirations. Great.