In separate appearances this morning, John McCain and Hillary Clinton both came hard after their colleague from Illinois, making it clear they both intend to wring as much political advantage as they can out of Barack Obama’s poorly-chosen words about small-town Americans at a recent San Francisco fundraiser. Each came at the task in a …
What’s the Matter With Obama
As Ambinder and others have pointed out, Obama’s San Francisco “gaffe” echoed some of the ideas laid out by Tom Frank in “What’s the Matter with Kansas.” An important difference: those ideas sound a lot less condescending at book-length, packed with reporting and supported by historical research. I’m not sure if it should matter or not …
Obama Takes a Hit in PA Poll
First poll of Pennsylvania voters post-“bitter” comments shows Obama taking a hit. The American Research Group had him and Clinton neck-and-neck with 45% each in its April 5-6 survey. The group’s April 11-13 poll has Obama at 37% to Clinton’s 57%.
Of course, this is just one poll. It’ll be interesting to see others as they come later …
Obama’s Bitter Pill
Here’s my analysis for time.com. And, Obama this morning in a speech before the Alliance for American Manufacturing questioned how in touch McCain and Clinton are. An excerpt:
You know, there’s been a lot of talk in this campaign lately about who’s “in touch” with the workers of Pennsylvania. Senator Clinton and Senator McCain
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Will Obfuscate For Food
In today’s New York Times, Neil A. Lewis tells us that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is having trouble finding work–at least, that is, in the legal profession.
That can mean only one thing. Yes–it’s time for a Swampland Commenter Invitational!
Today’s challenge: To come up with a new career for Fredo.
In the ArenaUncategorized
The Case Against Obama
The founders of Politico, Jim VandeHei and John Harris, have stepped up today with a comprehensive case against the Obama candidacy–and, whether you like it or not, there’s enough political reality there to give any Democrat pause. There are, however, two or three counter-arguments that can be made:
1. Obama is a terrific politician …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Bitter Cling
Well, I don’t know. This Obama controversy, described below by JNS, is the sort of thing we journalists blow up into massive gas, mostly because we really don’t want to get down in the weeds about the things we need to get down in the weeds about…like whether trade deals really are so bad, especially with the weak dollar (I don’t think …
Obama’s Bitterness
Yesterday the Huffington Post had this exclusive audio of Obama speaking at a California fundraiser. An excerpt:
“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama said. “And they fell through the Clinton
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Strange Facts Proven to be True
• “Everybody’s favorite space dog Laika now has a statue near Moscow’s Military Medicine Institute!” [Boing Boing]
• “The newsreel footage from the old Soviet days kept confusing me. Stein does know that the Stalinists rejected the theory of evolution as a biological rendition of capitalism, doesn’t he? And
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WTF GDP
Our Curious Capitalist investigates an idea that I sent him after stumbling upon it over at Boing Boing: linking GDP to numbers that are more directly linked to people’s day-to-day lives (apparently known as “non-market activity”). You’ll be shocked to learn that the Bush administration has undone one of the few American programs that …
Buying Philly Votes
A must-read story today from Peter Nichols at the L.A. Times about Obama refusing to engage in the local buy-a-vote racket in Philadelphia. A juicy segment:
The dispute centers on the dispensing of “street money,” a long-standing Philadelphia ritual in which candidates deliver cash to the city’s Democratic operatives in return for
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McCain’s Tortured Position
Commenters may remember that we spent some time in the threads a couple of months ago discussing McCain’s vote against the Dem’s Field Manual legislation. Critics may seize upon this early draft of McCain’s own legislation that Michael mentions as proof of further hypocrisy; as I said in the threads, to McCain, it’s not hypocrisy, it was …
Parsing McCain’s Interrogation Position
I have a new story up at Time.com about John McCain’s position on waterboarding and other harsh interrogation politics. One interesting thing I turned up: A 2005 proposal from McCain’s staff that took the same position on applying the Army Field Manual to the CIA that he now opposes in the Senate. To wit:
In the spring of 2005,
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