The McCain campaign has gone into full on negative smear mode, with Governor Sarah Palin playing the traditional attack role of the Vice-Presidential candidate.
Apparently Obama has been consorting with terrorists, because he once knew a member of the Weathermen (long afterwards and when Bill Ayers had become an educator and a Distinguished Professor at the University of Chicago). All these allegations were aired during the primaries - and no doubt the Rev. Wright stuff is being readied for an encore. Reading this article on the campaign in Florida really does show how much dissemination the loathsome “Muslim sleeper” stuff is getting as well, and Palin’s attack on Obama as some sort of terrorist sympathiser will reinforce that theme among those disposed to believe it, or to have doubts.
Earlier on tonight, the indications were that the US House of Representatives would be voting around 2am AEST on the revised version of the TARP bailout bill (with extra billions of dollars in pork to attract lawmakers’ votes - added in the Senate amendment which John “Against Earmarks and Wasteful Spending” the Maverick McCain duly voted for). It doesn’t look like that’s the case because a lot of Congressthings want to go on record for their constituents by speaking on the House floor (and/or because they have to ask questions now because the bill has never been subjected to legislative hearings, as is normal in the US Congress).
Anyway, I’m off to bed. But you can follow what’s going on via this liveblog from Catherine Rampell at the NYT’s Economix.
NB: Previous discussion and commentary at LP on the bailout, the financial markets crisis and the ramifications can be accessed here.
1:25 p.m. | Bill passes: The bill passed 263 to 171. The vast majority of Democrats voted in favor (172 yeas to 63 nays), while a slighter majority of Republicans voted against (91 yeas to 108 nays).
In the absence of any more “game changing” impulsive madness from Walnuts, all eyes will probably be on the Veeps debate on Friday - although our friends in the House Republicans or more spectacular crashes on Wall Street might diminish the focus a tad. Sarah Palin won’t be able to pull a McCain though, and “suspend” her campaign, after that trick spectacularly failed as Walnuts slunk out of Washington calling for bipartisanship on one hand while slagging off Obama on the other, after fairly poor reviews of whatever contribution he may have made to the crisis from his fellow Republicans. Nor will Palin be dropped from the ticket - I think (presuming there’s any rationality to the McCain strategy). As Nate Silver observes, there are at least three good reasons why it would be dumb (but again, I’m thinking dumb is the name of the McCain game). And the last time a Veep candidate was dumped - Thomas Eagleton in 72 - McGovern dropped 7 points in the polls.
Anyway, that’s that for the moment, but in this increasingly bizarre campaign which in true postmodern style seems to have as fictive a relationship to the real world as all that fictitious capital swirling around Wall Street waiting for the government to buy it, who knows what lies ahead, or even what lies lie ahead. My main purpose in posting was to draw attention to two excellent pieces from two of my favourite Stateside online writers on the bizarre phenomenon that is the Palin pick, something I continue to believe deserves more analysis than just political calculation or the desire to diss implies.
The obvious retort to John McCain’s faux suspension of his campaign last week was that Presidents should be able to deal with more than one issue at the same time. That’s obviously true, but it’s also a truism which disguises something - politicians think that the public want their focus predominantly on the crucial issue of the moment (and the media reinforces this with its “narrative” obsession).
It might not have escaped folks’ attention that Kevin Rudd minimised his focus on climate change at the UN in favour of the plan he and Gordon Brown cooked up for saving the world’s finances. Rudd himself mentioned that it would be difficult to concentrate world leaders’ attention on climate change. This rhetoric also provided him with some convenient cover for disguising the switch in focus for the justification of his trip as it came under opposition attack. But it does raise the broader question of which way Kevin Rudd will jump on climate change and emissions trading - perhaps more in terms of the international negotiations (which however can’t be separated from the domestic politics, with the whole question of the significance and timing of Australia’s ETS being crucial to the “argy bargy”).
Joe Conason has a devastating critique on McCain’s “bipartisan” “here to help” “campaign suspended” play at Salon:
His attempts to game this dangerous situation, his waffling between bipartisanship and ideological rigidity, his shiftiness on the real issues and his obvious lack of concentration on the problems that must be resolved — suggest that he is in fact unfit to serve in the office he desires. Once again he has proved that his claim to put country first is hollow. He was more than willing to take America down as he gambled for that prize.
Do feel free to use this thread to reflect on the debate as well.
None of this is about the economy. It’s about rescuing McCain’s campaign, not Wall Street. But reportedly McCain’s “help” comes down to supporting a proposal by House Republican Leader John Boehner:
That proposal reportedly includes even more deregulation and further tax breaks to the financial sector, plus a prayer that Wall Street can rescue itself if the restraints are removed.
The $700 billion bail out is wildly unpopular in the States, to put it mildly. But not because the American people are taking a stand against regulation.
Update: Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings on how the deal was scuttled. McCain’s lying about his part in it, as is now routine.
I’m still scratching my head over this bit of political crazy.
John McCain has launched his second Hail Mary pass in a month. On Wednesday he called for a suspension of the presidential campaign—no events, no ads, and no debate Friday—so that he and Barack Obama can head to Washington to forge a bipartisan solution. Even more than his selection of Sarah Palin as running mate, this gambit feels like a wild improvisation someone in the McCain team mapped out on his chest: OK, you run to the fire hydrant, cut left, and then when he gets to the Buick, John, you heave it.
First John McCain picks one of the least qualified people in American political history as his VP running mate, now this.
It’s not looking like solid decision making by a supposedly serious Presidential candidate and what’s worse is that he now wants to postpone the debates of the VP candidates into the hazy future. Why? Because it’s becoming increasingly obvious that his handpicked running mate just isn’t up to handling the pressures and rigors of a campaign.
Today’s events call into question his decision making capabilities. John McCain is looking like a befuddled old man, unable to start a task and finish it; attempting to short circuit the hard work required of an issue or event with a stunt that garners nothing but short term political mileage.
Bill Clinton is the only genuine political talent that creaking heap of donkeys, the beloved Democratic Party, has produced in an age. Damn that Twenty-Second Amendment.
Obama plays it safe yet again, basically following the line of least resistance by endorsing the Paulson bailout plan with some meaningless caveats. There were calls in the States for Obama to actually return to the Senate and get involved in the legislative process over the “plan”, which would be a useful contrast with what firedoglake correctly characterises as McCain’s “empty babbling on the economy”. That might be a smart move particularly given his very thin legislative record.
As a supplement to earlier posts on the sociology of the global financial crisis from Kim and dk.au, I thought I’d note something very interesting written by Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber. Farrell traces the shift in paradigm in the regulatory architecture of finance, one that has supplemented the first shift away from direct involvement of the state in economic ownership:
The second is more specific and recent – the tendency to replace ‘heavy-handed’ forms of regulation with ‘regulation with a light touch’ and self-regulation. This has been most marked in Anglo-American economies, but other countries (in continental Europe and elsewhere) have faced persistent ideological pressures to move in this direction. This is a large chunk of the so-called ‘reform’ agenda that the Economist magazine, the OECD and other such bodies keep pushing. Both of these shifts are largely ideological – that is, they gained much of their impetus from changes in the ideas which constitute policy-makers’ shared collective wisdom about how to deal with the economy.
The second shift (the reform agenda) is now a busted flush. Its proponents are in disarray (if I’m feeling in a vindictive mood, I may well buy a copy of the next Economist to see how its editorialists try to rationalize all of this).
Any reasonable assessment of the actions of the Fed and the US Treasury would suggest that they’re driven by confusion and are very much ad-hoc measures. Neither Bernanke nor Paulson seems to have much of a big picture grip, and politicians reciting “the fundamentals are sound” is clearly not going to cut the mustard now, even, as with John McCain, precipitating something of a backlash.
John Quiggin has speculated on how all this will play out. The confusion has led to some quite bizarre moments, such as pundits on Lateline Business declaiming “capitalism is in crisis” and “the financial markets may not be viable”. What we’re seeing - among other things - is a decomposition of that abstraction “the markets” and a reduction of these so-called impersonal forces to the panicked reactions of individuals. If Robert Skidelsky is right, and a tipping point has been reached, it begs a very big question, which Farrell answers in terms of process (because no one can know the outcome of such a fluid conjuncture). Continue reading ‘The end of financialisation? II’
If Man becomes an animal again, his arts, his loves, his plays must also become purely natural again. Hence it would have to be admitted that after the end of history, men would construct their edifices and works of art as birds build their nests and spiders spin their webs, would perform musical concerts after the fashion of frogs and cicadas, would play like young animals and would indulge in love like adult beasts.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
In 2004, George W Bush’s denunciations of John Kerry as a liberal Washington insider who had trouble articulating clear positions also had the ring of truth.
Those campaigns were slick and sophisticated attempts to shape public opinion. By contrast, McCain’s ads and rhetoric sound like they’re generated by a bunch of twentysomething Republican bloggers, strung out on caffeine at 3am, each trying to out-snark all the others. The main thing the campaign has going for it is sheer outrageousness – that is, by hitting every conceivable cultural hot button and repeating untruths over and over, it will both get an anti-Obama message out and also dominate the news cycle.
9/11 (TM) has made possible the greatest sleight-of-hand in our nation’s history.
The political party in office at the time of the attacks, at the local, state and national levels, the party which uniformly ignored the warnings and the presidential administration already through twenty percent of its first term and no longer wet behind the ears, have not only thus far escaped any blame for the malfeasance and criminal neglect that allowed the attacks to occur, but that presidency and that party, have managed to make it seem as if the other political party would be solely and irredeemably responsible for any similar catastrophe in the future.
The misrepresentations and manipulations of the terror of seven years ago are laid out clearly in Olberman’s analysis, starting with his contempt for the choice of Giuliani, who has no other bandwagon to ride other than 9/11, as a keynote speaker at the convention.
his childish, squealing, braying, Tourette’s-like repetition of 9/11 (TM), was greeted not as conclusive evidence that he is consumed by massive guilt - hard-earned guilt, in fact but rather as some kind of political tour-de-force, an endorsement of your Vice Presidential nominee, a rookie governor , a facile and slick con artist.
The blind endorsing the bland, to a chorus of 9/11 (TM), 9/11 (TM), 9/11 (TM.)
Your ringing mindless cheer of “We’ve Kept You Safe Since Then.” While nobody asks “doesn’t then count?”
All of this, sadistically disrespecting the dead of New York, and Washington, and Shanksville. Endorsed, Sen. McCain. Exploited, Sen. McCain. Trademarked, Sen. McCain by you.
As a bit of a follow up to Mark’s post on the latest travails of the Democratic campaign, here’s a link to a very interesting article which includes interviews with both Obama and McCain’s campaign managers. My take? Obama (and Axelrod) are running a very successful strategy to defeat Hillary Clinton by a whisker in the primaries. Oopsy! Hang on! General election time? Oh dear.
Incidentally, the 50 state strategy isn’t looking so good.
Although aspects of his critique are tentatively sketched by his own admission, Jay Rosen has hit more nails than he’s missed with his analysis of the significance of the Sarah Palin veep selection by the McCain campaign. Rosen’s article is rightly getting a lot of attention. It’s “personalities, not issues” as McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis said, and the dark divisive arts of Karl Rove are being revived for the umpteenth time, and to date, are apparently working. Though in an somewhat problematic article in Salon, problematic because of the gender stereotypes it re-enacts while purportedly criticising them, Gary Kamiya provides some hope for thinking the Democrats might turn things around. But the controversy over Palin’s claims to have opposed the infamous “bridge to nowhere” illustrates the double bind the GOP have the Democrats in.
At least the turf this issue - the purported opposition to earmarks and pork that Palin is supposed to share with McCain - is being fought over is a public policy issue rather than all the personalised stuff which just puts the Democrats and the media where the GOP want them. But Obama’s reluctance to use the words “lies” and “liars” shows he knows the score. He’s being criticised for that by liberal bloggers, who are cheering on the media “fact checking” exercise.
But all this truthiness is also at great risk of playing into the GOP’s hands - because it reinforces the equation of the media and blogosphere with the Democrats Rosen identified as the tactical positioning the Republicans want - and which George W. Bush reinforced with his claims about “the angry left” in his RNC video link. The culture wars schtick works - because the America of Wal-Marts and small town “values” has more electoral power in the swing states that count than the wonky redoubts of the blue staters. And a lot of those voters - who don’t source their news from the internet but from cable tv - and get their analysis from others of like mind in their own circles rather than bloggers, commentators and wonks - are seeing what McCain wants them to see - a feisty outsider being beaten up by the Beltway elite. Hence McCain’s polling gains, among other demographics, with white women.
With the news that John McCain has now hit 50% in the Gallup poll, opening up a 4 point lead over Barack Obama, I thought it might be worth mentioning a few cautions about interpreting both American polls and the race as a whole - because there are significant differences from Australian elections folks don’t always take into account.
(1) Polling is much less reliable in the US than in Australia because of the voluntary voting factor. Polls tend to try to sample either registered voters or use various metrics to sample those whom they predict will vote, but all this is quite difficult and it’s worth remembering that in most states, registration is open until October. In some states you can register on voting day itself. So one result of this is often significant disagreement between various polls, which you can see in spades at the moment. But one conclusion you can draw is that there’s a lot of volatility around at the moment. Many voters won’t make up their minds til after the various debates, and some won’t until Election Day itself, and the same for whether to vote at all. The Gallup tracking poll I mentioned actually gives us two numbers - 50/46 to McCain among registered voters and a much bigger gap of 54/44 among likely voters.
(2) The Presidential election is not a national election. It’s the aggregate of 50 state elections which are more or less important depending on the number of electoral college votes each state has and whether they’re hotly contested or not. So national polls might be misleading, although they can show where the momentum is. For instance, at the moment, while the Gallup poll shows McCain with either a slim or a huge lead, Republican strategists have the McCain/Palin ticket behind or at par in most of the swing states.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
I’m going to go out on a limb here. 
Recent comments
yeti, Stephen Hill, Nickws, Nickws, Adrien, wizofaus [...]
Elizabeth Hart, Elizabeth Hart, Brian, Elizabeth Hart, Brian, Robert Merkel [...]
Andrew Reynolds, wizofaus, Andrew Reynolds, Adrien, Jacques Chester, wizofaus [...]
jo, Lefty E, wizofaus, fatfingers, fatfingers, Yaz [...]
Pavlov's Cat, Martin B, Tyro Rex, Pavlov's Cat, klaus k, Adrien [...]
Peterc, Helen, Lefty E, carbonsink, Lefty E, wizofaus [...]
Tyro Rex, Mark, Megan, Catriona, lyn
Peterc, mick, Mark, mick, wbb, Steve D [...]
Mark, C.L., Adrien, Adrien, Tyne Tees, su [...]
Ambigulous, jane, adrian, Ambigulous, Adrien, GB [...]
Ed, wizofaus, Robert Merkel, Huggybunny, Huggybunny, Fmark [...]
Kat, Paul Burns, Brian, David Rubie, wbb, Brian [...]