Month: July 2008

by Chris Bodenner

By Patrick Appel

Here’s a response to Malaki by Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy adviser, from earlier this evening:

The difference between John McCain and Barack Obama is that Barack Obama advocates an unconditional withdrawal that ignores the facts on the ground and the advice of our top military commanders. John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground. Prime Minister Maliki has repeatedly affirmed the same view, and did so again today. Timing is not as important as whether we leave with victory and honor, which is of no apparent concern to Barack Obama. The fundamental truth remains that Senator McCain was right about the surge and Senator Obama was wrong. We would not be in the position to discuss a responsible withdrawal today if Senator Obama’s views had prevailed.

Josh Marshall calls it pretty weak. It’s certainly muddled. While Scheunemann paints Obama as committed to a fixed timetable and indifferent to the consequences of pulling out of Iraq, in reality Obama has consistently said conditions on the ground would inform his timeline for withdrawal. McCain may be able to argue he was right about the surge, but Obama can argue he was right about the war. Scheunemann seems to acknowledge that we’re in a position to "discuss a responsible withdrawal," but he also says that "John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground." If we’re in a position to discuss a responsible withdrawal, doesn’t that mean those conditions have largely been met?

By Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

Twice now the Dish has written that "the McCain and Obama positions on Iraq will be as minimal as McCain can make them by November." I simply don’t understand how that could be politically tenable for McCain. Obama is favored by something like 30 points on the economy and 20 on domestic issues more generally. Iraq and foreign affairs more generally are the only issues McCain can feasibly run on. If he moves towards Obama he will cut his own legs out from under him. Maliki has more or less done that already, putting McCain in a very awkward position. But moving towards Obama on Iraq would take away one of the few contrasts that could possibly be favorable to McCain. How does he avoid an overwhelming landslide if he can’t keep both sharp contrasts and focus on the Iraq issue?

By Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

Just read "Dumbing Down the Presidency" and something clicked. I think part of the reason Bill resents Obama is because he’s doing a lot of things the way Bill wanted to do them, but was talked out of by his advisors.

Obama’s speechifying is everything Clinton’s could have been – unrestrained, rhetorically brilliant, unapologetic – except that Bill chose to go the "dumb-down" route and so eschewed all the intellectual acclaim that the former Rhodes Scholar could have claimed. He chose to accept the conventional wisdom that the average American was too dumb to follow a collegiate level speech. Seeing Obama pull it off must be infuriating – it’s like watching someone win a race you know you could have won too, except everyone told you not to enter.

By Patrick Appel

From John Crawford’s 1962 article on beating the Russians by packing on the pounds:

Muscles may be useful in hand-to-hand combat, but I fail to see what advantage they give one in the Cold War. Indeed, that gaunt and bony look so much in fashion among Americans today may be a positive liability in the battle for the minds of men. How can we expect the world’s starving masses to believe that a nation of emaciated people is as well off as it pretends to be? We seem to have forgotten that while obesity is the bane of modern America, it remains the ultimate symbol of happiness and security to that portion of mankind which goes to bed hungry every night.

By Patrick Appel

"I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’"-Michael Savage.

By Patrick Appel David Zetland proposes:

As it stands, Los Angeles households pay $2.80 for the first 885 gallons they use per day. That’s enough water to fill 18 bathtubs. The next 18 tubs cost $3.40, which is only 20% more. Most L.A. households don’t even see this price increase, since the average household of three uses just 350 gallons–about seven bathtubs–each day. For that water, the household pays only $35 a month. If they use twice the amount, the bill merely doubles.

I propose a system where every person gets the first 75 gallons, or 1.5 bathtubs, per day for free but pays $5.60 for each 75 gallons after that.

Under my system, the monthly bill for the average household of three would come to $95.

My system is designed to reduce demand rather than cover costs. Revenue paid by guzzlers would cover the costs of those who use only a small amount of water. Any leftover profits could be refunded to consumers or used to enhance the quality or quantity of the water supply.

Drum offers this caveat:

One thing, though: this is going to be a hard sell unless agribusiness is included too. If we charged them market prices for water (a) food prices would go up a few pennies and (b) there’d be so much water left over for residential use we’d hardly know what to do with it. We’d be awash in the stuff.

By Patrick Appel

Marc’s take on Maliki endorsing Obama’s withdrawal timetable:

This could be one of those unexpected events that forever changes the way the world perceives an issue. Iraq’s Prime Minister agrees with Obama, and there’s no wiggle room or fudge factor. This puts John McCain in an extremely precarious spot: what’s left to argue? To argue against Maliki would be to predicate that Iraqi sovereignty at this point means nothing…Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, "We’re fucked."

A few weeks ago, Ross argued (somewhat persuasively) that McCain should run on the surge. In the last few days, the McCain campaign and his supporters began pursuing that strategy. An independent pro-McCain group, Let Freedom Ring, announced today it is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars running an ad attacking Obama over Iraq. And the McCain campaign put out a new TV ad along similar lines yesterday. But with Maliki backing Obama’s Iraq strategy and Bush accepting time horizons, those ads feel tone-deaf.  Andrew’s prediction yesterday, that "the McCain and Obama positions on Iraq will be as minimal as McCain can make them by November," seems especially prescient today.

[Update]: McCain campaign response:

"His domestic politics require him to be for us getting out," said a senior McCain campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "The military says ‘conditions based’ and Maliki said ‘conditions based’ yesterday in the joint statement with Bush. Regardless, voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders."

That doesn’t make McCain’s position much more tenable. Larison has a typically insightful post in response.

By Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

The mere notion that a regional candidate could amass gargantuan popular majorities in only certain parts of the country while blowing off the rest ought to shock into sobriety anyone who gives the notion of doing away with the Electoral College a moment’s thought.  Not only would it matter merely to win a given State, but by how many votes; if you think you’ve seen ballot stuffing in its highest form in this nation’s electoral history, then you’ll be in for a genuine revelation.  Even more alarming is the prospect of a heightened imperative to systematic disenfranchisement of voters in particular locales who may be expected not to vote "the right way" come election day.

With that in mind and on top of it –and this should alarm first-principles conservatives who still believe in a few old-fashioned virtues as they would pertain to the right of the States to manage, to the extent feasible, their own affairs– we’re looking at the potential (nay, the necessity) of federally administered presidential elections, right down to the level of the polling place.  Nothing like more government to solve a "problem" that exists only in the minds of sore losers; it’s worth reminding that nowhere in the Constitution is there a guarantee of the right of an individual citizen to cast a ballot for the office of president in the first place.

"Not only would it matter merely to win a given State, but by how many votes": how is that a bad thing? And why would ballot stuffing be any more prevalent with a popular vote model? One would have to falsify hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of votes to change the outcome. If you want a smart take on incremental electoral college reform, Rick Hertzberg has written extensively about it.

by Chris Bodenner
Nate Silver ran 10,000 simulated elections and determined that Michigan — Romney’s home state — is the top "tipping-point state" for the fall.

Update (7/20): Sean at 538 emails to note: "The polls are updated constantly which affects the Tipping Point chart, and Michigan has dipped to 22% and 3rd, behind Ohio (41%) and Colorado (23%)." He also points to his skepticism about running mates helping in their home states.

I myself have always been skeptical of the ability of Romney to carry MI. He won the state by just 9 points in the Jan. primary — before the national economic downturn, which is hitting states like MI harder than others. The conventional wisdom says that Romney’s major strength is economic issues, but I fail to see how a multimillionaire CEO of a private equity firm will help with struggling Rust Belt voters. If anything, he’d be a liability for McCain (with Gramm’s "nation of whiners" the icing on the cake). Huckabee said it best back in January: "He is the boss that fired you, not the guy you work with."