William Katz: Urgent Agenda
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SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2008
SARAH
Posted at 8:01 p.m. ET
A reader alerts me to a column on Sarah Palin by the excellent Michael Goodwin of The New York Daily News. It reveals the mindset of a certain class of people here in the northeast.
There's a famous story about Pauline Kael, the movie critic. After the 1972 Nixon blowout of George McGovern, Kael commented that she couldn't understand how Nixon had won since she hadn't known anyone who'd voted for him. Her world was this narrow little place known as Manhattan.
In 1936, Liberty Magazine conducted a poll showing that Governor Alf Landon of Kansas, the Republican presidential nominee, would easily defeat President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But it was a telephone poll, and those running it never realized that many hard-pressed Americans, Roosevelt supporters, didn't have telephones.
Ah, that "world view" problem again.
Michael Goodwin writes:
The changes are coming so fast we hardly take notice. Is America really going to elect a black President? Two years ago, that was unthinkable. Now it's very likely as Barack Obama has seized the momentum 30 days from the election.
But before we sprain our shoulders patting ourselves on the back for our color-blind, bias-free selves, let's acknowledge that certain prejudices are far from taboo. In fact, in some quarters they are ascendant and celebrated.
I'm thinking of the overt, outrageous prejudice that infuses some of the contempt on the left for Palin. Scrape away the surface excuses and much of it is because she is a Republican. And an anti-abortion one at that. How dare she!
Indeed. How dare she be "different." We celebrate diversity, dearies, but we do have our limits.
That the bias comes from people we think of as sophisticated makes it disappointing, but not surprising. After all, contempt for Republicans is the only socially acceptable prejudice remaining among many educated people today.
A celebrated retired journalist, a man I've long admired, was surprised when I told him I hadn't decided whom to vote for. "You're too smart to vote for John McCain," he said, thereby insulting 50 million Americans.
And...
George W. Bush appointed the first two black secretaries of state, but does anyone on the left regard him as a racial trailblazer? When I raised that question to another liberal, she dismissed the idea, saying Bush "never thought about race."
That exchange took place three years ago, but I still can't grasp her logic. How does she know what Bush thought? Why would it be more important than what he does?
A similar blind spot toward the political "other" explains much of the contempt for Palin. If she were a Democrat, her unusual life would be spun into a compelling narrative that would make her the darling of the coastal elite.
Well, maybe. First she'd have to produce a Wellesley or Princeton degree, or explain in an essay why she went to one of those...state schools.
Yes, I know there are many legitimate reasons to vote against her and McCain. And I am not arguing for a second they should be supported, least of all because of her gender.
But couldn't we all at least acknowledge Palin's moment and what it means for America?
Apparently not. She must lose, the liberal narrative goes, because she is unqualified, case closed.
Some day, we will look back with disgust at the abuse Palin has taken and wonder how it could happen in this great nation, circa 2008.
Spare me. We already know the answer.
Yes we do. What a disgrace.
October 5, 2008. Permalink 
UPDATE AT 6:35 p.m. ET: ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Barack Obama's allies warn that John McCain's attacks on the Democrat's character will lead to the political equivalent of mutual assured destruction: fire your big weapon at your own peril.
Several Obama surrogates said his supporters may start reminding voters of McCain's ties to Charles Keating, a convicted savings and loan owner whose actions two decades ago triggered a Senate ethics investigation that involved McCain as one of the "Keating Five."
COMMENT: I thought that The One is above this, something pure, from Heaven. Apparently, he's just another politician, willing to play rough when needed. Imagine what it will be like to criticize him when he has the power of the presidency behind him.
UPDATE AT 1:17 P.M. ET: The Gallup tracker just released has Obama up seven. It was eight yesterday. Statistically insignificant change, but more evidence that the vice-presidential debate had no effect on polling.
UPDATE AT 12:55 P.M. ET: The Hotline tracker, just published, shows Obama up seven, unchanged from yesterday. Again, the vice-presidential debate seems to have had absolutely no effect on voter preferences.
UPDATE AT 9:40 A.M. ET: Rasmussen's tracker is out for Sunday, reporting Obama up seven, up from six yesterday. Two of the three days of the polling for this report occurred after the vice-presidential debate. That debate has apparently had zero impact on the vote, and Republicans must now concede that Sarah Palin, although wonderful for the GOP base, will have the usual minimal vice-presidential effect on the election.
Rasmussen is unusually blunt about the situation facing McCain:
One way of understanding the difficult challenge now facing McCain is to consider the relatively small group of persuadable voters who could still change their mind. The Republican hopeful would have to win nearly 80% of those votes to pull ahead in the race. That’s especially challenging because most of those voters are currently leaning towards Obama. In other words, while the race is not over, McCain needs a significant--game-changing—event to win the White House. Simply doing what he’s been doing a little better will not be enough.
The only predictable game-changing events are the two upcoming debates - and there's no reason to believe McCain can make any progress through them. His first performance against Obama was lackluster.
We fight on, and must. But this is Obama's to lose. He is on track for a landslide victory in the electoral college. Imagine - this egotistical young man with not a major public accomplishment to his name may be overwhelmingly elected president, and carry both houses of Congress with him. And the same press that largely created him will be covering him, and covering for his mistakes. A terrifying moment.
STEALING IT FAIR AND SQUARE
Posted at 9:23 a.m. ET
We've been warning for months at Urgent Agenda that two factors would have an inordinate influence in this election - extreme press bias and widespread voter fraud. We've written extensively about the press bias, and will again. We turn our attention to voter fraud, and an excellent piece by John Fund that lays out the problem:
Our nation may be on the brink of repeating the 2000 Florida election debacle, but this time in several states, with allegations of voter fraud, intimidation and flawed voting machines added to the generalized chaos that sent Bush v. Gore to the Supreme Court for overtime.
"If you think of election problems as akin to forest fires, the woods are no drier than they were in 2000, but many more people have matches," says Doug Chapin, editor of the nonpartisan Electionline.org.
For example:
The issue of photo ID has become symbolic of the clash of values on election standards. Supporters say it is bizarre that most states don't require a photo ID to vote, at a time when one is needed to buy an airline ticket, rent a video or cash a check. A Rasmussen Research poll found 82% of Americans believed voters should show photo ID, including 70% of Obama voters. But liberal groups insist that even laws that allow voters to use a paycheck or utility bill as ID discriminate against minority voters and could lead to "profiling."
Maybe we should let people in baby carriages vote on grounds that they're really 21 but have grown slowly.
But when voters are disfranchised by the counting of improperly cast ballots or outright fraud, their civil rights are violated just as surely as if they were prevented from voting. The integrity of the ballot box is just as important to the credibility of elections as access to it.
Where did John Fund get a strange idea like that? Probably from Karl Rove.
Party machines in Hawaii and south Texas intimidate critics and journalists as they harvest votes from illegal aliens and the dead. A left-wing "community organizing" group called ACORN has seen its employees frequently convicted of voter registration fraud. This year its employees are under active investigation in several states. Perhaps one reason for ACORN's go-for-broke behavior is that Barack Obama used to be a lawyer and top trainer for the group.
There he goes again. Guilt by association. Just because he did a little honest work for these folks...
Even after Florida 2000, the media tend to downplay or ignore stories of election incompetence, manipulation or theft. Allowing such abuses to vanish into an informational black hole in effect legitimizes them.
Sad to say, but I'm afraid that's the point. Much voter fraud occurs in inner cities, and there are those who will charge "racism" against anyone who looks into the problem.
If the race tightens, this may be a very big story on election day.
October 5, 2008. Permalink
FACTS? ANYONE?
Posted at 8:15 A.M. ET
The great Tom Sowell asks, "Do facts matter?"
He's referring, of course, to a political campaign in which facts seem to have become luxuries, and out of reach for some.
The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain-- which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.
It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?
Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years-- including the present year-- denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.
Pay no attention. Pay absolutely no attention. This is propaganda of the far right, secretly written by Joe Lieberman's cousin.
We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.
Then there is the little matter of Franklin Raines, who made $90-million at Fannie Mae, and, despite sudden denials, is an adviser to Barack Obama.
Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.
And more...
Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd.
But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.
Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.
The GOP is asleep, its usual situation:
The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to counter-attack. They deserve to lose.
They sure do, if they can't wake up and get the facts to the American people. But it's been reported that McCain fears being seen as "racially insensitive" if he lays the truth on the table - as if large numbers of African Americans would vote for him to reward his "sensitivity."
And finally...
But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.
Tom Sowell argues it better than the McCain team...which is one reason why McCain is being so badly beaten.
John McCain, call Tom Sowell. Chat a bit. You'll learn how it's done.
October 5, 2008. Permalink
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2008
FREE SPEECH FOR ME
Posted at 7:24 p.m. ET
Free speech for me, but not for thee. It's a familiar refrain of civil libertarians, warning of the attitudes of some Americans.
But those attitudes seem to be spreading into dangerous corners. In a short but important piece, Rich Lowry cautions about some disturbing trends in the Obama campaign, and the Obama movement. This is a matter of great concern to me as well, and I'll be writing about it in the future. Let's start with Lowry:
Barack Obama has already brought change. He's ended the "chilling effect."
Any restrictions on speech -- real or imagined -- were once inevitably deemed to have a "chilling effect" on people who would otherwise exercise their First Amendment rights if they weren't so frightened by the possibility of running afoul of the law. Claims of a "chilling effect" were the most reliable weapon in the American Civil Liberties Union's absolutist campaign against, say, even the most common-sensical laws against obscenity.
But the politics of free speech has been subtly shifting. Opponents of the ACLU on the Right are increasingly worried about overreaching rules against "hate speech" defining legitimate opinions as out of bounds. Meanwhile, the same people who forever decry the country's imminent descent into the dark night of fascism are now comfortable regulating political speech in federal law and banning speech on college campuses. The Left has learned to like some chill with its free speech.
Wonderfully stated. And more:
Enter the Obama campaign, which reflects the new ethos. It twice issued "Obama Action Wire" alerts for activists to call a Chicago radio station and try to shut down appearances by two Obama critics, writers Stanley Kurtz and David Freddoso. No "chilling effect" here.
And...
The Obama campaign's effort dovetails with the work of an outfit called Accountable America, run by a former MoveOn.org operative. It is devoted to threatening conservative donors with legal action and exposure of any embarrassing details of their private lives if they give money to groups running ads against Obama.
And...
Liberal editorial boards have apparently lost their former zest for the First Amendment. Consider this approving sentence from a New York Times editorial: "The wholesale descent into Swift Boat campaigning has been blocked -- for now -- by a federal judge in Virginia."
Those hero judges.
It's all just a taste of what's to come if Obama wins and Democrats have even bigger majorities in Congress, emboldening them to try to crush their antagonists once and for all. "Hate is not a family value" was a popular bumper sticker on the left during the 1990s. Now, the left has embraced hate as, if not a family value, the organizing spirit of its long assault on George W. Bush, and anyone else in the way, from Joe Lieberman to Sarah Palin.
Finally...
America's partisan politics has always featured its share of rancorous abuse, but there's something rancid at the heart of the new, blog-driven left that believes its bullying childishness has led the way out of the wilderness. This spirit will inevitably seep into an Obama administration. Whatever Obama's professions of his commitment to cross-partisan understanding, he's never confronted the left of his own party and has always been willing to engage in hardball when it suits his purposes.
And where is the ACLU? Are we serious?
Several years ago, one of the last of the great ACLU lawyers, a man truly devoted to the First Amendment, told me how worried he was about the anti-freedom trends in this country. He worried first about speech codes on college campuses, which teach young kids that such restrictions are permissible and desirable. Those kids will be in positions of power in 20 years, he cautioned, and will carry that logic with them. He worried about his own ACLU, and revealed that some members of the national ACLU board don't even believe in traditional free speech any longer.
The left is very good with words, far better than the right. It is also ruthless about power. It won't say it's restricting free speech when it tries to get talk radio off the air. It will say it's expanding opportunities for others, and improving the atmosphere in our nation. It will lie because it feels it has a right to lie, because it possesses "a higher truth." Among the worst offenders in the drive to limit speech will be journalists.
Remember that all totalitarian systems begin with words, not actions. If we slip into a kind of dictatorship, it won't be because the Army gets out of control or there are riots in the streets. It will be a soft ride, with assurances along the way that these "new standards" will elevate us. All dictatorial systems promise a kind of paradise to those who go along.
How many Americans will go along? Given the nature of our educational system, and the collapse of journalism's once-spirited defense of the First Amendment, I fear the answer to that question.
October 4, 2008. Permalink
UPDATE AT 6:06 P.M. ET: A professionally knowledgeable reader makes the following comment about the Minneapolis Star-Tribune poll, which reported comedian Al Franken up nine points against incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman:
The STRIB poll showing Franken ahead of Coleman is obviously flawed. In the poll, Democrats outnumber Republicans by 17 points, 42-26. In this week's SurveyUSA poll, the Democratic advantage is only 7 points, 37-30. That poll's partisan spread is much closer to reality. Rasmussen, who just reweighted his polls based on 21,000 interviews over the last several weeks, puts the national Democratic advantage at 5.5 percent. Never have election-day exit polls shown anything like a 17-point Democratic advantage in the Minnesota electorate.
Larry Jacobs, who runs his own poll at the Humphrey Institute, has a low opinion of the polling done by Princeton Survey Associates for the STRIB. Princeton Survey Associates also does the national NEWSWEEK poll, generally considered one of the least reliable of the national polls.
So I think you can be confident about the SurveyUSA numbers this week, putting Coleman up by ten.
I will sleep more soundly tonight.
TRACKERS
Posted at 2:45 p.m. ET
The three trackers for the day are out. The news is not good. Only in Rasmussen did McCain show any gain, one point. Gallup has Obama up eight. It was seven yesterday. Hotline, which has now switched to likely voters, has Obama up seven.
There is no indication that the vice-presidential debate changed things. It's the old story: People don't vote for the vice president.
What's interesting is the actual percentages. Obama stands at 51 percent in Rasmussen, 50 percent in Gallup and 48 percent in Hotline. Even after all these months, he barely cracks 50 percent. This is not a pro-Obama vote. It's an anti-Republican vote. Unfairly, the party in the White House is taking the rap for the financial crisis, even though the Democratic Party is heavily responsible for the Fannie-Freddie collapse, and blocked any attempt at reform.
People won't blame the Democrats unless they have the information. The mainstream media doesn't seem eager to give it to them. We have still not seen a single inquiry into the convenient timing of this financial collapse, right in the middle of a presidential campaign.
And yet we must fight. This can be turned around, although the odds get longer by the day. There's a debate Tuesday. Take the gloves off, John.
The election is a calendar month from today.
October 4, 2008. Permalink
UPDATE AT 10:27 A.M. ET: From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken has moved into his first solid lead over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman, according to a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll. The survey, conducted Tuesday through Thursday by Princeton Survey Research Associates International among 1,084 likely Minnesota voters, shows Franken leading Coleman 43 to 34 percent. Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley is supported by 18 percent of respondents.
COMMENT: Minnesota has sent some fine people to the U.S. Senate. Now it's apparently ready to elect a hot-tempered comedian, and an obscene one at that. Are we going completely mad?
FURTHER UPDATE: Readers Check Zdeb and Albert Schwartz have alerted me to the historic inaccuracy of the Star-Tribune polls. Please see John Hinderaker's piece on this at today's Power Line, here.
UPDATE AT 9:49 A.M. ET: The Rasmussen tracker, just published, shows Obama up by six points, down one from yesterday. Trackers are done over a three-day period, and this one included Friday, the first polling day following the vice-presidential debate. If Rasmussen noticed a substantial change on Friday, he would have reported it on his website. There was no such report. The bailout bill was signed into law yesterday, and today will be the first full day of polling after that. Battleground doesn't report on weekends, so we have two other trackers that will list results today - Gallup and Hotline.
UPDATE AT 8:59 A.M. ET: From The Politico: In the aftermath of John McCain's decision to pull out of Michigan, Republicans in the state are expressing shock and bewilderment at his move—and aren't willing to cede the state's 17 electoral votes just yet. “We’re blindsided, along with everybody else in Michigan,” said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson. “I feel like I woke up this morning and there was a note on my pillow.” “When the general leaves the battlefield when the fight’s still going on, it creates a lot of chaos,” he said.
COMMENT: Sarah Palin objects as well. We urged yesterday that the decision be reversed, and that Sarah be turned loose on the state. It might just happen.
UPDATE AT 8:09 A.M. ET: ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Sarah Palin is the breadwinner and husband Todd is, well -- he takes a lot of deductions for his fishing and snowmachine racing careers, according to 2007 and 2006 federal tax returns released Friday. Sarah Palin makes $125,000 a year as Alaska governor. Plus, since she took the job in December 2006, she hasn't paid taxes on the more than $17,000 she received in controversial per diem payments for working out of the family's lakeside home in Wasilla -- some 575 miles from the capital of Juneau.
COMMENT: This is a disgracefully slanted story, typical of the AP these days. The apparent objection is that Todd Palin is middle class, building a business, and takes legitimate deducations. Compare please with the treatment of the Obamas, living in a mansion, making tons of money, no questions asked. Why was Michelle Obama paid such an inflated salary in her so-so job at the University of Chicago? Why was her salary doubled when her husband became a U.S. senator? Don't ask the AP to ask.
OPTIMISM
Posted at 7:48 a.m. ET
One key to turning this race around is keeping up troop morale. The mainstream media would love to declare the race over, give Obama his crown and celebrate the ultimate victory of the 1960s. They're not up to date, you know.
Bill Kristol, wisely, will have none of it. We can win this thing. Yes, accept the bad news as real, then determine a strategy to turn that bad into good. Kristol:
...this year's race has already--twice--moved by more than 6 points over a span of only a few weeks. The race went from McCain up 2 (these are the Real Clear Politics averages) on September 14 to Obama plus 6 on October 2, less than three weeks later. In the four weeks before that, the race had moved from Obama plus 5 on August 12 to McCain plus 2 on September 12.
So while there's reason for McCain-Palin supporters to worry, there's no reason to despair.
Exactly.
On Thursday night, Sarah Palin more than held her own in the vice-presidential debate against Joe Biden. She may well have stopped the McCain campaign's slide and, with her assaults on Obama's tax-and-spend liberalism and his willingness to lose in Iraq, set up McCain for a strong performance in Tuesday night's debate.
He's got to deliver. No more Mr. Nice Senator.
McCain can go on the offensive for the final weeks.
But what kind of offensive?
The positive component is pretty straightforward: McCain and Palin are common sense conservatives and proven reformers. The record of reform can be emphasized and contrasted with Obama's and Biden's record of conventional, go-along, get-along liberalism. And implicitly: If McCain and Palin are reformers and outsiders, it's not Bush's third term. More important is the negative message. The McCain campaign has to convince 51 percent of the voters they can't trust Barack Obama to be our next president. This has an ideological component and a character component.
You mean, we have a right to ask about Obama's character? Wait. My pills!
Character is a legitimate issue. Obama hasn't shown much in the way of leadership or political courage, and he's consorted with dubious figures. It's fair to ask whether Barack Obama is personally trustworthy enough to be president, and the McCain campaign shouldn't be intimidated from going there.
That's the key word: Intimidated. There is far too much intimidation in this campaign. The race card is played, in a subtle way, almost every day. There are whole areas of Obama's life that seem to be out of bounds, beyond a wall. Mr. McCain, tear down that wall!
But one shouldn't underestimate the ideological issue, and the potency of the fact that Obama and Biden are orthodox liberals. They're for raising taxes, federally funding abortions, naming activist judges, and losing wars. The American people may think--they do think--the country's on the wrong track, that the Bush administration has made too many mistakes and that the Republican party's no great shakes. But they haven't suddenly become liberals. And they probably aren't crazy about the prospect of a liberal administration governing unchecked, hand in hand with a liberal Congress. During the next four weeks, the McCain-Palin campaign should make this risky prospect vivid.
That's good advice.
October 4, 2008. Permalink
"What you see is news. What you know is background. What you feel is opinion."
- Lester Markel, late Sunday editor
of The New York Times.
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