I just read a great post from Razib K over at Culture 11.  And he has some data that indicates that the polling could be WAY OFF BASE.

LINK.

Seth

My previous posts in this series are

• HERE - Introduction
• HERE - Fixing What’s Broken

ON JOHN MCCAIN
In light of my argument that I’ve made on the evils of the Bush administration, my brothers and friends have reminded me repeatedly that our choice doesn’t include George W. Bush. Obama is running against John McCain, not Bush. I understand the point, but Bush and his administration does factor into this for one simple reason, which I will demonstrate by asking some questions. Which candidate in his demeanor, his campaign, his rhetoric and his voting can be trusted to wage the battle against the Bush Legacy? In other words, who is more likely to work vociferously to restore human and constitutional rights? Who is more likely to restore the Rule of Law? Who is more likely to pursue criminal and human rights charges against people in the highest levels of government? Who is more likely to show the rest of the world that America’s promise to be a beacon of justice and opportunity is not just a sham, but that America can live up to the IDEA of her greatest virtues. My Answer is - Not John McCain.

Before I tell you why, I would be remiss if I didn’t admit up front that there is much that I admire about John McCain. His record of service to our country as a Naval Aviator and the 5+ long years he spent as a POW must never be forgotten. Throughout much of his career, he really and truly has been a maverick, rejecting the ideology of his own party and reaching across the aisle in compromise. He has obtained some bitter enemies to his right over the years as a result, George W. Bush being one of them.

But something has happened to John McCain. I think he has wanted to be president for so long and with such determination that he literally made a conscious decision that he would do anything to win. He left his honor and his principles behind long ago. For example, in the last two years, he has voted with Bush 90% of the time in the Senate. There are many examples but to me there are two especially notable ones. First when he voted in February, 2006 to allow the CIA to use “Enhanced Interrogation” (i.e. TORTURE) techniques, some of which were used against HIM as a POW in Vietnam. A Boston Globe article said at the time

JOHN MCCAIN this week had a choice between his principles and propping up a failed president. He chose the latter.

The second obvious example is when McCain dropped support for his own immigration bill, that would’ve been a very good non-xenophobic compromise. But in the end he didn’t support his own bill because it was more important to appease the base than to stick to his principles. In a debate this February, he actually said that if his own bill had come to the floor, he would’ve voted against it. At the Carpetbagger Report (a liberal blog) a few days after that debate, Steve Benen wrote:

Over the last year or so, when John McCain was struggling to get his presidential campaign back on track, one of his more notable challenges was reinventing himself — again.

When he got to Congress, McCain was a rather conventional conservative Republican. After his role in the Keating Five scandal, McCain took on a reform-minded persona. By 1999, he was a self-described “maverick” and moderate, who would move the GOP to the center. By 2004, McCain was back to being a conservative again. By 2007, he had positioned himself as an establishment Republican, and when that didn’t work out, McCain decided he’d become some kind of hybrid of the various McCains of the recent past.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say McCain has very few core values, and is willing to shift with the wind to get ahead. It’s one of the reasons he’s flip-flopped all over the place throughout the campaign.

In addition to his more recent voting record, there are two more examples of McCain losing his principles and his honor for the sake of winning the election. The first one is how he has run his campaign. We’ve had a few arguments about this on this blog and in terms of who has run the less honorable campaign, with more smears, lies and distortions, I think McCain is the clear winner (although Obama’s campaign isn’t entirely without guilt). The really sad thing to me is that McCain used the exact same strategy (and even the same people and organizations) as was used against him in by the Bush campaign in 2000. I am just very glad that this time around this evil campaign tactics and smears have not worked against Barack Obama. I hope they analyze this thoroughly and that the experts conclude that that kind of campaigning doesn’t work anymore in this age of abundant information. I’m hoping.

The last reason I believe that McCain the maverick, McCain the reformer, McCain the centrist is actually gone, never to return, is because of his pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate. If he loses tomorrow, historians will look back and consider this to be one of the greatest campaign blunders of all time. There are two reasons. First, by selecting Palin, he made it clear he was making an appeal to the extreme evangelical right-wing of the party’s base, thereby destroying his credibility as a centrist. Second, by picking someone with so little knowledge and experience, he removed the most powerful argument he had against Barack Obama, which was his experience. His selection of Palin has pretty much sealed the deal for me.

ON SARAH PALIN

First I want to emphasize something very important. As we have discussed abortion on this blog, I have made the (admittedly cynical) case that the republican party is really disingenuous when it comes to abortion, that every four years they wave the pro-life flags, get the pro-life believers motivated and fired up and then don’t actually do much to end abortion after the election. I think there is a strong case to be made for that point, but I think the best example against it in this election is Sarah Palin. I think Sarah Palin is genuinely pro-life and has put her money where her mouth is. I love seeing Trig Palin at rallies and I don’t doubt one iota, Sarah Palin’s commitment to the cause. My own son, who has Down Syndrome and is named Brig, gets to vote in his first election tomorrow and we have had to work hard to explain to him that he won’t be able to vote for Barack Obama AND Sarah Palin. I am not sure how he will vote. When we talk to him about the election we have tried to be neutral, but on the other hand he does hear us every day speak admiringly of Obama, so who knows? Only Brig does.

That being admitted, let me just say that I can’t stand Sarah Palin. I think she represents all the worst things about the republican party. I’m talking about the christian evangelical, divisive, right-wing, xenophobic, liberty-hating, religiously intolerant, Culture warring, flag-waving, ignorant, unthinking, partisan part of the party. She fires up that group more than any other politician since Pat Buchanan. That group really makes me mad and I believe represents the biggest threat to our country in existence today.

The fact that Sarah Palin is one 72 year old heartbeat away from the presidency scares the crap out of me. Remember how I said that we must fix the colossal errors of the Bush Administration and many of you have pointed out that Bush isn’t running this election. My answer is yes he is, and his name is Sarah Palin. I think she is like Dick Cheney with lipstick, only way more ignorant, more partisan and more ideological than Bush. Not only do I not think she herself has the intellect to actually lead our country well, I think she will just be a tool of the worst kind of people in the Republican Party. She would surround herself with extremists, (her track record in Alaska bears this out) and then she would become their tool. Like the emporor in Japan before and during the second World War. Much like I believe Bush has been a tool of Dick Cheney. Now lets suppose that, for some reason (maybe the abortion issue), my brothers actually convinced me not to vote for Obama. I can tell you right now, I would do like a favorite blogger, Molly and vote third party before I would risk putting Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. If McCain wins this election, I will pray four hours a day for God to maintain his health and beg him to please keep Sarah Palin away from the White House.

Honestly, I may have hoped that John McCain would get into office and let his mavericky, centrist cream rise to the top of his ideological churn. Now the best I imagine is buttermilk, left in the garage, three weeks past the expiration date.

Scott

He says:

McCain, just like Obama, believes that taxes should be levied for the purpose of funding social programs that redistribute income downwards. (We’ll leave aside, for the moment, the fact that both of them also believe that taxes should be levied for the purpose of funding a bloated military-industrial complex and other things that redistribute at least some of the income upward.) McCain and Obama may envision different forms and scopes for those programs, and those differences may or may not have profound consequences in practice. However, the McCain rhetoric is being employed to argue that just about any downward redistribution is a type of socialism. If it is (at least in McCain’s usage of the term) then McCain is a socialist. Maybe not as much of a socialist as Obama (we’ll leave aside welfare for the rich, for the moment) but a socialist nonetheless.

If the pinko pot wants to call the kettle red, well, have fun. One can argue that McCain is a lesser evil according to the manner in which he has framed the issue (leave aside welfare for defense contractors, because military spending isn’t actually spending, in the bipartisan consensus) but that’s about it. The party that expanded government spending for 8 years (even leaving aside military spending) and brought us the Medicare prescription drug benefit simply has no credibility on whining about redistribution. Of course, one could acknowledge this and still argue that at least McCain will spend less money on social programs (not so sure that’s true, and of course we’re leaving aside a whole pack of pachyderms in the room, but whatever). Still, the rhetoric as currently framed defies credibility. As McCain and Palin are currently framing the argument, any sort of redistributive social program is welfare and hence socialism (according to their usages, mind you–Gov. Palin, what do you think about Alaska’s oil fund?).

The post is HERE and the commentary over there is intelligent as usual. You should join in.

Scott

But McCain is funnier by far.

LINK

EXAMPLE:

Obama repeats his claim that he supports net spending cut. Eliminate programs that don’t work–bold move! These programs are always nameless, which is probably one of the reasons they don’t work. Ethic of responsibility? What? That’s dangerously close to calling on people to accept austerity. McCain is stuttering, and reverts to his litany about energy independence. In the mythical world where we have energy independence, life will be beautiful. Perhaps Aeolus will power the entire grid. Spending freeze! (Obama says that’s a hatchet.) Ethanol is bad; eliminate tariff on Brazilian sugar-based ethanol. Fight the earmarks! What does McCain have against planetariums? McCain wants to use hatchets and scalpels.

Hatchets and scalpels and katanas, oh my!

Obama: You’re just more of the same, John. But where is Joe the Plumber in all this? I believe he may have been left behind. McCain: “You’re not convincing”–it’s not very convincing to say that your opponent isn’t convincing.

McCain: Why are your allies being so mean to me and Sarah? Repudiate John Lewis! Obama’s spent more money on negative ads than anyone (because he’s spent a lot more on ads than anyone else). He broke his word on public financing! Now it’s getting a bit more heated. Obama: All of McCain’s ads are negative, but no one cares about this, so let’s talk issues. Obama starts referring to 527s. Wow, this debate has become the inside baseball World Series.

Scott

AKA, buying votes. LINK. This is why I hate politics:

The crisis is taking money out of people’s pockets; McCain should promise to put a lot of money right back into them, and to do so immediately, with as large a tax rebate as he thinks he can propose without the media laughing him to scorn. And at the same time, he should promise that every dollar the federal government earns off the bailout, every dollar saved from cutting earmarks, and every dollar saved as we draw down into Iraq, will go directly into some other pander-iffic proposal - like, say, an emergency relief fund for retirees whose 401(k)s have lost more than some specific percentage of their value in the last month. Wrap it all in a bow, call it a “Bailout for Main Street,” and put as much energy into selling it as they’ve put into trying to rebrand Barack Obama as radical, vacuous, unready to lead. (And yes, they can still talk about Ayers, too.)

Steve

Imaginary answer from imaginary politics that is.

LINK

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post has this article on the two candidates health proposals. She endorses Obama’s plan but spends very little time discussing it. Ms. Marcus does the best job, by far, of anything I have read in the MSM explaining the rationale behind McCain’s proposals . His proposals are very sensible but also strongly counter intuitive which makes them hard to sell politically. Marcus does a beautiful job of explaining the reasons for the McCain plan and debunking the misrepresentations of the plan from the Obama campaign. Key paragraphs:

The central aspect of McCain’s approach is to eliminate the existing tax preference for employer-sponsored health care. Under the current system, employees don’t pay tax on the value of the health insurance they receive from employers, even though most individuals buying insurance on their own don’t get that break and have to purchase insurance with after-tax dollars.
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The existing arrangement is an irrational artifact of World War II wage controls, when companies competing for scarce workers dangled health insurance to lure them. The result is a tax subsidy that has ballooned to $200 billion a year. No one designing a health-care system from scratch would set things up this way. Tying insurance to employment makes little sense in a world where workers hop from job to job. Excluding the value of insurance from taxable income leads to overconsumption of health care, driving up costs. It favors better-off employees who, because they pay higher marginal rates, derive a greater benefit from not being taxed on their health insurance.

Eliminating this distortion — if done the right way, and that’s a big if — could help more Americans obtain insurance, push down costs and reduce the drain of health-care costs on the federal budget. Don’t believe me? Read Jason Furman, Obama’s top economic adviser, writing just in April: “The most promising way to move forward in all three dimensions — coverage, cost, and long-run fiscal situation — is to replace the employer exclusion with a tax credit.”

UPDATE: Ezra Klein has a persuasive take on the Marcus article as well as a persuasive critique of McCain’s plan.

Steve

LINK

LINK

Scott

Andrew Sullivan wants to know why Megan McCardle is hyperventilating over the bailout but not about:

How about nominating Palin in wartime? I don’t remember Megan panicking about that.

Megan replies:

Andrew may not have heard, but there have been a few interesting developments in the financial markets over the last few weeks.  As an economics blogger, I was regretfully forced to forgo full time devotion to the vice presidential race and turn to more trivial matters.

OUCH! Read the whole thing. Everything she says about the Palin nomination is spot on.

Sullivan’s obsession over Palin really is kind of sad and pitiful.

Steve

On Friday night at the debate, he couldn’t stop blathering on about earmarks.

Well lookie here. It’s the percentage of the federal budget going to earmarks.

I especially find it ironic since Sarah Palin is The Queen of Earmarks.

Scott

Ross Douthat links to this credible theory of Chris Orr that Palin is dragging down the campaign, not by her own incompetence, but by incompetent McCain campaign handlers, who have managed to drain the confidence out of her by overcoaching.  They would do better to let her flame out spectacularly then to slowly suffocate her with a pillow.

Steve

1. Don’t bailout anyone.

2. The USA utterly collapses into the 2nd Great Depressions.

3. We elect John McCain as president of the USA.

4. He get’s into WW III.

5. The increased productivity of the war gets us out of the 2nd Great Depression.

There you go…it’s bullet-proof. I know it’s bullet-proof because when I was in the 8th grade I remember reading that the industrial boom of the 2nd World War got us out the 1st Great Depression.

What am I missing here?

Seth