At the Plank, Sacha Zimmermanfrets thatRachel Maddow is a harbinger of an era of biased, partisan news:
I really like Maddow and have found her thoroughly compelling throughout this latest campaign season, but I am not so thrilled about this trend toward partisan networks and news. By all means we should have progressive and conservative commentators and analysts, but is there no room for argument between the two? Where have all the iconoclasts gone?
First off, I question how partisan MSNBC really is. Yes, they now have prime-time slots for Maddow and Keith Olbermann. But unlike, say, Fox News, where the only liberal on the team is the addlepated Alan Colmes, MSNBC hands over its entire morning show to Joe Scarborough. It's quite the stretch to say the cable networks are mirroring the red-blue split of America. In fact, the reason that liberals are thrilled with Maddow's promotion is that lefty perspectives are underrepresented on all cable news networks, including MSNBC.
Zimmerman continues,
And, since cable news is not exactly renowned for its nuance or intellectual rigor, knee-jerk reactions can pass for smart commentary. I think Maddow will be a wonderful host (and God knows MSNBC could use a smart woman), but how exciting is it really if she is just preaching to the choir?
As Andrew Golispoints out, another reason Maddow is beloved is because her commentary is nuanced and intellectually rigorous, not because she's a Limbaugh-style attack dog for the left. At least in the clips I've seen, Maddow does provide smart commentary and engage with issues -- beyond talking points.
I hear what Zimmerman is saying about the overall quality of the cable talk shows. It's dismal. Do I wish they devoted more time to in-depth news reporting, or to structured, in-depth debate? Yes, absolutely! But if the cable news networks are going to fill the bulk of their airtime with commentary, I'd rather that commentary come from someone like Maddow, who has done the research, than from a hack like Sean Hannity.
The Washington PostprofilesMcCain's de facto campaign manager today. Steve Schmidt is generally held responsible for the campaign's new sense of discipline and purpose, as well as its negative turn. But here's what stood out to me:
Schmidt's sister, his only sibling, is gay, and he has made it clear that he is appalled by the party's hostile attitudes toward gay rights. He urged Schwarzenegger last year to sign the California gay marriage bill, which the governor vetoed.
Unlike some on the left, I like to give most of my political enemies the benefit of the doubt, believing that their support for misguided or downright inhumane policies is based on an honest belief that their worldview is fundamentally good. Which means I think most of the Christian right is terrifically wrong, but I can understand why they think they're right. But I have no sympathy for someone like Schmidt, a paid political operative who is doing everything he can -- and quite well -- to elect a candidate whose personal positions and party are dedicated to the idea that his own sister is less than human and undeserving of fundamental rights. There's a certain point where you have to stand for principle in politics -- Mark McKinnon understood this -- and it's a shame that Schmidt, who considers himself a "moderate" and dislikes his reputation as a Karl Rove protege, is willing to sacrifice his principals and his family for his career.
Here's one other quote from the piece, on why this will be Schmidt's last campaign:
"The Internet has created a wave of venom that is very disturbing," he
says of the e-mails and calls he receives. "People who run these
campaigns have become targets very directly. Who needs it?
Given the output of the McCain's campaign's press operation, pot kettle black. And while it may be nice to lurk in the shadows as a political operative, Schmidt's work directly impacts the political agenda of this country, and folks have every reason to confront him about his decisions.
Via ID, it appears that the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is deploying from Murmansk to the Mediterranean. The expectation seems to be that she will operate (at least for a short period) out of the Syrian port of Tartus, which has been the focal point of negotiations between Russia and Syria for quite some time. Ironically enough, Admiral Kuznetsov was originally named Tbilisi.
A couple thoughts... Kuznetsov deployed to the Med for exercises last year, so this isn't a radically unusual move. Still, I think it has to be interpreted as yet another "No, we really are serious" message from the Russians to the West. Kuznetsov is the largest, most powerful unit in the Russian Navy (excepting SSBNs), and moving her invariably carries political as well as military significance. And although Russia has been engaged in negotiations with Syria over the base at Tartus for a while, I still have to wonder if the Russians don't relish this deployment as an opportunity to send a message to Israel. Noah Shachtman has a fine post at Danger Room discussing the extent of Israeli military cooperation with Georgia, a relationship that the Russians are now complaining loudly about. Noah also notes that the Israelis saw the danger of war, and decided to substantially cut back on arms shipments to Georgia at the end of the last year. This included canceling a deal for Merkava tanks. The Israeli justification for slowing down cooperation was the need to maintain good relations with Russia in order to place additional pressure on Iran.
This post has been edited from its original version.
Rush Limbaugh, who has been driven utterly insane by the idea of a black man in higher office, just can't take it anymore:
Obama's patriotism is not being attacked in an ad. McCain's just out there saying he's putting his own personal political ambition ahead of the country's. It's -- you know, it's just -- it's just we can't hit the girl. I don't care how far feminism's saying, you can't hit the girl, and you can't -- you can't criticize the little black man-child.
The sad part is it would be best for Obama if the media didn't actually pick this up, and McCain wasn't forced to respond to Limbaugh's comments. While the Right has spent the last few months successfully demanding that Obama apologize for everything any black person has ever done that has offended them -- McCain having to respond to this kind of racist disrespect for his opponent would simply make people sympathetic to the idea that Obama is being treated somehow "better" than McCain when the opposite is actually true. What Taylor Branch calls the inversion of history is a common tactic on the right, and Limbaugh's treatment of Obama is simply an inversion of recent history. It is the McCain campaign, not the Obama campaign, that has maintained throughout this race that biographical details should make their candidate immune from criticism.
As for Limbaugh's lamenting the fact that feminism says "you can't hit the girl," I'm sort of at a loss to explain why Limbaugh thinks that "hitting" women is the kind of thing people should be allowed to do.
Via Ambinder, the Obama team already has a pretty devastating attack ad out going after McCain for being completely out of touch, not only with the economy but with his own home economics. Here's hoping they push it hard for the next week. This is a testament to the preparation and reflexes of Obama's media team: Putting this footage together overnight and getting it out the door. I was just berating my officemates (okay, Adam) about Obama pessimism. This should make everyone on the left who's feeling nervous a little more relaxed.
As Tim writes, the debate schedule was announced today. I don't have much to add, except to say that I do not like the visuals of the only female and non-white moderator being relegated to the V.P. table. It's 2008. Can't we do better?
The two presidential campaigns jointly announced their debate plans today, and there are no real surprises. What would you give to be a fly on the wall when that joint statement was hashed out? Looking at the formats -- posted below the jump -- you'll see two of the debates will have a relatively free-form discussion period. Conventional wisdom holds that as the better debater, this bodes well for Obama, but after Saddleback, and just watching his free-form speech in general, I'm becoming more concerned about his discursive style. Sure, it's smarter and displays his command of the issues, but it's not always the most decisive. Katharine Q. Seelye gets at this in a smart article at the Times. Here's an example she cites:
* Should we pay good teachers more money? (This is admittedly a trickier question for a Democrat who relies on teachers unions that oppose merit pay.)
Mr. Obama: “I think that we should, and I’ve said this publicly, that we should set up a system of performance pay for teachers negotiated with teachers, work with the teachers to figure out the assessment so they feel like they are being judged fairly, that it is not the whim of the principal, that it is not based on a single test but the basic notion that teaching is a profession, that teachers are underpaid. So we need to pay them all more and create a higher base line but then we should also reward excellence.”
Mr. McCain: “Yes. And find bad teachers another line of work.”
What's certainly true is that McCain's recent performance raises expectations for a McCain win, so that any Obama win will be magnified, as opposed to the Bush tradition of eking out a small win but having it resonate thanks to his anti-intellectual reputation and inclinations. As a final note, I'd be remiss in any discussion not to include James FallowsAtlanticarticle on debates, which didn't blow my socks off but does include some good advice for Obama (and the rest of us, as well): just think of McCain as Alan Keyes.
Below, Tim notes that John McCain can't remember how many houses he has at a time when even Americans with good credit are concerned about foreclosure.To be fair, McCain typically can't remember his position on important political issues either, like say, his position on lobbyists. Yesterday, in an interview with The PoliticoMcCain called lobbyists "birds of prey" and, according to The Politico, "vowed to enforce a lifetime ban on lobbying for members of his administration." Of course, this presents something of a problem for McCain, whose entire campaign is staffed by former lobbyists, (including former agents of foreign governments who are now crafting his foreign policy). This didn't stop him from telling the newspaper, "Lobbyists don’t come to my office."
No, they just work there.
It's a good thing McCain's not an out-of-touch elitist who can't relate to the day-to-day concerns of the average American because he's black and goes on vacation in Hawaii.
-- A. Serwer
So Allen and Martin had a laugh-in with John McCain yesterday and wrote up this zinger:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.
"I think - I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told us in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where - I'll have them get to you."
Hoy-oh! That's a hoot. The article points out that he owns at least four houses, plus a few condos here and there, for a total of at least seven properties. During a housing crisis where hundreds of thousands of families are facing foreclosure, here is a president who can empathize with their situation. It just shows how far out from the average American McCain really is. Buying a house is one of the largest single expenditures in a person's life --even, I'd imagine, for members of McCain's $3 million middle-class -- a mortgage is a decades long obligation, and when it's finally paid off, people celebrate. Unless you have a $100 million fortune.
The Obama campaign is no doubt eyeing this information as fodder for a potential attack ad, or at least a disarming quip for their candidate. But it reminds me of this graph Ezra made the other day, a nice comparative model demonstrating the relationship between actually being rich and what you think the definition of rich is. But there's also an interesting relationship between not being rich and supporting policies that benefit the wealthy -- less-well off Americans may see themselves as strivers, as people who can get there some day; it can be hard to admit that you're not going to end up with millions of dollars. Let's hope the economic situation we're in right now has made everything too serious for that kind of aspirational voting.
Kevin Drumlinks to Ezra and asks why efforts to demonize right winger sugar daddies the way George Soros was demonized hasn't worked:
The left, of course, has tried its best to demonize "Scaife-funded," "Coors-funded," etc., but it's never really worked. They kept giving their money away with no problems. But why? Is it because (a) the right is better at demonizing than we are (with help from their fellow travelers, of course), or (b) we get scared and back down a lot faster than they do? Or both?
George Soros is Jewish. The idea of a conniving all-powerful millionaire who aims to control the state with his influence is pretty much of a piece with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Back when Bloomberg did that gun bust in Virginia, NRA publications were depicting him with familiar anti-Semitic iconography.
Of course, the disproportionate fear of "Jewish influence" on politics (on the left as well as the right) from the sort of people who lament that kind of thing reveals the awkward in-between Jews occupy in terms of ethnic identity in this country. No one complains about the "Irish" or "Italian" influence in politics because the Irish and Italians are now considered white. Most of the time, no one complains about "Jewish" influence either. They just say this rich guy George Soros is trying to destroy Christianity with all his money. But simply omitting the religion of the target doesn't change the nature of the critique, which relies on old anti-Semitic tropes.
Two of America's most loathsome politicians, Rudy Giuliani and Joe Lieberman, are getting speaking slots at the Republican National Convention, with Giuliani getting the keynote address (I'm guessing it will involve 9/11). Lieberman gets to share the night with George and Laura Bush, Dick Cheney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think Arnie got the raw deal on this one. (Eds. Note: Schwarzenegger hasn't officially accepted the speaking position yet.)
Barack Obama has started to hit back against John McCain, starting with a new ad that criticizes McCain's coziness with corrupt lobbyists and power brokers.
The new Republican VP buzz has it that McCain's testing of the pro-choice waters is just a way of preparing the "Romney rollout." Having Mittens back in the spotlight would absolutely make my day.
Free advice to Democrats: McCain is open to reinstating the draft for the War on Terror (TM). Might be a good point to bring up during a presidential election.
For what it's worth, Ralph Nader thinks Barack Obama will choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Far be it for me to agree with Nader on anything, but I've come around to the idea that Obama might deem Clinton's presence on the ticket a necessity at this point, and given that Biden is apparently "not the guy." Unlike Sam, I'm having trouble thinking of who else it could be that isn't as bland as Bayh or Kaine.
Polls are looking none too good for Obama. Nationally, Zogby has him behind McCain by five points, 46-41, although some caveats are in order on this poll. A GWU Battleground poll has McCain ahead nationally by one point, 47-46, but CNN gives Obama a one-point, 45-44 lead. At the state level: In Indiana, Obama's one point lead in June's Survey USA poll has vanished, replaced by a six-point McCain lead, 50-44. Rasmussen has McCain maintaining a 5-point lead, 48-43, in Ohio, a three-point lead in Florida, 46-43, and a one-point Obama lead in New Hampshire, 47-46. Insider Advantage has McCain ahead by only two in North Carolina when Bob Barr is included, 45-43 (and a tie between Elizabeth Dole and Kay Hagen in the Senate race).
Phil Klinknersplashes cold water on the notion that Obama's ground game will amount to anything more than a few points on Election Day, and won't be enough to overcome bad polling, noting that Karl Rove relied on this same thinking to incorrectly predict the outcome of the 2006 elections.
Who's more patriotic? Americans say McCain, although when Obama "frames his idea of patriotism in terms that call on America to live up to its ideals and promise, respondents prefer his patriotism-centered argument over McCain's more traditional patriotic framing by 11 points." Gee, maybe questions whose answers fluctuate based on framing ought to be avoided in gauging public sentiment?
Today's campaign skirmish started by the McCain campaign: Ambassador Daniel Kurtzervisited Syria a few months ago with the American Bar Association for a conference on the rule of law and met with Syrian oficials; he's also an informal advisor to the Obama campaign. This afternoon's McCain conference call featured Randy Scheunemann and Rudy Giuliani trying to convince reporters that this is a sign of Obama's inexperience. Not sure how that follows, but as Ben Smithpoints out, they did cut off a critical questioner, and Michael Goldfarb also lectured a reporter for asking a veepstakes question -- "That's not what we're talking about today!" The Obama campaign responded in kind a few hours later, noting that McCain met with Syrian President Hafez Assad at the height of his country's terrorist-sponsoring in 1984.
The media doesn't seem ready to spring at this one. Here's my question: Without Obama on vacation or an on-going Georgia-style foreign policy crisis that allows McCain to seize the headlines, can the McCain campaign make the press listen to what he's talking about today? The Kurtzer attack is pretty weak, politically and substantively, and now that Obama has responded to the celebrity attacks in kind it seems that narrative is weakening as well. It's conventional wisdom that McCain is going to try to spoil the coverage of Obama's veep roll-out, either with his own announcement or attacks like these. We'll likely see tomorrow if that tactic is successful. Judging from today's dueling, I doubt it will be.
Reihan Salam makes a great point about the United States' unconditional support of Pervez Musharraf.
It is no wonder that Pakistan's tenuous alliance with the United States has also been discredited in the eyes of the Pakistani masses. After all, the United States stood by as Musharraf made a mockery of his democratic commitments, and turned a blind eye as he armed Islamist militants with one hand while "fighting" them with the other.
The United States' unconditional support of Musharraf is something Obama has been criticizing for a long time, while John McCain remained a supporter of the Bush Administration's policy. This is the second major area in which Obama has proved to be prescient in foreign policy matters, and John McCain has proven he doesn't know what he's talking about. The first was the issue of withdrawal from Iraq. Yet somehow, despite both of these developments, there is absolutely zero discussion in the media of what this might mean in terms of how each candidate might handle foreign policy.
This is at least partially the Obama campaign's fault, for not pushing the fact that their foreign policy vision is the more comprehensive and realistic, and pointing out that hystericalpunditry is a dangerous way to approach foreign affairs.
In the end, this election will depend on whether Barack Obama is able to be persuasive to working and middle-class voters who have deep economic anxieties. That means promising an economy of restored opportunity, decent incomes, and economic security.
But if the debate comes down to a battle-of-the-tax-cuts it will be a war that only Republicans can win. Theirs are always bigger, since they don’t much care of the whole government outside the military establishment shrinks to a size that could fit in a bathtub, as strategist Grover Norquist once so quaintly put it.
If needed revenues are given away in tax cuts -- even the downwardly tilted ones that Obama favors -- there are two big problems. First, the fight is waged on Republican ideological turf of tax-cutting-as-virtue. And second, revenues needed to underwrite a transition to a high-wage economy are used up on tax cuts. If people had decent jobs, health security and retirement security, the would not need the poor substitute of tax breaks.
The Obama campaign has tacked back and forth on this question -- itself not a good sign. In a recent oped piece in The Wall Street Journal, Obama top economic advisers Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman, surrogates for the candidate, offered a profusion of new tax cuts that their man would deliver: new tax breaks for “working couples…. low- and middle-income seniors, homeowners, the uninsured, and families sending a child to college or looking to save and accumulate wealth” and also cuts for small businesses to defray health insurance costs, as well as “elimination of capital gains taxes for small businesses and start ups.”
Wow. No wonder The Wall Street Journal 's op-ed page deigned to publish something from the Obama campaign.
None of this, however, alters the structural injustices of the US economy. Maybe we need less in the way of tax breaks for small business to buy inefficient private health insurance, and more of a transformation of the whole health insurance system (which Obama is also for -- but why mix the message?) Maybe we need to restore funding for America’s great public universities and community colleges to make college affordable, as well as more adequate Pell Grants, rather than making it the family’s problem and then soothing the family with tax breaks.
At other times, however, Obama himself has sounded like the real deal. His proposed $50 billion emergency recovery program, providing aid to strapped cities and towns to spending on public works so they don’t lay off workers in a recession, is good stuff -- it just needs to add another zero to get the economy of its deep hole. And here is Obama, in an off-the-cuff dialogue with NPR’s Michele Norris, with Obama playing the part of a progressive and Norris in the role of the conventional wisdom:
Norris: “This morning you announced a new emergency economic plan. It includes a $50 billion package. Can you promise to pay for all that without increasing our debt? Where will this money come from?”
Obama: “When it comes to a stimulus package, typically you are not looking at offsets, because what you are trying to do is to prevent the economy from going into a further tailspin.”
Norris: “But with the deficit as high as it is right now, is it responsible to propose something that is likely to increase deficit spending?”
Obama: “Well, Michele, Understand that if we continue on the trends we’re on right now, where unemployment keeps on going up -- I’m in Florida, where they are in recession for the first time in 16 years -- if you continue to see an economic slide, that is going to cost far more in terms of tax revenues, because businesses aren’t selling, taxes aren’t being collected. And what we’re going to end up with is a much worse situation when it comes to our deficit.”
Awwright! Why do I feel that this guy does best when he listens to his own heart?
Another Bush administration change in E.P.A. regulations -- also reflective of the legendary Republican commitment to "federalism" -- has been rejected by the courts as inconsistent with the Clean Air Act. It's almost as if that act was intended to require the executive to reduce pollution rather than to empower the executive to obstruct state efforts to reduce pollution:
A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out an Environmental Protection Agency rule limiting the ability of states to require monitoring of industrial emissions.
The 2-to-1 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the most recent in a series of judicial setbacks to the Bush administration’s efforts to reshape federal policies under the Clean Air Act.
Under 1990 amendments to the original Clean Air Act, states were allowed to issue permits limiting pollution emissions from industrial facilities, like refineries or utilities. To ensure compliance, Congress required states to set more stringent monitoring requirements if they deemed federal requirements inadequate.
The E.P.A. gave states this leeway until 2006, when it reversed course and prohibited the states from requiring new monitoring. Environmental groups challenged the agency, saying that the new rule kept public agencies from gathering and making available the best data about industrial contributions to air pollution.
In case you're curious, the Trotskyite judicial activists in the majority wereGeorge W. Bush and Reagan appointees.
Conservative attacks on Obama's old vote against Illinois' Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA) have been percolating online for months, and burst into the mainstream Saturday, when Rick Warren asked the candidate about his position on BAIPA at the Saddleback Church forum (see Sarah Posner's latest for more on that). Today the New York Times weighs in with a piece parsing the language of the two separate "born alive" bills that Obama opposed in the Illinois state senate: The first, which NARAL did not oppose and which has a federal antecedent, would have defined as a "child" any fetus "born alive" during either a birth or abortion, making it a crime for doctors to withhold medical care from such babies, regardless of their eventual viability outside of the womb. The second bill would have allowed legal action against hospitals, doctors, and nurses that did not provide such care, and is the one pro-choice groups were more concerned about. They worried it would create a climate of fear in which practitioners would not perform abortions or complicated births because of the legal risks.
I first wrote about Obama, the anti-choice movement, and BAIPA in March, for RH Reality Check. Undoubtedly, NARAL made a smart political move when it decided not to oppose BAIPA; nobody wants to be painted as the cold-hearted group or individual who opposes life-saving interventions for babies. But if you're scratching your head about the intent of these bills -- wouldn't any doctor be compelled to save the life of any baby? are fetuses really "born alive" during abortions? -- you're not alone. It's worth going into some detail to clarify how BAIPA operates as a classic anti-choice strategy, distorting the very nature of abortion in order to horrify the public and erode support for choice.
In order for a fetus to be "born alive" during an abortion, that fetus would have to be removed from the womb relatively intact. But 90 percent of abortions are performed through aspiration (usually in the first 16 weeks of pregnancy), in which a surgical vacuum is used to empty out a woman's uterus. The vast majority of the remaining 10 percent of abortions consist of dilation and evacuation, which is usually performed after 16 weeks of pregnancy, often when a woman's health or life is at risk. Under that procedure, the aspiration process is sometimes preceded by an injection into the abdomen that ensures fetal demise.
The kind of abortion BAIPA really targets is so-called "partial birth abortion," or dilation and extraction, which accounts for less than one-fifth of one percent of all American abortions. It is used most often to end wanted pregnancies in which expectant parents learn their baby will not be viable outside of the womb. During the operation, the fetus' skull is collapsed inside of the woman, after which labor is induced and she delivers the fetus. Difficult stuff, and not a procedure any woman or doctor undergoes lightly or happily. That's why so few of these operations take place each year. But here the fetus is removed intact. Under BAIPA, this would open up doctors and nurses performing dilation and extraction to accusations of delivering "live" babies. It would be almost impossible to make such a claim when the result of an abortion is an aspirated mass of blood and tissue.
What is BAIPA? It's not a bill about babies at all -- doctors are already required to save babies' lives, and any ethical doctor would do so. BAIPA is a bill meant to reshape the language we use to talk about abortion and mislead the public about the possible outcomes of typical abortion procedures.
I'll echo Dana andAnn's comments about Kathleen Sebelius and add a few of my own. As this nice New York Times piece points out, Sebelius reinforces Obama's core message in a way none of the other potential VPs do. She has a record of working with Republicans to achieve progressive aims -- increasing school funding, blocking the construction of new coal plants -- in exactly the same way Obama promises to do.
That message of bipartisan change, which has been the center of Obama's brand since his convention speech in 2004, has gotten lost in the shuffle over the last month as Obama has dived into the general election. It's still his strongest argument and I can't think of a better way to reinforce it than picking Sebelius. Picking Biden, on the other hand, would signal a deliberate decision to abandon that approach and run a more traditional Democratic campaign, and if there's one thing Obama isn't, it's traditional.
What's more, Sebelius' relative absence from VP speculation over the last few weeks actually makes me think she might just be the pick. After all, Obama will almost certainly get a bigger bump if he picks someone surprising than if he chooses someone well-known.
Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones died today after suffering an aneurysm, according to CNN's homepage. She was found collapsed in her car last night by police. She was only 58.
Rep. Tubbs-Jones is the first black woman to represent Ohio in congress, and was a strong supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton in the primaries, before switching her support to Obama in June. In 2005, she interrupted the joint session vote tally of electoral votes to protest voting irregularities in Ohio, and challenged the allotment of the state's 20 electoral votes to President Bush.
-- A. Serwer
Update:Reports of her death are, thankfully, incorrect -- though she's still in intensive care.
Ann Friedman considers common complaints about feminism and todays young women:
Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I don’t believe that the number of people who self-identify as feminists -- or anti-war or labor-rights activists -- will ever be that huge. And I'm not sure it's even a primary goal of feminism to simply get more people to call themselves feminists. The goal is really for feminist ideas to become mainstream and for feminist policies to be enacted. The fact that many young women are pro-choice, desire equality in personal relationships and in the workplace, and are politically engaged yet don't use the word ''feminist'' to describe themselves does not signal a crisis to me. It represents progress and opportunity.
And Sarah Posner is back with the latest on the religious right:
When I talk to evangelicals about who the most prominent leaders in the post-Moral Majority/Christian Coalition era are, Rick Warren is often the first name that rolls off their tongues. Warren, after supporting George W. Bush for president in 2004, has since refashioned himself as a global crusader for the poor and the sick, rather than a culture warrior fixated on gay marriage and abortion. Even evangelicals who claim to be progressive (and Obama) have assisted in marketing Warren as a new kind of evangelical who has ditched the culture-war vitriol in favor of helping the downtrodden. But although Warren knows how to tone down the rhetoric, he maintains a deeply conservative, biblically literalist worldview, is firmly opposed to reproductive rights, gay rights, and evolution, and views Jesus as the only way to a "purpose-driven life."
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I think Dana is right that it would be fascinating to see the reaction to a Sebelius pick for VP. I'm of the opinion that most former Hillary Clinton backers would be happy to see a woman on the ticket. As TAP contributor Addie Stanwrote last month at HuffPo:
But the notion that voters mad at Obama because, being a young man, he swept past a 60-year-old woman who has paid some serious dues -- that those voters then would be miffed by the nomination of a 50+-year-old-woman who has paid some serious dues simply makes no sense. It has no internal logic, which obviously would not disqualify it in the eyes of those who think that older women -- and let's face it, that's what is meant by "disaffected Hillary voters" -- lack the capacity for logical decision-making.
As Dana has reported, most feminists who supported Hillary in the primary have come around (or are coming around) to Obama. Of course Clinton's primary supporters weren't a monolith, and not all identify as feminists. But every feminist I know who was a die-hard Hillary supporter understands that the primary is over, that voting for McCain is not an option, and would be happy to see any liberal, pro-choice woman on the ticket with Obama.
Over at the Washington Post, Jonathan Weisman muddies Barack Obama and John McCain's positions on abortion, pointing out that while both candidates have extensive pro or anti-choice records, if you look at the kind of meaningless things politicians say in order to endear themselves to the middle, you kinda might not maybe not be so sure about their positions on the subject:
But McCain has repeatedly been at odds with the National Right to Life Committee and other antiabortion groups over his efforts to limit their ability to run pointed "issue advocacy" advertisements in the closing weeks of campaigns. Although his voting record is strictly antiabortion, he has never made religiosity or social issues centerpieces of his political persona. And his 2000 labeling of evangelists Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance" deepened evangelical suspicions.
Forget Shawn Johnson -- these are some impressive media gymnastics: managing to insert one of the media's favorite scrapbook memories of McCain, his 2000 criticism of Falwell and Robertson, to suggest McCain might not be anti-choice, while at the same time avoiding the fact that McCain has since recanted the statement. McCain's old comments might or might not hurt him among evangelicals, but they have absolutely nothing to do with whether he would govern as an anti-choicer. As a legislator, he already has. The article then notes that McCain might pick a pro-choice running mate, but that is total speculation. The only way that McCain doesn't look like a completely anti-choice candidate is if you cross your eyes and then bang your head against a wall until you're unconscious. But as the article notes at the bottom, the issue of abortion is less decisive for Democrats than it is for Republicans, so it is to McCain's advantage that the media continue to portray him as a moderate on the issue.
Amidst all the Cold War throwbackery here at TAPPED, we've let Iraq slip a little below the radar. What's up now? The Shiite government seems to be cracking down on Sunni leaders. Abu Muqawama has the run-down, but basically it looks like ethnic conflicts are coming to a boil again; via Spencer this article gets straight to the point:
Those on the ground know that because none of the fundamental political grievances underlying Iraq’s ethnosectarian conflict have been resolved, the security gains remain fragile and reversible. ...Genuine reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites remains elusive.
Everybody say it with me: The Surge only works if there is political progress on the ground. There hasn't been much progress on reconciliation, though the Shiite majority seems to have secured its position further. All this underscores the fact that American troops are not a particularly useful tool for securing this kind of rapprochement. The authors of the above article want to link U.S. aid to political progress, and that's a viable idea. But creating a withdrawal timeline and sticking to it will reinforce the message that the U.S. is canceling its "blank checks to the Iraqi government."
For a while now, I've been wondering why no one is talking about the Senate race in Oklahoma (yes really, Oklahoma). In fact, I've been wondering long enough that I wrote an article about the Democrat in the race, Andrew Rice, for In These Times a few months ago. Now, Washington Post campaign guru Chris Cillizzahighlights a new poll showing the race in single-digits after a month of advertising by Rice.
So far, Rice's ads are gauzy positive spots, aimed at boosting his name ID and positive perceptions. When I spoke with Rice in March, he also seemed very optimistic about the possibility of using incumbent James Inhofe's egregious environmental record against him, though that may have changed in the last few months. And, while Inhofe will presumably continue to enjoy a big lead in fundraising, (being the most vocal denier of global warming in the Senate helps to open up those oil-industry pocketbooks) the DSCC's big cash advantage over the NRSC and the low cost of media in the state could make this a good fight.
What's more, Inhofe is one of the most radical right-wingers in Congress. What Jesse Helms was to race relations, Inhofe is to the environment. When I was working on the article I asked Tim Greeff, deputy legislative director at the League of Conservation Voters, what Congress would be like without Inhofe -- his response:"Xanadu." What's more, if Rice makes the environment a big part of his campaign -- not a crazy idea in a time when Oklahoma farmers are facing sudden droughts and ice storms and both John McCain and Barack Obama are touting their alternative-energy plans -- a defeat for Inhofe would put the fear of god (or Gaia?) into other conservative opponents of addressing climate change (read the ITT piece for Rice's thoughts on how to successfully campaign on climate change).
If Joe Biden was both truthful and informed when he insisted last night, "I'm not the guy," where does that leave us? Tim Kaine has also said he doesn't expect to be picked. Evan Bayh has supposedly been sidelined for reasons of egregious moderation. The more I think about, the more I come to the conclusion that it would be silly to count out Kathleen Sebelius.
Sebelius, of course, would be the bold, unconventional choice -- very Obama. But by choosing a female running mate, Obama would, unfortunately, thrust the Hillary die-hards and their ever-more marginal discontentment back into the spotlight. That said, anyone who believes that only Hillary Clinton deserves to be the first female president or vice president doesn't deserve the designation "feminist." So I'd relish watching the reactions to a Sebelius nod, not only because such a choice would double down on Obama's most effective message -- "change" -- but because it would reveal exactly which Clinton boosters are ready to widen the lens and enthusiastically support women's leadership as such.
Running mate announcement watch: Barack Obama will make an appearance with his VP pick in Springfield, IL, on Saturday, the same location where he announced his candidacy in February 2007. It is unknown at this time whether the identity of the veep will be disclosed in advance. Personally, I would like to see the veep jump out from behind a curtain, preferably one colored a lush burgundy (or lavender) and made of crushed velvet, to the sounds of trumpeting horns - that's the only way I see for the announcement to live up to the hype of the veepstakes. In other news, John McCain also made the revelation that his veep choice will be announced on August 29 in Dayton, OH -- the day after the gavel closes the Democratic National Convention.
National Review reports that John McCain has been contacting state GOP officials to sound out the feasibility of a pro-choice VP pick, most likely Joe Lieberman. Another possibility being floated by the Cornerites is Rudy Giuliani, which could produce a truly awesome vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and America's Mayor.
Al Gore is scheduled to speak on the final night of the Democratic National Convention -- and on the same stage at Invesco Field where Barack Obama will give his acceptance speech. The campaign is mum on the time slot.
A New York Times/CBS News poll of DNC delegates asked who their preferred running mate is. Hillary Clinton topped the list with 28 percent (although fully one third offered no opinion). The next highest pick was Joe Biden, at 6 percent.
Greg Sargent reports that John McCain is outspending Barack Obama by hundreds of thousands of dollars in battleground state television advertising. But as Sean at FiveThirtyEight points out, and I concur, these figures don't begin to reckon with the vast sums Obama has sunk into his field operations compared to McCain's very modest -- in some cases nonexistent -- efforts.
The Washington Times has a write-up on Obama's "southern strategy" but I recommend the Salon.com discussion between Bob Moser and Prospect alum Tom Schaller for more rigorous analysis on the relevance of Dixie to Democrats this election cycle.
Chris Cillizza does some solid reporting on Democratic challenger Andrew Rice's chances of taking away Republican James Inhofe's Senate seat in Oklahoma. The verdict: the race is on the "national radar," but unlikely to flip now or in the near future.
And Finally, McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarbapologizes for insulting Dungeons & Dragons fans. Haven't gotten near a non-computer-based RPG in over a decade so maybe I'm out of touch, but I had no idea this constituency was such a valued part of the GOP base.
MSNBC just announced that, starting on September 8, Rachel Maddow will have her own nightly show on MSNBC at 9 p.m., right after Keith Olbermann's show at 8. She'll replace Dan Abrams, who will remain on the network. I'm working a piece about Maddow for the next issue of the Prospect; she's a fascinating figure, a great object lesson for progressives in the media, and also just a deeply sensible person.
I'm not surprised by this development, though it came somewhat sooner than I expected (As Olbermann points out in a Daily Kos diary entry about the announcement, she's only been a paid guest on MSNBC for five months). It's also worth noting that, while Olbermann's support has been part of her success at MSNBC she's also really well liked by executives there. Fans of her Air America radio show shouldn't worry, her show's executive producer Vanessa Silverton-Peel just confirmed to me over email that it will continue. As Maddow told me about doing both, "If Glenn Beck can do it" she said "why can't I?"
The Round-Up returns with background info on Georgia and a deep love for the reality-based community.
Past is prologue. Georgia and its neighbor Azerbaijan have a history of supplying the world with oil, the Center for Strategic and International Studies' David C. Chow notes. These same oil reserves are both Russia's target and the key to Georgia and Azerbaijan obtaining and retaining full independence, and Chow analyzes the various options policymakers have to encourage a diversity of supply routes -- including potential cooperation with China and Iran. - DS
Shadow army. This report got some play last week, but the CBO's research into contractors in Iraq is worth a second look. For one, there are more contractors -- 190,000, 20 percent U.S. citizens -- than soldiers, a ratio 2.5 times higher than in any other conflict in U.S. history (though the Balkans were close). Interestingly, the cost of private security contractors is about the same as the cost of a similar military unit ... until the contract is up, since military units continue to contribute to the force structure -- i.e. train, perform non-combat duties, etc. -- after their deployment. -- TF
Just the facts. Public policy needs to be based more on evidence, according to a group of authors at the Urban Institute. In the United Kingdom and other countries, evidence-based policy is growing in popularity, but in the U.S. ideological considerations cloud the process and make government ineffective. What to do? Adopt a laser focus on three questions: "What exactly is the problem? What are the possible ways to address the problem? And what are the probable impacts of each?" - DS
Personal Worst. Productivity's up, GDP's up, but are your wages? Didn't think so. The Economic Policy Institute's 11th State of Working America (2008/2009) elucidates the thankless hard work of our middle class. They've grown the U.S. economy over the last seven years, but are left with nothing to show for it in their wallets. A snippet of the report has been posted; check back for more by Labor Day and for the complete report by January 2009. - CP
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