Obama vs. McCain in World of Warcraft

The dwarfs seem to like McCain. I wonder why.

"Huh"

Sarah Palin declares for her 2012 campaign:

Blitzer: Republican VP Candidate Sarah Palin now speaking out openly about her intentions in 2012 if - if - she and John McCain were to lose this contest next Tuesday. In an interview with ABC News, Sarah Palin is now saying she would be interested in remaining a serious national political figure going ahead to 2012.  She was asked, what happens in 2012 if you lose on Tuesday - do you simply go back to Alaska - Elizabeth Vargas of ABC News asked her - and Palin said this, and I'll read it to you verbatim according to an ABC transcript:

Absolutely not.  I think that if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender, I think that some of the political shots that we've taken - that that would bring this whole - and I'm not doing this for naught."

And that's a direct quote from Sarah Palin.

When a candidate who is down in the polls is asked the inevitable, "What will you do if you lose?" question, the standard response should be, "I will win." You never talk about what you will do if you lose because the idea of losing is one that should never enter your dialog.

I love the McCain campaign's response:

Blitzer: Any reaction yet, Dana, from this blunt statement that she would in fact be interested in leading the Republican Party going forward after Tuesday if they lose?

Bash: I just got off the phone, Wolf, with a senior McCain adviser and I read this person the quote and I think it's fair to say that this person was speechless. There was a long pause and I just heard a "huh" on the other end of the phone. I mean, this is certainly not a surprise to anybody who has watched Sarah Palin that she is interested in potentially a future national run. Certainly she is being urged to be a lot of people inside the Republican Party if they do lose, but it is an if, and people inside the McCain campaign - they do not want ANY discussion that has in "if" in front of it six days before the election.

Update: ABC News story

The Quest for the Democratic "Macaca"

Why are the wingnuts so obsessed with "secret" tapes that will they pray will bring down Obama? Maybe it's a case of YouTube envy.

YouTube has been the enemy of Republicans in these last two election cycles as it has allowed the average citizen to see just what it is they are saying when they think they are among friends. The most famous example, of course, is the Sen. George Allen "Macaca" incident. That bit of tape helped bring down Allen (with an able assist from Jim Webb of course) and destroyed what was, up till then, the GOP's leading prospect for the 2008 Republican nomination. Just imagine where we would be today if S.R. Sidarth had not been there with his video camera.

The Republicans would love to have a Democratic version of "Macaca". It will probably happen someday (Democrats have their share of idiots), but not today.

Aside: What the Republicans fail to appreciate is that "Macaca" was not the single bullet that brought down Allen. He was brought down by a narrative that was given weight by "Macaca" (that Allen was a closet racist) and by a strong opposition candidate (Jim Webb). So all of these hoped for "Macaca" moments for Obama won't work if they don't fit into a believable narrative and Obama doesn't have a strong opponent.

The next generation of Nigerian Spam Email

My first impression of this story was that API (whoever the hell they are) was being scammed by someone who called up and did a Michelle Obama impersonation. But the recent developments in this story make me think that it is API who is pulling a massive scam on the right-wing loons who are desperate for a magic bullet to take down Obama.

Girl's Costume Warehouse

My favorite is "Sexy 1900s Steel Conglomerate Tycoon"

Press Bias

Why McCain is getting hosed in the press

As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.

The Politico must really be feeling the heat. Thankfully, they seem to "get it" in the sense that they understand that a raw measure of negative to positive stories is not a valid measure of bias. If one campaign really is doing badly and another campaign really is doing well then it makes no sense not to report it that way. It just takes intestinal fortitude to stand up and defend it when the inevitable complaints come in.

Of course, I can remember liberals making similar complaints back in the day about the opposite bias, and I generally agreed with them. One thing this election has taught me is that bias is not as easy to detect as one might think. Maybe Gore and Kerry got more negative coverage because they simply ran inferior campaigns? I've known many Democrats who say that they did run bad campaigns (including myself), but would they admit that maybe the negative coverage of those campaigns was justified?

Again, its hard to say.

Republicans helping liberals make the case

Marc Ambinder points out how the conservative movement might be shooting itself in the foot with its ideological attacks on Obama:

Conservatives find it absurd that Americans are about to elect the most liberal president of the modern era and aren't terribly upset by it; but in capitalizing on this particular argument of Obama's, the Republicans are rearguing whether some form of economic redistributions from white people to black people was necessary -- even though Obama never really made the point.

Obama has been talking about the larger GOP governing philosophy for a while now, but until recently, the race hasn't seemed like as much of a referendum on Republicanism; it's been more of a referendum on the Bush years.

What changed?

The GOP went all in on an ideological war.

If Obama wins on November 4th (as appears likely), the post election spin war will be furious (it always is). Part of what will determine its course will be the framing that was used prior to the election. By painting Obama as as "the most liberal Senator", in favor "spreading the wealth", and as a closet socialist, the conservatives have legitimized the argument that the electorate wants more liberalism, more "spreading the wealth", and even (horror of horrors) more socialism.

Liberals of my acquaintance have been arguing for more than a year that this election needed to be about more than just Bush. It needed to be a repudiation of conservative Reaganomics and Rovian political tricks. Obama and others (as Ambinder notes) have attempted to do this, with little success. But the Republicans, by making an ideological attack, have made the argument for us.

Thanks for the assist.