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MSM = 'Media Saves McCain'?Plus--Krugman: From shrill to shill!

By Mickey Kaus
Updated Monday, Dec. 31, 2007, at 5:27 PM ET

Press pros on the ground (excitable Joe Klein,, Marc Cooper, the First Read crew) are convinced Huckabee's press conference today--in which he announced he was pulling a negative campaign spot and then showed it to the press anyway--was so disastrous as to be Dean-screamish. Like Jonathan Martin, I'm not so sure. Huckabee's transparently trying to have it both ways--but it's not clear why he won't have it both ways. Transparently cynical arrangements seem to be working well this year! At least with Iowans.... P.S.: This seems like the MSM jumping in in order to discover for itself that Huckabee is imploding after he has already been taken down by Romney's attack spots. ... 2:00 P.M.

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Kf Hero of the Day: Gov. Strickland of Ohio, who commits a classic Kinsley gaffe, foolishly telling the truth about Iowa ... and about New Hampshire.

In an interview with The Dispatch last week, Strickland said the Iowa caucuses make "no sense." He called the GOP and Democratic caucuses "hugely undemocratic," because the process "excludes so many people." Anyone who happens to be working or is sick or too old to get out for a few hours Thursday night won't be able to participate, Strickland said.

"I'd like to see both parties say, 'We're going to bring this to an end,'" Strickland said, adding that he has no problem with the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8, because "at least it's an election." [E.A.]

Letting the presidential nominee be picked by the Iowa caucusers is like letting your antiwar tactics be picked by the last people left at the end of a 4-hour SDS meeting in 1970. The result: the leftist radicals win! [But you were all leftist radicals. It was an SDS meeting--ed Oh, right. I mean, the most committed partisans who have nothing better to do with their time win! In Iowa these people are proven fools, remember.]

Update: John Fund notes that Iowa's silly process is not an accident.

The caucuses are run by the state parties, and unlike primary or general elections aren't regulated by the government. They were designed as an insiders' game to attract party activists, donors and political junkies and give them a disproportionate influence in the process. In other words, they are designed not to be overly democratic

Fund's piece also has gives good headline! ... 1:11 A.M. link

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He Dieted for Our Sins--Or Did He? Republican Undernews! Did Huckabee go bariatric? Plutarch makes the (surprisingly non-weak) case with photos and graphs. ... P.S.: The Arkansas ex-governor's dramatic weight loss is to his campaign what Edwards' loyalty to his sick wife is to the latter's campaign. In each case, there are undernews suspicions. In each case, these suspicions are likely to become overnews--i.e. news--if (as is very possible) the candidate in question emerges victorious from Iowa. In each case, apparently, the suspicions could be dissipated by the presentation of routine medical evidence. [How with Edwards? Just between us--ed Aternity-pay Est-tay] ...

Backfill: Jonah Goldbeg has one argument against bariatricity. ... Powerline commenters debate here. ... Another Huck defense here. ... 8:26 P.M. link

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From Shrill to Shill! It looks like that pro-Edwards "527" group defended by Paul Krugman as a "labor 527" and a "527 run by labor unions" actually got about a third of its money "in a single check from an entity linked to Rachel Mellon, the widow of Paul Mellon, who inherited his share of the great American fortunes." ...

P.S.: Obama's point in attacking Edwards on the 527 issue was, of course, not that it was wrong to accept union help but the transparent phoniness of Edwards boasting "I support public financing of federal elections"--and saying "these [527] groups should not be a part of the political process"--when this one is run by his former campaign manager and obviously set up to help his campaign. ...

P.P.S.: Edwards seems to be good at these elaborate charades! [What are you thinking of?--ed Oh, nothing.] ...

Update: Overlawyered raises another question about the Mellon contribution.

Related anti-Krugmania: Steve Smith reads FDR's Madison Square Garden speech and finds some "Obamaesque" passages Krugman must have missed. ... See also Jon Alter, on--among other things--Krugman's convenient ex cathedra assertion that a populist candidate would do better than a more moderate candidate in the general election (something Krugman supports with on surveys of debate-watching Democrats). ... 1:20 A.M. link

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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Mark Halperin's "The Page" has suddenly become indispensable if you're trying to follow the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. ... I guess that was his plan all along! P.S.: NBC's excellent First Read is also one of the few sites that's posting enough to cover the rapid developments. But they're trying to do it all themselves. Halperin's playing Drudge, which is much more efficient. ... 8:13 P.M.

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Does MSM mean "Media Saves McCain"? Howie Kurtz goes to bat against Romney's anti-McCain ad with a defense that's much more misleading than any ad I've seen:

Romney's description of McCain's failed immigration bill -- which was backed by President Bush -- is so selective as to be misleading. The measure would have allowed illegal immigrants to seek legal status only if they first returned to their country of origin and paid a fine, and it was coupled with stricter border enforcement -- key elements omitted by the ad. Romney called a similar bipartisan effort "reasonable" in 2006. It is not true that McCain backed Social Security for illegals; a Senate amendment would have allowed payment of past benefits only after immigrants obtained legal status. [E.A.]

The provision requiring a return "to their country of origin"--the so-called "touchback" plan--was in fact not part of the reform that McCain has righteously championed for years. It was added at the last minute, as the bill was sliding down the tubes, in a desperate attempt to attract conservative votes. (The bill failed anyway two days later.) The provision was also a fraud, but that's almost beside the point. ...

Why don't reporters like WaPo's Kurtz** and NYT's Santora--both of whom have now peddled correction-worthy pro-McCain misinformation--stop pretending they are enforcing truth or fairness and just face the perhaps-subconscious motive that's evident to nearly everyone: They liked McCain's failed immigration reform, or they like McCain, or they like their own acceptance into the comfortable bipartisan "comprehensive" consensus, and they instinctively for the ways to defend him against what they assume must be crude, yahooesque attacks from the right?

**--Have I mentioned that Howard Kurtz has the biggest conflict of interest in the business? Not lately! ... 7:54 P.M.

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Is Gen. Petraeus Killing Kos? Even though there's a big election on, Daily Kos traffic peaked in August, and has been trending down ever since, according to this forthright Onemadson post (noted by Geraghty and Instapundit). ... Hmm. I don't think the cause is "candidate wars." I was at a very nice left-wing party over the holidays and the youthful antiwar types were saying that traffic was down on all the left-wing sites because of ... Iraq. ... That's not what I said. It's what they said. ... Iraq just isn't as salient now that it doesn't seem to be spiraling into apocalypse. ... P.S.: Was the left-wing blogosphere always mainly about Iraq? ... P.P.S.: Of course, some right-wing sites seem to be experiencing a mild decline since August also. Maybe the whole blogosphere was about Iraq! ...

Update: Maguire does some actual research, and discovers that "the big lefty sites ...peaked in April (Atrios, MY DD, C&L) or February (Firedoglake); the righty sites peaked in October (Instapundit, Ms. Malkin) or March (Powerline)." He speculates that the left sites are simply coming down off an anomalous spike in traffic caused by the Feb./March Libby trial. But the "surge" explanation also fits that timetable, as a commenter notes. ... 1:01 A.M.

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Friday, December 28, 2007

Truthchecking the MSM's Truthcheckers: The New York Times' Marc Santora declares Romney's anti-McCain ad "selective or worse, misleading" on immgration:

For instance, Mr. Romney claims Mr. McCain "even voted to allow illegals to collect Social Security."

The more complicated reality is that Mr. McCain supported legislation that would allow illegal immigrants who come forward, pay fines, then wait their turn to become citizens the chance to collect Social Security — but only after they are citizens.

Santora has to be wrong. ... [pause for Googling] ... He is. Under McCain's bill, legal immigrants wouldn't collect Social Security "only after they are citizens." They would collect Social Security after they had become legal. In fact, illegal immigrants apparently don't even have to become citizens now, under current law--if they're legalized, they can collect Social Security, even for work they performed here when they were illegal.

The distinction between "citizen" and "legal" is important, because it's easier to become a legal worker than it is to "wait" and become a full-fledged citizen. And McCain's "comprehensive immigration reform" would have legalized millions of current illegals fairly quickly. Hence, it would ... how to put it? ... "allow illegals to collect Social Security." Romney's charge seems basically accurate.** The New York Times seems "selective or worse, misleading." ... P.S.: Actually, no. It's not "selective." Or merely "misleading." Make that "misinformed or worse, spun by the McCain camp." ...

Update: Note that McCain's response to Romney's charge has largely avoided an actual defense of McCain's position, focusing instead on Romney's flaws. See here, here, here, and here.

**--It's reasonably clear from the context of the ad that Romney is saying that McCain would let illegals collect Social Security by giving them amnesty, not by allowing them to remain illegal and collect Social Security. But you be the judge. ...[via Ambinder] 7:19 P.M. link

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The Feiler Faster Thesis suggests that by next Thursday the Benazir Bhutto tragedy will loom shockingly small in Iowa. ... 4:45 P.M.

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It's CW that Hillary Clinton "would rather ... come in fourth"** in Iowa if John Edwards finishes first than come in a close second to Barack Obama. (Or maybe even than coming in a close first to Obama.) For Hillary, it's all about getting rid of Obama. But what about for Obama? Which of these two scenarios would he prefer?

Obama--35

Edwards--33

Clinton--25

or

Clinton-35

Obama--33

Edwards-25

It's close, no? Getting rid of Edwards--making it a Hillary vs. Obama race--seems very important to Obama. If he comes in a competitive second to Hillary, on the other hand, will the press really declare that Hillary's delivered a "knockout punch" and go home? I doubt it. They'll want to set up an epic two-person battle. ...

**Chris Matthews, 12/26 ... 4:40 P.M.

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Tariq Ali on Benazir Bhutto: Written before her death. Quite nasty. I don't trust him.** For all I know he may now regret writing it. But there is a lot here to chew on, especially the intrigues surrounding her brother Murtaza. Compare with John Burns' NYT obituary. ...

Update: Here's a post-assassination piece by Ali.

**--Reflexive anti-Americanism would be the charge against Ali. For example, would U.S. non-interference in neighboring Afghanistan really end "instability" in Kabul and "the tribal areas betwen the two countries" in a way that didn't simply empower Al Qaeda? ... 12:28 A.M.

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Wednesday, December 26, 2007

One Hed Fits All: Are you impressed with a drop in home values of 6.6% over a year? It doesn't seem like such a big correction, given the dramatic run-up in prices over the last decade or so. ... And don't declining prices make housing more... what's the word? ... affordable?** ... This evening NBC Nightly News billboarded a "housing CRISIS." (Link available here.) I thought a "housing crisis" was when people couldn't find housing, not when it got cheaper. (NBC's expert: "It's very, very difficult to find any silver lining." No it's not.) ...

P.S.: Instapundit suggests that the press may (in the words of a reader) "scupper Main Street confidence" in the economy when all it really wants to do is scupper the Republicans. You'd think the Fed or someone would address this structural issue by creating a reliable way for reporters to sabotage Republicans directly, without having to go through the intermediate stage in which they drag the entire economy down too. Sort of an earned "path to partisanship": For every sensible, non-hysterical story about the economy's perturbations under a GOP president, Dem-leaning reporters get to apply an anti-GOP double standard in a non-economic story. ...

**--Update: "Affordable housing," and "housing crisis," as traditionally used by critics on the left, includes rental housing. If the credit crunch prevents people from buying houses, and those houses are sitting around unsold, they'll be rented, no? Which will tend to drive rents lower. Am I missing something? (This is a response to Bill Quick and others). ...

More: Quick responds that rents in San Francisco are going up, as people who can't get a mortgage to buy a home crowd into the rental market. Hey, the same thing happens in my neighborhood!. But it's a short-term (and maybe localized) effect, no? Speculators who own houses have an interest in renting them rather than leaving them vacant--even at bargain rents. I would very much doubt it if rents are rising in overbuilt South Florida, for example. .. [pause to Google] ... Yep.:

Depressed housing market is good news for renters

Glut of property makes it cheaper than buying home

Harriet Johnson Brackey/Personal finance

December 9, 2007

What a good time it is in South Florida for renters.

Rent is falling and renters have their pick of places to live: Apartments, condominiums, apartments that used to be condos that have gone back to apartments. Not to mention single-family homes for rent from accidental landlords. ...[snip]

Research from Axiometrics, a Dallas firm that studies major apartment markets around the country, shows that rents in Fort Lauderdale in the third quarter of this year are down by 2.2 percent compared with last year. In Palm Beach County, the decline is 7.8 percent and in Miami-Dade County rents are off by 0.7 percent.

"In a lot of the overbuilt markets, it's better to be a renter than an owner," said Axiometrics President Ron Johnsey.

Again, I'm not saying the credit crunch isn't a problem. I'm not saying that a lot of middle class Americans haven't bet a lot on the continued rise in their homes' value, or that if they take a big hit the resulting slowdown in their spending might not tip the whole economy into a recession. (But it might not!) I'm saying that during the runup in housing prices the air was filled with complaints from the left that the rich were bidding up the value of housing, which was becoming unaffordable for ordinary Americans whose wages were rising only slowly, etc.. Now that this process is unwinding, some of this affordability problem is presumably being corrected. I'm amazed Quick resists this point. He must own. ...

Corner reactions here. ... 7:57 P.M. link

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Is illegal immigration like crime in New York: They said it could never be reduced, until it was? More evidence that even the mild efforts at border control are having an impact.

a) The Gran Salida continues, reports Reuters, although the story offers no hard numbers (just a reported "spike" at a Mexcian consulate). Instapundit notes that one non-enforcement explanation--a shift in exchange rates--doesn't appear to hold water.

b) And they don't keep on coming: Meanwhile, the LAT reports on a decline in incoming illegal immigration, and the paper has some numbers. ... Mexicans who say they plan to seek work abroad: down by a third. ... Border arrests: down by 20%. ... Most significantly:

The growth rate of the U.S. Mexican-born population has dropped by nearly half to 4.2% in 2007 from about 8% in 2005 and 2006, according to an analysis of census data by the Pew Hispanic Center. [E.A.]

That seems pretty dramatic. True, there's a debate about how much of the drop is due to stepped-up enforcement and how much to a decline in construction work. The official PC position appears to be that enforcement can't possibly have anything to do with it.** Still, the drop suggests that border control efforts may have at least as much effect on shaping the future electorate in the long run as attempts by Republicans to win over Mexican-Americans by pursuing McCainesque semi-amnesty proposals. [But illegals don't vote-ed. Their U.S.-born children do. Plus, fewer illegals = less demand for semi-amnesty, no? Which makes it less likely that a whole new group of previously illegal Latino immigrants will ever become voters. Pandering to this now-smaller group of potential future voters in turn bcomes less appealing.]

.**--you see "the border buildup has encouraged more illegal immigrants to employ professional smugglers, whose success rate is higher than that of individuals, according to Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego." OK, but doesn't the cost of hiring a professional itself deter illegal immigration? And are the pros getting less successful--and more expensive? ... 7:21 P.M. link

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How grudging and testy is Bob Wright's acceptance of the surge's relative success? (And he wasn't even against it.) ... 1:58 P.M.

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Undernews Underanalysis: Still impressive, near-total lack of MSM pickup of the National Enquirer's Edwards scandal allegations.** My guess regarding MSM thinking is 1) Nobody wants to hurt Elizabeth Edwards and 2) Everybody figures that if John Edwards loses in Iowa, there's no reason to mention the story. It will go away and nobody will have to cover it. ... If Edwards wins Iowa, however, that calculus would presumably change.

P.S..: Were the story to break out in the MSM before Iowa, the Edwards camp might react by allowing his popular wife make an impassioned plea for her husband, against sleaze, etc., which would generate considerable sympathy. His support in the caucuses could well go up in the short run. If you don't want Edwards to win--as I don't--it may be best at this point if the story stays undernews until January 4. Which puts me in the same page as the MSM, I think.

In other words, under this theory the worst outcome for Edwards is if the Enquirer account slowly seeps into voter consciousness, but doesn't become known enough for Edwards to be able to profit by making a big deal of it in public (which would have the downside of bringing it to more or less every voter's attention). ... That assumes Edwards remains in contention. Should he fall significantly behind in the polls, then making a big deal out of it becomes a plausible Hail Mary gambit. ...

P.P.S.--Mickey's Assignment Desk: Are the issues of the Enquirer making it to the supermarket stands in Iowa? If anyone's there and can check, I'd love to know. ...

**-- Relevant denials are included in the Enquirer story. See also Edwards' denial ("made up") in this Rush & Molloy column. ... 3:01 A.M. link

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AARGH! Cardinal "Mike" Richelieu casts aspersions on an ARG Iowa poll ("looks off because it near-certainly is"). ... Barack Obama better hope that this more recent ARG poll is off. It has him plunging into third place in the caucuses. ...

Update: Mystery Pollster on ARG--

[T]he problem in trying to assess the ARG poll is that we know so little about it. Does ARG make call-backs to unavailable respondents? What was the sample composition on any ARG Iowa survey this year in terms of age and education level, and was this one suddenly different? Did ARG weight the results by age or education this time, and if so, by how much? We are in the dark on all of these questions. ...

See also: Jay Cost, who offers more reasons for caution but not dismissal. ... 1:38 A.M.

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Monday, December 24, 2007

Mick Shand, one of the few survivors of the "Great Escape"--the last man to make it out of the tunnel--has died at age 92. ... P.S.: The book was better than the movie. ... 12:43 P.M.

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Sunday, December 23, 2007

I'm staying out of the great Politico vs. Fred Thompson debate. Many campaign events seem forced and awkward to me. Thompson's fire-station drop-by looked maybe more awkward than most. So? Is gladhanding ability all that crucial a presidential talent? More important, as Instapundit notes, Thompson's answer to local paper's farm policy question wasn't entirely "glittering generalities" (Politico's quote from an editor). Thompson eventually got around to saying:

We're going to have to phase out the corporate welfare system we've got, however. There are extremely rich people living in skyscrapers in Manhattan that are receiving subsidy payments. I think that's wrong. I'd put a stop to that if it was within my power. That still continues in this latest Farm Bill and it's not right. There ought to be a cutoff at some level and it's not right to have millionaires receiving farm subsidies.

People who know more about farm issues can tell me how brave and non-pandering an answer that is. But "phase out the corporate welfare system we've got" would seem to have some bite. ... P.S.: Here's McCain on the same topic. Arguably braver, since he talks of reducing all subsidies, not mainly about cutting off the rich. Still. ... 11:40 P.M.

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Did you know that CITGO, effectively owned by the Venezuelan government headed by Hugo Chavez, runs ads in the U.S. urging Latinos to buy its gas on the basis of ethnic solidarity--as "Energia Latina"? .... One ad is here. ...10:31 P.M.

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If Hillary's poll numbers in Iowa show her losing badly early next week, wouldn't she be smart to have her much-rumored staff shakeup the day before the Iowa caucuses? That way a) the story the next day becomes "Hillary relaunches campaign" instead of "Hillary crushed" and b) she might even convince some people that she lost because of the staff shakeup. ...Even if she doesn't think she needs a shakeup, it might be a good idea to have one. ... P.S.: Blame Bill: Implicitly blaming her staff seems more promising than blaming her husband. She' stuck with her husband.** And do we really think Hillary's main problem is subconscious sabotage from her husband? Isn't Hillary's problem Hillary? ...

**--Unless ... you don't think ... Now that would be a staff shakeup. ... 10:51 A.M. link

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Friday, December 21, 2007

The Matrix: Room Eight's Jerry Skurnick has suggested that the electoarate is splitting into two diverging parts--people who follow politics and people who don't--with the people who follow politics much better informed than they were before (thanks to cable, web, etc.) and the people who don't follow politics less well informed (they used to get at least some information from Walter Cronkite). That certainly rings true to me. And it may, as Skurnick claims, explain some of the new volatility in polling--e.g., when the uninformed majority suddenly discovers, say, that Rudy Giuliani has been married three times.

But there's a second way to divide the electorate that asks how the voters inform themselves. Do they rely on the traditional Mainstream Media (MSM), or do they get their political information from the Web, from cable news, from the tabloids, etc. This division may have once seemed unimportant, but it doesn't anymore--its seriousness is suggested by the MSM's impressive resistance to stories bubbling up from the blogs and the tabs that don't meet MSM standards (putting aside whether you regard those standards as high or merely idiosyncratic). "Rielle Hunter"--the woman whom the National Enquirer alleges was John Edwards' mistress--was the top-searched name on the MSN site at one point Thursday, I'm told. Meanwhile, in the traditional mainstream press, 'Rielle Hunter" was mentioned only ... well, zero times.

Of the two ways to divide the electorate, the second is arguably more important. After all, even those who don't follow politics, will eventually inform themselves before the election.** But if the MSM/Web barrier remains as robust as it's been, those who inform themselves from the MSM will find out something different, when they finally tune in, than those who go to the Web and learn both the news and what might be called the "undernews." *** If you're thinking of voting as a Democrat in Iowa or New Hampshire, you might watch NBC and never know about this messy Rielle Hunter business. Or you might read DailyKos know the whole allegation plus the arguments against it plus seven theories about how it came to light. That knowledge might cause voters to vote against Edwards or to vote for him--but either way first they have to find out.

Likewise, TNR's Noam Scheiber suggests that the egghead sector ( "urban, college-educated liberals") of the Democratic party--which used to be less partisan and combative than the blue-collar/labor sector--is now more partisan and combative, because its eggy heads are wrapped up in Kos and other anti-Bush sites, where they absorb the latest undernews about the machinations of Karl Rove and Tom DeLay. Scheiber argues this is a good development for Obama, who surprisingly doesn't have to become more partisan then he actually is in order to win over non-egghead (labor) Dems.

The 2008 campaign will be a test of the relative strength of these various differently-informed electorates. Of those who follow politics (Skurnick's first group) how many follow the "undernews" and how many merely watch Brian Williams? Of those who don't follow politics (Skurnick's second group) how many bone up in the end by madly googling the candidates, and how many just read the editorial endorsements in their local papers? The non-MSM Enquirer will be in the checkout aisles all over Iowa, but will it have an impact?

At the moment it looks as if Edwards has the most at stake in this great experiment, but others will have a stake soon enough. . Much of the anti-"amnesty" immigration movement has been consigned to the Undernews simply because the MSM consensus in favor of some kind of "comprehensive" legalization has been so strong. Why even cover those nativist kooks? That's no longer true, but there may be other issues the MSM doesn't cover, including various partisan conspiracy theories and maybe entire candidacies (e.g. Ron Paul).

My guess is that Skurnick's largest group--those who don't normally follow politics--will by and large continue in 2008 to get their "free media" from the conventional press. That means they won't, by and large, learn the undernews. The MSM will still dominate this election. But not the next one.

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**--You might think there would only be three groups: Non-Followers, people who follow through the MSM, and people who follow through non-MSM. But the non-followers who actually vote will have to start following some time, at which point they will also fall into two groups: either relying on the MSM or going beyond it. It's a four-box matrix--very exciting--although the box of "those who don't follow politics but then learn from blogs" presumably doesn't contain many voters.

***--Apologies to Sam Smith of Undernews, and the various sites that use this term in what may be a different way. 3:39 A.M. link

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Thursday, December 20, 2007

McCain's Secret Friends? Pithy, knowledgeable Weekly Standard blogger Richelieu busts Edwards aides for forced spinning of their man's comeback. But Richelieu himself keeps spinning McCain comeback scenarios--the latest suggests that Giuliani could become a "Superman" by dropping out and endorsing McCain. If, as everyone including me suspects, Richelieu is in fact former McCain strategist Mike Murphy, someone should bust him. The Standard is depriving its readers of a key fact they need to judge his posts. ... P.S.: This is not to say that Edwards or McCain might not, in fact, come back. ...Update: And isn't Jake Tapper a famously huge McCain fan? Today ABC's evening news led with Tapper's report hyping McCain rival Giuliani's apparently brief illness as if it were the equivalent of Paul Tsongas' cancer. ... 3:53 P.M. link

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"Nice Hagel!' Malcolm Gladwell has elaborated a Theory of Disqualifying Statements, in the context of courtship:

For every romantic possibility, no matter how robust, there exists at least one equal and opposite sentence, phrase, or word ... capable of extinguishing it.

Gladwell gives two examples of such disqualifying phrases. ("Brown," and "nice Tits!").

There are similar Disqualifying Statements in politics, words that will extinguish your enthusiasm for a candidate at the very moment when you are ready to swoon for him (or her). Here's one of those words: "Hagel." As in:

Barack Obama has often said he'd consider putting Repbulicans in his cabinet and even bandied about names like Sens. Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel.

Forget that this is a cliche appeal to hack Washington bipartisanism, that Sen. Hagel's reputation seems to have been built on the substitution of good looks and agonizing passion for coherent, articulated thought, that the press mainly loves him because he's always ready to go on television and stab his party in the back. Why would you promote Hagel at the very moment when his prediction that the Surge was "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam" appears to have been humiliatingly wrong? Disastrously wrong, potentially, if it had been heeded. Disqualifyingly wrong, you'd think. Obama is saying, in effect, that his need for respectable approval trumps reality. ...

P.S.: And just when many people (e.g. me) were trying to conivnce themselves that Obama's inexperience wouldn't be a problem because he'd surround himself with terrific advisors. ...

P.P.S.: "Hagel" isn't as much of a disqualifying statement as "I support the Davis-Bacon Act." But it's close! ... 12:01 P.M. link

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The Wages of Lehaneism: Steve Stark explains why Hillary gets unfavorable press:

[T]he crew that publicly surrounds Hillary has consistently come across as the most arrogant group of know-it-alls ever to populate the modern campaign stage. (When one considers the group that surrounded Richard Nixon, that's really saying something.) Every question is seemingly answered with a snarl. Every challenge appears to be greeted with a personal insult. ("We don't comment on books that are utter and complete failures," was one such riposte.) [E.A.]

It's not a complicated dynamic! I remember feeling that way about Joe Biden's 1988 staffers when I worked at Newsweek. I internally resolved to screw them to the maximum reasonable extent if the opportunity ever arose. ... The "we don't comment on books" line is a bit of Lehane-style fightback the Hillary camp must have been particularly proud of. But it had long-term costs way in excess of its short term benefits. (Political journalists, remember, are people who tend to write books that are utter and complete failures.) .... 11:32 P.M. link

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What am I, a potted plant? Like a blogger trying to seem sophisticated, Rush Limbaugh embraces the fallacy that just because the National Enquirer published a scandal story about John Edwards a couple of weeks away from an election, it must be a "hit":

But I've been trying to think: who leaked, who planted, who dropped this story right before a neck-and-neck primary?

Sometimes a story is just a story. They're not all plants..Sometimes they just, you know, bubble up! And they tend to bubble up right before elections for the same reason students tend to check out library books right before finals--it's fish-or-cut-bait, use-it-or-lose-it time for sources and reporters alike. ...2:52 A.M. link

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Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Level-headed Kos diary. ImpeccableLiberalCredentials argues Edwards

needs to avoid sabotaging himself with denials if they will not be borne out by facts, ignoring the rumors or issuing reckless challenges to the media - mistakes that have brought down frontrunners with even more substance and experience than Edwards has.

P.S.: Less level-headed Kos diary. I'm sure the commenters will defend me! ... 12:04 P.M.

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Rielle Hunter Update: Respected stock researcher and astral analyst Jerome Armstrong has the claim of paternity from the lawyer for former Edwards' aide Andrew Young. ... P.S.: Sure seems like a lot of secrecy--features of the Enquirer story that are undisputed in the statement-- if Young and Hunter are just "a couple that's expecting a child." ... P.P.S.: The solution of living with your wife and family and the pregnant mother of your forthcoming offspring in the same gated community seems a little, well, old-school Mormon!. .. Also: Note that Young's lawyer writes

the relationship between these former co-workers, which began when they worked together in 2006.

But Hunter, in her original MyDD-posted denial, declared:

When working for the Edwards camp, my conduct as well as the conduct of my entire team was completely professional.

I sense a contradiction! . ... 1:34 A.M. link

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007

[See Correction appended] Pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal notes a big reason why those gratuitous network Iowa caucus "entrance" polls might be wrong. As he puts it in an email, "There is zero check against younger interviewer bias"--meaning that when the networks employ young interviewers older caucusers tend to avoid talking to them.

Keep in mind that the 2004 [exit poll] debacle was partly the result of younger, presumably Dem interviewers having greater trouble approaching or interviewing older Republican voters. This despite the age / gender "adjustment" that [CBS pollster] Frankovic talks about.

Why this matters: As Frankovic notes, Obama's support is much higher among voters under 45. So never mind the deliberation, post threshold reallocation, etc. The entrance poll will likely show Obama doing better than he'll really do even among those entering.

The networks could leave the Iowa caucuses to their own perverse, undemocratic and historically misguided devices without making them more perverse and undemocratic. But then how would network polling divisions justify their existence? ...

See earlier post. ...

Correction: It turns out the networks will attempt to correct for the tendency of older caucusers to avoid young entrance poll interviews. But the fix requires the already-harried entrance polltakers to keep an accurate tally of the voters who don't talk to them (are they old, male, female etc.). It's not clear that this can be pulled off in the crush "as voters stream in for the 6:30 p.m. caucus start," Blumenthal notes. But he has posted a correction. ....11:48 P.M. link

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What to expect when you're expecting: Drudge teases the National Enquirer ... Update: The Enquirer posts the gist ...Update: The full Enquirer story is now up. ... One initial point: There's no reason to conclude this story was planted by one campaign or another. I'm familiar with how the initial Rielle Hunter/Edwards rumors, true or not, got to at least one news outlet--and no campaigns, Dem or GOP, were involved. It was a story going around--I'd been hearing it for months. Not all rumors are plants. And some are true. Even in the Enquirer. .. P.S.: Here's an earlier analysis of the potential effect of this scandal on Edwards--and Hillary. It doesn't seem all that complicated. Until recently, Edwards not very subtly put his wife's illness. and his loyalty to her, near the center of his campaign. In the process, he said:

In so many ways, you're the guardians of what kind of human being, we're going to have as president. ... And you get to judge us.

and, on 60 Minutes:

[E]very single candidate for president, Republican and Democratic have lives, personal lives, that indicate something about what kind of human being they are. And I think it is a fair evaluation for America to engage in to look at what kind of human beings each of us are, and what kind of president we'd make.

Backfill: Here's Jerome Armstrong's initial Rielle Hunter denial from back inOctober ("completely unfounded and ridiculous") ...

Update: Many readers report the story has disappeared from the Enquirer's web site. I don't know why, but you can't be too paranoid when Ron Burkle might be involved. (If it hurt Edwards, the story would potentially devastate Burkle's candidate Hillary, who needs Edwards to beat or dilute Obama in Iowa. That's why it's crazy to suggest that Hillary's camp planted it.)

Just in case, I've saved my cached copy. You can do it too!. ...

12/19 Update: The Enquirer has now posted a more complete version. Editor in Chief David Perel emails Wonkette: "Due to a website malfunction a summary of the story went live last night for a brief time. It was then taken down because it was scheduled to be released this morning." ... 4:54 P.M. link

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Congress' Fence-Gutting: Get the old gang back together one more time? Provisions buried in the huge omnibus spending bill about to pass Congress gut the program to build a border fence, according to Republicans--and they appear to have a point:

The 2006 Secure Fence Act specifically called for "two layers of reinforced fencing" and listed five specific sections of border where it should be installed. The new spending bill removes the two-tier requirement and the list of locations.

Defenders of the changes (i.e. Sen. Hutchison of Texas) argue that the Department of Homeland Security should have discretion to "utilize limited resources." But the whole problem is that nobody trusts President Bush's Department of Homeland Security. Or anybody's Department of Homeland Security, for that matter. Whoever is president, DHS will always have a bureaucratic bias toward expanding its budget by employing more DHS personnel--e.g. border patrol agents--and less cheap, inanimate fencing. They can't be expected to stand up to the businesses and local interests and ACLU lawyers and diplomats who hate the fence and will always lobby against it.

Shouldn't the old "yahoo" coalition from earlier this year reform and bombard the Capitol with phone calls to get the House and Senate to drop the fence-gutting language? I say yes. a) The project seems doable--Dem Congressman are trying to appear tough on border security and are unlikely to cling to the fence-weakening provisions, Spitzer-style and b) if they backed down, it would provide a valuable deterrent demonstration for future politicians who try to sneak border-weakening provisions past the vigilant yahoo community. ....

One problem is that a prominent border-control blogger, Michelle Malkin, is wedded to a silly idiosyncratic position that the fence is "gesture politics," as opposed to something the soft-on-illegals lobby (including Republican business interests) oppose precisely because it will actually work. ....

Update--It's on: Border-control group Numbers USA has sent out an "action" alert to its lists, ("Senate Vote this afternoon. Stop Congress from gutting the Secure Fence Act!") Doesn't seem like a lot of time if the vote is this afternoon, however. ... 12:09 P.M. link

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Monday, December 17, 2007

It's come to this: Counterproductive overspinner Chris Lehane and his firm get $100,000 a month (according to S.F. Chronicle's Matier & Ross) to craft mindlessly combative sound bites for Hollywood studios in their dispute with the Writers Guild. Sample sound bit (after union president Andy Stern severed ties with Lehane):

"The real issue here is that Stern needs to do some explaining on how it is that he is fighting for people who make more than doctors and pilots against the interest of real working-class people (set workers and others who have been sidelined during the strike) - and less time punching at shadows."

I dunno. That one was worth maybe only $99,000. ... But hey, you have to hit back! It's the Lehane way. Ask President Gore. [So now that people who buy you dinner are on strike, you're suddenly pro-union?--ed No. Just Anti-Lehane.] 5:50 P.M.

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New Clinton ad: "Hillary's mom lives with her." But does her husband? Mickey's Assignment Desk: Has anybody updated Patrick Healy's May, 2006 story and calculated the number of days Bill Clinton has spent in Hillary's Washington, D.C. house in the past year (now that it's been officially designated as the place where you live when you live "with" Hillary)? If you're going to flaunt your home life then people are entitled to examine your home life. ... Assigned to: Healy. Hillaryland already hates him. He might as well take all the flak. ... 5:19 P.M.

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The TV networks are screwing around with the already-absurd Iowa caucuses again, using an "entrance poll" of only 40 precincts (out of more than 3,500) that threatens to manufacture a misleading result. Ah, but it's all justified because of the valuable information the network poll will gather! Politico's Roger Simon reports

Though the actual questionnaire that will be handed to voters is a secret, Kathy Frankovic, the CBS News director of surveys, told me it would probably include 12 to15 multiple choice questions asking such things as when the voters decided on whom to support, how they feel about the Iraq war, whether they are in a labor union, their political philosophy (i.e., liberal, conservative, etc.), and age, income and level of education.

Armed with this information, a network analyst can say: "Obama got 53 percent of the anti-war vote, while Clinton got 47 percent of the labor vote and Edwards got 36 percent of those who made up their minds in the last two weeks."

a) I deny this information is that useful. If Obama wins, I bet he got most of the anti-war vote! I don't need an entrance poll to tell me; b) Network polling place surveys have a history of humiliating error. Ask Presidents Gore and Kerry; c) The information, even if accurate, is likely to be deceptive. If Obama does get 53 percent of the antiwar vote, that might mean antiwar voters shopped around and found Obama the most anti-war of the candidates. Or they might have liked his smile. They might even have liked Obama first, before thinking about the issues, and then become antiwar voters because that's what Obama talked about; d) Mainly these unenlightening little correlations let network news divisions fill time--because the real news (who won) comes at an inconveniently late hour and then only takes about 10 seconds to report; e) The conceit of the "caucuses" is that voters meet, argue with their neighbors, listen to speeches, and then vote. But the entrance poll records their preference before the arguing and speeches; f) Worse, the entrance poll results threaten to have a Heisenbergish outcome-distorting effect, since they may be known before the caucus votes are finished and will instantly flash on everyone's Blackberry, cell phone, etc.. If Obama is barely edging out Edwards in the (possibly inaccurate) entrance poll, with Hillary third, will Hillary order her supporters to switch over to Edwards in order to deny Obama a win? I don't think that's too far-fetched. ...

Backfill: The networks wouldn't have to resort to a questionable "entrance" poll if Iowans voted at normal hours using, say, easily-countable ballots. But that's not the Iowa way. For a preview of the state's near-identical vote problems from four years ago, see "The Four Votes of Iowa." Key point:

Iowa only gets its moment of cynosure, in other words, because its system is too f---ed up to be a primary.

If it were a straightforward "primary," after all, then it wouldn't be allowed to precede New Hampshire.

All this might be excusable if Iowa Dem caucusers had a long track record of sound judgment. Alas, ...

See also Saletan and Schiller, and Saletan's seminal article on the epic 1988 caucus debacle. ... 1:16 P.M. link

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Sunday, December 16, 2007

"Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster" When I read that NYT headline I thought the accompanying piece was going to document that the rich are not only getting richer, but they are getting richer faster than before. It wouldn't be surprising--sure seems that way to me. But there's nothing in David Cay Johnston's trademark semi-penetrable reporting that compares the increase in riches at the top in the most recent period against the increase in prior periods (except a GOP claim that the increase for 1992-1997 was the same as the increase from 2000-2005, which would seem to make the opposite point). ... In short, Johnston's actual story showed inequality increasing, but not accelerating. Clearly the rich had a very good 2005, though,and it's hard to believe 2006 will be worse. ... P.S.: Here are the CBO's year-to-year data since 1979 (see esp. Table 1C). Incomes at the top took a big hit between 2000 and 2001, and they had big increases the past two years. I leave it to the more graph-oriented to extract the trend Johnston failed to extract. ... Update: See,e.g., Jared Bernstein's effort. (he finds a greater increase in income inequality from 2003-2005 "than over any other two year period" since 1979.) ... But Luskin notes that the 90s saw a sustained increase in the income share of the top 1% ("to 20.8% of total income in 2000, from 14% in 1990"). It's not clear the 2000s will see the same sort of increase. So far, no. (After the "bad" years in the early part of the decade, the top 1% are now up to 21.2%, he says.) ...

**--not just faster than the poor, which is, as they say, old news.

Note to David Cay Johnston: All emails on the record! ... 11:54 P.M.

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Idle Minds Will Work for Free: First Kushell strike video, OK. Second Kushell strike video, excellent. ... P.S.: But what's Kevin Drum got to do with it? (I was paying close attention to the credits.) ... P.P.S.: The video is funnier than most TV comedies. It reportedly got 400,000 hits--more than many cable shows. It was put up on the Web by unpaid performers seemingly just for the hell of it (and maybe the exposure). Doesn't that sort of make Marc Andreesen and Rob Long's point about the tenuous positon of both Hollywood and the Writers Guild? ... It's as if the Linotype operators went on strike and decided to publish their story in four color offset!...10:36 P.M.

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I'm discounting all reports of a McCain surge that look like they might well come from Mike Murphy, the shrewd political observer who ran McCain's 2000 campaign and obviously likes his former client. That includes this report--and maybe this one too. On the other hand, Mark Steyn also blogs of a "detectable" McCain surge in N.H.. ... 11:10 A.M.

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Saturday, December 15, 2007

Obama goes after Edwards: Hillary's not even Obama's main rival anymore? ... 2:23 A.M.

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Friday, December 14, 2007

Huckabee and the Pence Scam: RCP's Tom Bevan wants to know how Huckabee can reconcile his righteous statments about compassion for the children of illegal immigrants ("[W]e are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did') with his tough new Minitueman-endorsed anti-illegal "attrition" plan. Here's one possible answer: Huckabee thinks he can square the circle with his support of the Pence Scam, which would require illegals to "touchback" in their home countries before letting them right back in again. It won't work because the Pence Scam is ...well, a scam. But I suspect it will beHuckabee's answer, if he has one at all.... Update: As predicted, Huckabee responds by declaring that"immigrants and their families here illegally would have to return to their home countries." But he's also said that in "days, maybe weeks" these people "could come back in the workforce"---jumping the queue of those waiting to come legally. In effect, amnesty with some travel requirements.. Bevan doesn't seem to recognize the Pence Scam when he sees it. Huckabee's obviously hoping GOP voters don't either.... 3:09 P.M.

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I attempt to defend the tri-modal model of scandal coverage against withering assault on bloggingheads here. Of course, I forgot the most important point--which is that when scuttlebutt is made public that serves an investigative function--sources are alerted and come forward, friends vouch, previously unkown emailers email, and you find out the truth faster than you would when professional journalists keep the good gossip to themselves. That includes finding out that a rumor is false. ...

P.S.: As the videos linked above eventually succeed in making clear, I think the easy-to-fabricate Huma innuendo is one of those false ones. I'd still argue (contra Klein) that if it's being used to smear Hillary in South Carolina it can be mentioned and assessed, but I'm not pushing it. (I'm pushing the Edwards rumor!).. 2:21 P.M.

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DC-centrism: Dana Milbank is "more powerful" than the editor of the Des Moines Register? I guess everyone in Des Moines should just give up. ... 11:07 A.M.

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Bob Wright boards the Anyone But Edwards bandwagon. ... and explains why. ...11:04 A.M.

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More reasons why the Iowa caucuses are a fraud:

1) In the Democratic caucuses, out-of-staters can sway the vote:

In each precinct, local officials will have a list of registered Democrats in that precinct. Those who show up and aren't on the list can register to vote by asserting that they live in the precinct and sign a voter registration form.

Technically, a campaign staffer who moved to Iowa a few months ago to work for a campaign is not breaking the law by attending a precinct caucus, even if the staffer plans to move on the morning of Jan. 4.

Why even stay "a few months"?

2) But in any case it's the network executives, not the actual caucusers, who may decide who comes in first. It's important to let everyone get to bed early, after all. Here's Howard Fineman on Edwards:

He could get pummeled by media dynamics. There will be exit polls on caucus night, but they will not be an accurate reflection of the final tallies of caucus delegates – the legally meaningful number – until later. Also, he is strongest in the small western towns, whose disproportionate influence in the delegate tallies (don't ask) won't show up in the exits. In other words, he could win but not get credit for it by the time the winners are declared.

9:55 A.M.

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Thursday, December 13, 2007

Even Mark Krikorian worries that "idiot politicians will overdo" the potent immigration issue "with "Listen, Jose, you're not coming in this time!" hyperbole.

The potential problem is not really the Hispanic vote, which is too small and diverse to be of much consequence in any case, but rather other Americans, who want the laws enforced and immigration reduced, but don't want to feel bad about themselves for wanting that.

I agree-- though, again, when it comes to detoxifying border-control rhetoric, I think I still prefer "no illegals, but more legals" to Krikorian's "fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome" approach. ... 11:30 P.M.

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I didn't realize the "shield" law passed by the Dem-controlled House applies only to professional journalists --i.e., those who disseminate news

for a substantial portion of the person's livelihood or for substantial financial gain

What's worse, inequality of income or inequality of rights? ... P.S.: "Substantial ... gain." At least they were precise!. .. [via Instapundit].10:50 P.M.

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Why are we running a BIO ad 19 days out!?!' That would be the complaint from the dissenters within the Hillary camp about this ad featuring Hillary's mother.. ... kf's line: Yes, it's a bio ad. And yes, Dorothy Rodham, seems a wee bit distanced, in a slightly elevated way, from the "other people's unfortunate circumstances" that Hillary is said to have "empathy" for. But at least she comes across as a real person, unlike her daughter. If she seems like someone who's led a comfortable, affluent, slightly snooty life--well, we know people like that! It helps us peg her and tether her, and indirectly her daughter, to a reality that's familiar even if it's not one we share. (As Lucianne says, "She had a mother?").

If you need a bio ad 19 days out you need a bio ad 19 days out. ... 2:27 P.M.

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Bloggingheads.tv launches alarmingly professional redesign. ... 1:51 P.M.

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Don't Tell Zell! The estimable Mark Blumenthal sorts through the myriad Iowa polls. Some have a "unique conception ... of the likely electorate." The L.A. Times' effort, in particular, does not come off well. ... 12:32 A.M.

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Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Hillary's Second Life Staff: Little did I know that the idea of a "backup" campaign staff is an idea that's been bubbling around in Hillaryland for at least a year. Obviously, current campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle is the main target--she holds that position mainly because Hillary knows she won't leak, I hear. She's now in charge in Iowa, which sets her up for the fall if Hillary should lose the state. .... I'm told there have been at least two unsuccessful coup attempts aimed at Solis Doyle--one by former Hillary chief of staff Maggie Williams, the second by strategists Carville and Begala. It wouldn't be surprising if the latter were available to step in as the white knights to save Hillary should what she calls the "best staff in the country" fail in the early going. ...Update: Knives out for chief strategist Mark Penn as well. "Campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson downplayed the dissent." But campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson "hates" Penn, I hear--and vice-versa. ... 8:03 P.M.

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"[T]heir friendship will never be the same. There is now a real distance between Burkle and the Clintons." I would be less skeptical of the severed-friendship part of HuffPo's story if it wasn't exactly what the Clintons would want to come out right about now. Unless Bill Clinton is a bigger fool than I think he is, he knew the complicated enterprise he was getting into when he got into business with Burkle, and he knew that at some point before the primaries he'd probably be well advised to officially distance himself, if only to avoid being associated with the behavior of every firm Burkle invested in. ... Or you'd think he would have realized, say, when this 2006 NYT story came out that Burkle's often-cacophonous life was something he got involved with at his own PR peril, no? Yet they were reported zipping around as recently as this August. ...

Update: Tom Edsall of HuffPo emails--

I guarantee that the story line was not the result of Clinton spin.

7:57 P.M.

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"Clinton readies New Hampshire 'firewall' to slow Obama post-Iowa" (AP): Some "firewall." ... 5:32 P.M.

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Polipundit rounds up yesterday's immigration-related news, including the LAT's winning entry in the contest to produce the most biased immigration poll in advance of last Sunday's GOP Univision debate. In the Times-Bloomberg poll, big majorities, from 54% to 76%, wanted to deny illegal immigrants drivers' licenses, food stamps and public schooling. A small 48-46 % plurality apparently even wanted to deny emergency medical services. Somehow the paper settled on the headline

1 in 3 would deny illegal immigrants social services

on the grounds that only 1 in 3 checked "no" to all the services. ... The poll's joint corporate press release was more accurately titled "Many would deny illegal immigrants basic social services." There must have been an Intervening Twit** before the actual newspaper hed was written. ... P.S.: Also, Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist appears to have fallen for the Pence scam! ...

**--as so often happens. ... 12:35 A.M.

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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Hillary pundit rebound? The smart, useful Ambinder/Todd National Journal ranking claims Hillary's still

ahead because there's a plausible scenario for her to win the nomination even if she loses Iowa and New Hampshire; that scenario does not exist for Obama.

I hope it doesn't involve winning South Carolina! ...

P.S.: Speaking of SouthCarolinawithitslargeAfricanAmericanpopulation, why couldn't Obama make a stand there if he comes close in Iowa and N.H.? ...

P.P.S.: The New York Observer's Steve Kornacki makes the more limited argument that if Hillary loses in Iowa she could restore her "halo of inevitability" in New Hampshire, where she's been "massaging the egos of local political leaders." But Doug Schoen, defending Hillary, claims she's actually already doing worse in New Hampshire than in Iowa. And anyone who remembers the Mondale/Hart race of 1984 won't put much stock on the egos of local political leaders. The mighty Mondale machine had massaged them into a state of near-arousal, but somehow actual New Hampshire voters swarmed to Hart. ... Anyway, given today's outlook, Hillary is well advised to drop the "halo of inevitability" and don the fur suit of the Energizer bunny candidate who will just keep going and going even if she, say, loses the first three primaries and the next three. Her strategists are presumably already thinking about such a long-haul comeback plan. ...

P.P.P.S.: One obvious comeback strategy would take to heart the lesson of the McCain campaign, which is that the press will give you a clean relaunch if you fire your existing, expensive campaign staff. But it's unlikely that this is the strategy Hillary's existing, expensive campaign staff will come up with. She needs a second staff! ... 4:44 P.M. link

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Today's video: Huckabee sucks up to the teachers' union. ... 11:54 P.M.

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Monday, December 10, 2007

The GOP's fake immigration tough guys: Mark Krikorian cracks Giuliani's code on immigration. It seems Giuliani wants to stop illegal immigrants at the border but resists "internal" enforcement--e.g., employer sanctions. I'm less gung ho about the need for "attrition" in the immigrant population than Krikorian is--but you do have to have "internal" enforcement to diminish the "jobs magnet," no? Unless, as Krikorian speculates regarding Giuliani, you only want control at the border as a political stunt to appease the 'yahoos' and pave the way for legalization. ....

P.S.: Meanwhile, Krikorian realizes that Huckabee--who theoretically based his seemingly tough, "prevent amnesty" proposal on a Krikorian article--has no idea what his own plan is actually about. In debate, Huckabee endorsed a version of the Pence "touchback" scam, which would allow existing illegals to jump the queue and become legal in "days, maybe weeks." ....

P.P.S.: Check out Huckabee ten days ago on This Week. He doesn't seem to have a tough-on-illegals bone in his body, whatever his ads or his overworked "issues" staff say in his name. ...

P.P.P.S.: Romney has just launched an ad attacking Huckabee as soft on illegal immigration. Huckabee is being defended by ... John McCain. Which is a little like being defended against a charge of marital infidelity by Bill Clinton. ... Update: Read Ryan Lizza's New Yorker piece to learn that McCain hasn't changed at all in either his support for "comprehensive" reform or his narcissistic righteousness on the issue.**

P.P.P.P.S.: Of course, we're not too sure about Romney either, on the anti- "amnesty" front. ... Of the top 5 GOP candidates, only Thompson appears not to be faking it. [He's an actor--ed. But not a good one]. ...

**--You won't learn much else from Lizza's article. It's ... not one of his best! A classic dumbed-down Remnick-era New Yorker piece--remedial reading for U.W.S. cocooners. Lizza skips over all the wonkish aspects of the immigration debate (like whether "comprehensive" reform will actually work) as if they have nothing to do with the politics, paints opponents as unfeeling racists, ignores well-publicized evidence (e.g., from Carville and Greenberg) that Democrats might have political problems from supporting legalization, falls for the recent Pew hype and generally fits the issue into a comfortable Civil Rights template (moral moderates vs. pathetic bigots). Did I mention that it's a bad piece? When E.J. Dionne offers a more nuanced, less moralistic view of the politics of immigration, you are in big trouble. ... 10:15 P.M. link

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Lehanian ethics: The New Republic quotes the Hollywood studio's new hired attack flack, who previously found work as spokesman against an obviously-doomed initiative designed to tinker with California's electoral votes:

"When they're refusing to say who's behind the initiative," says Chris Lehane, a consultant who handled communications for the countereffort, "the rules of the game are that you can make all sorts of allegations." [E.A.]

Who makes these "rules of the game"? Maybe if Lehane played by more appealing rules he'd win a few. ... 9:40 P.M.

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The Dog Ate My Sermons: Mike Huckabee wants credit for his work as a preacher** but doesn't seem to want to make public his preachings--his campaign says its "not able to accommodate" press requests" for his sermons, and a pastor's assistant at his Texarkana church tells Mother Jones

much of the archival material from Huckabee's tenure as pastor had been destroyed during a remodeling. The rest, she said, was not available to the press.

Hmm. These aren't exactly private documents. They're addresses to large groups. He's running for President. Seems like he should make them public. Could be a rich treasure trove of embarrassment! [Like your archives-ed I've been thinking of, you know, remodeling.] ...

**--See, e.g,, his December 2 Stephanopoulos interview ("I also have a record of being in the private sector, not only in small business, but being involved in the human work of touching people's lives from the cradle to the grave ..."). 2:02 P.M.

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School Me (a new feature in which I advertise areas in which I'm embarrassingly ignorant, in the hope that readers will fill me in faster than I could fill myself in by, say, making phone calls): Back in June, Ron Brownstein wrote that in California "liberal interests and labor unions ... hate the idea" of an "individual mandate" requiring everyone to buy health insurance. Does that "hate" hold true nationally? Is it grounded solely in the sentiment Brownstein alludes to--that "they consider it unfair to working families"? Or does it also have a more cynical, institutional grounding, namely unions' fear that an individual mandate would undermine employer-provided insurance and the role of unions in negotiating for that insurance? ... American labor has been relatively selfless, it seems to me, in lobbying for government programs (e.g. OSHA) that partially remove the very need for unions by providing directly, through government, what unions otherwise provide through collective bargaining. This would be an exception to that tradition. ...

Most important (for campaign purposes) does this mean that on the domestic policy issue where Obama is most conspicuously more "conservative" than Hillary Clinton, he's not telling voters "what they need to hear," good-government style, as advertised in his J-J speech--he's telling powerful liberal interests "what they want to hear," New Deal-hack style? ... 12:44 A.M.

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Sunday, December 9, 2007

I was relieved to see that Juan Cole's "Why Bush's Troop Surge Won't Save Iraq" doesn't say Bush's troop surge won't save Iraq. It says what you've heard before--that "there have been some relative gains in security recently," yet on the political front "Iraq is still beset with problems." It asks, "How much longer can Iraq limp along as a failing state before it really begins to collapse?--but doesn't try to give answers. ... "Iraq ... beset with problems" sounds a whole lot better than what we were looking at a year ago. ... P.S.: The June version of Cole's catastrophism ("Surging toward disaster in Iraq")--which foillowed a brief U.S. offensive in Baquba--declared that

the operation clearly committed the United States to one side in a civil war. ...

Which side? The Shiite side. "In practical terms, the U.S. military was helping a Shiite government and a Shiite security force impose itself on a majority Sunni population." Given what we now know about the Sunni-empowering aspects of the surge--including the Sunni "tribal Awakening Councils on the U.S. payroll"--that does not seem like an eerily prescient characterization of the surge's actual effect. ... 11:47 P.M.

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Saturday, December 8, 2007

Seasonal: kf 's perennial nominee for best rock Chrismas song. Only works loud. ... Update: That link now dead. Here's a video. ...[Thanks to C.M.] 6:47 P.M.

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Friday, December 7, 2007

Reminder: Back in January, the courageously incoherent Sen. Chuck Hagel called the "surge"

"the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out."

He got lots of glowing coverage. But whatever the surge is, it isn't that. ... Why mention this? In case anyone feels an urge to draft MSM favorite Hagel for president on the Unity'08 ticket. ... 1:36 P.M.

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I talk Hollywood right-wingers with the expressive and strangely compelling Rob Long. ... 1:24 P.M..

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Thursday, December 6, 2007

Hillary's supposed to be the experienced one who can handle foreign policy crises. Yet in the current campaign it's Hillary who seems panicked and Obama who projects calm. Just saying. ... Maybe this is how "running for president [became] a qualification for being President." ...11:52 P.M.

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Sell your studio stock: The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has hired Chris Lehane, according to Hollywood-writers-strike-must-read Nikki Finke. The producers' group apparently wants "to take a more aggressive approach in its public relations" (LAT's words). Lehane is the counterproductive overspinner whose "aggressive" approach made Al Gore, John Kerry and then Wes Clark president. He also helped California Gov. Gray Davis establish his political legacy in his recall contest against fading action star Arnold Schwarzenegger. ... Update: Radar has more on Lehane's magic touch. ... 4:14 P.M.. link

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The Pew Hispanic Center reports that between July 2006 and October 2007 Hispanic voters went from 49/28 Dem-Republican to 57/23--a net Democratic gain of 13 points. In an excellent bit of 'comes-at-a-time'-ism, Pew attributes the shift to Republican anti-comprehensivism:

This U-turn in Hispanic partisan allegiance trends comes at a time when the issue of illegal immigration has become an intense focus of national attention and debate

HuffPo's normally sophisticated Thomas Edsall makes the argument less 501-c-3-ishly: "GOP Driving Hispanics Away with Anti-Immigrant Push." The problem, of course, is that the Pew Center doesn't tell us how many points the Democrats gained among non-Hispanic voters, or all voters generally. These were not good months for the GOP, mainly because of Iraq.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that the immigration debate has hurt the GOP among Hispanics, but without any sort of control group it's impossible to tell how much. (Gallup, for example, has the Republicans losing about 5 points among all voters over the same period--suggesting that the real Hispanic immigration backlash amounted to 8 points net, not 13.) ...

Update: More to the point, Mark Blumenthal notes that Pew's own data

shows that leaned party identification (identifiers plus leaners) among all adults went from 47%-40% Democrat/Republican in July 2006 to 54%-36% in October 2007 -- a net Democratic gain of 11 points.

That would make the extra GOP downturn among Hispanics more like a mere 2%! But that would be hardly be worth writing a big report about. No wonder Pew didn't mention it. ...

P.S.: What are the chances that the Pew Hispanic Center is going to conclude that Hispanics are not important or distinctive--they're really just like everyone else and really not worth studying much? I'd say close to zero. The study would be more credible if it came from the Pew Hellenic Center. ... Update: Steve Sailer says I'm being unfair to Pew. ("Robert Suro and the others at the Pew Hispanic Center are willing to publicly state, for example, that the Hispanic vote isn't as big or powerful as the media typically assume."**) But this report, not written by Suro, seems pretty egregious--and it does hype Hispanic voting power.

More: The NYT swallows it whole, without bothering to ask whether "[g]ains made by Republicans ... in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004" haven't been "erased" for virtually all voters, not just Hispanics. ....

P.P.S.: If legalization is so important to Hispanics, why does John McCain--champion of "comprehensive" reform--only draw 10% support in Pew's Hispanic Republican sample? ...

**--Sailer's conclusion:

yes, the GOP may have lost 3 or 4 points among Hispanics on 2006 due to resistance to amnesty, but the size of the Hispanic vote is so small, that it's insignificant -- 5.8% times 4% = 0.23% -- compared to picking up votes (or at least not losing them) among the other 94% of the population.

3:32 P.M. link

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America's Petting Zoo of Faith! Does anyone else find the following paragraph in Mitt Romney's big religion speech just a wee bit condescending--a quick tour of America's religions offering each a little pat on the head:

"I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pent