Month: September 2008

I’m on Bill Maher’s HBO show tonight – live! You never know what I might say.

He’s now closing in on 50 percent, five points ahead of McCain in the Gallup Daily Tracking. RCP has his national lead now at 2.2 with a strong bounce and McCain with a steep decline. Obama’s current lead is now a smidgen below McCain’s highest lead in his convention bounce.

Ross wonders what will happen if McCain loses:

Advocates of retrenchment will argue that McCain’s heterodoxies cost him the loyalty of the base and thus the presidency, while advocates of renovation and reform will argue that he hewed too closely to party orthodoxy to win over independent voters. And the question of whether the GOP is stuck in the Democrats’ 2004 or in their 1980 will be left unresolved—that is, at least until 2012 rolls round.

Or we may just realize that his insane vice-presidential pick makes everything else moot.

The ‘first dude’ won’t testify. The point, after all, is not investigation. It’s deference.

What the economic crisis may mean for main street:

For an individual or business that falls behind on payments or needs an increase in short-term credit because of the slowing economy, credit will be much harder to obtain than in recent years.

This is going to slow growth. We have not seen this much stress in the financial system since the Great Depression, so we do not have any recent history to rely upon in quantifying the magnitude of the slowdown. A recent educated guess by Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs suggests that G.D.P. growth will be just about 2 percentage points lower in 2008 and 2009. But as he explains, extrapolations of this sort are highly uncertain.

Chait has an excellent summary of how every alledged advantage has evaporated and every liability has begun to gain more and more traction:

The swift disintegration of Palin’s anti-pork credentials has been especially amusing.

After initially casting Palin as a dedicated foe of earmarks, and then having it revealed that she asked for and received enormous sums of earmarked projects, the McCain campaign has fallen back to the defense that she requested fewer earmarks than other Alaska pols. This is true: Even though Palin took ten times the national per capita average in earmarked spending, in this regard she still rates somewhat below average by the standards of the petro-kleptocracy of the state from which she hails. Yet this defense raises the question of why Ted Kennedy never thought to run for president on the slogan "He Never Took a Drink In His Life," and then, when challenged, point out that other members of his family are less sober than he.

Lincoln, Nebraska, 1.15 pm.

Watch her dodge! Watch Hannity defer:

She’s in another world. We have someone with a serious psychological problem.

Palin strikes again:

"Oil and coal? Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first,” Palin said. “So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans that get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It’s got to flow into our domestic markets first," – Sarah Palin, Energy Expert and University of Idaho graduate in sports journalism.

Hilzoy, mercifully, unpacks it. Hard not to wince at the grammar and the logic. Remember this is allegedly her sole area of expertise and she’s barely above high school level.

Moulitsas notes a staggering 21 point decline in a week. More here. On 9/11, Palin had a 52 – 35 favorable – unfavorable rating. She now has a 42 – 46 favorable – unfavorable rating. She went from + 17 to – 4 in a week [update now – 5] . Kos says this proves that the focus on her constant lying, religious fanaticism, spectacular stupidity, ignorance of basic facts even on energy, total unawareness of and interest in foreign policy and inability to hold a press conference was a strategy worth pursuing.

I agree but not for partisan reasons. My concern with Palin is merely to expose the truth about her in the face of an historically unprecedented campaign of seclusion, press intimidation and constant, constant lies.