Heroes

There is no such thing as a "hero" among US Senators.  These are all detached millionaire babies who spent last night toying with the idea of making your already bad health care system worse.  John McCain isn't a hero.  He's a preening attention junkie who could have voted no on the motion to open debate.  Two Republican Senators actually did that. They aren't being celebrated today they way John is. He also had the option of not even showing up. McCain could have stayed in the hospital where he had a perfectly good excuse to be absent. But, no, he had to come put on a "show" so that the press would write about this was all about him and not about the hundreds of thousands of mobilized voters and activists who have been fighting the repeal for months. Congratulations.

Obamacare is a conservative policy. It protects insurers and needlessly imposes often unbearable costs upon those it does cover. We need to move past it. We need a single payer system that provides care for everybody.  But our politics is so screwed up that we can't allow the debate to expand beyond whether or not the baby millionaires who rule us will act to give us something worse.  This time they didn't act and we are relieved. It's the best we are allowed to hope for.

Also, this isn't over. ACA repeal is not dead until the Republicans lose a house in the midterms and/or we legitimately begin the push toward single payer. Until then, there will be more opportunities to pretend the millionaire babies are heroes.

They are going to find the votes

See, the thing about "moderate Republicans" is... there are no "moderate Republicans."

It's about 3 PM on Wednesday right now. Since making a big show of opening debate yesterday, they've voted down the BCRA (Senate repeal/replace bill) and, just a few minutes ago, they voted down a straight up repeal.   All of this was expected, though. The strategy was to go through these exercises before taking up some version of the so-called "skinny repeal" or whatever semblance of the House bill they can squeeze by to make it to conference. They're still on track to do that.

One way or another, they're eventually going to find the votes to do this. In the meantime it would help if our Louisiana press would stop looking for "moderates" among our own Republicans to do anything to stop it.  Those do not exist.

Sage advice

From the man who decided Sarah Palin would be a pretty good VP candidate: 

Former Republican presidential nominee John McCain offered his preferences (for a GOP Presidential nominee) Monday night on “The Tonight Show.” “I like Chris Christie. I like Bobby Jindal. I like a number of those people who have succeeded in states that have both Republican and Democrat,” he said.

So take that for what it's worth, Republicans.  For some reason, Jindal issued a statement thanking McCain for doing this. Which seems weird since nobody watches The Tonight Show. But since Bobby Jindal isn't running for President, I guess it's fine.

And with this, it's off to the undisclosed location

My Friends,

I wish I could spend this last weekend before the glorious socialist revolution with you but, regrettably, I will be out of town... and likely away from the internets... between tomorrow and Monday. It's probably a good thing at least as far as my blood pressure is concerned. Those of you who mainline the political stupid as much as I no doubt understand this Daily Show gag on the same visceral level.



Now, as the longtime readers of this site know, unless Dangerblond is running for something, this site does not make election recommendations. We do not fancy ourselves activists here. It conflicts with our steadfast commitment to detached elitism and our comfort derived from the fact that no one gives a fuck what we think. However, as longtime readers are also aware, we simply cannot pass up any opportunity to be wrong about stuff. Therefore we offer the latest in an ongoing series of dismal Yellow Blog election predictions.

• The New Orleans Saints will continue pass the ball well and play zero defense for the rest of the season on their way to an 8-8 finish. If they finish any worse than that, Coach Soupy may not be back next season. Poochie will continue to annoy people and Bush will lose at least three more fumbles before the season is done. Morten Andersen may be the next kicker. I think Deuce, Grant, Smith, and Nesbit all got shafted by the NFL's draconian and pointless drug testing PR scheme and look forward to their various legal challenges. We'll discuss all of this at length after the election.



• I've already said that Obama will get more than the 17 percent of the Louisiana white vote predicted by this poll. But I don't think he's likely to actually carry the state as some of the more excitable kids seem to be saying.



• The Italian guy will be the next Orleans Parish D.A.
  
  Oh okay, I think the Williams endorsement complicates things but Cannizarro still has the edge.



• John Neely Kennedy will complete his spectacular failure to obtain what was previously thought the "most vulnerable" Democratic Senate seat in the country.



• Dollar Bill will go back to Congress after comfortably trouncing Metairie Barbie.



• The goofy "We agree to whatever plan you haven't told us about yet" charter change will fail.



• Steve Scalise will survive the challenge from Jim Harlan in Congressional District 1



• The Democrats will pick up 30 seats in the House and will reach exactly 60 votes in the Senate. Unfortunately vote number 60 will be Joe Lieberman who will demand to be named King of All That is Sensible with weekly parades in his honor on Friday which will henceforth be known as "Joe The Lieberman" Day.



• Taking the Mayor up on his invitation to stay as long as he likes despite the fact that his office is being dissolved, Ed Blakely will move into the same Loyola University library cubicle that once housed Robert Cerasoli's office. Library staff will complain from time to time about having to clean up his half-finished plastic cups of wine... but since he'll be continuing to spend most of his time in Australia and Dubai anyway, nothing else much will change.

Finally, Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States. This is a difficult thing to conceive of for those of us who watched John Kerry find a way to FAIL in 2004... or even Ray Nagin cruise to reelection in 2006. We have come to expect the irrational argument to move the most voters. Greg Peters offers a similar (though not identical) observation of what I think is the same phenomenon. He calls it the "Fuck You Vote". (If Greg ever updates his cartoon archives again, there will be one I can link to for your further edification in this matter)

I've spent the past two months watching for signs that the Fuck You Vote would be activated again this year but, simply put, the sheer incoherence of the McCain campaign has failed to provide the necessary stimulus. Sure there are hordes of drooling half-wit race/religion voters roaming the countryside looking for something to smash, but even those folks need some semblance of a standard bearer and McCain has failed to make them march.

Meanwhile, a surprising number of high-profile Republicans and establishment conservatives have publicly turned their backs on McCain. Every Chris Buckley or Scott McClellan or David Frum to endorse Obama further confuses the McCain message that his opponent is some sort of unacceptable radical. During the campaign's final week, McCain's own nutty running mate is openly undercutting him. Make no mistake. The McCain Campaign is one of the all-time spectacular political bus wrecks.

And while the Obama campaign is cautioning about a last second bike wreck...



I think it's safe to say the thing is done. It's really just a matter of counting electoral votes.


So let's count 'em up, dammit! Here it is, kids. The official Yellow Blog 2008 projection.



Now pick out something nice from your borrowed $150,000 wardrobe, fix yourself some arugula salad, get out of... whichever one of your houses you're staying in this time of year, fill up those tires, and haul yourself down to the polling place Tuesday and vote.

See you next week.

Mandate

Yglesias argues that the McCain campaign is doing as much as anyone else to provide Obama with a claim to a substantially progressive mandate from the electorate next year.

This is where I think some of the recent “socialism” scare talk and so forth gets interesting. Presumably, come January and February conservatives are going to be wanting to argue that Obama’s got no mandate, that Republican legislators have no need to fear him, and that Democratic legislators should live in terror of overreaching. To that end, it’ll be helpful to argue that Obama got elected as a tepid centrist. But in their last-ditch efforts to beat him, they’re doing the reverse, and dramatically overpainting Obama as a wild-eyed radical ready to unleash Marxism on the country. Well, if you spend a month or two running around saying that, and then the voters back the Marxist anyway, he’s got pretty much carte blanche to do what he wants if he wins.

This is exactly what I said this past Saturday. Saturday's comment was in response to a silly article in the T-P comparing Obama with Huey Long. I kind of turned that around by suggesting that since McCain could be the catalyst for a leftward movement by the new President, it's actually McCain who looks like this generation's Huey Long... although we're not sure McCain is actually this generation's anything anymore.

Info Porn

Here's a pretty good Wa-Po table based on the Tax Policy Center's analysis of Obama and McCain's tax proposals. Note that when John McCain and Sarah Palin barnstorm the countryside screaming bloody murder about President Obama's plan to raise "your" taxes, they are speaking to a very specific "you" when they say that. And that "you" is not very likely to be... um... you specifically.

Closing argument

Nothing more to say, really

Things you can do if you write a crappy book

You get to say unbelievably stupid things in the newspaper

Perhaps, but Richard White Jr., a professor at LSU's Public Administration Institute and author of "Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long," said that doesn't mean that Long and Obama didn't and don't invoke similar fears on Wall Street.

With Obama and a Democratic Congress, White said, Wall Street sees the return of a more tax-and-spend, redistributive regime in Washington with a dread that he believes helps explain the severity of the recent market collapse. "It's the New York Stock Exchange reaction to the certainty that Barack Obama is going to be elected president," White said. "They know there are rough days ahead."

Let's go ahead an assume that this article appears on Page 1 of today's T-P because the paper wanted to push a desperate McCain talking point. McCain says President Obama is a "socialist" who wants to "Spread the Wealth" so let's ask a bunch of people if he reminds them of Huey Long. Let's assume that this story was conceived of as a subtle hit piece designed to feature idiotic statements like the one quoted above.

I'm actually glad they did this because it's perfectly illustrative of the utter failure of the McCain campaign to make any message resonate. The more McCain and his surrogates talk about President Obama's nefarious plan to "spread wealth around" the more you can almost hear most Americans saying, "Yes that's something we're ready to do."

It's a fascinating phenomenon. McCain is pushing an Obama-as-populist message far more aggressively than Obama himself has. And as the public responds more and more positively to that message, it helps to shape President Obama's mandate. In a way, McCain's reckless flailing may have pulled President Obama's agenda further left than Obama previously intended. Maybe the real problem with this T-P article is that it compares the wrong candidate to Huey.

Here's what I mean by close

The map I've put together below is the result of my stab at discounting Obama's likely overstated advantage in current polling results. Please bear in mind, this is not necessarily the way I think these states will go (I'll make those pointless pronouncements next week sometime) rather it is the result a clumsy but illustrative decision on my part to color red every state in which Obama has not consistently polled comfortably over 50% during the past month.




Again, this is not a prediction, just a look at how much closer I think the election is than the received wisdom would have it. And yes I am aware that some of the states I have in red here are trending Obama just as I'm aware that McCain has reportedly "conceded" New Mexico and Colorado so that he can go make an ass of himself while still losing Pennsylvania. But this does not mean those states are not still "in play" nor does it mean Obama has the thing won.

Exactly why I think McCain won

Because I think people like Joe Klein are exactly wrong

We've been conditioned by thirty years of certain arguments working--and John McCain made most of them last night against Barack Obama: you're going to raise our taxes, you're going to spend more money, you want to negotiate with bad guys, you're associated somehow--the associations have gotten more tenuous over time--with countercultural and unAmerican activities.

Again, these arguments have "worked" for a long time. The Democrats who got themselves elected President during most of my career were those most successful at playing defense: No, no, I'm not going to do any of those things! And so the first reaction of more than a few talking heads last night was that McCain had done better, maybe even won, because he had made those arguments more successfully than he had in the first two debates. I disagreed, even before the focus groups and snap polls rendered their verdict: I thought McCain was near-incomprehensible when talking about policy, locked in the coffin of conservative thinking and punditry. He spoke in Reagan-era shorthand. He thought that merely invoking the magic words "spread the wealth" and "class warfare" he could neutralize Obama.

But those words and phrases seem anachronistic, almost vestigial now.

I think this notion that wrong-headed conservative ideology has suddenly become "anachronistic" is a misguided toy for the chattering cheerleading children to chew on. This is not fashion we're talking about here but the ideas and prejudices people were raised with and which they never really shed.

Just like I don't think we're going to be finished fighting the "counterculture wars" in our politics until all the Boomers are dead, I don't think we'll be rid of the residual hateful conservative ideology (if we ever are) until the children of the Boomers are all dead.... and I am currently 34 years old.

I'll allow that the critical economic circumstances make Obama worth listening to for certain "persuadable" voters, but ultimately I expect that his race and the late election barrage of lizard-brain conservative dog-whistling will bring enough of those voters back home. McCain did an excellent job of sounding the dog whistle last night. We'll see how many heard it on November 4.

Update: Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson, who is also 34, has an opposing (and incorrect) take.

A quick few words for Senator Obama

That pitiful cranky old man just whipped your ass. This will be a dangerously close election.

Update: So far, my favorite line comes from this ATR comment thread:

During Obama's replies, McCain has been staring into space with the sort of glassy-eyed fixed grimace you'd see on a Furby that's two seconds away from going for your throat.

Exactly. That's what McCain looks like when he knows he's winning.

Upperdate: D-BB the Blogger hires Joe the Plumber

Palling around with terrorists

And this time the guy's surname is Hussein.

Adding: Geez, is there at least one awful thing out there for which a McCain campaign staffer didn't lobby at some point?

Finally ,some straight talk!

McCain finally tells us what we've always kind of suspected.



John McCain has finally come to save us from the Matrix.

Blog outsourcing

I thought McCain won the first debate and I think he probably won the second one too. Not because he was more reasonable or polished than Obama... heavens no... but for... well a bunch of reasons that I've already stated in the comments below this Adrastos post and this one at Moldy City; posts you should be reading anyway.

Also:

Eli has some comments here as does Schroeder here

Update: If you haven't played political handicapper with us before and are playing along at home now you should probably be aware of the following.

I tend to make some calls that look really out there up until the election at which time I am either proven spectacularly right or spectacularly wrong. Either way, it is spectacular, though.

The reason for this, I believe, is that I'm not as guilty of applying the rules of national politics to Louisiana elections as most other folks tend to be. At the same time I am often guilty of applying Louisiana rules to national elections. So if you're wagering on whether I'm going to be spectacularly right or spectacularly wrong in a particular case, those tendencies may be of some use to you.

I find a nice visual aid always helps

I'm reposting something Jonathan Scwarz wrote here so that I can finish the joke for him.

Yes, How?

I'd missed this when it happened back in April on ABC:

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you have any doubt that Barack Obama shares your sense of patriotism?

SEN. MCCAIN: I'm sure he's very patriotic, but his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question...how can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings which could have or did kill innocent people?

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Obama says he was eight years old when that was happening.

SEN. MCCAIN: But he became friends with him and spent time with him while the guy was unrepentant over his activities...

I'd like to make some jokes here, but I don't have the heart. What a country this is.

I have the heart today. How's this?

Surely THIS must be good news for John McCain

Charles Krauthammer thinks Obama has the election in the bag.

Given the thick magical forest of unreality which the elfin Krauthammer usually inhabits, that looks like a contrary indicator to me.

On the other hand, the more reliable indicators seem to suggest the little elf is right.

Update: What do I think at this point? It's going to be really really close. I'm wondering what the McCain campaign will roll out as its third act... other than the upcoming T Boone Pickens endorsement, that is.

Eye contact

Shut up about it, you fucking pack of snickering eighth graders. Yes, McCain's body language was bad but it is so far from the point of anything worth talking about that it takes the light from that point 100 years to get to.... Iraq where John McCain will have it spend another 100 years.

Remember back when you all complained sooo much about how the children in the news media fixated on Al Gore's sigh? This is just like that. Congratulations, now you're doing it too.

Shorter Debate

McCain: The world is full of scary evil people who only want to cause mayhem. I will kill every one of them before they kill us.

Obama: I completely agree with that description of the world but I think I will probably see that we kill at least as many of the bad guys as he will by setting slightly different priorities as to who we kill first.


Advantage: McCain (In light of the fact that this debate allowed him to salvage what was otherwise a debacle of a week for him by running and hiding behind "the troops", one wonders why McCain tried to duck this one)

Update: Adrastos has some "quick and dirty" observations which you should check out, but which I am linking to here in order to call attention to my comment there which I will now shamelessly cross-post:

I don't think Obama has ever really learned why he has so many precociously stupid but enthusiastic supporters. People are waiting for someone to challenge these global imperialists and their bloody wars-for-the-profit-of-the-few. If Obama would articulate this... give words to the collective dissatisfaction, he would knock McCain right on his ass. But instead, Obama is running the Kerry strategy; arguing that he is a shrewder manager of the bloody empire instead of taking it on. In short, he's NOT THE CHANGE HIS SUPPORTERS BELIEVE IN.

We can talk forever about how many times McCain lied or got facts wrong or failed to make eye contact or looked grumpy and we'll all be very right about that and feel good about ourselves. But we're missing the point.

The point is Obama had an opportunity to light a political fuse that needs to go off and he timidly refused to do so. This was a very bad moment for him.

Also, there is more debate reaction here from the cheering section.

Turning numbers low and high

If you've got some time today, please watch this interview between Bill Moyers and Kevin Phillips. When I was growing up, Phillips was one of a vanishing (now extinct) number of non-crazy Republicans out there. His new book Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism is just out. Here are a few pertinent passages from the interview.

BILL MOYERS: You wrote in that AMERICAN PROSPECT piece that some people, particularly in the reform community and among progressives, see this as a great opportunity for returning to the New Deal regulatory period instigated by Franklin Roosevelt in the pits of the Depression. You don't think that's happening.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, I mean, there's several difficulties here. First of all, at this point, what you've got are the Democrats are the party right at this point that's getting most of the financial money. When Franklin D. Roosevelt won in 1932, we know he wasn't getting most of the financial money.

The second thing is I don't think we're more than partway through. The Democrats think it's going to be another 1933, they get in there, they can do all the New Deal stuff. My feeling is that they're coming in halfway and they're going to have to make hard decisions that are going to eat the Democratic coalition like a bologna sandwich. They're going to start civil wars-

BILL MOYERS: How come? What do you mean?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, if you're going to bail out Wall Street while you're saying oh, the Social Security recipients, maybe they don't even need that money. A lot of people in the financial community basically want to push Social Security on some sort of voluntary basis and needs test it and get rid of it. Now, a lot of Democrats in the labor movement are very nervous about Obama. They put out press releases talking about Rubin-nomics because they see that the flesh of the Democratic Party carries a lunchbox. But the new soul of the Democratic Party wears a pinstripe suit.

BILL MOYERS: And the Republicans, what do they do?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, they're-

BILL MOYERS: More of the same? I mean-

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, different flavors. I can't imagine anything worse than having another four years of George W. Bush. I think he's probably the biggest disaster at the worst period of time that we could ever have a disaster in modern history. But could the Republicans be different and better? Oddly enough, I think they might have a small bit of integrity as opposition people, whereas subordinate to Bush and all the people that control national Republican politics, the Republicans were a waste of time.

But, for example, Senator Grassley of Iowa was ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. He opposed the Fannie/Freddie Bill and said it was a payoff to Wall Street and K Street. That's the lobbyists in Washington. You now have the Senator of Alabama, Shelby, who's the ranking Republican on Senate Banking, totally opposed anymore bailouts. We've got to let the markets do it. Well, the National Republican Party doesn't believe that for one minute.

BILL MOYERS: Because they get their money from the same people.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: That's right. The same money goes to the Democrats.

Later..

BILL MOYERS: But we are going to have a new president in January, no matter how despairing people may be about that. What is the first thing you would find convincing if he did it to meet this meltdown, this issue, this crisis?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, I guess I would without talking out of school particularly, Obama told me one time he read some of my books. So I would be very interested and impressed if he in January started to say something has really gone wrong in this country. And I'm not sure that I or anybody else can turn it around. But we borrowed so much money.

We've let this Las Vegas version of what used to be ordinary banks in our ordinary hometowns go berserk. Our currency is having enormous problems. People are losing their homes. We've got to face up to what our problems are and talk about how this happened. Who did it? Why? Who made the money?

Well, I think if he were to start talking about I'd take him seriously. But I think half of Washington would have a problem in their stomach needing quick relief, let me put it that way. Cause you don't rock that boat. You pretend that it's a sound economy. And if it's not sound, it's nothing that the old Democratic elixir can't fix, you know? Old New Deal in a bottle. We'll have a couple of swigs and you'll be happy again. I don't expect him to level.

BILL MOYERS: But is it conceivable to you that a John McCain might have gotten the message now to see what's at stake in the presidency that he would hold if he is elected and that he might actually turn out to be a reformer?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, I think there's some element there in contrast to what you've sort of osmose at the Harvard Law School, what you osmose in a naval family I think would be much less sycophancy toward Wall Street and the money crowd. So I think McCain has that. On the other hand, he doesn't have any knowledge. Anybody who thought that Phil Gramm was somebody who could instruct you in fairness to ordinary people and your — this is the guy, "Nation of Whiners" remember Phil.

Where's the outrage here?

Seriously I can't decide. Is it that John McCain sees his job as "somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have" or is it that he assumes someone like Ray Nagin isn't.