Trevor Cook

McCain stuffs up on Pakistan

Max Bergmann: Major Gaffe: McCain Said Pakistan Was a Failed State.

McCain just badly misstated the history of Pakistan. For someone claiming extensive foreign policy knowledge, this is simply not acceptable. McCain said Pakistan was a failed state before President Musharraf came to power. That is not true.

Musharraf took power in a military coup in 1999 when he diposed Nawaz Sharif - who recently participated in the latest election. The coup followed the 1999 war in Kashmir with India and was due to a power struggle with Sharif, not due to Pakistan being a "failed state." The United States did not welcome the Musharraf coup. Instead the government of the United States imposed sanctions against this action.

Early voter reaction: Obama wins first debate

CBS poll of uncommitted voters:

Thirty-nine percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-four percent thought John McCain won. Thirty-seven percent saw it as a draw.

Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.

Insider Advantage / Poll Position

Opinions on who won the debate split almost evenly: 42 percent said they thought Barack Obama won the debate, 41 percent thought John McCain prevailed, and 17 percent were undecided.

The poll of 411 registered voters has a margin of error of plus or minus five percent. The results were weighted by age, race, gender and political affiliation.

CNN/Opinion Research Corp.

found that 51 percent thought that Obama won, while 38 percent thought McCain did. Respondents were generally impressed: 57 percent said Obama did better than expected and 20 percent said worse, while 60 percent said McCain did better than expected and 20 percent said worse.

One caveat for the poll: the party makeup was skewed toward Obama: 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans, and 30 percent identified themselves as Independents.

Sarah Palin free from 'witchcraft'

NEWS.com.au.

A YOUTUBE video has surfaced showing Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin being blessed in her hometown church by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for her protection from "witchcraft" as she prepared to seek higher office three years ago.

Is the real agenda to hide Palin from Biden?

Link: Political Radar: McCain Camp: Let's Push Back Biden-Palin Match-Up, Too.

The Arizona senator would like the vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, which is currently scheduled to take place on Thursday, Oct. 2 in St. Louis, Missouri, to be scheduled for a later unspecified date.

Palin stumbles on McCain's regulatory record or 'let's face it, McCain is the cowboy capitalist candidate"

Letterman on McCain suspension

Link: Daily Kos: State of the Nation.

"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, Sara 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!"

McCain's campaign crisis

Let's be frank. You don't pull out of a debate when you're behind in the polls and your opponent is gaining momentum every day. Unless, you're hoping for a circuit-breaker.

The Palin effect has washed through the polls and now they're starting to reflect a new campaign on the economy and that favours Obama because he's way ahead of McCain on the economy with voters. The McCain camp has come under intense criticisms for its lies and its reluctance to face media questioning.

The first debate was due to be on foreign policy and that's McCain's strength so he could have hoped for a bounce if he bested Obama in the debate. That would have been dampened by the current focus on the economic crisis, including Bush's address to the nation later today.

Plus there's another bind for McCain. Bush needs his support to get the bail-out package through but McCain can't be seen to be in lockstep with the incredibly unpopular Bush. McCain can't win this election if he looks like a mainstream maverick, that's why he has been reluctant to sign up to a package that is drawing a lot of criticism in mainstream and among all those people who have lost their homes and jobs (why bailout CEOs with million-dollar packages - that's suicidal for McCain).

McCain hopes that his campaign suspension will get him free of these horrible knots in one bound but it is just as likely to focus yet more attention on his deep links with the failed policies of Bushite republicans.

Race swings back to Obama

The race has been tight for months and it is tight now. During the Democratic National Convention in the first week of this month Obama's lead in the Rassmussen tracking poll blew out to 6 points. Then came Palin and suddenly McCain was up by three points. Gradually, since then the Palin effect has dissipated and Rassmussen currently has McCain up by one point.Gallup has been slightly more pronounced. Obama's lead this month went out to 8 points and flipped to a McCain lead of 5 points. Since then the Palin effect has dissipated and today Gallup actually has Obama back in the lead, by one point. A poll done for Reuters also has Obama back in front today (by 2 points). Other tracking polls also have Obama back in front. The state polls are slower to come in so there is a lag and they show McCain slightly ahead on electoral college votes but that will drift back too.

In the meantime, of course, a sea of ink has been spent on why Palin has changed the race, how she has re-energised the republican campaign, how the Obama campaign is floundering, why Hilary should have been the nominee or at least the VP pick, and so on and so on. Perhaps, we can now expect a flood of breathless coverage acknowledging that the Palin effect has washed through, in just a fortnight, and we're pretty much back where it was before the conventions started. The fascinating struggle goes on.

Palin drives increase in political website traffic

Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog.

Looking at U.S. Internet users’ interactions with political websites for the week ending with August 30, 2008 (the week of the Palin announcement), visits to over 800 campaign and blog sites grew 33.8 percent to reach the highest level of online political activity in the last three years.

Out of his depth: McCain flip flops on the economy

Link: McCain Laboring to Hit Right Note on the Economy - NYTimes.com.

VIENNA, Ohio — On Monday morning, as the financial system absorbed one of its biggest shocks in generations, Senator John McCain said, as he had many times before, that he believed the fundamentals of the economy were “strong.”

Hours later he backpedaled, explaining that he had meant that American workers, whom he described as the backbone of the economy, were productive and resilient. By Tuesday he was calling the economic situation “a total crisis” and denouncing “greed” on Wall Street and in Washington.

The sharp turnabout in tone and substance reflected a recognition not only that Mr. McCain had struck a discordant note at a sensitive moment but also that he had done so with regard to the very issue on which he can least afford to stumble.

With economic conditions worsening over the course of this year and voter anxiety on the rise, Mr. McCain has had to labor to get past the impression — fostered by his own admissions as recently as last year that the subject is not his strongest suit — that he lacks the experience and understanding to address the nation’s economic woes.

MCCain-Palin suddenly don't look so great now that the focus is back on serious issues.

McCain's lobbyists er friends

Are the republicans push polling?

Jewish Voters Report Calls Disparaging Obama.

The Jewish Council for Education in Research says at least two women in separate states were push polled, or asked questions intended to influence voters while pretending to take a poll, on Sunday afternoon from a caller who said he was from Research Strategies.

Joelna Marcus says she became uncomfortable when the caller asked if she was Jewish, whether she was Orthodox and how often she attends synagogue.

The caller then asked if Marcus would be influenced if she learned that Obama had donated money to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The caller also asked how she would vote if she learned that someone on the Illinois senator's staff had close ties to Palestine.

Just when you thought the McCain campaign couldn't get uglier?

UPDATE: Or maybe just "message testing" as this commenter on New Republic suggests:

How long did all of this take?

If it we're talking about something in the 10-20 minute range, it was probably message testing rather than a push poll. Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com had a few good articles about the difference here www.pollster.com/.../proclinton_push_poll.php and here www.pollster.com/.../message_testing_hear_it_for_yo.php . Also see the links in those articles.

Push polls are designed to reach a very large number of voters and it just isn't cost-effective to do lengthy interviews for such a large group of people. Message testing is designed to see how various messages go over with a random sample of the target audience, and only a few hundred people need to be contacted, so long interviews are not prohibitively expensive (and they're necessary because the whole point is to gauge people's reactions).

As Mark writes, though, even if it is a real poll, it doesn't free the pollster from ethical responsibility. They don't seem to be using a standard of truth any lower than what the McCain campaign has been using in recent weeks, although that's not exactly setting the bar very high.

"Deception is all he has left"

Country second: McCain's dishonesty is the key issue

McCain has lied his way back into the presidential campaign and the issue of his dishonesty is building like a powderkeg:

Washington Post - Does the truth matter anymore?

This is not false naivete: I am genuinely surprised that John McCain and his campaign keep throwing out false charges and making false claims without any qualms. They keep talking about Sarah Palin’s opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere without any embarrassment over the fact that she once supported it. They keep saying that Barack Obama will raise taxes, suggesting he’d raise them on everybody, when Obama’s plan, according to the Tax Policy Institute, would cut taxes for “about 80 percent of households” while “only about 10 percent would owe more.” And as Sebastian Mallaby pointed out in his recent column, Obama would cut taxes for middle-income taxpayers “more aggressively” than McCain would.

And now comes a truly vile McCain ad accusing Obama of supporting legislation to offer "'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." The announcer declares: "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

Post, page 1: As Campaign Heats Up, Untruths Can Become Facts Before They're Undone

From the moment Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared that she had opposed the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," critics, the news media and nonpartisan fact checkers have called it a fabrication or, at best, a half-truth.

CBS (top story, evening bulletin):

Its one of those claims that gets so much applause.

"I told Congress 'thanks but no thanks,' to that bridge to nowhere," Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has said over and over on the campaign trail, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.

Palin just won't let it go. But the truth is the governor never rebuffed Congress. Here are the facts.Setting The Record: Palin's Earmarks

AP: "A new ad from John McCain's presidential campaign contends his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere." In fact, Palin was for the infamous bridge before she was against it"

Chicago Tribune:

"Is Sen. John McCain against kindergartners being taught the difference between good touching and bad touching to protect children from sexual predators?

Or does the McCain campaign really have such a low opinion of Sen. Barack Obama that it actually believes he wanted to have Illinois kindergartners taught all the titillating details of human sexual anatomy.

There's another possibility, of course, that we are in the spitball phase of the campaign, where the McCain team is willing to send whatever it can Obama's way to see what sticks.

NY Times on the great pipeline:

“And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence,” said Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee. “That pipeline, when the last section is laid and its valves are opened, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.”

The reality, however, is far more ambiguous than the impression Ms. Palin has left at the convention and on the campaign trail.

Certainly she proved effective in attracting developers to a project that has eluded Alaska governors for three decades. But an examination of the pipeline project also found that Ms. Palin has overstated both the progress that has been made and the certainty of success.

The pipeline exists only on paper. The first section has yet to be laid, federal approvals are years away and the pipeline will not be completed for at least a decade. In fact, although it is the centerpiece of Ms. Palin’s relatively brief record as governor, the pipeline might never be built, and under a worst-case scenario, the state could lose up to $500 million it committed to defray regulatory and other costs.

And so it goes on. Layer after layer of dishonesty.

And Lipstick on a pig? Here's McCain in December last year:

Mr. McCain also criticized the Democratic plans, but his comments were more in passing and were far less barbed.

But when asked about Mrs. Clinton his speech, he said her proposal was “eerily” similar to the plan she came up with in 1993, when she headed a health care reorganization effort during her husband’s administration. “I think they put some lipstick on a pig,” he said, “but it’s still a pig.”

McCain is no hero. He's a liar and a smearer who will stop at nothing.

Just what is she hiding? Loose cannon Palin still running scared

Sarah Palin will be missing from action Sunday a.m. As is The Ticket's custom, a post listing the entire roster of appearances on this Sunday's interview programs will pop up Saturday at noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT).

But here's an advance heads up, in part because of who WON'T be found on any of the chat shows.

Three of the four now-official candidates on the major-party presidential tickets are scheduled to sit down for questions: Democrat Barack Obama on ABC's "This Week," his running mate, Joe Biden, on NBC's "Meet the Press" and Republican John McCain on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Absent from this list, of course, is the GOP's star of the moment, the not-so-long-ago obscure governor of Alaska who is McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin.

If Palin really was a serious candidate she would be out there putting the Republican case aggressively (and not just in a tightly-controlled, scripted environment). Her continued avoidance of the media just confirms that she is a joke candidate, just there to inspire the dopey 'christian right' and give some life to the old man's otherwise very dull campaign.