The other night on Countdown, Keith Olbermann asked Barack Obama about the apparently successful blitzkrieg campaign of lies and distortions that John McCain and Sarah Palin are waging against him.

Obama responded that "once the dust has settled," the American people will come to their senses and vote for the saner choice.

I'm here to tell you, Barack: the dust will not settle.  

Why?  Because McCain, Palin, Steve Schmidt and Karl Rove will keep kicking it up.

When Palin was tapped for VP, she seemed inexperienced, incompetent, and extremist.  How did the McCain campaign compensate for this?  Not simply by playing up her experience.  They went on the attack: "Sarah Palin has more executive experience than Obama and Biden put together!"

A whole variety of questions about Palin's qualifications have been shut down with the accusation of "sexism".  McCain and Palin, in stump speeches and massive ad buys, blithely repeat blatant falsehoods about her ("She opposed the bridge to nowhere") and about Obama ("he will raise your taxes").

Almost every day, for instance, McCain says rival Barack Obama would raise everyone's taxes, even though the Democrat's tax plan exempts families that earn less than $250,000. ...

For now, there appears to be little political reason to back down. A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken Sept. 5 to Sept. 7 found that 51 percent of voters think Obama would raise their taxes, even though his plan would actually cut taxes for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Obama has proposed eliminating income taxes on seniors making less than $50,000 a year, but 41 percent of those seniors say their income taxes would go up in an Obama administration.

Obama's response?  To continue to commend McCain's military service, and to call Palin's life story "compelling" ... oh, and to point out that "you can't just make stuff up."

Actually, Barack, they can.  And they are.  And they will keep doing so.  The dust will not settle.

Obama is cool, dispassionate, rational.  Like many progressives, he earnestly wants to move American forward with smarter policy choices.  He has the advantage of being extremely likable -- far more charismatic than any Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton.  But these days, he seems afflicted by the same troubling lack of fire in the belly that characterized Kerry, Gore, and Dukakis.  In the words of W.B. Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Understand: There is no blow to low for the GOP, no lie too outrageous.  And as quickly as one fire is put out, they will start another.  They've called Obama an elitist, a Muslim, and a terrorist sympathizer.  Now they are accusing him of supporting explicit sex ed for kindergarteners. 

It's not enough to respond to lies by pointing them out, or to have your campaign spokesman issue another verbose, whiny, confusingly worded statement:

It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls - a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds.

That's a 47-word sentence, with a dangling clause at the end that I still can't figure out.  Mitt Romney?  Whose friend?  What position?  WTF?  When will Democrats learn to talk and write like regular people?

We've seen this movie before.  Why would a Democratic candidate for president not be prepared for this kind of fight?  If you don't hit back -- and hard -- it looks like you just don't care when you're slandered.

But really, hitting back is not enough.  That's still reactive.  Hitting back is better than what Obama is doing now -- essentially, writing strongly worded letters of protest.  But even better than hitting back is what the Republicans themselves do: they hit first.

As I've been saying for years:

The single most shocking fact of our political system is that for years, the Democrats have been face to face and toe to toe with an aggressive, partisan GOP, and have watched that party win power with an attack-dog, take-no-prisoners attitude -- and yet the Dems have neither learned from nor emulated it.

Back in June, Obama quoted The Untouchables: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."  Sounds great.  But every Dem presidential nominee seems to tell a similar story to his own base, at fundraisers and rallies... and then goes out to the gunfight, with nothing in his holster except a strongly worded letter.

I believe Obama is capable of running a tougher campaign... and I believe it can be done in a way that is not as sleazy and dishonest as the Republican way.  The strongest moment of Obama's campaign against McCain thus far was the attack on McCain's inability to remember how many houses he has.  This was done brilliantly, quickly, repeatedly -- and truthfully.

We need more of this, and we need it yesterday.  Define new rules of play.  Knock them off their game.  Don't react mildly to their smears and insults.  Don't react strongly.  Stop reacting.  Start acting.

I'm no campaign strategist (altho, like all political bloggers, I play one on the internet!), but here are some ideas...

» Define Sarah Palin: Create a concise, negative portrait or label of Palin... or 2 or 3 (but no more than that)... then hammer her with them relentlessly.  John Kerry was successfully defined in 2004 as "elite" and a "flip-flopper."  McCain was, until the convention, widely viewed as "old" and "out of touch."  Initially, his choice of Palin seemed to support another negative definition of him: "cynical."  The question of the moment is: Who does Obama want people to think Sarah Palin is?  Right now, they think "hockey mom" and "reformer."  How about "incompetent"?  How about "fraud"?  How about "extremist"?

» Use explicit narratives that dovetail with implicit ones: Obama can't say that McCain is too old for the job.  But he can say he's "out of touch" and "can't even remember how many houses he has."  (And he did so, to great effect.)  Obama can't say that Palin is a religious extremist with a seemingly out-of-control family life (pregnant teen daughter, son who joined the military to escape criminal charges).  But he can say she's "extreme" politically, and "incompetent" as a public servant.  And those explicit charges -- which are fair game, and can be backed up by evidence -- reinforce the implicit ones that the Obama campaign can't make.  Leave those to tabloids, outside groups, and late-night comedians.

» Attack their strengths: For example: call McCain on his endless exploitation of his POW status.

» Open up new fronts: Get in their faces.  Ask questions they can't answer.  Start new fires that they have to race to put out.  I'm not going to try to offer suggestions here.  Obama's campaign staff can surely come up with some good ideas.  If they can't, he should fire them and hire new people.

And most importantly:

» Don't back down: Don't apologize.  Don't undercut your surrogates.  This looks weak.  This is weak.  No more weak sauce.  Americans like their sauce extra-strong.

People do vote based on rational calculations of self-interest... but also based on strong emotional motivations.  Prior to Palin's selection, Obama offered a stronger emotional connection to the public than McCain.  Now the shoe is on the other foot... and that foot is kicking our guy in the head, repeatedly.  Palin smiles perkily, as she and McCain lie and smear and keep sticking the knife into Obama.

Barack, please don't wait for the dust to settle, and for rationality to prevail.  Don't think you can just brush that dust off your shoulders, and offer firm, courteous, point-by-point rebuttals to their daily barrages of trash talk.  It will not work.

Yes, it's true... the dust will settle, eventually.  And I can tell you exactly when it will settle: on November 5.  But by then it will be too late.

After Ron Fournier's latest antics, you'd think the Associated Press would be a little more careful about serving up their "news" with such an obvious pro-McCain slant. 

You'd be wrong.

Humble pie nourished McCain's campaign

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Republicans lugged money, fame and promise into their race for the presidential nomination. One of them carried his own bags, tooled around New Hampshire with a few volunteers, flew commercial and won.

John McCain's diet of humble pie in the summer of 2007 might have been the best thing that happened to his campaign.

At first it's hard to understand why the AP chose this moment to write a story about John McCain's campaign in the summer of 2007.  But when you read the article, it comes off as a tailor-made piece of counter-spin, designed for one purpose: to fight the McCain-as-elitist narrative, so powerfully driven home by the recent publicity surrounding his lavish 4, er, 7, er, 12-house lifestyle.

As the earliest perceived front-runner, McCain saw an elaborate organization grow around him, populated by some of the George W. Bush operatives he had faced as rivals in 2000. He wore the structure like a fancy, ill-fitting suit.

Translation: The GOP built an expensive operation for McCain, but maverick John just wasn't comfortable being surrounded by all that money and Republican establishment frippery.

Just over a year ago, McCain was laying off more than 50 campaign workers, cutting pay and seeing his poll numbers mired in single digits in some of the big early states.

The Iraq war he supported had been going badly and he obstinately was sticking to his position. Social conservatives, masterful organizers, were not sold on him.

By necessity as well as by nature, McCain was meeting small groups of voters and standing out easily as the most accessible of the major candidates in either party.

You could edge up to him at a New Hampshire bar and shoot the breeze. He flew Southwest, without an entourage. ...

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who has known the Arizona senator for 25 years, said the crisis was oddly liberating.

"All he could do was go up to New Hampshire and be John McCain," he said. "It was a streak of good fortune that he ran out of money and went up there and was himself. That's what people love — that he is himself, not some sort of synthetic character trying to figure out who he is."

What a guy!  Standing up against the hard right, schmoozing with regular folks, taking commercial flights by himself.  Yep, John flying solo, just like always.

"The middle seat on Southwest gave me a lot more opportunity to interact with voters," he allowed in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm not complaining. Still have town hall meetings. Still able to do 95 percent of what I did before."

And there the story ends.

Or does it?  Did McMaverick really spend all last summer flying Southwest?  Funny, the AP forgot to mention this:

Given Senator John McCain’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field.

But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain, according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.

Mr. McCain’s campaign paid a total of $241,149 for the use of that plane from last August through February, records show. That amount is approximately the cost of chartering a similar jet for a month or two, according to industry estimates.

The senator was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control.

Wait... this is a law McCain himself helped to create?  I'm sure that exemption was purely coincidental...

The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole — rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes — but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.

Because that exemption remains, Mr. McCain’s campaign was able to use his wife’s corporate plane like a charter jet while paying first-class rates, several campaign finance experts said. Several of those experts, however, added that his campaign’s actions, while keeping with the letter of law, did not reflect its spirit.

“This amounts to a subsidy for his campaign, which is notable given how badly they were struggling last year,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that collects and analyzes campaign data. ...

Last summer, just before starting to use his wife’s plane, Mr. McCain was quoted in a newspaper report as saying that he did not plan to tap her substantial wealth to keep his bid for the Republican presidential nomination going.

“I have never thought about it,” Mr. McCain was quoted by The Arizona Republic as saying at a July appearance. “I would never do such a thing, so I wouldn’t know what the legalities are.”

I'm reposting this with corrected formatting.  Admins, feel free to delete the earlier version.

Is it just me, or does this headline sound like something from The Onion?

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former White House aide Karl Rove denied on Monday that his close ties with Republican politics and John McCain's presidential campaign undermine his credibility as an election analyst for the Fox News Channel.

Undermine his credibility? His ties to the GOP are exactly what his credibility (to Fox viewers) is built on.

The credibility and independence of most cable new pundits is weak to begin with. That goes double for conservatives (who tend to be paid shills of right-wing think tanks), and triple for anyone on Fox News. Debates about the objectivity of such characters are almost always a feeble joke.

Rove is a perfect storm of everything that's wrong with cable punditry, multiplied by 100. And yet he's also the perfect contributor to the Fox News propaganda network (founded by another GOP political consultant turned "newsman", Roger Ailes).

Despite all this, Steve Gorman's piece seems intended to be entirely irony-free.

 

Is it just me, or does <a href=http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080715/tv_nm/rove_dc_1 target="_blank">this headline</a> sound like something from The Onion?<blockquote>LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former White House aide Karl Rove denied on Monday that his close ties with Republican politics and John McCain's presidential campaign undermine his credibility as an election analyst for the Fox News Channel.</blockquote>Undermine his credibility? His ties to the GOP are exactly what his credibility (to Fox viewers) is built on.

The credibility and independence of most cable new pundits is weak to begin with. That goes double for conservatives (who tend to be paid shills of right-wing think tanks), and triple for anyone on Fox News. Debates about the objectivity of such characters are almost always a feeble joke.

Rove is a perfect storm of everything that's wrong with cable punditry, multiplied by 100. And yet he's also the perfect contributor to the Fox News propaganda network (founded by another GOP political consultant turned "newsman", Roger Ailes).

Despite all this, Steve Gorman's piece seems intended to be entirely irony-free.

 

When all 3 cable news channels (MSNBC, CNN, Fox News) spent hours on Tim Russert's death on Friday, I was slightly surprised.  Even Fox was paying lavish tribute.

When I kept checking back as the night wore on, and kept seeing nothing but Russert, I was increasingly puzzled.  Did nothing else more important happen in the nation or the world that day? 

When I checked in on MSNBC at various points on Saturday, and the Russert mourn-a-thon seemed to be continuing nonstop, I was disgusted.  The death of their fellow member of the elite media loomed larger to these people than the floods in Iowa, the Taliban prison break in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court's restoration of habeas corpus to Gitmo prisoners, Obama's Social Security plan, or anything else.

When I saw that they were again programming solid wall-to-wall Russert all day Sunday -- giving his death far more coverage than the passing of the far more talented Peter Jennings, at least as much coverage as the death of John Paul II, and rapidly approaching the point where it will overtake the Ronald Reagan weepfest -- I finally understood. 

The bizarre, narcissistic spectacle of the Tim Russert Memorial Network reveals the fundamental truth about cable "news": It's not about news.  It is about itself.

I fired up my computer this morning to be confronted with the news that Clinton is STILL trying to poach superdelegates from Obama.  In spite of all the calls for her to drop out, in spite of all the marshaling of facts and figures, she will not concede.  I've felt for weeks now that she is very likely to take this fight all the way to the convention, and that feeling is growing stronger, not weaker, as time goes by.

Why are Clinton and her diehard supporters refusing to give up in the face of impossible odds?

I was e-mailing with a friend about some of the nuttier-seeming pro-Hillary protesters at the RBC meeting.  My friend (an Obama supporter like myeslf) made this observation:

There are some women who I think see Hill's run as vindication for every wrong perpetrated against them in their work and personal lives. [...] So imagine you were a hard working woman who was skilled at your job.  Over and over you get turned down for the promotion that is given to some backslapping guy who talks about sports and plays golf with the muckity-mucks.  Your husband leaves you after the youngest kid turns 18 years for a woman 20 years your junior.  Yeah, I'd be bitter too.

I can understand how this kind of experience would strongly shape a person's outlook.  But could this alone create the kind of seeming blind fervor of the most devout Clintonistas?  I think that's part of what's going on, but not the whole story.

(NOTE: I use the term "Clintonistas" as a pithy but neutral descriptor for Clinton supporters, just as some call Obama supporters "Obamanauts".  Also, it was short enough to fit nicely into the title field of this diary.  I mean no disrespect by it.)

It occurred to me today that there is a traditional protocol in male-dominated organizations and subcultures about what happens when a contest concludes.  It's expected that losers will gracefully acknowledge winners, and basically fall in line and respect the hierarchy.  Complaining about the outcome of a competition is strongly scorned -- "There's no crying in baseball", etc.  The idea is that one may nurse one's private grudges and emotional bruises, but bad feelings should be channeled into future rounds of competition, rather than aired publicly and used to whip up resentment and stoke division within the ranks.

One can argue about whether this is good or bad (and of course it isn't always strictly observed), but I do think it's the dominant ethic in male hierarchies.  It's a form of emotional repression, and it's part of what has enabled men to form -- for better or worse -- highly disciplined, rank-oriented groups, such as sports teams and military units, in which leaders give orders and subordinates obey them with a minimum of questioning and dispute.

So when people say that it's time for Clinton to step aside and get behind the nominee, this is really standard rhetoric for this stage of the process -- it's what runner-up male competitors have been told in situations like this since the beginning of time.  

But perhaps to Clinton and some of her diehard female supporters, the calls for her to bow out sound like something else -- namely, men telling a woman to sit down and shut up.  I can understand why this would irritate women who have dealt with that sort of thing for decades... and in fact it may feel to some like accepting this outcome would be the ultimate betrayal of deeply-held feminist convictions.  

Of course there has been, and still is, real sexism directed against Clinton.  But I think some of her supporters are mistakenly interpreting as sexism what is, for the most part, the normal appeal for unity at this point in the election cycle.  

This is particularly true for those who do not have a lot of good, objective information about the rules and details of the primary process.  Case in point: ABC's Jake Tapper blogged over the weekend that some of the protesters at the RBC meeting mistakenly believed that if the FL and MI delegates had been granted full votes, Hillary would gain the lead in the delegate count.  In reality, of course, Obama would have still been ahead even if that had happened.

And when it comes to objective information, it doesn't help that many members of her campaign (including, it should be noted, plenty of men, like Bill, Terry McAuliffe, Harold Ickes, etc.) seem to be operating in the toxic Bushian mode of believing their own spin -- with regard to the "popular vote", the "electoral vote", MI and FL, the "white working class", etc.  I'm sure the campaign was not doing anything to disabuse the protesters of their confusion about the delegate count on Saturday.

All of this is producing a festering mess.  And the only person who is really in a position to end it is Clinton herself.  But I'm not sure she's going to.

A campaign ultimately reflects the psyche of the candidate -- and a signature trait of Clinton's campaign has been its inflexibility.  They failed to adapt to Obama's brilliant end run around the large, traditionally blue states; they did not act in time to stem ruinous financial losses; they stuck with bad managers like Patti Solis Doyle, and bad messengers like Mark Penn, long past their expiration dates.

This says something about Clinton herself.  She is incredibly disciplined, but not good at operating in rapidly shifting political winds.  Her attempts to launch fresh lines of attack against Obama every couple of weeks do not represent fundamental changes in campaign strategy, merely changes in surface rhetoric -- and they have been spectacularly unsuccessful.

Her inflexibility is her tragic flaw.  Now I fear that it may not only be her personal downfall, but that it may deal a crippling blow to party unity going into the fall.  I wonder if she is even psychologically capable of conceding before exhausting every single procedural loophole.  Remember how Bill resisted overwhelming pressure to resign during his impeachment?  I have no doubt that much of his tenacity was backstopped by hers -- they seem to feed off each other.  If she approaches this situation the way he approached that one, then she is not about to concede.  And the combination of her inflexibility, her supporters' deeply-ingrained resentments, and her campaign's relentless promotion of bogus information about the process, is a recipe for serious trouble ahead.