Via Clive Davis, I see that Niall Feguson has abandoned John McCain. In a Guardian interview he says:
He denies suggestions that Colossus, specifically, was written with
half an eye on influencing the White House - but he became, for a time,
one of John McCain's foreign policy advisers. "I must say that since he
won the nomination, which I was very happy about, I've played virtually
no role. In fact, I've played no role. Because, uh" - he is suddenly,
uncharacteristically halting - "how to describe it? - I felt much less
... enthused, I think is probably the word, now that it's between him
and Obama. And I felt much more uncomfortable with some of the
positions he has had to take in order to secure the conservative vote."
Presumably this means that Ferguson is reasonably comfortable with Obama's foreign policy views. Given Niall's own positions, one might think this likely to disconcert some of Obama's more "progressive" supporters while, of course, also confirming the paleocon view that there's much less between the candidates' foreign policy "vision" (which is not to be confused with jjudgement and temperament) than is generally thought the case.
Then again, Niall likes to think of himself as a 19th - or 18th - century liberal, so it's no great surprise that he doesn't have an obvious home in either party at present. Of course, Colossus argued that, in the end, the United States didn't have the stomach to do empire properly. I don't suspect he really thinks this will change under Obama, but, rather, Obama's upside is greater than McCain's and his downside, in foreign policy terms at least, no lower.
More than 210,000 blacks who are registered as Democrats have cast
early ballots in the Tar Heel State - compared with roughly 174,000
registered Republicans overall. Four years ago, the number of GOP early
and absentee voters was more than double that of black Democrats.
It's over. How so? Because campaigns that have a chance of winning don't perform stunts like this:
Please join our campaign for a conference call at 11:30 a.m.
EDT, with former CIA Director Jim Woolsey and McCain-Palin Senior Foreign
Policy Adviser Randy Scheunemann to discuss recent news stories
about which candidate terrorists would like to see in the White House in
2009.
Apparently he's the new go-to guy in this daft Presidential election. Of course, it shows how out of touch I am that when I saw Tito was the headline act I found myself wondering quite how Yugoslav politics had become an issue. Then I realised that it was the lovely Sarah Palin who'd been talking about Tito, so obviously it had to be something else entirely.
UPDATE, October 27th. Ana Marie Cox braves the nonsense:
Obviously, the big draw in Leesburg this morning was Tito the Builder,
aka Tito Munoz, aka defended of Joe the Plumber. If you had ever wanted
to hear a crowd of Northern Virigian White People chant "Tito! Tito!
Tito!" who weren't looking for a Jackson brother encore, well, you
missed your chance.
Ooops. I meant to mention Mike Crowley's entertaining New Republicpiece on the polling wars. It's a fun, breezy read that's well worth your time:
Shock Poll - blared a Drudge Report
headline on December 26, 2007, just one week before the Iowa caucus. At
a time when most pollsters were showing a dead heat in Iowa, this new
survey found Hillary Clinton with a 15-point lead over Barack Obama.
But the only shock, as it turned out, was that someone could have
gotten it so wrong: Obama would beat Clinton in Iowa by eight points.
The offender was the New Hampshire-based American Research Group. ARG
is a black sheep of the polling world; I repeatedly heard it singled
out for scorn by other pollsters. They complain that it releases little
information about its sponsors and its methodology--for a time, there
was even confusion about whether ARG relied on automated surveys or
human operators. "ARG is a mystery," Leve says. "They release almost
nothing about what they do. It's possible they don't even make phone
calls." ("There's plenty of disclosure," says ARG's Dick Bennett. "I
guess people are into trashing.")
Also:
Overall, response rates have been declining for
years. And, this season, race and gender have added tricky new
variables. In short, Leve's success is hard to explain-- affirming a
postmodern sense that methodology no longer ensures accuracy more than
instinct and dumb luck. The irony is that this perception, one that critics use to deride polling, is now widespread even among pollsters themselves.
And:
Leve has none of this sentimentality for his own industry. In fact, he
can be downright dismissive of our national obsession with polling.
When a surprising number appears in the news, he says, he often fields
calls from his excitable mother. "I pick up the phone and she says,
'Hey, I just heard-- McCain's now in front!' I say, 'Mom, ignore it!' I
often tell people to pay no attention whatsoever. There are an awful
lot of numbers coming out that mean absolutely nothing."
And then they were eight. Tracking polls that is. Which one should you follow? Or, rather, which should you discount? Happily, Nate Silver is here to explain it all.
What I find odd about American polls, mind you, is their tiny sample size. National Journal's tracking poll only follows a few hundred people for instance and even national opinion polls often only consult around 1,000 people. That's roughly the same kind of sample size used by British pollsters. But of course there are 60 million people in Britain and 300 million in the United States. Our polls should, therefore, be more accurate. Right? And in America how difficult would it be to poll 5,000 people instead of just a few hundred?
UPDATE: As commenters point out, I don't know very much about polling. Or statistics.
Now I may have actually heard it all. Ralph Peters offers an unintentionally hilarious tour round the globe predicting famine and pestilence and death should Americans be mad enough to elect Barack Obama next month. Apparently America will be fatally weakened and the world will fall apart. I mean, you do realise that Obama will be responsible for losing Bolivia, right? Are you prepared for that?
Chavez client President Evo Morales could order his military to seize
control of his country’s dissident eastern provinces, whose citizens
resist his repression, extortion and semi-literate Leninism. President
Obama would do nothing as yet another democracy toppled and bled.
Hat-tip to Daniel Larison who has some fun with the rest of this laughable - but enjoyable! - poppycock.
Yes, I would vote for Barack Obama rather than John McCain. But that doesn't mean that one expects too much from an Obama administration. Consider this startling passage from a speech the candidate gave in Toledo last week:
I also believe that Treasury should not limit itself to purchasing
mortgage-backed securities – it should help unfreeze markets for
individual mortgages, student loans, car loans, and credit card loans.
Clinton was a free trader and interested in policy innovation. By
contrast, Obama never misses a chance to mention China in a
disparaging way and all of his plans seem to revolve around throwing
money at any perceived problems. Does anyone think he bring fiscal
restraint to the federal budget? Does anyone think he'll approach
entitlement reform with any weapon other than increased payroll taxes?
All too true. In other words, there are plenty of policy reasons for doubting the transformational potential of President Obama. And there'll be plenty of people who'll be regretting the intensity of their enthusiasm for the junior Senator for Illinois, even if he remains the obviously preferable selection.
Obama's September fundraising explains why he's been able to outspend
John McCain so widely: He raised over $150 million in September alone,
adding 632,000 new donors.
At some point it becomes difficult to actually spend all this cash. Hence reports of Obama advertising on country music stations in Miami or on video games. Anything to, you know, get rid of all this cash... Notable too that the Obama campaign is expanding its list of target states once more, this time buying time in West Virginia.
Ramesh Ponnuru, seeing parents in his neighborhood encouraging their kids to be Obamatons, rightly says he doesn't get people who delight in politicizing their children.
Completely agree. For some reason, though, my two boys -- ages nine and
four -- are crazy for Barack Obama, and have been for a long time.
They're put out with their mom and dad for not being for Obama. It has
nothing to do with policy, of course; they just think he's the coolest
thing. It's actually kind of cute, and as young as they are, I'd rather
encourage them to be excited about the political process rather than
engage them in tit-for-tat over who's the better candidate. (Though
Matthew did ask me once what the difference between Democrats and
Republicans was, and I told him, kind of flippantly, that Democrats
believe that the government should give you whatever you want; "I'm a
Democrat, then," he said).
Comedy assignment: someone should find households where the parents are devoted Obama volunteers but the kids are rock-solid Republicans. I nominate Mike Crowley or Dave Weigel to write this.
Though publishing it does feel a bit like piling on, this picture - an actual, real, Reuters photograph - does sort of sum-up the campaign. Your suggestions for a caption please!
UPDATE: Commenters point out that this was McCain pulling a deliberate "Doh!" type of face having initially tried to wander off the set in the wrong direction. So, unfortunate that the cameras caught him. And probably unfair for the whole world to blog it. Still, as I say, joke or not it does rather encapsulate the central campaign narrative: Obama cool, calm, collected; McCain crazy wee man.
So here we go again, campers. In just a few hours our long international nightmare will be over. Yup, there'll be no more Presidential debates to entertain us. John McCain and Barack Obama are even now limbering up for their final tussle. By way of a prelude, I'd recommend reading this pre-debate symposium at Culture 11, especially Dave Weigel's advice. Good stuff. The lads at the Confabulum will also, like half the known blogosphere, be live-blogging the nonsense.
Here, we're going to try something a wee bit different, using live-blog software from Coveritlive to, well, live-blog the debate. You can leave comments which I'll then put into the live-blog, vote in polls and generally have, in theory, all manner of bloggy fun and games. No need to press "refresh" either. We'll see how it works...
In 2004, George W Bush "won" the Ground Game. This time? Well, every indication is that Barack Obama has built a vastly more formidable organisation than John McCain. To help give readers a sense of what's happening out there in the field, I'm delighted to say that super-smart Democratic operative "Josh Lyman" is going to be filing occasional reports from the great state of Ohio. Here's his first dispatch:
"I got placed in Bowling Green, right by Bowling Green State University. To say that this area is a hotbed of activism, ground tactics, tension, and the trenches of the cultural war would be a stretch. The county is a swing county, but that is mostly because there are 50,000 rural families and 25,000 Bowling Green residents combined with 25,000 Bowling Green students. Unlike in 2004, the voting apparatus is controlled by Democrats. So there won't be instances of there being two voting machines on campus but nine in an Amish community on the outskirts of town, like there was four years ago.
My sense is that Obama is well on his way for a nice sized win here in Ohio. No candidate has carried Ohio without carrying Wood County (BG is the county seat). One would think that this historical oddity would almost mandate a heavy McCain presence, but alas there is none to speak of.
I spent a little bit of time at the Obama state HQ in Columbus yesterday. It was jaw dropping. They had taken over an old mega-church. The first floor was a warren of staffers running around all very young and all very busy. The basement was probably the size of a supermarket, lined with table after table. Each table was staffed by four youngsters, all responsible for a different city, county, task etc. It looked like the command center for a massive army. No windows, no natural light, but filled with kids who probably had no idea it was 8am all hovering over computers, maps, data sheets. There were 600 staffers there, all dedicated to Ohio, at 8am. I'm amazed."
By way of background, Wood County is in north-western Ohio, near the Michigan state-line. It is a little bit richer than the US average. And a lot whiter. Fully 94% of its residents are white. Thirteen of the county's 15 elected officials are Republican. In 2004 Bush beat Kerry in Wood County 53-46%.
And so, weary campers, the end is in view. Tonight's debate is the third and final tussle between Messrs McCain and Obama. A victory on points won't help Mr McCain; it's far from certain that even a knockout defeat can really hurt Mr Obama. Anyway, I dare say I'll try and live-blog the thing again. So what does Mr McCain have to do? Here are some helpful tips from National Review Online:
Advice to McCain [John J. Pitney, Jr.]
What
demeanor should McCain display tonight? Angry doesn't work. Solemn
doesn't work. ake-smiley doesn't work. Instead, McCain should go back
to his roots and unleash his inner smart-aleck. If Obama accuses him of
being erratic in a crisis, he should say: "So I'm erotic in a
crisis? Who knew?"
This approach has a couple of
advantages. First, it enables McCain to show the more appealing side of
his personality. Second, it throws Obama off his game. His handlers
have surely anticipated every possible attack line about Ayers and
Wright. And as a good liberal, he's waiting for the chance to say,
"Have you left no sense of decency?" But he'd be hard put to defend
against ridicule. The One can't handle the jokes.
So to get ready for the debate, McCain should lay aside the notes, crack open a beer, and watch Animal House.
It really is hard to see what could possibly go wrong with taking this approach. As another doomed candidate once-never-quite-said, "Crisis? What crisis?"
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