Daniel Larison gets to the heart of the identity politics hustle that is Sarah Palin:

Speaking of populism, Palin was peddling the phony variety earlier in the week on Hewitt’s program with her claim to represent Joe Sixpack (which is, of course, a name given to normal people by pundits who do not know them).

The question to ask about Larison's observation is why would someone who is ostensibly supposed to represent the average person need to rely on a reductive shorthand to communicate that? Because when Palin calls herself "Jane Sixpack" she's not talking to voters so much as she's talking to reporters who speak pundit and focus group fluently. I wouldn't say she's not talking to voters at all, but those most likely to respond to invocations of "Jane Sixpack" are the kind of people who make more than the average person but like to think of themselves as average. You know, like the Palins.

--A. Serwer

• Last night's presidential debate drew 45 percent of American households, a considerably larger audience than the first debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Think Progress has compiled a video that demonstrates how reliant Sarah Palin was on notecards to deliver her talking points. [EDIT: Marc Ambinder argues that wasn't the case, as it would violate the debate rules.] Finally, blogger Aden Nak has put together a useful flowchart to help you make sense of Palin's thought processes during the debate.
• Today on Fox News, Palin discussed being "annoyed" during the Katie Couric interviews because "no matter what you say, you're going to get clobbered. If you cease to answer a question, you're going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try to pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that, too." I agree. It must be irritating to have to answer questions from a journalist when all you're trying to do is use the interview to spew campaign boilerplate. In the same interview Plain revealed that she first learned about the McCain campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan in the paper this morning. Definitely a valuable member of the team, that Palin!
• Yesterday, Politico reported that the McCain campaign is planning to target three states in the wake of its Michigan decision: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota. In addition, the campaign is targeting Maine's second congressional district, which, if  it's successful, would yield a single, potentially tie-breaking electoral vote. Meanwhile, Barack Obama appears to be playing the same game, putting resources into Nebraska's second CD.
  
• The RNC raised $66 million in September, a record amount. That kind of money can sure buy a lot of attack ads.
• Charles Krauthammer calls the election for Barack Obama, observing that "he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president." He's right, but since he's Krauthammer, he uses his media real estate to pump the Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers and Tony Rezko connections that the McCain campaign is sure to tap soon (as if anyone cares or is listening).
• Quote of the Day, courtesy of Rich Lowry, editor of that serious journal of conservative ideas, National Review: "I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, 'Hey, I think she just winked at me.' And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America." Dood, shez so hawt!!!
• In Virginia, Barack Obama has reached his voter registration goal of 150,000 people, adding over 100,000 in the last month alone. Virginia doesn't require disclosure of party affiliation but, based on where these voters are coming from, they're probably mostly Democrats.

--Mori Dinauer

Jewish comedian Jackie Mason, on behalf of the Republican Jewish Coalition, is trying to save his career striking back at Sarah Silverman for having made a pro-Obama video that implies older Jews might not vote for Obama for racial reasons. I've always thought this problem, if it exists, to be more of an older white folks thing than a problem confined to Jews, but either way, this is Mason's retort:

Who ever said they had thoughts of bigotry in their mind? But they try to convince you that just because he accomplished nothing that's not the reason you're not voting for him, you're not voting for him because you're a bigot. The fact he accomplished nothing is the reason you're not voting for him.

Of course, Jackie Mason is probably not the comedian to argue that bigotry won't have an impact on people's decision to vote against Obama. I'm reminded of classic Jackie Mason joke:

"Are there any Puerto Ricans in the room?"

"Good. Let's tell the TRUTH!"

--A. Serwer

I realize that facts are irrelevant to the McCain campaign's messaging at this point, but Sarah Palin's sustained criticisms of Obama as "irresponsible" for his remarks on Afghanistan betray a basic ignorance of how much of a liability civilian casualties are to the the mission there. For the record, Obama said:

We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.

The remark came at a time when an AP count showed that American soldiers had actually been responsible for the deaths of more civilians in Afghanistan than the insurgents they were fighting, something which was a cause for serious concern from Afghan President Hamid Karzai:

As of Aug. 1, the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can't be attributed to one party.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his concern about the civilian deaths during a meeting last week with President Bush.

Bush said he understands the agony that Afghans feel over the loss of innocent lives and that he is doing everything he can to protect them. He said the Taliban are using civilians as human shields and have no regard for their lives.

The idea that the legitimacy of our mission in Afghanistan is jeopardized by civilian casualties shouldn't be beyond the Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard of Alaska. Still, as I said before, this is irrelevant to the McCain campaign's current message, which is that Obama has questionable loyalties and therefore shouldn't be in charge of the armed forces. It isn't exactly ironic that Palin's argument actually puts her judgment of military matters in question, rather than Obama's.

--A. Serwer

On Wednesday the Senate, by an 86 to 13 vote, approved the U.S.-India nuclear trade agreement, obliquely known as the 123 Agreement. India will now share in the perks enjoyed by Israel and Pakistan as a recognized de facto nuclear state that has not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). Under the agreement, India will lose its nuclear trade windfall if it conducts any more nuclear tests, which it has done twice before in 1974 and 1998.

The 123 Agreement has far-reaching implications and indicates India's increased clout on the world scene, but, to our enemies, the 123 Agreement will be perceived as yet another case of hypocritical favoritism. America's own shortcomings in adhering to the NPT have been pointed out in the past by Iran which, unlike India, Pakistan, and Israel, is a signatory. The third tenet of the NPT grants signatory states the right to pursue peaceful nuclear power and is thus what Iran is able to point to in its nuclear pursuits. Meanwhile, the second tenet calls for disarmament, which is what Iran accuses the United States of not upholding.

In the eyes of the Iranians, the United States is the treaty-breaker, an international criminal, both for its non-adherence to the NPT and its decision to grant aid and trade privileges to other nuclear states who have not even bothered to become NPT signatories in the first place. 

The NPT, in this regard, has proven to be a vapid and arbitrary means for guaranteeing international nuclear security. The responsibility to show leadership here must belong to the Unites States. Aid and nuclear trade benefits with Israel, Pakistan, and India should be conditional on, inter alia, signing the NPT and at least showing an effort to adhere to its three tenets. This would be setting a much safer example for the international community than the Pot Calling the Kettle Black Doctrine the Bush administration has employed for the past eight years and it would be an effective diplomatic measure to further erode Iran's justification for its nuclear program down the road.

--Stuart Whatley

My friend Noreen Malone makes a good point about Sarah Palin's claim that she's connected to the Heartland:

It's very different to be sitting around the kitchen table in Wasilla worrying about those things than it is in Ohio, where your local economy isn't hemorrhaging just jobs, but entire industries. The "heartland" she references so glibly formed its identity and its values from the industries -- manufacturing, agriculture -- that are rapidly changing or disappearing, and that's a large part of what makes the piecemeal worries about health care and tuition weigh far more heavily than the sum of their parts for people who live there. Palin made a big deal about American exceptionalism last night, but Alaskan exceptionalism is far more germane -- as she pointed out last night, it's the "nation's only Arctic state." You can define the heartland as broadly as you want, but Alaska just isn't in it.

Alaska's economy, thanks to oil revenues, has been likened to that of Abu Dhabi. The state has a budget surplus. There are relatively few manufacturing jobs and few illegal aliens, so there's not the looming specter of losing jobs overseas or to cheaper labor here. The state has the lowest individual tax burden. She's co-opting—and cheapening—a narrative that she has had no real contact with. Living in Wasilla is nothing like living in the rapidly changing modern heartland. That bothers me on a visceral level, but what troubles me on a deeper one is that that means she has no experience in what it's like to govern in the non-Abu Dhabi parts of America and very little context that would help her learn to do so, fluency in "doggone" and "gosh darns" put aside.

It's not an unusual sentiment. I ran into a family friend up in New Hampshire today, a rock-ribbed conservative and a hunter who's made some trips up North just for that purpose. Talking about the Palin's debate performance, he observed that "Alaska's weird ... it's not like the lower forty-eight." He's a bit put off by Palin's act, wondering whether she would appeal to someone who likes "folksiness." If her manner doesn't appeal to actual heartland residents or conservative New Hampshire outdoorsmen, I'm not sure what demographics are actually impressed by our winking Republican VP nominee.

--Tim Fernholz

I've expressed concern in the past that Barack Obama's Pakistan policy may be identical to George Bush's. While Obama has said he would go after high level terrorist targets in Pakistan without the Pakistani government's approval, for the past few weeks instances in which American troops have entered into Pakistan have been a disaster, with Pakistani troops actually opening fire on American soldiers.

Spencer Ackerman tries to parse the difference between Obama and Bush's approaches, and discern if there is in fact a difference. At least one expert says no, but that the question of Pakistan's approval is not entirely straightforward:

“Each attack blamed on us makes us more unpopular,” said Ronald Neumann, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. Yet, Neumann added, “If you had a clear high-value target or no collateral damage, what would be the difference in the order Obama proposes to give than what [Bush is] doing now? I don’t see it.”

The retired ambassador suggested that a likely scenario would have Obama reaching an “understanding” with the Zardari and Kayani that would never be put on paper. “Something really has to be worked out over time with the Pakistanis,” Neumann said. “It’s not something one can structure, purely theoretically, in Washington. There will probably be pushing back and forth both ways.”

There isn't any politically tenable way for Zardari or any potential Pakistani leader to publicly approve American incursions into Pakistan. They are deeply unpopular and they gin up sympathy for the very radicals Americans are trying to eliminate.

While certain high-level targets might be worth the side-effects, it is probably best for American interests that, should Obama win, he be far more discreet about taking such action than the Bush Administration has been so far. It's still not so clear that he would be. The benefits of this approach are limited at best. As Ackerman points out, in the long run, the U.S. needs to find a way to convince Pakistan to fight the radicals themselves; there's only so much the U.S. military can do on its own.

--A. Serwer

The bailout bill passes the House, 263-171. More analysis when we see the roll call, but the large margin suggests that not too many Blue Dogs defected. The Republicans turned out almost exactly the number of votes they promised last week: 91 for, 108 against. The Democrats supported the bill 172-73.

Update, 1:49: Still no Roll Call vote available, but The Hill is reporting that vote-switching Democrats are pointing to Barack Obama as a reason for their decision to support the bailout. This is the Obama campaign's foray into the leadership role that John McCain falslely trumpeted last time. I don't think that the Illinois senator will actively promote this message (he, after all, did not take a huge leadership role in the bill), but his campaign will use it to smartly rebut assertions from the McCain camp that their candidate helped forge the bipartisan compromise while Obama sat on the sidelines.

-- Tim Fernholz

David Roberts reviews recent books on the environment, including one by Thomas Friedman, and concludes that they reflect an evolution of the debate on global warming:

It soon became clear that the next debate, about what and how much to do about the problem, would be every bit as contentious. Conservatives shifted seamlessly from climatic Pollyannas to economic Chicken Littles, insisting that strong steps to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions would destroy prosperity.

Cute pictures of endangered polar bears have done little to counter that argument, but a more effective response is now taking shape. Rather than focusing narrowly on the ecological, it takes a more expansive view, casting "green" as savvy economics and tough-minded national-security strategy. Curiously, this approach finds its most powerful expression in the writing not of longtime environmentalists but of green's recent converts. Enter New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.

And Adam Serwer talks to Myrna Perez of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU about efforts to prevent voter disenfranchisement:

Adam Serwer: How does the voter purge process work?

Myrna Perez: It differs from state to state, and it depends what kind of purge we're talking about. People can be purged for a number of reasons; they can be purged because someone believes they have died, or they have moved, or they have a criminal conviction, or they have a duplicate registration, or they've been adjudicated incapacitated for the purposes of voting. The process for each is different, but generally what happens is officials look at a list of people who are ineligible for one of those reasons and compare the list of persons who are ineligible to people who are currently registered. When they identify a person that has matched, they take whatever next steps are appropriate, and there are legally required steps depending upon what grounds of purge they are being investigated for, and then they remove them.

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—The Editors

In an otherwise straightforward depiction of the Blue Dog Democrats' role in the House debate over the bailout bill, Time's Jay Newton Small offers this nugget:

When [Blue Dog Chairman Rep. John] Tanner talks about financial crises, he means not just the credit crunch on Wall Street but the massive deficits breaking the back of the federal government.

How, exactly, are the massive deficits "breaking the back" of the federal government? Deficit spending is generally amoral -- it's where the spending goes that determines if it is a good decision or not to borrow money for the federal government. In some cases, including a recession, deficit spending is an important tactic to kick-start the economy -- see Larry Summers here and here. Bill Clinton was able to balance the budget and gain surpluses at the end of his time as president because the economy was running strongly during his tenure, but our future president will face a very different economic situation. (For more on how the Blue Dogs will affect the next president's agenda, check out my magazine piece.)

But how could Small write this sentence with a straight, er, pen? Has the government stopped functioning because of the deficits, and we just didn't notice?

--Tim Fernholz

My computer cut out last night, so I wasn't able to post any final thoughts on the debate, but two moments for each of the candidates stood out to me as significant.

Washington speak: Honestly I think this was Palin's best moment, although it was clear that the dig was somewhat shallow. Biden's effort to defend his vote for the 2003 AUMF is simply indefensible as "not a vote to use force." This explanation didn't pass muster when Hillary Clinton made it, and it doesn't work for Joe Biden. It was a perfect example of Washington speak, of trying to have it both ways, and it was the one moment in the debate for Palin where her persona matched her argument.

A question of succession: When Gwen Ifill asked the two candidates what they would do in the event that their running mate was killed or otherwise incapacitated, Palin's answer was absolutely frightening. The transcript of the debate does not do this moment justice. While Biden met the question with appropriate seriousness, Palin looked like she had fallen off a cliff. She looked frightened, and her instinct was to fill the air with the same cutesy platitudes she had been tossing out all night, that she'd bring "a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there to Washington, D.C.," that she and McCain were a "team of mavericks" who don't agree on everything. It was chilling -- she might as well have said, "I have absolutely no idea." She just barely answered the question -- and it just happens to be the only question that really matters when you're considering a vice-presidential candidate.

--A. Serwer

Palin's most tone-deaf moment of the debate was when she accused Obama and Biden of "waving a white flag of surrender" for wanting to withdraw from Iraq. The argument is simply nonsensical. The Iraqis, and the Iraqi government, want us to leave. If the surge did indeed succeed the way McCain and Palin contend, then we have to respect the wishes of the ostensibly sovereign government in Iraq. The only way "surrender" works as a description is if the surge in fact failed, the government in Iraq is not sovereign, and therefore their wishes shouldn't be respected.

Perhaps more significantly, half of the American people think we should withdraw from Iraq, and more than half think the war was a mistake. Staying indefinitely is not an option, and neither is ignoring the will of the government in Baghdad.

--A. Serwer

During the debate on the bailout bill currently proceeding in the House, Rep. Charlie Rangel is taking time outside of his allotted minutes to say goodbye to Rep. Jim McCrery, a retiring Republican congressman from Louisiana. I love bipartisanship as much as the next guy, but save it for cocktail hour -- y'all got an important job to do now.

--Tim Fernholz

Waking up from our post-debate slumber today, we're greeted with an unpleasant announcement: The government's newly released jobs report shows a loss of 159,000 jobs, nearly twice the loss of August or July and the largest monthly decline in employment since 2003. David Leonhardt points out the bad news: The survey was conducted before the financial crisis really ramped up into full gear, so we don't know the magnitude of that event's effect on joblessness. It's one more sign that the fundamentals of our economy aren't strong and another indicator that the problems at the top of the economy are affecting the bottom of the economy.

The Economic Policy Institute has a nifty map that shows you the range of the unemployment problem, though I don't believe it includes the data released today. Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Illinois are among the worst hit.

--Tim Fernholz

My wrap-up is below. Also see Adam on Gwen Ifill's moderating, Palin's identity politics, and her banality. Ezra's liveblogging is here, including some final thoughts.

Isaac Chotiner rounds up the insta-polls, which show Biden winning.

Matt Yglesias downplays the expectations game.

Josh Marshall argues that Palin did better than she has in interviews because Ifill was unwilling or unable to ask follow-up questions (the debate format didn't help either).

Ambinder calls it a wash. 

--Sam Boyd

Palin managed to meet the absurdly low expectations she faced going into the debate. But, judged by any actual objective measure, I think it's hard to deny that Biden made far more substantive points about John McCain. And that's the other key difference between the two -- Palin attacked Biden, Biden attacked McCain.

Biden realized, correctly, that he didn't have to go after Palin -- she'd indict herself. And she pretty much did, from misunderstanding the difference between personal and business taxes, to getting the name of the commander of American troops in Afghanistan wrong. Palin showed she could speak in complete sentences -- not an obvious thing before tonight -- but I don't really think she managed to make a case for voting for John McCain.

--Sam Boyd

Palin's best moment so far was calling Biden out on trying to have it both ways on the war. She's absolutely right that he was engaging in Washington speak, not that platitudes topped by nonsense and gibberish are much better.

--A. Serwer

Obviously, Gwen Ifill's biggest problem is not bias, but really bad questions.

"Which is worse? A nuclear Iran or an unstable Pakistan?" I'm paraphrasing, but that question is roughly equivalent to "would you rather be stabbed or shot?"

--A. Serwer

Palin is clearly showing that she hasn't let her lying muscles atrophy. She just accused Obama of "voting against funding for the troops."

Of course, John McCain voted against funding the troops too. The difference between the bills that Obama voted for and the ones McCain voted for is that the former had timetables, and the latter bills didn't.

--A. Serwer

Palin is trying her best to signify herself as "working class." She just referred to "people on Mainstreet like me," "East Coast politicians," etc. Like Nixon, but with lipstick.

People on Main Street don't have mansions with tanning beds. I'm sorry, none of the people running for president are "working class" or "Main Street"; they are incredibly privileged. I'm getting really tired of these really insincere appeals to working-class and middle-class people.

Still there's a qualitative difference between saying you grew up "working class" and portraying yourself as being that way now.

--A. Serwer

Joe Biden just defended Obama's plan to raise taxes on people who make over $250,000 a year. Sarah Palin responded that this meant raising taxes on small businesses. This is the kind of thing that you get in trouble with if you don't understand your own talking points. She was supposed to say that tax increases would effect small business owners, but she either messed that up or just doesn't quite get the distinction. Either way, it's very revealing. Biden managed to subtly highlight the difference in his response when he pointed out that most small business owners don't make more than $250,000 a year -- it may have just been in my head but I thought he emphasized the word owners heavily.

--Sam Boyd

Palin is repeating the "fundamentals of the economy are strong" line referred to "the American workers." If that's the case, then why did the RNC cut an ad dishonestly implying that Obama said the same thing and attacking him for it?

On the other hand, Palin is best when she's criticizing Obama. When she's talking about technical stuff, she sounds like she's just repeating stuff she's memorized.

There's also a lot of signifying, she's mentioned hockey moms, joe sixpack, and soccer games already and it's the first 10 minutes of the debate. But truly odd was when she argued that "America wants new, fresh ideas," since you know, John McCain is at the top of her ticket. But as we know, Palin sometimes forgets that.

--A. Serwer

If there is no really pivotal moment in this debate, expect people to play up Palin's greeting. Even I have to admit, it was a sweet moment.

--A. Serwer

A good indicator of which campaign isn't winning, whether in polling or news cycles, is that they hold a conference call on "the state of the race" -- Obama pulled this when he was the underdog a few weeks ago, and now it's the McCain camp's turn. Today the campaign reported that it is pulling its financial resources out of Michigan, a key retreat for them that severely limits their winning options on the electoral map after a simply astounding week of polling for Obama -- so astounding that I can't imagine the numbers won't recede in the coming weeks.

But McCain political director Mike Duhaime and senior adviser Greg Strimple aren't worried, because they're aggressive -- in fact, everyone's aggressive. The word came up about 50 times in the call, used to describe everything from Obama's liberalism to President Bush! (Amateur psychologists, make of it what you will.) They also promised an aggressive last 30 days, which is no suprise as conventional wisdom is beginning to coalesce around the idea that the McCain camp needs to/will go negative to win.

But it wasn't a good call, as the press wasn't buying the spin. After one of the advisers (I couldn't really tell their voices apart so you'll have to bear with me) explained that Obama's campaign must be very worried that he isn't breaking 50 percent in any polls, one campaign reporter asked where the McCain camp was over 50, a question met by silence.

A little fact checking: One of the advisers claimed that the Democrats didn't have the votes to pass the bailout bill, which reveals Obama's inability to lead. False. They also claim to have 260 electoral votes locked up, which isn't reflected in any independent analysis of the state of the race.

The essential message of the call was that Obama's money put him over the top in a few states, but that when voters learn about Obama's real record, the McCain campaign expects the states -- especially traditionally Republican states like Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana where Obama has seen success -- to "snap back." But with 30 days left until the election, after months of campaign commercials and appearances, two conventions and a debate, I'm not sure there are too many people out there who aren't familiar with Obama. Of course, the two remaining presidential debates and tonight's Veepsperience could prove decisive, but I bet they'll likely reinforce the narrative developing so far. I'm off to the Granite State tonight, so I'll miss the debate, but look for crack analysis from the rest of the TAPPED team.

--Tim Fernholz

• John McCain's electoral prospects are looking bleak at this point. His campaign's decision to pull resources out of Michigan essentially concedes the state to Barack Obama, which leads to the serious question of what remaining paths there are for John McCain to reach 270 electoral votes. Brian Schaffner makes the compelling case at Pollster.com that unless McCain can win over all undecideds (not likely) and steal back some votes from Obama (offset by defections in the other direction), there really isn't a viable path to 270. And according to Sean Quinn, the Obama campaign has locked up 269 electoral votes (Kerry states - NH + IA, NM, and CO) by maintaining a five percent lead or better in those states, leaving Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida and Nevada as possibilities for crossing 270.
• As Sarah Palin prepares to debate Joe Biden in St. Louis tonight, Politico reports that Palin will aggressively go after Biden on foreign policy and the Delaware Senator's liberal record. Foreign policy? Really? This comes as The New York Times reports on Biden's coziness with the powers that be in Delaware and his shameful use of Amtrak for commuting. Also, the USAF corrects Palin's vast knowledge of Russian sorties into U.S. airspace. On the plus side for Palin, she probably has sunk as low as she can go, as both Public Policy Polling and an ABC/Washington Post poll point to Palin's rapidly shrinking favorability ratings both nationally and in key swing states where Obama enjoyed a concurrent uptick approaching double digits in some states.
• The St. Petersburg Times reports that the Florida GOP, panicking over McCain's sliding poll numbers, "hastily convened a top secret meeting" to discuss their options. A little race-based vote suppression ought to do the trick, right fellas?
• Barack Obama is employing aggressive and inventive techniques to reach voters, including an iPhone app designed to allow people to "research Obama’s positions, find local events and contact voters," running his two-minute advertisement on the economy non-stop on a Dish Network channel, and employing a local bluegrass legend to cut an ad on behalf of the campaign in southern Virginia.
• Coherence is not John McCain's friend. Today on MSNBC McCain opined that the president ought to veto any spending bill that crosses his desk, including the $700 billion bailout McCain himself voted for last night. Huh? And if that wasn't enough, The Gambler remarked on Fox News that he wishes Gwen Ifill hadn't been picked as tonight's debate moderator, even after commending Ifill's professionalism yesterday. Seriously, is McCain even trying anymore?
• Oh, where would we be without that scourge of partisanship Joe "soon to be stripped of his committee chairs" Lieberman? Holy Joe tells Fox News that not only will the bailout bill be "good for the country," but "good for John McCain," claiming it will take voters' minds off the crisis so they can go back to comparing the presidential candidates. Of course, McCain's call for a veto would work against that noble goal so I have to conclude that Lieberman is a pretty terrible surrogate.
• Like me, I'm sure many of you will be watching tonight's debate at your local watering hole, which ought to cushion the impact of any Palin or Biden gaffes. While you're at it, try playing some PalinBingo!

--Mori Dinauer

Much has been made about the McCain camp's attacks on tonight's debate moderator, Gwen Ifill. It's surprising, then, that I haven't seen anyone recall the last time that Ifill tangled with racial stereotypes. In the early nineties, when Ifill was the New York Times' White House correspondent, shock jock Don Imus told his audience, "“Isn’t The Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.” In 2007, when Imus got himself into hot water again for referring to the Rutgers' women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos," Ifill wrote a column on the subject, and, referring to the old slur, wrote:

"I haven’t talked about this much. I’m a big girl. I have a platform. I have a voice. I’ve been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.’s juvenile slap will define or scar me. Yesterday, he began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. ...Every time a young black girl shyly approaches me for an autograph or writes or calls or stops me on the street to ask how she can become a journalist, I feel an enormous responsibility. It’s more than simply being a role model. I know I have to be a voice for them as well."

Ifill isn't a lightweight. She doesn't care what the McCain campaign or anyone else says about her. She's going to ask tough questions of both candidates, and do herself proud.

-- Tim Fernholz

Kevin Drum, responding to my statement that, "In my view, if there's a constitutional right to privacy, you can't take away someone's right to have an abortion, anymore than you can take away someone's right to bear arms:"

In fairness, I really don't think this is true. The Fourth Amendment protects you against the police busting into your home without a warrant, but that doesn't mean it's OK to murder your kids as long as you do it in your living room. If Roe v. Wade were overturned, states could almost certainly declare that human life begins at conception and then outlaw abortion as murder regardless of any constitutional or statutory doctrine on privacy.

The reason I said "in my view" is because I think conservatives have a perfectly reasonable argument here that abortion is a "unique" circumstance in which the right to privacy doesn't apply. Clarence Thomas has been making that argument. But my point is that acknowledging a right to privacy completely contradicts originalism as it has been put forth by Antonin Scalia (as well as "originalist" Thomas), namely that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution.

Conservatives can't claim that the right to privacy exists and at the same time claim to be originalists. That's why I say Ramesh Ponnuru was moving the goalposts, because there is simply no way to argue that the right to privacy is "originalist," even though you can agree in theory with a right to privacy and still argue against abortion. I just think you'd be wrong.

As Scott Lemieux pointed out this constitutional right to privacy has meant the right to have an abortion in the past, (even most conservatives to some degree must believe that the two are synonymous, since they've spent years arguing against a right to privacy in the Constitution for just that reason) and it is a perilous if not impossible argument to make that states can pick and choose which constitutional rights they choose to protect. 

The fundamental argument, regardless of "originalism," will continue to be over the idea that a fetus is entitled to the same rights as the kids in Drum's example. 

--A. Serwer

As if we needed any more evidence that the GOP holdouts against the bailout were motivated by discredited Reagan era corporate welfare politics. ... Today Ryan Grim of Politico reveals that Bill Isaac, an obscure Sarasota-based financial consultant and onetime FDIC appointee, almost single-handedly pushed House Republicans (and some Democrats) into anti-bailout stances earlier this week.

"That guy is more responsible for bringing this thing down than anybody else. He whipped them up into a frenzy,” said a frustrated House GOP leadership aide, who argued that Isaac’s early 1980s experience may have been impressive then, but questioned whether it transferred to today’s financial system.

“Joe Gibbs was a great coach,” he said. “In the 1980s.”

Isaac doesn't have a great track record on the economy -- last year, he said the housing market had already hit rock bottom. Isaac donated $1,000 to Ralph Nader this election cycle. Truly bizarre story.

--Dana Goldstein

Lou Engle, the anti-abortion crusader and founder of The Call, which brought thousands of "end-times warriors" to the National Mall in August, and which is holding a similar event in San Diego, just sent out an e-mail alert about a prophetic dream a friend had about tonight's debate. Engle, who frequently prophesies about the election and other political matters, is telling followers that this dream represents "an urgent prayer point for America." Quoting his unnamed friend, he writes:

I had a very short dream, yet it is an exhortation to pray for the vice presidential debate this Thursday evening.

In the dream, I was reading Friday's paper (the day after the debate). There were two papers. One said, "Palin hits a home run," while the second said, "Palin strikes out."

As I was looking at those two papers, I found myself back at the debate and saw the darkness and powers surrounding the event. Great darkness had been assigned to the debate, and the church was not seeing it nor taking it soberly.

Then Engle asks, "Would you pray with thousands of others today and during the debate tonight for God's supernatural hand to attend this profound Esther moment?"

Translation: Satanic forces are surrounding the debate, wanting Sarah Palin to fail. If spiritual warriors pray and battle those satanic forces, Palin will be seen, like the Biblical Queen Esther, as God's chosen one for a "time such as this." While Esther saved the Jews, Palin will save fetuses.

For activists like Engle, Palin's ignorance of constitutional law is of no moment. It's all Satan's fault.

--Sarah Posner

To follow up on Adam's point here, the conservative project to separate the implied constitutional "right to privacy" from Roe v. Wade is longstanding. (I should note, contra to Ponnuru's fancy shuffling, the question -- and Palin's answer -- were both about the "right to privacy" as opposed to whether specific provisions of the Bill of RIghts protect "privacy." Although I guess it's good to see a conservative admitting that Douglas' "penumbras and emanations" argument is, in fact, perfectly logical!) Reagan's solicitor general Charles Fried, for example, has argued that the Court could "pull the thread" of Roe without affecting Griswold and the general "right to privacy."

The problem with the argument that privacy could entail a right to use contraception but not a right to an abortion is that it's absurd. As Stevens memorably pointed out in Thornburgh:

For reasons that are not entirely clear, however, JUSTICE WHITE abruptly announces that the interest in "liberty" that is implicated by a decision not to bear a child that is made a few days after conception is less fundamental than a comparable decision made before conception. There may, of course, be a significant difference in the strength of the countervailing state interest, but I fail to see how a decision on childbearing becomes less important the day after conception than the day before. Indeed, if one decision is more "fundamental" to the individual's freedom than the other, surely it is the postconception decision that is the more serious.

If there is a fundamental right to use contraception, there must be a fundamental right to choose an abortion, and given how abortion laws are actually written and enforced it's nearly impossible to argue that a state's interest in protecting nonviable fetal life could trump a woman's fundamental reproductive rights.

--Scott Lemieux

As viewers of The Matrix will recall, an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) results from a nuclear explosion, and has the effect of briefly shutting down the electronics systems of our would-be robotic overlords. EMP was taken fairly seriously in the Cold War, because it posed a threat to US defense systems in the context of a general war between the US and the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cold War it hasn't received much attention, because if a terrorist or rogue state decided to use a nuclear weapon on the United States, nobody could figure out why they would blow it up in the atmosphere rather than in one of our cities.

And then along came a couple of idiots scholars at the Heritage Foundation, who've come up with the bright idea of an "EMP Recognition Day," so that we'll all recognize the threat that EMP poses. On this day, Congress would close its cafeterias, walk to work, turn off its blackberries, and work in darkness. This would presumably increase EMP awareness. No, seriously; click the link.

There's comedy gold, here, but I'll leave the mining to others, and simply suggest that we set aside a day to recognize those brave souls who spend their days valiantly manufacturing implausible threats to the Republic. We can even turn the lights off and shut the cafeterias down in their honor. Via AG.

--Robert Farley

Robert Kuttner breaks it down:

With the Senate’s passage of the bailout bill, 72 to 25, Democrats in Congress need to begin preparing right now for a second package to do the job properly. They also need to begin the tightest possible monitoring of Secretary Paulson’s actions and their effects on financial markets. Here is what is likely to unfold over the next few weeks:

The House will pass the bill after at least twenty more Republicans agree to support it. A few more Blue Dog Democrats may switch their votes to no, in protest against the trillion dollars of tax breaks added by the Senate as sweeteners for Republicans.

And Matt Yglesias argues that, in the midst of the current crisis, we shouldn't forget how much the cost of the war has effected our economy:

Since September 11, the American imagination has been captured by the terrifying image of an American city struck by a terrorist WMD attack. It's a gripping scenario, but though the risk of such an event is certainly a reason to do our best to halt and reverse nuclear proliferation, it's always been a pretty outlandish concern. Nuclear weapons, it turns out, are really hard to build, even for states and for all the understandable anxiety nobody's ever created an effective biological weapon. A smallish band of terrorists operating on a shoestring budget doesn't have any plausible means of creating a mass casualty device. And though stolen Russian missiles became something of a 1990s movie cliché, in the real world, the Russians guard this stuff pretty carefully.

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