Talking about Obama's playing of the race card, they manage to make it seem like it was McCain who played it.
With his rejoinder about playing “the race card,” Mr. Davis effectively assured that race would once again become an unavoidable issue as voters face an election in which, for the first time, one of the major parties’ nominees is African-American.
And with its criticism, the McCain campaign was ensuring that Mr. Obama’s race — he is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas — would again be a factor in coverage of the presidential race. On Thursday, it took the spotlight from Mr. Obama when he had sought to attack Mr. McCain on energy issues.
Odds are good it's because you're a dog. Uber-liberals like Josh Marshall think this new McCain ad is racist:
Why? Well because it shows images of Obama along with the flower of demure young femininity in the persons of Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears. Toss in some phallic landmarks and it should be obvious what the message is: Don't elect Obama or else he'll have sex with the sluttiest white gals around!
One obvious problem occurs to me. Most politicians only target people who are undecided. Does anybody really think that McCain needs to target racists? I mean, how many of them are likely to vote for Obama in the first place?
No, this commercial associates Obama with celebrities, and in particular with two of the ditziest and most superficial people on the planet.
Ross Douthat says the ad is childish. I don't know about that. One of Obama's real problems is that he remains a blank slate; if McCain can convince people that there's little substance behind the flowery talk, he could be halfway home.
Check out this description of minority journalists at an Obama speech:
When Obama walked on stage at the McCormick Center, many journalists in the audience leapt to their feet and applauded enthusiastically after being told not to do so. During a two-minute break halfway through the event, which was broadcast live on CNN, journalists ran to the stage to snap photos of Obama.
The Illinois senator talked about his trip overseas, reiterating his opinion that violence is down in Iraq but worsening in Afghanistan. And he expressed his approval of the Senate's passage of a major housing bill to help homeowners avert foreclosure.
Obama, who acknowledged that he needed a nap, stood up to say farewell to the audience of journalists, many of whom gave him another standing ovation.
Interesting article on the evolution of MoveOn, but I got a laugh out of this:
"The idea that MoveOn is like some foaming-at-the-mouth, swinging-from-the-trees liberal interest group is kind of a joke," says influential blogger Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake.com.
According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society website, Daly engaged in four single-handed firefights to protect his men, killing 15 Germans, silencing three enemy machine guns and wiping out an entire enemy patrol. He was later promoted to captain.
"I'm no hero," Daly often said, according to the Connecticut Post. "The heroes are those who gave their lives."
The ones who say they're not heroes are usually wrong.
Those goals are the basis of the recent campaign that I helped launch -- along with progressive bloggers such as Jane Hamsher and the Blue America PAC -- to target selected Democratic members of Congress who have been responsible for some of the worst acts of complicity and capitulation. The campaign we launched, which raised over $350,000 in a very short time largely from dissatisfied progressives, has run multimedia ads criticizing the likes of Blue Dog Rep. Chris Carney and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, despite the fact that neither has a primary challenger and despite the fact that Carney is quite vulnerable in his reelection effort this year.
It's not my business to tell the libs what to do, but this is really, really stupid. Targeting non-liberals in swing districts makes no sense. If, say, San Francisco had a moderate representing it, I could see liberals targeting her.
Update: Andrew Sullivan has a guest blogger from the odious American Conservative that Greenwald links to approvingly who says:
Bizarrely, it is those on the left who most want to pursue a real progressive agenda who are criticized for imitating the sort of lock-step partisan loyalty to political leadership that typified the Bush years, while those who are content to enable and collaborate in the worst abuses of the administration are the pragmatic and reasonable ones. This is the absurd, imaginary world in which Ron Paul and Russ Feingold are extremists and Joe Lieberman and John McCain are "centrists"--no wonder the arguments defending that world make no sense.
If you don't think that Ron Paul and Russ Feingold are extremists, it's probably because you're way out on the fringe yourself; not that it's surprising from a writer for Pat Buchanan's mag.
Clearly this poll has to be considered an outlier at this point; if there really has been a shift in sentiment it should show up pretty quickly.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain moved from being behind by 6 points among "likely" voters a month ago to a 4-point lead over Democrat Barack Obama among that group in the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. McCain still trails slightly among the broader universe of "registered" voters. By both measures, the race is tight.
The Friday-Sunday poll, mostly conducted as Obama was returning from his much-publicized overseas trip and released just this hour, shows McCain now ahead 49%-45% among voters that Gallup believes are most likely to go to the polls in November. In late June, he was behind among likely voters, 50%-44%.
Among registered voters, McCain still trails Obama, but by less. He is behind by 3 percentage points in the new poll (47%-44%) vs. a 6-point disadvantage (48%-42%) in late June.
