Don't Think of a Maverick! Could the Obama Campaign Be Improved?:
In 1980, Richard Wirthlin -- Ronald Reagan's chief strategist -- made a fateful discovery. In his first poll he discovered that most people didn't like Reagan's positions on the issues, but nevertheless wanted to vote for Reagan. The reason, he figured out, is that voters vote for president not primarily on the issues, but on five other factors -- "character" factors: Values; Authenticity; Communication and connection; Trust; and Identity. In the Reagan-Carter and Reagan-Mondale debates, Mondale and Carter were ahead on the issues and lost the debates, because the debates were not about the issues, but about those other five character factors. George W. Bush used the same observation in his two races. Gore and Kerry ran on the issues. Bush ran on those five factors.
In the 2008 nomination campaign, Hillary ran on the issues, while Obama ran on those five factors and won. McCain is now running a Reagan-Bush style character-based campaign on the Big Five factors. But Obama has switched to a campaign based "on the issues," like Hillary, Gore, and Kerry. Obama has reality on his side. And the campaign is assuming that if you just tell people the truth, they will reason to the right conclusion. That's false and they should know better.
Chris Cillizza, in his Washington Post column, made the mistake of calling this a matter of "personality." DLC theorists Bill Galston and Elaine Lamarck have previously made the same mistake. Voters are smarter. Since they don't know what the situation will be in a couple of years, it is rational to ask if a candidate shares your values, if he's saying what he believes, if he connects with you, if you trust him, and if you identify with him. That is a rational thing to do. Not just a matter of personality.
Unfortunately, it is also easy to manipulate these things with marketing techniques....
Lose your house, lose your vote:
Voting rights is an area where the psychological and linguistic differences between liberals and conservatives are starkly clear. Virtually all Americans agree that voting is a right and that people should exercise that right. Most of the time when someone says this or that group shouldn't be allowed to vote, they mean it as a tasteless joke or a bitter commentary on some item in the news and not as a serious proposal to change the Constitution. There are exceptions, but they are mostly stupid people who shouldn't be allowed to vote.*
The reason that liberals and conservatives come into conflict over voting rights every election is that while they agree that voting is a right, they don't agree on what the word "right" means. Most liberals think rights are something all people are born with and that they can only be deprived of their rights for the most grevious wrongdoing. Most conservatives think rights are something earned; though we might all be born with a potential to have the same rights, we must first earn the the perrogative to exercise a specific right. Simply put, when a conservative says "right" he means what a liberal means when he says "privilege."
This difference is most visible in discussions of election malfeasance. When conservatives get upset over election problems, they are almost always upset over the idea that someone voted who didn't "deserve" to vote. "Deserve" is one of the most powerful words in the conservative lexicon. They worry that the value of their rights are diminished by undeserving people exercising the same rights. When liberals get upset over election problems, they are almost always upset over the idea that someone was unfairly prevented from voting who was entitled to vote. "Fair" is one of the most powerful words in the liberal lexicon. Being excluded is one of the most unfair things a liberal can imagine. Election reform for conservatives means strict controls to keep the wrong people from voting. Election reform for liberals means making sure no one is prevented from exercising their right to vote.
...many more under the fold:
I can't weigh in these rumors, since I have no clue. But, more broadly, I will say this: that if earpieces are indeed so easy to wear and hide, then we should expect politicians to use them. Even if I were an experienced pol, I imagine I'd want an emergency cue in case I blanked on a question. (You remember the name of Zimbabwe's opposition leader, right?) After all, a national politician is expected to have thoughts on everything from our policy toward Cyprus to the legacy of Earl Warren.
Of course, if politicians were indeed using earpieces, it'd be a bad thing. Voters would be misled--and deprived of a chance to judge the candidates properly. But I doubt we have any safeguards in place to prevent it. So here's my question: What is a realistic way of guarding against a politician taking his or her cue through an earpiece during a public appearance? Because if it hasn't already happened, it surely will.
This matters not because I think a whole lot turns on whether or not someone can correctly identify the Bush Doctrine, in particular, but because it is not a hard question to anyone who has been following foreign policy for the last few years. I want someone who might end up being President to have a reservoir of background knowledge to draw on in times of crisis. And Sarah Palin just doesn't have one.
The Emperor-to-Be Has No Clothes:
But even beyond the specifics, the entire interview was like watching a bad actor spit out memorized lines that she had learned only a few nights ago. You could almost hear her mental gears grinding, trying to retrieve the talking points and forcing them into her answers. Nothing came from her -- or if it did, she certainly fooled me. Reagan and Clinton -- governors both -- would never have appeared that ignorant, largely because they weren't. They were engaged with the issues of their day and wrestled with them intellectually. Today's interview reflected an unprepared, uninformed person cast into the spotlight far before her time.
And that's what's so absurd about the whole thing. The Palin selection is, above all else, a reflection on John McCain's willingness to let the country be run by an unvetted and woefully unprepared person. And if she's that uninformed, it means that someone else will effectively be running the country if she's president -- just like Bush and Cheney. Who would that be? No idea, but I'll go with the odds and guess "a Kagan." I actually have a decent sense of what a McCain or Biden or Obama foreign policy would look like. I have no idea what Palin would do -- or whom she would listen to.
The Palin craze is also a poor reflection on the social conservative base, which has so uncritically embraced her. They embrace her not because they know anything about her, but because they think the world is out to get them, and that Palin is "one of them" who also faces liberal attacks. The truth, though, is that they're just projecting their preferences onto a blank canvas. At the end of day, they're apparently not all that interested in qualifications or ability to govern.
Hell, McCain might as well have campaigned over the past 2 weeks with a cardboard cutout with a wind-up string that gave the same (dishonest) speech every time. It's just a joke -- no interviews, no engagement with the issues, no qualifications whatsoever. Can you imagine what Drudge/Hannity/et al. would have said if Kaine had been picked and gave that blabbering interview? They'd talk about it for a month.
I know the new conventional wisdom is that Palin was a genius pick. Well, it may well be the pick that costs McCain the election. And if it did, it would certainly be well deserved.
It's struck me that the wonderful little riffs Obama does on these controversies are sort of how you'd respond if the world were run by Daily Show viewers. Obama is sly and irreverent and mocking and even a little noble. The expectation appears to be that enough of these replies and the media will start constructing a story around the cruelty and hollowness of McCain's campaign. It is an incredibly weird way to approach an institution that is, at base, stupid, simple, hungry for constantly-changing narratives, and utterly and proudly amoral. It's not going to happen. The dynamic of this election is that the media covers conflict and the McCain campaign gets up each morning and gives them a new conflict to cover. The Obama campaign does not, and thus the McCain campaign sets the agenda.
The problem with the "more of the same" charge is that it's a campaign against Bush, not McCain. At some point in the election, though, the Obama campaign needs to provide the reason to vote against John McCain -- a politician whom, lest we forget, ranked as one of the most popular in the country for most of this decade. Happily, McCain provided them with plenty of ammunition for a charge that's organic to his life and record: That he's out of touch. Doesn't get it. Too old, and too rich, for the world we live in. Thinks wealth starts at $5 million a year and has too many houses to even keep track. has voted to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, health care for kids, and every type of income assistance program that exists. The raw material exists, strewn across video clips and voting records. They just need to use it. Voters may not want more of the same, but they need to also be convinced that they don't want John McCain.
Well ....
So that's our next vice president, huh? The person who sat across from Charlie Gibson is the carefully vetted, fully informed candidate ready to be one heartbeat away from becoming leader of the free world?
Ummm. No.
Lose your house, lose your vote:
"When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote," Hebert went on, "your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others," who see a long line and realize they can't afford to stay and wait.
Challenging all voters registered to foreclosed homes could disrupt some polling places, especially in the Detroit metropolitan area. According to the real estate Web site RealtyTrac, one in every 176 households in Wayne County, metropolitan Detroit, received a foreclosure filing during the month of July. In Macomb County, the figure was one household in every 285, meaning that 1,834 homeowners received the bad news in just one month. The Macomb County foreclosure rate puts it in the top three percent of all U.S. counties in the number of distressed homeowners.
Note to Democrats . . . FOCUS:
I think one of my favorite people, Senator Bob Casey said it best today when referring to the tactics of those pulling the strings at camp McCain/Palin when he said on MSNBC "[t]hese people have a Ph. D. in Smear Artistry." And they'll continue to do it if we let them.
Some Straight Talk, My Friends:
I borrowed that title from the Great Maverick, John McCain, the guy who is so extremely aware of women's issues that he ummed and ahhed through a video on health insurance not covering contraception because he quite clearly couldn't be bothered to have learned even one political soundbite on the issues. Or rather, he was put between the rock and the hard place by the questions because his wingnut puppet-masters don't like women to have any access to contraception but the mainstream voters think contraception is a good thing. What to say, my friends? Well, McCain said "errr" and rubbed his nose as you can see here:
If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. And Palin would be wearing quite a few of them. It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen into the world's harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect the girl's privacy. But then it takes chutzpah to support criminalizing abortion and then praise Bristol's "decision" to have the baby. The right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America. Palin's even said she would "choose life" if her daughter was pregnant from rape. Can't you just hear Bristol groaning, "Mo-om...!"
Frank's takeaway message: Liberalism can't survive much longer if liberals continue to expect that conservatives will play fair and debate the real issues with them. And democracy can't survive in a plutocracy, which is what we're becoming while Cindy and John pile up the houses. Conservative policies are wrecking the country, and it's time for the liberals to stop their nuancing and start holding people accountable for it.
As a McCain aide made clear the other day, the GOP wants the '08 campaign to be about personalities, not issues. Frank gets that sentiment: "What I did not understand," he says of his early reporting days, "was that beating liberal ideas wasn't the goal. This wasn't about ideas at all. The Washington conservatives aim to make liberalism irrelevant not by debating but by erasing it."
The Republican National Convention - A mean machine:
McCain touchingly recounted his biography and managed to get in a few mistruths about Obama. (He opposes nuclear power! He'll raise your taxes! His health-care plan will reduce your wages!) Compared to the feverish oratory of the night before, though, it felt low-key and lecture-like. The nominee had been one-upped by his vice-presidential pick.
The McCain campaign consists mostly of frantically throwing red herrings in all directions, hoping no one notices that John McCain and his moose-shootin' sidekick have no idea how they might govern. And this is working very well for them, it seems. The American public has gotten so used to content-free campaigns they think this is normal.
Palin and Pipelines, Desperation and Gish:
If you are paying attention, you are seeing this game for what it is for Oh, these Many Years. It is a full court press, an all guns blazing, warp speed Mr Zulu, fullspeed ahead Gish Gallop constantly being performed by our community theater troop of a government, and man, are they good. They have fucking consistently thrown so much insane and blatantly untrue, inaccurate nonsense at us for so long and at such a speed that we cannot possibly process it all, let alone refute or fight it.
And it works. We're tired, we're confused, our heads are spinning and on massive overload. You can't even see all the lies, so how can you see the truth through them?
Wow, this might be a record, even for me. It would seem I've gone screaming naked down the hallways of a tangent before I even approached what I came here to talk to you about.
Sarah Palin is clearly a Gish Gallop. She isn't part of one, the woman is actually a Gish Gallop for the McCain campaign.
We thought things were strange in 2004 when the war hero was Swift-boated into a pussy, while the draft dodger was the pinnacle of warrior strength, but the last week has really outstripped anything that has come before. It's as though the selection of Palin has caused a rift in the space-time continuum where up is down and the Chicago Cubs are battling for the best record in the majors. Think of the recent happenings that were previously unthinkable: Campbell Brown becoming a hard-hitting journalist/interviewer, the Republicans crying "sexism" over the treatment of Palin, and the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee speaking at the Republican convention. (OK, it's not that unthinkable that Lieberman 2.0 would go the full Zell Miller, but it sure is bizarre.) Palin is even trying to take advantage of the current shift in the cosmos by being simultaneously for and against government pork.
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John McCain's campaign slogan is "Country First." In the primaries he famously lambasted Mitt Romney for working for profit rather than patriotism. Several times during the campaign he has implied (or outright declared) that Obama takes positions out of political expediency, rather than what's good for the country (as McCain does). Clearly, this is a man of principle, and not someone who thinks it would irresponsible to put someone so manifestly unqualified as Gov. Palin in his "break glass in case of death" container. The only way McCain would feel comfortable doing this is if he absolutely knew that he would be serving out his full term. And the only way a 72-year-old man could possess this confidence is if he knows that he is a superhero, or at least like Bruce Willis in that M. Night Shyamalan movie that wasn't nearly as good as The Sixth Sense, but not nearly as bad as anything that's come since. In McCain's defense, he has survived multiple jet crashes, being shot down in Vietnam and an extended stay in a tiger cage, not to mention a couple of bouts with melanoma, so you can't blame the guy for being a little cavalier vis-a-vis his own mortality. The good bottom-line budget news is that if this is indeed true, we can save a lot on Secret Service protection.
What Do Focus Groups Actually Tell Us?:
How does that square with wanting "details"? I really have to wonder what this means. To me, it sounds like a lot of rationalization, combined with the phenomenon of a bunch of people trapped in a room who: 1) don't really know what they're talking about; and 2) are encouraged to complain. There has to be a better way of figuring out what voters want than this.
More importantly, what is staggering, and ultimately depressing is the criteria that these swing voters use--issues don't matter. They're not using heuristic shortcuts to determine possible positions on issues, they fundamentally do not think that policy is what politics is about.
Sarah Palin's Myth of America:
The Republican Party's subliminal message seems stronger than ever this year because of the nature of the Democratic nominee for President. Barack Obama could not exist in the small-town America that Reagan fantasized. He's the product of what used to be called miscegenation, a scenario that may still be more terrifying than a teen daughter's pregnancy in many American households. Furthermore, he has thrived in the culture and economy that displaced Main Street America -- an economy where people no longer work in factories or make things with their hands, but where lawyers and traders prosper unduly. (Of course, this is the economy the Republican Party has promoted -- but facts are powerless in the face of a potent mythology.) Obama is the precise opposite of Mountain Man Todd Palin: an entirely urban creature. He lives within the hilarious conundrum of being both too "cosmopolitan" and intellectual for Republican tastes -- at least as Rudy Giuliani described it -- while also being the sort of fellow suspected of getting ahead by affirmative action.
THE FACTS ARE A FEATURE STORY:
So Feehery is saying that the McCain campaign will lie to the American people, and will get away with it because no one cares about the facts. Not only that, but people will be offended by the facts if you report them about the person the GOP happens to be running for vice president. So don't bother.
Alan Brinkley Misunderstands Electoral Politics:
Alan Brinkley's piece in Saturday's Wall Street Journal is subtitled: "Millions of voters have moved out of the political party system. The decline of loyalty has made politics less stable and predictable--and has resulted in close elections."
This statement, and Brinkley's thesis, is dubious. Elections are not getting closer, less predictable, or more volatile. And voters' loyalty to political parties is quite strong and has been getting stronger. I elaborate below. This is a lengthy post, but I think it is important to dispel Brinkley's misconceptions, which seem to me typical of much conventional wisdom about elections.
The Guide to the Conservative Palinguage Vol.2 -- the People's Edition:
This is the Vol. 2 of The Guide to the Conservative Palinguage. I'm calling this one the People's Edition because you, the people, have obviously been taking AP courses in talking Conservative. I've been slammed with responses. Enough that I can promise you there will be future volumes. Along with some of mine, I've mixed in a few of yours for everybody's linguistic pleasure.
The Times blames the Internet:
So according to the Times, there's no way anyone could suggest that Obama was referring to Palin with his pig comment. No way. But what created the chatter on the Internet was Palin's previous reference at the convention.
Um, no.
We'll Stop Calling Her a Liar When She Stops Lying:
"Well, Reihan, we will keep hearing about it because she has been lying."
Fact Check: Palin Wrong on Former VP Credentials:
However Palin was mistaken, at least where recent history is concerned. Every vice president over the last 30 years had met a foreign head of state before being elected.
How absolutely, head-in-the-ground oblivious do you have to be to our national politics to not be familiar with the Bush Doctrine, the very cornerstone of this administration's foreign policy and the doctrine that led us into the most disastrous foreign policy decision in American history?
Department of Distressing Trends:
Earnings going down down down for everyone without professional degrees as illustrated by the chart on the left. One major factor here is the rise in health insurance premium costs. As we saw yesterday the employee side of insurance premiums is rising quickly and reducing disposable income. But the employer side of the premium ledger is also rising rapidly, so employees are getting more-and-more of their compensation in the form of employer health care costs and less-and-less in the form of money.
Interestingly, Sarah Palin seems to have outlined a sensible "imminent threat" standard for preemptive military action. It would have been nice for Charlie Gibson to point out that George W. Bush and John McCain agree that this is the wrong standard and we have the right to use military force unilaterally even where there isn't an imminent threat. I think Palin's view is sensible, so it would be interesting to learn her opinion of her running mate's much less sensible view.
Olbermann says he will give to charity every time Palin lies:
Last night on MSNBC, host Keith Olbermann aired clips of Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) offering her support for the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere" during a debate in 2006, and another of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) criticizing it. "Considering that this campaign is not about issues, that dispute could very well be moot," Olbermann said, adding that as of today, he will give to charity every time Palin lies:
Believe it or not, sequencing the DNA of Seals, Bears, Lobsters, pick-a-ridiculous-sounding-animal has merit, both in evolutionary and ecological terms. Why these projects aren't funded through the National Science Foundation or the National Human Genome Research Institute and are instead shuttled off into earmarks is a valid question, but as a genetics professor, I'm tired of our field being the butt of an "easy" joke.
McCain has a hard slog on campaign trail without Palin:
Here's why the mile-wide, inch-deep celebrity of Sarah Palin is a requirement for John McCain--he can't cut it on the stump without her because he simply cannot draw crowds or enthusiasm with his low-energy, dry, empty politicking and poor message. She is a very flawed distraction, but a distraction nonetheless because of the novelty she represents for the Kool-Aid drinkers and the fundies. This is what happened in Philly (and PA is a battleground state):
This is not a person who's remotely prepared to lead this country.
I can't believe that serious Republican people are not just as scared and horrified watching that video as I am. I can't believe that partisanship truly trumps all sense and rationality. She has no idea what the fuck she's doing.
I'm not saying that as a progressive. I'm not saying that as a (historically always) Democratic voter. I'm not saying that because I looked at her résumé and decided it was too thin and automatically assumed she was unqualified. I'm not saying it because she's a woman, or a Republican, or a conservative.
I'm saying it because it is now patently obvious.
And quite frankly, Republicans, ignoring it just because she's on your team is not just politics as usual; it's dangerous and it's irresponsible.
John McCain has asked you to put your trust in a person who is manifestly unfit for the presidency. Doesn't that bother you? Doesn't it piss you off? Doesn't it scare you?
Because it fucking should.
A number of you have written in (mainly research scientists of one sort or another) to say that in the case of Sarah Palin's $3.2 million earmark request to study seal DNA we should not jump to the conclusion that such spending is wasteful just because it may sound funny. So let me be clear. I don't assume that at all. In fact, I'm a big supporter of federal spending on pure research -- much of which McCain routinely derides as pork to guffaws all around. My father was a marine biologist whose commitment to investment in the sciences was so great that he'd surely send a thunderbolt down from heaven to smite me if I didn't. Of course, being such a hard core scientist he didn't believe in heaven, which is a complication. But I digress. I raise these earmarks because it is another example that John McCain and Sarah Palin are monumental hypocrites and liars on the whole issue of reform, earmarks, the Bridge to Nowhere and virtually everything else. So it would be irresponsible not to make that clear.
Bill O'Reilly Defends Obama, Slams Smears:
Bill O'Reilly led off tonight's episode of The Factor with a pointed critique of the latest small-minded content of the news cycle, criticizing the McCain campaign both in terms of character and tactics, slagging the media for pressing the story senselessly, and largely absolving Obama - though perhaps with faint praise: his "Obama doesn't like confrontation" statement seems out of joint with last week's insistence that the Illinois Senator was "tough" and "not a wimp."
Nevertheless, O'Reilly very clearly stipulated that there was no evidence that Obama intended to make any sort of sexist remark.
This being Bill O'Reilly, the content naturally managed to slag Daily Kos and NBC News.
Election 08: Will the media cover pig lipstick or real issues?:
Politico is holding an interesting round-table discussion on why the media can't seem to stop itself from dwelling on non-issues -- like the recent faux controversy over Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment -- instead of things that matter, like war or the collapsing economy.
A corporate ratings-driven media, the gossipy "gotcha" quality of YouTube and online outlets, and other culprits all come under attack (and even a few -- albeit very few -- defend the media).
If the press will just do their job, all will be OK:
The Republicans can scream all they want, all that anyone will hear is that they are lying. I don't see how the press can avoid this. We can all see it openly, Republicans and Democrats and independents, and people all over the world who don't get a vote in our election, but whose respect for us they do control. America will be judged by how we handle this. We will not be able to hide behind the usual excuse "I didn't vote for him" because you are now called on to do more.
I think we made a lot of progress today, cleared a lot of things up. Republicans could help by holding another convention and nominating a new ticket. McCain is completely discredited, he could not serve as President with the support of anyone who has an education or who cares about the future of this country. Yes I understand that we who are educated and have health insurance and jobs are elitist and different from those who live in small cities and towns, but my family comes from small towns, and my ancestors were not educated. We have so much in common and so much at stake, we really can't afford to be split this way, again. Permalink to this paragraph
McCain's gamble was too big, and it didn't work. You can play a few more cards from the hand, but it's not going to change the outcome -- he can't be President. It won't work. The sooner the Republicans acknowledge that and respond, the better we all will be. Until that happens all the press has to do is report the news and stop being anything other than reporters.
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