Archive for the 'White House '08' Category

Durenberger: Tim Pawlenty is no Joe Biden

by
Matt Martin
Published on August 24, 2008 at 11:27 am
, filed in White House '08
. 36 Comments

This may be a moot point given Pawlenty’s recent announcement that he will be serving out the remainder of his term as Governor in Minnesota but it’s still interesting given Pawlenty’s new role of national McCain attack dog:

“I am very pleasantly surprised,” said David Durenberger, the former Republican U.S. Senator from Minnesota. Durenberger, who served in the Senate with both Biden and John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, said that he admired both colleagues but added that “I think Joe’s got an edge on John” on judgment issues.

Durenberger said Biden would be a formidable match for Pawlenty should McCain make the Minnesota governor his running mate. “I admire Tim Pawlenty, but he’s not Joe Biden,” Durenberger said. [Strib]

The article also noted the universal praise of the choice among Minnesota’s elected DFLers:

Minnesota Democrats ranging from U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar to Christine Almeida, an Obama delegate from Minneapolis, were effusive in praising Biden’s selection. Klobuchar said Minnesotans “are going to love him”, and U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum said she was so excited by rumors late Friday that Biden was the choice that she got up in the middle of the night to follow news reports. Biden “has a sense of the common man,” said Almeida.

Minnesota House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, a former Clinton supporter, said Biden would help rally Clinton backers. Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken, campaigning at the Minnesota State Fair, said he was “thrilled”, and U.S. Rep. Tim Walz said he was impressed with Biden’s work on behalf of the middle-class.

“Obama is a dynamic figure, and Biden is ‘steady as she goes,’ ” said U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison. “It makes a great team. McCain can’t shake his finger at Biden and say, ‘Young man, you just don’t get it.’ ”

Reaction on Biden Pick: Slam Dunk

by
Matt Martin
Published on August 23, 2008 at 4:07 pm
, filed in White House '08
. 25 Comments

This collection of quotes from some of the major political pundits just arrived in my email inbox, I think it’s worth sharing (especially the Chuck Todd quote, he’s a favorite around here):

TIME (Joe Klein): “Biden has the stature and knowledge — and the blue-collar, no bull pugnacity — to call McCain on his imprudent militarism.

The Hill (Bob Franken): “In all seriousness, Biden is a formidable choice. Not only does he have a depth of knowledge about the law, social issues and international relations — after decades of Senate leadership in all those areas, he is a truly nice guy, with a real, common touch.

MSNBC (Joe Scarborough): “Joe Biden, again, the consensus seems to be this morning, Joe Biden, a great pick for Barack Obama.”

NBC (Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro): “The candidate many Republicans least wanted to see Obama pick was Biden”

The Hill (Brent Budowski): “In his first truly presidential decision, Barack Obama acted like a president and chose a presidential-caliber candidate for vice president. I recently wrote that this choice would speak volumes about the kind of president he would be, that if he choose one of the heavyweight contenders, such as Sam Nunn or Joe Biden, over the less-qualified candidates it would be an enormously positive sign. Obama came through, big time.”

CBS (Vaughn Ververs): “The senator brings some real strengths to this ticket. He’s one of the most respected foreign policy minds in the Senate, something that was reaffirmed by his quick trip to the nation of Georgia during the recent crisis there.”

The Atlantic (Marc Ambinder): “I gather that what impressed Obama about Biden is that Biden gets things done. He’s a man of action.”

TPM (Greg Sargent): “Biden, ultimately, shares and embodies one of the core convictions driving Obama’s campaign: That Democrats can win an argument about national security with Republicans, and shouldn’t run from a fight on the topic or concede any sort of presumed GOP superiority on it.”

I’d say that’s a pretty good start!

Pawlenty Will Serve Out Term As Governor

by
Aaron Landry
Published on August 23, 2008 at 10:11 am
, filed in White House '08
. 8 Comments

While this is not actually breaking news, Eric Black has the scoop:

So, to be specific, speculation about Pawlenty seeking national office in 2008 was already present in 2006 as the guv approached the question of seeking reelection. Without question, it would have been awkward to seek a new four-year term if voters thought he might ditch halfway through. So, on May 31, 2006, the day he announced in a park in Eagan that he would seek a second term, Pawlenty said:

“As to my future, if I run for governor and win, I will serve out my term for four years as governor.”

No weasel words here. Not “expect to” serve my full four years. Not “plan to.” “Will.” I have always taken it as an unequivocal statement of a commitment, although that’s my naïve streak coming through.

By the way, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, you can watch the video and decide for yourself whether there’s a wink or a nod there that left open the possibility that Pawlenty would do something other serve out his four-year term. (In the clip, WCCO states that Pawlenty’s comment “might well put an end to speculation that the governor would take off mid-term for Washington and a higher office.”)

Read the full story here. And yes, since June or so, his rhetoric has changed a bit.

Obama Nails McCain Again

by
Matt Martin
Published on August 22, 2008 at 3:07 pm
, filed in White House '08
. 24 Comments

I was reading some commentary today that asked an interesting question: Is McCain so out of touch with reality that he can’t even keep track of how many houses he has, or is he just having a senior moment? While the latter may be more likely, it’s also the far more frightening possibility… do we really need someone running the country who can’t even keep track of something as significant as how many houses he has? I wouldn’t begrudge anyone their success, especially if it was self-made (which McCain’s wasn’t, but that isn’t the issue here), but McCain has been trying to paint Obama as an out of touch elitist for the last 3 months and the man is married to a woman who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars… Those in a glass house…

Oh Snap!

by
Sean Broom
Published on August 21, 2008 at 12:06 pm
, filed in White House '08
. 8 Comments

McCain Doesn’t Know How Many Houses He Owns

by
Sean Broom
Published on August 21, 2008 at 7:59 am
, filed in White House '08
. 28 Comments

From Politico

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

“I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

How many houses do you need to get before you can’t remember all of them?

No, Really, It’s A Good Thing

by
Sean Broom
Published on August 18, 2008 at 9:35 pm
, filed in White House '08
. 31 Comments

Over at whathisnames site they’ve been crowing about some Democrats dissatisfaction with Barack Obama’s lawn sign policy (namely, you’ve gotta pay for them). I heard about this policy a while ago, and was pretty sure that it would result in folks complaining about the $8 you had to spend to get them.

Memo

To: All
From: Sean

There is no such thing as a free lunch. That is all.

After the jump, some more.

Continue reading ‘No, Really, It’s A Good Thing’

By This Time Next Week

by
Sean Broom
Published on August 18, 2008 at 9:05 am
, filed in White House '08
. 15 Comments

We will know who Barack Obama’s VP choice is. And, I’m just sayin’.

Update: The senior Senator from Deleware was in Georgia (the country, not the state) this weekend.  Gosh, sure would be handy to have that actual on the ground perspective on the ticket.

Approval Ratings

by
Matt Martin
Published on August 15, 2008 at 9:28 am
, filed in White House '08
. 5 Comments

This grassroots video has been making its way across the interwebs over the last couple of days (it was #1 on Digg yesterday!) and I can see why. This is the type of hard-hitting yet honest counterpoint that we need to see on the airwaves, not just the netwaves:

Americans Have Much Less in Common with John McCain

by
Matt Martin
Published on August 14, 2008 at 2:42 pm
, filed in White House '08
. 23 Comments

It’s amazing that the Mainstream Media has bought the whole “Barack Obama is different” line of attack hook, line, and sinker.  If they’d pause for just one second to take a look at how much John McCain shares with the average American they might discover who the truly out of touch candidate is.  Luckily, there are still some out there making the point.  Bob Cesca on The Huffington Post reached his breaking point:

This week, for example, Cokie Roberts and Michael Crowley, along with a creepy monster squad of Republican stalkers, have been trying to peg Senator Obama’s vacation in Hawaii as proof that the script is accurate. Hawaii, they say, is only for exotic elitists. Senator Obama is in Hawaii. Therefore, Senator Obama is an exotic elitist. See how that works?

Never mind that this Hawaii-is-exotic-and-elitist gripe came from a not-elitist millionaire with the not-exotic name “Cokie.” This Cokie phenomenon is a solid example of the script’s paradoxical, fictitious awfulness. Despite similar griping from the McBush Republicans, the truth is that Senator McCain is far and away the more elitist and exotic of the two candidates. Fact. No bias here.

Let’s start with Hawaii and do the list.

Senator McCain met and fell in love with his current wife, Cindy Hensley, while on vacation in… exotic and elitist Hawaii. He was 42, she was 24. He was still married to his first wife at the time, who was disabled as the result of a car accident, by the way. The whole scene — Hawaii, cheating on a disabled wife with a super-rich beer heiress — is just about as exotic and elitist as it gets according to the standards of the script.

Cesca continues on to talk about how Cindy McCain’s beer distributorship pulls in upwards of $300 million annually, how the McCains have 8 houses, how they have a private jet and more.  Is that relate-able to by most Americans?  Or would most relate to the man who has been happily married to the same wife his whole life, just paid off his student loans, was raised by a single mother from Kansas, and wears shoes that cost less than McCain’s $520 loafers?

Look, I hate the whole idea of even debating these issues; they’re worthless points.  But the fact of the matter is that McCain’s consciously and strategically leveraging a narrative of Obama as unamerican while he is woefully out of touch with the average American. I actually don’t take issue at all with McCain’s background (save for his possible disloyalty in marriage, which is still unclear anyway) and wish we could move on, but as long as he’s wielding this sword, I think it’s time for the light to shine in the other direction…

Deployed Troops Give 6:1 to Obama

by
Zack Stephenson
Published on August 14, 2008 at 10:42 am
, filed in White House '08
. 4 Comments

I thought the Republicans were supposed to be the party of the military:

According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain…

Despite McCain’s status as a decorated veteran and a historically Republican bent among the military, members of the armed services overall — whether stationed overseas or at home — are also favoring Obama with their campaign contributions in 2008, by a $55,000 margin. Although 59 percent of federal contributions by military personnel has gone to Republicans this cycle, of money from the military to the presumed presidential nominees, 57 percent has gone to Obama.

Dowd: McCain Green with Envy

by
Matt Martin
Published on August 7, 2008 at 9:28 am
, filed in White House '08
. 0 Comments

Maureen Dowd had an amazing op-ed in the New York Times yesterday.  You should definitely give the whole thing a read (it’s not all that long), but here are some excerpts to give you a feel of the narrative:

Not since Iago and Othello obsessed on the comely Cassio, not since Richard of Gloucester killed his two nephews, not since Nixon and Johnson glowered at the glittering J.F.K., has there been such an unseemly outpouring of boy envy.

Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson and John Edwards have all been crazed with envy over the ascendance of the new “It” guy, Barack Obama.

…

Now John McCain is pea-green with envy. That’s the only explanation for why a man who prides himself on honor, a man who vowed not to take the low road in the campaign, having been mugged by W. and Rove in South Carolina in 2000, is engaging in a festival of juvenilia.

The Arizona senator who built his reputation on being a brave proponent of big solutions is running a schoolyard campaign about tire gauges and Paris Hilton, childishly accusing his opponent of being too serious, too popular and not patriotic enough.

Even his own mother, the magical 96-year-old Roberta McCain, let slip that she thought the Paris Hilton-Britney Spears ad was “kinda stupid.”

…

McCain upbraids Obama for being a poppet, while he’s becoming a puppet. His mouth is moving but the words coming out belong to his new hard-boiled strategist, Steve Schmidt, a Rove protégé, nicknamed “The Bullet” for his bald pate.

Schmidt has turned Mr. Straight Talk into Mr. Desperate Straits. It’s not a good trade.

The whole thing’s not much longer and fleshes out the argument a bit better, give it a read.

Here’s my quick 2-cents: These ads and the narrative the McCain campaign is trying to weave does have a lot of bite to it.  I think they have been effective and they’ve given McCain a lot of free play in the press.  But, look, there are 90 days left in this campaign — an eternity — and these ads are the equivalent of sacraficing your queen in the first three moves.  A large part of McCain’s appeal has always been that he’s an above the fray consensus builder, but now he’s systematically displaying his own conventionality to the whole nation.  Maybe the Obama camp is dumb enough to let this narrative ride without turning it around, but no one who’s just watched them upset what was arguably the most potent political machine of the last 4 decades is going to place their bet on the Obama camp’s stupidity…

Pawlenty Poker Anyone?

by
Aaron Landry
Published on August 3, 2008 at 9:54 pm
, filed in White House '08
. 3 Comments

Try not to blow your Monday away on this:

Pawlenty Poker

Keep in mind this is Carribbean Poker, not Texas Hold’em. From Alliance for a Better Minnesota:

In the game, the player chooses what issue they want to use to pander to the Republican base.  As the Governor you can choose to - increase tuition, ignore transportation problems, shift the tax burden on property taxpayers, and reduce health care access.  The game also features special appearances by Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Larry Craig.

My high score is 6650.

Smackdown

by
Matt Martin
Published on August 2, 2008 at 7:35 pm
, filed in White House '08
. 4 Comments

As usual, it takes the real journalists at, ahem, Comedy Central to properly hold McCain’s feet to the fire on his latest ads… sigh.  It’s a bit long, but worth every second:

Who’s Getting the Free Pass?

by
Matt Martin
Published on July 27, 2008 at 3:28 pm
, filed in White House '08
. 38 Comments

It’s been almost comical to watch the media overcompensate for accusations that they’re giving Obama a free pass while McCain has made gaffe after gaffe without any attention. The fact of the matter is that Obama does get more attention but it’s not because of any bias, it’s because he’s much more exciting. The media is a business just like any other: it steers itself towards where the money is. As Frank Rich pointed out in his Op-Ed today, even Access Hollywood saw a 20% spike in viewers when they put Obama on. But here’s the thing, he’s not getting a free pass. The added attention has led to more scrutiny than any other Presidential candidate has experienced and the amazing thing is that he’s held up. Over all this coverage and all this attention he has yet to really make any game-changing mistakes.

McCain on the other hand has been busy making mistakes. Rich points out a few:

Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.

Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.

The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.

Rich’s article was very good and actually not really focused on the media angle but on how Obama has come to be seen as the President in waiting. It’s definitely worth a read.