3 – Obama’s radical connections. Standards operating procedure has been to cry “racism” whenever one of these has been brought up. We even have a detailed strategy ready to go should McCain ever bring Rev. Wright up. Though by themselves they are of minimal worth, taken together, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfelger, and now, Rashid Khalili, are exactly what the campaign does not need. The more focus on them, the more this election becomes a referendum on Obama. The campaign strategy from the very beginning was to make this election a referendum on Bush. Strategists have been banging their head on how successfully McCain has distanced himself from Bush. This has worked, and right now the tide is in his favor. People are taking a new look at Barack Obama, and our experience when this happens tells us this is not good news at all.
Yep. As I mentioned to Andrea Shea-King last night, Obama is not a closer, and the reason is fairly obvious. Once you start looking at him carefully, the smoke and mirrors and vapid slogans don't work anymore. You start to realize that the (proposed) emperor has no clothes.
Last week I made the open-and-shut case for John McCain: In a dangerous world entering an era of uncontrolled nuclear proliferation, the choice between the most prepared foreign policy candidate in memory vs. a novice with zero experience and the wobbliest one-world instincts is not a close call.
And this part nobody except Joe Klein can deny:
On other domestic issues, McCain is just the kind of moderate conservative that the Washington/media establishment once loved -- the champion of myriad conservative heresies that made him a burr in the side of congressional Republicans and George W. Bush. But now that he is standing in the way of an audacity-of-hope Democratic restoration, erstwhile friends recoil from McCain on the pretense that he has suddenly become right wing.
Exactly. The notion that somehow McCain has morphed into a John Bircher may be useful for the media, but it's as divorced from reality as Obama's plans to meet with Ahmadinejad.
(This post will remain on top until Thursday night; scroll down for newer content).
I will be on tomorrow night with my old buddy, Andrea Shea-King to talk about the upcoming election and other topics of current interest. Andrea is always a terrific host and asks the most interesting questions, so be sure to tune in over the internet tomorrow, Thursday, at 9:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM for those of us lucky enough to live in the West.
I mention the Bradley effect because I think, too, that McCain and Sarah Palin's attack against Obama for advocating "spreading the wealth" and for "socialism" and for pronouncing the civil rights revolution a "tragedy" because it didn't deal with the distribution of wealth is aimed ultimately at white working class undecided voters who would construe "spreading the wealth" as giving their money to blacks. It's the latest version of Reagan's "welfare queen" argument from 1980. It if it works, it won't be because most white Americans actually oppose a progressive income tax, but because they fear that Obama will inordinately favor blacks over them. I don't doubt that this argument will have some effect, but I suspect it's too late and that worries about McCain and Republican handling of the economy will overshadow these concerns.
Several people have picked up on this supposed connection between redistribution of income and the progressive income tax; I don't get it. For starters, Obama was talking about redistributing the wealth in that 2001 video, not income (although he did talk about redistributing income in his discussion with Joe the Plumber). Second, there is no "re-distributing" going on in the income tax; it's all taking.
Steve Benen continues the "when John McCain says socialist, he means black" canard.
I perceive the rhetoric the same way. When McCain tells white working class undecided voters that Obama wants to "take your money and give it to someone else," he doesn't say who "someone else" is, but he probably hopes he doesn't have to.
An Obama presidency would be a stark contrast to the rhetoric of the “real” America — which is basically defined as the part where everyone is white — versus the unreal America comprised of non-whites and the white people who deign to live near them.
What's going on here? For starters, they're poisoning the well. If McCain does win on Tuesday, they're all going to say it's because he ran a racist campaign with all these "code words" to appeal to bigots.
And for another, they're Charlie Brown and the American public is Lucy, holding the football and telling them to go ahead and kick the field goal. They're paranoid that once again the final panel will show them flat on their backs, bemoaning their naive belief that the ball wouldn't get yanked away at the last moment.
Sure, he has a nice easy smile, but he also looks very determined, strong-jawed yet thoughtful, as if he’s very seriously pondering, “Why do they hate us?” Don’t laugh, that’s not funny. There is absolutely nothing in the record to indicate that President Obama wouldn’t slap the cuffs on any jihadis when the evidence is there that they plan to attack America, or already have, and that the Obama Justice Department won’t throw the book at them in a major way. He’s personally going to invade Pakistan, or not, depending. And he’s got some stern words for a lot of dictators he intends to deliver face-to-face, mano a mano. Nuke-happy mullahs, watch out: There’s a new community resource officer in town, and you’re about to be read your Miranda rights.
Yep, he'll capture Osama and put him on trial in New York, where Bin Laden can't face the death penalty, and they'll reform him there so that he renounces his terrorist ways and promises to be good and the Truthers and the folks from the Free Mumia movement will have somebody else to swoon over.
I mentioned earlier that the McCain camp is complaining about the LA Times' refusal to release a videotape of Obama praising Rashid Khalidi.
Who is Rashid Khalidi? He's currently the Hate Israel Chair--err, make that the Edward Said Chair at Columbia University. He's not very fond of Israel:
The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.
This is not surprising. Although he was born in the US, he spent some time working for the PLO:
But when Columbia academic officials made this choice they knew they were getting a Palestinian political activist. From 1976 to 1982, Mr. Khalidi was a director in Beirut of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA. Later he served on the PLO "guidance committee" at the Madrid peace conference.
Yep, that PLO:
And as Mona Charen notes, this is not "just some guy" in Obama's neighborhood.
The Khalidis and Obamas were good friends. In his capacity as a director of the Woods Fund, Obama in 2001 and 2002 steered $75,000 to the Arab American Action Network, the brainchild of Rashid and Mona Khalidi. According to an L.A. Times account of the dinner, Obama mentioned that he and Michelle had been frequent dinner guests at the Khalidi home (just another guy in the neighborhood?) and that the Khalidis had even baby-sat for the Obama girls.
Like William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama in their living room when he unsuccessfully sought a House seat. At the farewell dinner, according to the L.A. Times, Obama apparently related fondly his “many talks” with the Khalidis. Perhaps that’s where he learned, as he told the Des Moines Register, that “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.” Obama told the crowd that those talks with the Khalidis had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots. . . . It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table” but around “this entire world.”
Of course, this only matters in as far as Obama has adopted Khalidi's attitudes towards Israel. According to some accounts, Barack has done this:
"A Local Palestinian Activist Said Obama Attended The Fundraiser And Expressed Sympathy For The Palestinian Cause And Criticism For U.S. Support Of Israel. "In 2000, [Ali] Abunimah [a Hyde Park Palestinian-American activist] recalled, Professor Rashid Khalidi, a leading Palestinian American advocate for a two-state solution and harsh critic of Israel, held a fundraiser in his home for Obama, embarked then on an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the House of Representatives. 'He came with his wife,' Abunimah said. 'That's where I had a chance to really talk to him. It was an intimate setting. He convinced me he was very aware of the issues [and] critical of U.S. bias toward Israel and lack of sensitivity to Arabs. ... He was very supportive of U.S. pressure on Israel.'" (Larry Cohler-Esses, "Obama Pivots Away From Dovish Past," The New York Jewish Week, 3/9/07)
For the past few weeks, however, I have been concerned about a totally different issue with respect to Prof. Ayers: his political views concerning Palestine and Israel. The LA Times recently explored Obama's connection to those politics through his and Ayers' service on the board of the Woods Fund, during which time he and Ayers voted to award a grant of $70,000 to an organization created by Rashid Khalidi. The article raises questions about the depth and sincerity of Obama's expressed support for Israel.
Yellow light on this one, but if true it could definitely hurt Obama:
Reason we can't release it is because statements Obama said to rile audience up during toast. He congratulates Khalidi for his work saying "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" plus there's been "genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis."
The McCain camp is accusing the LA Times of covering up for Obama:
"A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi," said McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb. " . . . The election is one week away, and it's unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job -- make information public."
The paper claims:
The Times on Tuesday issued a statement about its decision not to post the tape.
"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," said the newspaper's editor, Russ Stanton. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."
Our socialist (oops, sorry, that's a racist code word) President-in-Waiting from 2001. More discussion from Mrs M.
Update: Also read Bill Whittle. If this had been Sarah Palin giving the interview, you know the freaking news media would have been all over the story.
Update II: Unexcitable Andrew:
Here's what it's based on: the "tragedy," in Obama's telling, is that the civil rights movement was too court-focused. He was making a case against using courts to implement broad social goals - which is, last time I checked, the conservative position.
Clearly, that was not what Obama was saying. The tragedy was that they didn't redistribute the wealth. It's true that Obama went on to say that using the courts in the future was liable to be counterproductive, but counterproductive to the goal of redistribution.
Update III: Full transcript of the entire show here. I am reading it myself now and will append my thoughts.
Update IV: Having read the relevant sections, I can say that the idea that this video unfairly characterizes Obama's position is false.
Update V: Ann Althouse says that Obama's position is uncontroversial from a law school professor's standpoint.
Obama was not showing disrespect for constitutional law in any of this. More radical law professors would criticize the courts for not engaging in more expansive interpretations of the Equal Protection Clause and for failing to provide much more expensive, invasive remedies. He did not do that. He accepted the limits the courts had recognized and advised against the unfruitful pursuit of economic justice in the judicial forum. It's a political matter. That is a moderate view of law.
But he did criticize the court, by saying it wasn't as radical as people think. And she hand-waves away the desirability of redistribution here:
Now, there remains the question of how much he would want the legislative branch to do in the name of economic justice, and obviously, the phrase "redistribution of the wealth" gets people going. But that's the same old question we've been talking about for months.
Since he didn't talk about how exactly how much he wants the government to redistribute the wealth, it's not socialism, or it might be but it's not proven how much socialism he desires. It's the same old question: Just how much of a communist is Barack Obama? We don't know, so let's find out.
But buried in these charges of socialism, Diuguid, the Star's in-house racial cryptographer, finds clear racist intent. He explains that "J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality." Indeed, "freedom fighters" like "W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization [and] Paul Robeson, a famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice..."
This is a sort of reverse McCarthyism; the presumption that because an activist was denounced as a 'socialist' he was obviously no such thing. But here Diuguid is, whether out of luck or ignorance, partially correct. Du Bois and Robeson were most certainly not socialists—they were Stalinists.
Footage of John McCain being interviewed as a bedridden prisoner during the Vietnam War has been released by the French national archive.
The video portrays the Republican as a hero but the message may be tarnished as he is filmed smoking a cigarette.
It's unfortunate for McCain that Barack Obama famously has never smoked anything in his life; not crack, not pot, not even a single cigarette. Oh, wait!
Apparently the media have been much more critical of John McCain's campaign than that of Barack Obama:
Media coverage of John McCain has been heavily unfavorable since the political conventions, more than three times as negative as the portrayal of Barack Obama, a new study says.
Of course, the shocking part is that it's only three times as negative; I would have guessed ten times would be more like it. And for some more evidence, look at this ridiculous "Fact Check" by the Washington Post today:
Politicians routinely twist each other's quotes. Sometimes, all it takes to construct a false straw man argument is the addition of a single, seemingly inconsequential word to an otherwise accurate quote. Take the common, four-letter, word "just." Surreptitiously inserting the "just" word into a quote can transform a bland statement into a falsehood or a dangerous policy position. The sentence "He is just a guy in my neighborhood" has an altogether different meaning from "He is a guy in my neighborhood."
The "socialist" label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.
J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.
To help the McCain campaign, here are some other words that mean "black":
Liberal Communist Redistributionist Terrorist Democrat Inexperienced
In most parts of America, getting money back on taxes you haven't paid sounds a lot like welfare. Ah, say the Obama people, you forget: Even those who pay no income taxes pay payroll taxes for Social Security. Under the Obama plan, they say, these Americans would get an income tax credit up to $500 based on what they are paying into Social Security.
Just two little questions: If people are going to get a tax refund based on what they pay into Social Security, then we're not really talking about income tax relief, are we? And if what we're really talking about is payroll tax relief, doesn't that mean billions of dollars in lost revenue for a Social Security trust fund that is already badly underfinanced?
Revealing article by Stanley Kurtz, who has been doing the mainstream media's job for them in investigating Obama's past connections.
To get a sense of where the New Party stood politically, consider some of its early supporters: Barbara Dudley of Greenpeace; Steve Cobble, political director of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coaltion; prominent academics like Frances Fox Piven, coauthor of the “Cloward-Piven strategy” and a leader of the drive for the “motor-voter” legislation Obama later defended in court on behalf of ACORN; economist Juliet Schor; black historian Manning Marable; historian Howard Zinn; linguist Noam Chomsky; Todd Gitlin; and writers like Gloria Steinem and Barbara Ehrenreich. Socialist? Readers can draw their own conclusions. At one point, Sifry does describe the party’s goals as “social democratic.” In any case, the New Party clearly stands substantially to the left of the mainstream Democratic party.
Zinn, Chomsky and Ehrenreich? That's pretty far left.
If you remember, that was the question for most of the winter and spring of this year. Despite having a mathematical advantage over Hillary, Obama found himself unable to seal the deal until after the primaries were over.
Of course, eventually he became the nominee and must currently be considered the most likely next President. But are there cracks in that confident, self-assured demeanor? Over at Talk Left, Big Tent Democrat dismisses recent polling:
DKos/R2000 has Obama by 7, 50-43. This is down significantly from Obama's consistent double digit leads in this poll. Rasmussen has Obama steady - with a 5 point 50-45 lead for the fourth consecutive day. Hotline actually trends towards Obama, up 2 for a 10 point 50-40 lead, UPDATE - Hotline today - narrows to 7. IBD/TIPP has Obama by 5, 46-41. Battleground has Obama by 4.
The question is the spread now. Obama will win. The last debate did nothing significant for McCain. Downticket should be our focus now.
Translation: There's no real reason for McCain to be rallying right now, so it doesn't matter. Really? I think the fact that there's no specific reason could be quite a cause for concern for Obama partisans. Note that most of the polls have not shown Obama breaking the 50% barrier. I've talked about this a lot in the past but this is a systemic problem for the Democrats. Do you know who the last Democrat was to get 50.1% of the general election vote or better?
Lyndon Johnson, in 1964. Carter got 50.08%, and Clinton never managed 50% (partly because of Ross Perot). In that same period of time, Nixon, Reagan, Reagan, Bush I and Bush 2004 all managed better than 50%.
"I want you to believe," said the candidate, clad in an open-necked shirt and barn jacket. "Not so much believe just in me but believe in yourselves. Believe in the future. Believe in the future we can build together. I'm confident together we can't fail."
There was a carnival atmosphere among the crowd of some 4,000, who almost drowned Mr Obama out as he reached his crescendo and said: "I promise you. We won't just win New Hampshire. We will win this election and, you and I together, we're going to change the country and change the world."
Oh, Lord. A barn jacket? Anybody remember Kerry in the barn jacket?
For the silly article of the day, check out this suggestion that what the GOP needs in 2012 is North American Union fruitcake Lou Dobbs:
This suggests that if Obama wins, the real political energy in the country over the next several years may come from a new populist political force. Would someone challenge Obama from the left? Unlikely. But already there are arguments from such political theorists as Michael Barone and Steve Sailer that the cheap mortgages, which led to the housing crisis, which precipitated the financial crisis, were directly related to the immigration boom. Such arguments are made-to-order for someone like CNN's Lou Dobbs, who has recently been railing against the lackluster efforts to solve the financial crisis with gusto, much as he attacks the government's failures to enforce immigration laws.
In other words, Dobbs -- or a counterpart -- is likely to be a "third party" political force to watch after November 4. That's not politics as usual. But neither is the era we're now facing.
Fascinating Article on Obama, Conformity and the Media
Like most of you, I've been amused at the photo displays put together at ZombieTime. But apparently the guy who did those can also write quite well.
Because it all boils down to this: Obama supporters presume that increasing Obama's perceived support will induce informational conformity in the American public. In other words, Obama supporters operate on the assumption that individual McCain supporters or undecided voters will in actuality change their minds about who to vote for if they perceive that a majority of people are supporting Obama. The imagined line of thinking is, "Gee, if so many people like this Obama guy, then my impression of him must be wrong; I trust the group's wisdom more than my own impressions."
Not sure it's all perception here, but the writer makes an excellent case.
The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end.
Jackson believes that, although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they'll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.
He flatly said that McCain voted with Obama on a tax hike. He didn't. He said McCain's healthcare plan amounted to a tax hike. It doesn't. Biden said we "must" drill for oil, but that ain't how he's voted. He said he's for clean coal, but just this month he passionately insisted to a voter that "we're not supporting clean coal" and vowed "no coal plants here in America." The scrapper from Scranton boasted about bonding with the common folks at a restaurant that's been closed for two decades.
"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain's ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.
Gosh, the AP reports, there's no evidence they were pals. Just because they served on some board together, just because Obama launched his political career at their home, why would anybody think they are pals. As for the racial angle:
Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee "palling around" with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?
Yeah, I don't get it either. Apparently you're not allowed to criticize a black presidential nominee.
15. Obama has several overarching international themes:
- the need to restore US leadership This gets a strong response from campaign audiences. He stresses his multilateralist credentials, his commitment to Nato and transatlantic partnership, and his support for strong international institutions (the campaign are sympathetic to the Prime Minister’s institutional reform ideas, but have focused little on them so far). Obama has said that he admires Bush Senior, JFK and even Reagan – this is no doubt meant to show a sort of “bipartisan realism”;
Of course, what Obama has in mind is followership, not leadership. We become more like Europe and follow the dictates of the United Nations. And this notion that Obama admires Reagan is just more lies from the Lightbringer. Here's what he had to say about Reagan in Dreams from My Father:
IN 1983, I DECIDED to become a community organizer. There wasn't much detail to the idea; I didn't know anyone making a living that way. When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds.
