The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass advises. Playing the race card was a brilliant stroke which instantly put the national democrat party on the defensive.

Since he was federally charged with trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder, Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been wrongly caricatured as some kind of hapless jester prancing on the edge of madness.

Jesters hold rattles with a likeness of their heads on the end of a stick, and they hop off into a corner, prattling to themselves. That’s what jesters do.

Jesters don’t pick up the race card in a nationally televised news conference and slam it into the face of every Democrat in the U.S. Senate, a palm heel strike to the tip of the nose, leaving all of them watery-eyed, their lips stinging.

Yet that’s what Blagojevich—aided by former Black Panther-turned-Daley-machine-functionary Bobby Rush—did at that stupendous news conference in Chicago on Tuesday. That’s when the governor appointed Democratic empty suit Roland Burris, an African-American, to fill the Senate seat vacated by Obama.

“Please don’t allow the allegations against me to taint this good and honest man,” said Blagojevich.

It was a brazen move, and a smart one, and though the race card was ugly, there was no passion in it. There was no lunacy involved.

“This is not about Roland, this is about Rod,” said savvy political consultant Thom Serafin when I called him while watching the circus of the politically bizarre. Serafin correctly predicted weeks ago that it would be Burris, shortly after Blagojevich was arrested and most other Senate hopefuls pulled out lest they be infected by the governor’s dilemma.

“This is Rod telling the political class that he’s still active, that he’s still around, that he’s still the governor,” Serafin said. “And how do they deny Roland Burris? They can’t.”

Read the whole thing.

Jonah Goldberg gleefully deconstructs all the shades of meaning in the Blagojevich indictment.

There are so many things to love about the Rod Blagojevich scandal it’s hard to know where to begin.

Wait. That’s not right. There are so many bleeping things to love about this bleeping-bleep Blagojevich scandal it’s hard to know where to begin.

For starters, the folks at the Chicago Tribune are Christmas Pony Happy because Blago tried to strong-arm the Trib’s owners to fire members of the editorial board. Instead, Trib editors will get to have a big tailgate party outside Blago’s cell window.

Newspaper people love that sort of thing. ...

For partisans, there’s the schadenfreude that comes with watching the Democrats — self-proclaimed anti-corruption zealots in recent years — explain why Blagojevich shouldn’t be lumped in with Congressmen Charlie Rangel (cut himself sweetheart deals), William Jefferson ($90,000 in his freezer) and Tim Mahoney (tried to bribe an aide he was sleeping with not to sue him — and you thought romance was dead) as part of a new Democratic “culture of corruption” storyline.

There’s the enormous I-should-have-had-a-V8! moment as the mainstream press collectively thwacks itself in the forehead, realizing it blew it again. The New York Times — which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial-board meetings in a refrigerator box — created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin’s background, all the while treating Obama’s Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls’ bedroom walls.

Read the whole thing.

Caroline Kennedy

NBC News New York:

Jennifer Lopez or Caroline Kennedy? Who is more qualified to be Hillary Clinton’s replacement as New York’s junior Senator?

Rep. Gary Ackerman, a veteran Queens Democrat wants to know.

“I don’t know what Caroline Kennedy’s qualifications are,” the 25-year Congressman said on Steve Malzberg’s WOR conservative chat-fest, becoming New York’s first prominent Democrat to openly challenge the credentials of JFK’s daughter as a potential replacement for Sen. Hillary Clinton.

“”Except that she has name recognition, but so does J.Lo,” Ackerman said, according to the New York Post. “I wouldn’t make J.Lo the senator unless she proved she had great qualifications, but we haven’t seen them yet.

I thought we’d seen Jennifer Lopez’s qualifications in several films actually.

Jennifer Lopez

One of the few places Yale undergraduates can smoke without persecution these days must be New Haven’s famous pipe and tobacco store, the Owl Shop which apparently has, in recent times, installed a bar and lounge.

An on-scene correspondent reports an amusing exchange via graffiti found at the Owl Shop:

“F*** Republicans”
and underneath in different script, of course:
“...because Democrats just lie there unresponsive.”
———————————————————
Hat tip to Angie Chamberland.

Karl Rove explains that he buried John McCain in an avalanche of money, with large quantities supplied by anonymous sources.

If money talks, we’ll likely soon hear the real reason why Barack Obama beat John McCain. Both men and the national parties will report to the Federal Election Commission today how much money they raised in October and November. And what the numbers will probably show is that Mr. Obama outspent Mr. McCain by the biggest margin in history, perhaps a quarter of a billion dollars.

On May 31, as the general election began in earnest, the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee had a combined $47 million in cash, while the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee had a combined $85 million.

Between then and Oct. 15, the Obama/DNC juggernaut raised $658.7 million. I estimate today’s reports will show Mr. Obama, the DNC and two other Obama fund-raising vehicles raised an additional $120 million to $140 million in October and November, giving them a total of between $827 million and $847 million in funds for the general election.

Mr. McCain and the RNC spent $550 million in the general election, including the $84 million in public financing Mr. McCain accepted in exchange for his campaign not raising money after the GOP convention.

How did Mr. Obama use his massive spending advantage?

He buried Mr. McCain on TV. Nielsen, the audience measurement firm, reports that between June and Election Day, Mr. Obama had a 3-to-2 advantage over Mr. McCain on network TV buys. And Mr. Obama’s edge was likely larger on local cable TV, which Nielsen doesn’t monitor.

A state-by-state analysis confirms the Obama advantage. Mr. Obama outspent Mr. McCain in Indiana nearly 7 to 1, in Virginia by more than 4 to 1, in Ohio by almost 2 to 1 and in North Carolina by nearly 3 to 2. Mr. Obama carried all four states.

Mr. Obama also used his money to outmuscle Mr. McCain on the ground, with more staff, headquarters, mail and a larger get-out-the-vote effort. ...

To diminish criticism, Mr. Obama’s campaign spun the storyline that he was being bankrolled by small donors. Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, calls that a “myth.” CFI found that Mr. Obama raised money the old fashioned way—74% of his funds came from large donors (those who donated more than $200) and nearly half from people who gave $1,000 or more.

But that’s not the entire story. It’s been reported that the Obama campaign accepted donations from untraceable, pre-paid debit cards used by Daffy Duck, Bart Simpson, Family Guy, King Kong and other questionable characters. If the FEC follows up with a report on this, it should make for interesting reading.

Mr. Obama’s victory marks the death of the campaign finance system. When it was created after Watergate in 1974, the campaign finance system had two goals: reduce the influence of money in politics and level the playing field for candidates.

This year it failed at both. OpenSecrets.org tells us a record $2.4 billion was spent on this presidential election. And with Mr. Obama’s wide financial advantage, it’s clear that money is playing a bigger role than ever and candidates are not competing on equal footing.

Ironically, the victim of this broken system is one of its principal architects—Mr. McCain. He helped craft the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform along with Sen. Russ Feingold in 2002.

No presidential candidate will ever take public financing in the general election again and risk being outspent as badly as Mr. McCain was this year.

WorldNetDaily explains that behind Obama’s victory was an organized alliance of liberal big money.

A Democratic juggernaut of local and regional organizations that blast Republicans and promote Democrats using money donated by hundreds of millionaires and even billionaires was a key to President-elect Barack Obama’s win over GOP candidate Sen. John McCain last month. And a new report warns the same attack strategy now is being implemented in states, targeting especially the offices of secretary of state, where elections are managed.

“The Democracy Alliance helped Democrats give Republicans a shellacking in November. Now it’s organizing state-level chapters in at least 19 states, and once-conservative Colorado, which hosts the Democracy Alliance’s most successful state affiliate, has turned Democrat blue,” the report from Matthew Vadum and James Dellinger of Capital Research Center concludes.

The report from the center, which studies non-profit organizations, is titled “The Democracy Alliance Does America: The Soros-Founded Plutocrats’ Club Forms State Chapters,” and is accessible online.

It concludes the 2008 victory for Obama was a result of the outraged millionaire donors to the Democrats who watched another failure for their cause in 2004, after opening their checkbooks for tens of millions of dollars.

“It was born out the frustration of wealthy liberals who gave generously to liberal candidates and 527 political committees, but received no electoral payoff in 2004,” the report said.

George Soros and others “were angry and discouraged after contributing to the Media Fund which spent $57 million on TV ads attacking President Bush in swing states and to American Coming Together which spent $78 million on get out the vote efforts,” the report said.

The result was a victory for President Bush. So in 2005, 70 millionaires and billionaires met in Phoenix “for a secret long-term strategy session.” Their principal point of agreement was “the conservative movement was ‘a fundamental threat to the American way of life.’”

The donors studied the success of conservatives, their network of organizations, funders and activists, including think tanks, legal advocacy organizations and leadership schools. Former Clinton administration official Rob Stein explained Democrats, meanwhile, had become a top-down organization run by professional politicians.

Result? The birth of the Democracy Alliance, “a loose collection of super-rich donors committed to building organizations that would propel America to the left,” the report said.

The New York Times reports that Barack Obama’s leftwing position during the campaign are now running into conflicts with reality as decisions on CIA appointments and policy need to be made.

Obama can’t appoint the best choice for CIA Director for fear of offending the leftwing base.

Last week, John O. Brennan, a C.I.A. veteran who was widely seen as Mr. Obama’s likeliest choice to head the intelligence agency, withdrew his name from consideration after liberal critics attacked his alleged role in the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Mr. Brennan protested that he had been a “strong opponent” within the agency of harsh interrogation tactics, yet Mr. Obama evidently decided that nominating Mr. Brennan was not worth a battle with some of his most ardent supporters on the left.

Mr. Obama’s search for someone else and his future relationship with the agency are complicated by the tension between his apparent desire to make a clean break with Bush administration policies he has condemned and concern about alienating an agency with a central role in the campaign against Al Qaeda.

Mark M. Lowenthal, an intelligence veteran who left a senior post at the C.I.A. in 2005, said Mr. Obama’s decision to exclude Mr. Brennan from contention for the top job had sent a message that “if you worked in the C.I.A. during the war on terror, you are now tainted,” and had created anxiety in the ranks of the agency’s clandestine service. ...

The flap over Mr. Brennan, who served as a chief of staff to George J. Tenet when he ran the C.I.A., was the biggest glitch so far in what has been an otherwise smooth transition for Mr. Obama. Some C.I.A. veterans suggest that the president-elect may have difficulty finding a candidate who can be embraced by both veteran officials at the agency and the left flank of the Democratic Party.

Now that the decision-making power, and the responsibility, are theirs, democrats have to square the circle of contradiction between liberal pieties and effectively preventing terrorist attacks. Will “human and non-coercive” methods really get the villain to tell where the ticking time bomb is located, or will Jack Bauer just have to shoot him in the knee?

On Wednesday, a dozen retired generals and admirals are to meet with senior Obama advisers to urge him to stand firm against any deviation from the military’s noncoercive interrogation rules.

But even some senior Democratic lawmakers who are vehement critics of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies seemed reluctant in recent interviews to commit the new administration to following the Army Field Manual in all cases.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who will take over as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, led the fight this year to force the C.I.A. to follow military interrogation rules. Her bill was passed by Congress but vetoed by President Bush.

But in an interview on Tuesday, Mrs. Feinstein indicated that extreme cases might call for flexibility. “I think that you have to use the noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible,” she said, raising the possibility that an imminent terrorist threat might require special measures.

Afterward, however, Mrs. Feinstein issued a statement saying: “The law must reflect a single clear standard across the government, and right now, the best choice appears to be the Army Field Manual. I recognize that there are other views, and I am willing to work with the new administration to consider them.”

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, another top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he would consult with the C.I.A. and approve interrogation techniques that went beyond the Army Field Manual as long as they were “legal, humane and noncoercive.” But Mr. Wyden declined to say whether C.I.A. techniques ought to be made public.

C.I.A. officials have long argued that publishing a list of interrogation techniques only allows Al Qaeda to train its operatives to resist them. But they say the secrecy has led to exaggeration and myth about the agency’s detention program.

Post-election studies find increased turnout in democrat constituencies this year, but less than optimal Republican. In other words, the democrats maxed out their potential votes, but we didn’t. In another year, when the Republican candidate is an articulate and firmly principled conservative, and when the democrats haven’t got a pop star with special constituency appeal to one particular democrat bloc, respective turnouts are going to be different.

National Journal:

By one estimate …, some 131.2 million Americans cast ballots for president this time around, or 61.6 percent of eligible voters. That’s a high turnout, to be sure, and represents a 1.5-percentage-point increase over the 60.1 percent turnout rate of 2004, according to Michael McDonald, a professor of government at George Mason University who tracks voting.

But it’s still below the 62.5 percent rate from 1968, and falls far short of the 65.7 percent record set in 1908—a record that earlier this year, McDonald suggested Americans just might approach.

Some have seized on the absence of more dramatic increases as evidence that this year’s voter surge was just another overhyped media myth. A closer look at the data, however, suggests plenty of historic trends. Turnout increased most sharply for certain blocs—especially 18-to-29-year-olds, African-Americans and Latinos. Turnout also surged more in certain regions of the country, such as the South. And there’s evidence that some GOP voters simply stayed home—driving down overall turnout.

“It is going to put a ceiling on your turnout if you only get one side to vote,” said Peter Levine, director of Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE.

Among other explanations, GOP nominee John McCain does not appear to have put together as formidable a ground operation as George W. Bush did in 2004. Whereas 24 percent of voters told exit pollsters they had been contacted by the Bush campaign four years ago, only 18 percent said the same of McCain this year, noted McDonald. By contrast, 26 percent of voters said they’d heard from President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign, the same percentage as reported contacts from Democratic nominee John Kerry’s team four years ago.

“It looks as though the McCain campaign did not do as good job of doing voter mobilization as the Bush campaign did in 2004,” McDonald said. “It might explain why Republican turnout seemed to be down in this election, particularly if we look at some of these battleground states.”

When Barack Obama named the Machiavelli of the democratic left, Rahm Emanuel, as White House Chief of Staff, the move, amounting to the selection of “a wartime consigliere,” was widely interpreted as evidence of the new administration’s intention of pursuing a highly polarized agenda, rather than, as Obama promised throughout his campaign, moving beyond partisanship.

Further signs of President-elect Obama’s intentions will come with ongoing appointments. Transition team chief John Podesta promised major cabinet-level appointments would be announced next month.

US News & World Reports published an unofficial transition flowchart (.pdf), currently circulating within the Beltway, which has some real eye-openers: e.g., Al Gore as “Climate Czar” and druggie-playboy-turned-Conspiracy-Theorist-and-Environmental-Prophet Robert Kennedy, Jr. as head of the EPA.

Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Walter Olson recently sounded the alarm about this possible appointment in Forbes, profiling Kennedy’s recent career promoting scary theories about childhood vaccinations causing Autism (complete with a CDC cover-up shielding the Drug Industry), air pollution causing Down’s Syndrome, and the Republican Party stealing the 2004 election.

David Bernstein looks at the results and puts them in perspective.

The picture is of a solid Democratic win, but not the tsunami some had expected. Obama won the popular vote by a solid, but not crushing, margin of slightly less than six percent (52.4-46.5). Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole by a significantly greater margin and even greater relative percentage (49.25-40.71), and George Bush by a slightly lower margin, but higher relative percentage (43.01-37.45). Bush, meanwhile, beat Dukakis by a larger margin, 53.4 to 45.6. The Democrats picked up about twenty House seats, on the low end of the expected range. And, as noted above, they seem likely to pick up five or six Senate seats,which would make the Senate races either 18-16 in favor of the Democrats, or tied at 17-17, again on the low end of the expected range.

It would have taken a miracle, or at least a match between a really unattractive democrat who made many mistakes and a dynamic Republican with Reagansque charisma, to produce a GOP win this year with the economy in a mess and poor, clueless George W. Bush hanging around the elephant’s neck like a dead albatross.

Considering all the factors destining this to be the democrat’s year, it could have been much worse.

Mark Steyn extends congratulations.

Just to be clear: I’m not indulging in the same somewhat moist-eyed congratulations as some of our colleagues. I extend my congratulations mainly in the same sense that elderly British veterans of my acquaintance like to express their admiration of the marvelously innovative ways their Japanese captors found to torture them. The President-elect ran rings round our side, and found many novel ways to torture us.

1:48 video

Hat tip to John Hinderaker.

Jay Nordlinger, at the Corner, finds the traditional stereotype view of the Republican Party as the party of the rich and the democrat party as the party of the workingman deserving of assignment to the category of persistent, but out-dated, myths.

I’ve just come back from a weekend in Vermont — and here’s how I understand it: Modestly off people — “real Vermonters,” as some people say — are voting for McCain and Palin. Comfortably off people, such as those who own ski chalets, are voting for Obama and Biden. And the following has been frequently noted about the city of my residence, New York: The rich are voting Democratic. And those who work for them — driving cars, cleaning rooms, and so on — are voting Republican.

Yet, when I was growing up, the Republican party was always called the party of the rich, and it still suffers from that label. Over and over, that which I was taught is contradicted by the evidence of my lived experience.

This time it was CBS Channel 3 in Philadelphia. Ask a hardball question of Joe Biden, and you’re out.

2:23 video

Via US Neverdock.

A typical Republican

Even the Washington Post notices:

Now the good news for Republicans: You are happier than Democrats. You always have been, and you probably always will be.

Never mind that your presidential candidate is sinking in the polls while your president plumbs historic depths of popular scorn and your free market squeals for intervention while your investments evaporate on Wall Street. You are not just happier than the other guys, but more of you are very happy indeed, according to new survey results published yesterday by the Pew Research Center.

The pollsters were in the field asking about happiness this month, a period when economic news was gloomy for everybody and presidential campaign news seemed especially baleful for Republicans. Yet they found 37 percent of Republicans are “very happy,” compared with 25 percent of Democrats; 51 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Democrats are “pretty happy”; and 9 percent of Republicans are “not too happy,” compared with 20 percent of Democrats.
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The partisan happiness gap—unbroken for nearly four decades—is impervious to electoral ups and downs. It has something to do with worldview. ...

Brooks says a lot hinges on the answer to this question: Do you believe that hard work and perseverance can overcome disadvantages? Conservatives are more likely to say yes.

Pew found that Democrats are more likely to say that success in life is mostly determined by outside forces. Republicans lean toward thinking that success is determined by one’s own efforts.

The hypothesis: Those who think they can control their destinies are happier.

Read the whole thing.

A commenter who signs himself “Waynes World” at Political Punch explains his reasons.

I’m voting Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending MY MONEY than I would. I think when you spread the wealth around it is good for everybody! It’s Patriotic!

I’m voting Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. All profits are evil and should be confiscated for Government Redistribution.

I’m voting Democrat because I believe that MORE Government regulations and higher taxes on Business will stop Business from exporting their jobs to Countries with LESS Government regulations and lower taxes.

I’m voting Democrat because I believe terrorists should be allowed to have trials in American courts. And be able to subpoena top secret documents, soldiers, government officials, etc. to cross examine for their defense. They should have ACLU lawyers who can help intimidate Americans who serve on the juries!

I’m voting Democrat because I believe Gay Marriage should be the law of the land and will probably produce better children.

Read the whole thing.

“I’m Spartacus.”

Transterrestial Musings finds :

71 BC*

ROME (Routers) Diligent investigative reporters were shocked to learn today that many, indeed most of the captured slaves in yesterday’s battle in Lucania who proclaimed “I am Spartacus” were actually misleading military authorities, and not the famous rebel leader at all.

One of the investigators, Probius Ani, lead chiseler at the Tempus Romae, shared the details. “We looked into their backgrounds, and while they were all slaves at one time or another, few of them had formal gladiator training, nor did they universally use the Thracian style of combat for which he was well known.”

After the defeat, when authorities demanded to know which of the defeated was the leader, at first one of them jumped up and declared himself Spartacus**. But the situation quickly grew confused as another, and then another, and then dozens and hundreds of the defeated curs shouted out the same claim. Legitimate demands of proof of identity, gladiators’ licenses, and tax and divorce records from them were met with a sullen resistance, making it impossible to tell which to properly punish.

“These slaves have no credibility,” noted a proconsul on the scene. “Why should we grant any respect to a campaign based on false pretenses? Why should we not just spread their wealth around, and crucify them all?”

Joe the Plumber speaks.

3:08 video

A prominent news agency is reporting that Antoin Rezko is singing like a bird to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and that Illinois democrats are trembling in their boots.
————————————————————-

HillBuzz rumors that Fitzgerald is after the ultimate scalp for his personal collection: Barack Obama’s.

The Sun Times today gave a major clue that Barack Obama will indeed go down with Tony Rezko, sooner rather than later. It looks as though Rezko is about to turn on Alexi Giannoulias, the 30-year old State Treasurer of Illinois (who was elected only because Obama backed him).

Here’s where all the clues are…and then we’ll walk you through the local Chicago politics on how today’s hint by the Sun Times has us convinced, for the first time ever, that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could indeed send Barack Obama to jail.

Sounds too good to be true, but we are certainly going to be keeping an eye out for further developments.

A 9:59 video look at the mortgage meltdown’s roots.

———————————————————
9/29: 6:00 PM EDT:

I would expect the video to be back (with the offending song removed) before very long.

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Back up 9:45 PM EDT:

new link

Virginia Shanahan, writing at MacsMind, has a longer memory than most of us, and cites a NY Times article from 2003 recalling that the Bush administration actually foresaw problems, and tried reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but his efforts were blocked. By whom? The same democrats who now possess a Congressional majority. With current Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Massachusetts’ own Barney Frank playing a leading role.

I doubt many of the readers recall this article from the New York Times five years ago.

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

We can see now that the Bush administration had accurately diagnosed the problem in the lending market and had a plan to address it. Reluctantly Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac supported the plan. However, Democrats objected.

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

Russ Smith feels the time has come to start discussing the unthinkable.

It’s three a.m. on Oct. 31 and a frantic broker awakens you. He’s advising making substantial investments that day in the stocks of Lilly, Pfizer and other manufacturers of anti-depressants, as well as high-end booze, say Grey Goose vodka and Hillary Clinton’s whiskey of choice, Chivas Regal. The calculations buzzing through your head are not insignificant. Barack Obama holds a two-point lead over John McCain in the Gallup poll for the Nov. 4 presidential election, and that slender margin suggests—given the undeniable factor of racism when Americans retreat to the privacy of the ballot booth—that for the third straight time a Democratic candidate will be defeated. Your own preference in the contest is irrelevant: there’s money lying on the table and only a fool would ignore the market’s indications.

A month ago, as any honest Democrat will tell you, this scenario was nearly inconceivable. The Republicans had nominated an elderly and inarticulate candidate in McCain, who was marred not only by his association with George Bush, but distrusted by the critical conservative base as well. ..

In mid-September the GOP resurrection is a simple reality, and though I dislike the cliché “a month in politics is a lifetime,” no one has any idea of how Americans will vote on Election Day. But the fear expressed by a “major Democratic fundraiser” in Politico last week—“I’m so depressed. It’s happening again. It’s a nightmare.”—isn’t isolated and won’t subside unless Obama, to quote a Matt Drudge headline, “gets his groove back.”

I have no clue if or when that could happen, but I do have an opinion of what will follow in this country if McCain pulls off what so recently seemed the miraculous feat of becoming the country’s 44th president. Voter fraud, conspiracy, “sleazevertisements” (the preferred term of many left-wing bloggers), disenfranchised voters, the return of redneck chic; those will be the immediate cries of Democrats who thought the election was in the bag. Once again, scores of celebrities will claim they’re moving abroad (and inevitably won’t). And then the depression will kick in hard.

New York magazine columnist Kurt Andersen, one of the few Beltway-Boston pundits who bashed Hillary Clinton a year ago, when her nomination appeared inevitable, was unstinting in his speculation of the fallout should Obama lose. He emailed me: “Even without post-November 4th rumors of rigged voting machines and the like, an Obama loss will be a deeply, traumatically depressing event for Democrats and other Obama enthusiasts. (Whereas if McCain loses, who will be seriously bummed outside of the McCain household?) There will be so many facets of potential unhappiness. That an eloquent, inspiring, intelligent, subtle black candidate lost—and if it’s close, it’ll be true that racism beat him… That the rest of the world will be reaffirmed in their belief that America is the land of nincompoops (or worse). That a war with Iran looks a lot likelier… That Sarah Palin won it for the Republicans, and gives a bad name to feminism and (terrifyingly) has a one-in-six (Russian roulette!) chance of becoming president before 2013.”

Tom Bevan, co-founder of Real Clear Politics, was succinct: “Two words: Hari Kari. The base of the [Democratic] party is so vested in its nominee…that to lose in November would be one of the most demoralizingin the modern era.”

Read the whole thing.

Financial Times:

Democratic jitters about the US presidential race have spread to Capitol Hill, where some members of Congress are worried that Barack Obama’s faltering campaign could hurt their chances of re-election.

Party leaders have been hoping to strengthen Democratic control of the House and Senate in November, but John McCain’s jump in the polls has stoked fears of a Republican resurgence.

A Democratic fundraiser for Congressional candidates said some planned to distance themselves from Mr Obama and not attack Mr McCain.

“If people are voting for McCain it could help Republicans all the way down the ticket, even in a year when the Democrats should be sweeping all before us,” said the fundraiser, a former Hillary Clinton supporter.

“There is a growing sense of doom among Democrats I have spoken to . . . People are going crazy, telling the campaign ‘you’ve got to do something’.”

Concern was greatest among first-term representatives who won seats in traditionally Republican districts in the landslide of 2006. “Several of them face a real fight to hold on to those seats,” the fundraiser said.

Tony Podesta, a senior Democratic lobbyist, said members of Congress were “a little nervous” after Mr McCain shook up the race with his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate and intensified attacks on Mr Obama.

“Republicans have been on the offensive for the past two weeks . . . You don’t win elections on the defensive.”

The campaign manager for a first-term Democratic congressman from a blue-collar district in the north-east rejected suggestions that Mr Obama had become a liability. He said his candidate would reach out to Republicans and avoid attacks on Mr McCain.

There is this rumbling in the ground, cracks can be seen on the surface of the hillside, is it possible? Can democrats who nominated the most leftwing member of the Senate be facing yet another massive public rejection and Republican landslide?

David From explains that Americans are still concerned about a president’s ability to protect the United States in a dangerous world, and that the public has not failed to recognize the democtrats’ record of insincerity and opportunism.

Democratic populism is destroying Democratic credibility on national security.

Let’s go to the numbers.

Republicans have owned the national security issue since the late 1960s. After 9/11, the Republican advantage on poll questions spread to an astounding 30 points.

But since 2005, the Republican advantage has dwindled. By the fall of 2007, the two parties had reached near parity on the issue, only 3 points apart—the best Democratic result since Barry Goldwater led the Republican party!

That parity did not last. Over the past year, Republican standing on the issue has revived while Democratic credibility has tumbled. In Greenberg’s latest polling, the Republicans now hold a 14-point lead, 49-35, a return to the kind of advantage they held in the 1980s.

What’s going on?

Greenberg advances three reasons, but here is the most important and provocative:

When asked to choose why they think Democrats are weak on security, the number one reason—picked by 33% of all respondents—is that Democrats” change positions depending on public opinion.”

“Moreover, when we ask respondents to compare the two parties, likely voters choose Democrats over Republicans as the party “too focused on public opinion” by a 27-point margin. Even Democratic base voters agree: liberal Democrats point to their own party as the one “too focused on public opinion” by an 18-point margin, and moderate/ conservative Democrats say this by 25 points.

In 2001-2002, Democrats chased public opinion in a hawkish direction. In 2004-2007, they chased public opinion in a dovish direction. In 2006, when the war seemed hopeless, that reversal paid off for Democrats. But as conditions have improved in Iraq, Republicans have been vindicated—and Democrats look weak and opportunistic.

Now when Bob Shrum talks of “populism,” he has something very specific and highly ideological in mind. But most Americans—and most working politicians—use the word “populism” in a more general sense. They use it to mean, “doing what is popular.”

You might think that doing what is popular is always good politics. That would seem true almost by definition!

And in the very short term, it has been true for Democrats.

But there is a longer term too. Voters remember. They compare results. They recall who stayed firm in the moment of decision and who flinched. And if the person who stood firm is also proven right—voters reward it.

Don’t misunderstand. There are prizes for the vacillating and the time-serving. John Kerry is still senator from Massachusetts after all. But there is a price to be paid too for too obvious vote-catching—and on national security, the Democrats have already begun to pay it. Just how high that price will go, we must wait until November to know.

Michael Graham, at the Boston Herald, addresses democrats denying the obvious.

Let’s start with the obvious and inarguable: Of course Sen. Barack Obama’s comment about “lipstick on a pig” was a reference to Supergirl Sarah Palin.

You know it, I know it and the partisan crowd that literally rose to their feet and cheered when they heard it knew it.

And it’s nothing new. Democrats shot the lipstick line at Gov. Palin on their official Web site last week with a posting entitled “McCain’s Selection of Palin is Lipstick on a Pig” – accompanied by what I’m sure was intended to be a flattering photo of the Alaska outdoorswoman.

And – coincidence or something more? – the same day Obama made his crack, a Democratic congressman introducing Joe Biden said of Sarah Palin, “There’s no way you can dress up her record, even with a lot of lipstick.”

If there was anyone in the audience still too dense to get it – say, an employee of CNN, perhaps – Obama immediately followed up with a reference to the McCain/Palin campaign wrapping “an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change.’ ”

A lipstick-wearing pig and an old fish? Gee, who could he possibly be talking about?

So please, my Obama-supporting friends, let’s stop the nonsense about how Obama’s lipstick talk was, as he put it yesterday, an “innocent comment,” or that the reaction is “phony outrage.” ...

Smart people are asking why Obama would do something so dumb. He couldn’t have meant to say it, they argue, because he had to know it would exacerbate his biggest political problem – women voters abandoning the Democratic ticket.

I agree. This wasn’t a political plot. It was a Barack Obama point of personal privilege.

What we’re seeing is how Barack Obama performs under pressure. And so far, it isn’t pretty.

I believe Obama knows it, which is why I believe he indulged that moment of unbecoming snarkiness on Tuesday. He did the same thing back in April when, during a speech about Hillary’s attacks, he carefully “scratched” his face with his middle finger. And, then as now, the crowd picked up on his digital communications.

Obama is frustrated. He’s cranky. He was on his way to a coronation and now finds himself in a catfight that, so far, he’s losing.

And so the Obama team is lashing out. The same day they started the “lipstick” meme, Democrats sent out 12 press releases attacking the bottom of the GOP ticket.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama campaign has “airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers” into Alaska, all to deal with the Palin problem.

Obama’s poll numbers keep sinking, his fundraising is flat. And there isn’t a Swift Boat in sight.

Just a hockey mom with a bachelor’s degree, who has brought the great and powerful Obama to his knees.

(This, of course, is really a recycled missive to the liberals of my college class list, in case anyone can’t tell.)

Don’t you liberals recognize that you’re wasting your time? Barring some remarkable unexpected development, we’re headed for another democrat debacle.

Face it. People who think like you have wildly different opinions, perspectives, life-styles, and values from the great majority of ordinary Americans, whom you don’t like very much anyway. The democrat party identifies with all sorts of craziness, so it shouldn’t really be surprising, I suppose, that it has internalized some of that craziness. Your party’s primary system is fatally flawed. The democrat party’s method of picking candidates is not democratic. (Obama won, though Hillary had a larger total of popular votes.) And it’s strongly biased to favor selection by your nutroots base of birdwatchers, tree huggers, malcontent pseudo-intellectual slackers, trustafarian bolsheviks, granola-crunching enviro whackjobs, and communists. The people who pick your presidential candidates don’t look like America. They look like the crowd at a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Show. Is it any wonder that you keep getting hosed?

Last time, you nominated an extremely liberal Eastern senator, who was a St. Paul’s nose-in-the-air snob, and a traitor, who proceeded to try running as a war hero. He managed to provoke every single officer he ever served under to come out publicly to denounce him, and an overwhelming majority of the men from his former naval unit collaborated on producing a book and a series of television commercials opposing his candidacy. He’s so lovable that, if John Kerry’s mother had still been alive, she’d might have been making Bush commercials, too. Frankly, I’m not sure my cat couldn’t have beaten John Kerry.

So, it’s back to the old drawing board. And, with a bit of aid from Hurricane Katrina, GOP Congressional scandals, and the MSM, you’re sitting pretty. It’s your year. And what do you do? You run out and nominate an exotic ultra-left Senator, the single most leftwing member of the Senate, who has not even served a single full term, because he’s pretty and gave one good speech. How could someone like that possibly lose?

Hillary tried nationalizing the health care system back in the 1990s, and the result was the first Republican Congressional Majority since the Korean War. You people are convinced Americans want another New Deal. It keeps coming as a shock every time we vote you down. You think Americans want their guns confiscated, and their kids taught political correctness and instructed on how to put condoms on cucumbers. You think America should lose in Iraq, and that our government should apologize and suck up to foreign countries. The vast majority of Americans want none of the above. The democrat minority thinks that people like themselves are wiser and better than everybody else, when the truth is they are still the weirdos, a minority of obnoxious egotistical misfits that nobody liked during high school, and nobody likes now.

Clive Crook explains that rejection of American values and contempt for ordinary Americans really does place candidates representing America’s urban elites at a serious disadvantage in national elections.

He doesn’t exhaustively address the subject, but he’s certainly identified a major part of the left’s problem.

This article is not the first to note the cultural contradiction in American liberalism, but just now the point bears restating. The election may turn on it.

Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.

It is an attitude that a good part of the US media share. The country has conservative media (Fox News, talk radio) as well as liberal media (most of the rest). Curiously, whereas the conservative media know they are conservative, much of the liberal media believe themselves to be neutral.

Their constant support for Democratic views has nothing to do with bias, in their minds, but reflects the fact that Democrats just happen to be right about everything. The result is the same: for much of the media, the fact that Republicans keep winning can only be due to the backwardness of much of the country.

Because it was so unexpected, Sarah Palin’s nomination for the vice-presidency jolted these attitudes to the surface. Ms Palin is a small-town American. It is said that she has only recently acquired a passport. Her husband is a fisherman and production worker. She represents a great slice of the country that the Democrats say they care about – yet her selection induced an apoplectic fit.

For days, the derision poured down from Democratic party talking heads and much of the media too. The idea that “this woman” might be vice-president or even president was literally incomprehensible. The popular liberal comedian Bill Maher, whose act is an endless sneer at the Republican party, noted that John McCain’s case for the presidency was that only he was capable of standing between the US and its enemies, but that should he die he had chosen “this stewardess” to take over. This joke was not – or not only – a complaint about lack of experience. It was also an expression of class disgust. I give Mr Maher credit for daring to say what many Democrats would only insinuate.

Little was known about Ms Palin, but it sufficed for her nomination to be regarded as a kind of insult. Even after her triumph at the Republican convention in St Paul last week, the put-downs continued. Yes, the delivery was all right, but the speech was written by somebody else – as though that is unusual, as though the speechwriter is not the junior partner in the preparation of a speech, and as though just anybody could have raised the roof with that text. Voters in small towns and suburbs, forever mocked and condescended to by metropolitan liberals, are attuned to this disdain. Every four years, many take their revenge. ...

If only the Democrats could contain their sense of entitlement to govern in a rational world, and their consequent distaste for wide swathes of the US electorate, they might gain the unshakeable grip on power they feel they deserve. Winning elections would certainly be easier – and Republicans would have to address themselves more seriously to economic insecurity. But the fathomless cultural complacency of the metropolitan liberal rules this out.

The attitude that expressed itself in response to the Palin nomination is the best weapon in the Republican armoury. Rely on the Democrats to keep it primed. You just have to laugh.

The Palin nomination could still misfire for Mr McCain, but the liberal reaction has made it a huge success so far. To avoid endlessly repeating this mistake, Democrats need to learn some respect.

It will be hard. They will have to develop some regard for the values that the middle of the country expresses when it votes Republican. Religion. Unembarrassed flag-waving patriotism. Freedom to succeed or fail through one’s own efforts. Refusal to be pitied, bossed around or talked down to. And all those other laughable redneck notions that made the United States what it is.