A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

McCain Supporters = Classy

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The Lafayette Journal & Courier had a picture of a last minute rally organized by McCain supporters to demonstrate against Obama on the occasion of his visit to West Lafayette. Demonstrating a lot of class, is the guy with the sign that says “Obama [hearts] Terrorists”.

Classy McCain Supporters

That’s just beyond the pale. The guns & religion thing – fair game. Claiming that Obama loves terrorists is just of a piece of the “Democrats hate America” meme constantly being pushed by the wingnuts. It’s evidence of a “my team” versus “your team” approach to politics without regard to facts or which policies are actually beneficial to the country; and, it’s toxic.

Obama: Focusing on 21st Century Threats

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Glen Johnson, writing for the Louisville Courier Journal, has an article on Obama’s recent visit to West Lafayette for a panel discussion on security. (Yours truly did not merit an invite – probably best that I did not have a tempting distraction from paying work.)

Democrat Barack Obama warned yesterday about the danger of “fighting the last war” as he pledged to focus on emerging nuclear, biological and cyber threats if elected president.

Two goals of his administration would be to secure all loose nuclear material during his first term and to rid the world of nuclear weapons, Obama told an audience before a roundtable discussion at Purdue University.

He warned against fighting the last war, responding to threats only once they develop. Obama proposes developing better methods to detect biological threats, and enhancing international intelligence and law enforcement infrastructures. Cybersecurity should also be a priority, he says.

Obama was, unsurprisingly, critical of the Bush/McCain approach to security:

“Instead of adjusting to the stateless threats of the 21st century, we invaded and occupied a state that had no collaborative relationship with al-Qaida. Instead of taking aggressive steps to secure the world’s most dangerous weapons and technology, we spent almost a trillion dollars to occupy a country in the heart of the Middle East that no longer had any weapons of mass destruction.”

Well, when you put it that way, the Bush-McCain strategy seems almost criminally wasteful.

Ouch

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KathyG has a long and thoughtful post on potential Vice Presidential candidates for Barack Obama. As a Hoosier, of course, her commentary on Evan Bayh stood out. All I can say is, “ouch.”

Oh no God no

Evan Bayh – At the moment, this is the choice I’m most worried about, because Bayh does really seem to be on Obama’s short shortlist. I think he’d be an awful choice, and not just because he’s a senator from a state (Indiana) with a Republican governor. Evan Bayh is one of the biggest Democratic corporate ‘hos in the senate — he’s “fiscally conservative,” voted for the bankruptcy bill, is a DLC Dem all the way. He is literally one of the Wall Street Journal’s favorite Democrats. He also voted for the Iraq War and is quite hawkish overall. On top of all that, he brings nothing to the table in terms of being personable, being a good speaker, etc. Someone I know who met him said he comes across as completely plastic — MItt Romney, he said, has more authenticity and soulfulness. If Barack picks this dude, it’s going to be a very long four (or eight) years. Let’s hope he has the good sense to choose someone else instead.

Election Projection

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(H/t In the Agora) Zach Wendling notes that the national media is about worthless, focusing as they do on the inconsequential national preference polls for the Presidential candidates. The Electoral College is the metric for this particular contest. Election Projection is one place that provides us with state-by-state polling data.

They break the states down into Solid, Strong, Moderate, and Weak in terms of support for one or the other of the candidates. As of today, which admittedly is light years away from November, the breakdown is as follows:

SOLID
Obama – 126; McCain – 30

STRONG
Obama – 78; McCain – 46

MODERATE
Obama – 57; McCain – 95

WEAK
Obama – 42; McCain – 61

In total, that gives Obama 306 and McCain 232. More importantly, I think, is the fact that Obama appears to be strong or solid with 204 electoral votes whereas McCain is strong or solid with 76. A candidate needs 270 to win. Obama needs to pick up 66 of his moderate or weak electoral votes, whereas McCain needs to pick up 194 such votes. That’s a whole lot of defense for a guy who doesn’t have a lot in the way of campaign cash compared to the other guy.

Evolution of a Smear

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The Washington Post has a good article on a researcher who tried to trace the evolution of the “Obama is a closet Muslim Terrorist” smear. (h/t Trifles from Anderson). The researcher got back as far as some of the denizens of the Free Republic, but they predictably denied any direct involvement.

My question is whether those who believe the information in the anti-Obama spam are the same folks who fall for the Nigerian e-mail scams.

Media in the tank for McCain

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The Gen. Clark brouhaha shines a nice light on the myth of the liberal media. Clark made what ought to have been an unremarkable point that being a prisoner of war doesn’t necessarily give one special talents in terms of managing national security policy. The collective media response seems to have been to pretend Clark said something other than what he said and to freak out over an imagined blood libel by Clark against McCain. Let’s go to the transcript to see what was actually said:

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: In the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk. It’s a matter of gauging your opponents, and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in Air- in the Navy that he commanded, it wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, ‘I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it-‘

Bob Schieffer: Well-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: ‘ -it publicly.’ He hasn’t made those calls, Bob.

Bob Schieffer: Well, well, General, maybe-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So-

Bob Schieffer: Could I just interrupt you. If-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Sure.

Bob Schieffer: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be President.

Bob Schieffer: Really?!

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: But Barack is not, he is not running on the fact that he has made these national security pronouncements. He’s running on his other strengths. He’s running on the strengths of character, on the strengths of his communication skills, on the strengths of his judgment. And those are qualities that we seek in our national leadership.

Talking Points Memo has the montage of the collective media freak out over a caricature of Clark’s actual comments. Many are pretending that, by questioning what skill set McCain actually acquired through his experience, Clark was somehow challenging McCain’s patriotism. Not to put too fine a point on the matter, it’s bullshit, ginned up faux outrage. Maybe it makes good TV.

Obama chose not to engage a questioner on this point, instead making the audacious suggestion that maybe Americans had bigger problems that ought to be drawing the attention of the media news reading personalities.

Difference of Opinion

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John McCain thinks invading Iraq was a good idea. Even knowing what we know now, he says he would have voted to invade Iraq. When your hindsight is just as impaired as your foresight, you’ve got problems.

The best case scenario is that he’s full of crap when he says he’d do the same thing if he had it to do all over again; he’s just boxed into a political corner and can’t admit he was wrong. If not, there’s every reason to believe he’d fail to get us out of the Iraqi quagmire and get us into additional quagmires besides.

Taibbi on McCain

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Matt Taibbi is one of the more remarkable political journalists/columnists working today. His latest column on McCain in Rolling Stone is scathing.

Just a taste:

The remarkable metamorphoses this year of both Hillary Clinton and John McCain would be puzzling and inexplicable were it not for a basic truism of the political-hate game. The reasons McCain and Clinton were villains of the Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity crowd in the first place had nothing to do with their policy positions or votes in the Senate or anything like that. Their real crimes were their arrogant insistence on exercising their intellectual independence, as well as their stubborn refusal to indulge in drooling-caveman demagoguery. The instant both of them crossed into the hater column and began feverishly jacking off the toothless racists of the Deep South with broadsides against the America-hating socialist menace Obama, all was instantly forgiven.

Only a few months ago, I was constantly running into Republicans at McCain events who had profound concerns about the Arizona senator’s “liberal” record. But these days I’m hard-pressed to find anyone on the trail who even remembers that McCain once supported Roe v. Wade, and opposed the Bush tax cuts, and compared the tortures at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo to the techniques of the Spanish Inquisition, and even heretically claimed that Mexican immigrants were “God’s children too.” When I ask Mary Morvant, a pro-life Christian, why she’s supporting McCain given his record on abortion, she gives a typical answer: “I’m much more concerned about Obama.”

McCain enters the general election in the form of a man who has jettisoned the last traces of his dangerous unorthodoxy just in time to be plausible in the role of the torchbearing leader of the anti-Obama mob, waving the flag and chanting, “One of us! One of us!” all the way through to November. He now favors making the Bush tax cuts permanent, he’s unblinkingly pro-life every time he remembers to mention abortion, and he’s given up bitching about torture. With his newfound opposition to his own attempts to reform immigration policy and campaign finance, McCain is perhaps the first candidate in history to stump against two bills bearing his own name.