Things Get Worse For McCain

First he lost the debate, now he's losing his mind.

Regarding the debate, I thought Tom Brokaw selected a good variety of fairly neutral questions. The variety of topics was pretty limited in my view, and the whole show was rather boring, but McCain still managed to lose pretty badly during the affair.

First he offered up a horrible mortgage buyback program that has managed to infuriate Republicans and Democrats alike. It's basically just a big giveaway to banks at the expense of taxpayers. Hopefully Paulson ignores McCain's plan and goes ahead with his plan to nationalize the banks, so that at least taxpayers get a real investment for their money.

Second, he was too much of a coward to take the gloves off and unleash his smears to Obama's face. Obama, meanwhile, was more than happy to humiliate McCain. Check this out:



He maked McCain look like a very small and foolish man, and it has probably pissed McCain off. He didn't stick around to shake hands after the debate, and his campaign has turned truly ugly and vile in the past two days. Now McCain and Palin are telling their rallies that Obama is a terrorist sympathizer named Hussein who wants to hand over the keys of the country to Bin Laden.

Unfortunately, the problem for McCain is that the Dow Jones has fallen 6,000 points in the last year of Bush's presidency. That is hitting people right in their wallets, and making it harder for people to really buy into that culture war, smear and fear crap. McCain's numbers are in the toilet and this is his last chance to turn things around.

It will either work just well enough for him to inch past Obama in the final stretch, or it will guarantee that McCain loses very badly. I think it will be the latter, but 2004 taught me to never overestimate the American voter.

By the way, the Troopergate report will be released tomorrow. Could be a non-event, or it could be THE event of October. I can't wait.

Tonight's Debate

Here are the rules surrounding tonight's debate:

–The questions will be culled from a group of 100 to 150 uncommitted likely voters in the audience and another one-third to come via the Internet. Brokaw selects which questions to ask from written queries submitted prior to the debate.

–The Gallup Organization makes sure the questioners reflect the demographic makeup of the nation.

–An audience member isn’t allowed to switch questions and will not be allowed a follow-up either. His or her microphone will be turned off after the question is read and a camera shot will only be shown of the person asking — not reacting.

–McCain and Obama will be provided with director’s chairs, but they’re also allowed to stand. They can’t roam past their “designated area” marked on the stage and are not supposed to ask each other direct questions.

I don't know which campaign consultants pushed for these dumb rules, but it sounds really moronic to me. I can't remember a town hall debate where the camera doesn't show the questioner while the candidate responds. And despite attempts in previous years to prevent candidates from asking follow-up questions, they always want to do it.

So yes, it will be weird to see McCain or Obama looking directly at a voter, responding to their question, and yet having the cameraman barred from showing the voter's reaction.

In addition, it seems that Tom Brokaw has quite a bit of power when it comes to selecting the questions. In addition to the 150 likely voters in the audience, he also received six million questions submitted online. So even though the questions that will be asked tonight were submitted by regular folks, Brokaw pretty much has the power to select any question on any topic that he wants.

As of late, Tom Brokaw has been acting biased towards the McCain campaign. If he wants to make this a difficult night for either candidate, he has that power.

For example, on almost every topic there is a neutral way to ask a question, there is a right-leaning way to ask a question, and there is a left-leaning way to ask a question. I'll give you some examples.

Abortion:

Neutral Way: What is your stance on Roe vs. Wade?

Right Leaning: I believe abortion is murder. Why should my tax dollars pay for abortions?

Left leaning: Do you believe that doctors should go to prison for performing abortions?

The right-leaning question was actually asked of John Kerry four years ago, during the town hall debate, and predictably gave him one of his toughest moments of the night. It's not his fault. The way the question was asked, there was no way he could win. I've seen moderators ask the abortion question using the neutral way, but I've never seen them ask it from the lefty point of view.

Iraq:

Neutral Way: What are your future plans regarding the Iraq War?

Right Leaning: Will you allow our troops to win the Iraq War?

Left Leaning: When will you bring our troops home from Iraq?

Taxes:

Neutral: Explain your tax policies -- which ones go up, which ones go down?

Right Leaning: Will you take a no-news-taxes pledge right now?

Left Leaning: Are you going to ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes?

Scandal:

Neutral: Both candidates have had troubling associations in the past. Do you believe that these should be a central campaign issue?

Right Leaning: Mr. Obama, why did you serve on a board with domestic terrorist William Ayers?

Left Leaning: Mr. McCain, why did you select a running mate who has close ties to an anti-American secessionist group?

And of course, the list could go on and on. I can guarantee that every form of these questions was asked by either one of the townhall participants or the six million folks at home. So Tom Brokaw has lots of power to alter the course of tonight's debate.

We can all hope that he chooses the neutral, issue-specific course. Barring that, hopefully he chooses an equal number of right-leaning and left-leaning loaded questions. And let's see how many questions are asked about energy, the environment, torture, habeus corpus, the prosecution of Bush administration war criminals.

Brokaw's reputation is on the line, so we shall see what happens.

By the way, my prediction for who wins the debate tonight? John McCain. He is the master of town halls, after all.

Republicans Catering To The Dark Side

The McCain campaign apparently believes that the best way to win is to demonize Barack Obama. So perhaps they shouldn't be surprised when their supporters take them at their word. These McCain/Palin events are getting truly ugly.

During McCain's speech today, he asked "Who is the real Barack Obama?" Immediately, a man in the crowd yelled "terrorist!" Watch it here:



Not to be outdone were the audience members at Sarah Palin's speech in Florida. Check this out:

It was time to revive the allegation, made over the weekend, that Obama "pals around" with terrorists, in this case Bill Ayers, late of the Weather Underground. Many independent observers say Palin's allegations are a stretch; Obama served on a Chicago charitable board with Ayers, now an education professor, and has condemned his past activities.

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said.

"Boooo!" said the crowd.

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

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

It's getting very ugly out there, and I hope the Secret Service is being vigilant about Obama's protection. The Republicans are determined to stir up some major hatred over the next month, all in the hopes of bringing enough white voters home to squeak out a 50+1 victory. I think the economic situation is too dire for this kind of trash to work, but it is already starting to turn Republican rallies into unabashed hate-fests.

I hope John McCain is happy with himself.

McCain Plans To Cut Medicare

Yeah, I'm sure this will go over well in Florida.

Problems Seeing YouTube Videos?

I've had some readers indicate that they've had trouble viewing the YouTube videos on this site.

My recommendation is to ensure that you have the latest version of Flash software.

Please completely uninstall Flash before reinstalling the latest version.

To uninstall Flash, please follow Adobe's instructions here.

Once you're done, restart your computer and follow Adobe's instructions for reinstalling Flash.

I was having a few hiccups as well, and this seems to have cleared things up. If this doesn't help, it's a browser/Blogger/YouTube problem that I can't fix.

Anyway, in case you missed it, here is Saturday Night's Live's hilarious take on the VP debate. They really nailed it:

McCain's Desperation Continues To Escalate

It's 29 days until the election, and McCain's campaign is flailing. They are down sharply in the polls, they lost the first two debates, and the economy continues to be front page news. Over the weekend, the McCain campaign announced that they wanted to "turn the page" from the economic crisis and start smearing Obama instead.

Indeed, Sarah Palin said that Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and today McCain basically accused Obama of being a liar and a fraud. Palin's remarks were despicable, and of course totally untrue:



Sarah Palin has also brought up Rev. Wright, in a NY Times column that could come back to haunt her:

I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?

She didn’t hesitate: “To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”

If anyone should know to keep their mouth shut about pastor problems, it's Sarah Palin. Just a few weeks ago, the Wasilla Bible Church hosted a sermon by David Brickner, of the anti-semitic group Jews for Jesus. Sarah Palin was in the audience and did not leave, despite these comments by Brickner:

Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity.

"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it."

Sarah Palin was also in church a few years back, when her pastor basically said that the world would be a better place if Christians, rather than Jews, controlled the economy. Obama, meanwhile, was not in the pews during Rev. Wright's controversial moments.

The Obama campaign, having learned the key lessons of 1988, 1992, 2000 and especially 2004, have not hesitated to strike back on all of these fronts. First of all, they have set up a website called KeatingEconomics.com, that explores John McCain's shameful role in the Keating Five scandal. The site includes a 13-minute documentary laying out the case against John McCain, and explaining how he has failed to learn the lessons of the Savings & Loan crisis.

It's actually laughable that McCain is today accusing Obama of being responsible for the mortgage meltdown, when in fact McCain has been there from the very beginning. Obama didn't even get to Washington until 2004, when the housing bubble was in full bloom. You can't even blame Democrats in general for the crisis, since housing prices ballooned during the years of Republican control and began to burst before Democrats took Congress.



In other words, blaming Obama for the current meltdown is the same as blaming Obama for high gas prices. It's ridiculous. It's the kind of argument a Washington outsider would make against a longtime insider like John McCain. But for John McCain to make it to a freshman Senator? Again -- ridiculous.

John McCain is revealing his character during this campaign. Angry, vindictive, reckless, erratic, willing to do or say anything to win. He'd have a tough time winning no matter what he did, given that he has voted 90% of the time with the worst president in history. But by picking a national joke like Sarah Palin as his VP, and by resorting to these sorts of discredited smear attacks, he has really trimmed his chances. At this point he needs an epic comeback to win, which would probably include either a meltdown by Obama or an assist from Al Qaeda.

No matter what happens on Nov. 4th, it's pretty clear that McCain's reputation is in the trash can.