And while the rest of us may be surprised by the recent turn of events, Obama was not:
If running around screaming “Ayers” while the economy is imploding is not evidence of the “We don’t have anything to offer but he is risky” McCain campaign, I don’t know what is. If you remember correctly, directly after that speech on July 30th, the Republicans went into freak out mode:
John McCain’s campaign manager is accusing Barack Obama of unfairly using the issue of race, a significant accusation in a campaign featuring the first African-American major party nominee.
“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” said Rick Davis, in a statement issued from the McCain campaign. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”
Yesterday in Missouri, Obama predicted McCain and the GOP would use racially tinged attacks against him.
He plays long ball. He knew what they were going to do. And that is why they panicked. Obama is running the most disciplined and best campaign I have ever seen.
Notorious P.A.T.
I can’t believe Obama thought people would use race against him!
By the way, did you know Obama has "terrorist bloodlines"?
Already linked to before, but still:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/hes-got-the-blo.html
Adam
A bit off topic maybe, but reading the latest GOP freakouts about Obama, it occurs to me that not only are they going to lose a lot of seats in Congress, but what we’re seeing right now is nothing short of the popular end of a major political party. They are drawing closer and closer to becoming something along the lines of Le Pen’s National Front party–ultra-right, xenophobic, racist, and therefore politically irrelevant. A purely reactionary party, devoid of ideas, that represents at best 10-15% of the national population.
gbear
I credit Obama.
Zifnab
I always assumed terrorism was an STD contracted after hooking up with 72 virgins.
sparky
exactly.
like watching FDR versus a bunch of 7th graders.
incidentally, can we have an inoculation against any possible hysteria from polling dips between now and the election?
cleek
i agree. but at the same time, McCain is running the least disciplined and most insane campaign i’ve ever seen.
gbear
…with 60% of the guns and .06% of the self control. They’re going to be dangerous.
Egilsson
I loved Obama’s recent comment that McCain had a chance to talk trash to his face but didn’t, and then suggested that McCain had one more debate to do it.
He’s basically steering McCain to get ugly and desperate in the last debate. If McCain does get ugly, he will come across as mean and unfocused from the world melting down; if he doesn’t, he’s weak and all this noise over the past few weeks isn’t actually serious.
Obama is clearly the superior strategic thinker, and he’s baiting McCain to take these shots at him.
I only wish I saw more surrogates and more media taking on McCain’s associations and Palin’s associations, in every breath.
Gibbs did ok on Hannity, but he missed the key part, which was that Hannity not only put Martin on the air, but he didn’t actively condemn Martin’s anti-semitism, which is the very critique they supposedly have of Obama/ Ayers.
SGEW
Say it again, brother.
I won’t be surprised at all if the Three Ring Binder of Justice, written in 2007 by Plouffe, Axelrod, Obama, Dr. Strange, and Professor Xavier, has little appendixes with labels like "Contingency 817C: John McCain Suspends Campaign to Address Economic Crisis" or "Contingency 974-6Q: V.P. Pick: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin."
Was Barack Obama a boy scout? Guy’s certainly prepared.
sparky
gbear: self-control is for terrorists.
dmsilev
You know, it will be so nice to have an actual *adult* in the White House, rather than the overgrown child that we have right now.
-dms
chopper
yeah, he was on top of this shit. then again, predicting that a republican ticket with john mccain on it would end up devolving to stupid attacks is like predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow. it’s a sure thing.
DrDave
Some of us saw this back in the primary season. Beating Hillary was going to be the more difficult task; it followed that beating McCain would be easier (provided Osama didn’t attack the US on Nov. 2).
robertdsc
In some bizarro world concept, I wish Dubya would give up the last months of his term and resign upon confirmation of Obama’s win.
4tehlulz
OT, but a new ARG poll has Obama up in WV by 8.
Comrade Jake
You guys miss the point. Obama has been way out in front on a whole host of issues, from the war in Iraq to this banking crisis to Afghanistan to the use of technology in his campaign apparatus.
That sort of prescience gives me hope that he’ll actually be able to anticipate things in office, that he’ll be able to make concrete advances. The guy is really, really talented, and that realization is what’s scaring the daylights out of the right-wingnuts. That’s why discussion of concern for his life and safety is kicking up.
SGEW
That would be "Contingency 42A-FF: Terrorist Attack."
I no longer believe that a terrorist attack would necessarily help the Republicans; I’m beginning to think that we’d have a more Spanish reaction (viz., Zapatero and the Madrid bombings).
bhagamu
This isn’t a bug or anything. I’m reading a lot of people’s work saying that it’s somehow John McCain’s fault that his
supporterstribe is going crazy over this. He’s encouraging it, true, but long before John McCain ever set foot on the national stage, these same folks were yelling racial epithets and calling the liberal party any one of: Terrorist, Communist, Fascist, Francophile, Appeaser, Liberal, Baby-killer, etc. etc. This is what drives these people and unites them – a common enemy that they can hate together. So I don’t see why people are surprised.Kamishna ya Watu Xenos
W just broke 8000 on the Dow. My prediction from Monday is shot out of the water.
r€nato
Well, it’s kind of hard to get to make that point when Hannity is constantly shouting down the last two points he was trying to make.
As for Obama, I couldn’t agree more – the guy is an awesomely serious strategic thinker, and it gives me great hope for his presidency in these increasingly dark times.
But, you get to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago because you are supremely qualified and intellectually gifted, not by pulling family strings like some other folks we know.
Kamishna ya Watu Xenos
Wow. Program trading bounced off that floor. Let us see if that will hold.
Punchy
I interrupt this Obama worship to let yall know that, 10 minutes in, the Dow is down 600……ok….now only 500.
Pure insanity. There doesn’t seem to be support at any particular number, when there really should be.
Zifnab
@Egilsson: I don’t know if he’s steering McCain so much as double-dog daring him. Either way, its a rather textbook response to a childish fit. Beg the opponent to overreach and his options are overreach or do nothing. But rehashing the same tired tripe for another round of six month old smears isn’t going to cut it this time.
I’m actually really proud of 2008 America. Had we seen this slime peddled in 2004, I think you’d see a much more degenerate reaction. But the country has really grown up in the last 4 years.
4tehlulz
Jesus, just under 1100 pts in the first 5 min. Just short of the circuit breaker too (which is at 1100).
Notorious P.A.T.
Has anyone here linked to this?
John McCain’s Rage is a National Security Concern
r€nato
wow imagine that – a leader with the foresight and intelligence to anticipate future events based on present trends and evidence. Must be some kind of Marxist. I’d much rather have a leader who makes decisions based on ideology blinded to reality, or one who lurches from one short-term tactic to another without any desired end-state in mind.
Say, neocons, since you have the ability to make your own reality, could you please make a reality where the markets stop tanking? Pretty please?
Napoleon
Well I got my ballot in the mail yesterday and today I will send my vote in for Obama. That will feel so good to do.
Notorious P.A.T.
Honestly, I can’t say I’m all that surprised. All the economic growth that happened under Bush has been an illusion. When the economy started tanking in his first term, the Fed basically started giving away money to try and put lipstick on the pig (sorry Sarah). That led to the mortgage bubble, the credit crunch, etc.
Meanwhile, in the real world, working people were getting hosed; that led to personal savings declining for the first time since the Great Depression. How far can the economy go when most people don’t have anything to spend?
Now the illusion is bursting. It probably should have burst a long time ago.
Dan
Palin just said this in an interview:
"Also, Obama has been also palling around with terrorists. Also and is also."
Phoenix Woman
Barack Obama is the kind of guy who when playing poker, calmly and quietly makes his moves while the other players get all flamboyant and silly, so it takes you a while to realize that he’s building up a huge pile of chips. By the time you do realize it, it’s too late.
Perry Como
Support is at around 6k when P/E ratios get back into the historical norm. Of course the market tends to overshoot, so 5k is a real possibility…
r€nato
you know, there are three and a half weeks left until the Obama blowout. After McFailin’ has spent another week or so flogging the flaccid Ayers story and getting negative results out of it, what are they going to do next? Might they actually be forced to address the economy?
The inadequacy of the McCain campaign and the right-wing’s smear-and-fear tactics have never been plainer. The Titanic is sinking, Obama is talking about how to save the ship and McCain is complaining about who Obama was once in the same room with. Doesn’t exactly make McCain look very relevant to Joe Six-Pack.
p.a.
This isn’t an example of the Obama campaign’s intelligence; the Republican Party has devolved to such an extent their actions are entirely predictable. It is an example of Obama’s backbone; he’s just running a campaign as most Dems knew they should over the last decade. The others just lacked cohones. (And lacked the external events that keep Americans focused on real issues not lapel pins).
r€nato
Please come around here more often, Phoenix Woman!
r€nato
speaking of lapel pins, wasn’t Tuesday’s debate the 2nd in a row where Obama wore one and McCain did not?
I can’t wait to remind my stepfather of this. This past summer he told me that he really thinks such things are important.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Not to take anything away from Obama and his campaign staff (because they really have done an excellent job), but isn’t this what we should be expecting as a matter of course from any political campaign? Why isn’t this the normal state of affairs? Why do most political campaigns look like a bad reenactment of a Keystone Kops routine?
Phoenix Woman
Yup. And even before that, you become the editor of the Harvard Law Review — the most powerful law student in America — because you are supremely qualified and intellectually gifted, not by pulling family strings like some other folks we know.
Obama’s background has been a blessing to him, in the same way that Bush’s and McCain’s backgrounds have been curses. He not only had to claw his way up on merit like Bill Clinton did, he also knew that as a black man he had to keep his nose super-duper clean and to avoid any of the temptations that sunk Clinton, but which Republicans like Rudy and Newt and Dan Burton commit without electoral penalty.
.
Because of this, because he understood how the deck was stacked against him, because he earned every damned thing he got with hard work, discipline and talent honed to a razor’s edge, he is flummoxing the lazy, undisciplined, talentless time-servers on the other side. Not just McCain, but the ranks of College Republican legacy hires that fill up the sheltered workshops that they call ‘think tanks’ — the Ben Domenechs and Jonah Goldbergs and Ann Coulters of the world. They screech and screech and chase their own tails because they have never had to actually think hard and work, and now they’re up against someone for whom hard work, discipline, patience, and proper use of brain and talent is now as natural as breathing.
.
Worse yet for them, the old tools that worked for them in the past, the crutches they relied on to avoid thinking — the appeals to racism and stupidity and naked selfish greed — are losing their power.
And he rolls on, unruffled, No-Drama Obama, calm in any situation, and crushes them.
SamFromUtah
He plays long ball. He knew what they were going to do.
I too will say that I play that kind of long ball by looking to the east for the sunrise – but I realize Obama’s insights have gone well beyond just knowing that the Republicans would attack his skin color.
What’s shudder-inducing is that the Democrats were unable to field a candidate with even that much foresight in 2004.
Grandjester
@DrDave:
Indeed, let’s take a moment to thank Hillary for going balls to the wall in the primary. The heat of that fire tempered Obama and his machine into a finely honed instrument of steel. All the better to gut the corpse of Republicanism.
Notorious P.A.T.
Someone ask her why that is worse than palling around with secessionists.
Phoenix Woman
Grumpy Code Monkey: Because very few candidates combine all of Obama’s gifts — another one of which is surrounding himself with good people and quickly dealing with problems in his staff.
Notice that there aren’t very many drama eruptions out of his campaign? No tales of staffers at each other’s throats? The few little blips that occurred happened during the primary season, and he dealt with them quickly and effectively, not letting them fester. By the time the conventions rolled around, the shakedown cruise had long since been completed and the discipline of the top ranks had filtered down to the ground troops — many of which were already well-disciplined and trained thanks to the ground work Obama and his started putting in back in early 2007.
r€nato
GCM, on the part of the Democrats at least (and in regards to the previous two presidential campaigns), I blame:
1) an insular DC groupthink mentality which led Gore to run a weak campaign in 2000 which nearly succeeded in spite of itself, and led Kerry to run a similarly weak campaign. I especially point the finger at the short-sighted decisions which led both campaigns to run regional campaigns, rather than a 50-state national campaign.
2) outdated belief in DLC/GOP Lite/Triangulation principles. Worked well in the 90s, should have been jettisoned in 2000 and especially in 2004. "GOP Lite" is the kind of shit which leads Americans to say, "Tweedledum and Tweedledee – what a choice!"
3) Democratic ‘loser’ mentality caused by too many beatings at the hands of the GOP and the cowed media, cowed because the right successfully worked the refs. Instead of moving forward boldly, it began simply reacting to whatever the GOP did. Playing defense all the time is no way to win in the long run. Gore decided not to run on Clinton’s record of success because of this, a monumental mistake on his part. Kerry was chosen by Democratic voters in large part on the strength of his war record. "No way the GOP can smear this guy as unAmerican!" Yeah, right.
It took a couple of outsiders – Howard Dean and Barack Obama, the REAL mavericks – to break this ossified thinking.
I am SO grateful Hillary did not win the nomination. While just about anybody with the D label could win in this environment, I don’t believe for a moment that Hillary with her penchant for co-opting GOP positions (which worked so well for her husband) would be verging on an electoral vote and popular vote landslide. You certainly would not see the enthusiasm that there is for Obama. A landslide will give Obama and Congress the REAL mandate and political capital they need to dramatically change the country’s course.
One of the really encouraging things for the long term, beyond Obama’s election, is the incredible ground game Obama has put together. It is setting the stage for a generation of progressive voters and a solid base of activists who will be available and willing to work for other progressive causes, whether at the national, state or local level. We’ve finally found our answer to the GOP’s fundy base which does a lot of the door knocking and phone banking.
r€nato
That’s a very, very good point and I welcome an end to the era of loyalty above all else. Kinda puts the lie to the GOP rhetoric about ‘the party of personal responsibility’. The GOP is the party of fealty, loyalty, and personal connections above all else.
And as I have been pointing out repeatedly, McCain’s military record contains a lot of examples of pulling strings to get ahead. That this is not more publically discussed nor known, is due to the fact that he says (and the media repeats), "POW! POW!" which short-circuits any serious look into his actual record previous to being shot down.
Joshua
I read a good passage in "Nixonland" yesterday, where Nixon said the first mistake in politics is to get mad. That sort of thing is doubly necessary for Obama, since guys like Brit Hume and Kristol would be on TV at the first sign of a blowup insinuating about Obama being the angry black.
I have a feeling that Obama would destroy McCain if John Sidney is foolish to bring it up in a debate, and McCain knows it, and Obama knows he knows it, and that is why McCain didn’t say anything in debate #2.
This stuff is for the brownshirts.
jamfan
Slightly OT, but the Jed video reminded me that this election season has also inspired some really amazing amateur political/campaign talent among liberals that, one hopes, will permanently overtake the current limp Dem consultant class to become the new professionals for elections to come. Should folks like Jed want that, of course.
Brian J
All of this, of course, is good news for John McCain.
But seriously, this is the sort of levelheadedness you want in a president. It’s not that he refuses to changes strategy until he’s forced, but rather that he’s confident, cool, and collected. He doesn’t let the small stuff bother him and instead chooses to keep his focus a little further down the road. Contrast this to McCain, who appears to have the attention span of my four-year-old niece after she has sugar.
ThymeZone
That’s a GOS clip. A quick read of the polling sites today shows a steady or steadily growing Obama lead this week.
The smearfest is not working. McCain’s favorability is looking like a skydiver with a tangled chute.
Every day that McCain and Palin talk about Ayers and not about the issues is another day closer to their ignominious defeat.
Comrade Desert Hussein Rat
Ironically, the way he is running the campaign is something I’ve used to convert a few moderate Republicans and Independents. As somebody who got on the Obama train late, I’ve been amazed at just how smooth and steady not just Obama, but his operation are.
He is easily the most effective Democrat at running an electoral campaign since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
If he runs his administration anything like he runs his campaign, it’s going to be a very good 8 years.
Phoenix Woman
Comrade Des: As a former Illinois state lege guy and poker-playing buddy of Obama’s said a few months ago, if he runs the country like he plays poker, I’ll sleep good at night.
Phoenix Woman
Egilsson @ 8:
You’re right. Obama’s getting under McCain’s skin, big-time.
jcricket
+10000 please.
Someone hire Jed to make attack ads for the web. His Palin/Secessionist thing was perfect. I hate Palin, and still had no idea she actually gave an videotaped introductory speech to the convention as recently as a few years ago!
If Democrats control Hollywood, we need to start acting like it and get better production values. And if Sorus/us Jews control banking, we need to be giving some more money to the Dems. And if the Democratic party is full of homos, why aren’t we all better dressed and with good hair?
These are the burning questions!
jcricket
I will repeat what I said, about what Dems have to do after winning in 2008:
1) Convince everyone Republicans fucked shit up.
2) Fix some shit.
3) Take credit, and make sure people know it was Dems.
4) (new) Strike fear into the hearts of everyone at the thought of returning to the party who created this situation (should be easy if you do #1).
If Dems get 60 seats it’ll help, but even if we don’t, we can still blame the Republicans for not going along with needed fixes, and blow them further out of the water in 2010.
gocart mozart
Watch Pheonix Woman’s link to TPM everyone. Gibson asks McCain about the Obama "won’t say it to my face" quote. It really bothers the Old Dude, I mean Old Douche. Priceless.
Xanthippas
This is why I’ve always thought liberals should own more guns. A gun is a very effective way of deterring a right-wing jackass.
DonnaInMichigan
Got Hate?
Comrade Tax Analyst
THE ABOVE IS PHOENIX WOMAN’S COMMENT, blockquote doesn’t appear to be working for me here.??
Anyway, Phoenix Woman is Spot-on here. I think it’s been pretty obvious for quite a while. But it flummoxes the feckless because they just can’t conceive of someone getting to this level of politics actually having any honest virtues underlying their public persona. And the more the American Public gets acquainted with this fellow the more they will accept him as a leader. I just heard that Obama is going to run a 30-minute campaign ad and I have no doubt that it will further strengthen and deepen his support. It’s kind of interesting to contrast this to how the McCain campaign has found it necessary to place Sarah Palin under a strict Media Quarantine. They know that the more the public knows about her the faster they will run in the other direction.
low-tech cyclist
Obama is running the most disciplined and best campaign I have ever seen.
I have a vision of McCain and Palin, like Newman and Redford as Butch and Sundance, looking at Team Obama and saying, "Who are these guys?"
I’m in awe.
Brian
Glsd to see the Dems playing chess while the repubs play checkers for a change…
Common Sense
It was this summer.
Chris Johnson
Once upon a time, it was the Democrats who ruled everything and the Republicans who were the despised outsiders who had to really be sharp in order to fight their battles.
The roles truly have reversed themselves. Let’s just see to it that it’s not all about that one guy. Here’s to having lots of liberals thinking hard and putting together another New Deal, since the old one’s been smashed like a scorned toy.
Titor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K50TS0UZE7w
this video is a MUST SEE!