Thanks to Matt for the heads up!

The difference between these two sets of negative attacks is that Obama’s attack on McCain is factually true. McCain’s attacks are not.

Over the past weeks and months, we have seen a John McCain all over the map as he tries to regain the lead in a race that is largely going badly for him. His faux suspension of his campaign for two days before the first debate was seen as a desperate hail-mary attempt to shift the focus to his leadership and willingness to put America first in a time of unprecedented economic crisis. When the economic deal his campaign needed didn’t materialize, he claimed victory and restarted his campaign with a “surprise” visit to the first presidential debate. This occurred after McCain’s previous hail-mary selection of a feckless governor of America’s least populated state as his running mate in an attempt to put the conservative Republican base at ease with his candidacy. That’s largely worked, but it hasn’t won him the accolades from women’s groups that he expected, nor has it swayed many Hillary Clinton supporters since many of them vote principles over gender.

For Obama to attack McCain for trotting out weirder and weirder ideas (taxing employee health benefits, anyone?), or flip-flopping on key issues (the fundamentals of the economy are strong one day and the sky’s falling the next) isn’t going negative. It’s calling things how they are.

I often wonder what might have happened if John McCain had successfully grasped his proper moment in history – if he had defeated George W. Bush in the 2000 Republican Primary. McCain was the right Republican for the job eight years ago.

He isn’t anymore.

Yesterday, GOP nominee John McCain suspended his campaign, saying he wants to lead a bi-partisan effort to solve the current financial crisis. At stake for McCain is the presidency, which seems to be slipping from his grasp with each new revelation about how the chickens released following years of deregulation and lax policing of financial markets – policies long supported by McCain – have now come home to roost.

So rather than face the tough questions about this situation, McCain hides behind a flimsy call for bi-partisan leadership on the issue. Never mind the fact that a deal is already nearing completion without McCain’s special brand of leadership. Never mind the fact that McCain, if he has his way, might be able to avoid debating Barak Obama. Never mind that McCain has admitted to being not particularly strong on economic theory. Never mind that McCain is a Bush Republican – which as we have all experienced – is many times worse than being a Tax and Spend liberal. These are the Bomb, Borrow, and Bail-out Republicans – and they preach a “small-government” line while putting taxpayers on the hook for their miserably failed policies again and again.

With McCain’s call to cancel the debate, he could well deprive the entire nation the opportunity to see how both candidates plan to deal with this crisis in the coming months. He’s apparently ok with keeping us from kicking the tires on the presidency he want to sell us. Interestingly, if he’s able to cancel or reschedule the presidential debate, then there’s another thing that the GOP will be able to keep hidden: Sarah Palin.

Beyond McCain’s irresponsible and politically calculated selection of an apparently know-nothing governor, the legitimate issue many have with Palin is that we know next to nothing about her. And if the McCain/Palin Campaign has its way, things will remain that way up to Nov 4, when you’re asked to buy a Republican bag of goods. What we do know is that Palin was added to the ticket to placate the religious right, as the lipstick on the pig of McCain’s not too conservative candidacy. We also know that McCain doesn’t have a plan, not for the economy, not for the wars, not for education or health care or job training or social security or anything. He doesn’t need one, because he’s cribbing from Bush.

But he doesn’t want any sunlight cast on that now, does he?

Edit – here are some David Letterman outtakes after McCain cancelled his interview to race back to Washington.

Obviously YouTube views aren’t really votes, and it’s not really clear how, or even if, they’ll somehow translate into votes. Obama’s success on YouTube does, however, illustrate the fact that Obama, much more than McCain, has an effective strategy to leverage social media sites like YouTube and Facebook to get his message out, and that very well could translate into more votes come election day.

Take, for example, Brian Stelter’s interesting article in the New York Times yesterday about the new media strategy of the Obama campaign:

The campaign’s new-media strategy, inspired by popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than two million donations of less than $200 each and swiftly mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters before various primaries.

The centerpiece of it all is My.BarackObama.com, where supporters can join local groups, create events, sign up for updates and set up personal fund-raising pages. “If we did not have online organizing tools, it would be much harder to be where we are now,” Mr. Hughes said.

What we see here is that the Obama campaign is doing more than just taking the internet seriously. They’re making it an integral part of their media apparatus. They’re staffing their web team with savvy professionals, and funding it as if victory depended on it. If this trend continues, and if the Obama campaign can somehow translate all the social media juice into tangible action in the voting booth, you can expect every future campaign to learn the lesson: Rather than simply a tool for poking your friends or for niche marketing, social media outlets can play a key role in selecting the President of the United States of America. And to me, that prospect is simply amazing.

One of the things I find interesting bout the FISA bill is that it doesn’t provide the telecoms that colluded with Bush administration officials with immunity from criminal charges.

The tragedy is that Hillary Clinton understands perfectly well that this is a stupid policy. (If you actually wanted to save people $40 over the course of the summer, you would just give them $40.) She is embracing it anyway. Her campaign is pushing it as a purely symbolic gesture, attempting to take the side of “real people” against elitist snobs with all of their “education” and “expertise” and Ivy-League degrees.

There are a number of reasons why the gas tax holiday proposal is a bad idea, but to cling to a turd like this and to try to sell it as a “real solution” for “real people” would make its supporters like Clinton and John McCain either woefully stupid (which they’re not) or calculating and insensitive to the poor (that’s where my money is).

HOW TO HELP LOW-INCOME AMERICANS
McCain: Obama’s insensitive to the poor
GOP candidate cites rival’s opposition to suspension of fuel tax
RASHA MADKOUR
Associated Press

CORAL GABLES, Fla. –Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Sunday called Democratic rival Barack Obama insensitive to poor people and out of touch on economic issues.

The presumed GOP nominee rapped his Democratic rival for opposing his idea to suspend the tax on fuel during the summer, a proposal that McCain believes will particularly help low-income people who usually have older cars that guzzle more gas.

“I noticed again today that Sen. Obama repeated his opposition to giving low-income Americans a tax break, a little bit of relief so they can travel a little further and a little longer, and maybe have a little bit of money left over to enjoy some other things in their lives,” McCain said. “Obviously Sen. Obama does not understand that this would be a nice thing for Americans, and the special interests should not be dictating this policy.”

How does gamecock’s claim smell of bullshit? Let us count the ways:

1. The Gas Tax is 18.4 cents per Gallon: The average car has a gas tank that holds between 10 and 15 gallons of fuel (even the old, broke down gas guzzlers that McCain claims the are driven by the poor). That means, that on a single tank of gas, the McCain proposal will save the consumer between $1.84, and $2.76. Yes, that’s real money, but when we’re looking at gas prices that are about $1.50 more per gallon than they were in April 2007 (when the price was around $2.60/gal), consumers are paying somewhere between $14 and $21 more per tank than they were last year. McCain’s “holiday” reduces this increase to something between $12 and $18 per tank. I suspect that making gas $18/tank more expensive than it was last year isn’t really “a nice thing for Americans” as McCain claims.
2. Republicans Have A Shitty “Sensitivity” Track Record : Republican policies under George W. Bush have been anything but sensitive to the poor, and John McCain, who supports the same wrong-headed policies gets to share in their moral bankruptcy. What happened to the poor in Darfur? What about the poor in New Orleans? Where do Republicans stand on the minimum wage, or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or other public funding that would assist the poor? Last year, rich white elderly guy’s guy John McCain voted, along with 27 other sensitive Republicans and zero Democrats, to abolish the minimum wage standard. Now McCain is holding up this “holiday” as a shining beacon of his sensitivity to the poor? Pardon me if I don’t buy that particular snake oil.
3. Giving Insignificant Breaks On Taxes That Disproportionately Affect the Poor Isn’t Sensitive: McCain himself said that the tax holiday wouldn’t do very much, but that there might be some psychological benefit of seeing your gas bill go down a little. That may be true, but the notion of this being a sensitive to the poor ignores the fact that any tax will disproportionately impact low-income families since they are the ones with the least ability to afford paying them. The same case can be made for retail taxes on groceries, pharmaceuticals, or utilities. NOBODY likes paying taxes, and Republicans are always keen on telling us how they want to keep Americans from paying new taxes, but their righteous anti-tax indignation is somehow absent every time a proposal is raised to eliminate taxes on low-income families. If you make $10 Billion/year, you pay the same at the pump as someone who makes only $10,000. Who do you think that 18 cents really hits, anyway? Retail taxes are the poor man’s burden, and making those burdens insignificantly lighter is disingenuous – especially if we crow about how “sensitive” we are. Instead, we should strive to eliminate retail taxes on basic necessities like food, energy, and health-care products altogether.

OK – 3. There are at least 3 ways that gamecock was full of crap.

Poise. Style. Polish. Class. Selflessness. Sacrifice. Grace. Tactfulness. Decency. Humility.

Hillary Clinton?

Got you, didn’t I. These aren’t the adjectives that immediately come to mind when I think of Hillary Clinton, and chances are they aren’t the first that pop into your head either. These are, however, some of the words that we’d all be using to describe Hillary if she were to read the writing on the wall, and bow out gracefully from her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Imagine the upheaval to the political landscape, the glassy-eyed stares of dumbfounded political wonks, the slack-jawed expression on the faces of her most ardent detractors that would result if Hillary were to postpone her quest for the White House, and unify the Democratic Party behind the clear favorite: Barak Obama.

Now, I’m obviously not the first to suggest that Hillary should bow out. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, among others beat me to the punch:

The choice before her is to go down ugly with a serious risk of humiliation at the polls, or to go down classy, with a real chance of redemption.

The redemption Alter speaks of is the redeeming quality of self-sacrifice. Everyone knows Hillary wants this nomination so bad she can taste it, but if she were to put her own desires aside for the good of her party, and the good of the country she obviously loves, then why not opt for a graceful exit and maximize the chances of seating a Democratic president in November? March 4th in Ohio and Texas may be the tipping point – where Hillary Clinton either scrambles back into the race with Obama, or where the odds against her become incalculable.

I know what the Republicans want, and I hope Hillary spikes that volleyball instead.

You got to know when to fold ‘em.