SmartRemarks

I really find it hard to believe… even if the McCain campaign has no ethical compunctions about this sort of thing, you’d think they’d be tactically smarter by now.

But no:  according to the L.A. Times, McCain’s people are now dredging up a months-old story and accusing the paper of “suppressing” a video showing Barack Obama at a years-old farewell party for Rashid Khalidi, in an attempt to connect Obama to another supposed “terrorist.” Read the rest of this entry »

As my last couple of posts should demonstrate, I can’t write about all politics all the time. I wouldn’t want to. But this is a political season, and there’s no doubt that the topic is on the front burner. We can all understand the reasons why.

We are seven days away from a momentous change in this country. One week from today, all the waiting and the suspense and the anticipation will be over, and Barack Obama will be elected president.

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Palin in a $2500 Valentino jacket

As The Politico has reported and The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein has elaborated (complete with a slideshow), the Republican National Committee has spent over $150,000 on clothing and makeup for Sarah Palin and her family since the beginning of September, including a single Needless Markup Nieman Marcus spree that ran to over $75,000.

Now, this may seem like a trivial issue to raise in the final weeks of a high-stakes political campaign, when genuinely important issues are on the table (and at least one side has been trying to talk about them)… but remember, these are the people who raised a hue and cry about John Edwards’ $400 haircut. This is the campaign that’s pulling out of swing states and crying about how it can’t afford enough advertising. And this comes when McCain and Palin are trying their damnedest to relate to “Joe the plumber” and other working-class, middle-American voters.

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There’s been more heat than light in recent days about alleged election fraud of various kinds. Today at electoral-vote.com there’s a good piece about some of the real problems involved here (emph. mine):

Challenges Could Disenfranchise Millions of Voters

The Help America Vote Act, passed after the 2000 debacle in Florida, mandates that states have a statewide data base of eligible voters to help people vote and to prevent fraud. However, these data bases are full of minor errors and hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of voters may be disenfranchised as a result. To make this clear, consider the five newly registered voters listed below on the left. The data for the same people (matched by social security number) appears in the drivers license data base below on the right.

Unless very carefully programmed, the software might reject all these new voters on the grounds of suspected fraud because the data don’t agree. Could the software be made smart enough to do “fuzzy matching?” Of course, but only if the people writing it were instructed to do so. In addition, in many states criminals have recently been purged from the rolls–along with everybody else with the same name as any criminal. But there is much dispute as to which crimes disqualify one, what about people who have served their time, and people who have been pardoned? Even if the laws are clear, which they generally aren’t, the data bases are so riddled with errors and the clerical personnel so ill-trained, that the whole issue of voter registration could be a time bomb that explodes on election day.

There have already been numerous lawsuits filed by the state Republican Parties challenging thousands of newly registered voters, most of whom are Democrats. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday against a GOP lawsuit trying to disqualify 200,000 new voters in Ohio whose voter registration data does not agree with other state data bases (like the examples above). In a Montana case, a federal judge ruled that the Republicans had filed the case “with the express intent to disenfranchise voters.” In some cases it is the Democrats going to court to prevent a (usually Republican) secretary of state from purging eligible voters. In other words, attempting to disenfranchise voters has become just another campaign tactic. It is virtually always the Republicans trying to purge (new) voters because the new voters are so heavily weighted towards the Democrats. If they can eliminate 100,000 voters, they will probably get rid of 80,000 Democrats and 20,000 Republicans, which is clearly worth the effort.

There are also good pieces about related problems today in the Los Angeles Times…

SACRAMENTO — Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.

Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed…

…and the New York Times.

In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has accused [ACORN] of perpetrating voter fraud by intentionally submitting invalid registration forms, including some with fictional names like Mickey Mouse and others for voters who are already registered.

Based on the information that has come to light so far, the charges appear to be wildly overblown — and intended to hobble ACORN’s efforts. …

According to ACORN, most of the forms that are now causing controversy are ones that it flagged and that unsympathetic election officials then publicized. …

But for all of the McCain campaign’s manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence — anywhere in the country, going back many elections — of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to.

Meanwhile, Republicans aren’t saying anything about another more serious voter-registration scandal: the fact that about one-third of eligible voters are not registered. The racial gaps are significant and particularly disturbing. According to a study by Project Vote, a voting-rights group, in 2006, 71 percent of eligible whites were registered, compared with 61 percent of blacks, 54 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of Asian-Americans.

Much of the blame for this lies with overly restrictive registration rules. Earlier this year, the League of Women Voters halted its registration drive in Florida after the state imposed onerous new requirements.

The answer is for government to do a better job of registering people to vote. That way there would be less need to rely on private registration drives, largely being conducted by well-meaning private organizations that use low-paid workers. Federal and state governments should do their own large-scale registration drives staffed by experienced election officials. Even better, Congress and the states should adopt election-day registration, which would make such drives unnecessary.

GOP operatives are doing nothing more here than seeding the ground with FUD so that when Obama wins the White House and Dems gain Congressional seats, they can whine after the fact about how it’s allegedly “fraudulent.” Even if they’re sincere in their concern about possible voter fraud, they’re still straining at gnats while swallowing camels, given the vastly larger number of legitimate voters at risk of being disenfranchised. It’s despicable, and it needs to be opposed.

Fortunately Democrats and civil liberties organizations in general have learned from 2000 and 2004, and they’re not taking this lying down. There are quite a few countersuits and legal defense operations going on out there, prominently including the Obama campaign’s recent demand that the special prosecutor investigating the Justice Department scandal “include a review of any involvement by Justice Dept. and White House officials in supporting the McCain-Palin campaign [and RNC's] systematic development and dissemination of unsupported, spurious allegations of vote fraud.”

Well, I’ll be damned.

Apropos my last post, today the Chicago Tribune endorsed Barack Obama.

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It’s amazing the kinds of things that can share a single news cycle sometimes.

On the one hand, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is discovering that he was no better prepared than Sarah (“Bible Spice“/”starbursty winks“/”ethical violations“) Palin to be plastered all over the media as a symbol of “ordinary Americans,” and it’s really not much fun. Turns out he doesn’t have a plumbing license. And he doesn’t make anywhere near $250k/year. And he owes back taxes. And he’s a distant relative of Charles Keating. In light of all this, the McCain campaign (after kicking him into the spotlight in the first place) has developed instant amnesia about poor Joe… and even though he not only opposes the very concept of graduated income taxes but even thinks Social Security is “a joke,” he’s now realizing that he was “used by the Republican Party as a pawn to make their point.”

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Meanwhile…

In that media niche that actually concerns itself with matters of substance, it turns out that Joe also was registered to vote under a misspelled name. Which makes him exactly the kind of Ohio voter the GOP was trying to purge, until (as the Washington Post reports) the Supreme Court put the kibosh on that today.

Continuing in a substantive vein, the Post also endorsed Barack Obama today, in a piece that summarizes his qualities accurately and concisely:

There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president. …

Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle for very good. …

Mr. Obama’s temperament is unlike anything we’ve seen on the national stage in many years. He is deliberate but not indecisive; eloquent but a master of substance and detail; preternaturally confident but eager to hear opposing points of view. He has inspired millions of voters of diverse ages and races, no small thing in our often divided and cynical country. We think he is the right man for a perilous moment.

There’s endless debate about whether endorsements carry any weight with the voting public, of course, but this one is notable nevertheles for how succinctly it reflects public sentiment at this historical moment.

Along which lines, suspense is still mounting over whether the Chicago Tribune will break with 150 years of loyalty to Republican presidential candidates and endorse Obama. That would definitely make news.

As John McCain continues to trail Barack Obama badly in the polls, Republicans are reacting in different ways. Quite a few prominent conservatives are openly abandoning McCain, or at least singing the death knell for his campaign. From one perspective, this is just a matter of reasonably intelligent people seeing the writing on the wall, and (at least) distancing themselves from the debacle or (perhaps) acknowledging that they really, genuinely don’t have a good ticket. From another perspective, though, it’s a matter of rats leaving a sinking ship, and these “disloyal” figures are to be excoriated by True Conservatives.

What’s happening is that “movement” conservatives are getting a taste of the anxiety and self-doubt that non-conservatives have been suffering for years, as I wrote the other day. The difference is, they’re not used to it.
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Tonight was the fourth and final debate of this electoral season (third between the presidential contenders), and McCain went into it a very long way from victory. In a campaign where those fond of sports metaphors have accused him of throwing too many “hail Mary” passes already, tonight was his last chance.

He still didn’t score.

Enough of that, though; frankly I hate sports metaphors. Politics isn’t a game, and tonight’s debate certainly wasn’t particularly entertaining.

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Just a month ago (although it seems like a political lifetime now), progressives, liberals, and Democrats of every stripe were wailing and gnashing their teeth at how popular Sarah Palin was with the public, and what a surge John McCain had made in the polls, and how Barack Obama would surely snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and dash everyone’s hopes. The mainstream punditocracy and the blogosphere alike were awash in armchair quarterbacking, urging free advice of every sort on the candidate:  Obama needed to be angrier, to show his passion. He needed to be more soothing, to avoid frightening (white) voters. He needed to attack Palin. He needed to ignore Palin. He needed to rebut deceptive attacks. He needed to avoid seeming defensive. He needed to move to the left, to reassure his base. He needed to move to the right, to capture independents. He needed to be all things to all people simultaneously, and yet never forget to show the strength of his convictions. He needed to reframe everything.

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Tonight’s second presidential debate is being billed as a “town hall” format. But here are the rules:

Tuesday’s match-up at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., will be moderated by NBC’s Tom Brokaw, with the questions to be culled from a group of 100 to 150 uncommitted likely voters in the audience and another one-third to come via the Internet. … Brokaw selects the questions to ask from written queries submitted prior to the debate, according to the “contract.”

An audience member will not be allowed to switch questions. Under the deal, the moderator may not ask followups or make comments. The person who asks the question will not be allowed a follow-up either, and his or her microphone will be turned off after the question is read. A camera shot will only be shown of the person asking — not reacting.

While there will be director’s chairs (with backs and foot rests), McCain and Obama will be allowed to stand — but they can’t roam past their “designated area” to be marked on the stage. McCain and Obama are not supposed to ask each other direct questions.

So no follow-ups from anyone, period—not the audience, the moderator, or the candidates. That’s a pretty damn tightly controlled “town hall.” At least the first debate, with Jim Lehrer, allowed for a certain amount of give-and-take. This one sounds like nothing but a forum for reciting talking points.

(And where do they find that many “uncommitted” voters at this stage of the game, anyway?)

Nevertheless, I’ll be watching it, and coming back here later to update this post with reactions. My expectations, however, are not high.
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