Two Women

Over on the Dem side there's the buzz aplenty regarding Sen. Hillary Clinton's meeting in Chicago with President-Elect Obama and rumors that she's been offered the Secretary of State position, which is actually only four steps down in the line of succession (thanks, schmebble), right after Vice President, Speaker of the House and President Pro Tem of the Senate, and can be as influential as Kissinger or neutered as Rice, but which is, if true, an offer unprecedented since, like Lincoln.

So while Sen. Clinton mulls over her potential choice between the Constitutionally 2nd most powerful foreign policy figure in America (after the President) of Junior Senator from New York with little seniority including in her signature health insurance area (she's not a Senate Committee chair, and both Kennedy and Baucus are making their plays on the issue), I wonder if she won't find all that travel tempting. She's well-known and well-liked around the globe, and the Camelot aura of Obama appointing his arch-rival for the nomination would speak volumes.

However, it is a lot of travel. She wouldn't be the first woman in the job (she'd be the third) and it is at the pleasure of the President. But as I've said before, Hillary may actually trust Obama more than she does her husband. He may have bested her in the nomination battle, but I doubt he's ever lied to her.

On the other side of the aisle, Sarah Palin has been sucking in camera-time like oxygen this past week, a slow curtain designed to avoid being a curtain as her chance to appoint herself Senator and finally escape Wasilla once and for all is going down with the Stevens-Begich recount.

It'll be interesting to watch the, um, plucky Governor try to elbow her way into media situations from now through the next GOP primary season for 2012, as I don't think the other aspirants will want her there. Her embarrassingly transparent "pageant-speak" is not germane to any of the real issues at hand, which the smarter Republicans are realizing means taking at least some of Obama's open hand and actually connecting with what people are really going through, not relying on distracting social issues.

Here's the BAGnewsNotes photo analysis of the tension coming from the other GOP Governors at their retreat Friday. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who followed Bush in that role, manhandles her at the podium, and her whole speaking demeanor in the press conference is way too tweaked, telegraphing that she knows she's swimming in deeper waters than she can handle, but is determined to bluff both us and her into believing she's not spouting nonsensical nothings.

And what is it with the "team" thing. A "team" of governors? Is that like a "team" of mavericks?

Watch for her to be cut off at the knees inside her own party. She may be able to raise money, but by now none of the other governors should have any doubt who she's raising it for.

Fix for Junkies

Attention political junkies: the final Obamaporn is in, the post-game inside-the-campaigns feature stories, the king of which is Newsweek's brand (since 1984) of deeply embedded reporting, with the contractual agreement that nothing the reporters covering each campaign goes public, not a word nor a rumor, until the day after the Presidential Election.

This time they have a lot of inside Clinton, along with Obama and McCain. For those of us who read too much campaign coverage while it was happening, the most surprising news may be when the McCain senior campaign staff knew they were 90% likely to lose (the weekend before the third debate) and that McCain essentially came up with the Joe the Plumber meme himself, egged on by his wife and Lindsay Graham.

There's a highlights version, but the multi-chaptered piece is really something.

For a more succinct "why he won" covering the Obama side, Ryan Lizza does a nice job in The New Yorker. The first passage ending kind of sums up the last phase of this insanely long season:

As a practical matter, this meant that, after the Democratic National Convention, in Denver, the campaign would do all that it could to focus attention on economic matters. It had no idea, of course, how fully both the economy and John McCain would coöperate with that goal.

David Grann covers McCain, who seems more and more like a quasi-tragic character who finds honor only in losing.

Drink up, this is the last time you're allowed at the well. It's onto the future since Obama is there already, vetting cabinet choices and, one hopes, secretly governing already. After all, per Andy Borowitz, Bush is in a race against time:

Confounding the conventional wisdom that he is a lame duck president with no agenda as his days in office dwindle, President George W. Bush is redoubling his efforts to mutilate the country before his term expires, aides confirmed today.

"President Bush has spent the first seven years and ten months of his presidency doing everything in his power to leave the United States in smoldering ruins," said White House spokesperson Dana Perino. "He certainly is not going to let the final days of his tenure go to waste."

Ah, someday this, too, shall pass.

The Other One

Of all the Republican Presidential aspirants who participated in the pre-nomination debates, the only one I found myself agreeing with regularly was Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).

Paul, of libertarian bent, was opposed to the Iraq War as well as Cheney-led curtailments of freedom under the Patriot Act et al. So while I agree with Paul on a number of very big issues, most importantly that the U.S. follow George Washington's lead to trade with all but stay out of entangling foreign wars, I'm generally in disagreement with him regarding government spending -- he wants to slash it to the bone, which I hold is not a responsible or suited response to the modern world.

However, what Ron Paul does have that the Republican party desperately needs -- and won't get from Gov. Palin, no matter how many post-loser Election interview she does -- is a consistent, comprehensible philosophy. Leaders can come and go but a philosophy can mature, prevail. Think Goldwater to Reagan. Or Robert Kennedy to Barack Obama.

Paul espouses in a CNN commentary he just wrote:

• Limited government power

• A balanced budget

• Personal liberty

• Strict adherence to the Constitution

• Sound money

• A strong defense while avoiding all undeclared wars

• No nation-building and no policing the world

I believe that the under-analyzed aspect of last week's election is Obama's philosophy, which is certainly not Marxism but does call for a responsible society, on both the governmental and personal level. While the government becomes an instrument of the Common Good, it does not reach into your television to turn it off during homework hours -- that's your job, albeit preached by Presidential example.

While the GOP casts about for some new packaging to somehow revive their party, Paul is offering something already made. If he can somehow turn his core of committed libertarian activists into the foundation of at least a mini-movement, I believe they could win a Republican Presidential nomination, whether it is Paul or a figure with less built-in loathing by his own party. And it could be a real threat to win, again if properly organized.

After all, who on the left could disagree with this passage from his commentary:

The Republican Congress never once stood up against the Bush/Rove machine that demanded support for unconstitutional wars, attacks on civil liberties here at home, and an economic policy based on more spending, more debt, and more inflation -- while constantly preaching the flawed doctrine that deficits don't matter as long as taxes aren't raised.

On the other hand, I have yet to be convinced that we should, per Rep. Paul, eliminate the Departments of Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development.

But I bet a lot of Americans would be open to the argument. Especially now.

Which gives upcoming President Barack Obama a very, very slim window to prove his argument in action.

Their House

I'm not sure how I'm going to make it through the inauguration if I'm already getting choked up -- in a sort of invigorating, fist-pumping manner -- looking at pictures of the Obamas coming over to the Bush's house today, the house they're moving into just 10 weeks from now. Oh, and video:



Part of the emotion is the fundamental patriotism for our democracy, typified every time there's a change of White House from one political party to a rival party. There's a lot of countries where that isn't guaranteed to happen, and for awhile (2003-2005?) some of us were worried it wouldn't. You know, martial law and a suspension of Presidential elections, like Rudy Giuliani tried to pull off after the attacks of 9/11/2001.

And it's even sweeter when the party you favor wins. The last time I got a buzz like this off the transition was when the Clintons took the door keys from the first round of Bushes.

Then there's the name. The White House. With this victorious black couple coming at the invitation of the current occupants to take a look around, talk a little policy, find out where the secret drawers are hidden, it's like fuck you historically racist America, you were actually laying the groundwork for this awesome moment, and from hereon out all limits of race or, I'd argue, gender for the job are history.

But what ties it all together are the three core themes of Barack Obama's campaign for President. There's Change -- that's the euphoric kick. There's Hope -- that's the tears. But there's a third theme that didn't get as much play as the first two in campaign iconography, but which is a core tenet of his oratory: Responsibility.

Obama believes that government has a responsibility to the people who elect it; that the people have a responsibility to carefully consider the issues, treat philosophical opponents with respect, and exercise their fair choice so as to keep democracy vital; and that we each have a responsibility to each other both on the personal and societal level.

This man is about to take on the most awesome responsibility in the world. Done right, there is no position more powerful that President of the United States of America. Hey, that's 50 states. Top that, Mevedev.

I'm an adult. I know there isn't a politician who won't disappoint me somewhere along the way. That's fine, as long as it doesn't get out of hand. There's every possibility that the headwinds will be so strong that Obama will somehow not succeed in his quest to save America and the world through his Presidency. Very, very bad, unmentionable things could happen; we've lived them all before. By the end of this, he may even end up being a "War President."

But somehow, I doubt it. Watching Obama enhancing even George W. Bush with his presence, with his soft-power hand on El Presidente's back as they head into the colonnade, I know this guy is there for a reason. I start wondering if he actually initiated the meeting, secretly, from his side. Because he appears to have even talked auto policy with Bush, maybe testing his political capital -- trying to get it decoupled from trade and actually get something done before even taking the oath.

That's the kind of guy we just elected, a real leader with a real purpose for moving into this house, America's house, our house. This is the guy whom his advisers were most concerned didn't have the "pathological" desire to be President, but invented it for himself through his sense of mission.

A community organizer for our desperate nation.

Moving into our house January 20th.

All-New Issue

Heading into our first full week with President-Elect Obama, it feels like a fresh start for America even though all the hardcore economic problems that existed a week ago are still here, and the other party is still in power.

That said, you'd be hard-pressed for a photo that better captures where we are right now in relation to our ecstatic history than this one at BAGnewsNotes, and equally able to enjoy David Brooks' honest depiction of where that other party is right now:



You've got a whole slew of babies who just got named Barack, Michele, Malia or Sasha. You've got a post-mortem by the team that helped their boss win the election that's filled with all the great moral attributes you'd like to hear -- no drama, no infighting, no hanging on race, win good.

And you've got 50 count'em 50 facts you may not know about our incoming President.

For example, did you know that he collects both Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comic books?

I wonder if he has any of the early Steve Ditkos or Barry Windsor-Smiths in his collection.

Marvel-ous!

Transformation

There's going to be a lot of Sunday morning quarterbacking, more like post-game analysis on why Obama did so well, but there's an article in the Sunday New York Times that I find particularly illuminating, about how the electorate of "Reagan Democrat" Levittown, PA went, in five months, from being unlikely to vote for a black man named Barack Hussein Obama for President to overwhelmingly going his way. For example:

I spent Election Day at a voting site inside the Magic Cottage preschool in a section of Levittown called Appletree, where Mr. Obama would defeat Mr. McCain, 682-388, a ratio slightly higher than the Democratic registration edge in that precinct. Not a single one of the more than 60 Obama voters I talked to said they had voted for him in the spring. Some said they had come around slowly, and many reported that they had been open to Mr. McCain.

So the Obama message of "change" was very real, down to the individual level -- admittedly racist adults having their attitudes flipped by him and his campaign, at least as far as this precious right and momentous decision.

Thankfully, the transformation, the change, seems to be real all the way up to explicitly reversing executive orders by El Presidente Bush, starting with those most damaging to the environment:

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

I guess that what the Presidential pen giveth, the succeeding Presidential pen taketh away.

Obama will need to move fast to reassure America and, in particular, his base of supporters that he means what he campaigned on, budget crisis or not. So I'm looking forward to these moves, maybe even starting late Inauguration Day.

On the other hand, there will be plenty of January Presidential pardons that he'll be unable to undo. Will it include convicted felons like Libby and Abramoff...or/also Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Addington, Yoo, Gonzales...

...well, my fingers could get tired just listing them all.

365

In the red red heart of America, Omaha, Nebraska, Barack Obama has won the single Electoral Vote representing that city, in the state's unique method for breaking off one of it's three, to give that metropolitan area (and suburbs and exburbs) its fair say. So on Nate Silver's map we can see a representation of Obama chipping into that solid line of Midwestern states, from North Dakota down through Texas, which will hopefully be more blue than red at this time in 2012.

365 is a serious win. In some ways, it's still sinking in. You might think, whoa, a black guy got in, and that's a few days of celebration, but when you realize that unlike the last six (white!) Democrats who ran, he won Indiana and North Carolina, and that he won Virgina which no Democratic Presidential candidate has won since Lyndon Johnson when Obama was three years old.

Right now Missouri is too close to call, and it'll be sometime next week when they come up for air again. McCain was leading by about 5,800 votes when they froze up and while it may stay red, wouldn't you want to get on the new President's good side and just throw it in for good measure?

I mean, if you like the ring of 365 (# of days/year), so be it, but wouldn't 376 (to 161) sound even sweeter? Or maybe you'd think, hey, Barack Obama, how come you couldn't peel off another 24 E.V.'s and hit 400? That's a Georgia, a Montana, and a couple'a Dakotas.

Hey, don't get greedy. 365 is a hard-rockin' mandate, more than 2/3's, actually 68% of the Electoral College (376 would, of course, be 70%). And per today's first President-Elect Obama press conference, we should just be relieved to have an adult in charge again:



Remarkable. Right to work, and the paychecks don't even start until January 20th.

He's got our number.

Sayrahnara

Why, oh, why, is the McCain Campaign throwing running mate Sarah Palin under the bus the moment she's safely our of the lower 48?:



Doesn't know that the country abutting her state is 1/3 or NAFTA? That Africa is a continent, not a single country? And from Fox News? Ah, the pain of the backstab from the very organ that gave her life! And then there's the highbrow publication with it's own special leaks:

The disputes between the campaigns centered in large part on the Republican National Committee’s $150,000 wardrobe for Ms. Palin and her family, but also on what McCain advisers considered Ms. Palin’s lack of preparation for her disastrous interview with Katie Couric of CBS News and her refusal to take advice from Mr. McCain’s campaign.

But behind those episodes may be a greater subtext: anger within the McCain camp that Ms. Palin harbored political ambitions beyond 2008.

As late as Tuesday night, a McCain adviser said, Ms. Palin was pushing to deliver her own speech just before Mr. McCain’s concession speech, even though vice-presidential nominees do not traditionally speak on election night. But Ms. Palin met up with Mr. McCain with text in hand. She was told no by Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers, and Steve Schmidt, Mr. McCain’s top strategist.

You can check out a slideshow of Palin & Family's wardrobe bought with campaign donations at HuffPo here along with this savory nugget:

Sarah Palin left the national stage Wednesday, but the controversy over her role on the ticket flared as aides to John McCain disclosed new details about her expensive wardrobe purchases and revealed that a Republican Party lawyer would be dispatched to Alaska to inventory and retrieve the clothes still in her possession...

Guess they're not trusting her to ship back every last shiny red pump herself.

At DailyKos blogger gracchus sees an element of internal GOP class conflict in the elders trying to bury Palin now, while the wounds are fresh:

The problem is that the rich folks who run the party - and run Fox News - aren't really sincere about the party's social agenda. It's just red meat for the rightwing workies. The rich - really, the country's owners - want the party to look after their class interests, which are all economic. They don't trust the petit bourgeois footsoldiers any more than you or I do.

The problem is that the crazies are getting restless, and want to run the party themselves, not just provide the voting muscle. This makes the richies nervous: you see this with the complete lack of rich-folks funding for Huckabee (who incidentally wasn't reliable on economic issues as far as the rich were concerned).

Palin also scares them, as she's drawn from the same group, but seems even more ignorant and likely to blow up the world in search of the the end of the world and the second coming. Even short of that, she seems ignorant and incompetent enough to fuck things up even more royally than the most recent occupant of the White House did, given the chance. She'd further tarnish the brand, and probably cause everyone's portfolios to blow up. And the people who run the party aren't fools, just dedicated to their own interests: they realize that she's incredibly ignorant, and probably dangerous beyond a point they're willing to tolerate.

Setting up the pins for Mitt Romney 2012, one expects.

I'm as happy as anyone that Palin is off the national stage, although very grateful for her help in electing Barack Obama President. The fact is that she needs the oxygen of media attention to survive and will do whatever she can to escape Alaska, possibly by appointing herself to Ted Stevens' Senate seat, should he turn out to have won the vote and then be stripped of his seat by the Senate, which traditionally does not seat convicted felons.

So I wouldn't count her out forever, and she has company in the likes of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) who managed to keep her Congressional seat even after calling for the news media to investigate how "American" are the Democratic members of Congress, and Sen. Obama. Bachmann is kind of a nightmarish hybrid of Sarah Palin and Katherine Harris, and today she's acting like we're all patriots:

After suggesting that Barack Obama had anti-American views in an exchange three weeks ago with MSNBC host Chris Matthews, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told Politico Thursday that she was “extremely grateful that we have an African-American who has won this year.” She called his victory “a tremendous signal we sent.”

“I have not seen the United States as a racist nation,” said Bachmann, who represents Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, in the east-central part of the state. “In my district, I don’t sense racism, and that’s why I’m thankful that hopefully this will send a national signal across our country that America is not a nation made up of racists. ... On the same hand, I hope that the national media will not confuse disagreement with Obama’s policy positions with being consumed [by] racism.”

Racism, maybe not. McCarthyism...yes.

Well, let's hope the antidote has arrived. With Obama, is his victory, already assuming the mantle of American institution, he's an endorsement worth pushing, even in the Southern state of Georgia -- witness this campaign ad for Democrat Jim Miller, entering a run-off election against Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss:



"American is Back."

Yep, you can run with that.

Enfranchised

Now that the dust is settling on the election and the Obama transition team is moving like quicksilver to put a new cabinet team in place, we can only hope that the Obama Administration runs as brilliantly as his campaign. This fascinating Adam Nagourney piece at the NY Times provides a window on the ups-and-downs of the race from inside the Obama team, so impressive from bottom to top. The article ends on a note about race:

In Mississippi, Stuart Stevens, a longtime political strategist who had worked for both Mr. McCain and Mitt Romney in the primaries, was surveying polling data for a Republican client. He was picking up on an unexpected shift for Mr. Obama, even among white voters. As he put it in an interview: If a house is on fire, the owner does not care what color the fireman is.

“He transcended race,” Mr. Stevens said. “At the time of crisis, it became particularly irrelevant.”

Back in Washington, Mr. Belcher, the pollster, was finding something similar. Mr. Obama was showing strength even among white voters Mr. Belcher had identified as having racial biases. It was a phenomenon captured in a photograph he shared last week of a homemade sign with the Confederate flag. It read: “Rednecks for Obama. Even we’ve had enough.”

The historic nature of this win cannot be understated, although it took someone who did transcend race through excellence of skills and temperament -- a political Jackie Robinson -- to do it. It's the fulfilling of the promise of America, the enfranchisement of a people, per this Toles cartoon. It understandably makes African Americans cry, for the sacrifices of the past having now led to the possibilities open to their children. It fills a child of a segregationist politician with gratitude. Per Joe Klein in Time, it opens up a fresh, beautiful path for America, based on its deepest values:

Obama's victory creates the prospect of a new "real" America. We can't possibly know its contours yet, although I suspect the headline is that it is no longer homogeneous. It is no longer a "white" country, even though whites remain the majority. It is a place where the primacy of racial identity — and this includes the old, Jesse Jackson version of black racial identity — has been replaced by the celebration of pluralism, of cross-racial synergy. After eight years of misgovernance, it has lost some of its global swagger ... but also some of its arrogance. It may no longer be as dominant, economically or diplomatically, as it once was. But it is younger, more optimistic, less cynical. It is a country that retains its ability to startle the world — and in a good way, with our freedom. It is a place, finally, where the content of our President's character is more important than the color of his skin.

Oddly enough, the ugliest words since last night seem to be coming out of the mouth of the unlikeliest, Mr. Ralph Nader. While his anti-corporate sentiment is part of his self-defined job, his use of a racist term is shockingly tin-eared and demeaning to the President-Elect. Say that again: President-Elect.

I like it.

CNN did a cool video covering the campaign, to the tune of the best campaign song choice of all time:



Signed, sealed, and to be delivered on January 20, 2009.

God Bless America

Exhale.

And the children did lead. The historical seeds have been planted for a fresh new generation of civic-minded Americans. They were ready after 9/11 but the failure of leadership frittered it away. Barack Obama has led like no other. And his victory speech was nothing less than laying out the mission, in surprisingly somber tones, and the need to turn the effort from electing to enacting, all together...united.

Kudos to John McCain for his gracious concession speech, even if some of his supporters seemed less so. And were those boos we heard when he started praising his running mate? Bottom line was that if this McCain had been the one running his campaign and showing up on the trail, tonight would have lasted a lot longer and maybe turned out differently.

There were moving voting stories all over the Net today and much noting of the historical nature of this victory, that when Obama was born there was still segregation in America, a country largely built on slavery (not to mention genocide). But what was striking about Obama's victory speech tonight was how accustomed we've become to him, how the race aspect has receded with familiarity, and instead how serious and mature his sense of purpose seems to be going forward. And he did it with a great callback to the theme of his 2004 DNC speech, that we must be united, per our charter, moving forward.

It's ironic that President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama owes his victory to the massive failure of President George W. Bush. And who knew that the loss of John Kerry four years ago might turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to our country? Obama is a man who recognized his moment far in advance of everyone else, who had a vision of America some of us may have discussed in vague outline but that he put to great use in his campaign and, one now expects, he will in his Presidency.

For now, let's revel in the greatness of our democracy, as President-Elect Obama put it in words to be quoted for years, decades and maybe centuries:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

And the world is answering.

Pass/Fail

This insanely long electoral process, from candidates announcing through a remarkably contested primary season past party conventions and now to the Election Day it sometimes seemed would never come, has clearly produced the single best person to run our country for the next four years.

Obama may be a historical choice because of his race, but that is far from the real reasons to vote for him. His combination of intelligence (book smarts, people smarts, sportsman smarts, a lil' of the ol' Chicago political street smarts), learning, temperament, energy, magnanimity and oratory, his now obviously monumental leadership skills, his incredibly capable strategic gifts, make him the right man at this critical -- and perilous -- juncture in our nation's history.

For those of us who have worked to convince friends and strangers, made calls, written posts and email, those who have knocked on doors and will continue to do all of the above until a victor is declared on (please, Lord) Tuesday night, the fears of defeat have frayed nerves far too long.

Let it go.

With the choice before us so obvious, there's a point where it is no longer in the hands of any one of us. It's the moment when America takes its biggest, clearest test since maybe the Civil War. If Obama loses due to fear or ignorance tied to racism, then America is not the Republic as advertised. It is a very simple final exam here, one that isn't graded on a curve or with A's, B's and C's.

It's a pass/fail test.

If America makes the correct choice, it'll go a long way towards restoring the notion of American greatness, of the belief that all men and women are created equal, that there is no English-style class system, that any child regardless of race (and one hopes, by extension, gender or religious orientation, maybe someday sexual orientation) can grow up to become President.

As we roll into the climax of the most epic contemporary political tale imaginable, Obama's grandmother has died, the woman who raised him to be the man on the verge of quite likely winning the Presidency. While on first blush it appears a crying shame, it can also be seen as the final send-off, the moment where the assumption of manhood, Obama becoming the person of destiny he was meant to be, is entered into poetically, having said his goodbyes, now without any parental figure fully on his own.

Or, as he put it:



I predict that the Obama campaign will be studied in both political science classes as well as business schools for the next several decades. There's never been anything like it, the first truly 21st century Presidential campaign.

I predict scores of voters not being able to reach the voting booth before polls close, but even if the election is decided by the time they reach the lever, they'll want to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime moment.

I predict a shocking landslide margin, per the traditional first voting just after midnight in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, which has not gone for a Democratic Presidential candidate since 1968:

President Bush won the town in a landslide in the last two elections: He captured 73 percent of the vote in 2004 (19 residents picked Bush while six preferred Sen. John Kerry), and secured 80 percent of the vote in 2000 (21 votes for Bush, five votes for Al Gore.)

But villagers expected the results to be close this year given Democrats now outnumber Republicans there.

This time:

General Election: (21 voters)
Barack Obama - 15
John McCain - 6

Dixville Notch's grade 2008:

Pass!

Can You Hear It Coming?

The rumblings...when the first rocks have come loose, knocking into other, larger boulders, which in turn undermine the structure of the entire mountainside...

Even self-identified rednecks are out there working for Obama. Republicans are scrambling to save their Senate and Congressional seats that are looking to be swept away with all that earth looking like it's going to be rollin' down that mountain. Profoundly moving stories like this from a 55-year-old Caucasian banker are happening everywhere:

Instead of walking the tree-lined streets near our home, my wife and I were instructed to canvass a housing project. A middle-aged white couple with clipboards could not look more out of place in this predominantly black neighborhood.

We knocked on doors and voices from behind carefully locked doors shouted, "Who is it?"

"We're from the Obama campaign," we'd answer. And just like that doors opened and folks with wide smiles came out on the porch to talk.

Grandmothers kept one hand on their grandchildren and made sure they had all the information they needed for their son or daughter to vote for the first time.

Young people came to the door rubbing sleep from their eyes to find out where they could vote early, to make sure their vote got counted.

We knocked on every door we could find and checked off every name on our list. We did our job, but Obama may not have been the one who got the most out of the day's work.

You can guess who did.

From rumblings to, one hopes, humblings. With Joe the Extremist questioning Obama's patriotism and American values this weekend and a GOP group reprising Rev. Wright on an ad that ran during Sunday Night Football, with Elizabeth Dole trying to save her Senate seat by smearing her opponent as godless via dubbed lines, with Sarah Palin creating the creepiest cognitive dissonance in memory by running as both celebrity and hate-monger, one can only wish that an Obama landslide will put the politics of lies and smears to bed for at a generation, and maybe force the more introspective of GOP losers to make a humble reappraisal of their electoral actions.

When you watch a video like the one below, you see how much Obama has gifted all of us Americans with his inclusionary campaign. Phone bankers are reporting older, more rural folks using some old-fashioned racial epithets when declaring their support for Obama. One senses that while not necessarily approving such language, Obama would understand that they are from a different time, but a vote is a vote, and recognizing the need for change is all any voter needs right now:



This is it. As Obama said early in the Primaries, we are the ones we've been waiting for. With over 27,000,000 early and absentee ballots cast so far, this is an election already underway in a very, very big way. While I would never rule out an upset, I believe we're about to watch a mountain roll. And hopefully it will extend to other historic changes, like a decisive "NO" vote on California's noxious and discriminatory Proposition 8, designed to overturn legal gay marriage in this great state.

I'm sure I'm not alone in betting that the vote on Prop 8 will be tighter than that for President, but there is reason for hope, like the Republican Mayor of San Diego reversing himself on the issue in an emotional public statement, in which he mentions both his gay staff members and his gay daughter:



I emailed my support to jerrysanders@sandiego.gov. How nice to see statesmanship come in different colors.

C'mon, America.

Gabba Gabba Hey

The day after John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate, I thought the die was cast, and that contrary to being able to paint Barack Obama as the “other,” it was now the McCain/Palin ticket that would look to America as a pair of aliens.

To wit: as Obama rounds out his final week with the likes of Bill Clinton and Al Gore speaking to crowds in support of his candidacy, the stars of the McCain campaign are either manufactured, like Joe and Tito and every other name they try to pander to on a stump, or just plain freakshow.

I mean, does anyone purposely choose Victoria Jackson as their surrogate?

Saturday Night Live Hail Marys, McCain dragged his wife onto this final pre-Election episode with him, in some crazy knife-selling skit. Is this really how he goes out, as farce? With Joe Werzelbacher as “my role model”?

Palin thinks we’re at war with Iran. She doesn’t bother to put McCain’s name on signs at her campaign rallies. She’s an alien to his own campaign, making it a circus where her getting punked by a wacky radio D.J. crowds out her share of the news cycle oxygen.

Then today, McCain received the biggest freakshow endorsement of all:



Yep, manna from heaven for Obama, who rounding third into the Election can now run against McCain, Bush and Cheney:



Maureen Dowd gets it right: McCain, not his opponent, is the question mark:

But, in an odd and remarkable reversal, it is McCain who is the enigma, even though he entered the race with one of the best brands in American politics.

And it is Obama, who sashayed onto the trail two years ago as an aloof and exotic mystery man with a slim record and a strange name, now coming across as the steadier brand…

...The ultimate riddle is this: Why doesn’t McCain question why he has become a question mark?

Here’s how things really look, according to Nate Silver:

This is beginning to look like a five-state election. Those states are Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada. Essentially all relevant electoral scenarios involve some combination of these five states…

…The victory conditions for Obama involving these five states proceed something as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania and ANY ONE of Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, or Nevada*
2. Win Ohio and EITHER Colorado OR Virginia.
3. Win Colorado AND Virginia AND Nevada.

(* Nevada produces a 269-269 tie, which would probably be resolved for Obama in the House of Representatives.)

Now, suppose you think that Colorado is already in the bag for Obama because of his large edge in early voting there. We can then simplify the victory conditions as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania
2. Win Ohio
3. Win Virginia AND Nevada

Frank Rich, Dowd’s colleague on The New York Times op-ed page, is optimistic and explains why -- realism:

Obama doesn’t transcend race. He isn’t post-race. He is the latest chapter in the ever-unfurling American racial saga. It is an astonishing chapter. For most Americans, it seems as if Obama first came to dinner only yesterday. Should he win the White House on Tuesday, many will cheer and more than a few will cry as history moves inexorably forward.

But we are a people as practical as we are dreamy. We’ll soon remember that the country is in a deep ditch, and that we turned to the black guy not only because we hoped he would lift us up but because he looked like the strongest leader to dig us out.

Yep, pure pragmatism. Because we're being presented with a choice of a carny sideshow vs. prime-time programming.

Here's to America buying the better ticket.

Reagan Endorses Obama

Yep, Ron Reagan has come out officially and emphatically for Barack Obama over John McCain. He is, of course, the son of President Ronald Reagan.

However, his father's own Chief of Staff, Ken Duberstein, has officially endorsed Obama this week as well:

Duberstein said he was influenced by another prominent Reagan official - Colin Powell - in his decision.

"Well let's put it this way - I think Colin Powell's decision is in fact the good housekeeping seal of approval on Barack Obama."

One of George H.W. Bush's Secretaries of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, came out saying Palin is not qualified to be potential President earlier this week...but I guess he got sent into GOP re-education camp and is now acting like a frightened turtle in recanting...

Plumb and Plumber

The young socialist, Barack Obama, spent serious capital on an infomercial on Wednesday night:



His half-hour program was seen by at least 33,600,000 Americans, which doesn't count any Internet viewing, never once mentioned his opponent, told four resonant stories of, uh, "real" Americans, and offered bold, clear solutions which he would implement if we choose him as our next President.

John McCain, on the other hand, has to bus school kids into his anemic events to fabricate a crowd and can't even deliver Joe the (rightwing nutbag) Plumber on cue:



Y'know, McCain likes saying we're all Joe the Plumber, but I'm not. If I can pick based on my own empathy, I'm Larry Stewart from Sardinia, Ohio, from the Obama infomercial, a great-grandfather who's wife's arthritis condition (and their lack of health coverage) has him out of retirement at a Wal-Mart and taking loans against their home. Except even if I were all those things, I wouldn't be as good a blues guitar player as Larry (my favorite reveal of the infomercial).

So McCain can't count on Joe showing up. Even a member of his New Hampshire Leadership Committee has come out endorsing Obama. And he's got his most moronic back-benchers going out to get humiliated in the media with their lies and scumbag innuendo:



And the bookend to today's competence chronicles:

The decision to finance a final advertising push is forcing McCain to curtail spending on Election Day ground forces to help usher his supporters to the polls, according to Republican consultants familiar with McCain's strategy.

The vaunted, 72-hour plan that President Bush used to mobilize voters in 2000 and 2004 has been scaled back for McCain. He has spent half as much as Obama on staffing and has opened far fewer field offices. This week, a number of veteran GOP operatives who orchestrate door-to-door efforts to get voters to the polls were told they should not expect to receive plane tickets, rental cars or hotel rooms from the campaign.

"The desire for parity on television comes at the expense of investment in paid boots on the ground," said one top Republican strategist who has been privy to McCain's plans. "The folks who will oversee the volunteer operation have been told to get out into the field on their own nickel."

Back on May 25th I wrote that by the time November 4th rolled around, casting a vote for Sen. John McCain "will seem like voting assisted suicide for America."

Choose life, America.

Three Campaigns

It kinda broke open today. There's the John McCain for President 2008 campaign, with it's premature eject-ulation:

Lara Elborno, a student at the University of Iowa, said she was approached by a police officer and a McCain staffer and was told she had to leave or she would be arrested for trespassing...

...She said McCain staffers wouldn’t tell her why she was being asked to leave and when she got outside, she saw “a group of about 20 people” who had all been asked to leave.

Elborno said after seeing the people who were asked to leave, she was concerned that McCain’s staffers were profiling people on appearance to determine who might be a potential protester.

“When I started talking to them, it kind of became clear that they were kind of just telling people to leave that they thought maybe would be disruptive, but based on what? Based on how they looked,” Elborno said. “It was pretty much all young people, the college demographic...”

“...I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”

This campaign appears to be in trouble, with early voting going against it (not that it couldn't all flip upside down on with turnout on the actual Election Day) and finding it necessary to run those awful robocalls in his very own home state of Arizona.

There's the campaign of Barack Obama for President 2008, where the candidate is pretty darned entertaining, even amusing himself as he bats down ugly smears:



He's got the Ronald Reagan shoe hole iconography going for him as well.

Then there's the third campaign -- Palin 2012:



If McCain didn't know it before, he sure knows it now.

In essence, when he picked her, he stabbed himself in the back.

He's Melting

Hell is in the process of freezing over with Fox News blog headline: "As McCain Cancels, Obama Rallies":

CHESTER, PA - Dressed in blue jeans and a black jacket, Barack Obama braved the cold rain falling in Pennsylvania, and held his scheduled rally - outdoors. “A little bit of rain never hurt anybody,” he quipped to the 9,000 who showed up in ponchos and futilely holding umbrellas.

Just an hour away in Quakertown, the rival ticket cancelled their own outdoor rally due to inclement weather. Unfazed, Obama incorporated the conditions into his speech.

“I just want all of you to know if we see this kind of dedication on election day – there is no way that we’re not going to bring change to America,” he said as the soggy crowd cheered.

And the temperature in hell continues to plummet, as Shepard Smith debunks Joe the Plumbers lying smear about Obama's relationship to Israel.

Then there's chillmaster Florida Governor Charlie Crist, one of the Republicans on the McCain VP list who got passed over for poll-sinkin' Palin, and had the additional humiliation of McCain's team cutting his seven-minute video meant to play before the nomination acceptance speech. So he has ample reason to be pissed off at McCain and no reason to support his losing cause.

But that said, when was the last time a Republican Florida Governor made it easier for people to vote?:

Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday extended early voting hours across Florida to 12 hours a day.

The executive order comes after record early voting turnout has contributed to long lines at polling sites.

Current Florida law allows for early voting to be conducted eight hours a day each weekday and for a total of eight hours during the weekends.

With Crist's order, early voting sites will be open the rest of this week from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. They will be open a total of 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday, the last day of early voting.

''It's not a political decision,'' Crist said moments after signing the order, which declares a state of emergency in Florida. "It's a people decision.''

And if that isn't a palette cleanser after Jeb Bush/Katherine Harris controlled elections, how about this Dem vote booster:

Crist issued an executive order Wednesday that requires officials to include voter registration applications when they send out rights restoration certificates to convicts who have completed their sentences.

The order also provides convicts who have completed their sentences with better access to information about restoring their civil rights by posting more of it on the Internet.

The rights of Florida's nonviolent felons are automatically restored some time after release. Violent felons have to go through an application process. Thousands of ex-convicts have had their rights restored but don't know it, or don't realize they are eligible to register as voters. The state has been unable to notify them because it has lost track of them.

Who knows, maybe Crist's gunning for an Team of Rivals cabinet post. Or maybe he rising to the dignification Obama offers everyone in this election. Or maybe he's got the makings of a real statesman; there were once Republicans like that.

The Obama love has spread to Obama, Japan. A 109-year-old daughter of a slave just cast her mail-in vote for Obama, just imagine. And this video had me reaching for the Visine:

This one had me reaching for my bourbon:

I guess you just have to admire all the Obama supporters who showed up to make themselves heard, and withstood the violent language and threats (both implicit and explicit) of this crowd John McCain and Sarah Palin appear to be deliberately ginning up.

There's never been a clearer difference between how two campaigns have conducted themselves. There's a lot of talk that McCain has run the ugliest Presidential campaign in anyone's memory, but Nixon was dirty filthy tricks, Bush 41 was racist Willie Horton shit perpetrated by Lee Atwater, and the GOP swiftboating of military hero John Kerry was vile. But it's how on the up-and-up Obama's run his campaign that makes McCain's look so bad.

And what is he doing with the Red Smears like he's studied at the feet of Joe McCarthy? What kind of man is he to cry fire in a crowded building, or allow his running mate to pour gasoline?

Per the ironclad screenwriting rule: true character is revealed under pressure.

Especially a downward spiral.

Close It Down

Do you want this man to be our next President?:



If you want Obama, take it up a notch. Close this election strong, not complacent. Visit your local Obama/Dem headquarters. Make a few calls. Convince one more friend. Put the sticker on your car.

He's not letting up -- he's still getting on the phone himself:



The opening of his closing argument:

One week.

After decades of broken politics in Washington, eight years of failed policies from George Bush, and twenty-one months of a campaign that has taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are one week away from change in America.

In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street.

In one week, you can choose policies that invest in our middle-class, create new jobs, and grow this economy from the bottom-up so that everyone has a chance to succeed; from the CEO to the secretary and the janitor; from the factory owner to the men and women who work on its floor.

In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope.

In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need.

Here's the close of his closing argument:



Does anyone doubt what Joe Biden says about Barack in this ad any more?:



The GOP is falling apart, with Palin political godfather Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) now no longer legal to vote, even for his own re-election -- Guilty x 7. Telemarkers are going all Norma Brockovich, refusing to robocall filthy, lying GOP smears about Obama. And lowlifes who even fantasize about killing Obama are getting nailed by the law.

The time to strike is now.

Big and Little

It seems that the Obama campaign can do big -- as in 100,000+ crowds at Denver's Civic Center Park today. The link takes you to photos that actually impress, even after all the crowds he's drawn so far, reminiscent of his Berlin speech.

And it also inspired the little guys out there to do their best work:



Somehow the idea of an Obama win in nine days makes the notion of this young reporter's prospects (and his cameraman sidekick) all that more imaginable, and that this will be the "look at him back then" clip that accompanies him to the top.

A Face in the Crowd

Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Governor Sarah Palin has reportedly gone "rogue" on Senator John McCain's Presidential 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 amidst another report of tension between the McCain and Palin wings of McCain's own campaign:

"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.

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.

Rogue sounds so appealing, doesn't it? And in her wardrobe, so fetching. It's Sarah Palin out-Mavericking the freefalling grandpappy "Maverick."

She's the fresh new face of American fascism:



This is smart on her part, since it plays the fear card big as Cheney and tells the plutocratic class that she'll red-bait rubes to keep their tax rates low and protect their disaster capitalist interests. At this time in history, for some extremist from the farthest, most rural corner of America to suddenly suck up so much of the oxygen, it's much like a movie.

Well, here's the only known antidote, especially starting @ 6:50:



Especially love the nearby crowd commentary. Have mercy!

And just to make sure that we don't tar all of Alaska with Gov. Palin's hateful brush, the Anchorage Daily News just endorsed Barack Obama for President.