In the interest of bipartisanship...

see Sarah Palin pictures

Keating Economics

I think this is like the skinny kid with glasses cold-cocking the bully when he pokes his fingers into the nerd's chest one too many times.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is in full-on flail mode.

Cast of Thousands: Obama Rally attended by 75,000

This could be going somewhere.

Corleone Family Tactics... Or Montana?

The question is, after she's done wiping out the disloyal, freezing out the interest groups who betrayed her, who's left to elect her in November? This is less like The Godfather, and more like Scarface, even if it works out for her. Unfortunately for her, just about everybody recognizes that whatever she says about Barack Obama's electability, she's kneecapped herself with major constituencies of the party, and many find her politics against her own party distasteful.

And that really is the heart of it: It isn't just that she attacked Obama. That's to be expected; politics ain't beanbag. It's that she's attacking her own party in a certan fashion. She's cooperated with folks on the right to do this(even folks that hounded her in the past), folks looking for strategic advantage on their own side who won't vote for her. She's taken up many of the Republican standards against her own party, with a party that no longer has any patience for the demonization of the left, and which can get independents and disaffected Republicans without having to sell themselves out.

So, in the end, she's dug her own electoral grave, and pretty soon the party's going to start burying her candidacy with no small sense of relief.

Loyalty Defined Down

I will have serious reservations about backing the Clintons in future contests because of this one. This article in the New York Times isn't what pushed me over the edge, I think their behavior over the past few weeks has been more the cause of that.

I'm really sick of politicians who define loyalty one way, towards themselves, but don't give back. It would be easier for the Clintons to keep friends if they acted like friends; friends of the party, friends of the middle class, friends to those who helped them, supported them, but have had differences of opinion.

If they took these things more maturely, if they accepted that they weren't entitled to win every contest, and that letting a few fights go might help keep them in the running for future candidacy, they might not have screwed themselves so royally. As it is, now, they've turned a huge portion of their party against them. What the hell now makes them the better candidates? Obama's not going to punish people for supporting Clinton. They won't be so forgiving, but as they decline, Obama's open arms are going to look a lot more welcoming than their turned backs.

Sorry no embedded video on this one, but...

...This is freaking Hilarious. (John Edwards doing The Word on The Colbert Report, for the click through challenged)

I want a jet-ski, too.

Gibson and Stephanopoulous Are angling for his Job...

I think I know what lead up to this bizzare commercial.

A bottle of tequila, shared between the political director of the McCain Campaign, and an eager young media student who can't wait to try out his new video effects program. (original link to article where I found this.)



Hey, I'm not judging, I've been there. Only I've never put out anything this... original. Yeah. That's the word for it.

Strategic Credibility

Here's how I think McCain gains his credibility. He publically arranges to do something substantially different from the party line, or makes some statement critical about a policy, and then makes sure the media covers it as if he's what he says he is.

The rest of the time, he does the standard things. The trick is to have those moderate, bipartisan things (or things that seem that way) be the face of his political career, rather than the stuff he actually does.

The key is to get the maverick, bipartisan, moderate stuff out in front, so when he backslides in private, he still appears like he's got the potential to do something surprising.

Bad Idea. Terrrrrrrible Idea.

I'll tell you what the problems with holding a Superdelegate convention before the real one to decide who gets them are:

1) It won't prevent a nasty public fight, it will likely just relocate it.

2) It would have all the elitist charm, if it's results went a certain way of somebody trying to appeal to the superdelegates at the convention.

3) Mathematically, we already have a decent standard on hand: pledged delegates. And that has the bonus of having a winner ready made, even if some in the party don't like it.

4) There's already a way for the superdelegates to decide what to do on their own. Follow the general state of the primary. If some catastrophe happens, you can always turn around and goe the other way.

At the end of the day, if the Superdelegates weren't so craven, we'd have a candidate already. And if we didn't have them at all, we'd hardly be having this conversation. We'd have a candidate. But that would be doing things the easy way, and the Democratic Party's hardly been interested in that for the generation or two before this one. Oh well, said the hydrologist.

Warning Signs

McCain is the only Senator, much less presidential candidate, to get an incomplete on a recent survey about Middle Class Responsiveness.

Stroke patient Tim Johnson, debilitated from serving until September of last year, showed up to vote, good or bad, fifty percent more of the time.

Michigan and Florida: A Path to Forgiveness (or how to pay for new primaries)

If both states are willing to do new elections in order to leave the illegitimate first tries behind, but neither is willing or able to pay for it, then I have a suggestion.

We've seen both candidates raise massive amounts of money to fund their presidential efforts. We've proven that this can be done within a matter of weeks.

So here's what we do: we set up a fund for these primaries, and both candidates implore their supporters to donate to it, the same way they've donated to their campaigns.

The advantages of this approach is that we have no one candidate funding the election, with the conflict of interest that brings, no drain of Party or candidate funds currently going to win races. If distributed widely enough, it would hardly have an effect on what people give to the candidates.

If we all give to the fund with the same commitment we've given to our respective candidates, we can easily pay for these new primaries. But that's not all.

The funding drive, if successful, would show that the Democratic Party is more united than it seems at the moment. It would show that our party is committed to keeping voters enfranchised. It would allow us to do this within the party's rules, maintaining their integrity.

Last, but not least, it would welcome Michigan and Florida back into the fold in a way sure to improve party morale. The national party, this drive would say, came together to give these two states their voice. All is forgiven. It would also reflect positively upon the party in those states, which might give our candidate an advantage in November.