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SNIPPETS, our daily collection of short items and comments, is here.

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Answers to last week's "Current Question" are here. The new "Current Question" is here, in the right-hand column.

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NEW AUDIO COMMENTARY TODAY:  "What have we become?" 

To listen, go here.

MONDAY,  NOVEMBER  3,  2008

UPDATE AT 8:56 P.M. ET:  ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A report has cleared Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of ethics violations in the firing of her public safety commissioner.  Released Monday, the report says there is no probable cause to believe Palin or any other state official violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act in connection with the firing. The report was prepared by Timothy Petumenos, an independent counsel for the Alaska Personnel Board.

COMMENT:  Thanks for telling us, now that her reputation has been pretty well trashed on this issue.  Let's see who apologizes. 

ELECTION EVE

Posted at 7:41 p.m. ET

I recall the feeling on election eve, 1980, when I was preparing to cast the first vote of my lifetime for a Republican presidential nominee - Ronald Reagan.  For those of us who made the journey to the Reagan Revolution, the vote was not that difficult, or traumatic.  As we said at the time, we had not left the Democratic Party.  The party had left us. 

We vote again tomorrow.  I will vote McCain/Palin.  The times are too important, too threatening, for the nation to be left in the hands of an inexperienced man about whom we know too little.

You'll see a lot of print in the next day or two, and hear the talking heads burn calories with their mouths.  Ignore 98 percent of it.  Transformational election?  Maybe.  Yes, if Obama is elected he'll make racial history.  But words like "transformational" are best left to the judgment of historians twenty or forty years down the line.  There are very few transformational elections. 

Change?  There's always change with a new president.  Often, it's more style than substance.  If it's Obama, we'll see what he really means by "change."  When he confronts his first international crisis, we'll see if that change is creative and positive, or catastrophic.

This campaign will be remembered.  Sadly, it will probably be remembered for the negatives.  It was a campaign remarkably lacking in substance or depth, given the great issues at hand.  It was a campaign truly built for the age of American Idol, not the age of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  It was a campaign in which the attacks of 9/11 were rarely if ever mentioned.  They have been washed away by time, and it may well be that our vigilance as a people has been washed away as well.

The campaign will be remembered for one major thing - the almost complete collapse of the responsibility of the press.  The rights of the press are enshrined in the First Amendment, one of the great constructions and pieces of writing in political history.  Those rights are there because the founders, in their great wisdom, understood that a republic cannot function without an informed electorate.  The press has always been an imperfect servant of that ideal.  In this campaign it has betrayed the very premise of its existence.  It may pay a price for its betrayal.  The nation will almost certainly pay a price.

Urgent Agenda will start our election coverage tomorrow morning, with reports on turnout.  We'll be on until the results are known.  We'll go light on the long articles tomorrow, replacing them with brief reports on what is happening.  Please be with us.  And do vote.  You never know.

November 3, 2008.      Permalink          

BULLETIN AT 3:35 P.M. ET:  The IBD/TIPP poll, the most accurate in 2004, has just been posted for today.  It has Obama up five, 48-43, a gain of three points since yesterday.  But, strangely, Obama is still under 50 percent, with nine percent undecided.

COMMENT:  McCain's only realistic hope, if one trusts in polls, is that the IBD/TIPP poll is accurate, and that those undecideds break heavily in his favor.  IBD/TIPP will publish a final result late tonight.

UPDATE AT 3:04 P.M. ET:   Two new polls are out.  Fox has Obama up seven, 50-43, a gain of four since the last Fox poll about four days ago.  Marist has Obama up nine.

COMMENT:  Further evidence that it's Obama, not McCain, who's gained in these final days.  I can't claim to understand it.  On the basis of what?  I suspect the voters are simply angry, and want to throw the party in power out.  There is a terrible immaturity about all this, given the problems the country faces.  (If you wish, listen to my audio commentary on that, here.)  

UPDATE AT 1:14 P.M. ET:  Here are the latest poll results:  Rasmussen shows Obama up six, 52-46.  Hotline has him up five, 50-45.  Battleground shows Obama leading by six, 50-44.  All polls released so far today show Obama with a minimum of 50 percent of the vote. 

COMMENT:  According to the polls, there is no last-minute surge toward McCain.  If anything, Obama has strengthened his position.  Now the key will be turnout.  The election is tomorrow.  Despite what the spin doctors tell us, it is not in the bag for anyone.  Only voters decide. 

UPDATE AT 8:15 A.M. ET:  The final Gallup poll shows Obama with an eleven-point lead among likely voters, 55-44.  That 55-percent figure is the strongest I've seen for Obama during the campaign.  At least four more polls will be published later today.

THE DAY BEFORE

Posted at 7:55 a.m. ET

You may have heard that there's an election tomorrow.  About 40 percent of the nation will be voters.  The other 60 percent will be pollsters.  I have never seen so many polls taken.  And I still have yet to meet anyone who's been surveyed. 

There are no current polls showing McCain ahead.  But there is a marked variance in the polling results, with Obama's lead ranging from 13 to 2 points.  Can McCain pull an upset?  Of course.  The only poll that really counts is the one on election day, and that depends on turnout.  If turnout predictions are off, anything is possible.  And remember, the poll that shows Obama only two points ahead, IBD/TIPP, was the most accurate poll in 2004.

I've seen very little journalism of significance this morning.  Writers have said what they've wanted to say.  The  Wall Street Journal, though, has an almost philosophical piece, chiding Obama on his candidacy:

Every vote for a nonincumbent Presidential candidate is in some sense a risk, given the power and complications of the job. But in both his lack of experience and the contradictions between his rhetoric and his agenda, Barack Obama presents a particular leap of hope. It is a sign of how fed up Americans are with Republicans that millions are ready to take that leap even in dangerous times.

Right over the cliff.

Mr. Obama has also understood the political moment better than his opponents in either party. In the primaries, he used his inexperience to advantage by offering himself as a liberal alternative to what seemed like an inevitable, and dispiriting, Clinton replay. He then turned around in the general election to project sober reassurance amid the financial crisis, which was the moment when his poll numbers began to climb above the margin of error against John McCain.

Of course, he didn't actually do anything, which isn't the greatest recommendation for the White House.

None of this changes the fact that voters still know remarkably little about a man who is less than four years out of the Illinois state Senate. While he has already written two autobiographies, there are significant gaps in Mr. Obama's political resume. The nature of his relationship with onetime friend and political contributor Tony Rezko, a convicted felon, or with radicals Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, not to mention Acorn, remains ambiguous or contradictory.

They were all early supporters or mentors, yet during this campaign Mr. Obama has eventually disavowed each one. This is perhaps testimony to a ruthless pragmatism, or maybe opportunism, but what do those relationships say about what he really believes? He is fortunate the media have been so incurious about them -- as opposed, say, to Sarah Palin's Wasilla church or Joe Wurzelbacher's plumbing business.

Ouch.  Mustn't be too harsh on one's journalistic brothers and sisters.

But for all his talk about reaching across the aisle, we can think of no major issue where he has disagreed with his party's dominant interest groups or broken with liberal orthodoxy. Not one.

Change we can't believe in.

If he is elected, Mr. Obama would immediately face the same kind of large, liberal Democratic majority on Capitol Hill that did so much to ruin Jimmy Carter and the first two years of the Clinton Presidency. Is there anything its liberal barons want that he'd oppose? He hasn't said so. On the contrary, Mr. Obama's voting record and agenda suggest that the "transformation" he may have in mind is a return to the pre-Reagan era of government expansion and liberal ascendancy.

And a weak or nonexistent foreign policy.  Remember Carter's?  Real human dynamo.

On national security, Mr. Obama is an even greater man of mystery. Perhaps once in office he will take the course of prudent realism. He can certainly sound hawkish when he wants to, advocating unilateral military strikes inside Pakistan and promising the kind of open-ended commitment to the Afghan conflict that he claims we can't afford or sustain in Iraq. Yet he ran irresponsibly against the surge in Iraq and now has his lucky stars to thank that Mr. McCain prevailed in that debate, so Mr. Obama would inherit a far more stable Middle East. His belief that diplomacy can stop Tehran's nuclear ambitions is also naive, and we suspect would be shown to be so early in his Administration with an Iranian nuclear declaration, if not a test.

Finally...

Perhaps this is the kind of leadership the American people want after the Presidential certitudes of the Bush years. Americans certainly are eager for fresh start, and it is typical of periods of economic panic that they may even be willing to reach for the kind of alluring but untested appeal that so marks Mr. Obama. Sometimes these gambles pay off, and sometimes they don't.

Quite a gamble.  The 9/11 hijackers could not have imagined this.

November 3, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 6:43 A.M. ET:  Zogby has Obama up seven, 51-44, a gain of one.  Wall Street Journal/NBC has him up eight, 51-43.  Zogby comments that Obama could have a big day tomorrow.  It's hard to know whether to take Zogby's comments that seriously,  as his polls have been all over the map.  The fact is, though, that all polls have Obama in the lead.  His highest figure, 54 percent, is in the CBS poll, which has him up 13.  His lowest, 47 percent, is in both the IBD/TIPP and Fox polls, which have him up two and three, respectively.

SUNDAY,  NOVEMBER 2,  2008

HOLLYWOOD IN CRISIS

Posted at 7:03 p.m. ET

There is a looming crisis in Hollywood, with potentially devastating psychological effects. We've written a bit about it before here, and I wanted to bring you up to date.

The crisis involves The One, and the outside chance that he could lose.  Hollywood fears the trauma that would accompany that result.  Psychiatrists are apparently running 24-hour walk-in offices out of the top floors of Beverly Hills mansions.

As usual, it's an English-speaking foreign journalist, this time writing for Australia's Sidney Morning Herald, who nails the story.  Be prepared for sadness:

A HIDEOUS new affliction is creeping through the ranks of America's creative community.

The further Barack Obama edges ahead of John McCain in the million and one polls that are coming out the more pernicious the nagging fear becomes.

What if he loses?

Barely a left-wing pundit, barely an Oscar-nominated softie can sleep a wink these days for fear of the race riots and international humiliation that will ensue should "The One" be defeated on Tuesday.

No intimidation there. Of course not.  No American would actually vote based on a fear of race riots and international humiliation.  No, never.  Hmm.

The comedian Chris Rock is at least capable of joking about it. "If Obama loses?" he replied to a question from talk show host Bill Maher. "Well, that Wednesday after election day, anybody … any activity in your life that involves black people, it's not going to get done. If you're at the airport? No one's going to get your bags."

Yeah, hilarious.  Vote our way, or else.

Crack teams of chiropractors are at the ready, and Nissen huts full of qualified shrinks and aromatherapists line Rodeo Drive to soothe the tortured brigades of the psychologically wounded should "The One" be robbed of victory.

Actress Susan Sarandon has already issued a veiled threat to the public.

"It's a critical time, but I have faith in the American people," she told Britain's Telegraph newspaper with a touch of implied menace in June this year. "If they prove me wrong, I'll be checking out a move to Italy. Maybe Canada, I don't know. We're at an abyss …"

Go already.  Please.  But Canada should be forewarned about a migration north of the emotionally unstable.

Barbra Streisand vowed to emigrate to Canada in 2000 if George Bush were ever elected President, an undertaking she refreshed four years later at the prospect of his re-election.

But she was still sufficiently resident in California on September 16 this year to host a $US2500 ($3800) a head fund-raiser for Obama at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Actually, she had trouble scheduling a moving van.  That's all it was.

The actor Alec Baldwin and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder made similar threats in 2000, as did Robert Redford in 2004, but none has since enriched the Canadian cultural scene.

In fact, Canadian immigration records show that arrivals from the United States actually slowed in the six months after George Bush's re-election in 2004.

That's because most Americans are sane and loyal, and live in the real world.  I've worked in Hollywood.  Real it ain't.

November 2, 2008.      Permalink          

BULLETIN AT 4:06 P.M. ET:  The IBD/TIPP tracker, the most accurate in 2004, has Obama up only two points, 47-45, as reader Fred Hill points out.  For their analysis, go here.  Clearly, this is at variance with all other polls, as listed at Real Clear Politics.  But there is that track record to consider.  Let us hope. 

UPDATE AT 3:52 P.M. ET:   Gallup, using its traditional model, has Obama up eight, 51-43; using its "expanded" model, Obama is up nine, 52-43.  Both were at ten yesterday.  CNN/Opinion Research, just out, has Obama with a seven-point lead, 53-46. 

UPDATE AT 10:57 A.M. ET:  The Hotline poll, just out, has Obama up five, 50-45.  The three trackers published so far today all have Obama up five or six points, and all have him at 50 or 51 percent. 

COMMENT:  Look, you never know.  Obama overpolled by an average of seven points in the primaries.  The race could be tighter than the polls show...or a great ground game by Obama on Tuesday can widen his lead.  Three days from today we'll know the whole story. 

FROM THE DEPTHS OF HIS SOWELL

Posted at 10:25 a.m. ET

Thomas Sowell has been one of the most vigorous Obama doubters during this campaign, and now he tops off his effort with a final blast, predicting no great things from The One.  This will not make Obama's day:

After the big gamble on subprime mortgages that led to the current financial crisis, is there going to be an even bigger gamble, by putting the fate of a nation in the hands of a man whose only qualifications are ego and mouth?

Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.

Well, Thomas Sowell just got scratched off Michelle's Christmas-card list. 

The kind of self-righteous self-confidence that has become Obama's trademark is usually found in sophomores in Ivy League colleges-- very bright and articulate students, utterly untempered by experience in real world.

No White House invitations either, even for the Easter-egg hunt.

"This is our time!" he proclaimed. And "I will change the world." But ultimately this election is not about him, but about the fate of this nation, at a time of both domestic and international peril, with a major financial crisis still unresolved and a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon.

Oh come on, he can bring in Oprah to work on those things. 

After this man has wrecked the economy and destroyed constitutional law with his judicial appointments, what can he do for an encore? He can cripple the military and gamble America's future on his ability to sit down with enemy nations and talk them out of causing trouble.

Oh, Sowell, so real world!  Don't you realize we don't talk about "enemy nations" in the Age of Obama?  They're "societies with alternative visions."  Get with the program.

Senator Obama's running mate, Senator Joe Biden, has for years shown the same easy-way-out mindset. Senator Biden has for decades opposed strengthening our military forces. In 1991, Biden urged relying on sanctions to get Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait, instead of military force, despite the demonstrated futility of sanctions as a means of undoing an invasion.

People who think Governor Sarah Palin didn't handle some "gotcha" questions well in a couple of interviews show no interest in how she compares to the Democrats' Vice Presidential candidate, Senator Biden.

Joe Biden is much more of the kind of politician the mainstream media like. Not only is he a liberal's liberal, he answers questions far more glibly than Governor Palin--grossly inaccurately in many cases, but glibly.

Yeah.  One heartbeat away.  It's an argument for hoping Obama stays in good health.      Permalink          

Finally...

Add to Obama and Biden House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and you have all the ingredients for a historic meltdown.

And The New York Times will blame Bush.

November 2, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 9:34 A.M. ET:  Rasmussen reports Obama up five, 51-46.  Obama is showing solid leads in all the polls, but his numbers, hovering around 50 percent, could still potentially spell trouble if there's a last-minute surge of support from undecideds toward McCain.  We haven't seen that surge yet.

WHY THE PRESS BIAS?

Posted at 8:57 a.m. ET

The obvious Obama-boosting by the press has now become one of the most talked-about subjects of the campaign.  That talk is likely to continue as the very journalists who helped put Obama in power start covering his administration, assuming he's elected. 

But why the press bias?  A distinguished observer has sent us an e-mail outlining some possibilities:

-- The media follows the polls and rewards the winner in its daily coverage.  That comports with the CMPA study that found Obama getting negative coverage in the summer and positive coverage in the fall.

-- The candidate makes fewer mistakes, resulting in better coverage.  That is consistent with findings that Obama got better coverage in the fall than the other three major party ticket candidates, whose campaigns and personal behavior produced more mistakes.

-- The media is more leery of criticisms that might reflect racial stereotypes than those that might reflect gender and age stereotypes.  This is consistent with the consistently negative coverage of the female candidates Clinton and Palin, and of some of the negative coverage of McCain over the course of the year.

-- The media wants to cover the first African-American president and are "voting the story" in their coverage.  An occupational incentive could be propelling this.

-- The media has a liberal bias and so have subjected Palin and McCain to negative coverage this fall.  This bias is emphasized because of Obama's liberalism and African-American identity.

I personally think most, if not all, of these factors are at work.  Some are entirely understandable and explicable and others are disturbing.

These are solid reasons, and their overall effect is to erode the credibility of the media.  We've seen the rapid financial deterioration of some news organizations recently.  The Christian Science Monitor is ending its daily print edition.  New York Times bonds have been reduced to junk status.  The Los Angeles Times is in serious jeopardy.  Some in print journalism attribute these ailments to competition from the internet and cable news.  I would suggest another reason:  The press has surrendered its greatest asset - its ability to gather news and present it objectively in ways no alternative medium can.  Instead, it has moved toward opinion journalism, journalism intended to "make a difference."  The audience is rejecting the change.  Many people feel they no longer need newspapers if those papers are simply going to be extended editorials. 

The future of the press is in the press's hands.  It always has been.  Those hands, today, seem less than capable.

November 2, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 7:55 A.M. ET:  Zogby has Obama up six this morning, 50-44.  There was much talk and drum-beating yesterday over comments by Zogby hinting at a McCain surge.  Apparently, there never was any such surge.  Zogby is a master of hype and self-promotion, and we got both yesterday.

COMMENT:  Please notice that Obama is only at 50 percent.  If that erodes a few points by Tuesday, the race could become competitive.