“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.

Drop Outs

Amy Schatz of the Wall Street Journal tweets:

If it goes really, really badly tonight could a VP candidate still drop out?

Schatz then links to June Krunholz’s post on WSJ Washington Wire, which opens:

What would happen if either Joe Biden or Sarah Palin decided after, say, a mediocre performance in Thursday’s debate to withdraw from the campaign and spend more time with the family? Washington Wire put the question to election-law experts. Their answer: No problem.

Krunholz goes on to cover the relevant legal ground for replacing a VP pick now. But let’s be clear, “Joe Biden” appears in her first sentence only as a requisite placeholder.  No one is expecting a performance so catastrophic that Biden would be forced to drop out. Hell, short of pinching Palin’s ass or exposing himself on national TV, I don’t think it is even conceivable that Biden would commit a verbal gaffe so damaging that he could no longer be on the ticket.

Palin, on the other hand, is a different story. The only reason two Wall Street Journal reporters are researching and speculating on what would happen if a VP candidate dropped out is because it is a conceivable reality with Palin. She has bombed every interview with the press in spectacular, if horrifying, fashion.  The fear isn’t mediocrity, it’s the continuation of her propensity to reveal in toto her lack of preparedness for the office she seeks. With Palin, a mediocre performance would be a huge step forward.

No, these questions are being posed because Palin is dancing along the cusp. She is hurting McCain.  And up against an incredibly qualified opponent in Joe Biden, Palin may walk away from tonight as the modern Republican Party’s biggest goat. From Day One I’ve thought Palin was at risk of being dropped from McCain’s ticket. We shall see if tonight’s debate is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

McCain Out of Michigan

Jonathan Martin of Politico is reporting that John McCain is pulling out of Michigan.

I will now put forward what I believe is the least likely explanation of why McCain is pulling out of Michigan:

  1. Former Congressman and Edwards campaign manager David Bonior is from Michigan.
  2. Bonior was very public in expressing his disappointment in John Edwards following it was revealed he’d had an affair.
  3. Black hole magic step.
  4. McCain is pulling out of Michigan.

I challenge you to find a less likely explanation for why McCain is pulling out.

Angry Populism

Robert Reich thinks America is about to explode in a wave of angry populism following the $700 billion Wall St. bailout. Reich writes:

The larger economic outlook is not encouraging. All signs point to the economy worsening, bailout or no bailout. Unemployment will continue to rise. Median earnings will continue to drop, adjusted for inflation. More Americans will lose their health insurance.

The Era of Angry Populism has only just begun. Let’s hope Obama wins, and is able to mobilize the anger into fierce pressure on Congress to get his agenda enacted, as well as reform Wall Street and Washington.

That would certainly be a positive manifestation of popular sentiment in tumultuous times, but I’m unclear how he thinks we get from here to there. We’re here precisely because the leadership of both parties in Washington has identified with and worked on behalf of corporate interests far more than working Americans. Populism is regularly laughed at by DC elites (See: Jim Webb & Jon Tester’s 2006 victories as an example). The most mainstream populism we see in the American political spectrum today is anti-immigrant, pseudo-racist variety provided by Lou Dobbs and the Minute Men.

Reich thinks McCain could play the role of Angry Populist better than Obama, which I suppose is true but only to the extent that McCain is infinitely more practiced at saying whatever is politically advantageous at a given moment than Obama. Were today to call for McCain to become an economic populist, his likely reaction would be, “Hell, why not?” if it wins him votes in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

But angry populism can only be an effective political response to economic and political disenfranchisement of the majority of the American populus if the people articulating it are genuine. Late arrivers need not apply. While that may be evident with imposters like John McCain and Sarah Palin, it’s also why some of our great liberals — Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton — would not do well as populists either.

Reich is onto something in suggesting that the coming populist outpouring could be a useful weapon in Obama’s efforts to enact his legislative agenda. But I don’t think it’s easy to go from Point A to Point B. Again I’m drawn to what I wrote about a few days ago — Huey Long’s Share The Wealth campaign. We can’t wait for someone who isn’t a populist to produce a populist agenda and harness support for it. If a legislative agenda were to be created that articulated the populist sentiments brewing during this crisis, it would best serve a President Obama to have it originate with an outside body who actually was a populist. We just don’t really have that person now on the Left.

What I think is most likely is that an outpouring of populist support will continue to rise across the nation and our political elites of both parties will ignore, miss, or marginalize it. We’ll have a few figures who harness it in circumscribed situations that don’t inform their legislative actions, as Jim Webb did on the bailout vote. Others will embrace populist rhetoric solely in electoral settings, like railing against high gas prices while oil executives pocket record profits, but then never once vote to change things when in office. At the end of the day, I don’t see any manifestation of populism on the Left that makes me optimistic about the prospects of Democrats currently serving at the federal level finding a way to hear and act upon the uprising to come.  Maybe someone like Brian Schweitzer in Montana will find a way to speak to these times, but again, I think even the list of politicians outside of federal office is short.

The opportunity is here for the Democratic Party to give birth to another Paul Wellstone or Huey Long. There is the popular will for their sort of politics. Will one emerge? And will it be someone we already know (Russ Feingold? Donna Edwards? Robert Wexler?) or someone coming from obscurity to speak truth about the state of affairs in the United States of America?