The New Yorker explains why Obama is a better choice than McCain.

1. The policies of Republicans generally and George W. Bush specifically are spent and the results are grim. The country is in a hole and McCain’s deck chair rearranging isn’t going to pull us out. Spending more, taxing less, and little to no regulation on Wall Street isn’t sound fiscal policy.

2. Obama actually has ideas about energy policy beyond “drill, baby drill.” McCain once seemed like he did, but he sold his soul to get the Republican nomination.

3. McCain picking Supreme Court nominees means it would end up packed with conservatives opposed to, among other things, Roe v. Wade.

4. In foreign affairs, McCain seems show more faith in force than interest in its strategic consequences. Obama seems capable of dealing with nuance.

5. Character: Obama has displayed more of it.

Echoing Obama, McCain has made “change” one of his campaign mantras. But the change he has actually provided has been in himself, and it is not just a matter of altering his positions. A willingness to pander and even lie has come to define his Presidential campaign and its televised advertisements. A contemptuous duplicity, a meanness, has entered his talk on the stump—so much so that it seems obvious that, in the drive for victory, he is willing to replicate some of the same underhanded methods that defeated him eight years ago in South Carolina.

The choice of Sarah Palin revealed McCain’s cynicism as much as anything else. Obama seems to be the embodiment of a pragmatic calm.

For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.

Nice video of Obama calling the Republican game plan in July interspersed with examples of McCain/Palin executing that game plan.

The short version is that McCain’s campaign slogan might as well be: That One is different. EEK!

Garrison Keillor:

[A]t least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked [economically] and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They’ll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.

Eli Saslow, writing for the Washington Post, has a good article about Obama’s time in the Illinois legislature. Unsurprisingly, I like learning about Obama’s history, but another aspect to the story with peculiar appeal to me was its discussion of the dynamics in a state legislature. The Illinois legislature has some similar characteristics to the Indiana legislature (and some substantial differences). You have an industrial north and a rural south. However, Indianapolis looms much larger for Indiana politics than Springfield does in Illinois politics; and Chicago obviously has a much larger impact than all of northern Indiana combined.

In any event, I enjoyed the parts that looked into the legislative dynamics of personal relationships.

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill Last Night.

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you or me
Says I, “But Joe, you’re ten years dead,”
“I never died,” says he
“I never died,” says he
“In Salt Lake, Joe,” says I to him,
Him standing by my bed,
“They framed you on a murder charge,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”
“The copper bosses killed you, Joe,
They shot you, Joe,” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man,”
Says Joe, “I didn’t die,”
Says Joe, “I didn’t die.”
And standing there as big as life
And smiling with his eyes
Joe says, “What they forgot to kill
Went on to organize,
Went on to organize.”
“Joe Hill ain’t dead,” he says to me,
“Joe Hill ain’t never died.
Where working men are out on strike
Joe Hill is at their side,
Joe Hill is at their side.”
“From San Diego up to Maine,
In every mine and mill,
Where workers strike and organize,”
Says he, “You’ll find Joe Hill,”
Says he, “You’ll find Joe Hill.”
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you or me
Says I, “But Joe, you’re ten years dead,”
“I never died,” says he
“I never died,” says he

Desmoinesdem, writing at MyDD, gives an account of stark differences between McCain’s field offices and those of Obama. The McCain offices were pretty lethargic with maybe one person making phone calls and the others kind of standing around talking about how they didn’t like Obama.

You could take every McCain volunteer we’ve seen doing actual work in the entire trip, over six states, and it would add up to the same as Obama’s single Thornton, CO office. Or his single Durango, CO office. These ground campaigns bear no relationship to each other.

Amusing blog entry at the Christian Science Monitor by Jimmy Orr entitled “Forget Palin, McCain needs Peyton.”

Hours before the second presidential debate, Senator John McCain might want to hire a new political consultant.

Although his Sundays are booked, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning has shown he knows how to erase a deficit – and fast.

Coming nearly five years to the day after he miraculously wiped out a a 35-14 deficit with less than five minutes on the clock, Manning pulled off another miracle this past Sunday over the hapless Texans.

. . .

If Manning were to join the team, he would probably want to start in his own backyard. The usually-secure Hoosier state was won by the current President by 21 points in 2004. McCain’s lead? Only five points – 51 to 46 percent according to a new CNN/Time Magazine/Opinion Research Corporation poll.

And five points might be generous. CNN/Time gives McCain only a 2 point lead in Indiana with Bob Barr factored into the polling. Survey USA recently had McCain +3, Research 2000 had McCain +1, and Selzer had Obama +3.

The McCain crazy is making the rounds today, apparently. As the McCain campaign lets loose the dregs, I’m reminded of a passage from the Harvard Lampoon spoof entitled “Bored of the Rings” — the scene where the heroes are standing in front of the gates of the spoof’s equivalent of Mordor:

Black flags were raised in the black towers and the gate opened like an angry maw to upchuck its evil spew. Out poured an army the likes of which was never seen. Forth from the gate burst a hundred thousand rabid narcs swinging bicycle chains and tire irons, followed by drooling divisions of pop-eyed changelings, deranged zombies, and distempered werewolves. At their shoulders marched eight score heavily armored griffins, three thousand goose-stepping mummies, and a column of abominable snowmen on motorized bobsleds; at their flanks tramped six companies of slavering ghouls, eighty parched vampires in white tie, and the Phantom of the Opera. Above them the sky was blackened by the dark shapes of vicious pelicans, houseflies the size of two-car garages, and Rodan the Flying Monster. Through the portals streamed more foes of various forms and descriptions, including a six-begged diplodocus, the Loch Ness Monster, King Kong, Godzilla, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes, the Brain from Planet Arous, three different subphyla of giant insects, the Thing, It, She, Them, and the Blob. The great tumult of their charge could have waked the dead, were they not already bringing up the rear.

One of the charges making the rounds has to do with Obama having had a roommate from Pakistan. (The linked page is to Snopes debunking one e-mail making the rounds charging Obama with some unspecified, yet undoubtedly nefarious, Pakistani connection that provided him with money to attend Columbia.)

In another one, one of McCain’s POW buddies is trying to scare everyone with the notion that Obama is a demagogue.

“All we have to do is open up the history books and look at what the fruits of demagoguery are,” Moe said. “When any individual or group tries to pick up a target of opportunity to blame social problems on … the results can be catastrophic. And you can choose any point in history that you want.”

Asked whether Obama’s statements could cause an event like the Holocaust, Moe responded: “If you like.”

If Godwin’s Law applied to elections, that probably would have handed the victory to Obama.

As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. . . . [O]nce such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically “lost” whatever debate was in progress.

Of course, McCain’s purpose in acting like a feces-flinging monkey is to make people uneasy about Obama. But, like most sources of uneasiness, these charges have the most impact if they are not examined closely. For example, one of the best ways to get rid of anxiety (I find) is to identify the source of the anxiety and attempt to articulate the negative consequences I fear.

So, what are we supposed to believe about Obama? Once elected, he’s going to pull off a rubber mask, laugh maniacally, and announce that we’re fools for electing him and now we’re under Pakistani rule? Maybe he’s just going to send all the whiteys off to “re-education camps?”

Seriously, how many folks, in the full light of day, actually believe that Obama does not love America? Listen to how he talks about America and its potential. From what I can tell, he seems to understand and love the country better than most. Certainly you can argue that his policy ideas are wrong and are not a good way to move the country forward. (I don’t make such an argument, but I fully recognized that good-faith arguments can be made). But these insinuations that he’s some kind of spooky radical who is going to wreck the country because he hates it are crazy.

That’s question at the heart of this column (news article?) by Ivy Farguheson for the Muncie Star Press. The jury is out, and this election probably won’t provide conclusive evidence either. For decades, a lot of white blue collar males have voted against their economic self-interest (to the extent the Democrats represented it — the Republicans mostly did not; but that doesn’t necessarily make Democrats champions of the working class). Instead, cultural issues seem to have been more of a driving force.

There are plenty of working class types who are going to vote for the shit kickin’ cowboy and not for the egghead, white or black. The egghead is probably going to gay marry their gun during an abortion ceremony while sipping a latte in a Volvo; or something. And Barack Obama is a known eater of arugula; I hear.

Anyway, race plays into the culture wars, but it’s probably not definitive. And there are plenty of working class whites in Michigan, Iowa, Oregon, and other states tilting strongly for Obama. So, it’s not the skin color or the economic status that is determinative. I tend to think the culture of the Confederacy is stronger in Indiana — that culture probably makes a person less likely to vote for a black person, but it also probably makes a person less likely to vote for any Democrat simply because they aren’t as socially conservative. In Indiana, there are a fair number of folks who long for a return to the 50s (1950s in some cases, 1850s in others).