God, remember when this seemed like another tossup? All the "insiders" say this one's Obama's. Smart Republicans are looking for good 2012 candidates. Over at InTrade, traders are betting heavily on an Obama victory. As you can see, after an odd September dip (one that wasn't relfected in other market prediction sites), Obama's up to nearly 74. [InTrade]
Tom Brokaw was determined last night that he wasn't going to put up with any crap from presidential candidates or their running mates, who had their way with previous debate moderators Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill. So every time John McCain or Barack Obama broke one of the debate rules, Brokaw delivered a verbal slap. The NBC News commentator got increasingly frustrated with infractions as the night wore on, but both candidates seemed to be on their best behavior yet, even when Brokaw rather oddly insisted they yield a heated moment to a question from the entire internet.
John McCain at least made eye contact with Barack Obama during tonight's presidential debate. But that seemed to be about all the pleasantry he could manage. First he called Obama "that one." Now blogs are burning up with chatter that McCain also refused Obama's post-debate handshake, pointing him to wife Cindy instead.
One might expect a right-wing shouting head like Bill O'Reilly to help the Republican Party ratchet down expectations for John McCain ahead of tonight's presidential debate. But the Fox News Channel host is raising the stakes. A few minutes before the debate started, O'Reilly said the event will mark the Republican presidential nominee's "last stand." "McCain has to do well tonight, or say goodbye," he added. We're still pretty sure there's a scheme here — O'Reilly's probably got an easy definition of "well" — but this makes it all the more difficult for McCain to spin if he does poorly. Click the video icon to watch the clip. (PS: The commenter liveblog is here in case you missed it.)
This election has seen a wealth of celebrity PSAs (some amusing, some snooty), but no ad yet produced can rival the visceral reaction produced by YOUVOTE's latest, star-studded salvo. The first two minutes of earnest political encouragement from Kathy Najimy and the cast of Gossip Girl are standard fare, but things really go haywire at the end (excerpted above), when all the celebrities engage in hideously embarrassing, new agey dancing. Sure, the ad may claim to be bipartisan, but the full roster of famous Obama supporters (like Kate Walsh and Samuel L. Jackson) degrading themselves so fully suggests an act of celebrity sabotage by rival John McCain. Also, Dana Delany? Reprising your "sock it to me" dance from the Emmys was not a good idea. [YOUVOTE]
Ha ha, just kidding. The plucky Alaska Maverick is just inspiring death threats, not inciting them! At a rally held earlier this week in 1938, Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terorrists." At that, a man in the crowd shouted "kill him!" Turns out you are not allowed to shout "kill him" in reference to a nominee for president. So the Secret Service totally promises to investigate! If they can find the guy and verify that he said "kill him" and not "boo-urns." Get your alibi in order, Lieberman! [Radar]
Yesterday's unlikely emergence of Sherri Shepherd as The View's new foil to Elisabeth Hasselbeck was no fluke! As you might be able to discern from the fierce, finger-wagging screencap up above, Shepherd set it off on today's program (and View producers helpfully sat the two budding rivals next to each other for maximum in-your-face screaming).As Hasselbeck again brings up this week's Republican talking points by linking Barack Obama to William Ayers, Shepherd goes ballistic, shouting, "Can we talk about poor judgment?" The evisceration of Cindy McCain's homewrecking ways that follows stuns Hasselbeck ("Wow, this is super personal now!") and even the unflappable Joy Behar, who rises and... mimes flashing the audience? We're not entirely sure, but now that The View has become a reliable daily source of politically-charged catfighting, we suppose some T&A wouldn't be entirely out of place.
So. The McCain campaign oddly decided to run against the media this year. It's not that odd, because Republicans have been doing it quite successfully since 1968, but this is the first year they've had a candidate who started off beloved by the media. And they just sorta pissed that away. Then in running against the media, they pissed off the media, and suddenly John McCain can't get any favorable coverage anywhere, and then they push back againt the media even more, and then Times executive editor Bill Keller says: “My first tendency when they do that is to find the toughest McCain story we’ve got and put it on the front page, just to show them that they can’t get away with it.” Sorta giving the game away! So that explains the gambling story. But those terrible old standards of make-believe "fairness" are what then led the Times to enable the insane and vicious tone the campaign suddenly took this week. The Times put that gambling story on the front page even though there didn't seem to be that much to it. Now Keller admits, basically, that they did it because the McCain campaign was bothering them. So, obviously, then they had to be fair and put some sort of theoretically damaging Obama story on the front page a week later! And they did, with Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths, the story of how goofy '60s Weatherman Bill Ayers cleaned up and went legit and eventually served on a non-profit board with Barack Obama, which means Obama is a terrorist. Like, seriously, this is what they concluded:
Jerome Corsi's brush with the Kenyan authorities is a gift to the Republican campaign and those who disseminate its talking points.
"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" [Palin] continued.
The cornerstone of so-called Rovian politics is "attack your opponent on his strengths." At its most basic, perfect level, it means attack war hero John Kerry for being a spineless anti-American coward. McCain tried it early this season: Obama is popular and energizing, just like a dumb blonde celebrity. Everyone cooed and said "oh good one Mr. McCain." But that line wasn't enough to get McCain through the end of the summer, let alone the fall. So now, yes, Steve Schmidt and John McCain have developed and employed a brilliant new twist on Karl Rove's old dictum: attack your opponent on your own weaknesses! In McCain's terrible new speech today on how none of us know who this mysterious and dangerous terrorist Barack Obama actually is, he says, literally, that Obama gets "touchy" and "angry" whenever he's attacked or criticized or accused of lying. As Josh Marshall points out, this is called "projection," because Obama actually remains infuriatingly cool and collected in the face of things that would drive us insane. Meanwhile, McCain is notorious for his temper, for his pettiness, and for his grudges. So naturally McCain found that he was being criticized by everyone for lying all the time, and he decided that meant that he was hitting a nerve with Obama (and not just all the dudes in the press who used to have man-crushes on him), and decided further to expand this into a whole new line of attack. A line of attack based entirely on projection. So when we said "a brilliant new twist on Karl Rove's old dictum" what we actually meant was "a sad foray into the extreme disconnect between perception and reality that is probably the logical conclusion of Rovian politics."
For all too long, Sherri Shepherd has stayed relatively quiet on The View, keeping a low profile (except for the occasional blow-up at Bill Maher) and generally avoiding the sort of "flat earth" gaffes that would draw the pity spotlight away from her cohost Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Today, though, in the midst of another Hasselbeck political rant about Barack Obama's association with William Ayers, a surprisingly prepared Shepherd jumped in to rebut the show's token conservative with a "Wait, wait, wait — no you don't!"Following her interruption with a laundry list of facts, dates, and counterpoints, Shepherd was eventually cut off by Barbara Walters, who was not ready for the cohost to do anything but smile beatifically and occasionally chirp, "Ludacris!" Is our little Sherri all grown up and ready for war? Watch out, Elisabeth: Sherri Shepherd's got a whole fleet of angel-babies at her command — and they're hungry!
So this weekend, the McCain camp called up all the reporters they're still speaking to to be like, "fuck it, we're going negative." The reporters were like, "going?" And McCain's people were all, "no, like super negative!" Then Sarah Palin showed up saying nonsense and the press backlash was immediate. You don't call up the press corps to announce that you're finally utterly trashing your Honorable Brand, for good, when they're in the middle of tearing you apart for abandoning your Honorable Brand to begin with, guys. Sheesh. But Steve Schmidt can't grasp that it's not 2004 and, more importantly, John McCain thinks he is still the honorable one, because he personally dislikes Barack Obama. Regardless, Obama's in a fine position right now! He's winning, his favorables are great, his Brand is still in tip-top shape, and everyone is crowing about how much smarter his campaign has been. So why's he going and ruining that with this Keating 5 business? Obama's people called the members of the press in their tank today to point them toward Keating Economics, an Obama campaign site about John McCain's role in the Charles Keating mess, because no one remembers that anymore. Their problem was not so much in doing this, it was in making it an official Obama-funded campaign stunt announced to the press, and not just quietly pushing Keating stories, Rove-style. Yes, the Keating 5 scandal is a legitimate talking point. Yes, McCain is certainly more tangibly and credibly "linked" to misdoings by Keating than Obama is linked to misdoings by a hippie mad bomber in 1968. But guys, you are just opening yourselves up now to the worst story in the world: "Both campaigns intensifying attacks! Film at 11! Obama sez McCain's corrupt, McCain says Obama's a terrorist, boo hoo how the standards of discourse have fallen!" (Hi there Politico!) Now indications are the newly emboldened press will not treat the factually accurate if slightly spun Keating story as equivalent to the sleazy insinuations of Palin. But it's still a dumb move when all the momentum is already in your favor. (Or, of course, maybe it's brilliant. We're sure as hell no experts.)
Remember when John Edwards got a couple of $400 haircuts and everyone made fun of him and called him a spendthrift pretty boy? Rush Limbaugh said he might be the "first woman president"! Har har! (And, remember, when Edwards slept with that lady and maybe had a love child and how the hair didn't seem like such a big deal after all?) Well, Edwards, in truth, isn't the only of the recent candidates to undergo special, fancy, or expensive cosmetic treatment. Sarah Palin maybe has lip tattoos! John McCain has the same makeup artist as Clay Aiken! Joe Biden maybe gets Botox! And Barack Obama... um... covers up his gray hair? Indeed. If you're curious to know more, we've put together a little compendium of these bits of cosmetic detritus for you, after the jump.
The New Yorker published its profile of Arianna Huffington. Though disappointingly far from the juicy takedown we hoped for, it does contain a few interesting nuggets. We learn, for example, that the Republican-divorcée-turned-internet-publisher bizarrely "hides" all three of her BlackBerrys in her bathroom at night, even though she lives only with a housekeeper and her two daughters. Her gay ex-husband Michael Huffington elaborates on how she knew of his interest in men before their marriage, saying, "in my Houston town house I sat down with her and told her that I had dated women and men so that she would be aware of it." And Huffington sounds downright proud of her lack of long-term friendships, saying, "I metabolize experiences fast." But there's so much missing, so much that should be in this 14-page story, starting first with how she runs the Huffington Post — would any male mogul be profiled at such length with so little said about how he runs his business? — and continuing through to juicer questions about her dating life and cultlike religious guru. A few specifics:
Way, way back in February of 2006, Senator John McCain invited a shiny new Senator from Illinois to a meeting to discuss campaign finance reform. A day after the meeting, the junior Senator, a polite young man named Barack Obama, wrote to McCain, "I know you have expressed an interest in creating a task force to further study and discuss these matters, but I and others in the Democratic Caucus believe the more effective and timely course is to allow the committees of jurisdiction to roll up their sleeves and get to work on writing ethics and lobbying reform legislation that a majority of the Senate can support. Committee consideration of these matters through the normal course will ensure that these issues are discussed in a public forum and that those within Congress, as well as those on the outside, can express their views, ensuring a thorough review of this matter." McCain's brain somehow translated that to mean, "Go fuck yourself, ass." Because this is what he wrote back:
You Betcha! Sarah Palin isn't simply ratings gold when Tina Fey is playing her. The vice presidential debate last night was the most-watched VP matchup ever, even surpassing by 33% the Obama/McCain debate from last week. According to THR, 69,989,000 viewers tuned in, which makes it the biggest debate audience since 1992, when Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Ross Perot all faced off. Palin has since had all three men fired. [THR]
Just as British funnymen Ricky Gervais and Simon Pegg have resolved to patch up their "fat idiot" feud, along come Sarah Silverman and Jackie Mason to fill the void with their own bit of culturally specific warring. Perhaps you'll recall Silverman's recent video for thegreatschlep.com, an organization designed to coax young, Jewish Obama supporters to travel to Florida and convince their grandparents to vote Democrat. Creaky comic Mason is not a fan of this idea (to put it mildly) and in an ad paid for by a Jewish Republicans group, he tears into both Obama and Silverman, calling the latter a "sick yenta." Careful, Jackie — if Silverman can handle talking shit about her ex-boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel, she's not going to be daunted by your dated patter. Both videos, after the jump:
The Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin phenomenon has officially found its absurdist zenith in France (where else), where the daily paper Le Soleil recently printed a photograph of last week's Palin/Couric SNL sketch to accompany a story about Palin's "hesitant, troubled and clumsy" press-handling skills. The minor controversy that ensued had photo source Agence France-Presse scrambling to defend itself Thursday, insisting it had accurately identified Fey and Amy Poehler in the SNL still and that the caption goof was the paper's fault. But really — does it even matter?Frankly, we've never appreciated a French newspaper more than we love Le Soleil at this moment. Sure, SNL can corner the Palin impression market, but it takes a special kind of postmodern zeal to own such willful ignorance of arguably the most famous female politician going right now. We can hardly wait for the next "accident" attributing mythic, messianic public-speaking genius to Democratic presidential contender Fred Armisen. If it hasn't been published already.
