myopiclunacy.com

According to RCP Obama needs 32 electoral votes from the battleground states and McCain needs 143. Given the margin of errors in statistical samples, a lead of less than 5 is considered to be a toss up, and in reality, should probably be given to McCain. There’s also the Bradley effect and the young-voter-apathy effect.

Makes me think that Obama’s shot will be from winning some combination of Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado for him to reach the 270. I don’t include Nevada because from what I’ve been hearing about polling there, it’s typically more favorable to Democrats than in reality. McCain needs almost all of the battleground states but if he takes all the toss ups and West Virginia, all he needs is Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada, or Ohio, Colorado and Virginia. Not impossible by any means.

So here are some interesting clips from articles I’ve been reading.

On Spreading the wealth: That Wealth Spreader - TIME

We may disagree on how much to spread around and how to go about it. We all tend to think that it’s someone else’s wealth that needs to be spread around and that it ought to be spread in our direction. But the principle that the unequal distribution of wealth is a legitimate concern and government policies should mitigate it has been part of American democracy since at least the New Deal. In fact, it is a commonplace that the moderate wealth-spreading of the New Deal saved American democracy. Today collecting checks from people and issuing checks to other people–or the same people–is the government’s main domestic activity.

Although it was an off-the-cuff remark and one that Obama probably regrets, he actually put it well, avoiding the suggestion of envy or class war, which are the usual accusations about such talk. Spreading it around is “good for everybody,” he says. And who disagrees? Or would you like to live behind locked gates and hire guards to protect your family from kidnapping, as in places where they spread it around even less than here?

On the challenges for the next president: How They Would Lead — Printout — TIME

A sad fact of contemporary politics is that we’ve lost the ability to get through a campaign without transforming honorable alternatives into cartoons of good and evil. Disagreement is out; denunciation is in. The distinctive tune of our day is hysteria with a drumbeat of hyperbole, all set in the key of bad faith.

Underneath, however, Americans still long for the mystic chords of memory strummed by the better angels of our nature — a patriotic harmony that we like to think is the song of our nation at its best. This is why the two candidates who fared best in this election were the ones who spoke most convincingly about bringing us together. When the two are finally narrowed to one, his mandate will be change, his timetable short and his environment stormy with division. At a historic moment desperate for a successful President, everything will hinge on one man’s ability to navigate by the clouded star of common purpose.

On branding Rashid Khalidi a terrorist: The Anti-Semantic Joe Klein - Jeffrey Goldberg

he’s a fierce partisan of the Palestinian cause, of course, and in my conversations with him, and in his writing, I see that his sympathies frequently cause him to distort Middle East history. But an anti-Semite? I don’t think so. In fact, Rashid Khalidi is one of the rare Palestinian advocates who argues, as he has with me, that Arabs must study Jewish history, including and especially the history of Jew-hatred, in order to better understand Israel, and to reach a compromise with it.

On the trickle-down folly: RealClearPolitics - Articles - Referendum on Trickle-Down

McCain regularly charges that Obama wants to be the “redistributor in chief.” Speaking at the rally here at Shippensburg University, Palin was forced to say this about Obama’s support for a variety of tax credits aimed at helping the poor and middle class: “He says that he is for a tax credit, which is when government takes your money in order to give it away to someone else.”

That is, of course, a mighty peculiar definition of tax credits. It is also an odd argument from a ticket that itself is committed to a research-and-development tax credit for corporations.

It’s true that Obama favors “refundable” tax credits to help low-income workers, including some who may pay no income taxes but do pay many other taxes. McCain has argued that Obama’s refundable tax credits amount to “welfare.” That, too, is a strange claim, since McCain favors refundable credits as part of his health plan. But the whole idea is to persuade voters such as Emily Daywalt that Obama really is just out to help those “who don’t do anything.”

And that is why Obama’s 30-minute advertisement on Wednesday night was targeted directly to voters such as Daywalt, or at least to those like her who are still persuadable. It was Obama’s tribute to the country’s working people who seek nothing more than decent incomes, health care and a chance to see their children succeed. It was less a political ad than a documentary about the value of work and the responsibilities of family life.

For years, Republicans have argued that the way to help struggling working people is to give more money to the wealthy. Obama is saying that we should cut out the middleman and help working people directly. My hunch is that Obama’s argument will prevail, and that conservatives will then work overtime to try to deny the judgment the people have rendered.

On how McCain might win: Commentary » Blog Archive » 10 Reasons Why McCain Might Win

9) The fire lit under Obama’s young supporters in the winter was largely due to Iraq and his opposition to the war. The stunning decline in violence and the departure of Iraq from the front page has put out the fire, to the extent that, like the young woman who made a sexy video calling herself Obama Girl and then didn’t vote in the New York primary because she went to get a manicure, they might not want to stand on line on Tuesday.

and my favorite hypocrisy of the day: Washington Times - THOMAS: Obama’s smoking audio

Electing Barack Obama president of the United States would be a roll of loaded dice. We will live (and possibly die) to regret it. Republicans have made many mistakes and deserve the punishment they are now getting, but the one charge that cannot be laid at their doorstep is that they wanted to rewrite the Constitution and weaken the country.

Yes - because if there’s anyone we know has never rewritten the constitution it’s Republicans - especially this strain of Republicans. Just ask Palin what the powers of the VP are.

Popularity: 1% [?]

This is what it has become. The promise of Goldwater with the pizzazz of Reagan has devolved into a steaming pile of cow dung. Colin Powell realized it (even if a bit two late for some) and is doing his part to save it by endorsing Obama. But as you can imagine … all the credit his fellow party members were willing to dole out to him a month ago is now toast … and all that’s left is the belittling name calling and sad spin:

Now that the most prominent military figure of our era - also a lifelong Republican, also George W. Bush’s first Secretary of State, also a friend of John McCain’s for 25 years - has publicly endorsed Barack Obama, it will be fascinating to behold the McCain surrogates and under-the-radar whisperers as they try to spin this one away. Maybe we’ll get variations of these:

1. Colin Powell has no credibility anymore, ever since he lied at the United Nations.

2. Colin Powell, a longtime moderate and supporter of abortion, has never been a real Republican anyway.

3. Colin Powell lives in McLean, Virginia, and we all know that Northern Virginia is not the “real” Virginia.

4. ACORN put him up to it.

5. Black people always stick together.

6. We’ve still got Joe the Plumber.

Colin Powell’s symbolic power

And he’s merely the last of a long line of moderate and/or pragmatic conservatives that are jumping from the ship before it takes on water. Some of the unlikeliest of candidates:

Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.

In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (”not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life. Two weeks from now that’s going to change: Ken Adelman intends to vote for Barack Obama. He can hardly believe it himself.

Neocon Iraq War Promoter Adelman Endorses Obama

It’s easy to blame this on the war or the economy or even Katrina. But in reality the blame goes squarely to the party’s most visible member - President George W Bush. Under his leadership (or lack thereof) the party has engaged in such divisive and brazenly corrupt behavior that even the enemies of the Clintons had to cringe. And the result? Rubble:

A column, like a good movie, should have an arc — start here, end there and somehow connect the two. So this column will begin with the speech Condi Rice made to the Republican National Convention in 2000 in praise of George W. Bush and end with Colin Powell’s appearance Sunday on “Meet the Press” in praise of Barack Obama. Between the first and the second lie the ruins of the GOP, a party gone very, very wrong.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Bush and now John McCain have constructed a mean, grumpy, exclusive, narrow-minded and altogether retrograde Republican Party. It has the sharp scent of the old Barry Goldwater GOP — the angry one of 1964 and not the one perfumed by nostalgia — that is home, by design or mere dumb luck, to those who think that Obama is “The Madrassian Candidate.” Karl Rove, take a bow.

It is worth remembering that both Rice and Powell spoke to that Philadelphia convention. And it is worth recalling, too, that Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” and had compiled a record as Texas governor to warrant the hope, if not the belief, that he was indeed a different sort of Republican. When he ran for re-election as governor in 1998, he went from 15 percent of the black vote to 27 percent, and from 28 percent of the Hispanic vote to an astounding 49 percent. Here was a coalition-builder of considerable achievement.

Now, all this is rubble …

Those of us who traveled with Bush in the 2000 campaign could tell that when he spoke of education, of the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” he meant it. Education, along with racial and ethnic reconciliation, was going to be his legacy. Then came 9/11, Afghanistan and finally the misbegotten war in Iraq. After that, nothing else really mattered. But just as Bush could not manage the wars, he could not manage his own party. His legacy is not merely in tatters. It does not, as he intended, even exist.

In the end, Powell was determined not to be one of the GOP’s useful idiots. Those moderates willing to overlook the choice of Palin, those capable of staying in a party where, soon enough, she could be an important or dominant force, retain the intellectual nimbleness that enabled them to persist in championing a war fought for duplicitous reasons and extol cultural values they do not for a minute share. Powell walked away from that, and others will follow — the second time that a senator from Arizona has led the GOP into the political wilderness.

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Powell Leaves the GOP Rubble

When will people learn that successful politics has and always will happen in the middle. You can set the agenda with your extremists, but you will never achieve political success when the fringe is running the show. You need real leadership and not party tricks or intimidation. McCain lost this election when he stopped being himself and started being George Maverick Bush. Don’t take it from me, this post on moderatevoices.com sums it all up:

I look up to Colin Powell.

He’s a fellow black man that happens to be a moderate Republican like myself. When there was speculation back in the mid-90s that he might run for president, I was hopeful. Here was a black man who had a real shot at the White House. When he became Secretary of State under Bush, I was excited that we had our first African American Secretary of State, a black man sharing the world stage.

But it wasn’t sheer racial pride that has made me an admire of the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was a moderate in his party. Save one other person, he was the head of a more moderate face of the party, one that was inclusive and spoke to our dreams and hopes and not simply our fears.

So, when Colin Powell decides to break with his party and support Barack Obama, that says something to me.

It’s not as Rush Limbaugh says about a black guy supporting a black guy. What is says is how the GOP has lost centrists and independents that are key to helping the party win. If it were simply race, then Powell would have endorsed him long ago. No, this is about the dead end that the GOP, Colin Powell’s party, MY party has reached- it has done everything to focus on the base and the result come November 4 is that it will for a time, be an undignified rump,having scared off everyone that could have made it a winning party.

When this election season began in January, I was pulling for John McCain. He was the only one that I wanted. When it was Minnesota’s turn to vote, I supported him in the GOP caucus. I knew that he had a good environmental record and a solid history of reaching accross the isle. I knew he was a centrist conservative that could bring our nation together.

But he had to face the current GOP and that meant changing. I tired to hang on, knowing that this is what one has to do to get elected. The election is the silly season.

But what has soured me on McCain is what has soured Powell- the choice of a someone that isn’t ready to be President. Maybe McCain thought he had to please his base. But in doing so, he scared off moderates and independents and even a few conservatives in the long run.

And maybe that shows one of the mistakes of the McCain campaign: he forgot to take care of HIS base: moderates and independents, moderate Republicans and Democrats that appealed to his way of governing. His focus on drilling, allowed Democrats to effectively paint him as against the environment when his record suggested otherwise. His willingness to focus on tax cuts, something he once opposed, again allowed his opponents to paint him as a big spender. Both moves frustrated his original supporters.

During the final debate, McCain said that he wasn’t President Bush and that Senator Obama should not run against the President. One wonders, why didn’t he say something like that six months ago? What if he proposed a new agenda, a new conservatism?

Like Mr. Powell, I still think McCain is a good person at heart. But he has not given people like Powell and myself a reason to support him. I think Powell’s decision is something that is taking place among many Republicans tired of shenanigans of the last few years. Many of us hoped the Arizona Senator would chart a new course, but it didn’t turn out the way we expected.

What Limbaugh and to some extent, McCain, miss is that moderates and independents are important to a party’s success. The old strategy of the base plus one can’t cut it.

Ronald Reagan showed us a conservatism that was inclusive and expansive. For some reason, his followers in the GOP have missed that message. In his 1977 speech called “The New Republican Party,” Reagan had this to say:

And just to set the record straight, let me say this about our friends who are now Republicans but who do not identify themselves as conservatives: I want the record to show that I do not view the new revitalized Republican Party as one based on a principle of exclusion. After all, you do not get to be a majority party by searching for groups you won’t associate or work with. If we truly believe in our principles, we should sit down and talk. Talk with anyone, anywhere, at any time if it means talking about the principles for the Republican Party. Conservatism is not a narrow ideology, nor is it the exclusive property of conservative activists.

McCain forgot to widen the base. Maybe he has been listening to his consultants or hemmed in by the far right, but it shows that we Republicans have forgotten what Reagan told us so long ago.

What I hope is that after this election, the seeds of a new Republican party is born. I still believe in the GOP and still think it can change for the better. Yeah, I know that makes me a fool, but I am a conservative and this is my home.

In the end, Colin Powell had to do what he had to do: stand on principle and be true to himself. I just wish that was something John McCain had done.

Colin, John and Me

I hope that in 8 years we aren’t saying the same thing about the left, but history says that we will. Don’t know what form it will take (abortion, crime, foreign policy, etc.) but surely there’ll be some reason for Americans to want a new change - perhaps to a leaner, meaner, more inclusive and more on point GOP. Certainly all politicians can learn from the abject failure of the last 8 years, seemingly an idealogical bookend on America’s shelf.

All we need to do is keep the car in the middle lane - and to do that we need a good driver. Our current driver was drunk, veered off to the right and ran us into a tree. And his party wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Sarah Vowell on Sarah Palin and Joe Six-Packs: The East coast is American enough for Al Qaida, it should be American enough for them.

Joe Biden (quoting a fellow senator) on McCain continuing George Bush’s policies: How can you be a maverick when all you’ve been is a sidekick?

Popularity: 8% [?]

Holy Frijoles. Dave Letterman was apparently RED HOT about John McCain suspending his campaign to race back to Washington to deal with the “cratering” economy and cancelling his scheduled appearance on the show last night. Dave spent literally THE ENTIRE SHOW just railing on McCain. It was BRU-TAL.

In addition to repeatedly mocking McCain for skipping out on his scheduled appearance Wednesday, Letterman also devoted, fittingly, his nightly top 10 list to the subject of “Questions People Are Asking The McCain Campaign.” Number Five: “Are You Doing All This Just To Get Out Of Going On Letterman?”

Brutal ESPECIALLY after they found out he was indeed not racing back to Washington, but taping an interview with Katie Couric - a fellow CBS employee!!

“In the middle of the taping Dave got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Dave even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, “Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?”

Earlier in the show, Dave kept saying, “You don’t suspend your campaign. This doesn’t smell right. This isn’t the way a tested hero behaves.” And he joked: “I think someone’s putting something in his metamucil.”

“He can’t run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sarah Palin. Where is she?”

“What are you going to do if you’re elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We’ve got a guy like that now!”

It was EPIC. Video below

Popularity: 6% [?]

Paul Kedrosky: Fire the SEC’s Chris Cox? Sure, Then Fire John McCain

Oh, now John McCain is suddenly swinging with both fists on capital markets? He just said he thinks SEc Chair Chris Cox should be fired because he allowed naked short-selling and that is driving the current crisis? Un-be-frickin-believable.

First, it is the height of irresponsibility for a politician to grandstand so clumsily when the market is as fragile as it is right now. It shows a remarkable lack of financial sophistication and market smarts on the part of John McCain, and I didn’t have much confidence in either from him in the first place (and that does not make this an Obama endorsement, because he has done diddly to convince me he gets this either).

Second, this has nothing to do with naked short-selling. Repeat after me: The trouble is not with short-sellers. The trouble is not with short-sellers. The trouble is with an over-levered financial system built on a house of cards comprised of under-collateralized toxic paper that was applauded all the way up by “housing is the American dream” nutters who couldn’t see that vast expansions in thinly-traded credit are a path to economic ruin. Focusing on the short-sellers will lead to completely wrong and counter-productive non-solutions to the current crisis.

Unbelievable. Truly.

Five myths about the Wall Street crisis

During the troubles on Wall Street over the past few days, many pundits have parroted tired slogans as the accepted wisdom. They seem to have forgotten that their blithe explanations have been found wanting in the past and are likely to be inadequate in the present…

Myth one: recent developments prove that Wall Street is nothing but a giant casino.

… In fact, as I argued in my book Cowardly Capitalism (Wiley 2001), the contemporary financial markets are characterised by risk aversion rather than a hunger for big bets. This is much more than saying the markets are simply fearful. Rather, I argue that the character of the financial markets has changed fundamentally.

The main reason for their existence used to be to move capital from one party to another. For instance, someone might put their savings into a bank account and the money would then be lent to a company for investment. Today, in contrast, a key purpose of many financial instruments is to transfer risk from one party to another. For instance, the derivatives markets essentially provide a way for institutions to pass on risks between each other. So, one party might want to protect itself against a falling dollar and another might want to bet on the American currency rising.

This ‘cowardly’ nature of the financial markets explains why the financial crisis has spread in the way that it has. Repackaging or ‘securitising’ mortgages initially provided a way for lenders to sell on the risk to other parties such as investment banks. In the short term, this had what was seen as the desirable effect of diversifying risk. But the risk was simply transferred rather than disappearing. Once problems emerged it could spread more easily from one institution to another. This explains what is sometimes misleadingly referred to as a ‘contagion’ effect or virus in the market.

Myth two: the markets were driven by greed.

It would be more accurate to say that the developments are driven by fear rather than greed… a general climate of anxiety in contemporary society that affects the financial markets as everyone else. Markets tend to react in a disproportionate way to the threats that they face.

Myth three: it is all about confidence.

It is true that confidence plays more of a role in the financial markets than in the economy as a whole. But it is a mistake to exaggerate the importance of confidence in the resolution of the crisis. The strength of the underlying real economy is a key factor to consider when trying to determine the likely outcome.

Myth four: it all started with irresponsible American subprime mortgage lending

The crisis is routinely blamed on irresponsible lenders and reckless borrowers whose debts have now gone bad. According to this caricature, a combination of greedy bankers and feckless ‘trailer trash’ are responsible for the crisis. In reality, the American housing bubble was simply a response to the low interest rates maintained by the Federal Reserve earlier this decade (4). This loose monetary policy was in turn a way of keeping an otherwise sluggish economy going by promoting a consumer boom fulled by cheap borrowing. The fundamental problem was therefore a weak economy rather than subprime borrowers or lenders.

Myth five: The recent actions of the American authorities, particularly last week’s nationalisation of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage guarantee agencies, represent an end to the free market on Wall Street

… In fact, despite its reputation as the ultimate free market, Wall Street has long been subject to extensive state intervention.

Several conservative commentators have bemoaned the fact that the American authorities have taken a strongly interventionist stance on dealing with the financial crisi