I Voted

I just got back from early voting. Didn't punch straight-Dem ticket (actually voted for one Republican, and a couple of libertarians, shockingly enough). But I did vote Obama, Noriega, and Skelly.

Then I went back to my car, and sat there for fifteen minutes or so. How amazing is this country? I've spent the last eight years insisting that the "average" American, those folks living somewhere between L.A. and N.Y.C., is neither a moron nor unfit to vote. I didn't realize, until today, how hard (emotionally, as well as intellectually) that argument had become. And suddenly, it's no longer an argument for me. It's fact.

What launched the last eight years was basic political cynicism -- you know, all the candidates are essentially equal, are crooks, our vote doesn't count, etc. Bush and the Supreme Court stole the election, but he was a passionate conservative, and didn't give speeches about lockboxes, so meh. Hey -- I was a political dilettante who wanted to vote for McCain in 2000 because he'd "shake things up." For me, this election has purged, permanently, that cynicism. President Obama won't turn water into wine, and he probably won't even give us national health care or a green economy. But he'll bring us closer, in every sense. It turns out that's not too much to ask.

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What the hell is McCain doing in PA?

A New Republic reader suggests:

McCain drew less than 500 people to a rally in suburban PA two days ago. Then he went to Western PA and flubbed the attack lines against John Murtha's comments so that the sound bite was completely incoherent. On Monday he drew crowds of about 2000, then 15 people at an airport rally (yes, that is correct--no zeros) ....

Now the Obama campaign is doing a major head fake in PA. They "accidentally" leaked an "internal" poll showing Obama up by only 2 percent in PA. I guarantee you that no such poll exists and that this was done both to motivate volunteers in the state (and maybe elsewhere) and prevent them from getting too complacent and also to sucker the McCain campaign into spending more time there. Ed Rendell has asked Obama to come back and campaign in the state-another major ruse. They know that McCain makes most of the decisions for his campaign and that they can goad him into spending more time in PA by pretending that it is close there. Let's see if Obama actually returns to PA before November 4th, but I sincerely doubt it. They are brilliant.

Ezra's comment: "It wouldn't shock me."

Well, it would shock me. There are two key problems with the idea that Obama head-faked McCain into PA. First, it's just too smooth and subtle for a major campaign to rely on it (leak one poll and get Rendell to issue one plea, and the entire McCain campaign will switch gears? Please.) It just gives too much credit (and affords too much power) to the campaign. It's like movies where they have the CIA tracking someone in the U.S., live, from multiple satellite cameras, while simultaneously tapping all of their twittering, debiting, and toilet paper consumption. If the CIA could actually do any of this, do you think 9/11 would have happened? Would the FBI still be struggling to identify the anthrax attacker? Hell, would the N.O. levies still be beaver-inspired shit piles? Campaigns, like govt bureaucracies, have about 1/10 the power that is credited to them. Mostly, they are large, unwieldy, and harder to maneuver than the Exxon Valdez.

The other key problem with the PA juke-out theory is that the Obama campaign has proved, time and time again, that they don't work this way. They don't worry about winning the week, or psyching McCain out, or quick-spinning the press. They keep their eye on the long game, and assume the short game will fall into place. McCain's campaign, which has done the opposite (c.f. suspending the campaign, "Joe the Plumber," and that twinkly flautist from Alaska), would be much more likely to try something like this -- and as his performance proves, while it's great copy and solid Hollywood scripting, it just doesn't work on the trail.

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Biden Goes Epic: A Level 25 Gaffe

Apparently conservatives are unhappy, because news of Palin's $250K shopping spree has displaced coverage of Biden's "gaffe" (he recently suggested that early on, Obama's administration would have to confront "an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy"). Ross Douthat, in his typically moderate tone, suggests:

Biden's bizarrely honest remarks are an almost too-perfect exemplar of the Kinsleyan definition of a "gaffe" as an accidental statement of the truth - and in a different, closer election, one untouched by a global economic crisis (and, yes, the ongoing Sarah Palin story), they might have been the game-changing flub that conservatives keep looking for. (At the very least, I think they summon up a much more compelling argument against the Democratic ticket than Obama's comments to Joe the Plumber.)

The problem with what Biden said, and with Douthat's take, is that it's not "an accidental statement of the truth" -- it's an accidental statement of G.O.P. delusion. Conservatives (especially neocons) have long argued that we need tough-talking hawks in the White House because it will cow the Muslims -- even Thomas Friedman advanced this argument in his infamous "suck on this" rant.

In reality, it's pretty clear that Muslim extremists see Republicans as more likely to play along with their attacks by over-reacting and overreaching. As Yglesias reminds us, not only was this Bin Laden's aim with the 9/11 attacks, there was pretty much a consensus that he mailed that tape to Al-Jazeera on the eve of the 2004 elections because he wanted to swing the elections toward Bush, who kept playing along. Hence, what makes Douthat's argument so "compelling" is the same thing that helped Bush in 2004 -- a mass national delusion rooted in our basic ignorance about what serves our objectives in the Middle East (and Al Qaeda's clear understanding of what our ignorance leads us to do).

The key point: these terrorists see conservatives and the G.O.P. as their defacto American allies. What does this mean? It means terrorists believe they get more out of attacking someone erratic and bellicose like Bush/McCain, rather than a more moderate Democrat. And this risk/payoff analysis, in turn, suggests Al Qaeda is more likely to attack a president McCain, whose response it can count on, than Obama.

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The Obama and McCain Comedy Hour

In case you missed them, Obama and McCain each gave roasts at the annual Al Smith dinner. I don't mind saying (though I thought both were funny) that McCain's script and delivery were better. They say the best comedy comes from pain...

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Palin and Hillary Clinton

At some point before the end of the primaries, Barack Obama decided that he didn't need Hillary Clinton on his ticket to win these elections. Many disagreed (including some of my friends) but it seems clear that, at the end of the day, he was right. On the other hand, it looks like he did need Sarah Palin on the ticket -- see this article by Dana Milbank, and Palin's ability to rally Hillary supporters to Obama's cause, or this poll which shows enthusiasm for Palin cratering. It looks like the woman McCain chose to win the Hillary vote is the woman who lost it.

If the voters get any more rational I'm going to freak out.

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The Great Tumescence

Conservative Daniel Larison makes a great point about the inanity of "the surge":

The reason why McCain was smart, if gutless, to avoid talking about Obama’s associations last night is that he and his advisors seem finally to have recognized that invoking Ayers is not an effective tactic. This is remarkable because this tactic is incredibly popular among people on the right who think that talking endlessly about the “surge” is a good idea, and McCain still doesn’t understand that the “surge,” like his obsession with earmarks, means little to most voters who want out of Iraq anyway. Even though there is little or no evidence that his obsession with the “surge” works with the general electorate at all, McCain has continued to invoke it every chance he gets. Just as he does not understand that the “surge” represented a change in tactics (it is not a strategy!), he has never grasped that the tactic of hitting Obama on his opposition to the “surge” was achieving nothing.

Which makes me wonder: what if he called it something else? The swelling? The swelling? The great engorgement? There are some awesome, bulging words out there just waiting to be tapped. (Cough)

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Obama wins the nomination

A year and a half ago my friends and family were asking me if I *really* thought it was possible for a black man to become president. And I kept saying I thought he could -- that if you see him in person and listen to his words, you'd be converted, too. Most ended up voting for him in the primary. Tonight it's clear that it's much more than a possibility that he'll become president. And it makes me so proud.

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The Clinton Legacy

It looks like today Barack Obama will *finally* be able to announce victory in the Democratic primary. And it feels like a hell of a long time coming. Chris Cillizza argues that Obama, in derailing Hillary's enormous early financial and political advantages, has pulled off "The Biggest Political Upset Ever" -- and from my limited knowledge of politics I'd agree.

But we'll have plenty more time to hash out Obama's strengths and the merits of his hagiography as his campaign continues forward. What I'm thinking about today is how this will affect the Clinton legacy. With his careless campaigning in North Carolina and his often intemperate remarks (not to mention Todd Purdam's racy article from Vanity Fair -- "Air Fuck One"!?!, now that's the premise for a movie), Bill Clinton's Political Chosen One glow has clearly lost wattage. But I'm not ready to sign on with Richard Cohen's evaluation of Hillary Clinton. Yes, I was often much pissed off by her tactics, but Cohen says he "loathe[s]"

what Hillary Clinton has done to herself. The incessant exaggerations, the cheap shots, the flights into hallucinatory history -- that sniper fire in Bosnia, for instance -- have turned her into a caricature of what her caricaturists long claimed she already was. In this campaign, Clinton has managed to come across as a hungry hack, a Janus looking both forward and backward and seeming to stand for nothing except winning. This, too, is sad.

I'm not sure if this is just Cohen blacking the kettle evenly (what's the reverse of gilding the lilly?) -- he dishes out a heaping helping of sanctimonious scorn to all the campaigns (always the bravest bet in an op ed.). But I don't think this will be how Hillary's campaign is seen a year hence. As Cohen argues in an earlier, truer passage of his column, the most painful aspect of this campaign has been "the resurgence of racism -- or maybe it is merely [his] appreciation of the fact that it is wider and deeper than [he] thought." And insofar as racism, as a legacy woven into the original pattern of our nation, continues to shape today's social fabric, it is inevitable that racism emerges in flashes from any political contest featuring a black man and a white person. When Hillary, in a particularly egregious example, offhandedly made her case to an editorial board that she retains support among "white Americans," I was angry. But I didn't imagine she was subtly spinning her comments for a racist demographic. To think or talk of "Black America" necessarily evokes White America, and to run against a black man forces you to remember that you are not only a woman, but a white woman. I say remember, because at some level white identity as well as black identity remain defined and circumscribed by each other in ways that are unique to America -- I think it's only white America that manages to forget that for periods of time. I may be bloviating, but I think this is true.

What does this have to do with Hillary's campaign? At the end of the day, I think it's clear that Hillary would never try to orchestrate a racist campaign -- and she's justifiably pissed that some think she has. But as much as we may hate it, racism -- evaluating things in terms of race or ethnicity -- remains essential to who we are as Americans (indeed, probably as humans). And sometimes -- particularly if we are married to the "first black president" -- we forget. This campaign necessarily handed us an opportunity to confront this fact again, so that we could work to effect a better change in that basic nature -- making its presence less insidious, making its judgments less execrable. It's hard to imagine what it would feel like to be a citizen of a color-blind America. It's a vision you can't just legislate, as France found out recently during the Parisian riots. But it's equally clear that we've made huge advances in 150 years, even if the last twenty have been particularly disheartening.

As this campaign moves into the general election, and Hillary begins to campaign for Obama (tirelessly and fiercely, I expect) we're going to see what actual racist campaigning looks like. Not from McCain himself, but from surrogates and third parties who want to play up fear of a jingoist chimera: The radical Black Arab terrorist representing the Islamofascist-Marxist party's Manchurian candidate. (I listen to Rush when I can -- know thy enemy -- and yes, it's just that incomprehensible.) While he'll decry it, McCain has already stamped this campaign with his unofficial imprimatur by arguing that Obama is the candidate of Hamas.

Remember, while Clinton didn't really receive more votes that Obama, she's second to him on the list of the most votes for a candidate in a contested Democratic primary ever. She's actually run a hell of a campaign, albeit with some slip-ups. She was swamped by a movement, not a gaffe, or "mis-remembering," or an SNL skit. And looking back a year from now, as Obama rounds out his first hundred days, what we'll remember, I think, is how fiercely Clinton fought for her party, how bumbling her hubby was, and how happy we're not chained to the sinking wreck of the G. O. P.

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