Why McCain Lost

Barrack Obama won the election, John McCain lost. That was always expected. The surprise is that McCain did as well as he did. Examining this is important for figuring out how to win future elections.

First, Obama had lost of advantages. He has a golden tongue. He also had the golden touch for fund raising. He raised several times as much as the federal funds that McCain used. In addition, the public is sick of President Bush. Finally, Obama's race helped him. I'm tired of hearing that Obama won in spite of his race. He gained a lot of votes from blacks and hispanics who voted on the basis of his race. He also gave whites the chance to feel virtuous by voting for someone with dark skin.

McCain never came up with a convincing narative. He had a great rapid-response team but little long-term message.

Despite all of this, the election was not a blow-out. Obama led in the polls for most of the Summer but his lead was within the margin of error. McCain pulled ahead after the conventions only to fall behind in mid-September. Had things gone differently he might very well have kept his lead and won the election.

So what happened?

One thing that didn't happen was Sarah Palin. It is true that the left piled so much muck on her that some stuck. Regardless, the people who think that she was a mistake overlook the alternative. Palin added a lot of excitement to the election. If McCain had gone with a conventional approach like Mit Romney the electorate would have gone to sleep.

Really, three things happened that cost McCain a shot at the White House.

The first was the war in Iraq. It went from unwinnable to victory. This happened too soon for McCain to take advantage of. Yes, he was right about the surge and Obama was wrong but the war had fallen out of the news cycle by mid-August. By the election it was low of voters' priorities.

The same thing happened with gas prices. McCain was for increasing domestic oil production. This might not produce results for years but Obama's renewable energy proposals will not produce for decades. As long as gas was above $4/gallon McCain had a winning issue. With gas back to $2/gallon, no one cared.

These were McCain's strong points. If they were still relevant at the election he stood a good chance of winning. Instead, we had the third event, the economy.

Obama never announced a plan to fix the economy beyond some more government stimulous checks and bail-outs. He didn't need to. All he had to do was to run ads linking Bush, McCain, and the economy. McCain had lots of plans - too many - and as a Congressman he couldn't distance himself from failing institutions.

So what can we learn from this? The economy gave Obama the presidency, not his progressive agenda. Voters want change but Obama was vague enough during the campaign that his idea of change is probably radically different from the voters'. His main promise was for tax cuts for nearly everyone (paid for by the remainder). He also promised to fix the economy. He didn't talk about the rest of his platform much.

This gives Obama a very clear and specific mandate - fix the economy and hand out money. Fixing the economy is beyond a president's powers and he is already backtracking on the tax cuts.

The rest of Obama's adenda is outside his mandate. He might get some form of health care passed. This will be tricky since it affects so many people. If he get it wrong he will lose the electorate.

A lot of Obama's primary promises will hurt the economy in general even if they help targeted portions (unions). Unless the economy is booming in 2010 Republicans will be hitting him hard on anything that hurts the economy.

All of this gives Republicans a shot at retaking Congress in 2010 without doing anything on their own. They can build on this but they have to take the right path. Bush-style big government Republicans will not have a message to use against big government Democrats. They have to go back to being the party of limited government. In 2008 limited government sounded outdated. It will make a comeback after Obama expands (or tries to expand) the government.

Things to take consolation from

Now that the election is over and Obama and the democrats won, there are still some things that Republicans can take solace from. Some of them are pretty meager but you take what you can get.

First there is the big one - the Democrats didn't win as big as they could have. There are still enough Republicans in the Senate to filibuster. Likewise, Obama won convincingly but his margin of victory was typical - somewhere between Bush jr's win in 2004 and Bush sr's win in 1988 or Clinton in 1992 and 1996. It was way short of Reagan's win in 1984.

So, the country has not made a dramatic shift to the left. Republicans still have a shot at the White House and Congress, especially when they are not weighed down by an unpopular president.

That brings me to the second point - the Democrats are now in charge. They cannot blame the Republicans for anything. I know that they will try. They will insist that they inherited unsolvable problems brought on by Bush. The public will cut them some slack for a year or two but they were elected to solve problems. If they don't come up with results quickly then they get the blame.

Which brings me to the fun part. It can be frustrating to be on the outside of government looking in but it is also easier. Just ask Rush Limbaugh. When your side is in power then you end up carrying a lot of water for them. This works for the other side, as well. Back in the late 1990s the opening monologues of shows like Politically Incorrect and the Daily Show came straight from the Democratic Message of the Day. Did these comedians really enjoy saying that lying under oath is the same as telling stories in a locker room? Come January, they are going to be stuck making excuses for the Obama administration. No more cheap applause lines ("When Bush and Cheney get together they kill puppies."). Now the right gets to make cheap shots.

Let's face it, a McCain administration wasn't going to be good for the Republicans. By the end of the campaign he was promising more federal bailouts and budget deficits than Obama. It's hard to be the party of fiscal restraint when your top guy is in a bidding war with the Democrats. The economy has been getting worse but so far it hasn't affected everyday people much. This will change over the next year or two and no one can stop it. If McCain was in the White House then Republicans would get the blame in the 2010 election. With Obama as president then Democrats will probably lose some seats and the Republicans can start rebuilding.

This segues into my next point - it's time to rebuild a conservative coalition and that could not be done with Bush of McCain in the White House. Bush and Rove wrecked the Reagan coalition of social conservatives and fiscal conservative. They figured that there are no votes in cutting government so they expanded it. A lot. By every measure, government is bigger than it was when Clinton left office. It was so bad that the Democrats ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility in 2006 (this was quietly dropped for 2008). Since he didn't appeal to a wide coalition, Bush barely won his elections. McCain appealed to pretty much the same crowd but couldn't pull in the same numbers.

With tax and spend Democrats in charge, Republicans need to reassert themselves as the party that keeps government off your back. This means turning their back on No Child Left Behind and some other accomplishments of the Bush administration. These didn't help Bush's popularity so they should be little loss.

One final consolation. As of this writing, Al Frankin lost the most expensive senate race in history by a narrow vote.

Obama and the Media

You already knew it but a couple of articles appeared about Obama and the Media. Surprise - they favor him over McCain by an overwhelming percentage.

Here is an anonymous writer confessing on behalf of his profession.

Forbes readers may scoff at Barack Obama as the messiah, but we don't. Give him eight years in the Oval Office, and the man with the most liberal voting record in the Senate will move the whole country our way. The One will make us "mainstream" once again. He might even make us profitable once again.

Here are the results of the bias.

Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases, compared to 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

{...} "For whatever reason, the media are portraying Barack Obama as a better choice for president than John McCain," said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the center. "If you watch the evening news, you'd think you should vote for Obama."

Life Under Obama

Liberals love to talk about how the Bush presidency has shredded the Constitution and eroded civil liberties. They never admit that none of this directly affects the average American or that most of their complaints are about the treatment of prisoners of an undeclared war who never set foot on American soil.

Obama is supposed to make it all better. Given the actions of his campaign and his supporters as well as the Left in general, we have a lot to worry about.

First, there is the Fairness Doctrine. This requires equal time for opposing viewpoints on public airwaves. It was instituted when radio was the only broadcast medium and later extended to TV. The reasoning was that A) these were public airwaves and should not be used for partisan purposes, and B) there were so few broadcasters that the government needed to ensure multiple viewpoints. The Fairness Doctrine was used by both parties against political enemies until the Reagan administration killed it.

The Left wants to revive this, but only for AM radio. Since AM radio is, at best, a niche market these days, the original reasoning no longer applies. In fact, the Left is quite open about the fact that this is a political move aimed at silencing conservative radio shows such as Rush Limbaugh. This is political abuse at its worst.

Obama has been active in silencing others. After complaints from his campaign, there were threats of arrest and criminal charges for stations airing an anti-Obama ad produced by the NRA. When McCain complained about ACORN and fraudulent voter registration, Obama's campaign requested that McCain be investigated by the special prosecutor looking into the firing of federal attorneys.

Obama is also promising increased enforcement of laws against discrimination. When everything can be twisted into racism (remember when calling Obama "thin" was racist?) this could turn into an easy way of silencing the opposition.

According to statements he made during the campaign, we can expect other intrusions into everyday life. He plans income redistribution but is vague on whose income will be redistributed. Until recently he consistently used the figure $250,000. Biden recently amended this to $150,000 and Obama's half-hour special split the difference at $200,000. Where will he draw the line once he is in office?

Then there is his energy policy. He is sort of for limited off-shore drilling under certain conditions. He will heavily subsidize alternate fuels. Increased ethanol production already led to a world-wide rise in food cost. Last Summer he made a statement about Americans not being able to eat as much as they want, set their thermostats to 72, and drive SUVs. Will this translate into legislation? Any legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions will increase the price of energy. We saw how that affects the economy during the Summer and $4/gallon for gas was no where near enough to meet greenhouse emissions targets. If this is added to an already shaky economy then we will see a second Great Depression. The Green activists who make up a significant portion of Obama's support actually want this.

Then there is the general irritation that government regulation causes. This will be added to the current irritation of dealing with insurance companies as Obama takes over the nation's health care industry.

So, that's what we have to look forward to - an erosion of liberites and living standards that will affect day to day life.

On the bright side, it will not take long to rehabiliate Bush. A couple of years from now he can hit the talk show circuit (on TV since it will be gone on radio) talking about the golden years under his administration. It worked for Clinton.

Corporations, Republicans and Democrats

Newsweek asks why corporations still love Republicans? The author, Daniel Gross, examines some articles from the Wall Street Journal and comes away convinced that corporations don't know what's good for them.

He starts with unions.

Big retailers such as Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and Target, the Journal reports, are freaked out that Obama and a Democratic Congress would pass the Employee Free Choice Act, "which would do away with secret balloting and allow unions to form if a majority of employees sign cards favoring unionization.

and goes on to describe all of the problems facing these corporations besides unions. All of his points may be true, but unions seldom help large corporations. Look at the automotive industry. The unionized American companies are failing. The non-unionized foreign companies are still solvent. GM has not been able to compete for years because of the overhead of union pensions. When you buy a car from GM, a greater percentage goes to the union pension than to pay for the steel in the car.

Later Gross tosses out this statement:

Once again, the past 16 years provide a great controlled experiment: eight years of a Democratic regime that was comparatively pro-labor, higher tax, pro-regulation and anti-free trade, followed by eight years of a Republican regime that was comparatively anti-labor, decidedly low tax and anti-regulation, and pro-free trade.

I have serious problems with this assertion, especially the part about trade. Clinton went against his party to pass the pro-trade NAFTA. His main flirtation with higher taxes was during his first two years. Once the Republicans took over after the election of 1994, Clinton practiced "triangulation". He moderated his policies. He also signed a major bank deregulation bill.

This is, in fact, a major problem with Gross's argument. He equates Clinton and Obama as having the same policies because they are Democrats. In fact, Clinton was much closer to Bush on most economic policies.

Obama is running an anti-trade and anti-corporate campaign. He promises to raise taxes on corporations and capitol gains (the rise in the value of your stock). He promises to tax excess profits (decided by him) and "return them to the people". He is against globalism in general.

But that's only Obama. consider the Democrats in general. Big box stores in general and Walmart in particular are hated by a large number of people, all of them on the left. There have been several local initiatives that would outlaw big box stores in specific cities. There have been attempts at putting them at a competitive disadvantage. There have been numerous boycotts.

Why would these corporations ever trust a party that hates them?

Redistribution of Wealth Experiment

Bluey Blog forwards an email on redistribution of wealth.

In a local restaurant my server had on a "Obama 08″ tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference�just imagine the coincidence.

When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need�the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

Actually, this is totally expected. People are usually in favor of redistributing other people's wealth. It's only when its their own wealth being redistributed that they object. That's why Obama continually points out that he will only be taking wealth from the top 5% and distributing it to the rest of us. In other elections this would be called buying votes.

America can't afford Obama

A week ago I suggested that it might be better for Republicans if Obama won. My thinking was that Obama would discredit the left while Republicans recovered their conservative roots. I've changed my mind in the last week. I've decided that Obama will cause so much damage that he should never get near the White House.

During the primaries Obama and Hillary got into a bidding war against NAFTA. At the same time, one of Obama's advisors assured Canada that this was just campaign talk. An article in my local paper indicated that Obama is still talking about changes to NAFTA. This will not only hurt trade which affects the economy, it will hurt America's image abroad.

Gas is selling for less than it cost a year ago. It was about 50% higher just a month ago. Obama has never been explicit about his policies on gas prices but he has dropped hints. He, along with the rest of the Democrats, has been against domestic oil production. He modified his position slightly to say that he might consider off-shore drilling as part of a broader solution. Most telling was a comment that he made last Summer. He said that the problem was that the prices rose so fast that people didn't have time to adjust.

Obama is a supporter of CO2 restrictions. That means higher gas prices. A lot higher. In Italy gas reached $10/gallon and people still kept driving. In order to get the reductions that Obama wants, we will see gas go that high or higher.

The military is stretched in Iraq. Obama reminds of this costantly. The reason for this is that the military was reduced under Clinton. We just don't have the troops we really need to occupy a country. Obama wants to escalate Afghanistan. In addition, Barney Frank let slip that the Democrats plan on cutting the military 25%.

Obama promises health care for everyone at no cost. He says that he will reduce waste and cut overall costs through preventative care. He's dreaming. Niether will work and preventative care is very expensive, partly because of the number of false positives in modern tests. Canada and Britian have tried universal coverage. The quality of their health care has gone down and they are having major problems controlling costs.

The centerpiece of Obama's candidacy is his tax plan. He describes it as raising taxes on the top 5% and giving a cut to the other 95%. Since 1/3 of workers don't pay income tax, he is going beyond regular income tax cuts. In order to cover his entire 95%, Obama is playing with the Social Security tax. The lowest earners will get a cut in Social Security. The highest earners will have an increase in the income tax with the extra going into Social Security. This is a fundamental change in how Social Security works. It breaks FDR's bargain that it be self-supporting (I won't get into the problems with the trust fund here).

In addition to all of this, there is Biden's prediction of the country being tested under Obama.

The bottom line is that much of what Obama proposes to do will never be undone, even if the Republicans retake the White House and Congress in 2012.

The "Real" America

What is the Real America? Governor Palin recently told a crowd that they were the best of America. This angered Keith Olbermann enough to do a special report on divisive politics. He quotes Palin:

"We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington D.C.," you told a fund-raiser in North Carolina last Thursday, to kick off this orgy of condescending elitism.

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."

Olbermann goes on:

Governor, your prejudice is overwhelming. It is not just "pockets" of this country that are "pro-America" Governor. America is "pro-America. "And the "Real America" of yours, Governor, is where people at your rallies shout threats of violence, against other Americans, and you say  nothing about them or to them.

He also quotes McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer:

"I can tell you that the Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia and moved into northern Virginia," she said. "But the rest of the state, 'real Virginia,' if you will, I think will be very responsive to Sen. McCain's message."

 

Again, a toxic message. The parts of the country that agree with Nancy Pfotenhauer are real; the others, not. Ms. Pfotenhauer, why not go the distance on this one? It was Sen. McCain's own  brother who called that part of Virginia nearest Washington "communist country."

Once again, Olbermann is practicing selective outrage.

First, Olbermann's threats of violence didn't happen. According to the Secret Service, no one shouted "kill Obama" at a Palin rally. Olbermann is repeating a lie, or possibly obfuscating it since he is referring to it in general terms instead of the specifics he used in a previous special report.

But, more to the point, we are becoming a very divided nation and the two halves don't think much of each other. A map of the 2004 election breaking down votes by precinct showed islands of populous blue cities surrounded by a sea of red. The people in those cities, especially the coastal ones look down on the rest of the country. They use derogatory terms like "flyover country". And that's the polite ones.

John Murtha recently called his district in western Pennsylvania racist. Barack Obama referred to them as bitter and clinging. And of course, Olbermann thinks that they are a violent mob. There is no question that the residents of the DC metro area have different political beliefs than the rest of the state.

The terms "inside the beltway" and "outside the beltway" have been part of the political lexicon for years. They refer to how people who live within the beltway surrounding Washington DC seem to be disconnected from everyday reality. Why should it be so offensive for a McCain official to use those terms?

What Does Joe Know?

Joe Biden

"And here's the point I want to make. Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough - I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it's gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you, not financially to help him, we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right. Because all these decisions, all these decisions, once they're made if they work, then they weren't viewed as a crisis. If they don't work, it's viewed as you didn't make the right decision, a little bit like how we hesitated so long dealing with Bosnia and dealing with Kosovo, and consequently 200,000 people lost their lives that maybe didn't have to lose lives. It's how we made a mistake in Iraq. We made a mistake in Somalia. So there's gonna be some tough decisions. They may emanate from the Middle East. They may emanate from the sub-continent. They may emanate from Russia's newly-emboldened position because they're floating in a sea of oil."

After again touting Cantwell's judgment, Biden told the crowd to "gird your loins."

"Only thing I'm asking you is, you know, gird your loins. We're gonna win with your help, God willing, we're gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It's like cleaning the Aegean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than - think about it, literally, think about it - this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets, this is a systemic problem we have with this economy."

So, just what did he mean? Obama dismissed this as a rhetorical flourish.

Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes, but i think his core point was that the next administration is going to be tested, regardless of who it is," he said at the Richmond, Va., event.

I don't think so. Here's what I think Biden was talking about.

First, Biden's strength is international relations. That's why he is on the ticket. Obama said that he will have Biden at his shoulder when he is making hard choices. Obama has other foreign policy advisers, too. Some of them are fairly sharp.

I'm guessing that they had a security briefing and the advisers told Obama that world leaders think that he is a Carter-style dove. They expect something to happen, maybe several somethings. Possibly Russia is going to annex someone. Or an Arab country is planning a strike against Israel. Or both. Maybe some other things, too. Biden talked about four or five scenarios. Maybe they are expecting a cascade.

But that's not all of it. Obama must have told his advisers how he plans to react to these events. It isn't going to be good.

That's what Biden is really warning us of. Something will happen and Obama's response is going to seem really, really bad.

There are two possibilities here. One is that Obama actually is a Carter dove and hopes to solve the world's problems through intensive diplomacy. The other possibility is that Obama is secretly a hawk.

Biden's references to Bosnia, Kosovo, and Somalia almost sound like Obama is planning on invading someone. Maybe he's going to get us into a quagmire (not counting the troop escalation in Afghanistan).

Either way, Biden is warning us that Obama's foreign policy is going to look terrible for at least a couple of years but, if we preserver then everything will turn out alright. This sounds surprisingly like Bush's Iraq policy for the last four years.

I don't like the sound of this either way. Diplomacy only works if each side has something that the other wants. If you take the threat of war off of the table then we might not have enough to bargain with. Somolia and Iraq proved how difficult it is to build a nation out of warring factions. The country is not ready for a new Iraq.

It would be nice to know exactly what Biden was referring to. Obama seems to be worried about this since he pulled Joe from the campaign trail yesterday.

McCain is already exploiting Biden's slip. With Wall Street calming down some, this could tip the election.

What's going on with the polls?

First, who is winning the presidential race? We don't know. Some polls show the race closing to within the margin of error. Others show Obama's lead widening. What's going on?

First, all of these results are within the margin of error, especially if you assume that McCain is slightly behind. But polling gets complicated quickly.

If you just call 500 people then you will get a result but it might be a bad one. A lot of people don't vote so you have to identify the likely voters. Your sample group is likely to be too small to really represent a cross-section of America so you have to do some weighting. This is the toughest part.

Lets assume that Democrats and Republicans make up 30% of the population each with the remaining 40% uncommitted. If your poll of 500 people was a good cross-section then you would have 150 for each party with the rest uncommitted. If your group actually had 200 Democrats and 100 Republicans then you have a problem. Your sample group is going to lean for Obama.

What the pollsters do is to estimate the proportion of voters in each party then weight the sample to match that. With the example I gave above, they would multiple the Republicans' answers by 150% and the Democrats' answers by 75%.

But, party identification has been fluid the last couple of years. In 2004 the parties were closer to parity. Republicans defected to the Democrats in 2006. It appears that this trend increased during the primaries this year but this may not be accurate. McCain clinched the primary early on. Many Republicans switched parties in order to be part of the Obama/Hillary contest. They may come home to McCain. No one knows.

Then there are "undecideds" who always vote for the same party but refuse to register with a party. In the last few elections the number of swing votes has been less than 20% of the electorate. It is hard to identify this group.

On top of that, an increasing number of people no longer have land lines and pollsters do not call cell phones.

Then there are people who say that they will vote for Obama because they worry about being labeled a racists.

Put it all together and the actual margin of error is probably higher than the pollsters are admitting.

Beating the Drum for Obama

After every election there is always some group on the losing side who complains that their man would have won if the news media had just gotten out their message. I always shake my head at this. The MSM is not there to carry water for either side. It is up to the candidate to get out his own message. This year is different. The MSM seems to be going out of their way to help Obama and hurt McCain. I have examples.

ACORN. The press has covered the massive number of fraudulent registrations that ACORN presented. In a normal election, they would also be going into detail about ACORN's long association with Obama. Not this year. Instead I have seen several articles on ACORN. They always seek to sooth the reader. They point out that ACORN practices voter registration fraud, not vote fraud. The two are separate crimes and the one that ACORN has committed thousands of times in multiple states is only a misdemenor. We are also assured that ACORN is itself a victim of unscrupulous workers and that the odds of actual voter fraud happening are less than of being struck by lightening. The fact that specific phrases like the one about lightening are in multiple articles makes me believe that these are being copied from a talking points memo from ACORN or Obama.

Joe the Plumber. The story here was that a regular working guy confronted Obama about having his taxes raised and Obama said that spreading around the wealth was the "right" thing to do. That got buried in stories about Joe himself. Reporters are falling all over themselves in an effort to discredit Joe and bury the real story which was Obama's response.

Violence at McCain rallies. It was widely reported that someone yelled "Kill Obama" at a Palin rally. The Secret Service later said that they had been monitoring the rally and that no one shouted that. This is one of the under-reported stories of the month. If the MSM picked up the story they buried it so deep that no one will actually see it. Where is the zeal that reporters showed in digging up Joe the Plumber's tax records? Keith Olbermann is still insisting it happened.

This is a troubling double-standard. Stories that hurt Obama are being discredited, even when they are true. Stories that hurt McCain are allowed to stand, even when they are false.

Do we want to win?

Obama continues to hold his lead in the polls. It is possible that McCain could still pull ahead but a little voice in the back of my head asks, "Do we really want this?"

It is not that I think that Obama will be a better president. I think that he will be a disaster. This thing is that I suspect that whoever is president will be presiding over a disaster for the next couple of years, at the least. The party in charge will get the blame. If McCain is the president then the Democrats will almost certainly increase their majority in 2010. The best thing that can happen to the Republicans is for the Democrats to be in charge (and vice-versa).

If Obama had been elected a year or two ago then he would have had no trouble implementing his progressive agenda. Times were good (at least better) and people were willing to support progressive programs like raising the minimum wage. Obama will face significant obstacles in 2009 that were not there before. These are:

The Democratic Congress of 2007-2008 failed to deliver on its promises. They did not bring fiscal reform. They did not end corruption. They did not end the war. They sure didn't lower the price of gasoline. About the only thing they accomplished was raising the minimum wage. Until now the Democrats could blame President Bush. With a democrat in the White House, they will have to deliver.

The economy and the bail-out will put severe limits on new programs. The psychological pressure against piling up more national debt will be strong. There will also be pressure for automotive and airline bail-outs. This will cause pressure to balance the budget instead of piling up massive new debt.

If Obama can push his tax plan through it will probably hurt the economy. Bush's stimulus failed because people banked most of it. The same will probably happen to Obama's proposed second stimulus.

The nation was about as primed for national health care in 1992 as it will ever be but the Clintons' plan didn't even come to vote in Congress. Obama will have a lot of work trying to sell his plan.

Democrats have defined themselves as the party of peace for the last several years but Obama now owns Afghanistan. A major part of his campaign was that Iraq was the wrong war and Afghanistan was the right one (echoing John Kerry and Howard Dean). Add in an unstable Pakistan and Obama faces a quagmire. Obama will be expected to make quick progress. He might get lucky and negotiate a treaty with the Taliban that includes an expulsion of al Qeada. Unless this includes bin Laden's head on a pole, it will not be enough.

The peace movement will have a tough choice. Will they support a Democrat who doesn't not meet their standards or will they turn on him? Cindy Sheehan already turned on Pelosi. Will she start camping out in Chicago?

International relations are going to be tough. Obama has already given our opponents the impression that he is a naive push-over. countries that were wary of Bush will push him to see what they can get away with.

Obama ran on an anti-trade platform. If he lives up to this then he will hurt the American economy and our international image. At worst he could start a new era of protectionism that will have world-wide repercussions. On the other hand, if this was all campaign talk then the unions will be upset.

Getting Kyoto passed was always a problem. Pressure will be on Obama for much stronger measures. These might have wide-spread support as long as Obama is talking about new green jobs but the suport will evaporate when people find out that it means $10/gallon for gas.

The Reagan Revolution could only happen because of 4 years of Democratic misrule under Carter. Two years of Democrat control under Clinton was enough to give Republicans control of Congress for 12 years - longer than they have held it since the 1920s. An Obama presidency will force the Republicans to reinvent themselves. The Republicans have not been the party of smaller government since 1989. George W Bush and Karl Rove decided that there were no votes in cutting government so they had no compunctions about expanding government. Post-Reagan Republicans were happy to follow Bush's lead (or to run ahead). They need the contrast of a big-government Democrat to recover their core principals.

On the other hand, if McCain wins then he will either spend his term fighting with Congress and angering everyone or compromising with them and angering the Republican base.

Obama and the Plumber

It's unanimous, Joe the Plumber son the 3rd debate. This could be bad news for Obama.

Joe, (full name Joe Wurzelbacher) originally made the news after being filmed asking Obama about his tax plans. Joe has been working for Newell Plumbing and Heating (which only has the two employees). At an Obama rally he stated that he hopes to buy the plumbing company which makes more than $250,000. "Your plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?"

Obama's answer is much longer and more nuanced than what is usually reported. A bit part of it is the supposition that, if Obama's tax plan been enacted ten years ago, Joe would have made more money so he shouldn't object to paying more now.

A couple choice quotes:

It's not that I want to punish your success. It's just that I want to be sure that those folks behind you, that they've got a chance at success, too."

I believe that when you spread the wealth around to everybody, it's good for everybody.

Watch the full exchange here.

Along the way, Obama states that 95% of small businesses make less than $250,000. I'm pretty dubious about that claim since it matches his claim that 95% of wage earners make less than $250,000. The government has standards on what qualifies as a small business. A plumbing contractor can make up to $14,000,000 and still be a small business. That's 56 time bigger than Joe but Obama is going to raise taxes on those businesses in order to spread the wealth around.

McCain jumped on Obama about this, mentioning Joe and small businesses 21 times. This is probably McCain's last chance. Obama was tied or slightly behind before the financial crisis hit. His message that the current problems were caused by the Bush administration are winning him votes (even if they are not true). McCain's only chance is to show that he supports the American worker more than Obama.

Most Americans have a different definition of fairness than Obama. Most people think that it is fair to let someone who works hard for his money keep it. Obama feels that fairness requires the government to spread it around to other people who may or may not be working as hard.

Until now Obama talked about taxing "the rich" and people assumed that he meant guys in costly suits and expensive cars who work for banks or oil companies. Joe put a different face on "the rich" - a middle-aged buy with a shaved head and a gut who works 10-12 hours a day. Joe doesn't look rich. He looks like the rest of us but Obama wants to raise his taxes.

So, will this resound with the voters? Maybe. In between Joe the Plumber references McCain pointed out that Obama wants to raise taxes and trade barriers during a recession. "The last president who did that was Herbert Hoover."

If the economy stops being the lead story then McCain might be able to make his case that Obama would be bad for the long-tern economy. There is a lot of meat to work with - Obama's desire to raise taxes on corporations, his reluctance to embrace off-shore drilling or nuclear energy. These are a lot more relevant than his association with unrepentant terrorists.

On the other hand, if the Dow continues to drop or something else happens then McCain will never get a chance to get his message out.

Update: True to form, the media is out to get Joe. A Google News search comes up with literally hundreds of stories that Joe is not actually a licenses plumber, that he may not be registered to vote, and that he doesn't actually have a plan to buy out his boss. With 15 minutes of fame comes 15 hours of “gotcha” scrutiny. Strangely, none of these stories link to the original clip that brought Joe to the media attention in the first place. I'm guessing that this is because the clip damages Obama.

None of this matters. Joe didn't plan on becoming a symbol and he couldn't have known what Obama's response would be. It was the symbolism of Obama telling a hard-working blue-collar worker that he made too much money and he needs the government to spread some of his money around for him that struck a chord.

Olbermann and the Truth

I got a comment on the last piece I wrote about Olbermann saying that he speaks the truth, unlike Fox and others. Well, there is the truth, there is "truthiness", and there are half-truths. Since Olbermann just posted a new special report calling on John McCain to concede the election, let's see just how close to the truth Olbermann is.

Olbermann begins by recounting how someone at a McCain rally that Sarah Palin was speaking at called out "kill Obamma" during the warm-up. While Olbermann admits that Palin probably didn't hear the cry, he is incensed that she didn't denounce it anyway. Apparantly McCain and Palin are now expected to start each rally by denouncing any negative comments that their supporters may have said.

I am not excusing anyone for advocating violence against Obama. This should be unacceptable behaviour but it has been tolerated by the left for so long that it was inevitable that it would spread to the right. Prominent people have been calling for and fantasizing about the assassination of President Bush for years. They have written movies, TV shows, plays, and songs about it. They have prayed for it. For some reason this never upset Olbermann or the rest of the left. He never did a special report on this. He never even named them the Worst Person in the World. I guess that calls for violence are ok sometimes.

Then there is Congressman Lewis who compared McCain to George Wallace. McCain called on Obama to repudiate these remarks. Olbermann responds,

Obviously, Senator, you haven't heard your own speeches, and Gov. Palin's, and what people shout during them.

I would love for Olbermann to point to a McCain of Palin speech that advocates violence.

Olbermann continues

And you haven't heard your state GOP Chair in Virginia, Jeffrey Frederick, giving talking points to 30 of your field-operatives heading out to canvass voters in Gainesville, Virginia. With a reporter present, telling them to try to forge a connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden to emphasize bombings and terrorism. And you haven't heard those volunteers, your volunteers Sen. McCain, shout back "and he won't salute the flag" and "we don't even know where Sen. Obama was really born."

McCain has already repudiated Jeff Frederick just as he has any of his supporters who crossed the line (real or not) but he doesn't get credit for this. Also, Frederick's statement ("What do Osama and Obama have in common? Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon.") is more firmly rooted in fact than Lewis's rhetoric.

Something else that Olbermann fails to acknowledge, the origin of most of the rumors about Obama. Most of those came from a whisper campaign dating back to when McCain was running 4th in the Republican primary. Hillary Clinton's staff is usually assumed to be the ones who started many of the false Obama stories.

So McCain is supposed to suspend his campaign because his supporters are repeating rumors started by the one-time Democrat front-runner.

Olbermann adds:

Sen. McCain, these people are speaking for you! And how dare you try to claim Congressman Lewis was linking you to Gov. George Wallace's segregation. He was linking you, aptly, to Gov. George Wallace's lynch-mob mentality.

If you read Lewis's remarks, he was doing both.

Sen. McCain, your supporters, at your events, are calling Obama a terrorist and traitor and are calling for him to be killed. And yet you keep bringing back these same rabid Right Wing nuts to deliberately stir these crowds into frenzies. And then you take offense when somebody who remembers the violence in our political past, calls you on it. You, sir, are responsible for a phalanx of individuals who are shouting fire in a crowded theatre. There are some things to respect and honor about you, Sen. McCain.

This is clever. No one has ever suggested that the scattered shouts for violence from the audience were from anyone connected with the campaign but Olbermann lumps them together with the now-repudiated campaign official and makes it seem that the McCain campaign buses people in to shout these things. Where, sir, is your proof?

Several times during the campaign McCain has apologised for things that campaign members said. Olbermann does not give him any credit for this and refuses to allow McCain to demand the same behaviour from the Obama campaign. Nor does Olbermann notice things like the "Sarah Palin is a c***" T-shirts. In support of Obama, the left has suggested that McCain was not really tortured in North Viet Nam but instead was a well-treated collaborator. They insisted that his story of a Christian guard showing him some mercy actually happened to someone else. They made up a preposterous story about Sarah Palin faking her pregnancy. None of this aroused Olbermann's wrath.

So this is Olbermann's version of the truth. He practices selective outrage. He leaves out important details. He picks and chooses. He distorts. And he presents it as news. This isn't a "special commentary" with a disclaimer after that says that the opinions are his alone. He is not a news anchor, he is a cheerleader for the left, repackaging their talking points and giving them respectability.

Community Organizing for Fun and Profit

During the Republican National Convention, McCain's supporters pointed out that while their VP candidate was getting executive experience as the mayor of a (small) city, the guy at the top of the Democrat's ticket was a community organizer. This line of attack left many democrats puzzled. How could Republicans imply that being a community organizer was something less than ennobling? I saw one person equate it with social work. Just today, Jacob Heilbrunn of the Huffington Post seemed to think that Obama's days as a community organizer somehow gives him inside knowledge on economics.*

Others have pointed out that Obama doesn't really want people to look too closely at what it meant to be a community organizer. The concept was created by leftist Saul Alinsky. The idea is for organizers to use self-interest to band the poor together into a movement which can be exploited to further a progressive agenda. The organizers themselves are to use the cause rather than individual charisma to recruit people.

Obama was not at all successful. He spent two years as an organizer. For the first year he tried to use jobs as an inducement to get people to join the movement. the problem was that there weren't any jobs. By the second year he was reduced to orginizing people in order to demand repairs to the housing projects. He wasn't very successful at this either. After two years he gave up and went back to college to become a lawyer with the intention of going into politics. He decided that Alinsky had gotten it wrong. What was needed was charismatic leaders.

Obama never gave up his ties from those days. ACORN engages in the same sort of community organization that Obama did. He has had a close relationship with them for years although he has tried to hide it recently. In the 1990s Obama did legal work and taught classes for them. More recently his campaign employed them. He has also steered a lot of money their way over the years.

All of this puts Obama way to the left of his image.

What saves Obama is that very few people actually understand what a community organizer is. When someone explains that he was working with hard-core unemployed they accept it. They don't realize that getting jobs for the unemployed wasn't a goal, it was just a first step. The McCain campaign has never bothered to explain exactly what Obama did. If they had then Obama's associations with ACORN, Ayers, etc. would be hurting him a lot more.


* The reasoning is that Obama saw poverty first-hand. Obama used the same line of reasoning himself earlier this year when he said that having been raised in a foreign country made him an expert on foreign affairs. In both cases, the argument seems to be that you can substitute empathy for experience. Using this reasoning, then Palin's assertion that you can see Russia from Alaska does count as foreign policy experience.

More on Olbermann

I got a comment from Matthew Montgomery on my last post which was about Keith Olbermann.

You've lost the plot, evidently. Colbert, an unmistakable satirist, is making a joke about the perceived bias of Olbermann, not about actual bias &mdash grouping him with the New York Times speaks to this.

The same goes for the Get Fuzzy comment.

Yes, Colbert is a satirist but the comment in question was satirizing Seymour Hersh at the time. Hersh was predicting (one of many such predictions) that we already had a timetable for bombing Iran. He referred to this as "Dick Cheney's pipe dream". Colbert said that Hersh got it wrong, that Cheney's pipe dream was to drive a bulldozer into the New York Times while drinking light sweet crude from Keith Olbermann's skull. While Colbert is talented, I don't think that he is so multi-layered that he would try to satirize Olbermann in the middle of a dig at Hersh. Instead, he was referring to Olbermann's well-known bias. The same is true for Get Fuzzy. Olbermann's name was dropped the same way that Rush Limbaugh's is when referring to the right. The difference is that Limbaugh is not anchoring a newscast nor has he been paired with broadcast anchors to cover the election.

Matthew also pointed out that there are people a lot further to the left than Olbermann. I agree. However, none of the regular diarists on Kos anchor a news broadcast. What's more, Olbermann reads these guys and believes at least some of what they say.

I first became aware of Olbermann in 2004 when MSNBC had their anchors post blogs on msnbc.com. Olbermann was an infrequent poster until the election. The kids at Kos and the Democratic Underground were onvinced that their candidate couldn't have lost in an honest election. They were sure that Deibold voting machines had been tampered with to throw the election. For the next few weeks they came up with numerous instances where the vote couldn't have been what the machines said. These claims were made without any proof by people who were nowhere near the machines in question. There was no cross-checking to see if the counties in question even used the suspect Diebold machines (they didn't). Olbermann was a true believer. He suddenly started updating his blog regularly, sometimes twice a day. He believed every theory and repeated them without bothering to verify the story.

My point is that Olbermann is not fit to be a news anchor. Newsmen are supposed to relate what happened, not judge it. Olbermann can't do this. MSNBC tried using Olbermann and Chris Matthews to cover the conventions and quickly pulled them.

NBC anchors Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams have complained that Olbermann's and MSNBC's biases hurt NBC's news operation.

Brian Williams recently told David Letterman that the McCain camp is punishing him by not allowing him to interview Sarah Palin because the McCain camp is mad at MSNBC's extreme leftism as evinced by Chris "Thrill up my leg" Matthews and Keith Olbermann.

Olbermann is hurting NBC News so he should go. It's as simple as that.

Matthew also commented

As far as Olbermann's comment last night, the one paragraph you included was the only personal attack of the set of comments, and it wasn't entirely inaccurate.

I only included a bit of Olbermann's remarks. I'll quote a couple more.

McCain is up to his neck in toxic campaign waste of his own creation.

But though McCain's tone seemed to be vaguely reminiscent of his own campaign's weekend of descent into the muck, there was not a mention of any of the subjects or people about whom Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin obsessed.

Plus

You would also be hard pressed to find any candidate who said of Social Security, "We are not going to be able to provide the same benefit for present-day workers... that present day retirees have today."

This one wasn't an attack, it just wasn't accurate. Bush raised the same issue in one of his debates with Gore in 2000. Olbermann should remember that but he was too busy trying to find fault with McCain.

Time for Olbermann to go

Keith Olbermann is easily the most polarized pundit masquerading as a news anchor. It's time for him to go. He is giving MSNBC and its parent operation NBC a black eye.

You know things are bad when a news anchor's biases become the subject of jokes. It started last year when Steven Colbert said,

Bombing Iran isn't Dick Cheney's pipe dream. His pipe dream is driving a bulldozer into the New York Times office while drinking light sweet crude from Keith Olbermann's skull.

Now, Colbert pitches his show at the politically aware. If you aren't keeping up with politics then you miss half the jokes. But what does it mean when you make the comics page? In this case, I'm talking about Get Fuzzy and not Dunesbury or Mallard Filmore. The punchline of a recent Get Fuzzy is Bucky Katt saying, "Go watch Olbermann you reality TV-hating elitist."

If you are not familiar with just how over-the-top just compare the pundits here. They were asked who won the October 7th debate. Three pundits, none of them shrinking violets, gate fair assessments. Then there was Olberman who launched into personal attacks.

You would also be hard pressed to find a candidate who thought he would gain benefit from a format that him walk around a room like an ailing man, winding up walking directly in front of the moderator's camera as the moderator is trying to say good night.

By employing Olbermann as a news anchor MSNBC has raised its ratings, attracting the far left who want nightly doses of venom. That is not a foundation to carry a news organization. It could well back-fire, also. If Obama wins then Olbermann will either spend his nights defending the inept stumblings of an inexperienced candidate who is not qualified to be president or he will turn on the Obamesiah and his base will turn on him just as it did on Cindy Sheehan.

Economics 101

The left has been proclaiming that the era of Reaganomics is over. The proposed bail-out of Wall Street will user in a new era of expanded government and re-regulation. While that may be true, there are several lessons from the Reagan era that should not be forgotten - or in the case of Senator Obama, should be learned for the first time.

1. We cannot tax our way into prosperity.
This is a big one but easily forgotten. The government does a poor job of creating prosperity. Taxes take money that could be invested or spent and redirects it elsewhere. Bill Clinton likes to talk about the economy during his presidency but it was built on and continued Reaganomics (except for the gasoline tax that he enacted early in his presidency). Obama has talked about raising the corporate tax rate, either directly or by eliminating "loopholes". This will reduce the amount of money that corporations can invest and make it more desirable for them to move overseas.

1a. We cannot regulate our way into prosperity.
Some regulations are needed. Even staunch Libertarians admit that the marketplace needs laws and regulations to keep things honest. Once those basic standards are met, regulations can quickly become a problem. One factor in the current credit crisis was regulations designed to increase minority home ownership. Banks were told to start lending to people who previously had been denied mortgages. There was a good reason for denying these loans. This is where a lot of the defaults are coming from - people who previously did not qualify for loans.

1b. We cannot redistribute our way to prosperity.
Tax cuts stimulate the economy. Tax increases create drag. If you raise taxes on one group and cut them for others the best you can hope for is equilibrium.

2. Bubbles happen.
Bubbles happen fairly often. Some are fairly small and self-contained like the Beanie Baby craze in the late 1990s or POGs prior to that. Others are large and affect the entire economy when they burst. The dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and the Japanese real estate bubble in the late 1980s are examples.

The problem with bubbles is that you can never have enough regulations to stop them. They are a product of the free market and they never happen the same way twice. There is also a phase when the participants believe that growth will continue in a straight line forever. During the 1990s, Bill Clinton spent a lot of time bragging about the Internet and the New Economy. People claimed that it would be recession-proof and continue to grow past all previous limits. The Japanese insisted the same thing about their economy in the late 1980s. There was a major craze in the US for emulating the Japanese way of doing business. as it turned out, Japanese business growth was tied directly to real estate prices in Japan. Companies that were losing money reported paper profits because the land that their offices sat on appreciated. At one point a single block in the Tokyo business district was reputed to worth more than all of California.

A second problem with bubbles is that no one wants to end them. It usually becomes obvious to outside observers that the bubble cannot last but by that point, breaking the bubble will cause pain. No one wants to be the one to do that. There were several warnings over the last few years that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were buying too many questionable loans but stopping this practice would make home ownership more difficult so nothing was done.

Housing values present a difficult problem. On one hand, they are too high which creates an entry barrier for the same low-income people that were supposed to be helped. On the other hand, lowering the value of housing back to reasonable levels will hurt everyone who bought during the bubble. Probably housing values will essentially freeze for several years until the actual value catches up with the inflated value.

3. Government interference in the marketplace often turns out badly.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are terrible examples of the free market. They are public/private entities. They have access to below-market interest rates but private ownership. It has always been assumed that they are too bid to fail and that the government will bail them out if they get into serious trouble. That encourages risky behavior. The government is involved in every level of the current crisis. For example, Real estate prices started to climb when the Fed reduced interest rates to historic lows in order to stimulate the economy after the dot-com crash.

Senator Obama's solution to every problem is more government involvement. In the last century we have had two periods when we expanded the size and scope of government - the 1930s and the 1960. Both were followed by long-term economic hardship. The problems of the 1960s didn't end until the 1980s and the start of Reagonomics. A return to the economic principles of the 1960s and 1970s almost guarentees a return of stagflation and the other economic ills of that period.

Class dismissed.

Hedge funds are not as tightly controlled by the government and are not having the current problems.

McCain, Obama and the Bailout

I still haven't made up my mind out the bailout. Was it worth it? Should we have let AIG and other big companies fall, taking lots of others with them? Or should we commit nearly a trillion dollars to the national debt?

Regardless, my subject for today is McCain's decision to suspend his campaign to help work out the bailout. He challenged Obama to do the same but the senator from Illinois declined.

So, why did McCain do it?

Some people have suggested that it was a move made out of desperation. That he was behind in the polls and knew that he didn't have a chance otherwise. This isn't likely for several reasons. The most important is that he isn't that far behind in most polls. In fact, he is within the margin of error. He is on the wrong side of it but he is close. More important, the Electoral College doesn't look too bad for him. Granted he has lost a few states including Virginia but he is very close in several states including Pennsylvania. A one-point gain in a few states and the election is his.

Plus, McCain may already be ahead. There were several stories last week about how Obama is having trouble with white male Democrats. There is also speculation that he is polling higher than his real support. This isn't surprising considering the number of Democrats who have announced that the only racists will vote against Obama.

The first debate is on foreign policy which is expected to favor McCain. In fact, the debate in general is expected to favor McCain. He did better against a crowd of Republicans than Obama did against either a crowd of Democrats or Hillary by herself.

The safe thing to do would be to continue to campaign and count on a enough of a bump from the debate to put McCain in the lead.

Obviously McCain didn't do that.

Many people think that it was a political move. There is something to that. It never looks good for a candidate to have to follow the other's advise. At the same time, by not following McCain, Obama is giving some clear signals about his priorities.

The main thing here is that McCain could have easily continued running campaign ads while looking presidential in DC. He didn't which could cost him with the election so close.

So, what if McCain is serious about the need to put the country first? He is not only a candidate for president. He is also a senator. If this legislation is as important as President Bush claims then McCain's place is in the Senate.

What about Obama? He is a senator, also, but he has not rushed back to the capitol.

"This is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess," Obama told reporters in Clearwater, Fla.

Ironically, Obama wants to someone else to deal with the mess for the next 40 days. He is too busy running for President to be part of the fix. He is perfectly happy to delegate the problem to someone else until he is sworn in. If McCain is putting country first then who is Obama putting first?

Note to Obama: The election may be in 40 days, but Bush continues in office in until January 20. You might have seen the 1/20/09 bumper stickers.

The Election and the Economy

A few days ago I was planning a post on how Obama's own qualities make him an unwinnable candidate. Since then there has been a major financial melt-down which gave Obama a sizable bounce. I would hate to see Obama win on this for a couple of reasons. The first is that the Democrats' fingerprints are all over the crisis, right beside the Republicans. The roots of the problems go back to the Clinton administration and actions taken after the Internet Bubble collapsed (Remember that? Bubbles happen under Democrats, too.).

The bigger reason is that Obama's proposals would strain the economy at any time. They would break it under current conditions. The reason that the Depression lasted so long and got worse under FDR was his response to the economy that he created. The problem is that he was seen as trying to help. Even if policies such as a punish-the-rich tax code and trade isolationism caused long-term damage to the economy, they were seen as being pro-worker. Obama is running hard as FDR's 5th term.

A view of socialized medicine

Read A Tale of 2 Sickbeds. The author contrasts his experience with a severe urinary tract infection in the UK and, a decade earlier, in New York. He relates several horrific experiences that happened to him in England. The bottom line is that you get what you pay for. The UK system is over-stretched and offers sub-standard care. The US system can be expensive but you never feel ignored nor do you find patients calling for help for an hour at a time.

Personally, I prefer the threat of high costs to the idea of being in a noisy, crowded ward without enough beds.

Back in the Pocket

Yesterday I complained about Senator Biden calling tax increases on the "rich" patriotic. Today I am going to analyze the other part of that statement. Biden said, We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.

The interesting part of that statement is the word "back" and the implications it has. At first glance Biden is just playing Robin Hood, taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor (who they refer to as the middle-class). If that was the case then he would have phrased it differently.

By using the word "back", Biden implies that the rich somehow have money that they took from the poor and it is the government's job to give it back. How does he come by that notion?

Democrats have been insisting that Bush's tax cuts were unfair because they favored the rich. This can be argued either way but the important thing here is that Bush did not raise taxes on the poor (or middle-class). He lowered them. No money was taken from the poor.

Maybe Biden means that Obama will take the tax cuts that should have gone to the poor (middle-class, whatever) and give them where they belong. But that isn't what he said, either.

I suspect that Biden's statement comes from a socialist zero-sum view of economics. If someone is rich, it is because he took advantage of the poor. This view matches Biden's statement. The rich were allowed to make too much money so it is up to the government to redistribute some of it from the undeserving rich to the deserving poor (they deserve it because simply they are poor). This fails economics 101. If I sell you something I may make a profit but that doesn't mean that I took advantage of you. You were free to not buy from me (there are exceptions to this but most involve government-sanctioned monopolies). You gained something of value to yourself.

There have been hints before that Obama was influenced by Marxism. Apparently Biden has a similar background. The idea of government redistribution of income seems like classic Marxism.

A side-note to this. Rep. Chris van Hollen (D-md) tried to justify Biden's statement this way:

Look, as Barack Obama himself has said, and as we all know, nobody likes to pay taxes. But I would ask Governor Palin a simple question; How do think we're providing equipment to our troops in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan? How do you think we're supporting the wounded veterans who are coming home at places like Walter Reed and other military hospitals? How are we supporting our troops in Afghanistan?

I thought it was patriotic for all of us to be supporting the troops in the field and providing them with the resources...

This is disingenuous. Biden was not suggesting that the rich pay more taxes in order to support the troops or even to lower the deficit. He (and Obama) want to give the money from the new taxes to the poor. If Obama and Biden were suggesting an across-the-board tax hike with the rich paying most of it then Biden might have a point. This is nothing of the sort.

A second side-note. The Democrats love to point out that McCain was against Bush's tax cuts but wants to keep them. They say that this represents a flip-flop. It does not. McCain voted against the tax cuts in protest because he wanted matching budget cuts. Regardless, he has pointed out that rolling back tax cuts years after they passed amounts to a tax increase which he also opposes.

Maybe this is too nuanced for the democrats.

Patriotism?

Democrats insist that they are patriotic (even the ones who claim that the US was behind 9/11). So what does patriotism mean to a Democrat? In Senator Biden's case it means redistributing income.

We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people. It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.

Keep in mind that this is coming from the vice-presidential candidate. Also remember that their definition of rich is a numbers game. If you make more money than 90% of the population then you are rich and don't deserve your ill-gotten gains. If you are under that magic 90% then you are the deserving poor (or middle-class).

In the early primaries the candidates all insisted that they were progressives instead of liberals. In Obama's case, this is correct. The progressive movement was heavily influenced by socialism and emphasized class warfare.

Biden has now codified patriotism as including class warfare.

Are We Safer?

I would have posted this on September 11 but it's hard to keep up when you are on vacation. Anyway, are we safer? I would say yes, for several reasons.

First, we were not really paying attention to possible terrorist activity prior to September 11. This was a bi-partisan problem.

More important is what has happened to al Qaeda in the last seven years. While bin Ladin is still at large, a number of al Qaeda leaders are dead or in jail. Their communications structure has been disrupted. What had existed as a de-centralized organization is now a bunch of independent cells. They can no longer coordinate well enough to do anything on the scale of 9/11. While it is true that the Taliban is gaining strength in Pakistan, it is unclear how much al Qaeda has profited from this.

Then there is Iraq. Al Qaeda sent tens of thousands of jihadists there. Most are dead or captured.

Internationally, bin Laden's stock is down. Immediately after 9/11 he was seen as the hero who brought the mighty America to its knees. Now he is seen as the person who provoked America into overthrowing Afghanistan. He announced that the fight for Iraq was of central importance. not only did his forces loose, they also killed Muslims indiscriminately. Bin Laden is now seen as a loose cannon rather than as a leader.

Of course, none of this means that we can declare victory and quit. That's what makes the next election important.

Lipstick on a Pig

Ok, this is a common expression and Obama (and McCain) may have used it before. Obama probably didn't mean to explicitly call Palin a pig. Given all of that, Obama still deserves all the grief he has gotten over this remoark for a couple of reasons.

Fisrt, the most memorable line out of both conventions was the one about the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom - lipstick. After that, Obama and his advisors should have scrubbed his speaches so that there were no mentions of lipstick, just to avoid this sort of situation. He didn't do this and is paying the price.

The second reason has to do with how Obama's supporters have been acting during the campaign. For months they have been disecting everything said about Obama, looking for hidden, racially coded messages. Suddenly, anything could become a racial code word. When Biden described Obama as "articulate", he didn't add, "For a black man." This was added for him by Obama supporters who then forced Biden to appologise for something that he hadn't said.

Obama never did anything to stop this. Instead, he benefitted from it. He could easily have made a statement saying that he was positive that Biden did not mean anything racial. Obama never did this, even when he invited Biden onto the ticket.

Obama ran a campaign where every utterance can be twisted into a coded reference so it is fitting that this should be used against him.

A Convention Roundup

The two parties conventions are over. Now the campaign begins in earnest. How did they do?

The Democratic National Convention was a mess. It was a good-looking one but a mess, never the less. In modern politics, the purpose of the convention is to sell the candidate. Everything else is secondary. So what did the Democrats do?

The first night was split between Michelle Obama and a tribute to Ted Kennedy. Michelle was practicing damage control after some widely-repeated remarks earlier in the campaign. Kennedy was a distraction.

The next two nights featured the Clintons. This is where the convention really failed. They felt that they had to give Hillary speaking time in order to reconcile her followers with Obama. They also felt that they had to give Bill Clinton speaking time. I'm not sure why since Obama (and Hillary) ran campaigns promising the end of Bill's compromises with the Republicans. Neither Bill nor Hillary made more than a token effort to elect Obama. any momentum from the first night was lost.

Joe Biden gave a speech somewhere in there. No one paid attention.

Obama was the main even on Thursday. Instead of addressing the convention, he addressed a campaign rally. He stood on an O-shaped island with a backdrop of Greek columns. His speech was toned down quite a bit from some of his other rhetoric. He didn't say anything like "We are the ones we have been waiting for" (translation; I am the one you have been waiting for). He didn't repeat his assertion that he would stop the oceans from rising and would heal the earth. He did go through a long laundry list of new programs and give-aways. Better yet, he said that he would reduce taxes and insurance payments for 95% of the country and pay for it all without new taxes.

Obama's ratings were through the roof - around 40% of the country watched.

The Democrats left their convention feeling pretty good about themselves. The Republican convention was to start a couple of days later on a holiday, Bush would be addressing the convention, and a hurricane was bearing down on New Orleans, threatening to cancel the Republican convention.

But there were some whispers that things weren't going so well. The old-timers were concerned that Obama wasn't attacking strongly enough. according to some reports, the stadium crowd wasn't impressed by Obama's speech. Where normally uninspired speakers like Gore and Kerry had given the speech of their life, Obama's was rather ordinary... especially for him.

Then things really went sour. McCain announced a surprise VP pick - Sarah Palin from Alaska. The Democrats' first response was to jump on her hard in the hope that they could hurt her reputation enough that she would have to withdraw. McCain's candidacy would have never recovered. Nothing was too extreme in this blitz. It failed and left the Democrats looking mean and petty. Obama had to denounce his supporters more than once.

The hurricane helped the Republicans far more than it hurt them. The first night of the convention was cancelled. This solved the problem of what to do about President Bush. He was too busy to address the convention in person. He ended up making a short address by satellite.

With an hour of airtime to fill, the networks covered the hurricane. The only real story there was how much everything had improved over Katrina.

The Republicans compressed their convention into three nights, all devoted to selling McCain and Palin. Palin's speech on Wednesday established her as a rising Republican star and matched Obama's ratings. McCain's speech on Thursday wasn't as inspired but he did manage to tie his POW experiences to his candidacy. Overnight estimates of his ratings put him higher than Obama.

So, where does this leave us? Often the conventions will give a candidate a bump in the polls that is enough to win the election. Clinton got a huge bump in 1992. Bush was running behind Kerry in 2004 until the Republican convention gave him a bump. On the other hand, Kerry got a slight negative bump, possibly because he overplayed the "reporting for duty" bit. McCain is in danger of doing this with his time as a POW but has not reached that point.

Obama got a slight bump from the Democratic convention but it only put him back to where he was in June. That bump has vanished by now. McCain is not showing much of a bump, either. He is back to running slightly behind but within the margin of error.

The real indicator is the electoral college. Polling by state is out-of-date and still reflects Obama's temporary bump.

With the two candidates running neck and neck, the debates will probably produce a winner. That is bad news for Obama. He is not as good without a script. He has poor instincts and the first thing he says is often wrong. His statement about meeting with hostile foreign powers without pre-condition came from a debate and he is still trying to live that one down. Expectations are lower for McCain which, as with Bush, makes it easier to win a debate.

Biden the Attack Dog

Most Democrats spent Thursday complaining about attacks by Sarah Palin. Joe Biden showed that he could up the ante. When asked about trying the current President Bush and associates as war criminals, he seemed to be saying that they are already working on it. Biden is trying to back off of his comments but you can judge for yourself. The video is here.

The Experience Issue

The Left keeps harping on Sarah Palin's lack of qualifications to be "a heartbeat away from being president". When Republicans point out that their ticket has the experienced candidate on the top, the Left counter-charges that Obama's campaign is good enough.

Now, you could make the point that running a national campaign is a big job and should count as executive experience but that isn't what they mean. Newsweek's Johnathan Alter is typical:

Obama won 18 million votes, faced countless tough interviews and emerged with a reputation for fluency in discussing affairs of state, whatever one thinks of his politics. Palin's vote totals for mayor were measured in the hundreds; she has served only 20 months as governor of a state half the size of Brooklyn, and knows nothing of national or international issues beyond energy.

Part of this is easy to dismiss - Palin has served 20 months as governor, Obama has served 32 months as junior senator and spent most of it campaigning. If all you count is time in office then Obama is unqualified.

The size of the state is also relevant. Ross Perot pointed out in 1992 that Arkansas is a tiny state (although more populous than Alaska) and one of the poorest. Does Alter think that Clinton was unqualified?

Obama's credentials on foreign affairs are debatable. Alter is impressed. I am not. Obama was against the war with Iraq but has never said how Saddam should have been handled instead. He was against the surge. He spent part of the primary in a bidding war with Hillary over how fast they would pull our troops out of Iraq. He still has not admitted that we are winning.

He promises to get along better with other nations (Bush also promised to be more humble when dealing with the international community) but he has also caused concern with trading partners. He threatened to start bombing Pakistan (an ally and a nuclear power) while promising to meet with national leaders who want the destruction of the US. Most recently he seemed to be unaware that Russia has veto power in the UN Security Council. Obama talks a good game but has not shown any real depth.

And, it should be pointed out that presidential candidates seldom have any real foreign policy experience. The last one who did was George H. W. Bush (former ambassador and vice-president). Prior to that you have to go back to Nixon (former vice-president) and Ike. We often elect governors as our president, valuing executive experience over foreign affairs. Palin is just one more in that line and not even at the top of the ticket.

Obama has indicated that he would make up for his lack of foreign policy experience by leaning on Joe Biden. Biden, it will be remembered, was for chopping Iraq into three parts then abandoning it.

That leaves Obama's votes and his participation in debates as his qualification to be president. What this really means is that the voters looked at Obama's thin resume and decided that they wanted him anyway. It doesn't reflect anything exect his ability to sell himself.

Palin wasn't (and isn't) running for president so she didn't get any votes.

Biden did run. He came in 5th. In New Hampshire he got 638 votes. He got a consistent 1%-2% of the vote. This raises the question, how can someone who was rejected by 99% of the primary voters be qualified to be vice-president?

All of this is partisan bickering. The Left loves Obama so he must be qualified. They see Palin's lack of experience as a way to hurt McCain so she isn't qualified. It is as simple as that.

Miscalculations

After listening to the Left for the last few days, you would have expected Sarah Palin's speech would make George W. Bush seem eloquent. That isn't what happened. She made a great speech. The crowd loved her and even the AP admitted that it was a "star-turning performance."

If the Democrats were surprised they have only themselves to blame. They have spent so much time belittling Governor Palin as the mayor of a small town that they overlooked her very real accomplishments. She defeated an incumbent Republican governor in the primary then defeated a former governor in the general election and went on to become a popular governor herself. This takes political skill. I'm betting that this is what made McCain put her on the ticket.

Keep in mind that the real job of the number two person on the ticket is to get the number one person elected. Sarah's first task was to present herself as a credible candidate. She did this very well, coming off far more presidential than Biden. I can see her running for president herself in four or eight years.

The Democrats should be worried about the vice-presidential debate. Biden is known for talking too much.

The Democrats have made other miscalculations in the past few days. They assumed that an unknown must have some disqualifying secrets in her background so they spent a lot of effort trying to find something. In the process they aired everything possible, no matter how irrelevant. Possibly the worst was posting a photograph of Sarah in college waring a tee shirt that said, "I may be flat broke but at least I'm not flat-chested!"

After these attacks, any doubts that Republicans had about Sarah were dismissed. They are far more supportive of McCain and Palin than they were of McCain by himself.

This push-back may spread to the general public. The press is getting stories from the DailyKOS and Huffington. Eventually the number of unfair attack will produce a sympathy for Sarah.

Update: according to the 9/4/8 Rasmussen Daily Polls, people think that the press has gone too hard on Sarah by a 10-1 margin.

The Democrats made one other miscalculation over the weekend - Hurricane Gustav. They were laughing over the prospect of a hurricane hitting New Orleans during the Republican convention. "This proves that there is a God," Michael Moore said.

I wonder if they are still laughing? New Orleans is still standing. FEMA is functional. Everything went as well as it possibly could have given that a major storm hit our coast.

Instead of reminding people about their outrage three years ago, Gustav has shown how much the government's response has improved. It also showcased the new Republican governor of Louisiana.

Update: Governor Jindal is now being talked about as a future presidential candidate.

It may prove that there is a god but it doesn't prove which side he is on.

Hating Sarah

If you had asked the Left a week ago who Sarah Palin is, you would have gotten a lot of blank stares. They didn't know (neither did most of the Right).

Now if you ask the Left about Sarah you will get a united answer - they hate her, they think that she is the least qualified candidate for vice president in history and by nominating her, John McCain has shown himself unfit for office.

Of course, they don't really think this. Some of them might have convinced themselves that this is what they believe. Many of them have worked themselves up over it. But, deep down, they don't really know or care anything about Sarah.

What they do know is that she is an unknown. They have probably been gathering dirt on the expected VP choices and sharpening their knives if it was Lieberman. Sarah's selection left them unprepared.

That didn't stop them from coming out swinging. The original statement from the Obama campaign was that she was the former governor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience. Obama himself realized that this reflected badly on him (a former state senator with zero foreign policy experience) and issues a more gracious statement.

Over the weekend the Left has gone to extremes to try to find dirt on Sarah. They insisted that her child is really her grandchild (forcing a public announcement that Sarah's daughter is pregnant). They found a ticket that her husband got 22 years ago. They announced that the vetting process for a vice-president has to include a newspaper search and that McCain hadn't done one.

I hope that Sarah isn't taking any of this personally. The Left has devoted itself to tearing her down in an effort to bring McCain down. That is all they care about. Deep down, Sarah Palin is nothing but a possible tool to be used in securing the election of their chosen one. They don't care who they hurt in the process.

Is Nothing Out of Bounds?

The big story of the weekend is that Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant. This was announced in order to stop rumors that Sarah's most recent child was really her grandchild who she claimed as her own. The proof for this claim was virtually non-existent but that didn't stop people posting to the DailyKOS from calling Sarah an outright liar.

Last week the former chair of the DNC laughed at Gustav hitting New Orleans around the time that the Republican convention begins. Here
"God is on our side."

Michael Moore thinks that Gustav proves that there is a god. Here. His reasoning is that the Republicans are at one end of the Mississippi and the hurricane is at the other end. Afterwards he realized that this was over the top, even for him, so he wrote a letter to God asking him not to hurt anyone. He assumes that God reads the Huffington Post.

The kids at KOS also celebrated when former White House spokesman Tony Snow died.

Was Tony Snow part of a Goebbels-like propaganda machine allowing a cabal of pillaging, warmongering thugs to seize War Powers of an Industrialized "Democracy" allowing said Regime to unrepentently torture, maim, and kill civilians in foreign lands while rationalizing his patrons Police-State Powers at home via the comprehensive, calculated dissembly of the Rule of Law?

Protesters at the Republican National Convention dropped sacks of cement on buses carrying Republicans.

The left has shown that nothing is beyond the pale. In fact, the thread (now deleted) about Palin's child had a survey asking if this was going too far. The overwhelming response was that this election is too important for anything to be out of bounds.

This is nothing new. Four years ago liberals tried to make a fuss about Dick Cheney's daughter being gay.

You don't see conservatives acting like this. Conservative attacks have been limited to Barack Obama and his documented record (the Obama is Muslim rumor is nasty but from the timing, it probably started with Hillary-supporters).

This raises an important question. The left thinks that they are committed to doing good. Why don't they act like it?

Women and the Presidency

With today's selection of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate, I thought it would be interesting to look back at previous women running for president.

Wikipedia has a list of women who were nominated for president or vice-president by 3rd parties.

Although it was never official, Elinor Roosevelt must be mentioned. FDR's health was worse than they let on and she assumed some of his duties near the end of his life.

In 1972, Shirley Chisholm made a splash when 152 delegates voted for her in the Democratic National Convention. This made her the first black candidate and the first woman to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.

In 1984, Walter Mondale was way behind Reagan. He decided that his only chance was to gamble on a woman. He chose an obscure congresswoman named Geraldine Ferraro. This didn't help him. He went down in a historic drubbing. Ferraro made the news earlier this year when she observed that Barack Obama's skin color was helping him in the primary just as her gender got her on the ballot in 1984. This led to Obama's famous race speech.

In 1988, there was a lot of pressure for George H. W. Bush to name a woman as his running mate. The Republicans had two women who were well-qualified - Elizabeth Dole who had held cabinet positions and Jeane Kirkpatrick, the Ambassador to the UN. The rumor is that Bush didn't like either of these women and wanted to prove that he could win on his own.

In 1992, the Clintons presented Hillary as a co-president. There was also talk of appointing her to the Supreme Court.

In 2000, Elizabeth Dole ran for president. Her candidacy didn't go anywhere.

And of course, in 2008, Hillary Clinton ran and lost by a fraction of a percent of the delegates. Hillary supporters have noted that the final choice was made by the super-delegates who decided to neuter themselves by ratifying the candidate with the most elected delegates, no matter how close the result.

Palin!

McCain finally announced his pick for Vice-President, Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska. This is an interesting pick, full of pluses and minuses.

One big plus, she was such an unexpected choice that she knocked talk of Obama's big speech out of the news cycle. With a holiday weekend coming up, his speech will be old news by Tuesday. This will minimize any bump Obama got from the convention. (Rasmussen shows a bump that is so small it is within the margin of error*).

A second big plus, she's not any of the other Republican candidates. I'm sick of those guys and I suspect that the rest of the country is, also. None of them had any wide support of McCain couldn't have wrapped up the nomination so fast.

A minus, she only has two years experience as governor and that is in a small state. On the other hand, she is still the only person on the ticket with any experience as an elected executive. If Obama is qualified to be president with four years in the Senate then she is qualified to be Vice-President with two years in the state-house. Hopefully the Republicans will use this argument against Obama.

She won the governor's race after a high-profile stint on an ethics board. The public is convinced that both parties are corrupt so this helps, especially against Obama's attempts to link McCain and lobbyists.

Her husband is a Yup'ik Eskimo. That means that her family is as exotic as Obama's (although she isn't as exotic personally). Between this and McCain's adopted daughter and Howard Dean should be forced to eat his words about the "white party".

She's in the NRA. Her husband hunts. Obama has already lost the gun-owner vote but this clinches it.

She is against declaring polar bears endangered. That puts her on the right side of the global warming debate.

She adds a lot of vitality to the ticket, just as Biden drains some of the vitality away from the Obama ticket.

Among Republicans there is a strong feeling that McCain should be a one-term president because of his age. This introduces a new face who could potentially be the candidate in 2012 (probably against Hillary!).

* Speaking of Rasmussen, the latest set of state polls show terrible news for Obama. While he is still slightly ahead in the Electoral College, all ten of the states polls showed a shift for McCain. In some cases this was a shift from "solidly Democrat" to "leaning Democrat". If this trend continues then McCain will win in a landslide. We will not really know until next week when the race starts in earnest. Traditionally people are more willing to go for a new face in early Summer but they get serious about their choices in September.