Palling around with terrorists

So by now you've probably heard that Sarah Palin has played the Ayers card, accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists". This, as McCain's own ad also invokes Ayers. As a result, Obama has taken the gloves off on McCain's own involvement in the biggest scandal of the 1980s, the savings & loan scandal, of which McCain was intimately involved. McCain was one of the "Keating Five". Obama's people have set up a new website, Keating Economics, where you can see just how involved McCain was in helping out the super-rich at the expense of us regular Americans. Quite apropos in this time of economic crisis, no? Here's the full video explaining just what McCain did.

But it's much more than that. If McCain and Palin want to play the terrorist card, then let's look at who has the REAL terrorism problem. Who was really "palling around" with secessionists who despise America? Sarah Palin.



And who tried to provide cover for domestic terrorists that would MURDER abortion doctors and volunteers? John McCain.



But by going down this dark path, the Washington Post reports that at Palin rallies, you now have overt cases of racism and even assassination threats.

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

....

The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Palin also told those gathered that Obama doesn't like American soldiers. "He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' " she said, drawing boos from a crowd that had not been told Obama was actually appealing for more troops in Afghanistan.

And at a McCain rally, when he asks who is the "real" Obama, you have an audience member yell out "a terrorist!" It almost looks like McCain suddenly realizes the Pandora's Box of hatred that he's opened up, but it's too late.



All this led to Keith Olbermann's latest Special Comment on Palin's remarks.



Get ready for more of this, Bruin Dems. Digby warned us last year of the coming deluge of right-wing violence if Obama wins.

I predict that we are going to see a remarkable resurgence of rightwing violence if the Democrats take full control of the government. These people are always surprisingly cooperative when the government is run by Republicans and then rediscover their "anti-government" beliefs when Democrats share or dominate the government. I can't imagine why that would be.

The Tennessee church murders and the murder of the Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman were just the first two salvos.

Update: And now from London comes a story of a black man getting shot simply for wearing an Obama t-shirt.

Powerful anti-McCain ads

This first user-created video is too long to be a commercial, but is incredibly powerful.



This one, if ran nationally, could be devastating for McCain.

McCain picks Sarah Palin to get the Vagina-American vote

The Daily Show's Samantha Bee really nailed it about why McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. (Also, Fox News's Steve Doocy is a true moron. EPIC GEOGRAPHY FAIL.)



Stephen Colbert also highlighted the hypocrisy and cheap political ploy of it all.




Now, as for who Sarah Palin really is, BoBo2020 lists 45 different problems with Sarah Palin, ranging from scandals she's involved in, dangerous policies she espouses, recent gaffes she's made, to her radical right-wing beliefs. The biggest problem? She's a global warming denying, pro-ANWR drilling, pro-life even in the cases of rape and incest, Dominionist movement belonging, creationist loving, oil company shill.

As for why McCain picked her, this video may offer some clues. Turns out McCain's Brain was also miked during the rally introducing her.

Devastating new web ad against McCain

And it's the creation of fellow Kossack cartwrightdale. Devastating. Hopefully the DNC will take notice of this ad.



"Do you support Bush more today than you did four years ago?" Excellent question that should be repeated every day from now on.

Political Pokemon

ROFLMAO!!!

Lakers lost... Democrats win?

Now, I know that many of my fellow Bruin Democrats were cheering on the Lakers as they battled the Boston Celtics for the chance to take home a NBA championship ring. I, more of a Warriors fan myself, was cheering the Lakers on, hoping that UCLA Alum Jordan Farmar and Trevor Ariza would bring another championship to L.A.

Yet, despite MVP Kobe Bryant and all the prayers of L.A., the Lakers lost to the Celtics in a pretty nasty game five defeat. And while our home team may have lost, this bodes well for a Barack Obama win in November.

Every year the Lakers have won a NBA Championship during an election year in recent history, the Republican candidate has won.

In 1972, the Lakers won, paving the way for a Nixon victory that fall. In 1980 the Lakers won again, as did Ronald Reagan. The 1984-85 season started with Reagan's reelection and was punctuated with--you guessed it--a Lakers championship. The Lakers won again in 1988 and so did George Bush Sr. George Bush was 'elected' in 2000, while the Lakers won another championship. And, as we all know, Bush was reelected in 2004 despite the Detroit Piston's best efforts (they beat the Lakers in the finals 4-1).

I am sure many Democrats would have enjoyed a Laker win followed by an Obama win in November. But at least the Laker's loss is joining a strong tide of unfavorable conditions for Republican John McCain.

So, sorry Kobe, and thanks Boston for making this a good year for Democrats to take back the white house.

Obama's electability & coattail advantage over Hillary

silver spring recently did an excellent analysis of the SurveyUSA numbers that show Obama has greater coattails than Hillary. This coattail effect was shown last week when Democrats took control of Dennis Hastert's former seat in Illinois. Regardless of who's president, unless the Democrats get a supermajority, expect to see the remaining Senate Republicans filibuster all good progressive legislation, especially under a Democratic president. So the issue of coattails becomes important.

I want to extend what silver spring did by looking at Rasmussen's state numbers. Now, I trust SurveyUSA the most, as they've consistently shown themselves to get very accurate results. In 2004, they did the best job of any polling firm, and their track record's holding this year too. The second best pollster from 2004 is Rasmussen Reports. Let's look at their state numbers. I've bolded which Dem does better against McCain in each state.

State	Dem	Rep	Dem Margin
California	Obama 53%	McCain 38%	Win by 15%
	Clinton 46%	McCain 39%	Win by 7%
Colorado	Obama 46%	McCain 39%	Win by 7%
	Clinton 35%	McCain 49%	Lose by 14%
Connecticut	Obama 50%	McCain 38%	Win by 12%
	Clinton 47%	McCain 44%	Win by 3%
Florida	Obama 43%	McCain 47%	Lose by 4%
	Clinton 40%	McCain 47%	Lose by 7%
Iowa	Obama 44%	McCain 41%	Win by 3%
	Clinton 37%	McCain 47%	Lose by 10%
Michigan	Obama 41%	McCain 44%	Lose by 3%
	Clinton 43%	McCain 46%	Lose by 3%
Minnesota	Obama 53%	McCain 38%	Win by 15%
	Clinton 42%	McCain 47%	Lose by 5%
Missouri	Obama 40%	McCain 42%	Lose by 2%
	Clinton 42%	McCain 43%	Lose by 1%
Nevada	Obama 50%	McCain 38%	Win by 12%
	Clinton 40%	McCain 49%	Lose by 9%
New Hampshire	Obama 49%	McCain 36%	Win by 13%
	Clinton 43%	McCain 41%	Win by 2%
New Jersey	Obama 43%	McCain 45%	Lose by 2%
	Clinton 50%	McCain 39%	Win by 11%
New Mexico	Obama 44%	McCain 44%	Tie
	Clinton 38%	McCain 50%	Lose by 12%
Ohio	Obama 40%	McCain 46%	Lose by 6%
	Clinton 40%	McCain 46%	Lose by 6%
Oregon	Obama 49%	McCain 40%	Win by 9%
	Clinton 42%	McCain 45%	Lose by 3%
Pennsylvania	Obama 43%	McCain 44%	Lose by 1%
	Clinton 44%	McCain 46%	Lose by 2%
South Dakota	Obama 38%	McCain 48%	Lose by 10%
	Clinton 38%	McCain 50%	Lose by 12%
Virginia	Obama 44%	McCain 49%	Lose by 5%
	Clinton 41%	McCain 51%	Lose by 10%
Washington	Obama 44%	McCain 45%	Lose by 1%
	Clinton 40%	McCain 48%	Lose by 8%
Wisconsin	Obama 44%	McCain 43%	Win by 1%
	Clinton 38%	McCain 50%	Lose by 12%

And for you visual types, here it is in graphical form, based on the Democratic margin of victory.



In 14 of those states Rasmussen surveyed, Obama outperforms Hillary against McCain. In only 3 states does Hillary do better, and only in one of them does she actually have the lead over McCain, in New Jersey. And no, a Democrat is not going to lose New Jersey, no matter what some Hillary supporters are saying. A "safe" blue state is not suddenly flipping red in 2008.


Now, regarding what I said earlier about the polls agreeing? When do SurveyUSA and Rasmussen agree on who does better against McCain? Well, pretty much, they agree who does better almost every single time. So let's look at who does better against McCain, starting from Obama's most favorable to Clinton's most favorable, per Rasmussen, with the SurveyUSA margin in parentheses. I've also bolded the ones where there's a key Senate race going on.

Colorado, Obama +21 (SUSA: Obama +15)
Nevada, Obama +21 (SUSA: Obama +13)
Minnesota, Obama +20 (SUSA: Obama +3)
Iowa, Obama +13 (SUSA: Obama +14)
Wisconsin, Obama +13 (SUSA: Obama +7)
New Mexico, Obama +12 (SUSA: Obama +7)
Oregon, Obama +12 (SUSA: Obama +13)
New Hampshire, Obama +11 (SUSA: Obama +10)
Connecticut, Obama +9 (SUSA: Obama +11)
California, Obama +8 (SUSA: Obama +1)
Washington, Obama +7 (SUSA: Obama +16)
Virginia, Obama +5 (SUSA: Obama +10)
Florida, Obama +3 (SUSA: Clinton +11)
South Dakota, Obama +2 (SUSA: Obama +8)
Ohio, Tie (SUSA: Tie)
Missouri, Clinton +1 (SUSA: Clinton +2)
New Jersey, Clinton +13 (SUSA: Clinton +5)


Only three states give contradictory data, and with the margins so close, you can't really say that there's contradictory data for Michigan. In the other two, Rasmussen has Obama doing significantly better than Hillary.

Florida, Obama +3 (SUSA: Clinton +11)
Michigan, Tie (SUSA: Obama +1)
Pennsylvania, Obama +1 (SUSA: Clinton +6)

(Yes, I know, New Jersey has a Senate race too. But after Estabrook dropped out, in terms of it being a "key" Senate race, well... it's not. For now.)


Now, just because Obama or Hillary does better than McCain in those numbers I've listed above doesn't mean they'll actually win those states. Sometimes it's a matter of not losing by as much as the other person.

Strangely enough, both Rasmussen and SurveyUSA show Clinton and Obama performing the same against McCain, though Rasmussen has both of them losing by 6 points to McCain, while SurveyUSA has both of them handily beating him by 10 points! Now that's unexpected, unless you think that Ohioans really don't care which person's the Democratic candidate. But that still doesn't explain going from losing the state by 6 to winning the state by 10.

But for the most part, the two polling firms agree on who does better against McCain, thus making us more sure in stating that that candidate really does indeed have an advantage over the other one. And in terms of possible coattails, it's almost pretty obvious Obama will do a better job. Especially in Colorado and Oregon, where both firms show Obama does considerably better than Clinton against McCain, the coattail factor may be critical in ensuring a Democrat wins those two Senate seats, especially with the polling in those two Senate races not exactly in our favor right now.

Of course, all this just a snapshot in time, and things can change if some revelations come to light in the next couple weeks or months on any of the candidates. But for now, it does seem that the talk about Obama being a map-changer is justified by the polling data, from both SurveyUSA and Rasmussen.

McCain's Yes We Can video

Thanks to Andy Cobb and the folks at BarelyPolitical.com for making these two video parodies of the Yes We Can video a few posts below.

CNN poll: Edwards DESTROYS GOP candidates

(also posted on DailyKos)

So CNN released a poll that matched up our top three with the GOP's top four (sans Thompson), and the numbers could not be more stark. John Edwards DESTROYS all the GOP candidates by the widest margins of our top three. So here, I do what I've done before in making a pretty graph to look at the numbers. For each GOP candidate, in the margin column I've bolded the race that would give us the best margin of victory.

CNN poll results (.pdf)

GENERAL	ELECTION	MATCH-UPS
Democrat	Republican	Margin
Clinton 51%	Giuliani 45%	Win by 6%
Obama 52%	Giuliani 45%	Win by 7%
Edwards 53%	Giuliani 44%	Win by 9%
Clinton 54%	Romney 43%	Win by 11%
Obama 54%	Romney 41%	Win by 13%
Edwards 59%	Romney 37%	Win by 22%
Clinton 48%	McCain 50%	Lose by 2%
Obama 48%	McCain 48%	Tie
Edwards 52%	McCain 44%	Win by 8%
Clinton 54%	Huckabee 44%	Win by 10%
Obama 55%	Huckabee 40%	Win by 15%
Edwards 60%	Huckabee 35%	Win by 25%

Notice a pattern? :-)

So, what does that translate to in graphical form? Visually, it becomes quite obvious.




Unfortunately, the CNN poll didn't provide demographic breakdowns like SurveyUSA always provides, so I can't do additional armchair analysis of what percent of Republicans cross over to vote for our candidates, or Democrats that choose to vote GOP. But I think here, the numbers speak for themselves.

The Edwards-Huckabee numbers are especially surprising, given that many of us were worried about Huckabee's economic populist stances taking away from Edwards. But if I may armchair pundit, perhaps we're seeing the reverse of the situation where you have a Republican versus a Democrat running as Republican-lite, and the voters choose the real thing. Here, you have a real economic populist, against a guy who talks a good game, but his Fair Tax bullshit sort of throws that out the window. Looks like voters go for the real economic populist.

It should be noted that some of these matchups differ wildly in other polls. For example, Rasmussen has Hillary doing better against Rudy than Edwards does. And that poll shows Edwards leading Huckabee by only a 44%-40% margin, quite a bit different from CNN's 25-point blowout.

So this CNN poll is just one poll. It may be a good or bad poll, we'll see. I'd like to see other non-partisan polling firms come out with these matchups to more accurately gauge what the national mood is.

But still, these CNN poll questions were asked of the same 912 registered voters, so to go from a 50%-48% McCain win over Hillary to a 60%-35% blowout of Huckabee by Edwards means there was a pretty significant chunk of that group that would prefer McCain to Hillary, but would rather back Edwards over Huckabee. That's a 27-point swing we're talking about. Over one quarter of the entire electorate! That's the difference between a nailbiter that comes down to one state, and the Democrat winning over 450 electoral votes in a landslide.

And assuming they produced about as close to a random sample as you're gonna get with telephone polls, that would indicate that in other samples, we should see similar movement towards Edwards. The problem with the Rasmussen polls I linked to is that those were asked of different samples of people, so the cross-comparison doesn't hold as much meaning. So while their Hillary-Rudy poll showed Hillary up by 3 points, perhaps if they had asked those same people about Edwards-Rudy, Edwards could have had a bigger lead. Who knows? It's just that in a separate poll, they show Edwards tied with Rudy.

So what causes this huge shift in Edwards' favor? Average Republicans. They're willing to vote for Edwards over their party's candidate by at least a 20% clip in quite a few key swing states, including Ohio. (Even 30% or more if the candidate is Romney.) Average Republicans like this woman:




And as mentioned before, the margin of victory is also crucial in that it needs to be greater than the GOP's margin for theft, chicanery, and voter suppression. Did you guys really think the GOP is gonna suddenly stop intimidating black voters or shredding registration forms? I don't think so. A 3-point lead can be stolen, and nobody bats an eyelash, because it was all within the margin of error. But if the polls show our candidate up by double digits, and they lose, most Americans WOULD bat an eyelash over those results.

McCain--Still not the Right Guy for the Job

Not to kick a guy when he's down, but John McCain is still falling terribly short of impressing anybody. The New Yorker followed McCain around for a day, and nearly everything he had to say to the magazine represented exactly what the country doesn't want right now: a leader who mistakes tough decisions for easy ones.

When asked "Is Iraq a hard call?", McCain responded, "I think it’s not that hard, because I have had no doubt. It hasn’t been a struggle within me."

That kind of self-assured tone about Iraq sounds awfully familiar. It also makes me wonder whether the senator has given serious thought to the matter. I suspect that even the most confident neoconservatives question the wisdom of their ideology from time to time. Apparently, the senator never had a moment of doubt, which suggests that he couldn't have possibly fully considered the weight of the decision to commit the United States to nation-building.

Americans, not just Democrats, want someone with gravitas to secede President Bush. After all, eight years of unthinking hubris is quite enough.