Month: August 2008

Josh Marshall is worried that the Democrats aren’t attacking enough:

My concern isn’t so much about Night 1, it’s my perception that the Obama campaign has ceded the initiative to McCain for the last four to six weeks, and that Obama’s campaign needs to get to work tearing down McCain’s concocted Mavericky, old soldier image…Attack is not synonymous with primal scream.

It doesn’t mean frothing at the mouth screaming. In fact, the best attacks undermine with ridicule and humor. But being on the attack means taking the fight to the opponent, making him or her respond — in so many words, taking and holding the initiative. In the context of a political campaign that means not responding to attacks but taking and holding the initiative by defining both your opponent and the question at the heart of the campaign Of course, attack can mean slashing attacks on the opponent’s character too. But that’s only one approach — and not the one everyone, especially the presidential candidate himself, should take.

James Joyner thinks this is McCain’s "most effective ad yet." I’m not so sure that "Hillary’s Right" is the best message for a Republican nominee, or that tying McCain to another old politician is smart. I’m also unsure that playing footage of international crises helps a man as hotheaded and belligerent as McCain. But judge for yourself. The PUMAs will be happy:

Walter Shapiro describes convention week:

…the glory days of smoke-filled rooms, delegates in funny hats, and suspenseful roll-call votes are gone. Conventions are now excuses for both parties to bludgeon the television networks into running four nights of political infomercials… So, in a sense, every reporter in Denver is on the television beat. And the journalistic danger lies in confusing the attitudes of the studio audience (the delegates) with the sentiments of Nielsen families (the voters)."

Mostly on point, but the "delegates in funny hats" are hardly gone. One can dream.

(hat tip: Goddard)

The DNC drinking game.

Photographer Nick Veasey makes art out of compilations of x-rays.

Maliki may issue a major crackdown on the critical Sunni forces the US has helped take on al Qaeda in Iraq  as early as November. Joe Klein weighs our options: 

Whose side are we on if Maliki launches the crackdown [on the Sons of Iraq]? Brimley and Kahl think we can influence Maliki’s behavior by threatening to withold U.S. military support–but that may be exactly what the overconfident Maliki wants. Then again, what choice do we have? I doubt that even John McCain will argue that the role of the U.S. military will be to defend the Sons of Iraq in the coming battle. My guess is that the end result in Iraq is an authoritarian Maliki- or military-led Shi’ite government, less toxic than Saddam Hussein’s, which will stand closer to Iran than to Saudi Arabia in the regional Sunni-Shi’ite contest. The war in Iraq will not have been "lost," but can this be reasonably described as "victory?" I think not. It can be best described as a terrible, shameful waste of lives and resources.

It is critical that intelligent observers note the decline in violence in Iraq, but insist that the full facts of the tragic waste of lives and resources are well-known. I have no idea whether McCain’s moronic "victory-or-surrender" rubric can account for critical issues such as this. But I doubt it. Here’s where Biden is needed to make the case against the McCain policy as powerfully and loudly as possible.

Will Saletan makes the case.

Suffering from a sudden bout of Hillary love (Bill Kristol’s newfound feminism must be contagious), Jim Geraghty compiles the top 20 ways Obama is snubbing Hillary. #7 is my favorite:

All of the delegates from Michigan and Florida have been reinstated . . . long after it would do her any good. Now that the DNC concedes she was right, where does she go to get her delegate count and “she can win the large important swing states” argument back?

An interesting interactive map on US troop levels around the world since 1950.