ON A BUS NEAR NEW PHILADELPHIA, OHIO–There is a theory of political consulting that puts great value in bright shiny objects, those sparkly ideas, issues or tactics that can distract the press (and the voters) to deliver a message. The McCain campaign does this a lot: all that hubbub about ACORN registration fraud, for instance, [...]

My friend Jeff Goldberg, author of Prisoners, which is one of the very best books I’ve read about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, takes me to task, rightly, for some wordplay I engaged in yesterday while  excoriating the vile McCain spokesman, Michael Goldfarb for calling Khalid Rashidi an antisemite. And while the term, antisemitism, [...]

And Halloween, no less. Yep, we’re due for one.

Wonder how much they spent to get the “quite startling” result of this study?: WASHINGTON (AP) — Women running for top offices need to appear competent and attractive, according to a new study. For male candidates, seeming competent may be enough.

A chat today with Obama’s David Axelrod.

Here we have the McCain campaign’s execrable Michael Goldfarb slinging around accusations of anti-semitism–a favorite pastime, as we’ve seen this year, among Jewish neoconservatives. I’ve never met Rashid Khalidi, but he is (a) Palestinian and therefore (b) a semite, so the charge of anti-semitism is fatuous. Khalidi is also a respected academic, the sort of [...]

Yes, it is perhaps the oldest cliche in politics to say that everything is riding on turnout. But take a look at the data for Georgia and Missouri in the latest TIME/CNN poll. In both states, McCain holds a narrow lead among “likely” voters (those who traditionally vote), but Obama leads among registered (the kind [...]

There is so much desperate, crapulous spew from the McCain campaign right now that it’s hard to keep track of it all–but this ad, via Andrew Sullivan, marks some sort of low. Yet again–in a last, desperate attempt to scare the elderly Jews of Florida–McCain posits Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the “leader” of Iran, even though [...]

Ana,  In your below post you wrote: Any VP candidate who isn’t thinking about running for president one day is probably less trustworthy than one who is — in part because they are probably thinking even darker thoughts. Two words, people: DICK CHENEY. Am curious — would you therefore call Joe Biden “less trustworthy”? Every [...]