The New York Times is obviously a left-leaning media outlet supporting Barack Obama. This article about the dynamic electoral map had this gem about the hypocrisy of Sarah Palin:
But the Republicans have not yet waved a white flag, which is what brought Ms. Palin to Lancaster on Saturday.
As Mr. McCain did in North Carolina, Ms. Palin repeatedly invoked Joe the Plumber.“So when he left Joe’s neighborhood in Toledo,” Ms. Palin said, “our opponent didn’t look real happy. Seems that the staged photo op there got ruined by a real person’s question.”
Ms. Palin, as has become her custom, did not take questions from the crowd or reporters.
The last line was a tongue-in-cheek remark about Palin’s hypocrisy. It had nothing to do with the rest of the article.
What’s up with this video page on John McCain’s website? Several videos of the debate just show Obama talking. It’s like giving Obama air time on McCain’s website. It would be understandable if Obama were making a fool of himself. But that’s not the case with these videos. In case the campaign changes the videos on the site, here is a list of the videos that appear on John McCain’s website:
This is the first video. It was titled “Obama: Healthcare” on John McCain’s website.
Second video: this one is actually about McCain. It’s titled “Spending Freeze”
Third video on McCain’s website. Titled “Pakistan”, it’s a 2-minute air time for Obama to talk about his position.
Titled “Obama”, this is the fourth video. Again, there is no point except where Obama says once that McCain is right about what would happen if Iran would get nuclear weapons. Obama gets 2 more minutes of air time on McCain’s website.
Titled “Six Point Plan” (God knows why), this is the final video on McCain’s site for the first debate. Once again, it is Obama talking for 1 minute. This time about Russia.
This is insane. Only 1 out of 5 videos on McCain’s website actually shows McCain talking. And that is the shortest video – only 15 seconds.
Conspiracy theory: Someone within McCain’s campaign is trying to sabotage his efforts because he/she is actually an Obama supporter.
The war over shaping the post-debate narrative got off to an exceptionally early start, beginning, in fact, even before the event occurred.
Mr. McCain’s campaign had actually declared victory as early as 10 a.m. Friday, hours before the debate here and even before Mr. McCain had committed to attend. In what aides said was a mix-up, The Wall Street Journal posted an Internet advertisement twelve hours early showed Mr. McCain proudly looking into the distance the words “McCain Wins Debate!”
A reader of the Washington Post spotted it and alerted the paper’s blog, The Fix, which promptly posted it before the red-faced McCain campaign removed it.
It was an embarrassing, yet telling, false start to the most important battle to shape perceptions of the election year so far…
Obama, on his part, made some mistakes of his own. Even I felt during the debate that he said “John is right” several times. It didn’t take long for people to compile videos:
I love McCain for his antics. There’s never a dull moment in the campaign because of McCain (or his campaign strategists – whatever).
McCain has given us wonderful moments to cherish: not remembering how many houses he owns and defining “rich” as someone who earns more than $5 million a year.
The Sarah Palin move was brilliant. Here’s proof: she had 10 times as many searches and news volume as Biden. If this was high school, Biden would be called Boring Biden.
Another politically smart move was to complain about CEO compensation in the context of the Wall St bailout. There is something surreal about a Republican complaining about CEO compensation (and about a Republican administration bailing companies out left, right and center). But it was populist – and good political strategy.
And today McCain said he’d like to suspend campaigning, cancel the first presidential debate and go to Washington to build consensus on the bailout package. This is the second time that McCain has suspended the campaign. It supposedly makes him look like some action-taking, decisive, consensus-building, powerful person.
Update on 9/29: Chadwick Matlin calls McCain a brilliant game theorist for this move.
So the McCain campaign has released an ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, both “better known for their childish off-screen antics”. Wow. Apparently, the idea is to portray the Illinois senator and presumptive Democratic nominee for president as a young (“childish”, inexperienced celebrity who is not ready to lead).
The McCain campaign will continue to use Obama’s age (or should we say “youth”?) against him. Obama, of course, can’t call McCain a senile old man who has had every type of skin cancer. This reverse ageism will, of course, hurt Obama’s chances. Perhaps in some sort of cosmic, karmic justice, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert never fail to remind their audiences about how old McCain is.
I also suspect that in one of the televised debates this fall before the election, McCain will smile at Obama and say, “Son, I was serving my country holed up as a prisoner of war by the Viet Cong when you were in Hawaii smoking pot and trying to discover your true identity.”
If there’s one thing we’ve learnt about politics, it’s that things don’t have to be true for politicians to say them.
Update: Reverse racism?
The McCain campaign has accused Obama of playing the race card. The Clintons tried the same tactic and failed in the primaries. The Republicans will most likely be much more formidable foes. Does Obama have anything to gain by playing the race card? It will only alienate him from the majority (white) and would be political suicide. Jesse Jackson got 10% fewer votes than opinion polls predicted because, appraently, white people won’t admit publicly in opinion polls that they won’t vote for a black guy. People tend to support others who are “like them“. Although he has overcome the “like me” challenge with a sizeable chunk of white voters, in general talking about race is only going to be detrimental to Obama. McCain’s campaign is going to bring this issue up every chance they get.
