Thursday’s campaign round-up

June 19, 2008

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:

* This is one way to avoid pesky questions: “After getting zinged for having a number of domestic and foreign lobbyists advising the candidate, the McCain campaign recently introduced new campaign rules barring anyone currently employed as a lobbyist from serving on the campaign. But they seem to have another new policy too: not telling anyone who the candidate’s advisers are.”

* More reconciliation talk during Michelle Obama’s appearance on “The View” yesterday: “‘Yes, there’s always a level [of sexism],’ she said [on coverage of Clinton’s campaign]. ‘People are not used to strong women.’ Obama credited Clinton for her race and for breaking down barriers for women. ‘And I think that Hillary Clinton, as she said, has made 18 million cracks on the ceiling and we need to keep pushing it and pushing it.’ She further credited Clinton for paving the way to make it easier for her young daughters, Sasha and Malia. ‘She’s taken [the hits] so that when my girls come along they won’t have to fight it as badly,’ she said.”

* McCain was pressed at an event in Missouri yesterday on the contributions he’d received from “big oil.” McCain said he didn’t know what the guy was talking about. As it turns out, “McCain does lead all other senators, and all others who ran for president, in contributions from the oil and gas industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ analysis of federal data in the 2007-08 election cycle. McCain collected $724,000 through May.”

* Laura Bush graciously defended Michelle Obama last week when asked about Michelle’s “proud of my country” comments from February. Yesterday, Cindy McCain was far less classy.

* There was some talk recently about retired Marine Gen. James Jones being considered for the Obama ticket. I think we can safely cross his name off the list — he joined McCain on the campaign trail yesterday.

* Virginia continues to look very competitive. A Rasmussen poll the other day showed Obama with a one-point lead, and now a Public Policy Polling (D) survey shows Obama leading McCain in Virginia by two, 47% to 45%.

* Quinnipiac showed Obama leading in Florida yesterday, but a new Rasmussen poll shows McCain ahead in the Sunshine State by eight, 47% to 39%.

* Similarly, Quinnipiac showed Obama leading in Ohio, but Rasmussen shows McCain winning by one point.

* Obama looks like he’s in good shape in Maine, where Rasmussen has him up by 22 points.

* Just so everyone’s clear, Obama’s half-brother did not say Obama was a Muslim. Rumors to the contrary are incorrect. Just FYI.

* Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen doesn’t expect Obama to do well in his state. He said yesterday he hopes to help get Obama “in the ballpark” of McCain.

Laura Bush graciously defended Michelle Obama last week when asked about Michelle’s “proud of my country” comments from February. Yesterday, Cindy McCain was far less classy.

Yeah, but one of the few good things about W is he knows not to yell at Laura. Cindy, on the other hand, is a battered wife who probably turned to prescription drug abuse as a way of dealing with John-boy, who must be a real SOB in private. So she knows to say what Johnny says, since she doesn’t want to be called a rhymes-with-bunt-and-starts-with-c in public again.

  • I know this is getting repetitious, but the people who are going to vote for McCain have already decided to do so. There are going to be very few switching from Obama to McCain. There are going to be a lot of switches in the opposite direction, as people get to know more about Obama than his race and party. (Again, this is what happened in the primaries. Clinton had maxed out her supporters at the beginning, and only lost votes to Obama. Does anyone, seriously, know of anyone who started out as an Obama supporter who switched to Clinton? We all know of plenty who went the opposite direction.)

    This is why I have yet to see a poll that wasn’t encouraging. Remember, if a person is ‘up by 10 points,’ it means that only 5% of his supporters have to switch for him to lose. And give McCain plenty of credit, he’ll manage to alienate at least 5% of his supporters in any state.

  • Quinnipiac showed Obama leading in Florida yesterday, but a new Rasmussen poll shows McCain ahead in the Sunshine State by eight, 47% to 39%.

    Yes, but an ARG poll came in yesterday with Obama leading Florida 49-44%. What to think?!

  • There are going to be very few switching from Obama to McCain. There are going to be a lot of switches in the opposite direction, as people get to know more about Obama than his race and party.

    That’s true. There will perhaps be even more McCain voters who just can’t manage to drag their dispirited butts to the polls on election day. That helps, too.

  • It is time to completely shut down the unregulated electronic oil futures markets. They have no legitimate social purpose; they only serve to enrich banks, energy corporations, hedge funds, pension funds and other greedy corporate speculators. Some one should ask our Presidential candidates about their views on speculators jacking up the prices of oil and gasoline.

  • Tom C:
    Stop with the slanderous charges — which don’t help anyone. I’ve defended you in the past, but it’s getting more and more impossible to do so. In fact, if you’d switch parties, you’d do great as a member of the VRWC.

    Do you have the slightest evidence that Cindy McCain is a battered wife? If not, will you kindly STFU.

    Look, you blooming idiot, Republicans toss these types of charges around — and usually only in ‘back-channel’ ways — because they have nothing good to say about their candidates and their policies. The only way they can win is by using crap like this.

    We have a candidate who doesn’t need this sort of ‘help,’ doesn’t want it, and knows it only makes his campaign look so weak it can’t win on its own merits.

    If you keep doing this, I for one would prefer you did it on some sort of site that appeals to the same sort of idiots that believe Larry Sinclair, think Hillary killed Foster, and think the planes that hit the Twin Towers were holographic projections.

    You really are capable of rational discourse, I wish you’d start doing it.

  • Ya know what? Michelle’s explanation is bullshit. She made a perfectly reasonable statement that for the first time she was proud of her country. That makes sense. It’s something any number of people could say. Her later explanations of it are just bull..

  • Hillary Clinton, as she said, has made 18 million cracks on the ceiling…

    Yep. And if those 18 million voters would donate $1.67 each, the Clinton campaign wouldn’t be 30 million in debt. Which is all to say: Hilary’s ginormous base needs to walk her talk. Otherwise, I might start to get the feeling I am being hoaxed.

    [18 million crickets chirping]

  • To swan-dive back in. Cindy’s comments weren’t supportive but they weren’t nasty either. She said what a woman in her circumstances would reasonably say. I’m with Obama leave the spouses out of it. I’ve never voted for a First Lady in my life.

  • Anybody have any historical skinny on which candidate normally announces a veep first?
    Does it fall in line with the first to ice the party’s nomination?
    Or, do the announcements get massaged by strategy and gamesmanship?

  • Maria@4: Yes, but we still have to worry about Obama’s young (18-30 yr old) supporters who traditionally do not show up to vote. While it is true that more of them are involved now than probably ever before, it’s still going to be a relatively small percentage. My opinion is that we’ve got to work harder than ever to get these folks registered and to the booths, and I hope to volunteer to do so.

  • Being in an abusive relationship — if it is one — is NOT the same as being a battered wife. (And most women in abusive relationships stick because they don’t have the resources — or the self-confidence — to be on their own. This is hardly true of Cindy McCain.)

    Tom C specifically implies physical abuse.

    Meanwhile, yesterday, the candidate we support specifically ruled out making Cindy a campaign issue. I happen to agree with him. (And how many of us would have been screaming if Hillary was the candidate and the Republicans implied the same about her, that the only reason she stuck with Bill was that he had to be abusing her and breaking her will. Nonsense? Of course. But so is TomC’s charge. Nonsense and irrelevant to the real reasons for opposing McCain.)

  • Rush Limbaugh’s guest host just said that Obama will lose because people won’t vote for a black man.

    “There is a big difference between what you tell a pollster in June and what you do in the secrecy of the voting booth in November.”

    OK, it isn’t exactly saying that Obama will lose because he is black, but….

  • “There is a big difference between what you tell a pollster in June and what you do in the secrecy of the voting booth in November.”

    This is also, though, just a description of the Bradley effect. A lot of liberals believe in the Bradley effect. My husband, a self-described pinko, doesn’t trust any Barack Obama polls for this reason, even though in the primaries the polls tended to underestimate his support. For my part, I just think the polls are so weird these days they’re about as good as tea leaves. But my gut tells me he’ll win.

  • (And most women in abusive relationships stick because they don’t have the resources — or the self-confidence — to be on their own. This is hardly true of Cindy McCain.)

    I’m not sure that Cindy McCain is an example of a woman with significant self-confidence or solid self-esteem. Whether she is or not, there are many, many women who have the financial resources to leave abusive relationships but lack the emotional resources to do so. I have no idea what the McCains’ situation is, but you’re conflating two issues here.

    I do agree, however, that Mrs. McCain is a non-issue in this campaign.

  • She’s the spokeswoman for Operation Smile?

    Well I guess she has been “facially reconstructed” to the point of looking like the Joker, so its appropriate.

  • Prup @ 2, I think you’re right, and I hope you’re right, but once the 527 slime machine kicks into high gear…who knows? The scores of lies the GOP will unleash about Barack Obama might not get people to switch to McCain, but it might connvince a few people that they just can’t know for sure that Obama is the right guy, so they just won’t vote at all. And in my book, that’s as good as a vote for McCain.

    I don’t think this will happen, not all that much anyway. In a way, the entire nation is like an abused spouse or partner, with the GOP being the bully in this relationship, and the nation is starting to realize that it doesn’t have to take that abuse anymore. The GOP will continue to abuse, or at least TRY to abuse, because it’s what they know and hey, it always worked before. And the abuse includes lieing about the other people the nation COULD be seeing: “What? You’re gonna dump be for that young punk boy Barack? Don’t you know he’s a niggermuslimterroristsympathizerwhiteyhatingantiamericanelite?” But if the nation is really fed up, they’ll continue to see through the lies, fingers crossed.

    And speaking of abusive relationships, in regards to your second post @ 7. While there is no proof that Cindy McCain is a BATTERED wife, the whole “c*ntgate” brouhaha is indicative of an ABUSIVE relationship, even if the abuse is *only* verbal. The fact that McCain would say something like this to his wife in front of others would lead ME, for one, to believe he’s not necessarily NCIER to her in private. Most folks I know put on their happy face in public, no matter how angry they are at their S.O., and save the invective for a private moment.

    This is not to say that Cindy lives in fear of a McCain Hulk-out. But you’re dealing with a woman who is not only standing by her man in the middle of a Presidential race so she’s naturally going to speak of him as if sunlight shines out of his ass. She’s also a woman who’d PROBABLY rather not be called names in public, as her husband has a history of doing. Oh, and he’s doing poorly, and it looks like he’s going to do even worse. Who wouldn’t try to keep things as light as possible?

  • More on Larry Sinclair’s arrest:
    http://www.reason.com/blog/printer/127093.html

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/trailmix/june08/luridclaims.htm

    Most hilarious lines from the second article:
    Mr Sinclair had in tow a lawyer called Montgomery Blair Sibley. The grandeur of Mr Sibley’s name was matched only by the grandeur of his attire. He was resplendent in a kilt, not exactly a common get-up in these parts.

    The clothes were rather more impressive than Mr Sibley’s legal credentials. His license to practice has been suspended in both Florida and the District of Colombia.

    Monty Python could not have done justice to the moment when Mr Sibley, a man hired presumably to lend credibility to the occasion, chose to explain the presence of his kilt with reference to the size of his manhood, which we were given to understand is too substantial to be shackled by the cloth of conventional underwear and trousers.

    “I don’t know why men wear pants,” he said. “It’s a function of male genitalia. If you’re size normal or smaller, you’re probably comfortable. Those at the other end of the spectrum find them quite confining.”

  • “Yesterday, Cindy McCain was far less classy.”

    Since when do you expect class from a ‘born-to-big-money’ ‘junkie thief’?

    Any time that anyone says anything in front of me that is negative toward Michelle Obama, I will forcefully discuss Cindy McCrap’s nationally televised admitting to being addicted to pain killers and stealing them from a tax-exempt charity organization.

    Bet me on a ‘really proud of my country’ and I will raise you on a junkie thief!

  • The last thing I want is a blond, bimbo druggie who makes her money off selling booze as the first lady of our country.

  • The more I read about Larry Sinclair – and subsequently his attorney, Monty Sibley’s Flying Penis – the more the term “sociopath” comes to mind. He really sounds like a guy who just constantly craves attention, and it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, earned with accomplishments or with spectacle. Much like the cat who helped invent most of the “evidence” the Bush Administration told us to believe in order to invade Iraq. “Whatdya want to know? I’ll tell you! Is the camera on? Are all eyes on me? Allrightarooni awaaaaay I gooooo!”

    Doesn’t excuse any doo schnozzle in the media or on the GOP for choosing to print his B.S unchecked and unvetted. You know, when you consider how many truly insane people there are in the world, this goes to prove all you have to do is be crazy in just the right way, and the world will revolve around you, if only for a little while.

  • Oh for the sake of your favorite diety — if any.

    SOV: The way to win this election is NOT to try to out-Republican the Republicans. Cindy McCain is irrelevant to the campaign, and everytime you ‘respond in kind’ to attacks on Michelle by attacking her all you do is to validate the Republicans’ use of such tactics. (How can the Democrats complain when they are doing the same thing? Got an answer to that?)

    And, btw, my original post had nothing to do with the facts of the relationship between John and Cindy McCain — which none of us here knows the slightest bit about. (we can guess, sure, and maybe we might even get it right — but if we do there is no way of telling. Do you know with any degree of certainty what the internal dynamics of your neighbor’s relationship is, or even your in-laws’?) It had to do with Tom C’s unequivocal — and evidence-free — statement that CMcC was a ‘battered’ — not an abused — wife. Please read my post at #7.

    I’m not telling Obama to be a Kerry *shudder* I’m saying that he, and we, have REAL ISSUES to run — and win — on. And he has shown damn well how to use Republican attacks against them, something we interfere with if we copy them.

  • The more I read about Larry Sinclair – and subsequently his attorney, Monty Sibley’s Flying Penis – the more the term “sociopath” comes to mind.

    Me: Bwahahahahaha!
    Her: What are you reading?
    Me: Huh? Uh … a political blog.
    Her: What’s so funny?
    Me: Monty Sibley’s Flying P..s
    Her: Are you looking at YouPorn again?

  • I agree with Barack’s approach on the issue of families.

    Michelle will more than hold her own, and if Cindy, her husband, or their supporters take the low road I think it will hurt them more than help them. Respond promptly to attacks, use shame where you can, but don’t get in the mud-slinging contest..

    Remember that you should never get in a wrestling match with a pig. You’re only going to get muddy, and what’s worse is the pig kind of likes it.

  • Prup @ 24, I’m not so sure I agree wit you, or at least as an absolute, either that’s always true or that’s never true statement. I’m not a fan of mudslinging, but I am ok with slinging mud BACK. If people are going to attack Barack, Michelle, or ANY American on their patriotism or supposed lack of, they best have their bona fides. and if the American public in general is gullible enough to fall for the constant barrage of Republican dirty tricks, we might benefit of learning how to use those tactics to our advantage, AS WELL AS learning how to negate their impact on our candidates. Up to now, the typical Dem plan has always been to treat the mudslinging as unworthy of any response. We’ve seen how well THAT works. But if the Obama’s want to stay above the fray while their supporters say “wait a minute, is Cindy McCain, the drug addict who stole from the charity she ran to feed her habit, questioning the former First Lady’s patriotism?” that does nothing to tarnish the Obamas themselves, AND it shows that Dems can fight back, which some people need to see. OF COURSE, the GOP will paint it as us being nasty, the GOP will paint a Dem helping an old lady to cross the street as nasty (get a good grab of her arm fat, there, you filthy commie liberal OOOOOoh, I hate you SOOOOOO MUCH!). Big f’n whoop, you then shove back in their face that they were too selfish or lazy to help the old lady, they hate old people and it shows. Put them back on the defense, and never stop.

    The good news is that the GOP, by and large, are pussies. Sure, some of them will fight like rabid dogs, but the rest, by and large, big ol’ pussies who will settle down the moment you make mince meat of their alpha dogs. So grab a tenderizer, and mince yourself some meat.

  • slappy:
    First, “pussies” — uh-uh. Whether you are insulting cats or women, DON’T!

    Second: I wrote a long post a while back comparing Obama with MLK, a comparison that looks better every day. Martin had a lot of people, blacks and some liberals, arguing against his ‘non-violence’ in just the way you are. ‘We won’t start it, but what’s wrong with fighting back and using their weapons against them?’

    Martin replied, in essence, because if we don’t, we use their attacks against them, and because if we get distracted by the battles you’d have us get into, we’d lose track of the goals we are fighting for.

    Who won that battle, and in retrospect, whose arguments were better?

  • prup,

    gonna disagree with you on both counts. I have no issue with referring to cowards as pussies, & I’ll bet I know more women who agree with me than you. I’ve weaned myself off of referring to my non-gay friends as fags when they annoy me, a decades-old habit of the “what, it’s how me & my friends always talk” ilk, but I’m drawing the PC line on pussies. If your line is somewhere else, fine, different strokes for different folks, and enjoy movies edited for broadcast tv & kidz bop CDs to your heart’s content.
    And last I heard, King got shot. I’ve no idea if people shaming good ol’ boys to do the right thing by civil rights would’ve hurt or helped, but there is that whole different strokes thing again. We’re all hardwired just a little differently, some people respond better to negative reinforcement than positive. Some people need to be rewarded for doing the right thing, others need to be told “Hey, don’t be stupid, do the right thing.” Before/in case you ask, yeah, I draw the line at physcal discipline, unless money changes hands & waivers are signed & safe words are agreed upon. America nowhas generations raised to believe dems & libs are effete, elite, ineffectual, you-know-whassies who will spend the apocalypse discussing their feelings & arrangin chore charts while REAL ‘murcans get r done. Part of fighting that stereotype, imho, s fighting back & making them realize how stupid they sound. They take the lib’s tendency to be above it all as a sign of weakness so eff em, I’ll call them pussies if it makes the mushy middle of the polisci spectrum feel like we’ve got enough balls to give us a listen.

  • I won’t comment on ‘pussies’ but we have a number of highly articulate and intelligent women who are regulars here. I’ll yield to them. (Zoe, phoebes, Maria, Libra? I really would like to hear from you on this, and will take my lead from you.)

    On the other hand — unlike you, obviously — I was alive when Martin was — I was 22 when he got shot. And, before he was, he had changed the country’s mind — irreversibly — about segregation and civil rights. (Alone, hardly, but with the aid of many people who agreed with him on tactics — even when it cost them their own lives, as with Goodman, Cheyney and Schwermer, and the forgotten Viola Liuzzo — who never had a movie made about her as far as I know.) For that matter, the tactics that Jackie Robinson had used before him, and Branch Rickey’s ‘there are times when you have to be too proud to fight’ were much the same, without the specific Gandhian frame of reference.

    By the time he died, it was no longer possible, as it had been, to argue that segregation should be accepted as a matter of states’ rights or as a representation of “Southern culture.” Blacks were voting then, which they hadn’t been before in the South. “Colored water fountains and toilets” were things of the past. In fact, by then he had started to ‘move on’ to struggles for economic justice and against the war, because he had succeeded so well. (He hadn’t eliminated racism, of course, it remained and still does. But he had made expressing it openly, or having it supported by state action, simply unacceptable. And he had changed matters so much that Strom Thurmond — about whom his fellow Southern Senators had said “The trouble with Strom is he really believes that stuff” — eventually was wiling to campaign for black votes and Orval Faubus (who stood in the door at Little Rock) even supported Jesse Jackson for President in 1988.)

    And if you think that America has generations trained to believe that liberals are wimps who will back down if threatened (with, sadly, much evidence from the likes of the Democratic candidates in the last 8 elections — and emphasized by Carter’s failure during the Iran hostage crisis) how do you think America thought of ‘Negroes’ for a lot longer. It wasn’t the Malcolm X’s (who was also shot — by his own bodyguards) or the Huey Newtons or the Black Panthers — all of whom would have agreed with you — who changed their minds. It was Martin, and Jackie Robinson, and Thurgood Marshall and people like them whose ideas actually worked.

    Study some history, guy, and then come back and argue your position — if you still hold it.

    (And, btw, I found your ‘edited for tv DVD’ comment particularly laughable — since it was aimed at someone who made a good proportion of his income during 1984-6 writing pornography.)

  • Prup,

    Since you ask… I have no objection to being thought of/called a “pussy”, if it means people think I’m weak, a wimp. I think of it as being the other kind of pussy — a pussy-willow. It bends but is damned hard to break. But then, I don’t get easily offended in general. Could be a reaction to a father who had an outsize chip on his shoulder and always looked for offense where none was intended; could be that it’s just how I am. I can be hurt, sure. But offended? Not so much. In fact, I’m as likely to be amused because, the more under-rated I am, the better my chances of slipping under the radar and winning. I’m the tortoise of the hare and the tortoise fable…

  • I’m not offended by “pussy,” either, but I am often amused by it. Given how much time, effort and fevered emotion goes into pursuing this (wonderful) thing, using its name as a pejorative is a comical contradiction and reflects a rather spectacular failure of imagination on the part of the (mostly) men who employ it.

    Yes, I get that to compare a man to a woman is the worst possible insult, ooooooooh, but that also means that this barb is a holdover from a time when anyone getting pounded for lack of leadership and decisiveness was almost certainly male. Today, the criticism associated with the word often applies to women as well as to men. How silly will one look calling Nancy Pelosi, for example, a pussy for not showing a stiffer spine? So, when I want to fling that particular bit of invective–and, sadly, I often do these days–I go for the all-purpose “candy-ass.”

  • well, before this post gets pushed to the hazy netherworld of Not-Page-One, I’ll forgo the Great Pussy Debate of Aught-Eight (Pussygate?) and touch on the “being too strong to fight” meme.

    You may know more than I about history, Prup – and of course I’ll be the first to admit I pull my opinions from the exact same place drug mules pull their cargo after landing in Miami Int’l Airport. But everyone learns from history, even the assholes. Sadly, those lessons aren’t always how-NOT-to-be-an-asshole, but rather, studying history to determine how to be a better, more powerful & efficient asshole. These are the lessons gleaned from the GOP, with sphinctus emeritus like Gingrich & Rove teaching their whelps how to exploit Dem weakness, and how to make Dem stoicism INTO a weakness to exploit. It’s up to us to fight back, not to change the minds of the Kool-Aid drinkers, but to affect the thinking of those watching on the sidelines. If you get the silent masses, more hungry for information than eventhey know, on your side, then you marginalize & neuter the right to be no more powerful than any other fringe group. Of course, you then have to remain vigilant to not only keep them marginalized, but to keep your side a side worth fighting for and fighting with.

    I don’t see my snarkiness being all that much different than the shamefests hoisted upon those that abuse their power from the likes of Stewart, Colbert, Black, Olbermann or Maddow. I’m not as amusing, Laws knows, but I’m trying. But we’ll never really know if MLK would look on these contemporary truth-tellers as part of the solution or part of the problem, any more than we could know if their voices would even be necessary in a world where MLK, or JFK or RFK or X, didn’t leave us when they did. But the world changes and shame-based, point-and-laugh political & social commentary, imho, is necessary. We all have our own morality. I suspect ours are not dissimilar. We just choose to express it differently, and we’ll all either be proven right, wrong, or inconsequential. I suspect I’ll fall in the inconsequential camp, but I’m amusing myself, and from the feedback I get, a few others get a momentary kick out of some of my stuff. I’m cool with that.

    Now go back to writing porn, standards have dropped too far the past couple o’ decades.

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