August 13, 2008
AND THAT'S REGISTEREDS:
Presidential Race Draws Even (Pew Research, 8/13/08)
With less than two weeks to go before the start of the presidential nominating conventions, Barack Obama's lead over John McCain has disappeared. Pew's latest survey finds 46% of registered voters saying they favor or lean to the putative Democratic candidate, while 43% back his likely Republican rival. In late June, Obama held a comfortable 48%-to-40% margin over McCain, which narrowed in mid-July to 47% to 42%.Two factors appear to be at play in shifting voter sentiment. First, McCain is garnering more support from his base - including Republicans and white evangelical Protestants - than he was in June, and he also has steadily gained backing from white working class voters over this period. Secondly and more generally, the Arizona senator has made gains on his leadership image. An even greater percentage of voters than in June now see McCain as the candidate who would use the best judgment in a crisis, and an increasing percentage see him as the candidate who can get things done.
WHY LIE WHEN HIS CANDIDACY CAN'T WITHSTAND THE TRUTH?:
Book on Obama Hopes to Repeat Anti-Kerry Feat (JIM RUTENBERG and JULIE BOSMAN, 8/13/08, NY Times)
In the summer of 2004 the conservative gadfly Jerome R. Corsi shot to the top of the best-seller lists as co-author of “Unfit for Command,” the book attacking Senator John Kerry’s record on a Vietnam War Swift boat that began the larger damaging campaign against Mr. Kerry’s war credentials as he sought the presidency.Almost exactly four years after that campaign began, Mr. Corsi has released a new attack book painting Senator Barack Obama, the Democrats’ presumed presidential nominee, as a stealth radical liberal who has tried to cover up “extensive connections to Islam” — Mr. Obama is Christian — and questioning whether his admitted experimentation with drugs in high school and college ever ceased. [...]
Mr. Corsi, who has over the years also written critically about Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s probable Republican opponent, said he supported the Constitution Party presidential nominee, Chuck Baldwin, and had not been in touch with McCain aides.
It'll come as no surprise that Mr. Corsi is one of those nativist loons who fears a North American Union and the NAFTA Superhighway.
BUT IT WAS WHAT HE DIDN'T SAY THAT RENDERED HIM OBSOLETE:
Past and Present: 'Malaise' and the Energy Crisis: Jimmy Carter's speech is remembered for something he never said—we should recall what he did say (Kevin Mattson, August 13, 2008, US News)
What Carter really did in the speech was profound. He warned Americans that the 1979 energy crisis—both a shortage of gas and higher prices—stemmed from the country's way of life. "Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns," the president said. Consumerism provided people with false happiness, he suggested, but it also prevented Americans from re-examining their lives in order to confront the profound challenge the energy crisis elicited."We've always believed in something called progress," Carter explained. The simple version of this big idea was the faith that "piling up of material" goods would ensure a better life. Carter condemned the idea's naiveté and warned his fellow Americans that they could not live in a world without limits. Selfish individualism (what he once called "me-ism") wouldn't pull us through the crisis.
As Americans, Carter explained, we had to stop daydreaming and realize that our reliance on foreign oil made us vulnerable. Here he used a war analogy for his solution—though sometimes a faltering metaphor, it made sense. Our country had been founded by a revolution against foreign dependence, and now the country needed to throw off reliance on the Middle East's "black gold." So Carter proposed an Energy Mobilization Board modeled after the sort of government agency that got the country through World War II.
Some of the other policies Carter offered in the speech still get recycled today. He wanted a "windfall profits tax" to hit the oil corporations. The money garnered would help fund the search for alternative sources of energy. Short-term pain would be inevitable, Carter warned ("This is not a message of happiness or reassurance," he said, "but it is the truth and it is a warning"). Still, the tax seemed the best compromise between two polarized positions, the open-ended deregulation called for by the right (including Reagan) and a call to nationalize the oil companies from the left. Before Bill Clinton, then a young governor of Arkansas, articulated a "Third Way" philosophy, Carter had discovered the virtues of the middle road and compromise.
We would do well to remember Carter's speech in today's context not for a word it never offered—malaise—but for the warnings it provided. Carter was right to suggest that the energy crisis of 1979 had to do with our moral shortcomings—our culture's penchant for selfish individualism and its desire to live without limits or a sense of a public good. Those are not bad lessons to heed today, as we think about our current energy crisis. After all, we should have readied ourselves during the go-go 1990s for the problems we face at the gas pumps now instead of rushing out to purchase SUVs and Hummers in record numbers.
We would also do well to remember the sort of complexity and humility that Carter tried to inject into political rhetoric.
Wow, what a spectacular failure to understand why the speech, for all its merits, failed. It isn't humble to act helpless and confused in the face of problems you identify.
EDGE?:
Harmony and the Dream (DAVID BROOKS, 8/12/08, NY Times)
If Asia’s success reopens the debate between individualism and collectivism (which seemed closed after the cold war), then it’s unlikely that the forces of individualism will sweep the field or even gain an edge.For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts.
Scientists have delighted to show that so-called rational choice is shaped by a whole range of subconscious influences, like emotional contagions and priming effects (people who think of a professor before taking a test do better than people who think of a criminal). Meanwhile, human brains turn out to be extremely permeable (they naturally mimic the neural firings of people around them). Relationships are the key to happiness. People who live in the densest social networks tend to flourish, while people who live with few social bonds are much more prone to depression and suicide.
The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream.
Folks like Mr. Brooks used to make the same nonsensical claims about Japan in the '80s, ignoring things like the way the lack of individualism led to their societies being profoundly uncreative, so that their economic model is based almost exclusively on cheaply assembling products that we invent, and the looming demographic crises that ensure imminent decline. But, whereas Japan enjoyed a long run as factory floor for the developed world, China's moment comes at a period of maximal globalization and, not only has competition kept a lid on wages but as it becomes more expensive to hire its workers the jobs will just move elsewhere. As a result, the Chinese have a per capita GDP of a mere $5,300, about 1/9th of ours. Even Japan has made it to $33k before it heads down hill.
Even the most Darwinist among the Brights can't really believe that the Asiatic mind is so different that a dime is as attractive as a dollar to the Chinese.
BWOOP! BWOOP! BWOOP! RACISM ALERT! RACISM ALERT!:
Yes, She Can (MAUREEN DOWD, 8/13/08, NY Times)
While Obama was spending three hours watching “The Dark Knight” five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring “Aloha attire” and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention.You can almost hear her mind whirring: She’s amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn’t eat candy.
Bad enough to make an obviously racist reference to how slender he is, but both beans and poles are clear invocations of genitalia. Does no one edit the Times? Does no one follow the Noahide Laws?
ALL THE DEMOCRATS WOULD HAVE TO DO...:
The Democrats’ Lost Tribe: An author argues that without support from Catholics, the Democrats won't win the presidency. But how to lure them back? (Roger Lowenstein September 2008, Folio)
Michael Sean Winters has a name for Democrats who have abandoned their party in recent years: Catholics.In Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats, Winters, a columnist for the Catholic World, argues that the Democrats discovered how to win presidential elections only when, in the 1930s, they formed a left-center alliance with working-class Catholics. This lasted half a century, until Catholic voters deserted Jimmy Carter in 1980. The party would lose five of the next seven elections, and in 2004, Senator John Kerry would fail to carry the Catholic vote. If that does not sound astonishing, imagine Senator Barack Obama losing the black vote. “How did the Democrats lose the Catholics?” a bishop asked Winters. He attempts to answer this very question.
...is forcibly resettle Catholics back in major cities and they'd get that support back. Once Catholics stopped being dependent on urban political patronage it was all over. That is, likewise, why Democrats have a vested interest in keeping blacks in ghettoes with bad schools.
DIDN'T THINK HE HAD IT IN HIM:
Edwards Took Mistress on 2006 Presidential Announcement Tour (Garance Franke-Ruta, 8/12/08, Washington Post: The Trail)
Well, you gotta give him one thing: the man has chutzpah.Photographs distributed by wire services and posted online by technology blogger Robert Scoble show that former North Carolina senator John Edwards took his mistress Rielle Hunter with him on the plane during his late 2006 presidential campaign announcement tour. As can be seen in this Dec. 28, 2006 photo (that's Hunter in the jeans and jester hat, as can be seen more clearly in this side-profile photo), Hunter stood off to the side of the national press corps filming Edwards as the former Democratic vice presidential nominee announced his second bid for the presidency in New Orleans.
Here she is drinking from a cup as Edwards is interviewed by the press. More photos of her at Edwards's presidential campaign kickoff can be found here and here, where she's shown laughing with Edwards's young staffers.
It's hard not to have a bit more respect for the Breck Girl given the massive contempt he demonstrated for the press and his party.
THE YOUNG LOVE THE UNICORN RIDER...:
In a Changing Corner of Pa., a Glimpse of Obama's Age Problem (Alec MacGillis, 8/12/08, Washington Post)
Even as younger voters are showing signs of breaking with years of lackluster turnout to support him, Obama is facing singular resistance from voters over 65. That age group turns out at the highest rate on Election Day and is disproportionately represented in the swing states of Florida and Pennsylvania; Bill Clinton and Al Gore both relied on it in winning the Democrats' only popular-vote majorities of the past two decades.With polls showing Obama dominating among those under 40 and running even among middle-aged voters, Republican John McCain's lead among those 65 and older is the main reason he remains close overall. His margin is largest among older white voters without a college education, accounting for much of Obama's problem with the white working class.
Obama has tried to compensate by proposing a tax cut for seniors, which was criticized by economists. But as Rutherford's comments suggest and surveys show, Obama's challenge goes deeper than a new proposal or two -- an approach that worked for Clinton against George H.W. Bush and Robert J. Dole.
Surveys and interviews suggest that older voters think McCain, who will turn 72 this month, comes far closer than Obama, 47, to sharing their values and outlook on the world and on the changes in the nation over the past half-century.
"The older people just don't see Obama in these glowing terms," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "For older voters, a lot of the reservations really have to do with this experience factor, while younger voters see in Obama something much closer to themselves."
...while Maverick does well among voters.
EVEN CARTEL MEMBERS EVENTUALLY COMPETE WITH EACH OTHER:
Oil at $75 a barrel? (Jamal Mecklai, August 13, 2008, Rediff)
I had been looking at a chart of oil prices and, while I'm no technical whiz (although I do have a passing sense of simple patterns like head-and-shoulders and the like), I noticed that if oil were to fall below $121.92 (the neck line of a S-H-S pattern) - as it has - it could (should?) fall all the way to $98. Of course, this, in itself, is no big shakes - an analysis we had done in April had forecast $100 (or a bit below) by year-end and a lot of forecasts today are calling for that level.But, looking more closely at the chart, I saw another possibility. As this pattern played out, the price could well bounce off $110, rise a bit and then resume its decline. This would set up - and trigger - another head and shoulders that would have a target at $75 to the barrel.
Now, that would be something, wouldn't it?
There is no historical reason to believe that the producing nations can maintain a profit margin that high.
LET US SUPPOSE FOR A MOMENT...:
Clinton Declined, but McCain Won't (Mark Davis, 8/13/08, Real Clear Politics)
"His roots to basic American culture and values are at best limited," Mr. Penn wrote in March 2007. "I cannot imagine America electing a president at a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and values."(And they say Democrats and Republicans can't agree on anything.)
He continues: "Let's explicitly own 'American' in our programs, the speeches and the values ... he doesn't."
Predictably, those now tasked with paving the way for an Obama ascendancy are awash in contrived indignation. "It's an appeal to prejudice. I think it's ugly," frowns Democratic consultant Bob Shrum. "If Hillary Clinton had done that, she would permanently besmirch her reputation, her legacy and her place in American politics."
Or she might have been delivering a Thursday night convention speech.
In state after state, primary voters who like their presidents to cleave to their country's roots and culture gave Mrs. Clinton victories that almost allowed her to rally.
Had she been more aggressive in this regard, I believe she would have won. Now, her torment will be complete, as John McCain uses exactly that strategy to reveal Mr. Obama as insufficiently woven into the tapestry of the nation he seeks to lead.
Can McCain Use Advice Clinton Got on Obama? (Dan Balz, 8/12/08, Washington Post)
Penn was always the biggest hawk in Clinton's campaign, always the one who advocated going negative against Obama. The day after the senator from New York won primaries in Ohio and Texas, Penn called for drawing a sharp contrast with Obama along the following lines:"He is just words and she is a lifetime of action. . . . She is the one who is ready to fill the big shoes of this job and he is an inspiring speaker who isn't, and whose background you are beginning to wonder about. She has brought real results and even his words today are in doubt, invented for a campaign. Ultimately he cannot win against John McCain."
Clinton's campaign, he argued, "must now in earnest show that their image of Obama Camelot is simply nothing but campaign pitter-patter."
At the end of the day on March 30, he wrote an even more pointed memo. He argued that Obama needed to be "vetted" on the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his former pastor; on his ties to the corrupt Tony Rezko; and on his record in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. Senate.
"Does anyone believe it is possible to win the nomination without, over these two months, raising all these issues against him?" Penn wrote. "A 'nice' campaign that wins the states alone that can be won -- will that be enough or do serious issues have to raised about him?"
...that Democrats should take what they believe seriously and that it is important for them to govern the country--in what sense then can Ms Clinton be said to have served her party and country well in declining to make the argument that her opponent is unelectable?