Month: November 2008

Justin Vogt studies the Arab American vote. A vignette from an event hosted by the Arab American Institute:

…the evening’s most striking moment was a less encouraging one. During his pitch, Bob Straniere, a Republican congressional candidate, made a rather cursory mention of his support for John McCain. A young man sporting ultra-hip jeans and heavily gelled hair raised his hand, and aired his distaste for McCain’s recent statements at a campaign rally in Minnesota.

When a supporter there told McCain, “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s not, he’s not… he’s an Arab,” the candidate took back the microphone and said ““No, ma’am. He’s a decent family-man citizen.”

“Why,” the young questioner asked Straniere, “would you support a person who would respond in such an unfavourable way to the community?”

A sustained round of applause swallowed the young man’s final words, and all eyes turned to Straniere, waiting to see if he would affirm that he believed Arabs could be decent family men. “You know, we all work very hard, we campaign very hard, and sometimes, your mouth goes faster than your brain,” he said through a stiff smile.

Besides, Straniere declared, McCain hadn’t been his first choice – “Rudy Giuliani was!”
This did not quite suffice, and the crowd let Straniere know it with a chorus of boos.

The young man sat down, frowning and rolling his eyes. A woman sitting nearby muttered, “They don’t get it.”

Blumenthal:

Not surprisingly, yesterday was another heavy day of new poll releases: 37 new statewide surveys and 10 national releases, yet these surveys indicate no clear trends and leave our bottom line electoral vote count unchanged. McCain does a little better on some polls and on some of our statewide trend estimates, Obama does a little better on others. The net result — for today at least — looks mostly like random noise.

Most people have made up their minds. But Obama is right about this:

"We can’t afford to slow down, sit back, or let up for one day, one minute, or one second in these last few days."

Nate Silver:

Pennsylvania seems to be the one thing that McCain has to hang his hat on. But he remains very unlikely to win it, and even if he does, Obama has any number of firewall states that could preserve a victory for him. McCain’s win percentage is down to 2.8 percent, his lowest number of the year.

JPod gives ten reasons why McCain might win. Here’s number eight:

What happened with the Joe the Plumber story is that Obama has now been effectively outed as a liberal, not a moderate; and because liberalism is still less popular than conservatism, that’s not the best place for Obama to be.

I agree with JPod that the McCain campaign has finally managed to haul out the one theme they should have emphasized from the start, and it has helped with some independents. On tax, Obama is more liberal than McCain. But on debt, McCain is more liberal than Obama. Obama’s proposals, according to every independent source including the CBO, will increase the debt less than McCain’s. So, to my fiscal conservative mind, it’s a wash. Neither one is serious about restraining spending – but, then, in the context of what could be a global depression, that might not, in the short term, be the worst thing in the world.

McCain’s closing ad:

PEW reports:

While use of the web has seen considerable growth, the percentage of Americans relying on TV and newspapers for campaign news has remained relatively flat since 2004. The internet now rivals newspapers as a main source for campaign news.

Yglesias is troubled by moderate Republican leaders jumping ship and endorsing Obama:

On some level, I sort of regret seeing people like this hop onto the Obama bandwagon. Realistically, at some point the Republicans are going to come back into power and I’d prefer that to be a less-crazy version of the GOP. That’s going to require less-crazy people, people like Duberstein, to exert some influence and have some credibility.

Marty:

I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute. And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered. In fact, I even invited Khalidi to speak for a Jewish organization with which I work.

America:

Rick Davis:

"We are witnessing, I believe, probably one of the greatest comebacks that you’ve seen since John McCain won the primary"

Coates:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but is there a single shred of evidence in this story? A poll? Anything? How is this not a GOP press release? How is it not journalism as stenography?

It’s a really truthy thing to say.