the Bradley Effect: shame on who?

A post over at Dan Cleary's blog expresses a concern I've heard expressed by some Republicans/Conservatives that a McCain victory might be diminished if there is evidence of the so-called "Bradley Effect."

I'm not sure that it being a factor would necessarily diminish a McCain victory, unless "being truthful to pollsters" is the moral standard. Though racial prejudice MAY be one motivation for being a "Bradley Effect" voter, it is inarguable that concern about appearing racially prejudiced for not voting for Obama is really the motivation . . . and who's (here, here) to blame for that? Indeed, I think trumpeting this issue is simply another way to influence uncommitted voters toward Obama.

Sorry, but it ain't over . . .

Bill Kristol has a great op/ed demonstrating why non-Obama-fans should take heart ("Can They Catch Up?"). He writes about the kind of "offensive" necessary to prevail on November 4th:

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.

I encourage you to read the rest of the article . . .

And Dan Cleary has a thoughtful post up regarding how Conservatives should interpret the current polling data. I liked the comment from an Obama person earnestly arguing, no, he really should accept that Obama has this thing in the bag. Sorry, Libs, if I am going to choose not to ensure--by throwing in the towel, that Obama wins the race.

Can't spell ACORN without "community organizer"

Actually, the "CO" stands for "Community Organizations," but it is intriguing to see the attention now being directed at ACORN (Association Of Community Organizations For Reform Now) and its ties with former-Community-Organizer-extraordinaire Barack Obama.

Folks, ACORN is radical (here, here, here). And you have to give them credit for how effectively they have been able to move beyond militancy (not that they've forsworn it, mind you) and gone mainstream. Here's an incredibly dense-reading report about ACORN's role in the collapse of the credit market.

There's no question that Senator Barack Obama is up to his saggy nipples (sorry, I couldn't resist, and I must admit he looks sharp in a suit) in ACORNish/Jeremiad Wright/America's-the-problem radicalism. The question is whether McCain has the acorns to call him on it.

Unless being black means being Marxist . . .

Some black Democrats are accusing Sarah Palin of racism because she's saying "Obama is different." ("Black Congressmen Declare Racism In Palin’s Rhetoric" | The New York Observer):

“They are trying to throw out these codes,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York.

“He’s ‘not one of us?’” Mr. Meeks said, referring to a comment Sarah Palin made at a campaign rally on Oct. 6 in Floridahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.quote.gif. “That’s racial. That’s fear. They know they can’t win on the issues, so the last resort they have is race and fear.”
. . . .

[State Rep. Yvette] Clarke [(NY)] also found a racial subtext in Ms. Palin’s repeated appeals to “Joe Six-Pack” and “hockey moms.”

“Who exactly is Joe Six-Pack and who are these hockey moms? That’s what I’d like to know,” she said. “Is that supposed to be terminology that is of common ground to all Americans? I don’t find that. It leaves a lot of people out.”

Since when is it "code" to call someone with a high-Marxism tolerance (as manifested in Obama's church and "community organizing" ties) "not one of us"? And since when is it "code" to point out that the core of Obama's ideology--which is socialism, is "different" than the ideology that made America great. Give me a break. Even CNN acknowledges that Obama is disingenuously claiming there was no significant relationship between Obama and unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.

Clinton on Election 2008

Terry Frank has embedded (here) two videos of Bill Clinton providing bi-partisan evidence of what's wrong with electing Barack Obama in light of the facts about the collapse of the credit market and the facts about Barack Obama's world view. It is HIGHlarious to watch Clinton struggle to answer the question about Jeremiah Wright.

Sarah Palin's affair . . . or not

I posted previously about the over-the-top sensationalism of reporting on Sarah Palin. And I have been intrigued at the enormous number of google hits I receive on a daily basis for "sarah palin affair."

But I almost laughed out loud when I saw a report today concerning the "source" relied upon by the National Enquirer in claiming that Sarah Palin had an affair in the mid '90s. The "report" is based on what a "family member" of the alleged adulterous man says he heard (aka "hearsay") about the situation, and I have to believe that even Enquirer writers blushed a little when writing about the "relationship" of the source (Jim Burdett) with Palin's alleged affair-mate (Brad Hanson):

[Jim] Burdett is a former brother-in-law of Hanson’s estranged wife Carolyn's brother, Craig Batton, and still speaks with many family members

I know it is difficult to follow, but read it again slowly (heck, you might be better off trying to diagram the relationship).

The fact that Lefties and Democrats have fostered this story is evidence of how UNHINGED they are about Sarah Palin. And to think that if they had just waited for her to do the Couric interview they wouldn't have had to cook up such lame crap to throw at her . . .

There's a difference between winning an election and deserving to win an election.

Aw gee, I hate the white guy, too

A WSJ article from today provides a glimpse of what we Republicans face if we criticize the Obama. "Hate" (in the title) isn't really accurate, I don't hate Obama or Biden, I just think they're wrong. From the article:

Over the weekend Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling around" with terrorists--a reference to his longstanding friendship and professional association with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, husband-and-wife Chicago college professors who are unrepentant about their activities in the Weather Underground gang.

According to an "analysis" by Douglass Daniel of the Associated Press, "[Palin's] attack was unsubstantiated." Palin said she got her information from the New York Times, and we suppose it says something that this isn't good enough for the AP. Odder still is Daniel's claim that Palin's statement "carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret."

Reader, Mr. and Mrs. Ayers are persons of pallor. What could possibly be racist about Palin's criticizing Obama for associating with a couple of despicable characters who are white? This question brings us into the weird world of Douglass Daniel's imagination:

Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee "palling around" with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Daniel does no reporting to back this up. He accuses Palin of racism because in his mind, terrorist implies Muslim, Muslim implies dark-skinned, and dark-skinned implies black.

This exercise in free association scarcely qualifies as analysis. Nonetheless, let us consider it step by step:

Terrorist implies Muslim. It is certainly true that America's terrorist enemies today are Muslims who justify their actions in Islamic terms. The terrorist fringe of the 1960s far left, by contrast, has withered away (or "sold out," in the parlance of the times). But there is nothing distinctively Islamic about tactics like bombing and kidnapping, which were used by outfits like the Weather Underground in their time and are employed by al Qaeda and its ilk today.

Moreover, as we have noted, the AP is sometimes at pains to avoid drawing a connection between terrorism and Islam when reporting stories about Islamic terrorism. Why does Daniel make the connection so casually here, when it is not even relevant?

Muslim implies dark-skinned. In fact, "Muslim" is a religious identifier, not a racial or ethnic one. Muslims are of all races and ethnicities. Daniel must be conflating Muslims with Arabs, the ethnic group to which the Sept. 11 terrorists belonged. Arabs do generally have darker complexions than people of Northern European origin.

Dark-skinned implies black. The racial identity of Arabs was a matter of some legal controversy in the U.S. early in the last century, but the courts generally concluded that they were white and thus eligible for naturalization under the racially discriminatory immigration laws in effect at the time. Arabs also are classified as white under the Census Bureau's racial taxonomy.

So Daniel seems to be saying that it is racist of Palin to note a nonracial commonality between Obama's white pals and the white men who attacked America seven years ago. Can you make any sense at all of this?

Neither can Daniel, so he changes the subject:

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

Most troubling, however, is how allowing racism to creep into the discussion serves McCain's purpose so well. As the fallout from [Jeremiah] Wright's sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America's promise to treat all people equally.

Wait, didn't the Jeremiah Wright controversy prompt Obama to give the most magnificently brilliant speech on the subject of race since Martin Luther King, or at least Abraham Lincoln? That's what it said in the papers, anyway.

Getting back to Daniel and Palin, it seems his claim is that her speech was racist because it somehow called attention to Obama's race. To be sure, there are people who are prejudiced against Obama because he is black. Shame on them. People like them used to have a lot more influence on elections than they do now, both because they were more numerous and because in many parts of the country they disfranchised blacks (including through terrorism!).

Yet we'd venture that there are voters who are troubled by Obama's palling around with terrorists irrespective of his, or anyone else's race. Does the public not have a right to know because some part of the public may be racist?

Furthermore, let's assume for the sake of argument that an actual racist has the brainpower to puzzle through the complex twists and turns that led Douglass Daniel from the information that Obama pals around with terrorists to the conclusion that Obama is black.

Isn't it a good bet that he already knew?

Voter Purging and hand wringing

It's election time, and that means Democrats are cuing up crazed accusations of voter disenfranchisement. Well, today I came across this article, Protecting Voter Rights | The American Prospect, profiling the Lefty bogey man of "voter purging." The article defines the term as "the process by which states remove ineligible voters from the rolls." But the phrase "voter purging" connotes voters, people, being treated poorly. Merriam-Webster online defines "purge" as,

to cause evacuation from (as the bowels) b (1): to make free of something unwanted (2): to free (as a boiler) of sediment or relieve (as a steam pipe) of trapped air by bleeding c (1): to rid (as a nation or party) by a purge (2): to get rid of

It would be more accurate (though less powerful as a political club) to use phrases like database purging or election roll purging or ineligible voter purging. Indeed, you will find little resistance from me about most of the Brennan Center's suggestions for purging best-practices. But I have to cry foul when Lefties claim that the Republican Party "stole" the 2000 election, or persists in trying to steal elections, by means of "voter purging."

So, did "voter purging" affect the results of the 2000 election, and is it likely that it will affect future elections? Let's consider those questions.

Did "voter purging" (particularly efforts to remove felons--who are not eligible to vote in Florida, from the voter rolls) affect the 2000 presidential election?

No. This article, in one nice little journalistic package (and from a neutral source--The Palm Beach Post), demonstrates that thousands of felons voted illegally, and thousands of persons on the suspected felon list were allowed to vote illegally in counties that ignored the procedures instituted prior to the election (hmmm, which Florida counties do you think made that unilateral decision?). I do not want to pooh-pooh assertions that some persons may have been unfairly denied the opportunity to vote, but there is no, I repeat no, evidence that the felon purge in Florida2000 determined the election. (Indeed, the subject of the article was a man unfairly denied the opportunity to vote for Bush).

Is "voter purging" something to worry about in the 2008 presidential election?

No. Following the 2000 election fiasco, Congress instituted election polices that include what is termed "provisional voting." In sum, provisional voting or voting with a provisional ballot allows for recording a vote when there is a question about the person's eligibility to vote. After the election, appropriate election officials determine--through review of voting records, state databases and information provided by the voter, whether the ballot should be counted. So, short of recruiting God to work the polls on election day, there is no more efficient and effective means of preventing illegal ballots from being cast while ensuring that qualified voters will have the opportunity to vote.

Lastly, accusations of "voter purging"--like most Democrat accusations of electoral shenanigans, have little credibility in light of Democratic Party electoral policy. As long as Democrats push their agenda of laissez-faire election policy, there will be plenty of honest, legal (and Republican) voters being "disenfranchised," because every illegal ballot cast negates a legal ballot cast for the opposing candidate. So, I might lose some sleep of "voter purging" and its cousin "voter caging" when the Left starts taking ballot integrity seriously.

The best summation of the VP debate I've read

Mark Steyn's humorous and accurate assessment of the VP debate. From the article:

The problem was that [Biden's performance] sounded drearily senatorial. Mention any global crisis — civil war in Bosnia, genocide in Darfur, Russian aggression in Georgia, the lack of five-star restaurants in Wales — and Biden has been there, usually within the last two weeks, and always at public expense. What the American taxpayer gets for the Emir of Delaware’s frequent-flyer miles is harder to discern. Biden was doing his best to turn in a decent karaoke version of Lloyd Bentsen, but, unfortunately, Governor Palin declined to play Dan Quayle. That left Joe sounding like an ancient pol being generically vice-presidential. Sarah, at her best, sounded like the citizen-politician this country’s Founders intended. She hasn’t voted 397 times against this or that in the U.S. Senate, because she’s been running a state, and a town, and a commercial fishing operation. She’s a doer, not a talker, which is why so many of my fellow professional talkers disdain her.

The Geeks Shall Inherit the Turf

Congrats Vandy. Amazingly, Vanderbilt is #1 in the SEC East and Tennessee is in last place. Ouch. Though I'm a Tennessee alum, Bobby Johnson is a class act, and you have to appreciate Vanderbilt's commitment to student-athlete-ism.

Have you stopped supporting Violence Against Women, yet?

If you watched the VP debate last night, there's a good chance you heard Joe Biden mention his signature legislative feat a couple times . . . it's VAWA or the Violence Against Women Act. Sounds like something you should support, right?

Biden also mentioned VAWA in his recent, stellar(!!) interview with Katie Couric. VAWA was the law at issue in Biden's response to Couric's question about "any decisions of the Supreme Court with which he disagreed."

Well, Sarah Palin referenced Federalism in her response to Couric's question, and if you know anything about the SCOTUS' VAWA decision, you can immediately appreciate a major difference between Palin and Biden. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and the Left generally, are eager to ever-expand the authority and scope and "jurisdiction" of the Federal government. I think Biden said more than once something along the lines of, "John McCain twice voted against the Violence Against Women Act." I pretty much concluded at the end of the VP debate that the curtain of Biden's impressive debate performance would be pulled back in due time to reveal a disingenuous political shyster. Change? Hope? I don't think so.

Here's a great analysis of VAWA and Federalism (co-written by InstaPundit).

Can't we just disagree?

Jonah Goldberg had some interesting observations about the Tolerant Party's treatment of Sarah Palin: ("Feminist Army Aims Its Canons at Palin"):

It’s funny. The left has been whining about having their patriotism questioned for so long it feels like they started griping in the Mesozoic era. Feminists have argued for decades that womanhood is an existential and metaphysical state of enlightenment. But they have no problem questioning whether women they hate are really women at all.

Since we know from basic science that Palin is a woman — she’s had five kids, for starters — it’s clear that these ideological thugs aren’t talking about actual, you know, facts. They’re doing what people of totalitarian mind-sets always do: bully heretics, demonize enemies, whip the troops into line.

Biden's foreign policy "experience" . . . impressive!!!

Palin's supposed to be gaffe prone? inexperienced on foreign policy? Ol' Biden had this whopper during the VP debate.

Here's another, regarding spending on Iraq v. spending on Afghanistan.

Who you callin' a reckless deregulator?

Biden's distortions . . . at least one of them

I felt all during the VP debate that Joe Biden was very vulnerable on the assertions he made. For whatever reason (uh, probably that debating is very difficult, especially on the defensive) Sarah Palin didn't blast away at Biden's blatherous assertions. This article denudes one particular assertion--that John McCain wants to do for healthcare what he did (?) for the broken banking industry"; from the op/ed: ("An Unhealthy Debate" by Yuval Levin on National Review Online)

Biden offered several criticisms of John McCain’s health-care plan which tracked precisely with the line of attack the Obama campaign has taken up against the plan in recent days, and which are flatly untrue and deceptive.

The Deregulation Canard
The approach involved two basic elements. First, after (somehow) implicitly attributing the current financial crisis to deregulation, Biden argued that McCain wants to do the same thing to the health care sector and so presumably send it into a similar crisis. “As a matter of fact,” Biden said, “John recently wrote an article in a major magazine saying that he wants to do for the health-care industry deregulate it and let the free market move like he did for the banking industry.” The same argument is advanced in a new Obama campaign commercial. Over images of Fannie and Freddie logos, the ad asserts that McCain wants to do to health care what “Bush/McCain policies have done to our economy,” by which they mean deregulation. The ad says:

McCain just published an article praising Wall Street deregulation; said he'd reduce oversight of the health insurance industry too, "just as we have done over the last decade in banking.”

The line they quote comes from an article by John McCain (i.e by his campaign) about the McCain health plan in the latest issue of Contingencies magazine. In a passage arguing for more competition to lower the cost of health insurance, McCain writes:

I would also allow individuals to choose to purchase health insurance across state lines, when they can find more affordable and attractive products elsewhere that they prefer. Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation. Consumer-friendly insurance policies will be more available and affordable when there is greater competition among insurers on a level playing field.

The Obama ad of course doesn’t quote all of that, but merely suggests McCain is endorsing some supposed deregulation of Wall Street. In fact, McCain is very plainly talking about the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking Act, passed in 1994, which permitted banks to establish branches nationwide by eliminating the requirement for separate subsidiaries in each state and the prohibition against banks accepting deposits from customers out of their home states. This very sensible reform updated a 1956 law to modernize American banking, and there is simply no question it has been successful and useful. It passed the Senate 94 to 4, and Sen. Biden voted for it.

That important act of deregulation had exactly nothing whatsoever to do with the economic crisis we now face, and on the contrary has contributed to American prosperity and competitiveness. The Obama campaign could raise questions about how close an analogy there might be to that law in allowing health insurers, like banks, to work across state lines. But the tack they have actually taken — accepting the analogy and asserting it reflects poorly on McCain’s plan — is either dishonest or ignorant. Either way, it makes no sense.

Aw heck, you ought to read the whole thing. It is the BEST articulation of McCain's healthcare proposal that I've seen.

The Couric interviews

It's interesting to watch these dueling clips from the Couric VP interviews. I indeed cringe when watching Palin's answers about Roe v. Wade and other Supreme Court decisions. Biden did a good job of describing the white-washed, Liberal view of Roe v. Wade--the truth is that the application of the Liberal view equates to abortion on demand. But it is intriguing to note that Joe Biden--who has been marinating in Federal issues for 35 years, serving (forever it seems) on the Senate judiciary committee, could only think of a SCOTUS opinion relating to a law he wrote . . . then he filibustered. The question nicely isolated a perceived weakness of Palin; It would be really impressive if a 44 year old, non-lawyer who has never served in, nor run for, Federal office was articulate on decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

But, under the circumstances, her answer(s)--as they bear on her ability to lead effectively, were not significantly less impressive than the answers given by Biden.

Joe Lunchpail (Biden) . . . not exactly

Here's some great reporting from the New York Times about Joe Biden's "everyman" image.

It is an interesting read, and it demonstrates how Joe Biden is rather like every other Senator or Congressman in enjoying perks not available to the little people. ("An Everyman on the Trail, With Perks at Home" - NYTimes.com).

Obama and Biden folks will certainly have a reverse spin on this report, and there is typically a legitimate "other" side to the story. But it is ironic that in 1996 Biden sold--through "word of mouth," his "manor" at a premium ($1.2 million to a politically connected and interested buyer) and then purchased four acres of lakefront property at a "wholesale price" because "the real estate market was soft." Sure.

Obama voted "present" . . . Dems voted "no"

How did we come to this credit market crisis? McCain pushed for accountability, Obama voted "present," Dems voted "no."

Biden's "experience" . . . impressive!!

In response some pre-VP-debate trash talk from Sean Braisted, I was reminded of a splendid analysis (here) of Joe Biden's much-ballyhooed (by the Left) foreign policy "experience." The conclusion any objective observer would reach after reading Andy McCarthy's extensive report, is summed up in this sentence:

For all Biden’s twaddle about doctrines and concepts, there is a simple technique for divining this foreign-policy solon’s bobs and weaves: Consult the polls and the calendar.

We'll have to wait and see if any "foreign policy" questions during the debate go beyond, "how many years have you been sitting in on foreign policy discussions?"

As Thomas Sowell asserts in a recent op/ed"experience":

[Biden] has had a front-row seat as an observer of foreign policy. But Senator Biden has never had any real experience of making foreign policy and taking the consequences of the results.

The difference between being a spectator and being a participant, with responsibility for the consequences of what you say and do, is fundamental.

You ought to read the whole article. And feel free to attempt a rebuttal.

Ifill's obligation

Initially I was conflicted a bit about the whole Gwen Ifill as "moderator" story. Revelations that Ifill is publishing a seemingly fawning book about Barack Obama might compel Ifill to strive for evenhandedness, I thought.

Well, Michelle Malkin article on the subject has changed my opinion. For example, learning that Ifill has responded to questions about her objectivity by bringing up race raises concerns. Ifill stated last week, “[N]o one’s ever assumed a white reporter can’t cover a white candidate.”

Malkin's response to this statement? "It’s not the color of your skin, sweetie. It’s the color of your politics." I'd say the "political color" of this particular media personality/journalist are unexceptional. I'm more concerned about the color of money--the financial interest that Ifill has in Obama's political fortunes.

Ifill made the decision to publish a book that fairly raises questions about her objectivity in covering politics and in covering this campaign in particular. I'd like to trust Ifill to play it fair in this high-stakes debate, but once the horse is out of the barn, it'll be too late. I think the professional thing to do would be to step down from moderating a debate this time around. Of course, that's easy for me to say, but I believe that as a journalist, the least that Ifill should do is begin this debate with an "in the interest of full disclosure" statement.