• As John McCain's prospects for becoming president fade more every day, it's clear he's going to go out hitting the wingnut trifecta, insinuating Obama and ACORN are committing vote fraud (actually, it's registration fraud), using Bill Ayers to explain why Obama is responsible for the financial meltdown (seriously), and of course blaming Obama for being ambitious, to which I second Tim's thoughts. The RNC has decided to go with the Chicago corruption angle in their new ad, tying Obama not only to Ayers, but William Daley and Tony Rezko.
• The Wall Street Journal invites us to mourn with McCain campaign staffers who lament the negative turn taken by the candidate but it's difficult to muster any sympathy when we learn from Bill Keller that the McCain campaign bullied The New York Times into doing its Ayers story last weekend. It does feel like an era is ending in American politics, to which I again second Tim's remarks.
• You can't make this stuff up. The Alaska legislature is releasing it's report today on the state trooper firing probe, and the McCain-Palin campaign releases their own report which, astonishingly, absolves Palin of any wrongdoing. Palin's essential corruption -- and I don't mean the type of quid-pro-quo corruption that infects politicians -- is her utter lack of a sense of the duty holding a public office entails. Indeed, her rapid rise, we learn from The Washington Post, was one big PR campaign designed to sell the GOP on her "energy expertise" bona fides. And speaking of PR, Palin will appear on Saturday Night Live on October 25.
• Barack Obama is purchasing a half hour of airtime for October 29, less than one week before Election Day. The campaign has not said what the content of the buy will be, but my hunch is that it will contain something much more substantive than a final pitch for his presidential campaign.
• It's probably a futile exercise, but I'm transfixed by trying to understand the mind of professional conservatives who are so committed to their interpretation of real world events that any sense of cause and effect utterly disappears. Renowned historian of American liberalism's fascist past, Jonah Goldberg, passes along an email -- which he admits to having "no idea whatsoever if there's merit to this, and if there is how much merit," -- arguing Obama's rise in the polls is responsible for the market tanking. Shortly thereafter, Goldberg finds another correlation (this time with graphs!) to which he writes "Still, I think Pethokoukis' point that Obama's success may make investors more pessimistic about the future has some plausibility to it."
• Cindy McCain sure knows how to win over the veteran vote. Responding to a question about John McCain's time spent as a POW and whether he still experiences trauma as a result, she observed that "my husband, he’d be the first one to tell you that he was trained to do what he was doing. The guys who had the trouble were the 18-year-olds who were drafted. He was trained, he went to the Naval Academy, he was a trained United States naval officer, and so he knew what he was doing."
• Quote of the day (well, yesterday) from Joe Biden, responding to Sarah Palin's "I was in the second grade when he [Biden] was elected to the Senate" line: "That’s true, but she was in sixth grade the last time John had a new idea." I think that one deserves a rare "oh, snap!" from me.
  
• It's a good thing Connecticut now allows same-sex marriage, because it gives Charles Keating one more place to express his long-held, deeply-felt love for John McCain.

--Mori Dinauer

Not content to leave the insanity enveloping the far right over ACORN, John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis today contended that McCain deliberately blew up the original bailout package because it contained money for ACORN:

"So we can actually say that in addition to saving taxpayers millions of dollars, and we're very happy that no more taxpayer dollars were added to the pile of money going to ACORN. Uh, by their own admission because, by the Democrats' own admission because John McCain came to town and blew that package up. Thank goodness."

Of course, after the original bailout plan failed, McCain blamed Obama, which sort of contrasts with the campaign's contention that Obama and ACORN are deeply connected. Not only that, but McCain attempted to take credit for the passage of the bill before it was passed, after which he blamed his rival for the bill's failure.

At any rate, for the campaign's new story to be true it would have to mean that McCain lied to the American people about doing his best to get the bailout passed, since he never indicated at the time that he would try to prevent the package from passing or his reasons behind doing so.

So either McCain is lying now, or he was lying when his campaign claimed that he had come to "show leadership" by making sure the first bill got passed. There's no way that both can be true.

--A. Serwer

The silliest part about the claim that ACORN is secretly trying to steal the 2008 election, other than the claim itself, is the idea that the large number of fraudulent forms submitted in Indiana would never have been turned in otherwise. But, as Adam Doster points out, ACORN is required by law to turn in all registrations, no matter how suspect. ACORN flags the ones that seem problematic to help state officials discern fraudulent registrations from real ones. CNN did not note that the law in fact, requires ACORN to submit voter registrations, even if they're filled out with names like Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse. In my last post, I suggested that the bad forms were turned in deliberately -- this is indeed the case. They were turned in deliberately because the law compels ACORN to do so.

Moreover, as a commenter pointed out on the last thread, Indiana has one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the country. Namely, voters in Indiana have to submit a government issued photo ID in order to vote. Try getting a government issued photo ID for your potted plant or puppy. It won't happen. This is the difference between voter fraud and registration fraud. The Right has an interest in conflating the two in order to create anxiety about voter fraud and restrict access to the polls for likely Democratic voters, but the media should not be complicit in mixing the two together. As I've said before, registration fraud is common; voter fraud is practically nonexistent.

The more I learn about the crackdown on ACORN, the more I suspect partisan motivations. How can the government accuse ACORN of deliberately turning in bad forms if the law forces ACORN to turn in all of the ones they collect, no matter how fraudulent they are on their face?

Update: I want to add one more thing for those who are still suspicious of the reason behind the law forcing ACORN to turn in registration forms that appear to be fraudulent. One of the more obvious reasons is that if voter registration groups could decide which forms to turn in, a liberal group like ACORN could simply throw away GOP registration forms and claim they were fraudulent. The law is in place, at least partially, to make sure things like that don't happen.

--A. Serwer

You are, if you're a taxpayer. Wachovia, the bank recently bailed out by the government to the tune of $312 billion, just gave the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee an $8 million loan. It's not unusual for big campaign committees to take out loans at the end of the cycle for one last burst of resources, but it is unusual for the NRCC, which fell victim to one of the biggest campaign-finance fraud scandals ever just last year, to be given a loan by a bank that isn't giving loans to anyone. And it doesn't make it look any better when you learn that Wachovia's leadership tilts heavily toward the GOP. This investigation at Facing South tells the whole tale.

Also, to put this number in perspective and explain the NRCC's serious need for cash, check out this recent New York Times analysis of congressional races making reference to the loan:

The National Republican Congressional Committee has spent well under $1 million on advertisements in House districts, compared with more than $16 million invested in advertising by the House Democrats’ campaign committee. And it can only afford to spend in defense of select Republican seats. On Wednesday, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call first reported that the Republican campaign group was borrowing $8 million to buy more advertising in the closing weeks, and to avoid being heavily outspent.

On the other hand, a quick check with a Democratic operative suggests that the DCCC wouldn't have had trouble getting a loan if it wanted one; neither the DCCC nor the NRCC has ever defaulted on a loan. And thinking further, given the state of the economy and the "credit rating" of these committees, it might not be the worst investment to put a little money toward politicians -- they're the only people injecting any capital into the market these days, right? But though it's technically legal, it's a glorious example of Washington influence buying at it's finest.

-- Tim Fernholz

The latest criticism of Barack Obama from the right is that he is somehow too ambitious to be president, and too opportunistic. No one mentions that of course he's ambitious -- so is John McCain. In order to become president you have to spend two years and hundreds of millions of dollars telling people how great you are and why you should be in charge of the most important government on Earth. This is not a task to inspire humility. But what's interesting his how the idea of ambition is being tied up in the question of who the "real" Obama is. In this column, Rich Lowry takes up the standard:

But no one can know whether Obama is the leftist his associations suggest, or the irenic uniter of his iconic 2004 convention speech; whether he’s the down-the-line liberal who kowtowed to the base of his own party in the Democratic primaries, or the pragmatist who readjusted to the center as soon as enthralled liberals handed him the nomination. The consistent line running through his career is opportunism, a willingness to accommodate whoever -- Bill Ayers or the swing voter in Ohio -- can help him up the next rung in his ladder of ambition at any juncture.

To which I reply: But no one can know whether McCain is the hard-right conservative his associations suggest, or the independent maverick of all of his speeches; whether he's the conservative who kowtowed to the culturally conservative, free market base of his own party in the Republican primaries, or the pragmatist who endorsed a massive government intervention as soon as he was handed the nomination. The consistent line running through his career is opportunism, a willingness to accommodate whoever -- Jerry Falwell, the U.S. Council for World Freedom or the moderate voter in New Hampshire -- can help him up the next rung in his ladder of ambition at any juncture.

I could add some other questions: Is this the McCain who opposed cutting taxes twice in the last seven years because it is wrong to do so in the time of war, especially while benefiting the privileged, or the one who says we should have $300 billion in tax cuts right now, disproportionately benefiting the wealthy and large corporations? Is this the McCain who said he would run a principled campaign and then took a hard right turn into the mud? Or is this the McCain who says walk softly and carry a big stick, but loudly counsels war with any number of states at a time when our military has been stretched to the breaking point by our conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq?

One has to understand that politicians are human, creatures of contradiction and convenience. We study their records, their proposals, try to get a sense of their characters, but we can't ask them to be any less complex than we ourselves are. To my mind, Obama didn't kowtow to the base half so much as Lowry suggests, or shift to the center, either, a mistaken narrative built on a few centrist votes in the Senate. I'd say McCain's flip-flops are much more glaring, but I understand why he chose to change his positions -- there are deep structural imperatives to doing so. Understanding those structural incentives is key to figuring out the heart of McCain's ideas. To do otherwise by demanding complete consistency -- as Lowry suggests or as Jonah Goldberg in a similar fashion demands or -- is to deny what makes politicians so compelling. I thought conservatives were supposed to have the nuanced understanding of the crooked timber of human nature, but I suppose that went out of style in the with-us-or-against-us years.

Lowry, I'm sure, has a strong opinion about Obama's "true" identity. By pretending otherwise, he's simply trying to spread the McCain camp's new meme of confusion. But he does more credit to his profession and his intellectual integrity when he simply answers his column's question and makes an argument about Obama's candidacy.

-- Tim Fernholz

It's a new election coverage meme: The grass-roots Republican faithful see McCain floundering, and they are freaking out. Politico's Jonathan Martin covers the trend, which includes chants of "terrorist!" and "Obama Osama" at McCain rallies. But nowhere does Martin mention a key factor in why conservative fear and anger this year is so much harsher than it was when Gore or Kerry was running -- race. A significant minority of the right-wing base coming out to these events are watching a black man with a Muslim-sounding name close this election, and they are not happy. If you have any doubts about their motivations, watch these videos.

Now let me repeat: these people are in a minority. But they are part of a disturbingly ignorant, hateful minority whose motivations should not be obscured.

--Dana Goldstein

Excellent news.

Or, at least, it's excellent news from my non-contrarian perspective. Maybe this will be a counterproductive decision that will also lead to a Republican landslide. After all, surely Peter Beinart's claim that the rejection of same-sex marriage rights by New York state courts would be good for same-sex marriage rights in the state has been vindicated by New York's ongoing exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage rights. And who can forget how badly the New Jersey court's civil union decision hurt the Dems in the 2006 elections? And how Goodridge was roundly rejected in Massachusetts? And how the extremely unpopular 2008 California Supreme Court decision has turned the election by cutting Obama's lead in California to a razor-thin 15 points?

Frankly, I don't know when proponents of same-sex marriage will start accepting this kindly concern trolling advice and start recognizing that losing is better than winning.

--Scott Lemieux

This morning I attended a briefing by Ruy Teixeira and William Frey that delved into the demographic trends that underlie our changing electorate. I'm still sifting the massive amount of data they presented, but here are a few preliminary observations. The dog and pony show consisted of Frey's accounts of demographic change in various states, where populations are growing and declining, and what kinds of people cause that growth. Then Teixeira steps in to explain what political behavior is displayed by these changing groups. Here are some initial impressions of their results:

• The project was funded by Brookings' Metropolitan Program, and no surprise, metropolitan areas are hugely important! Considering a number of swing states, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Colorado, the authors concluded that heavy population growth in metropolitan areas and their suburbs make them critical reserves of voters for Democratic politicians. By superimposing the change in partisan voting margin from 1988 until 2004 over maps showing population growth, the authors were able to suggest a correlation between the fastest growing counties and the more Democratic voters. This demographic shift promises returns for the Democratic pary.
• For one example, check out their discussion of Ohio and the mid-west. You can see rapid growth in the Cleveland suburbs, in Columbus and its suburbs, and in the Cincinnati metro area, while other areas have slower or negative growth. Then, take a look at the change in presidential party voting: In all the growth areas, the Democratic margin has been increasing, often by more than 10 percent, since 1988.
• The newest Mark Penn-esque voter demographic to pay attention to is whites with some college, one of the fastest growing segments of the electorate. It's a volatile group but also has been trending Democratic. White working class voters and white college educated voters are both moving in the Democratic direction this year in comparison to 2004. White college educated voters are starting to supplant white working class voters as an increasing number of people have access to some higher education.
• In some states, especially in the intermountain West, Florida and Virginia, minorities are an increasingly important part of the Democratic electoral coalition. In Colorado, for instance, the largest growth is in white college graduates, many of them from California and other classically blue states, and Hispanic-dominated minorities. Minorities have had a greater increase in vote share than any other bloc (17 percent from 2000 - 2006, with the largest rates of increase in Denver and its suburbs). If Democrats continue to capture a large share of Hispanic voters, this trend -- here as well as in New Mexico, where Hispanic-dominated minorities make up 50 percent of the voter share -- will have a powerful electoral impact going forward.

The two authors noted that the future of this coalition depends on winning Democrats' success at governing -- if they are elected and don't respond with effective policies, then no number of sympathetic demographic groups will help them. But slog through the whole report -- there's a lot going on out in that country of ours. As I find new interesting nuggets, I'll bring them to your attention.

-- Tim Fernholz

CNN is unable or unwilling to make the critical distinction between registration fraud and voter fraud. As I've said before, the former is really easy to do, even by accident, and the latter is extremely difficult and rarely occurs. The sheer volume of ACORN registration forms found in Indiana suggests the forms were deliberately filled out wrong, but they do not in any sense prove that there is a widespread liberal conspiracy to steal the election. More likely, ACORN workers were stealing time and trying to get paid without actually doing their jobs. Given how easily the forms were discovered, it would have to be the most inept scheme in the history of the United States.

Last night on Anderson Cooper's show, CNN reporter Drew Griffin concluded the following (via Lexis):

GRIFFIN: It absolutely is a crime. That was a fraud, somebody who filled out those forms. And I looked at them, Anderson. They're obviously a fraud.But the election workers say we have to turn this over to the actual elected board of elections. The board of elections has to then bring in the county attorney to see if an investigation, a criminal investigation, should begin. So all of that will be, you know, weeks, maybe even months down the road, and of course, that's going to be after the election.

Griffin's conclusion leaves open the possibility that there are thousands of fraudulent registration forms that will lead to people voting illegally and thus stealing the election. No where in his report does he acknowledge that voter fraud is very difficult to pull off and thus very rare, he is simply content to frighten people into believing that the fraudulent voter forms could lead to the election being stolen.

By contrast,The New York Times reported yesterday that thousands of voters have been illegally purged from the rolls in several swing states. Cooper gave this non-hypothetical problem about ten seconds of airtime before informing his viewers that they would "look into it in the days ahead."

Here we have one problem that we know is real, is actually happening, and may deny hundreds of thousands of Americans their vote on Election Day. But that's not nearly as sexy or exciting as an election stealing conspiracy that doesn't actually exist. We have a real problem, and a hypothetical one. CNN, like many in the mainstream media, decided the hypothetical problem was more important.

They're "keeping them honest," all right. Everyone but those who might actually affect your right to vote.

--A. Serwer

Nationwide, only 2 percent of eligible children take advantage of No Child Left Behind's "transfer provision," which compels districts to allow kids attending a failing school to transfer to a higher performing one. Why is the provision so rarely used? In many districts, there simply isn't a great school to transfer to, and NCLB does not allow transfers across districts (in my view, a major flaw of the legislation). There's also the problem of transportation; many districts just don't provide a good way for students to get to a school outside of their neighborhood.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that now even those districts that have been providing busing are cutting back, citing high fuel costs and budgetary belt tightening. But it's no coincidence that some of the districts now canceling busing programs have long fought desegregation. The entire state of Alabama won a federal waiver releasing it from the transfer provision. Milwaukee, DeKalb County in Georgia, and Tampa Bay have also wiggled out from under the requirement.

If local governments can't or won't provide this service, the federal government should step in, creating voluntary transfer programs that offer districts funding incentives for taking students in from across boundary lines. How would it work? Read about Hartford, Conn. The simple truth is that integration matters to the academic performance and social development of children of every race and class, and it simply cannot be achieved without government intervention. Consider the case of Wannesha McKennedy, who lives outside of Atlanta and would like to attend a better high school. The Journal reports:

McKennedy's daughter, Wannesha, had been accepted at a well-regarded high school in an affluent part of northern DeKalb County. But it is 22 miles away from the family home. Mr. McKennedy couldn't figure out a way to drive her there and still get to downtown Atlanta to start work on time at 7 a.m. And so, for her junior year, Wannesha will stay at her neighborhood high school, which has missed its NCLB achievement goals for the past three years.

Without transportation, the promise of choice is a "joke," says Mr. McKennedy. "If you're going to have it, you need buses."

--Dana Goldstein

Pirates are claiming that an $8 million ransom has been arranged for the return of MV Faina, a ship hijacked off Somalia while carrying 33 Ukrainian T-72 tanks and a collection of other weapons. I'm skeptical of an accord on two levels. First, I simply don't think it's a good idea to pay the pirates to give up the ship; in such a high profile case, this will have the inevitable effect of making pirates believe that they can get away with anything. It would be better to take the risk of storming the ship and arresting or shooting the pirates, particularly with the credibility of the United States Navy on the line.

If the USN is operating off Somalia for no purpose other than to moderate pirate ransom demands, then we have a serious problem. At the same time, I'm not sure that I would take any ransom agreements at face value. Just because the pirates think they're going to get a ransom doesn't mean they actually will; the French have, in two recent cases, used the promise of ransoms to lure pirates away from ships and arrest them. This, I think, would be the best outcome of the MV Faina case. Future pirates might not fall for the same trick, but the point is to convey that a life of piracy doesn't pay.

--Robert Farley

From the AP:

Palin pre-empts state report, clears self in probe

Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.

In other news, Phoebe and I have conducted a thorough investigation of typos on the site and determined that they never happen.

--Sam boyd

Last night the Obama campaign sent an e-mail to supporters with the subject line "Time for the Talk." I thought this e-mail would finally ask folks to deal head-on with racism among their friends and family. It turns out that the text did not mention race specifically, but it did seem geared toward encouraging younger voters to broach that very subject with their older relatives:

With so many rumors and misperceptions out there, it's incredibly important that you sit down with parents or other family members. Tell them who Barack is, what he stands for, and why you're supporting him.

You may be the only person who can convince them.

The campaign went on to offer this sample e-mail for supporters to send to their families:

Hi, I've been thinking a lot about the election and how important it is to our family.

I've decided to support Barack Obama, and wanted to let you know why.

There are many rumors floating around out there, so here's some information about Barack's positions on things I know are important to you.

[...]

This is probably going to be the most important election in my lifetime, and it's something I strongly believe in. So let's talk about it. Ask me anything.

Ask me anything. That seems to be an invitation to an open discussion about race, religion, and cultural values.

--Dana Goldstein

It’s probably a little early to make this direct a comparison, but yesterday I reread a favorite story of mine, Michael Lewis' New Republic article “The End” (Available, unfortunately, only on Nexis). In it, Lewis travels with senator and then-presidential candidate Bob Dole during the last four days of the 1996 election, watching as the GOP standard bearer succumbs to irrelevancy and frustration. As McCain criss-crosses the country today attacking Barack Obama, and his aides futilely spin the press about their chances of winning, there are certain similarities:

Mainly what is noticeable to the naked eye is how much less pleasant the Dole campaign has become -- which is saying something. The crowds flip the finger at the busloads of journalists and chant rude things at them as they enter each arena. The journalists, for their part, wear buttons that say, “Yeah, I’m the Media. Screw You.” The artillery aimed at Clinton gets heavier by the hour. ” I never saw an FBI file,” former President Bush tells the crowd. “But then I never had a barroom bouncer right there to look them over for me.” Five hours later Bush’s barroom bouncer has become President Ford’s bartender. A few hours after that Dole himself picks it up and describes Clinton’s bartender looking through files: “He looks at a FBI file, then has a beer. Looks at another file. Has another beer.”

…One of Dole’s better-known strategists, Charlie Black, [now he works for McCain] rides in the press plane. Black was the brains behind Phil Gramm’s presidential bid, which set new records for dollars expended per vote. … Joylessly Charlie announces that we are all deluded in thinking that Clinton is ahead in the polls; the true poll numbers show that Dole is gaining in popularity three percentage points a day and there is nothing Clinton can do about it. “They’re in a desperate gambit to turn out their base because they see the election slipping away from them—and it is,” he says, with total certainty.

This sort of behavior has become routine in the Dole campaign; indeed, from the beginning the Dole people have preferred to insult your intelligence than to craft more plausible lies. The disjuncture between the persona of the candidate (straight talker) and the behavior of his campaign (big liars) dates back to the very start of the primaries. At the same time that Dole was presenting himself as a force for decency his campaign was spending millions of dollars on push polls. When asked about them, the Dole campaign told reporters that Forbes and Buchanan were hiring pollsters to slander themselves, so that they could accuse the Dole campaign of dirty tactics. They kept this up for several weeks, even after they were told to stop by the Republican National Committee. Dole’s attitude seems to have been: whatever these people I’ve hired do in my name is not my responsibility. He never seems to have realized there’s a problem with selling honesty dishonestly.

History runs in circles, apparently, but we knew that, right? The piece also mentions McCain, who cleared his schedule to spend Election Day commiserating with Dole during his loss. Lewis, a McCain fan in the nineties, appreciates his passion for lost causes. Lewis ends the story in a VFW hall, observing that Dole is the last of the World War II generation politicians. On the day of Dole’s final defeat, Lewis writes, “Tonight in Russell, Kansas, World War Two finally ended.”

Which is a poignant reminder of what everyone in my generation fervently hopes as the last weeks of this election approach: On November 4, 2008, whoever wins, can the Vietnam War please come to a conclusion?

—Tim Fernholz

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What does it mean that the Dow closed below 10,000 today -- returning to levels first seen nearly a decade ago, in early 1999? Many interpret it to mean that the stock market is finally reacting to the credit crisis. A more accurate assessment is that it's finally catching up to the consumer crisis.

After the market closed today, Bank of America announced a significant deterioration in people's ability to repay credit-card and other consumer debt.

The central fact is this: Consumers in the real economy are coming to the end of their capacities to keep spending. They can't take on any more debt. And with the costs of energy, food, and health insurance all soaring, they're doing the only thing they can. They're pulling in their belts. They're leaving the malls. They're not buying a new car or TV or anything else they can do without.

For years, regardless of the business cycle, American consumers were the Energizer Bunnies of the world economy. Their spending kept it going. But now the Energizer Bunnies have turned into scared rabbits, and they're going back into their holes.

Yes, we need better regulation of Wall Street in order to avoid the sort of bubbles and distrust that have generated a credit crisis. But even more than that, we need to get money back into the pockets of average American consumers -- including major investments in infrastructure, affordable health care, and a more progressive tax code.

--Robert Reich

Also on Robert Reich's Blog.

• I suspect Barack Obama's taunting of John McCain over the so-called controversies in Obama's mysterious past ("he wasn't willing to say it to my face") are likely to get under the Arizonan's skin. Joe Biden is getting into the act as well, telling supporters at a rally in Missouri that "In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him." I guess you can take the Biden out of Scranton, but you can't take the Scranton out of Biden.
• Realizing that a win in Florida would be the nail in McCain's coffin, Obama has dispatched his top two field generals to the Sunshine State to oversee GOTV efforts. See also Zach Exley's detailed piece on the organizational strategy of Obama's "neighborhood teams." One hopes this will offset some of the disturbing patterns of illegal voter purges in battleground states Adam commented on this morning.
• President Bush has begun coordinating with both the Obama and McCain campaigns on the upcoming presidential transition but, as Sam Stein reports, McCain's efforts are lagging considerably behind Obama's. Perhaps McCain has decided there isn't much of a reason for fruitless preparation at this point.
• Word on the street is that McCain might return to campaign in Iowa this weekend. Rick Davis claims this is because the campaign's internal polling shows a much tighter race than the polls describe.
• Even though I try to comment on non-presidential elections, I have to admit that the eleven gubernatorial races going on around the country were completely off my radar. Thankfully we have Larry Sabato, who goes into detail on each of them.
• Nate Silver latches onto Karl Rove's assertion that 2008 probably has "more undecided and persuadable voters open to switching their choice than in any election since 1968" and provides the historical data to demonstrate to Turd Blossom that, no, this simply isn't the case.
• David Petraeus affirms at a Heritage Foundation event that yes, sometimes you do need to talk to your enemies. Since I believe everything John McCain tells me about foreign policy, I have to conclude that Petraeus is both weak and naive in matters of foreign policy.
• Speaking of foreign policy experience, David Corn crunches the numbers and finds that Sarah Palin spent about 12 hours over her 19 months as governor in meetings with foreign officials. Corn doesn't say whether the records log the many hours Palin spent gazing at the Russian coastline, inferring Vladamir Putin's malicious intent.
• I'm not sure which provides the greater sense of schadenfreude, Hugh Hewitt's lame attempts to find a publisher for his book with the satire-proof title, "How Sarah Palin Won the Election... And Saved America," or this straight news story from Roll Call detailing the chaos that will befall the Republican Senate caucus if Mitch McConnell goes down in November.

--Mori Dinauer

It's pretty obvious why John McCain is pushing guilt by association -- he needs to do something to shake-up the campaign, and he's pinning his hopes on a desperate attempt to convince the world that Barack Obama has some sleazy connection to former Weatherman William Ayers. Apparently, being on the board of a foundation funded by Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Great Britain at the same time as a former radical makes you guilty of ... well, knowing a former radical.

But the real question is, why are some conservative intellectuals -- I'm pointing at the Corner gang -- taking this seriously? They've concocted a fantasy world where the biggest unknown is whether Obama is a Maoist or Stalinist. I kid you not. Keep in mind, Obama is a guy who is subject to a lot of suspicion among the actual far left. If we engaged in the same level of intellectual chicanery here at TAPPED, I'd be breathlessly debating what kind of fascist John McCain is; after all, he served on the board of an organization that included neo-Nazis and supported right-wing death squads in South America.

But we're not doing that, because John McCain's actually stated policy goals are scary in and of themselves. He does want to continue the war in Iraq indefinitely, with no plan for, or even concept of, what a victory would like look like. He'd love to pass $300 billion in tax cuts. He plans to end employer-based health care as we know it. He thinks Sarah Palin is a competent public official. No need for me to argue that McCain was secretly indoctrinated into a national socialist front and that's he's been infiltrating the government for years so that, as president, he can seize the reins of the state. (Yes, that's what the Corner folks argue Obama is attempting).

No doubt the writers at NRO sincerely believe what they've written there. (Note: this isn't all conservatives or even everyone at NRO; some realize that they need ideas that matter in context of the times). But there may be a larger issue. Liberal policies are mostly popular, reasonable, and increasingly feasible in relation to the larger world around them, while the last six months have seen conservative rhetoric have less and less to do with reality, particularly in the economic realm. It's very hard for conservatives to say that Obama's ideas are dangerous and be taken seriously. So all that remains is convincing themselves -- and likely only themselves -- that Obama's rhetoric is vague enough to impute a future rife with left-wing plots straight out of Reagan's bad dreams, instead of what responsible reporting indicates will be pragmatic center-left policies. Well, whatever gets them through their long, dark night of the soul.

-- Tim Fernholz

P.S. The best line from a recent McCain campaign press release: "Obama Spokesman Ben LaBolt Told The New York Times That Last Year Obama And Ayers 'Bumped Into Each Other On The Street In Hyde Park.'" Oh noes!

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"The Bradley Effect" has become well-known this year -- it refers to the gap between African American candidates' polling numbers and their success on Election Day. Is there also a Bradley Effect for LGBTQ issues?

That's what supporters of California's Proposition 8, a gay marriage ban, said when polling showed their initiative trailing by 17 points. But after a far-reaching television and radio ad campaign funded by national Christian conservative groups, the newest numbers, by SurveyUSA, show Proposition 8 with a slight lead, though one within the margin of error. The commercials featured a clip of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom saying marriage equality was here to stay "whether you like it or not." It was a smart campaign; nobody likes to be told their opinion doesn't matter. And, depressingly, the shift in support toward Proposition 8 was in large part due to younger voters deciding they supported the ban. Americans under 30 are supposed to be on the vanguard of increasing tolerance for gay people.

And there's more bad news. There are gay marriage bans on the ballot in Arizona and Florida, too. In both states, supporters of the bans have vastly out-spent the opposition, and the initiatives are likely to pass. Arizona is an especially interesting case; in 2006 it became the first state in the nation to reject an anti-marriage equality ballot initiative. But this year's initiative avoids penalizing unmarried hetrosexual couples, and thus has garnered more support.

--Dana Goldstein

Some folks are noting this ridiculous complaint/threat by CBS News' Dean Reynolds. It's silly on first sight -- what, no one will do your reporting for you? It's hard to meet deadline? You have to get up early? The airplane smells bad? -- but I'll tell you something: This is a beautiful sign for God knows how many CBS underlings, who should immediately mention to Reynold's boss that if he doesn't like covering this historic presidential campaign, they'd love to. None of the folks above me here at TAP were complaining about cramming six people into two hotel bedrooms or waiting in security lines during the Democratic convention, but if they had been I certainly would have been first in line to suffer the hardships of reporting from Colorado.

--Tim Fernholz

From the standpoint of a supporter of reproductive rights, Ann Bartow brings a pessimistic perspective while Neal Devins is more optimistic. I have agreements and problems with both arguments.

I do disagree with Bartow that the five votes to overturn Roe "are already there." In particular, I don't agree with her claim that Kennedy "has been moving against abortion over time." I don't see how his position has changed at all. The plurality opinion in Casey created (as Devins notes) a regime of legal-but-regulated abortion; Carhart II isn't inconsistent with that. And while bans on "partial-birth" abortion are idiotic, they also have less impact on access to abortion than the waiting periods and parental involvement requirements upheld in Casey. Particularly when you consider his very strong endorsement of the right to privacy in Lawrence, I think the odds that Kennedy would be the fifth vote to overrule Roe are nil.

In addition, I also disagree with the essentially functionalist account of Casey advanced by both Bartow and Devins. Both see Casey as a product of social and political forces that perhaps caused the median justices to vote against their true preferences. But the upholding of Roe was very much contingent; with exactly the same political and cultural context it could well have been overruled. Had Reagan just nominated Scalia and Bork in reverse order, or had Bush I nominated Ken Starr rather than Souter, Roe would be gone. And I think this mattered a little more than Devins assumes. It's true that majorities favor abortion rights, but a number of state legislatures would have almost certainly passed abortion bans had the Court permitted them.

At any rate, I do agree with Devins that Roe is probably safe in the short term, and certainly isn't immediately threatened should Obama win. On the other hand, I don't agree with him that a court with a more conservative median vote would reject abortion regulations that push the envelope. Roberts and Alito might not want an opinion overruling Roe explicitly, but I don't think they will ever vote to find an abortion regulation unconstitutional, and as Carhart II proves the current "minimalist" court will go to ridiculous lengths to pretend it's not overruling precedents it clearly is. Moreover, politics can change quickly, and given the relative ages of the pro- and anti- Roe forces on the Court there's unlikely to be much margin for error for quite a while. The 2008 election really does matter, and a substantive right to abortion will not be on safe ground for quite a while after that. Casey did mirror (for better or worse) national median opinion quite well, but the Court could have plausibly have gone against it before and could do it again.

--Scott Lemieux

Dayo Olopade reports on a congressional race in Minnesota that bears a striking resemblance to the presidential campaign:

Minnesotan viewers of the January candidates' forum with state Senator Terri Bonoff and two other Democratic challengers for the 3rd Congressional District seat could be forgiven for thinking they'd seen this movie before. Bonoff, a two-term state representative with strong institutional backing, found herself in a heated back-and-forth with two male opponents, each determined to take their insurgent candidacy all the way to Washington. The scene, of course, was an off-off-Broadway rendition of the widely watched debate between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards, which had taken place in New Hampshire just two weeks prior.

Tara McKelvey interviews Barton Gellman, author of Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency:

Tara McKelvey: What do you think are the most important things Cheney has done that will last or have a legacy?

Barton Gellman: It's so hard to understand legacy with Cheney. He says he wants to be judged by history, but he has thrown up roadblocks to historians such as the new executive order on presidential records. In other cases, he simply did not keep records. They also invented this curious new form of quasi-classification where they would stamp things as if they were secret or sensitive information, but they would use the words, 'Treat As,' or 'Treat It As.' It could take decades longer than it's supposed to for that information to be released. What archivist is going to look at this stamp and just throw it into the open pile?

And Eric Rauchway writes that Herbert Hoover's vain attempts to restart the economy late in his presidency show the foolishness of government interventions run by people who don't believe in government:

We remember Hoover as talking constantly about the imminent return of prosperity -- which, in his view, was a mischievous scamp who always happened to be just around the corner from America and who might be lured back with, say, a cut in the capital-gains tax. But Hoover was far more than a mere happy-talker: He also managed to spend enormous sums of money trying to rescue banks without halting, let alone reversing, the nation's slide into financial disaster. He accomplished this feat because early in 1932 Congress voted to help America's ailing financial sector, creating an agency called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) with $500 million in capital and an authorization to borrow $1.5 billion more.

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—The Editors

Leaks from a National Intelligence Estimate set to be released after the election point to a rather dismal conclusion: we're not winning, in part because of leadership failures here in the U.S. and in part because of the corruption and poor management of the Hamid Karzai government. U.S. officials are reviewing how best to adjust their approach to Afghanistan to have more effect. Hopefully that review will include a hard look at what our objectives in Afghanistan are, because they are overdue an update. The next president will have to decide what the actual goal of our occupation of Afghanistan is: Nation building? Counterterrorism? Counterinsurgency?

These three goals aren't mutually exclusive and the mechanisms to reach them can work hand-in-hand, but it's not at all clear to me that that is happening now. We don't have the economic or military resources in Afghanistan now to pursue full-fledged nation building and counterinsurgency, even if succeeding in those two areas would contribute to effective counterterrorism policy. If the U.S. does commit the needed resources -- which both presidential candidates seem intent on doing -- then it will have to be clear with the public that this is as long a project as Iraq. If, instead, we focus on counterterrorism as our priority, it's not entirely clear that we need to be committing ourselves to nation-building, especially if our real concern is al-Qaeda in Waziristan. My basic point is this: Our Afghanistan policy needs to be rethought in light of what we have learned about our Iraq policy, not simply changed to into our Iraq policy. The good news is that those conversations are happening.

--Tim Fernholz

The reasons for my confusion have been made clear by Politico: "McCain changes homeowner plan."

Overnight, they went from requiring lenders to take a loss to offering to pay them. A similar thing happened during the day yesterday. In the morning, we heard Holtz-Eakin suggest:

"The taxpayers' contribution would be, in some cases, the difference between the values of those two loans." -- Doug Holtz -Eakin, conference call.

And then he told the AP that he would simply pay the original value:

To do so, the government would pay the full face-value of the distressed mortgages, Holtz-Eakin said.

Which is to say he's gone from forcing lenders to take a loss to being willing to negotiate with lenders over the refinancing price to simply buying the original value of the mortgage. No more defense from me. But there still isn't any effective plan out there to help prevent foreclosures. There are simply optional authorities that don't provide good incentives for participation of the government or lenders. It's a good sign that Secretary Paulson is emphasizing the use of equity stakes in banks as opposed to purchasing the toxic securities outright at inflated prices, but that still doesn't have direct effect on people who are losing their homes, which accelerates the drop in value of those bad assets and hurts the economy in myriad other ways.

The politics behind this, of course, was an imperative for McCain to differentiate himself from both Bush and Obama. It's unlikely this is a policy a President McCain would ever pursue.

--Tim Fernholz

Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to a web video taken of some ignorant white folks in Kentucky dropping n-bombs and calling Obama a terrorist:

I'm sympathetic to white folks on this one. This is like when some fool from your local news affiliate goes to interview someone in a black neighborhood and they pick out the most ignorant fool they can find. That dumbass is then taken as representative for us all. Seriously White people, having seen this, you guys should have some idea of what we go through.

This strikes me as overly generous. Unlike Hot Ghetto Mess or the various five minute minstrel shows we call music videos, white people can look at this video without imagining that people on the street believe that this is what white people are actually like. No white person walks into a job interview with the fear that the images in this video are representative of all white people, everywhere, or of how typical white people act. Whiteness is effectively compartmentalized by class, which is why the media this election cycle have focused so heavily on the racism or racial discomfort of "white working class voters" as though class divorces one from such problems entirely.

The white people who are genuinely embarrassed by this video are likely the same ones who are frustrated by, and see themselves as unfairly reflected in, the media focus on race and the "white working class," who are routinely reduced to stereotypes in media coverage. But this is not the same thing as the hundreds of years spent reinforcing the kinds of stereotypes about black folks that remain quite prevalent even in the "Age of Obama." This gets to the heart of one of the most persistent struggles with race in America--white people are seen as individuals, black people are seen as part of a group. To the extent that this video reflects "whiteness," it reflects a whiteness that most white people in America are divorced from and don't see themselves being a part of, and perhaps most importantly, most of the country doesn't see them as being a part of.

 --A. Serwer

David Petraeus will be CENTCOM chief no matter who ends up in the White House. As such, I'm not surprised that, in the context of a talk at the Heritage Foundation, he's making nice towards Obama:

Petraeus also came out unambiguously in his talk at Heritage for opening communications with America’s adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, “You have to talk to enemies.” He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors.

It's also worth pointing out that Awakening tactics, which have seen such success in Iraq, are at heart about talking with enemies until they aren't enemies anymore.

Petraeus is difficult to read politically, and it's worth remembering that just because conservatives love him doesn't mean that the affection is reciprocated. He certainly believes that winning political opinion on the home front is key to victory in a low-intensity conflict, which is problematic for a variety of reasons, not least in that it targets the United States media for military propaganda operations. However, it's not necessarily true that Petraeus' apparent willingness to give interviews to conservative media outlets is evidence of strong right wing tendencies; these outlets were the "low hanging fruit" in the effort to build domestic support for the Surge. In any case, I don't expect that there'll be substantial conflict between Petraeus and an Obama administration.

--Robert Farley