Americans Are Liberal!

Matt Yglesias offers these Pew poll results as a rejoinder to those of us who think a win for Obama isn't a mandate for his policies. Says Matt, "The voters felt they had a choice between a liberal and a conservative, and felt they preferred the liberal and his policy agenda." Well . . . no. For one thing, most of the choices ...

Could McCain Win Minnesota?

Minnesotan Ed Morrisey got an email from Team McCain informing him that the state is "a dead heat" based on a Survey USA poll.  Ed then cites some research that Obama is actually dragging Al Franken's numbers down in the state and muses, "If McCain wins Minnesota, that puts a major dent in Obama’s presidential aspirations." Certainly, another 10 Electoral Votes ...

McCain - Obama Debate 1: Foreign Policy

Forty minutes into the first presidential debate of the 2008 general election season, which was supposed to be about foreign policy, we have had precisely no discussion of foreign policy thanks to moderator Jim Lehrer's asking the same three domestic policy questions repeatedly.   Granting that there's an emergency in the financial sector, most of the questions are only tangentially related ...

Obama: Sex Before Reading?

A new John McCain ad belittles Barack Obama's legislative achievements on education reform and includes this gem: Obama's one accomplishment? Legislation to teach "comprehensive sex education" to kindergartners. Learning about sex before learning to read? TPM's Greg Sargent finds the charge "false" and "pernicious."  He cites this passage from the bill, as circulated by  McCain's staff: "Each class or course in comprehensive sex ...

Obama’s Convention Bounce

Team Obama is shrewdly lowering expectations, saying they may well not get any bounce at all from their convention. That, of course, would be a first. Yesterday, when Gallup's poll showed a 3 point uptick in their rolling average, I said that it could either be an actual bounce or random fluctuation caused by sampling error. Now, though, we're ...

2008 Presidential Candidates’ Tax Plans

The Tax Policy Center, a joint effort by the Brookings Institute and the Urban Institute, has looked at both candidates tax proposals and...well it isn't pretty. Basically both candidates do not believe in fiscal responsibility, both are pandering, and neither of them are willing to make the hard decisions. Which is somewhat to be expected given that the ...

Why The Campaign is So Negative

David Broder gets both candidates to agree that the campaign has gotten more bitter than they'd like and is intigued by John McCain's suggestion, "I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings." The early blogospheric response to this has come mostly from Obama supporters who, not surprisingly,  ...

McCain ‘Broken’ ‘Family’

The McCain campaign has launched two new ad videos in consecutive days under the titles "Broken" and "Family." I find the juxtaposition amusing.  The spots themselves strike me as weak but, as I keep reminding myself, I'm not the target audience. "Broken" Washington's broken. John McCain knows it. We're worse off than we were four years ago. Only McCain has taken on big ...

Obama’s Veepables

A little run-down at my place.

Iraqi Government Acting Like Real Government

The Iraqi government is claiming Der Spiegel mistranslated earlier reports that they were supporting a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.  The magazine stands by its story. Ali al-Dabbagh, the chief spokesman for al-Maliki, said in a statement Sunday that the prime minister's comments were "not conveyed accurately" by Der Spiegel.   Al-Dabbagh said al-Maliki did not endorse a specific timetable ...