Month: August 2008

That’s what Halperin is hearing. How many mansions would that be altogether?

Fish: meet barrel.

Nate Silver makes one last pitch:

If Obama picks Clinton, the Republicans are likely to overplay their hand. One thing that Obama has not really been able to do is to generate some organic level of backlash when he is attacked. This is separate and distinct from the notion of "fighting back"; it is voters stepping in and refereeing the match themselves. Voters recognize that McCain has gone negative but they aren’t really punishing him for it — his favorables haven’t moved at all. Why not? 

I think it has to do with the nature of Obama: he is new, he is confident to the point of being arrogant, and up until recently, he has been leading. To the extent there is any genius in the "celebrity" line of attack, it’s that nobody feels much sympathy when celebrities are made fun of (well, except for this guy); it is a sort of sport to try and pierce their bubble.

With Clinton, on the other hand, voters naturally want to come to her defense — and overzealous attempts to whip the Republican base into a frenzy will be counteracted with outrage from significant numbers of older and working-class women.

A revealing bloggingheads exchange between Bob Wright and Ann Althouse. Both realize that McCain’s vow to "defeat evil" at Saddleback was both asinine machismo – like we haven’t had enough of that after eight years of Cheney – and deeply unChristian. There’s no way a president of the United States or any country can "defeat evil." Evil is everywhere and always for Christians – until the Second Coming. Particular manifestations of evil can be defeated, but not evil itself. That endures, and is part of us too.

In this, of course, Obama’s theology is far more mainstream than McCain’s bravado. And Christians are first reminded that we too are capable of evil – even as we try to do good. And so a genuine effort to spread democracy and human rights can even allow some leaders, divorced from real Christianity, to commit absolute evil in the name of good.

Like, say, torture.

Ezra Klein thinks Obama has found his economic message. From today on the stump:

The Chicago-Sun Times reports that the Rezko sentencing has been bumped from September 3th to October 28th, one week before the election.

The far right goes there. The source of the smear is a group called the American Issues Project. According to Ben Smith, its spokesman, Christian Pinkston, is a former aide to presidential candidate Jack Kemp, and went on to run the conservative group Empower America. Jack Kemp must be proud, don’t you think? And Stanley Kurtz just had an obasm.

That’s how many houses McCain actually has, although because they’re all part of Cindy’s massive fortune, it’s understandable he can’t quite keep track of how immensely wealthy he is and has been for a very long time.

"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison," – Brian Rogers, McCain spokesman, responding to Obama mocking McCain for not knowing how many houses he owns. This was McCain’s rhetorical gambit when accused of carpet-bagging earlier in his career. Hilzoy is getting tired of McCain playing the POW card without reason. Ben Smith’s take:

It does seem like they’re flirting with Giuliani/9/11 territory here, in which at subject that seems utterly immune to humor, used as a first resort, suddenly becomes a running joke among your political enemies and your late night comic friends.

He does seem to play the POW card every hour or so. And who is this Brian Rogers? Apart from sounding like an asshole in every single quote of his I see?