Saturday, July 26, 2008

All Sharks Are Fish

Daniel De Groot of Open Left has a word of caution to those who chortle at the bizarre, self-contradictory comments coming from McCain (Obama's time tables are bad, Maliki likes Obama's Time table, I think its a good time table). Just because they are logical nonsense does not mean they won't appeal to a certain mindset. We can't take anything for granted in an election this important.

Check it out.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Why no Obama bounce?

I love 538.

Some people have been expressing concerns that Obama isn't seeing any bounce from his successful world tour. But Nate of 538 has an analysis of how an emphasis on foreign policy could actually produce a short-term drop.
Now suppose this: Obama emphasizes foreign policy. As a result, he cuts his deficit with McCain on that issue from 70-30 to 65-35. But he also increases the percentage of the public that base their decision on foreign policy from 25 percent to 35 percent. (Indeed, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, attention to Iraq and Afghanistan has increased by about that margin within the past week).

...

Now, instead of leading by five points, Obama leads by just two-and-a-half -- even though the strategy succeeded in improving perceptions about his ability to handle foreign policy.
The long-terms are still good.
That is, in the long-run, the public's emphasis shifts back to domestic policy, which is where Obama wants it. But among those voters who do want to vote on foreign policy, he has assuaged some concerns and made some permanent gains. This results in him leading by 7.5 points rather than five.
Obama strikes me as a long-term thinker. He doesn't sweat the short-term that much because he understands that a seed planted today can bear fruit long after it is planted.

Check it out.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The JV Campaign

I said before that whining about the media is a losing proposition for a candidate, but, amazingly enough, the McCain campaign is going one better: insulting the journalists who actually are paying attention to his campaign. Don't believe me? Look at the press credentials his campaign is handing out:



It reads 'McCain press Corps - JV Squad - "Left Behind to Report in America"'.

So McCain's campaign is not only rubbing it in the faces of their press following that they were "left behind" while other reporters got to travel the world with Obama, they double-down by labeling those "left behind" as Junior Varsity. You know, the losers who were good enough to make it to the "real" games.

Petulant AND self-destructive. If I were a McCain supporter I'd be depressed right now.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

McCain losing his base?

I believe it's a truism in politics that your campaign is flailing when you are reduced to whining about the press, no matter how justified that whining may be.

Reality From The Right

If you are looking for intelligent politicial discussion in the blogosphere that comes from a right-leaning perspective then I'd recommend NextRight. The group over there are definitely not the typical talking-point-name-calling-blame-the-Dems-for-everything types we have grown used to.

Hell, they are even willing to acknowledge when Markos might be correct:
All that to say, while [the Daily Kos] reputation as bitter partisans and bomb-throwers is well-deserved, I'm not sure that they are actually outside the mainstream of American politics. And if that's true, then it is a reality we need to acknowledge and address.
Reality based politics from the right? What a strange phenomena!

Why the military wants Obama

Why does it appear so many soldiers support Obama despite the persistent propaganda that says military people don't like Democrats (see this dKos diary for evidence of this support)?

An acquaintance of mine who is ex-military has explained it well to me (this is my explanation of his explanation so forgive me if I f*ck it up).

When you join the military you give up an essential element of your freedom. The freedom to say "no".

When your superior orders you to do something, you do it. Most of us understand this at an intellectual level, but how many of us, outside the military, understand it at a gut level? What this means is that if your superior officer orders you to go into downtown LA and start shooting civilians, you do it.

Now I can already hear people squawking about war crimes and about the Nuremburg trials which established the principle that the military can refuse orders that are war crimes. In a technical sense, this is true. But in a practical sense, it creates a problem.

Do you want to give people in the military the option of refusing to obey the orders of a superior? Do you want to give generals the option of simply refusing to follow the orders of the President if they happen to disagree with the policy behind those orders? Do you really want to open ourselves up to that?

The beauty of the American system of civilian control of the military is that the military NEVER decides the foreign or domestic policy path of the nation. It is the civilian leadership which has that task. Any system that gives the military the option to decide whether to follow policy inevitably leads to military control of the government.

But then, how do you deal with the issue of war crimes? How do you deal with "illegal orders"? How do you deal with soldiers ordered to shoot civilians in downtown LA?

You deal with it by removing from command those who give those orders.

If the lieutenant gives the order, the colonel who commands him should relieve him. If the colonel gives the order than the general who commands him should relieve him. If the general gives the order than the president who commands him should relieve him.

And if the president gives the order?

Then it is the responsibility and the duty of the civilian oversight of the president to relieve him of command. That means impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate. And that is why it is the duty of the congress to impeach a president who puts the military in the position of having to execute orders that it finds reprehensible (such as invading a country that never attacked us).

So what does this have to do with why so many soldiers are happy at the idea of Obama becoming president?

Those soldiers have surrendered their essential freedom to say "no" on the assumption that the chain of command, all the way up to the president and the congress and the American people, would never ask them to do something they find wrong. Bush has failed them in this regard (and congress has failed them by not removing him from power). They don't want to be in the position where they have to actually consider the idea that their superiors are giving them "illegal" orders. Entertaining that idea damages the entire structure of the military command structure. It strikes at the core of how the U.S. military works.

And Obama represents hope that those soldiers won't have to question their orders any more. He represents a restoration of authority that Bush and Congress has squandered.

Obama is someone who's orders they can follow without doubt that they will give meaning to their sacrifice.

That is why they cheer.

Rope-a-dope

Obama made a conscious decision in this campaign not to cede the issue of foreign policy to John McCain. Indeed, he has relished the opportunities to talk about his vision for how America should present itself to the world. This is a refreshing change from past Democratic Presidential candidates, many of whom firmly embraced the conventional wisdom that Democrats can't win these fights and thus should avoid them at all cost.

I really don't know why people should be so surprised that this strategy appears to be working. Obama is shifting the window of what is considered “acceptable” opinion on foreign policy. What was derided as naivete 12 months ago is now being discussed as a serious alternative to the neo-con/neo-liberal approach.

This is what happens when you have a candidate who doesn’t listen to the “experts” on what a Democrat needs to do to win a foreign policy debate. Obama has laid out a compelling alternative approach and has refused to wilt in the face of the expected negative reception.

Think Ali vs. Foreman. Everyone expected Ali to go down when Foreman came at him with those massive arms. Foreman hit Ali with everything he had and Ali refused to go down. He just absorbed the blows and continued fighting. Foreman didn’t know how to deal with that. All his previous opponents adopted the “avoid his blows” strategy. But it's hard to avoid blows in a full fight. That strategy inevitably failed the minute Foreman connected. Ali took a different approach. He used the ropes and his forearms to absorb the force of the blows. After several rounds, Foreman wore himself out and gave Ali the opening he needed to hit back.

That's how you win a fight against a "superior" foe.