Guest Post by Adam Earlier this week, when CBS was revealed as having edited an interview in a manner that omitted a pretty serious foreign policy error on McCain’s part, I assumed the problem was ignorance, rather than a deliberate effort to hide what had happened. It’s one of the major shortcomings of the evening […]
Guest Post by Steve M. If the McCain campaign and the right blogosphere are horrified by Barack Obama because he called himself a “citizen of the world” in his Berlin speech, then they should be really furious at the liberal hippie who said this: I’ve had to make some very difficult decisions, as you know, […]
I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, I’m taking an exceedingly rare day off, my first since February. The good news is, some friends of mine will filling in for me. Steve M. from No More Mister Nice Blog, Ron Chusid from Liberal Values, and Adam Serwer, a writing fellow at […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Wall Street “abruptly ended an earnings-driven rally and closed sharply lower Thursday after a steeper-than-expected decline in existing home sales and worries about the financial sector chilled the market’s recent optimism. The major indexes fell about 2 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which lost more than 275 […]
Conservatives, of course, were unlikely to praise Barack Obama’s speech before 200,000 in Berlin today. But I found some of the criticism to be more misguided than usual. Here’s Ross Douthat, for example: Yes, of course the Hitler comparisons are absurd, but I’d really like to know which genius on the Obama campaign thought it […]
It’s July. Neither candidate has picked a running mate. We’re more than a month away from either party’s convention. The Democratic candidate didn’t lock down the nomination until last month. Election Day is 102 days away. With that in mind, it just doesn’t make any sense to get too excited, in either direction, about what’s […]
Realistically, it’s not at all fair to keep expecting Barack Obama to deliver stirring, powerful addresses. And yet, he keeps managing to exceed expectations. It’s striking that there’s a universality to Obama’s message. He sees a nation at a crossroads here at home, but Obama also sees a world facing a turning point. When he […]
Chatting with reporters last night, Barack Obama was asked if he expected a million screaming Germans to greet him in Berlin today. “I doubt we are going to have a million screaming Germans,” Obama said. “Let’s tamp down expectations.” That’s probably a very good idea, but it’s hard to deny the international interest in the […]
Recognizing the interest in Barack Obama’s speech in Germany today, the McCain campaign came up with a photo-op that would have captured at least some attention — John McCain would hop on a helicopter and give a speech from an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Louisiana coast. The campaign knows how […]
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) came pretty close to ruling himself out as John McCain’s running mate yesterday. “I’m not going to be the vice presidential nominee or vice president,” Jindal told […]