The Turn Out

The biggest crap shoot of this election is foing to be the turnout. Who ultimately shows up to vote will determine who is elected. There is one potential model where Obama wins big and none of the mccain voters turn out. This would leave us short of the record turnout that some people have predicted. It is also possible depending on the lack of enthusiasm for mccain versus the fear of an obama presidency. McCain and the gop have done a very goood job trying to make sure that their base fears Obama.

People have evaluated his ads based on the idea that he is trying to scare the undecideds away from voting for obama but this tactic also works to scare your base into voting. Make them so fear the opponent that even though they dont particularly like you the fear of the other guy is so great that they just cant take the risk of letting him win. Here is the turnout discussion from last nights hardball.



I do have to take issue with the assertion that McCain is running his GOTV efforts in ohio and the other traditional battleground states. 538 did the work of actually visiting the offices in the battle ground states.

Offices in Troy, Ohio were closed on Saturday October 11. With perfect coincidental timing, two elderly women dropped by to volunteer but found the office shut. At Republican state headquarters in Columbus later the same day, one lonely dialer sat in a sea of unoccupied chairs. In Des Moines on September 25, another empty office. In Santa Fe on September 17, one dialer made calls while six chatted amongst themselves about how they didn't like Obama. In Raleigh this past Saturday, ten days before the election with early voting already open, two women dialed and a male staffer watched the Georgia-LSU game. In Durango, Colorado on September 20, the Republican office was locked and closed. Indiana didn't have McCain Victory offices when we were there in early October.

When the offices are open, they have reduced hours. We can confidently plan to get evening good-light photographs of a town after we visit the local McCain office, because we know it will be closing by 5 pm, as the office in Wilmington, North Carolina was this past Sunday. The plan is, get to inevitably closed/closing McCain office, get an hour of photos near sunset, then visit the bustling local Obama office.

It coming down to the wire. It appears Obama has done everything possible to take this thing. One day till election time.

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It was all in good fun.

McCain appeared on SNL last night and the skit was pretty funny. Tina Fey reprized her role as Palin and Palin was pretty well trashed in the skit. McCain came off pretty well. Cindy even made an appearance. I think this was clearly the first step in rehabbing his image should he lose, or even win, on tuesday. McCain is hoping that he can simply shrug off the tactics and tenor of his campaign after the election. He will give a shoulder shrug and a simple, "thats politics" and maybe throw in a bit about regretting that "some things got out of hand" but that was all Palin and Schmidts fault. McCain then will probably try and make a big gesture to President Obama, on climate change.

Climate change is the one area that Obama continuously credits mccain with good work. McCain will probably use this as a platform to rehab his maverick image. the media of course will be more than happy to assist in this. They never really believed that mccain was anything more than an honorable man trapped by the evil obama into making dastardly attacks on him...or something. Meanwhile liberals everywhere will be banging their heads against the wall.

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Sad, Sad, Story

But the other story, the story on which we've had a running eight-week exclusive in 36 separate On the Road pieces and counting, is that John McCain's ground campaign is just not happening. It hasn't been happening, without Sarah Palin there might be four or five volunteers across the entire nation left, and now, per Mosk's piece at WaPo, it looks like it will be happening even less.

Head over to 538 and read the tragedy that is McCain's ground game at work. Look at the photo's by Brett Marty and tell me you dont feel bad for the people in the photos.

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Determinist v. Free Will

As the campaign winds down there is going to be an ongoing narrative war. There will be two camps, the determinist and free will. The determinist camp will be supporting the idea that no matter what events happened in the campaign mccain was going to lose and that the macro factors such as general anger at Bush and Republicanism were most important. the free will camp will hold that McCain was in this campaign and that he, more than any other republican could have overcome the macro factors because of his unique campaign branding. these people look at the tactics and strategy employed by mccain and use those as the determining factor of the election.

I tend to come down in favor of macro factors setting up the playing field tilted in obama's direction to the point that mccain needed to run a flawless race with obama running an average or bad campaign. Just the opposite has happened. McCain has run a terrible race. Many will assert that mccain has not actually run a bad race, they will point to the numbers coming out of the convention and during the summer as an indicator. This is a flawed argument because the numbers coming out of the convention fit in line with historical trends coming out of conventions. Also, the polling during the summer has never been a particularly great indicator of where the race is going to end up and that held true here.

Instead McCain made a series of highly visible and very poor choices. He made the choice to run to the right in an attempt to salvage his "base". He ran as a pure conservative after the primary in defiance of his brand name. He made the conscious decision to embrace bush instead of creating separation. McCain figured at the time that he could win on an experience versus change argument and that by throwing bush under the bus he would be making too great a concession towards change. McCain proceeded to run a fairly traditional Republican campaign on matters of national security and taxes. The when it came down to crunch time after a fairly forgettable summer he picked sarah palin.

Palin was a terrible pick. She was a complete reversal on the one consistent message mccain had, experience. McCain needed to present a perfect image to the voters to separate himself from the macro factors that weigh down genric republicans. he not only failed to rise to this challenge but ran away from it and into the arms of his party hardliners. Then he failed in his response to the financial crisis making himself look erratic and foolish.

So McCain had a mountain to climb at the beginning of the election. It was not an impossible climb but it was a really tough climb. In the end he has put his foot wrong one too many times and it is doubtful he recovers. Be careful of anyone who attributes things solely to either the macro or micro factors because the truth is in the middle.

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McCain and the Press Coverage

Politico has a story up on the press coverage of the election. Specifically they are addressing the issue of bias in media coverage. The entire post is very interesting and worth a read. Look particularly at the premise of the piece contained in the first line, "thats not balanced". This is a major signal that one group is upset that the stories run are not perfectly equal in tone and tenor. Here is happens to be coming from the McCain campaign.

The McCain campaign would very much like for the stories about the election to be "balanced". Balance is a term of art that means every time you mention a negative thing about mccain you have to cancel it out with one about obama. This of course fails to take into account a situation where one candidate, mccain, is far more negative than the other. McCain has been almost exclusively negative personal attacks since the convention. The only exception might be this socialism stuff he is floating although that is so dubious and lacking in support it really is a personal pejorative. The McCain people are upset because the stories actually reflect reality,

The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s researchers found that John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative.

What’s more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain — and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent).

You call that balanced?

No, i call it the truth. The truth is that mccain has been more negative and more personal this election cycle. his attacks have not only lacked effect the have lacked merit. Having been informed of both of these issues McCain has not opted to go the traditional route of apologizing or defending and pulling the ad. Instead what he has done is push on with discredited ads in the face of press opposition. The politico crew call this, the mccain backlash.

One is McCain backlash. The Republican once was the best evidence of how little ideology matters. Even during his “maverick” days, McCain was a consistent social conservative, with views on abortion and other cultural issues that would have been odds with those of most reporters we know. Yet he won swooning coverage for a decade from reporters who liked his accessibility and iconoclasm and supposed commitment to clean politics.

Now he is paying. McCain’s decision to limit media access and align himself with the GOP conservative base was an entirely routine, strategic move for a presidential candidate. But much of the coverage has portrayed this as though it were an unconscionable sellout.

Since then the media often presumes bad faith on McCain’s part. The best evidence of this has been the intense focus on the negative nature of his ads, when it is clear Obama has been similarly negative in spots he airs on radio and in swing states.

Now you can certainly take issue with he idea that Obama's ads have been as dirty and untrue as mccain's ads have been. Obama has stayed on policy, attacking mccain relentlessly on policy and on his policy reactions in the campaign. The part about the media assuming bad faith on McCain's part is certainly true. I dont want to give the politico crew too much credit because they really do try and carry mccain water in a couple places,

It is not our impression that many reporters are rooting for Obama personally. To the contrary, most colleagues on the trail we’ve spoken with seem to find him a distant and undefined figure. But he has benefited from the idea that negative attacks that in a normal campaign would be commonplace in this year would carry an out-of-bounds racial subtext. That’s why Obama’s long association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was basically a nonissue in the general election.

Journalists’ hair-trigger racial sensitivity may have been misplaced, but it was not driven by an ideological tilt.

Rev Wright was a nonissue because it was not an issue. It became an issue because of race. Politico is making the assertion that had it been a white pastor and a white candidate we would be seeing all wright all the time and we know thats not true. See sarah palin and her witch hunting pastor. The truth is that many of the attacks were raced based. anything having to do with his middle name is a racial thing.

Politico finishes the piece with a look at the systemic biases institutionalized in the media and i think this is possibly the most important section.

Beyond the particular circumstances of McCain v. Obama, there are other factors in any race that almost always matter more than the personal views of reporters.

The strongest of these is the bias in favor of momentum. A candidate who is perceived to be doing well tends to get even more positive coverage (about his or her big crowds or the latest favorable polls or whatever). And a candidate who is perceived to be doing poorly tends to have all events viewed through this prism.

Not coincidentally, this is a bias shared by most of our sources. This is why the bulk of negative stories about McCain are not about his ideology or policy plans — they are about intrigue and turmoil. Think back to the past week of coverage on Politico and elsewhere: Coverage has been dominated by Sarah Palin’s $150,000 handbags and glad rags, by finger-pointing in the McCain camp, and by apparent tensions between the candidate and his running mate.

These stories are driven by the flood of Republicans inside and out of the campaign eager to make themselves look good or others look bad. This always happens when a campaign starts to tank. Indeed, there was a spate of such stories when Obama’s campaign hit turmoil after the GOP convention and the Palin surge.

For better or worse, the most common media instincts all have countervailing pressures. Countering the bias in favor of momentum is the bias against boredom. We’ve seen that several times this cycle — an outlying poll number being pumped to suggest big changes in a race that is basically unchanged. There’s a good chance you’ll see this phenomenon more in the next week.

Then there is the bend-over-backward bias. This is when journalists try so hard to avoid accusations of favoritism that it clouds critical judgment. A good example were stories suggesting Palin held her own or even won her debate against Joe Biden when it seemed obvious she was simply invoking whatever talking points she had at hand, hanging on for dear life.

Finally, one of the biases of journalists is the same one that is potent for almost all people: the one in favor of self-defensiveness. That’s why, even though we think ideological bias is pretty low on the list of journalistic maladies in this election, it is not viable for reporters to dismiss criticism out of hand.

I am loathe to run through each of these things one at a time. It suffices to say this stuff is true. it is one of the times that media people actually tell you what they think and why they run a story. They admit here to cherry picked polls to try and create artificial news. They admit to relying on the gossip and process stuff instead of focusing on policy. Everything the press is routinely criticized for is in this last section.

Politico seems to be hanging their hat on the simple proposition that reality says one campaign is winning and the other is losing. They luck out here in a way because even if mccain was actually winning with these tactics he would deserve just as much scrutiny. Sure we might see fewer process stories but i doubt it. Reporters just love that stuff too much. instead of negative wardrobe stories we might being seeing stories on how palins look was helping mccain. his ads however would still be 100% negative. if the presss covered the negativity different because he was winning that would not be right. The entire talk of balancing stories is something that needs to go away. Politico crew sums it up best when they say,

As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.

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McCain:Pop Quiz if Elected

Surprise! John McCain has informed us that there will be a test if he is elected.

“I have been tested,” McCain said, with a certain gritted-teeth look at the state fairgrounds in New Mexico. “I’m gonna test them. They’re not gonna test me.”

Of course who exactly he will decide to test is up for debate. I put my money on Iran or maybe Cuba.

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Palin v. McCain: Republican Rumble

The McCain campaign has become a microclimate of the GOP. Constant discord and strife, infighting and circular firing squads. The epicenter of this most recent fight is blame over McCain's failing campaign. One side wants to blame palin for being incompetent and a complete drag on the ticket. The other side blames the McCain team handlers for not letting Palin be Palin. It all kicked off with a report by politico's ben smith

Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign's already-tense internal dynamics.

Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline.

"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

"I think she'd like to go more rogue," he said.

Smith goes on to outline the palin camps frustration over her very restrictive treatment and the McCain camps counter charges of her complete and utter unreadiness. Palin essentially sees the writing on the wall and wants to make sure her career and political future is not destroyed by being tied to McCain. Personally i think that ship has sailed. However Plain clearly does not and just as clearly the McCain team wants to make sure she becomes the top line reason for the loss. They are attempting to generate conventional wisdom that blames palin for dragging everything down.

Instead of triggering denials and push back that everything is peachy keen in McCain land Cnn ran with the story and included more quotes from McCain aides and Palin stalwarts detailing the campaigns inner battle.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue."

A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

This is simply the explicit stating of things that some were observing under the surface. MSNBC's Chuck Todd commented on the apparent lack of chemistry between the two after the recent brian williams interview.

"When you see the two of them together, the chemistry is just not there. You do wonder, is John McCain starting to blame her for things? Blaming himself? Is she blaming him?...We are at a critical juncture inside this campaign for the McCain folks and that is who is trusting who? You have got people worrying about their reputations. Now you are wondering do the candidates trust the staff? Does the staff trust the candidates? This is a dangerous time in a campaign that is behind."

The underlying story here is clear. The McCain people think that Palin has no idea what she is doing and is undercutting and creating distractions. They view her as incompetent and someone who needs to be tightly controlled to minimize the damage. They are right about that. Palin has failed in just about every attempt to answer substantive questions. She draws attention to her inexperience and captures the news cycle with stories that put mccain on the defensive.

But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and that the missteps could have been a lot worse.

They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain's record.

"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."

The crux of the problem is that you cant blame palin. She has her political future to think of. From every indication she is confident in her abilities. She truly believes that she should be given more room to do what she wants and she is going to make that room. She was picked by the McCain people to be the VP and that alone should give her a self belief. No the people responsible for this are McCain, Black, and Schmidt. This is possibly the best quote of the entire cycle and it shows exactly why those three people are responsible.

After that first brief meeting, Davis remained in discreet but frequent contact with Palin and her staff — gathering tapes of speeches and interviews, as he was doing with all potential vice-presidential candidates. One tape in particular struck Davis as arresting: an interview with Palin and Gov. Janet Napolitano, the Arizona Democrat, on "The Charlie Rose Show" that was shown in October 2007. Reviewing the tape, it didn’t concern Davis that Palin seemed out of her depth on health-care issues or that, when asked to name her favorite candidate among the Republican field, she said, "I’m undecided." What he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues — energy independence and ethics reform — and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her. A friend had said to Davis: "The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P."

Schmidt, to whom Davis quietly supplied the Palin footage, agreed. Neither man apparently saw her lack of familiarity with major national or international issues as a serious liability. Instead, well before McCain made his selection, his chief strategist and his campaign manager both concluded that Sarah Palin would be the most dynamic pick...

The next morning was Thursday, Aug. 28. Salter and Schmidt drove Palin to McCain’s ranch. According to Salter, the senator took the governor down to a place where he usually had his coffee, beside a creek and a sycamore tree, where a rare breed of hawk seasonally nested. They spoke for more than an hour. Then the two of them walked about 40 yards to the deck of the cabin where the McCains slept. Cindy joined them there for about 15 minutes, after which the McCains excused themselves and went for a brief stroll to discuss the matter. When they returned, McCain asked for some time with Schmidt and Salter. “And we did our pros and cons on all of them,” Salter told me. “He just listened. Asked a couple of questions. Then said, ‘I’m going to offer it to her.’ ”

There is no way that the McCain people are allowed to complain about Palin being uniformed. They knew she was uninformed. They picked her for the same confidence on display right now. Viewing the Charlie Rose interview they admired her tactic of latching onto pet issues and never letting go. They knew everything they needed to know about sarah palin before they picked her and not only didn't they care about the flaws they admired them. They were right that she was a dynamic pick and she does look good. It just so happens that the other things like policy matter too. Her strengths have been weaknesses and her weaknesses have been fatal flaws. Palin has been who she is but it turns out that who she is is not what the McCain camp projected they were getting.

It was all there but it took someone better than schmidt mccain and co to see it. Now they are repenting at leisure a marriage they made in haste as the pick they thought would put them on top has instead begun to tear them apart. Palin will continue to fight for her personal future and set the stage for her dream 2012 run against Huckabee and Romeny. The McCain loyalists will continue to paint palin as the backstabbing diva who cost them the race and dems everywhere will sit back and enjoy the schadenfreude.

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I am Spar..Joe the Plumber!!

Really, it had to be done.



Now Compare



Cmon, this entire economic strategy built around Name the Occupation is about the most stupid and juvenile thing yet. It is beneath the dignity of a serious political campaign, luckily mccain is not running a serious political campaign. Serious political campaigns deal with issues and the concerns of voters, neither of which mccain addresses.

McCain has been running around telling people the center piece of his campaign is the economy. Clearly this is a laugh line. The center piece of the mccain campaign are lies innuendo and smear currently being spread by robo calls. Go over and read the NYT preview of the mccain campaign article. This pretty much sums up the mccain campaign

After that first brief meeting, Davis remained in discreet but frequent contact with Palin and her staff — gathering tapes of speeches and interviews, as he was doing with all potential vice-presidential candidates. One tape in particular struck Davis as arresting: an interview with Palin and Gov. Janet Napolitano, the Arizona Democrat, on “The Charlie Rose Show” that was shown in October 2007. Reviewing the tape, it didn’t concern Davis that Palin seemed out of her depth on health-care issues or that, when asked to name her favorite candidate among the Republican field, she said, “I’m undecided.” What he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues — energy independence and ethics reform — and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her. A friend had said to Davis: “The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P.”

Could you ask for a more shallow and incompetent way to pick a running mate? Truly this explains why palin spent 150K on clothing, she was picked to look pretty distracting viewers from her filibuster and lack of knowledge. I mean they knew about the abuse of power investigation and ignored it. This validates every thing said about how the gop operates, they live to win campaigns and not to govern.

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Obama Cmpaign Robo Calls

Obama has his owm Robo Calls out there to fight those of John McCain.

Here's a script:

Hi, this is Jeri Watermolen, calling for the Campaign for Change. I live in Green Bay and, like you, I've been getting sleazy phone calls and mail from John McCain and his supporters viciously -- and falsely -- attacking Barack Obama. I used to support John McCain because he honorably served our country -- but this year he's running a dishonorable campaign. We know McCain will continue many of Bush's policies, and now he's using George Bush's divisive tactics. In fact, he hired the Bush strategists whose attacks even McCain once called hateful.

Barack Obama will turn the page on these negative politics and stand up for the middle class. That's the change we need, and it's why I have changed my mind about John McCain. Join me in voting for Barack Obama. Paid for the Campaign for Change, a project of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, 608-255-5172, and authorized by Obama for America.

People want to know if robo calls work and i think the answer is that no they do not. People just dont listen to the calls. Calls with volunteers are the only call method proven effective. However that is hardly the point of these calls. The point is that now anyone mentions robo calls obama's will be included because of the need for balance. Obama will be able to get his message attacking mccain for being sleazy out in the free press echo chamber and now millions who would otherwise never been exposed to them are. It is similar to what mccain has been doing with his video press releases.

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McCain loses last bit of honor

Too often, i think, we separate the man from the politician. We see that idea reflected in the press coverage of McCain where reporters are shocked and dismayed that McCain is using lies and smears to target Barack Obama. "This is not the real McCain. He is too honorable. You can tell he does not like to do this." You can hear the yearning in for McCain to throw off the shackles and be free! This is of course utter nonsense.

A campaign for the president is a grueling test of a persons' principles, ethics, and morals. Presidential nominees are pulled in thousands of different directions by various interest groups and demands on their time. They must prioritize who and what is important to them. Then these priorities are put to the test when the campaign hits a bumpy spot. Will a candidate stay with their proffesed princples or will those be thrown under the bus in a quest for power? We know the answer with Sen. McCain. If you doubt that he has thrown out any shred of honor he had watch this



Video Description from Greg Sargent

McCain defended his robo-slime by saying that the calls directed at him were worse than anything his own calls said about Obama.

"These are legitimate and truthful and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that -- things that this is -- this is dramatically different and either you haven't -- didn't see those things in 2000," McCain said.

McCain said his robo-slime was highlighting "a legitimate issue," which is the question of whether Obama is "being truthful with the American people," a clear reference to his robo-call attacking Obama's association with William Ayers.

Actually, this is false. McCain's robo-call about Obama and Ayers says absolutely nothing about whether Obama is telling the truth about his relationship with the former Weatherman. If you don't believe me, you can listen to the full call right here.

Text of the call

"You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country."

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racism is alive and well

i think we can put behind us the idea that discriminating or hating on the basis of race in america is no more.

Surprise, shock and some fear in a local neighborhood, after an anti-Obama display is hung from a tree. The display is at a home at Symmes and Hicks Road in Fairfield.

And the person who put it there says the message isn't political, it's racist. Shawn Ley spoke with the man who isn't shy about his views.

There it is, right above the "McCain-Palin" sign: a make-shift ghost, hanging from a noose. A Barack Obama sign attached upside down. Obama's middle name: "Hussein" spray painted and misspelled above.

Mike Lunsford hung the ghost in his yard. He spoke to us off-camera, saying his views could hurt his employers business ... but he says make no mistake: He doesn't want an African American running the country.

Lunsford says he believes Barack Obama is not a "full blooded American." And he says the United States is a white, Christian nation - and only with white Christians should be in power.

This is so unacceptable. His reason for doing this was to respond to a cartoon of mccain in kkk robes chasing obama. Explain to me exactly how this is meant to respond to that? If anything it only reinforces the idea that mccain supporters and the gop is racist.

I look forward to hearing Sen McCain condemn this but i look forward to hearing gov palin condemning this as well. That is one of the big points is that mccain is playing good cop bad cop with this topic and this is not a situation where games need to be played. So McCain get your house in order because this is what you tolerate, out and out racism.

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Will the media tell the ground game story?

The under the radar story of the election as far as the traditional media outlets are concerned is the amazing effort and dedication of the obama ground game. It gets references in passing but because it is not sexy or flashy has largely been ignored. This absence of national level attention has not stopped the dedicated organizers and volunteers across the country who have worked tirelessly to elect either Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain. The Obama organization will be one of if not the best in history but because of the way the election is shaping up that story may not be

The story of the ground game is not one alien to dkos, fivethirtyeight, or The Field Readers. These sites have dedicated a great deal to reporting on the ground game and how it is shaping up as well as its possible effects. Sean Quinn at 538 has been traveling the country reporting town by town city by city on the different campaign's efforts in the battle ground states. The Field has done, imho, the best work on the ground game available in the blogosphere and Giordiono's recent post sums up why he finds it so important,

There are ten thousand potential newspaper, TV and radio news stories in those numbers, and at least as many "reporters" in need of a good report, but as during the primaries, the commercial media are leaving the real story of the 2008 United States presidential election to a few intrepid online journalists and bloggers. When on Election Night they will raise their eyebrows and go, wow, just wow, how the hell did that happen?, it will be the Field Hands here, and a very few folks like Sifrey, like Sean Quinn at 538 and Zack Exley at The Huffington Post who will have documented the answer: It was the organizing, stupid!
...
See, the story of the 2008 campaign is not some media creation and caricature like "Joe the Plumber," but those Americans that have done more than "win" the media lottery by having a chance encounter with a presidential candidate. (I put "win" in quotation marks because I have the feeling this isn't going to end well for that Joe, as media scrutiny can be a knife with two edges.) No, the story of 2008 is authentically about "Debrah the Neighborhood Team Leader" and "Glenna the Neighborhood Team Leader," and "Joe the Organizer," and "Jane the Change Crew Chief," and "Jose the Phone Banker" and "Jasmine the Canvasser." The story is that of so many Americans that didn't wait for the media to show up at their doorsteps but stepped out onto the battlefield and did the heavy lifting.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

He is absolutely correct on just about everything in there. What i think he misses is that the media will not wonder at how obama won the election. The media will look at the polls, look at the timing of some national level events and write a narrative that fits. I already wrote one that is perfectly plausible and does not rely on the hard work of the ground game.

The problem with this election is that the way it is shaping up it could be a very big win for obama. In that scenario the media will not look to the dirty and gritty work done by those on the ground. they will not give the ground game the credit it deserves for registering and turning out voters because they will make the assumption that the extra effort made no difference due to national level events. They play no part in the ground game and so it cant be important. They will simply attribute the overwhelmingly positive response for obama as the natural outgrowth of the democratic enthusiasm without making the connection that this energy means nothing without proper harnessing.

If Debrah the Neighborhood Team Leader" and "Glenna the Neighborhood Team Leader," and "Joe the Organizer," and "Jane the Change Crew Chief," and "Jose the Phone Banker" and "Jasmine the Canvasser" do not get the recognition they deserve on a national level then true difference between Obama and McCain will not be understood. Obama was able to translate excitement into work while mccain and palin were able to generate this in Columbus Ohio,



(picture by Brett Marty of BrettMarty.com)

Described by 538,

It's fair enough. We're not their biggest priority. They probably assume if they haven't heard of us, how much exposure could photos of their huge phone banks with 40 phones and one lonely caller at their state headquarters three weeks before the election really get?

As for the field offices themselves, we told you about the closed one in Troy. We were ushered out by rent-a-cops in Toledo (the second time I spoke with Levine), and there was a pencil-thin mustachioed rent-a-cop in the HQ where we got that picture.

We'll keep trying in good faith to speak to communications directors and stop into field offices, and if they're fair with us, we'll be fair with them. The problem the McCain folks have is that their offices are empty, and why would you want reporters to do a story on that, or on obviously manufactured volunteer conversations? So, we're not optimistic, but we're not quitting. They'll have to say it to our face.

One lone volunteer and 39 unused phones. That might be one of the saddest images of the campaign and it tells the story in a way words just fail to convey. It makes me feel sad for that lone volunteer, who although i disagree with her vehemently in her choice of candidates, earns my respect for sitting there all alone to make calls.

Getting people to the polls, making phone calls, getting people registered, canvassing neighborhoods, these are essential elements of campaigns that the media overlooks unless the race comes down to a few hundred votes in one state. There is reason to take heart though.

We can push this narrative. Whenever someone talks about the election and mentions the poll numbers or media coverage you should talk about the ground game. when people talk about how mccain lost it the election instead of obama winning it talk about the differences in organization and hard ground level work. the more we push the importance of the ground game in obama's victory as opposed to debates or katie curic interviews the more traction it can get.

Pat Buchanan loves to go on tv and talk about the economic disaster like it is a black swan event and but for that McCain would be right in this thing. This is simply untrue. Obama has legions more volunteers dedicated to contacting voters and making calls, getting his message than mccain does. Reading Quinn's series only seems to prove that in excruciating detail. If there were legions of mccain volunteers dedicated to getting him elected they would not have been scared off by the economy. He still has 40%+ support generally among the populace after all. The truth is that the Obama ground game will have been key no matter the outcome. The ground game can be the difference between squeaking by and a solid progressive mandate.

The story of the Obama ground game is important because, while its primary focus was on electing barack obama, the registration, canvassing and data entry it performed is invaluable to the down ticket dems. The organizing done by the obama campaign is not about just him but about the democratic party as a whole. he put infrastructure in solidly red states as an investment in the future. that's an important story. eliminating the excuses of the congress members who refuse to advance liberal or progressive legislation under threat of filibuster or defection may disappear because of the hard work done on the ground.

I expect all of this to be lost on the media at a large. Whether it is or not you can carry the story about the power and importance of the obama ground game to your community. let people know that their efforts on behalf of obama where essential. That the media is oblivious to this says more about them than the people who spend time on the ground doing this organizing.

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McCain's last best hope for a comeback.

This idea is about as likely as snow in summer but hey, mccain really is desperate. His final move is to throw bush completely and totally under the bus. Run against him and the GOP for the last 18 days and pray people take him seriously.

mccain was at his best last night when he was laying out his maverick cred. people used to really believe that and i think many would like to believe he can be that again. To do this he needs something big but believable and just trashing bush, his legacy etc, may be it. Of course Obama is going to hit him on his voting history and past support of bush but he is going to do that no matter what mccain does.

The biggest card in this is to prosecute both of them for war crimes and to close gitmo. vow ot get the bottom of the corruption and to name names. Obama has so far refused to do anything like this and the public would probably be on board. It might even give permission to the right to stop towing the defending bush line. they need permission to throw him under the bus and mccain can do it with threats of prosecution.

Separation from traditional conservative orthodoxy was always mccains best hope. that he let the schmidts of the world lead him down the old path of smear was the worst decision of his campaign. I dont claim he would win by just turning bush into a pinata and he might lose the base totally but he is going to lose now. doing what he is doing is not working and this was the only thing i could come up with that would resonate with the general public.

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Into the Wilderness

The Republican Party and conservatism in general really is fascinating right now. Taking glee in their circular firing squad and subsequent cannibalism is going to bring a smile to the faces of many liberals. The election is not over yet but the all signs point to an obama victory and when that happens, on the scale it looks like it might happen, conservatives and the republicans are going to be as farther out in the wilderness than either party has been in the modern political era. The reasons are easy to spot.

When David Brooks wrote his now famous column excoriating the GOP for chasing away the people who demanded and respected ideas he illustrated the greatest problem with modern conservatism. Modern Conservatism as it has evolved has entered the last stages of its society, its civilization.

Picture them as a civilization where at one point there were a number of people inventing things. These people were advancing conservatism for the rest of the conservative society. A conservative enlightenment. They invented the backbone of the society in the southern strategy, tax cutting, abortion, gay rights, "patriotism", regulation bad. What have become the traditional republican wedge issues were once shiny and new. They were invented by people like Nixon and Buckley who were very smart regardless of what you think of their morals.

These ideas became the cars, the tv's, the computers of conservative, the houses. They were things that everyday conservatives used as a basis of their lives. Now however all of the inventors are gone. Instead we have people like Rove who do not actually invent anything but are good at using what has already been invented. They can use what they have but cant build anything new. So they stay in the same buildings, use the same tvs, use the same cars even as those start to get very old and to break down. Now though nobody is around to fix them. its the idea that everyone can drive a car but if it all went to hell not many people could build one from scratch.

The failure of the modern conservative to understand how to build new things, new ideas is exemplified in the McCain campaign. McCain is unable to weave the various pieces of conservatism that he has into a coherent economic vision. his failure in the banking and financial crisis is going to cost him the election. He had a certain set of tools left to him by the proto conservatives but they were not enough to deal with the situation at hand and so mccain has sunk.

So the conservatives civilization has collapsed like europe into the medieval period. they will be headed into the wilderness with the task of building a new society with new ideas. they need the big thinkers the inventors again if the want to get back into power. i doubt they realize this any time soon. every indication is that instead of abandoning some of the obsolete cars etc they are clinging to them even tighter.

I suspect though that there is a small number of national or state level republicans who understand the fundamental need to do something new. they look a lot like mike huckabee. Huckabee is at least someone who is putting out new ideas to frame the future of the republican party. Economically populist while socially conservative. we have to keep an eye on them while they trek off into the wilderness to restart their civilization.

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Debate Reaction

Well, this will go down as the Joe the Plumber Debate. There must have been 20 mentions of this random plumber from ohio who was supposed to represent America at large. he was a small business owner a family man, pretty much whatever the situation called for. I can say everyone is hoping to never hear about this guy again.

On the expectations for the night Obama retained his cool and steady demeanor. McCain exacerbated the angry narrative. McCain started strong with some passionate rhetoric designed to make the case for him as a maverick. He laid out an impressive list of things he has bucked his party on and really stuck Obama on the issue of being an orthodox dem. Putting aside whether this point is makes any sense when the country has agreed the gop has done everything wrong the last eight years it was a highpoint for McCain.

McCain really began to fall apart though after the issue of the campaign tone was introduced. he tried to pin the negativity on Obama and his refusal to do town halls. this would have simply been an eye roll and move on if he had not followed up with the john lewis comments. Getting into lewis mccain tried to make himself look like the victim. it really did not work. He claimed that he denounced everyone who made comments that were out of bounds but of course this was untrue. The entire segment played false on McCain's part to anyone who has been paying attention.

I was wrong in my prediction that Ayers and Acorn would be either go unremarked or be brought up by Obama.McCain did go there but failed to do it in a coherent way and Obama handled it without issue. It was made even worse by obama's ruthless focus on the issues which made mccain look small when he talked about ayers. so ayers should just be over at this point.

Obama dominated the health care segment and it was by far his best part of the debate. Obama looked into the camera and laid out his health care plan in concrete and easy to grasp terms. he was confident and direct. McCain in contrast tried to explain his plan and to attack obama's. He was clearly uninformed about both his and obamas. Obama made the point that McCain would tax benefits and that his tax credit was less than the cost of buying a plan. Obama destroyed mccain on the mandate and fine point. Zero? ouch.

McCain also ran into a great amount of trouble on the issue of abortion and judicial nominees. His ridicule of a health of the mother exemption will not play well. it looked cruel. He claimed it was a extreme left position when it is not. I cant help but think mccain really blew it on the issue. He also was very incoherent and contradictory on how he would select judges. No litmus test on roe but if you like roe your unqualified?

Again McCain was completely unable to handle himself in a calm and detached manner. his body language and actual language was far too hostile. He exudes contempt at these debates and it is not apparent why when obama is calm and polite. McCain's anger issues will be one of the lasting narratives of the campaign.

McCain was wrong on education policy but by then the debate was already over and mccain failed on all of his objectives.

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Debate Prediction

Obama wins. McCain's problem is that he has to try and knock obama out and make him look unqualified. He has to do this while sitting only a couple feet away at a table. He cannot use any character based attacks on Sen Obama because no one other than the far right is at all interested in hearing them. People care about one thing this election, the economy. They dont care about it in any nebulous balanced budget sense either, they want to hear details that are so intense they cant actually understand them. Then they want them explained as to how exactly they will work. McCain is not capable of doing that. He simply is not versed well enough in economics to do it.

Obama will not make this easy for McCain. Obama will go after McCain on his policies. He will not let up on McCain and hammer him on the economy on his erratic behavior. McCain will get visibly annoyed and angry at Sen Obama and will have several awkward creepy laugh moments.

For my million dollar long shot; The topic of voter fraud will come up. It will be Obama who talks about it in reference to McCain Acorn and trhe recent court case in ohio.

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How Obama Won the Election.

This is not designed to be overconfident or to claim victory before it has happened. This is actually my attempt to predict the punditry that will occur should Obama win the election. Everyone always wants to do postmortems on campaigns. People are still writing them on the clinton campaign. I am going to do mine three weeks in advance making it a pre-postmortem and we can come back to it later and assess how right i am about the punditry and my predictions on why Obama won. If i was ambitious enough and had enough time i would turn this into a book ready to go just after election day. I dont, so this will have to suffice.

How Obama Won the Election.

How did Barack Obama, a relative new comer, an african american, a man with a funny name, manage to defeat John McCain, formerly one of the most popular politicians in America? John McCain began this campaign as a well respected maverick feared by dems as a man able to draw independents with his vaunted political independence and foriegn policy expertise. McCain has finished the campaign with his reputation and legacy in taters a sad object of pity, a man who gave it all up in a second failed bid for the presidency. Obama did with a simple premise many writers and average joes can relate to, "show not tell".

Many will point to the economic crisis as the moment when Americans woke up to the fact that the last eight years of republican rule had led to economic disaster. The tale is that but for that black swan McCain, who lost in a devastating electoral college and popular vote landslide, would have been either victorious or at least in a dead heat. As late as September 16 McCain had a lead over Sen Obama in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll. Sept 14 happens to be the day that Lehman filed for bankruptcy. September 15, 2008 is the day McCain proclaimed the fundamentals are strong. Coincidence? Not really. The deteriorating economic situation was indeed part of the reason for the collapse but not in the way many seem to be telling the story.

It is true that generally people credit the dems with being better on the economy and domestic issues. It is also true that they are better. For McCain who entered the race with shaky economic credibility at best the economic crisis was, as he is fond of saying, an existential challenge of his candidacy. Things did not have to turn out that the economy would sink McCain. In fact the financial crisis presented the best most clear opportunity to lead and to prove his economic credibility possible. McCain could not have asked for a better stage to display his econ cred and had he managed to do so the race would have been completely different.

The crisis presented a rare opportunity for voters in presidential elections. Elections generally are all about promises. Candidates say they will do things but because they are not president we have to take them at their word. Here though we had to people in a position to exert direct influence on the solution. McCain and Obama both reside in the senate and could participate and direct the solution to the problem. Here was chance not to just tell the voters what they would do but to actually do it. McCain failed. He failed not in a minor way but in truly an epic manner.

His big chance to erase his weakest point and he instead generated a meta narrative that he was confused, erratic and generally lost. He inspired not confidence but utter dismay at his over the top and immediate reversals on the existence of a problem. his campaign non-suspension will be a historical reference point for gimmickry. McCain was demonstrating his in ability to lead or deal with a major crisis in any comprehensive or cogent manner. He took credit for the passage of a bill that actually failed. He undermined himself at every step. All of this only reinforced the narrative of McCain the fallen. The man with tactics but no strategy, a narrative set in motion on the fateful day of Aug 29.

Aug 29 is the day the other great failure of the McCain campaign occurred. This is the day that the McCain Campaign announced his VP choice of the little known Gov of Alaska Sarah Palin. Billed as an attractive looking, reforming hockey mom Gov Palin was the immediate darling of the right. She was an instant sensation that captured the news cycle completely erasing the power of Obama's convention speech and securing McCain's base at the same time. However, she was a non-vetted choice with some major skeletons already peeking out of the closet. She would prove disastrous.

On the heels of her convention speech Palin was in incredibly high demand, every one wanted to get to know the GOP's apparent savior and rising star. However, she was held back from media interviews. Slowly but surely as information trickled out about her support of the bridge to nowhere in alaska, her record of championing earmarks as a small town mayor, her troopergate problems the media began to demand answers. The biggest question was simply how she was qualified to take over in the event of McCain's demise. What foriegn policy cred did she have? Inquiring minds wanted to know and on Sept 11, 7 years after the fatefuly fall of the towers we would get an insight into the vacuous mind of sarah palin. Sep 11, 2008 Palin interviews with Charlie Gibson and not only fails to respond to the question on the Bush Doctrine but tries to pretend she does understand it with the now classic, "in what respect charlie?"

Here is the point where McCain's experience and country first arguments were destroyed. The naked opportunism and cynicism of the Palin pick was confirmed. McCain's first decision as president and instead of country first as he had been telling us he showed us McCain first. He showed us by his choice of a lady who could not name a newspaper she read, or a supreme court case other than roe, or answer coherently about anything. her answers in the catie curic interview were so ridiculous that snl appropriated her bailout answer whole. Now it is clear she cant even tell the truth. Palin started a narrative that the economic crisis cemented. McCain, when it came time to walk the walk, ran away.

To this point i have focused exclusively on John McCain and how he undermined himself. None of this would have been as damaging had Sen Obama not displayed the complete opposite tendencies at every turn. If Obama had proved as inept as McCain has shown himself to be he might be losing no matter what McCain was doing. Instead Barack Obama has displayed the qualities we look for in a leader. His first chance to make a presidential decision was Joe Biden. Biden was a conventional pick. Certainly non-threatning Biden is an elder statesman fully capable of assuming the office of the presidency if called upon. Biden was safe and reassuring displaying, if not flair, a pragmatic understanding that the importance is on governing not just winning.

Biden is also someone many people like because of his blunt nature. He exudes regular guy at the same time he displays a depth and breadth of policy knowledge only a decades experienced sen could have. The difference between Palin and Biden could not have come off worse for Sen McCain. Biden may not have been the sexiest pick but he was certainly not a drag on the ticket.

Then came Obama's chance to display the qualities we look for in a president in the turmoil of the financial crisis. Instead of bouncing from policy to policy Obama was deliberate and put forth some basic bailout principles that were hard to attack. He called for anti-golden parachute language, protections for the tax payer investment that was being demanded both in accountability in how it was spent and in possible recovery or profit on the money. Obama was cool and collected.

Obama tried to get a joint statement with mccain but mccain was determined to try and take credit for everything. Obama made statements about not wanting to blow up the negotiations with presidential politics proven correct after mccain parachuted into washington. At every turn Obama was making responsible decisions. He let the system work as opposed to trying to blow it up and take credit.

After the bailout and the economic downturn became the topics everyday Obama put together comprehensive plans to deal with the problems. He talked about the middle class. He made the economy and the failure of the regulatory system the focal point of the campaign. people were scarred of the economy so oabam addressed their fears. This was never more in evidence than in the friday night debate during the bailout negotiations.

In that debate Obama stood on stage with McCain and talked policy in a calm and collected manner. he was safe and he was boring. those are the qualities we are looking for in a candidate during crisis. we want the steady hand who not only understands what is going on but is capable of explaining to the people like adults. Obama stuck to policy in a time when people wanted that.

Ultimately that is how obama won the campaign. He was a man able to stick to policy and to demonstrate to people that he was a man who was serious about solving the problems in our country. He showed the people with his laser like focus on the economy and his emphasis on the middle class that he gets it. As McCain has gone off on more and more personal smears obama sticks to policy and what he is going to do to fix the problems the country faces. His demonstration of poise is more striking when placed next to Sen McCain. One man demonstrates the qualities of a president while the other demonstrates his loss of shame.

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McKiernan the new Petraeus

The situation in Afghanistan is a complicated one. Not made less by the fact that the democrats view Afghanistan as the good war. Afghanistan has become the democrats war the way Iraq is the Republicans war. In a way this makes sense as Afghanistan provides Dems with a way to demonstrate they are not pacifists or unwilling to fight a war. Afghanistan has been a good tool. As our presence and long term commitment to Iraq has been winding down more focus has shifted to Afghanistan. The picture there is not a pretty one. It reflects Iraq in many ways and this has led to a focus on the man in charge just as iraq became a focus on the man in charge. That man is David D. McKiernan and he is the new Petraeus.

Some background on Gen. McKiernan,

McKiernan graduated from The College of William & Mary in 1972 where he received an ROTC commission; McKiernan then entered the Army. He holds an MPA from Shippensburg University and an honorary doctorate in Public Service from his alma mater, the College of William and Mary.

McKiernan gained experience in the Balkans as a staff officer in the 1990s. In July 1996, General McKiernan joined the Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), serving as the Deputy Chief of Staff G-2/G-3 forward deployed in both Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rheindahlen (Mönchengladbach), Germany. From August 1998 until September 1999, he served as Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations, Headquarters, United States Army, Europe and Seventh Army during a period of simultaneous operations in Bosnia, Albania, and Kosovo.

In 2001, he was assigned as G-3 (Operations), Headquarters, Department of the Army. Following that posting, in September 2002, General McKiernan assumed command of the Third U.S. Army and U.S. Army Forces Central Command (ARCENT), and became the Coalition Forces Land Component Commander for U.S. Central Command in preparation for Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. In March 2003, General McKiernan led all coalition and U.S. conventional ground forces that attacked Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Following his assignment as ground forces commander, McKiernan was assigned as Deputy Commanding General/Chief of Staff for United States Army Forces Command, the largest major command in the United States Army which is responsible for the readiness and deployment of Army forces based in the U.S. He assumed command of 7th Army/U.S. Army Europe. He assumed command of ISAF on June 3, 2008 and assumed command of both ISAF and USFOR-A on October 6, 2008.

McKiernan also appears to have had an interesting role in the debate over prewar troop levels and the importance of the paramilitary forces employed by saddam. McKiernan plays an important if understated role in the invasion and conquest of Iraq. According to a NYT article from 2006

Even before the war, Mr. Rumsfeld saw the deployment of United States forces more in terms of what was needed to win the war than to secure the peace.

With the tide in the United States' favor, he began to raise the issue of canceling the deployment of the First Cavalry Division — some 16,000 soldiers. General Franks eventually went along. Though the general insisted he was not pressured to agree, he later acknowledged that the defense secretary had put the issue on the table. "Don Rumsfeld did in fact make the decision to off-ramp the First Cavalry Division," General Franks said in an earlier interview with The New York Times.

General McKiernan, the senior United States general in Iraq at the time, was not happy about the decision but did not protest.
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General McKiernan concluded that the United States faced two "centers of gravity": the Republican Guard, concentrated near Baghdad, and the paramilitary Fedayeen. He decided to suspend the march to the capital for several days while continuing airstrikes and engaging the Fedayeen. Only then, he figured, would conditions be right for the final assault into Baghdad to remove Mr. Hussein from power. To provide more support, General McKiernan freed up his only reserve, troops from the 82nd Airborne Division.

With the limited information i found on McKiernon he certainly seems to be a competent commander and strategist. He recognized the need to control the paramilitary forces that eventually evolved into the insurgency. He was cautious and considerate in his approach to the war making sure he was accounting for those paramilitary forces and not rushing simply to depose Saddam.

Fast forward to today when the attention of the American public, driven in part by obama, is looking at the situation in Afghanistan and not finding it particularly pretty. The question has now become what to do about it. The Republicans have tried to simply transfer their iraq war terminology and say it will work in Iraq. However, they have no credibility after the disaster that they made Iraq. The Republican strategy became to use the military figure in command of the area as the guiding light. This is how Petraeus became the commander in chief. According to GOP rhetoric anything he says is absolutely true and the right idea. After all he is the Petraeus.

To apply their thought process in its application to Afghanistan Barack Obama and Joe Biden have tried to use McKiernan and his comments to bolster their argument about the Afghanistan. The dynamic that takes shape is one where the field commander is making all the decisions and the civilians back home are just giving them whatever they need. I cant say whether this makes things more or less effective. I do know that it is somewhat of an abdication of civilian control of the military.

The GOP of course does not particularly care about what the good general actually said. They will still try to use him as a prop, a legitimizing authority for their rhetoric. Example, Sarah Palin in the debate who was in such a hurry to show she could use the surge rhetoric in regards to Afghanistan she called McKiernan, McClellan. McKiernan of course is talking about something completely different than what Palin claimed,

"Afghanistan is not Iraq," said Gen. David D. McKiernan, who led ground forces during the 2003 Iraq invasion and took over four months ago as head of the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Speaking in Washington yesterday, McKiernan described Afghanistan as "a far more complex environment than I ever found in Iraq." The country's mountainous terrain, rural population, poverty, illiteracy, 400 major tribal networks and history of civil war all make for unique challenges, he said.

"The word I don't use for Afghanistan is 'surge,' " McKiernan stressed, saying that what is required is a "sustained commitment" to a counterinsurgency effort that could last many years and would ultimately require a political, not military, solution.

This is similar in many respects to what John McCain has done with Petraeus. McCain likes to attack Obama on the issue of preconditions yet Petraeus is on a different path,

Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, “You have to talk to enemies.” He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors.

The military commander is only omniscient when he validates McCain's views. To a limited extent this seems to be true of Obama.

I have had trouble sorting out the Obama Afghanistan plan in relation to conditions on the ground. The plan is available here in pdf and again slightly different here. Here is the Plan Obama has for Aghanistan,

Redeploy American Troops to Afghanistan. Barack Obama will deploy at least an additional two brigades (7,000 personnel) of rested, trained American troops to Afghanistan to reinforce our counter-terrorism operations and support NATO’s efforts to fight the Taliban.

Strengthen NATO’s Hand in Afghanistan: NATO currently has about 41,000 troops in Afghanistan. However, the force is short-staffed and some countries contributing forces are imposing restrictions on where their troops can operate, tying the hands of commanders on the ground. As president, Obama will work with European allies to end these burdensome restrictions and strengthen NATO as a fighting force.

Train and Equip the Afghan Army and Police: Barack Obama will strengthen the training and equipping of the Afghan army and police and increase Afghan participation in U.S. and NATO missions, so that there is more of an Afghan face on security.

Increase Non-Military Aid to Afghanistan by $1 billion: To prevent the country’s backsliding into chaos, Barack Obama would increase U.S. non-military aid to Afghanistan to $3 billion. This aid would fund reconstruction, police and army training, embassy operations, and local projects including efforts to impact the lives of ordinary Afghans and to give farmers alternatives to growing opium poppies. The aid would also be tied to better performance by the Afghan national government, including anti-corruption initiatives and efforts to extend the rule of law across the country.

Strike Al Qaeda: Last summer, Barack Obama was criticized for challenging conventional thinking and saying that as president, if he had actionable intelligence about the whereabouts of al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan--and the Pakistanis cannot or will not act--then he will use highly targeted force to do so. At the time, Senator Clinton said Obama’s statement was a “very big mistake.” Over the last few months, the wisdom behind Clinton’s assertion was called into question as the Central Intelligence Agency successfully took out senior al Qaeda leader Abu Laith al Libi, in North Waziristan, Pakistan, in January.

Obama later updated that last part to edit out Sen Clinton and to just talk about Musharraf, and now i believe it is simply if the Pakistan government refuses to act.

In any event i would really like to have more detailed planning about what Obama intends to do in Afghanistan. McKiernan has said that what is required is a "sustained commitment". Obama certainly seems to be on the right track discussing increased aid. His reasoning for sending troops also seems to be fine. He wants more troops so that we have better capability to direct air strikes thus lessening the number of innocent people we kill with missed strikes. More troops for a surge like security crackdown seem to be the last thing needed. Not to mention that the terrain of afghanistan is terrible and that the tribes who live there are much more adept at fighting on it than we will be as juan cole points out,

The major critique I have is that Obama keeps talking about intensifying the search and destroy missions being carried out by US troops in the Pushtun areas of southern Afghanistan. As we should have learned from Vietnam, search and destroy missions only alienate the local population and drive it into the arms of the insurgency.
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Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai's army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there.

The air strikes make it especially tough to involve the american military in any efforts to rebuild the country. McKiernon is on record as noting the solution must come from the afghan government. This is a government that has serious credibility issues. Ending the corruption and establishing a political system that allows for local level input would appear to be a required condition for aid and Obama has mentioned that.

McKiernon has become the front man for the war in Afghanistan. He occupies the position in that war that Petraeus occupied for Iraq. Look to see his name become well known and not just because of Palin's poor reference. Obama has made winning in Afghanistan one of his central themes along with catching bin laden and now fixing the economy. The Afghanistan of 2008 is vastly different and in many ways more hostile than that of 2002. Dont be surprised if we find ourselves in a similar situation as we are in Iraq complete with highly decorated military officer as the media focus.

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Connections for McCain

one of the things i think make a big difference in how a person lives their lives is their ability to make connections. Not just personal connections, those are essential, but also cause and effect and relationship connections. I find that many of the most incisive and though provoking articles and comments are those that facilitate the connection of two ideas that people would otherwise view as unrelated. Most often for me this seems to present itself in glaring inconsistencies. when i see something that appears inconsistent, like sarah palins call for massive governmental oversight preceded by a demand for government to get out of the way, i cant help but point out that those wont go together.

Spotting the interdependency of ideas and actions and then synthesizing that into something for others to read is not an easy task. Often you can end up with the, "well duh", posts. Generally though the post that connect two things people overlooked provoke the most thought and debate. My favorite example right now is the efforts of john mccain to roll back the observable vitriol that marks his campaign rallies. McCain is getting credit from pundits and people in the blogosphere for this effort. Some have latched onto it as proof that mccain really is an honorable and decent man troubled by the tactics he is "forced" to pursue.

I of course see this entirely differently based on several things. The first is that McCain instigated all of this with his 100% negative campaign. He chose to use Ayers etc instead of campaigning on ideas. As David Brooks pointed out the Republican party is no longer the party of ideas or intellectual thought. It cannot be surprising that the candidate of a party without ideas runs on a platform without ideas. McCain is wholly complicit in the campaign strategy he has chosen. The crowning glory of this was actually the convention with the GOP speeches that went after Obama on all of the same topics as we see splashed across the headlines.

Second with how mccain is polling the people that still go to mccain rallies are those diehard of diehards. There has been talk of Obama butting against the ceiling of his support. This means that McCain would be scrapping the bottom of his. This bottom was always going to be the craziest of the right. The people who will look for any excuse to vote against obama, against any dem candidate. so we really see the base, the core of the gop without the veneer of moderate conservatives usually in front of the cameras.

What does it mean that the conservative movement has run out of ideas? it means the movement is dead. that entire branch of conservatism is dead. it has been tested in governance and has failed and yet mccain, instead of running on the glittering maverick brand, ran with the movement. It does not say much for mccain that he was unwilling to take charge and lead in a new direction when it became obvious the old direction was a dead end. Sadly he apparently fell victim to the mantra, conservatism cannot fail, you can only fail conservatism.

this failure and the failure of the mccain campaign will obviously lead to one of two possibilities, the gop continues to double down on the social emotional direction or reforms to something along the lines of mike huckabee. a populism mixed with social conservatism.

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Debate Reaction...

McCain lost and he lost big. i did not need to see the snap polls to bolster my claim but they do back me up. McCain did not do terribly but he it made for a couple of strange moments when he called obama "that one". It was just kinda weird. I did not see it as the end all and be all of the debate but the media needs a narrative and that fits best with the result of the first debate where mccain failed to look at obama. "Now he wont even address him etc..." McCain loses any policy discussion because he is ont he wrong side of the public on his policy. He cant win on the merits. So he lost the debate itself but he also lost the larger fight over regaining some positive aspects of his campaign. He needed a big headline out of this and he did not come close.

The format sucked. The entire idea behind a town hall is that the people actually ask and the candidates answer questions off the cuff. There should be follow ups and it is supposed to be unscripted. Last night was anything but. i mean brokaw had a script he could not read when he candidate stepped in front of it at the end of the night. How lame.

I thought this provided a big opportunity for mccain when both candidates were visibly chaffing at the restrictions to just blow up the format and ask obama to shift to a real town hall style. Talk about a crazy made for tv moment that could introduce major uncertainty into the campaign. McCain cannot win as long as the campaign stays sedate and boring. He is behind and behind by a lot. If he is willing to take the ayers track of throwing away his honor he should have been willing to throw away the debate format. The media and the people would have loved it. Maybe he would not have done as well on the answering but really it would have provided the chance to dominate the debate in a way the actual format never gave him.

Note that McCain failed to bring ayers into the debate. He was not man enough to do it to obama's face. He was not able to stand on stage and call obama a terrorist. maybe the campaign would not have been negative if they had done the town halls because mccain could never attack obama like that to his face. even palin was willing to go after biden with the white flag of surrender. baring a nuclear moment i dont see mccain turning this around. Obam by 4.5 points in popular vote and he wins 376 electoral votes.

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