July 30, 2008
Vice presidential scuttlebutt is picking up.
... which is as good an occasion as any to take our reigning champion 85-comment election politics thread and spill to a shorter page (this one). Sidebar links have been updated.
Assuming he doesn't out-and-out endorse McCain, that sounds like a terrible idea when we could be close to 60 (filibuster-proof). (You can convince me that I'm wrong.)
And looking at the numbers here, I don't think he's as conservative as the blogosphere thinks he is.
* He's nowhere near center in the Liberal-Conservative voting record spectrum
* His party unity score the last 3 congresses have been 91, 92, 88; compare Zell Miller at 6.5, VP possibility Evan Bayh at 79/81/89, NE's Ben Nelson at 56/56/41, and Ted Kennedy at 97/97/99.
He has out and out endorsed McCain. He did it ahead of the NH primary. Lieberman's endorsement coincided with (but did not necessarily cause) McCain's turnaround in New Hampishire, and by extension, the primary campaign. This is why he is already had his credentials for the Democratic convention revoked.
He subverted the outcome of a Democratic primary, which is the lone tool that voters have to influence the makeup of the party. He is more hawkish than many Republicans are (though he is admittedly quite good on choice and the environment). And, he is quite willing to go on MTP and all the other Sunday shows and undermine the Democratis messaging on the war and on "moral decency".
For those of you (like me) who didn't know most of those last names on the VP list, see here.
If this is true, (to be all midwestern): barf
Could instead be Roemer, as the comments suggest. As you might guess, I'm for someone quite centrist -- the VP is functionally mostly irrelevant and I just want to win.
Neither a rant nor really a discussion but instead simply hilarious (and also frightening/saddening?):
Politics at Comic-Con
That is fantastic. Seeing bloody-mouth vampire uptalk girl's response gives me renewed hope for our country! Or whatever the opposite of that is.
she was more...zombie than vampire i think.
fivethirtyeight.com puts forward the idea that Obama may announce with national ads during the Olympics. That would be a brilliant move I think.
In my trip back to Missouri, I saw this ad about two trillion times. Well, when you slam someone who is famous just for seeking attention, SURPRISE! They go and look for attention. So here's Paris's own attack ad.
And, rather than mentioning it ahead of Iowa, when it would have been relevant, the the NYT discovers bundling. McCain-Feingold is toothless law.
Well, I for one feel like we dodged a bullet here. Please don't let my statement come back to haunt me...
Obama's gotta make up some ground quickly--he has all but blown his huge lead of a month and a half ago, and McCain is finally finding some attacks that are sticking. I am getting flashbacks to Gore and Kerry.
Joe Lieberman to speak at RNC. The dude is just not a Democrat.
This is one of the things that annoys me about US party politics. The platforms are largely meaningless except as details for the respective bases to fight (and splinter) over. Anyone can declare their allegiance to either of the big parties without actually having to adhere to (or I would argue in some cases know) what the party itself stands for. Which (independent thinking) is one thing if it actually meant something come vote time, but especially in recent years, it means less and less as the parties pull in for bloc voting. And yeah, Liebermann's officially independent now, but they want him for the same reason that they got Zell Miller in 2004 -- to punch the Dems in the gut, not b/c they think Joe is oh-so-hot. But Miller (and to a lesser extent Liebermann) shouldn't have been a Democrat in the first place, at least going by where he stood on issues. I don't know that I want to go so far as to ask for a party-loyalty pledge (eeks), but I wish people would pay a lot less attention to party branding and more to the actual candidates. </rant>
Obama selects Biden...making the announcement via a 3 AM text message, in an ironic twist on the clinton ad against him.
Attn Lazyweb (i.e. Valatan):
So everyone keeps talking about Biden's loose/sharp tongue, like he's the lovechild of Bundini Brown and Gilbert Gottlieb Gottfried gone into politics.
But I don't know what any of these zingers, gaffes and mots justes are -- can anyone run down, or point to, a list of greatest hits?
Well, OK, I just got a "that's what we'll get with four more years of George, ..uh.. John McCain" on the convention broadcast.
His speech so far is superb BTW.
....and at 2135h CDT I can officialy announce that the delegation from Flipistan has done a 180 (well, at least a 90°) and enthusiastically embraces Joe Biden as our Vice Presidential nominee.
Dammit.
If you didn't watch the speech, BTW, Biden whales on McCain like a speedbag. Awesome.
And via fivethirtyeight, this Biden Moment. pwnd.
correcting my own malaprop here -- out of whale, wail and whail I'd have chosen whail as the spelling for 'beat your ass'
Oh man, after seeing the 2nd one in this reel I have no further questions -- but I'd still like to see what Valatan can call to mind.
I would have picked wail. m-w.com doesn't recognize whail as a word at all.
Believe it or not, Urban Dictionary does: "Verb, Contraction of whack and wail."
heh. I picked a hell of a day to not be on the internet. The "noun, verb 9/11" quotation was, certainly, one of the more important moments of the primary--it was given around Rudy's high water point, and it really, really served to highlight how horrible a candidate Rudy was.
His big gaffe of the primary season was this one from early in the season: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."
I was really hoping to find some stuff about biden in the '80s--he has long been a boogeyman to conservatives, because he presided over the Senate Judiciary hearings of failed arch-conservative judicial appointee Robert Bork, which was very, very contentious and controversial (The harsh tone of the Bork hearings were used to justify the houndings that Clinton later recived over Zoë Baird and Lani Guinier). Conservatives would later be rushed into a furor when Anthony Kennedy, who would be the person who eventually filled Bork's seat, was the decisive vote in the 5-4 decision to uphold Roe v. Wade in Casey v. Planned Parenthood in 1993, conservatives further lambasted the Bork hearings, and further cursed Biden's name.
So, I thought that I would be certain to find some awesome soundbyte where Biden tears into Bork in 1987, as I had been hearing all my life about how Biden's personal destruction of Robert Bork led to the baby holocaust. Instead, this is about all I could find on the internet.
I'm coming to think that some of his reputation comes from him taking on this sort of gadfly role in the primary debates (where he did really damn well, I think).
Reading that article about Biden and the court makes me realize what a bummer it is that the court got so back loaded with conservatives in the last few decades. You know Scalia isn't giving up the reins until a Republican is in the White House and replacing Stevens doesn't get you any more votes on the liberal side. Shucks.
bye bye to the argument that Obama is inexperienced. Seriously, what does Palin accomplish that Kay Bailey Hutchinson wouldn't have, aside from taking Alaska and it's decisive 3 EVs out of play?
a quick summary of Palin from an Alaskan perspective.
It's the Idiocracy gambit, an amplification of the 'Celebrity' tactic.
Every candidate tries to present themselves as just a regular joe aw shucks. Given a choice between a person who is clearly not at all a regular joe, but has the potential for greatness, and a person whose political narrative is "I'm just a regular hockey mom" and *is*, which will voters choose?
Palin-dromes:
No Kay, AK? Kayak on! I hot sarah, as saharas to HI.
(reposted from my Twitter)
A few recent posts from The Poor Man to accompany Valatan's Alaskan perspective link above.
apparently we're not the only ones that are quickly learning stuff about Palin.
Superb Sarah Palin-drome from JonTheGeek:
de veep: yen more of know-how, woh, wonk, foe Romney peeved
If you want to talk about a politician's personal life in order to make a political point, this is how you do it. All of the clumsy talk about Bristol and the sexist beauty queen shit is not. If it doesn't connect to actual policy, and you don't make the connection explicitly, you are turning your target into a victim, and Republicans are excellent at playing the victim.
this is why Biden's on the ticket. Damn.
Oh, and Obama refuses to say he's against nationalizing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
"Give 'em Hell, Joe"
"I'm not gonna give 'em hell, I'm gonna tell 'em the truth and they'll *think* it's hell"
No link, but also, Palin is now holed up in Alaska, presumably to send of her son to Iraq, and studying up so that she won't make an idiot of herself when she goes toe to toe with Biden and the press in October.
Sarah Palin is an idiot. If you don't know the central foreign policy philosophy of the current President, then you are not fucking ready to be President
Get Fuzzy's take on Palin:
Actuary tables put the probability of a 73 year old man living to 77 at about 1/6.5. This (I think) doesn't factor things such as POW status, cancer history, the stress of the Presidency, and assassination attempts.
Republican need to ask themselves if they're willing to take that much of a chance on having Pandora Palin advance to the Presidency.
Sadly I worry that all too many Republicans would look forward to that possibility.
I found the last factoid in that article interesting: the rate of left-handedness in the population goes down with age? What the hell is happening there? Do more left-handed people commit suicide or something?
--
Wikipedia says it's because schools used to force lefties to write right-handed (but don't anymore). I know you'll be shocked if I add that some people disagree with that interpretation.
i hear that polar bears are left-handed. (thx Ricky Gervais on last night's Daily Show)
Bob Barr files suit to remove Obama and McCain from Texas ballot, on the claim that they did not fulfill a state requirement that the candidates declare their candidacy 70 days before the election, which would have been before either convention.
I kind of hope that the DNC gives Barr all the money and lawyers he wants. it's either more attention for Barr, or it makes it pretty much impossible for McCain to win.
@Valatan -- wait, you mean Matt Damon was wrong? (link to video incl.)
Oh, it turns out that his number is for McCain making it through a second term. Still, 1 in 7 does not make me feel a lot better.
But what if Matt Damon was right?
Coming this fall from Disney - "She was just a Hockey Mom... Until the knock at her door!"
Whoa! Krugman memes:
More specifically, though, the failure to get a deal reflects the betrayals of the Bush years. Democrats weren’t going to trust Henry Paulson, because behind him they see the ghost of Colin Powell (and Paulson’s “all your bailout are belong to me” proposal, aside from being bad economics, showed an incredible tone-deafness.)
"horseshit" - "horseshit", or horseshit?
I wish Dems would run more ads like this one for a Dem house challenger in VA.
Sarah Palin undermines own abortion position, also doesn't understand anything about the Supreme Court.
You can consistently believe that there's an inherent right to privacy and also believe that once a fetus is 'alive' it is a child (and therefore that abortion, unless life of the mother is at stake, is abhorrent).
The whole 'Federalism' thing is blowing smoke, sure. Saying she believes there's an inherent right to privacy, though, doesn't undermine the abortion position Gov Palin has espoused.
However! The question was to describe a single other Supreme Court decision she *disagreed with*.
Off the top of my head I can think of.... Brown v Board, Dred Scott, Bush v Gore, Eldred, Roe v Wade, Feist, Marshall(?) Marbury vs Madison by name; the semi-recent eminent domain case, the recent DC gun case, the one with 2 Live Crew vs. Roy Orbison and the one with George Harrison vs the Chiffons; and a couple rounds of overturning pandering Internet filtering laws. I don't recall whether the overturning-Sodomy case was a Supreme court decision.
I disagree with Dred Scott, Bush v Gore, Eldred and the DC gun rulings. Apart from Dred Scott (hardly a bold stance), I bet she's not a big fan of the sodomy and internet laws but I think the case law for them is pretty solid. I don't know enough about the eminent domain one, and I bet she doesn't either, but it looks like easy points to say you're against it.
Anyway, my point is that "name a recent supreme court case you disagree with" is harder than you think for a conservative federalist.
Needless to say, Biden gave a lucid, informed answer that reflected years of experience and a recognition of the complexities involved. He also discussed the issue in terms of what the broad spectrum of the American People believe rather than what *he* believed.
Also: I don't think there's a good basis to assert a 'Constitutional' right to privacy, rather that it's an inherent right -- that such a fundamental right needs no delineation. I see the constitution entering into it not through the 14th but the 9th Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The absence of the word 'privacy' from the constitution is undeniable, though I see the merits of including it under the heading of 'Liberty'. But if you enumerate privacy among the Fundamental Rights of Man (I vote 'yes', and I'm surprised when federalist individualist non-interventionist conservatives argue otherwise) I think the 9th amendment couldn't be any more clear.
If you believe Roe v. Wade was incorrectly decided, but also believe in a constitional right to privacy, as originally established in Griswold v. Connecticut, then it is incumbent on you to explain how, considering that the argument that the court made in the Roe decision is pretty much based entirely on the Griswold decision.
One could probably make such an argument, but it would require a careful use of logic, and most of the leadership of the organized pro-life movement believes that Griswold should be overturned in addition to Roe, so it's not a common argument to hear from a nationally viable politician opposing abortion.
Of course, she clearly had no idea about any of this.
(note -- my previous comment was edited after Valatan's response.)
Roe v Wade balances two fundamental rights, privacy and life. *If* a baby is alive, and the mother's life is not at stake, then Griswold or not, life takes primacy over privacy.
What's wrong with that argument?
In fact, that is pretty much my position -- though I place life at "high expectation to be viable outside the womb without extraordinary measures". Mostly I think that the best way to stop abortions and to preserve privacy and choice is to quit counting hairs in Plato's Beard about when life starts, and work to increase adoption, contraception, and fight poverty. I've yet to meet a 'pro-life' activist with adopted children.
... and in fact eminent domain was the correct answer.
Here are the details of the case, and though I can't figure out why I agree with Scalia, I think that eminent domain should be held to the strictest standards of "public use". Incidentally: comma, or smudge?
Dayum, that shit is poppin'!
Was I asleep or something because how did I miss these stand-up comedy routines by Obama and McCain? Holy crap they are hilarious. McCain's plumber and expectations-raising and Obama's Superman/name jokes were killer. Seriously, I genuinely laughed a bunch of times at both of them. This is how the whole campaign should be, really. If you don't have time for the vids MSNBC has some of them written out.
These are really good -- McCain's Hillary line in particular is killer (and overall his routing is clearly better). The part at the end (note that each has a part 2) where McCain speaks genuinely and graciously about Obama and the momentousness of the race was particularly moving:
"There was a time when the mere invitation of an African-American citizen to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. Today, it’s a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. And good riddance. I can’t wish my opponent luck, but I do wish him well."
This is the McCain I thought Obama was going to be running against. That would have been, I think, a much harder battle for Obama, and given an outcome (whichever that outcome becomes) less fraught with furious resentment.
===
Speaking of which, go also watch Colin Powell's endorsement (full version; in the press conference after, he condemns the slime campaign).
Its forceful eloquence is unlike anything we've heard in a while this campaign.
This why I still bear a political man-crush on him even in the face of 2003. Well, that and the fact that he speaks Yiddish and fixes old Volvos.
If you're a politician, it's a good idea to register yourname.com. Because, you know, other people might do it for you, you know.
Republican donors are really pissed at how much money has been going toward making Palin look good. Note this. And her reportedly $200,000 clothes budget from McCain '08.
last minute polling extremely favorable to Obama. The upshot:
Obama leads by more than 6% in the most recent polling in states whose sum total is worth 278 electoral votes.
Obama holds a lead of between 2% and 6% in 3 states (OH, VA, FL) worth 60 electoral votes
Obama and McCain are statistically tied in three more states (MO, ND, NC) worth 19 electoral votes.
This picture has been pretty static for a while, and a lot of these states have pretty significant early voting (note how crazy it has been in Texas), which means that McCain probably needs to win pretty big on election day in order to sweep these six states, AND flip one of the states where Obama currently has a 6%+ polling percentage.
In summary, things are looking really damn dire for McCain. At this point, the congressional races are more exciting. Will Al Franken manage to win his really close race in Minnesota on the back of his recent surge in polling?
« Older 1337 politics. | At Least It Wasn't Mutt Williams Newer »
To post comments to a thread you must login or create a profile.
For those not aware, Sen. Ted Stevens, of "series of tubes" fame has been indicted on seven corruption charges. If he resigns, then the democrats can safely expel Joe Lieberman from his leadership position, rank within the party, and from his committee chairmanship.
posted by Valatan at 10:45PM CST on July 30