Thank god these horse and pony shows are done with, truly. "Joe the Plumber," if you exist, bless your heart, but I've never experienced a more irritating gimmick than your insertion into this debate. The economic crisis? It has been boiled down by moderator after moderator this season into a contest on which candidate is the more convincing budget hawk. But has anyone ever heard of Keynes or FDR? Infrastructure and social spending is what will create jobs in a recession. Unfortunately, the lessons of history have never been major topics in these debates.

On abortion, Obama did better than any Democrat has since Clinton, Bill. He won that segment by being pro-choice, pro-woman, pro-health, and pro-morality -- even religious morality. On health care, McCain was clearly on the defensive; instead of discussing his actual plan, which would do nothing to expand coverage, he made some inoffensive statements in favor of electronic medical records and against obesity. (Isn't obesity an issue of "personal responsibility," anyhow? Or has the position on that changed since Mike Huckabee came to town? Just checkin'.)

To be sure, McCain started strong with his exhortation, "I'm not George Bush." His attacks on Obama are too tedious to recount here, though I suppose they were as potent tonight as they ever were -- among those who believe the Democratic nominee consorts with terrorists and wants to kill babies. In his closing statement, McCain portrayed himself, through his paternal line, as quintessentially patriotic, speaking of a "long line of McCains who have served this country in wartime and in peace. It's been the honor of my life." The implication was that Obama, with his immigrant father, funny name, and so on, can never meet McCain's pure American-ness. Of course, that has been the underlying rationale behind all the McCain-Palin attacks of the last several weeks, so this was no surprise.

The good news? This election is almost over. Finally.

--Dana Goldstein

He's for public school choice, not for vouchers that give families a tiny bit of money to attend an inner-city parochial school. Key distinction.

--Dana Goldstein

Has localism in education really "served us well," as Obama claims? No way. It's the reason why states are allowed to set their own narrow, way-too-easy NLCB standards, and then "pass" them with flying colors, giving us no real metric of how well our kids are doing.

--Dana Goldstein

McCain appears to be taking elocution lessons from Palin. When asked if he'd ever appoint a Supreme Court justice who disagrees with him and supports Roe, he said:

I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade would be part of those qualifications.

Whaaaa? And does McCain really believe he's reaching out to swing women voters by calling health exceptions for women in abortion bans "stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything?" Those exceptions are very popular.

Obama used some smart new rhetoric on this topic, adding "religious advisors" to the list of people a woman should consult with when deciding what to do about an unplanned pregnancy:

Roe vs. Wade probably hangs in the balance. ... Abortion is a very difficult issue and it is a moral issue, and one on which good people on both sides can disagree on. Ultimately what I believe is that women in consultation with their families,their doctors and their religious advisors should make this decision.

He added that reproductive rights "shouldn't be subject to state referendum," as they currently are in states around the nation, most notably in Colorado and South Dakota, where far-reaching abortion bans are on the ballot.

--Dana Goldstein

Obama's best moment in the debate may be his invocation of parental responsibility. His own complicated upbringing gives him credence on what may be his most resonant cultural issue.

The good news is that he's not all talk, he's been pretty clear on his policy priorities for helping families, especially low income families, stay together and help non-custodial parents do a better job of providing financially for their kids.

--A. Serwer

A quick addendum to Tim's post: My cousin, who works for the American Medical Association, informs me that even "cadillac gold plated" health care plans don't cover plastic surgery, except in the case of disfigurement. McCain seems to think they do.

--A. Serwer

Joe the Plumber is ringing a little flat for me; it's not as effective as Obama's more personal story. But Obama did well when he addressed JTP, telling him his fine will be zero, and McCain's somewhat flabbergasted look attests to that. As has been a trend in the debates, Obama handles the health care contrast well, clearly explaining his plan and dissecting McCain's. It surprises me that McCain didn't preempt Obama's inevitable decision to talk about McCain's plan to tax employer-based health care, since we saw the same dialog in the last debate. Also, does McCain really consider organ transplants luxury care?

-- Tim Fernholz

Not so much; Obama was too kind to recognize her "work" on these issues. Palin has a disabled infant. But she has no policy record on disability issues.

--Dana Goldstein

Update: No Wright, but Ayers has come up, big time. Obama's response is that 1) he rejects Ayers' past "despicable acts" and 2) Ayers "associated" in Chicago philanthropy with a lot of people, including known Republicans such as the president of Northwestern University.

Given a clear opportunity by Bob Schieffer to bring up Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, McCain demurs. He says a lot of other nasty stuff, but he doesn't pull the gloves totally off, as many conservatives hoped he would.

--Dana Goldstein

Add Bob Schieffer to the growing ranks of journalists who buy into the neo-hooverism spreading like wildfire among the punditocracy. This austerity-for-austerity's sake posturing isn't helping anyone understand the real issues that underlie the economic crisis and the policies the U.S. should adopt to get out of it.

As I write this, McCain is firmly denying that he is George Bush. Give one to McCain, he is on point tonight, confident and aggressive. Unfortunately, Obama is standing his ground well and looks composed -- his quick list of policy positions that contradict Democratic conventional wisdom was an excellent response, and he turns it back around to go after McCain's support for the Bush administration adroitly.

-- Tim Fernholz

John McCain is following the GOP line again and making taxes the focus of the first portion of the debate. First of all, Obama's tax plan can't put someone in a different bracket, as McCain says -- as though Obama would start declaring lower bracket tax payers rich -- it simply adjusts the rates. Others have debunked the McCain small business tax foolishness. It's an interesting tack for McCain, and it's sure to please some conservatives who have been calling on the GOP nominee to offer some more traditional right-wing economic rhetoric. McCain is being aggressive -- is his Joe Plumber example working, commenters?

-- Tim Fernholz

John McCain just started off by saying Fannie and Freddie caused the subprime mortgage crisis. Of course, neither institution makes loans, they bought mortgage loans from other institutions. In fact, during the biggest subprime boom between 2004 and 2006, Fannie and Freddie's share of the mortgage securities went down.

The fact is that the institutions that made sub-prime loans were private and not subject to the strict federal regulation.

--A. Serwer

Soledad O'Brien just told CNN's dial-testing group that dial-testing groups react negatively to negative attacks. Now that's true usually, but geez, way to bias the results right off the bat.

Also, the focus group features a black female college student who is primarily concerned about health care and education ... who is supposed to be undecided. Right ... See my piece on the validity of dial testing here.

--Sam Boyd

Sure, the economy's in the tank, and we're in two wars, but I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see Bob Schieffer himself bring up Ayers or Wright in this debate. Given his performance with General Wesley Clark earlier this year, it seems Schieffer isn't above spinning for John McCain if the moment presents itself, especially if he took Obama's "say it to my face" statement as personally as he took Clark's notion that being in the military didn't necesarilly qualify one to be president. He might just get McCain off the hook by asking about Ayers and Wright himself, especially if Shieffer is drawing from the Dan Balz school of journalism.

Not only that, but there's been a conspicuous lack of discussion as to the focus of this debate, and I wouldn't be surprised if, like the Gibson/Stephanopolous debate during the primaries, Shieffer didn't simply decide that all the relevant issues have already been dealt with, so why not do some culture war stuff?

UPDATE: Rahm Emmanuel just told Keith Olbermann he expected Shieffer to bring up Ayers.

UPDATE II: BarbinMD at DailyKos points to this Shieffer quote:

I don't know who's going to win this debate, but I think somebody is going to win. Somebody is going to score a decisive win. That's just my sense.

It's gonna be a long night.


--A. Serwer

• An accidentally leaked campaign memo acquired by ABC's Jake Tapper breaks down Barack Obama's strategy for tonight's debate, but it turns out that it pretty closely resembles the official memo that was deliberately given to the press. No surprises here.
• Politico reports on the tsunami of television advertising Obama has unleashed compared to John McCain: "In the first three weeks of September, Barack Obama ran 1,342 television commercials in the Washington media market that reaches heavily populated and contested Northern Virginia. According to The Nielsen Company, in the same period and market, John McCain aired just eight commercials on broadcast stations."
• John McCain helped raise over $10 million for the RNC last night in New York.
• Marc Ambinder reports in a brief item that Barack Obama is moving campaign staff out of Michigan and into Indiana, supposedly in an effort to widen a mere electoral victory into a landslide. But I'd agree that, even if he gets one, it shouldn't be thought of as a mandate, per se.
• Responding to a CBS News/New York Times national poll showing Barack Obama with a 14-point lead over John McCain, pollster Bill McInturff remarked that "the financial tsunami has produced one of the most difficult and volatile times to conduct polling in modern times. During these uniquely volatile last few weeks, I have seen as much day-to-day movement as I have witnessed in my 20 plus year career as a pollster."
  
• Ben Smith shares some anecdotes from an "upper-Midwest" focus group that demonstrates, once again, that Obama's "otherness" just doesn't compete as an issue compared with a tanking economy widely believed to be the product of Republican rule. See also Ezra on the Republicans' epic failure.
• Kevin Drum has a roundup on the latest desperate right-wing conspiracy theories surrounding Barack Obama. My favorite has to be the Family Security Matters item titled, "Was a Communist Obama’s Sex Teacher?": "In another major scandal involving Obama, the tabloid National Enquirer has seized upon the Frank Marshall Davis story in its October 20th issue. It glosses over his Communist Party membership and focuses instead on his role as sex pervert, pedophile, pornographer and mentor to Obama." Inquiring minds want to know.
• Speaking of conspiracies, I'm eagerly waiting for someone at The Corner to comment on the fact that William Timmons, head of McCain's presidential transition team, used to lobby on behalf of -- get ready -- Saddam Hussein.
• And finally, polls that matter: Scholastic magazine has been in the field since the '40s polling the vital K-12 crowd and has found them to accurately predict the winner of each presidential campaign every year but two (1948 and 1960). We'll see if their predictions hold up this year.

--Mori Dinauer

Apparently, four-star general and former Secretary of State Colin Powell isn't immune to Fox News' absolute commitment to perpetuating as many black stereotypes as possible. This is the headline of a recent Fox story:

Hip-Hop-Dancing Colin Powell Fuels Speculation He'll Endorse Obama

Beware America. Your favorite Negro has been hanging out with other negroes and their negroness has been rubbing off. As for Powell, he has the right idea:

Powell -- who has yet to back a candidate -- told the audience: "I stand before you as an African-American. Many people have said to me you became secretary of state of the USA, is it still necessary to say that you are an African American or that you are black? And I say yes, so that we can remind our children."

Clearly, some people don't need to be reminded.

Via Oliver Willis.

--A. Serwer

At a briefing this afternoon, David Rothkopf, who is, among other things, an expert in emerging markets, noted something extremely worrisome that I haven't seen mentioned much at all: Pakistan, not the most stable country to begin with, is suffering extraordinary economic problems connected to the global financial crisis and that most pernicious of instruments, the Credit Default Swap. The Financial Times is reporting that there is a 90 percent chance that the country will default on its debt, with high inflation (25 percent!), and both fiscal and trade deficits contributing to the situation.

As these problems continue, there are a number of negative repercussions that could affect our national security. One, the already tenuous Zardari government continues bleeding legitimacy, making it an increasingly problematic ally in the fight against al-Qaeda groups based in Pakistan. Two, it may lead them to a deepening relationship with China, with the added incentive of a nuclear deal similar to the one the U.S. gave to India, which would further weaken U.S. influence in the region. And of course the overwhelming fear is that Pakistan could collapse into a failed state, putting its nuclear arsenal at risk. Another reminder of the relationship between the U.S.'s economic strength and it's national security, and the linkages between global political stability and global economic stability.

--Tim Fernholz

The reliably funny Chris Beam gives an etymology of the insult of the moment.

--Dana Goldstein

In Ohio, a federal judge ruled yesterday that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has to use the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database or the Social Security Administration database to verify the registrations of some 660,000 newly registered voters.

"It is hard to imagine a public interest more compelling than safeguarding the legitimacy of the election of the president of the United States," said Judge George C. Smith of U.S. District Court in Columbus in upholding the Ohio Republican Party's request for a court order.

The Help America Vote Act established strict criteria for newly registered voters, who have to provide a Federally approved form of ID to vote the first time. That means those 600,000 new voters in Ohio would have had to show a government issued photo ID or a government document or utility bill with name and address. None of the people newly registered in Ohio can simply show up and vote without providing ID that conforms to federal standards.

So, in addition to the ID requirements in place to prevent voter fraud, the state of Ohio will be using flawed databases and matching criteria to determine eligibility, which will inevitably prevent a substantial number of legally registered people from voting.

To be completely clear, there is a very small chance that any of the new registrations are fraudulent, and almost none that they will result in double voting. But, given the very flawed methods that will be used to verify registration, there is a very high chance that thousands of people who are eligible to vote will be disenfranchised. The cure is exponentially worse than the disease.

--A. Serwer

Now that FiveThirtyEight shows Obama winning Indiana, it's worth revisiting Lauren Bruce's piece from the primaries on the politics of the state:

Here's a tip for reporters and pundits covering the Indiana primary: If you can’t get through an article about Indiana without mentioning a certain 20-year-old sports movie, you aren’t qualified to write it.

Hoosiers have been in the national spotlight over the past few weeks, and I’ve noted that many disparaging stereotypes make it into the national media coverage of my fair state -- stereotypes that reinforce the myth of a beer-drinking, pickup-driving Republican stronghold that is hopelessly out of touch with coastal progressivism. As a life-long Indiana resident, I personally vouch for blue veins running through this state and throughout the Midwest, a fact frequently ignored in favor of maintaining the awestruck-hillbilly myth. If reporters and pundits took a look past the stereotypes, they’d see that Indiana is a lot more complex and important than they think it is.

--The Editors

This is exactly right:

Not me. Or, rather, I think the evidence suggests that mandate is a meaningless concept. America went to the polls in 2000 and whatever you think of what went down in Florida, clearly more people overall voted for Al Gore than for George W. Bush. What’s more, a substantial minority of people voted for a candidate who thought Gore was insufficiently leftwing. And the exit polling made it clear that Bush had the edge over Gore on a bunch of “character” issues. This series of facts, combined with the regnant ideology of mandate-ism, led a lot of pundits to conclude that Bush would, due to his lack of mandate, curtail his agenda. In fact, he did no such thing. And while that was bad for the country, the lack of a mandate wasn’t a practical problem.

Say what you will about Bush, the one thing he understood is that the only meaning of "mandate" is "whether you have the votes in Congress." And of course the even better example is that FDR -- almost certainly the most transformative president of the 20th century -- ran essentially as more-Hoover-than-Hoover in 1932, which didn't seem to affect his actual governance. For this reason, the number of Democrats in the Senate and the number of progressive Democrats in the House will be much more important to whether health care reform can pass and what form it will take than the precise proposals made by candidates during the Democratic primary.

--Scott Lemieux

From TechPresident co-founder Andrew Rasiej: The Bradley Effect, in which black politicians receive fewer votes on Election Day than polls predicted, will be overtaken this year by "the Obama Effect," in which white folks who claimed not to be voting for Obama secretly do so.

Discuss.

Hat tip: Megan Garber at CJR.

--Dana Goldstein

Drew Griffin is getting a lot of kudos on the right for his reporting on ACORN, which regularly omits relevant information. In his first report, he failed to distinguish between voter fraud and registration fraud, and he neglected to mention that ACORN is required by law in Indiana to turn in all of its forms, whether they appear to be fraudulent or not. Today, the McCain campaign is sending around more evidence of Griffin's journalistic malpractice, which relies heavily on the bet that reporters don't own dictionaries. In the past, this has proven to be a pretty safe bet. The quote at the head of the e-mail is:

Now, today I'm told that the Obama campaign is saying that we may have paid them some money for canvassing, but in earlier e-mails with the Obama campaign, they did say that they paid them $800,000, a subsidiary of ACORN in the primary to garner votes.

Canvassing, by definition, is "garnering votes." This is like saying "Adam said he was drinking a Diet Coke, but in reality he was downing an artificially sweetened carbonated beverage owned by the Coca Cola Company." Griffin paraphrased what the Obama campaign said and tried to present it as an inconsistency.

Likewise, in order to increase the aura of intrigue, Griffin says Obama represented ACORN without noting that he was accompanied by the United States Department of Justice.

That's just bad reporting.

--A. Serwer

Seriously, where is he finding this:

[Harold Ickes] routinely shaved off a point or two from Mr. Obama’s number to account for hidden racial prejudices. That is no small factor, considering that Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain are separated by very thin margins in many polls in battleground states.

Huh? Journey unto FiveThirtyEight and take a look at those. Check out the scene today at Pollster. The battleground states we were all expecting to be decisive -- Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, are all in the Obama column. The new battleground states are Indiana, North Carolina, West Virigina, North Dakota -- who thought they would be even in play? -- are where Obama has a thin margin. And thus, contra Nagourney, this is a small factor, since the Democratic nominee doesn't need all of these states to win.

I'm not convinced at all that a Bradley effect -- people lying to pollsters about their voting preferences because of race -- will have much impact on the election. The political science literature says no, as does the guy who ran the campaign against Bradley. If race is influencing your vote, you probably just make up another reason and tell that to the pollster without disguising your preference. What's the incentive to lie about which candidate you're supporting?

--Tim Fernholz

Sam Boyd explains the live focus group, known as a dial-test, that CNN broadcasts during its debate coverage:

But, besides goosing CNN's ratings, what exactly is the point of broadcasting dial-testing results during a debate? (Both Fox and MSNBC use dial-testing groups for post-debate analysis but do not put the results on screen during the debate.) Skeptics of the network's use of dial-testing point to uncertainty over the meaning of the results, problems with the composition of focus groups, and the distorting effect of watching the debate with a dial in hand. CNN counters that displaying the results keeps viewers engaged and gives them a baseline against which to measure their reactions.

And Sarah Posner has the latest on the religius right:

Charles Dunn, dean of the Robertson (as in Pat) School of Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, tells the American Family Association's news service that Sarah Palin is the "heir apparent" to lead the conservative movement and the Republican Party, even if Barack Obama wins the White House. Dunn predicts we'll be saying goodnight to Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in 2012.

As always, subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they are published.

—The Editors

CBS News/New York Times released their latest poll the night before debate day -- way to capture that news cycle, fellas -- and they've got Obama up a ridiculous 14 points, 53-39. The McCain camp says polling is volatile and that this result is an outlier but, even if they're right, when 14 is your outlier and 10 is your average, there's not enough spin in the world to get you out of the hole.

Here's an interesting cross-tab from the Times :

What interests is me is that Republicans put nearly the same explain/attack numbers up for both candidates. If Republicans think that Obama is running a campaign equally focused on outlining his own policies and attacking his opponent's, then it's going to be very hard for the GOP to continue to create a false equivalency between Obama's attacks and McCain's. Independents and Democrats overwhelmingly think Obama's campaign is focused on promoting his vision.

The poll's conclusion that McCain's attacks in the past weeks have backfired is interesting going into tonight because McCain is under pressure from his base, some of his advisers, and even the Obama campaign to bring his negative campaign into the open. If he does bring up Ayers or Wright, or accuse Obama of abandoning the troops, my sense is that he'll look bad and that Obama will have a good response. That response will probably be something along the lines of what Bill Burton outlined in a strategy memo sent to reporters: Dismiss the attacks and return to the economy. If McCain doesn't bring up his character attacks, either in response to the poll or in keeping with his let-the-campaign-do-the-dirty-work strategy, he looks a bit, hmm, timid?

On a related note, I have been wondering recently, as Obama climbs in the polls, if the conventional wisdom after the election might be that Rove-style smear politics are less effective these days. Obviously we'll never get rid of the grit of our political life and attack ads are here to stay, but maybe vicious attacks on patriotism and ethics will become less common. But Jason Zengerle catches a depressing new meme developing among conservatives: If McCain loses, it will be because he wasn't negative enough. Let me second his ugh. The reinvention of the GOP that follows this election will be interesting to watch -- quick quiz: see if you can name five rising conservatives out there stumping for McCain -- but hopefully it will be based more on explaining than attacking.

-- Tim Fernholz

It's really not clear to me why conservatives seem to think that the proper response to the financial crisis is to blame "minorities," despite all available evidence, but it seems to be practically an article of faith. An atheist might as well argue with a believer as to whether or not angels exist. It's practically a sacrament. You can't really be a conservative until you've established that your knee-jerk response to certain issues is that non-white people are at fault. Take Byron York's conversation with Matt Taibbi:

B.Y.: I think that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were also major factors. And I believe that many of the problems in the mortgage area can be attributed to the confluence of Democratic and Republican priorities: the Democrats' desire to give mortgages to people, particularly minorities, who could not afford them, and the Republicans' desire to achieve an "ownership society," in part by giving mortgages to people who could not afford them. Again, I believe that if you are suggesting that the financial crisis is a Republican creation, or even more specifically a McCain creation, I think you're on pretty shaky ground.

Reading the rest of the conversation, it's clear that Taibbi has a better understanding of how the economy works than York. But I still find it disturbing that York thinks the problem is that Democrats wanted to give mortgages to "people, particularly minorities" as though there's something particularly reprehensible about giving a loan to someone with bad credit if they happen to be black. If only these loans were restricted to white people with bad credit, we'd be okay.

Of course, white people received the largest number of sub-prime loans (72.5 percent to be exact) so this line of argument is ludicrous. Moreover, Fannie and Freddie didn't gain more of the sub-prime market out of generosity towards people of color, they did it to keep pace with the market, in which banks and companies not regulated by the Community Reinvestment Act did most of the sub-prime lending. Moreover, without the profit motive for integrating all this risk into the financial system via mortgage backed securities, the credit crisis could not have occurred.

But hey, you can't argue with faith. If the party of personal responsiblity wants to blame everyone else for their failures, particularly everyones who happen not to be white, who am I to argue with faith?

--A. Serwer

I've been catching up on my dead tree reading, and highly recommend New York's 40th Anniversary Issue. Check out the dialog between Mike Bloomberg and Ed Koch, in which the third term-crusading mayor refers to himself throughout in the third person. (MB: "I'd argue that Ed Koch -- and Michael Bloomberg, both -- had a real advantage coming in. ... Bloomberg got elected because he spent $75 million and his opponent self-destructed.") I was also fascinated by Bloomberg's visceral anger toward the teachers' unions, which in the state legislature blocked his attempt to use student test scores when evaluating whether teachers deserve tenure.

I'll give you an example of the worst thing I think has happened, the most disgraceful thing in the last six and a half years. In April, in the middle of the night, with no notice, no hearings, no publicity, the Republican Senate and the Democratic Assembly passed a law, which the governor signed, which prevents us from using teacher performance in granting tenure. Now, tenure for public school teachers is about as stupid a concept -- these people are not advancing man's body of knowledge, they have civil-service protection anyways, they don't need to be able to say stupid things or write stupid things like some college professors.

This kind of overheated ("the worst thing...the most disgraceful thing") rhetoric toward teachers from politicians is part of a trend I've written about before. There are good reasons to oppose tenure and good reasons, rooted in history, to support it. But shaming teachers, who work all day educating children, for "not advancing man's body of knowledge" is no way to build support in the profession for accountability measures. It's simply bad politics.

Update: Open hostilities. According to GothamSchools, the UFT, New York City's largest teachers' union, is preparing to oppose Bloomberg's push for a third term.

--Dana Goldstein

What brought on the economic meltdown of 2008? Besides the bursting of the housing bubble, Wall Street's malfeasance and non-feasance, and Washington's massive failure to oversee Wall Street, fingers are also being pointed at average Americans. Some of them took on mortgages they couldn't afford, of course, but we're also hearing a more basic theme that goes something like this: For too long, Americans have been living beyond our means. We went too deeply into debt. And now we're paying the inevitable price.

The "living beyond our means" argument, with its thinly veiled suggestion of moral turpitude, is technically correct. Over the last fifteen years, average household debt has soared to record levels, and the typical American family has taken on more of debt than it can safely manage. That became crystal clear when the housing bubble burst and home prices fell, eliminating easy home equity loans and refinancings.

But this story leaves out one very important fact. Since the year 2000, median family income has been dropping, adjusted for inflation. One of the main reasons the typical family has taken on more debt has been to maintain its living standards in the face of these declining real incomes.

It's not as if the typical family suddenly went on a spending binge --- buying yachts and fancy cars and taking ocean cruises. No, the typical family just tried to keep going as it had before. But with real incomes dropping, and the costs of necessities like gas, heating oil, food, health insurance, and even college tuitions all soaring, the only way to keep going as before was to borrow more. You might see this as a moral failure, but I think it's more accurate to view it as an ongoing struggle to stay afloat when the boat's sinking.

The "living beyond our means" argument suggests that the answer over the long term is for American families to become more responsible and not spend more than they earn. Well, that may be necessary but it's hardly sufficient.

The real answer over the long term is to restore middle-class earnings so families don't have to go deep into debt to maintain what was a middle-class standard of living. And that requires, among other things, affordable health insurance, tax credits for college tuition, good schools, and an energy policy that's less dependent on oil, the price of which is going to continue to rise as demand soars in China, India, and elsewhere.

In other words, the way to make sure Americans don't live beyond their means is to give them back the means.

--Robert Reich

Cross-posted on Robert Reich's blog.

Galrahn has some thoughts on what Obama's Navy might look like:

Will Barack Obama walk in with his own preconceived notions based heavily on the opinions of advisers to guide him? Repeating George Bush mistakes doesn't seem to be the Obama template. There is barely anything written from a liberal think tank regarding naval power, and yet, in many ways I find myself thinking that much of the strategic thinking coming from the Navy today would fit very well into a liberal core view of how naval forces should be postured, deployed, and operated. Ultimately, the progressive political view regarding the nation's seapower will have to be developed.

--Robert Farley

• John McCain unveiled his missing economic plan yesterday, a $52 billion package aimed mostly at older voters, although there seems to be some internal campaign confusion as to why it wasn't released Monday as originally planned.
• The national GOP has fallen on hard times, as Politico reports on the party's plans to take out a $5 million loan to protect embattled senators while leaving up-and-coming talent to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, the RNC is flexing its financial muscle, dropping the same amount on advertising attacking Barack Obama and the Democratic ticket.
• The Anchorage Daily News isn't feeling too chummy with Sarah Palin these days. In a nasty editorial concerning Palin's insistence that her breach of ethics guidelines doesn't indicate wrongdoing, the paper concluded Palin is "either astoundingly ignorant or downright Orwellian." The piece goes on to describe Palin's response as "the kind of political 'big lie' that George Orwell warned against" and that "her Orwellian claims of "vindication" make this blemish on her record look even worse." That's a whole lot of Orwell.
• Over at The Corner, Stanley Kurtz is starting to put the pieces together: "I think I’ve figured out what’s had the Obama camp so worried about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records. It goes way beyond Bill Ayers. In fact, it connects the dots between Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Obama’s own early radicalism." Wow, it's like the Rosetta Stone and The Divinci Code all rolled into one!
  
• A Daily Kos diarist has compiled an extensive collection of Republican re-election Web site screenshots that studiously avoid noting their own party affiliation. You'd almost think they comprised their own third party at this point.
  
• Barack Obama has purchased some virtual ad space, in the form of billboards featured in the XBox 360 car racing game, Burnout Paradise. Will they age better or worse than bumper stickers from years past?
  
• V. Lance Tarrance Jr., pollster for George Deukmejian in his race against Tom Bradley in 1982 and 1986, has a fascinating piece at RealClearPolitics on the exaggeration of the much ballyhooed "Bradley Effect."
• And finally, stumping for Barack Obama in Ohio, Sherrod Brown tells supporters they ought to watch Fox News on Election Night -- not because of the quality of the news, but instead to watch Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly squirm as they're forced to declare an Obama presidency. "And the crowd went wild," the Fox Embeds blog concludes.

--Mori Dinauer

Health insurance coverage woes, math challenges, gas gouges, and the electoral map, all products of tank-based thinking this week!

• More private sector shortcomings. In an Economic Policy Institute report, Elise Gould traces the 5.4 percent decline in employer-sponsored insurance coverage (ESI) between 2000 and 2007. This amounts to a loss of coverage for over 3 million Americans under age 65. Though the rate slowed a great deal in 2007, Gould points out that this was due largely to the public sector picking up the slack through increases in Medicaid and SCHIP. Ultimately, this further underlines the failures of the private sector, which, when left to its own devices, fails to ensure the well-being of all Americans.--SW
• Maths is hard. A study published Friday in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society examined data from the world's most difficult math competitions for young people, and found that most U.S. competitors are immigrants or the children of immigrants from countries where math education is prized and math talent is cultivated. The study suggests that while many young Americans have exceptional mathematical talent, they are rarely identified because our culture does not value talent in math, discouraging boys and girls from excelling in the field. -- DH
• Fueling inequality. The Urban Institute has released a study outlining the effects of skyrocketing energy prices on poor Americans. It finds that a majority of all American workers commute to work by car alone, but gas prices comprise a significantly higher proportion of the income of poor commuters, taking up 8.2 percent of their income on average, as opposed to the 2.1 percent for commuters above the poverty line. The study has serious constraints, using travel time to work as a proxy for gas burden. A number of relevant factors, such as the fuel efficiency of cars and the landscape of the commute (city or highway) are missing. The study suggests that these flaws mask the way impoverished people are burdened by the inefficiencies of cheaper and poorly-maintained cars. But it's interesting to note that the voracious appetite for luxury sedans and SUVs puts wealthier folks at the whim of gas prices, too. -- ZA
• Change we can see, track, and study. The Blueprint for American Prosperity, a Brookings initiative, put out two reports last week on the political geography of battleground states in the Heartland and the New South. Both areas have seen demographic changes that will alter their voting pattern from 2004. Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri remain white working class states, but their metropolitan areas have experienced an influx of Latinos and white college graduates, turning those regions blue. Migrants from New York and New Jersey have turned Virginia and Florida purple, as Republican voters there hoofed it to North Carolina and Georgia. Brookings looked at battleground state demographics in the Northeast and the Intermountain West, too; visit their site for the full set. -- CP

-- TAP Staff

Previous Round-Ups:
10/7/08
9/30/08

Brian Katulis and Nancy Soderberg think that President Obama should strongly consider keeping Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense:

Gates understands that all three aspects are crucial, that for all our core national security problems — finishing the jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan, stabilizing Pakistan, defeating al-Qaeda, confronting a resurgent Russia and advancing the Middle East peace process — the secret to success will be improving the basic security of people in the area and giving them more comfortable, hopeful lives. If McCain and Obama understand this as well, they’ll ask Gates to stay put. He has served his country well, but his country isn’t done with him yet.

I concur that Gates has done a very credible job as Secretary of Defense, particularly considering what he’s been given to work with. I’ve been especially pleased by his willingness to tangle with the Air Force. The next Secretary of Defense is going to have a remarkably difficult job, including fighting the war in Afghanistan, winding down the conflict in Iraq, and substantially downsizing what has become a bloated Defense Department. I can see the temptation to stick with the demonstrably competent guy who’s already there.