-CNN just tried to make McCain the winner by fooling around with its map; they could not do it. (9:44)
-And there goes Ohio according to CNN. (9:34)
-Look, if these numbers hold, this is going to be a blowout. Leads in Ohio, in Florida, in North Carolina, damned close in Virginia, damned close in Ohio. (9:33)
-CNN calls Pennsylvania for Obama. People here boo - with no percent reporting? (8:42)
-The numbers everywhere are good right now. (8:36)
-Some people calling North Carolina’s Senate Race for Kay Hagan. (8:18)
-Some people are calling PA for Obama. Calm down. Calm Down! (8:11 PM)
-Obama up 300,000 in Florida. (8:04)
-Obama gets: Maine, Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois, DC, New Jersey and Connecticut. McCain gets Oklahoma and Tennessee. None of this is surprising. (8:00)
-Indiana’s numbers good for Obama; South Carolina for McCain. (7:57)
-Obama’s up 150,000 in Florida. (7:53 pm)
-CNN refusing to call Ohio, North Carolina…or West Virginia.
-North Carolina’s coming in five minutes.
-CNN’s hologram is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. Did they capture the technology from the first Star Wars movie to make this happen? The response from the gathered crowd at my house? “This is stupid.”
-CNN has Kentucky for McCain, Vermont for Obama. Marc Ambinder’s reporting better than expected numbers for Obama amongst working class whites.
Geez, he’s killing. He just announced that he understands that Sean Hannity’s fans probably don’t want to have a beer with him. He also acknowledged that his willingness to share his toys in kindergarten is also indicative of his socialist tendencies. His opponents continue to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the man and he parries, dodges, or thrusts. He’s taking nobody’s shit.
And that matters. I genuinely think that McCain supporters believed that all they’d have to do is slander the man and he’d back down like Democrats always did, and the minute he didn’t, his critics wilted. They continue to believe that they’ll find a magic bullet that will take Obama down, but if it hasn’t hit him by now, when will it?
Everybody else has probably posted the video above, but does John McCain have anybody that feels the same way about him? Some of my friends have accused me of being too aggressively supportive of Obama. Fair enough. But I can’t help thinking that his victory would be an awfully good thing…and that a McCain victory (which I’m fearing like hell) would be an awfully bad thing.
Go figure that Republicans are wailing about ACORN while simultaneously implementing policies designed to purge legitimate voters from the rolls in an attempt to keep Obama supporters from getting to vote. Of course, this is typical of the Republican Party, whose disinterest in voting has been apparent since at least 2000. Oh well - I’m sure I can expect more insistence that ACORN represents the real threat to American democracy.
How long before McCain supporters start claiming that this was an elaborate political stunt designed to gin up support? A day? Two days? Nothing’s been out of bounds so far, so why start being classy now?
Republicans have always been very, very clear about the following: there is one set of rules for all of us who don’t agree with them, and there is a radically different set of rules for themselves. There are two excellent examples floating around the internet right now.
Douthat’s Pathetic Take on Joe the Plumber
Graeme Frost was a 12-year-old child who was featured in advertising supporting the SCHIP program, which was basically a program designed to provide health insurance to children. Offended that a child would dare cross them, the conservative blogosphere investigated the Frost’s life, decided that the child didn’t need health insurance, and called the kid’s parents all sorts of names. Read about it here.
Cut to Joe the Plumber, a guy on a ropeline who asked Obama a question. The candidate’s answer, taken wildly out of context from the get go, lead John McCain to mention Joe the Plumber fifteen thousand times during the candidates’ final debate. So what does the left-wing blogosphere do? They give Joe the Plumber the Graeme Frost treatment. Ross Douthat finds that appalling.
“They’re totally different!” He argues. “Joe the Plumber didn’t volunteer like the boy did! He just asked a question! And even though John McCain’s at fault for bringing up twenty-six thousand times in one debate, he deserved better. Even though he was basking in the temporarily warm glow of the media spotlight. But more importantly, he supports a conservative candidate for office, so you can’t treat him as disrespectfully as my side treated the boy and his family! There are different rules for us!”
Douthat’s behavior is as shameless as it is predictable. (For real fun, go dig up Michelle Malkin’s destruction of Graeme followed by her first class hissy fit about Joe the Plumber.) Different rules. That’s what this comes down to. These people want to be able to slander, slam, criticize, unbraid, and eviscerate anybody they please, but expect to be left alone whenever they stray beyond reason. Different rules.
But there’s a better example of this Republican mindset:
John McCain’s Empty Soul
Remember the evil of the robocalls in South Carolina that suggest McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually the product of…dun, dun, DUN…a interracial fling he’d had? Remember how offensive it was that George W. Bush’s campaign would slime another candidate like that? Well forget whatever sympathy you had for McCain on that one, because his campaign, employing the same people who ran the robocalls against him, are doing precisely the same thing to Barack Obama.
It’s gotten so bad that Fox News - Fox News!!! - questioned the Senator’s behavior. Predictably, he punted, claiming that the questions his robocalls were asking voters to think about - like the we’re-not-quite-sure-we-need-to-think-about-this-some-more, “Barack Obama is a terrorist!” phonecall - is the sort of thing that voters need to know about. Seriously, here’s the transcript:
WALLACE: But Senator, back — if I may, back in 2000 when you were the target of robo calls, you called these hate calls and you said…
MCCAIN: They worked.
WALLACE: … and you said the following, “I promise you, I have never and will never have anything to do with that kind of political tactic.”
Now you’ve hired the same guy who did the robo calls against you to — reportedly, to do the robo calls against Obama and the Republican Senator Susan Collins, the co-chair of your campaign in Maine, has asked you to stop the robo calls. Will you do that?
MCCAIN: Of course not. These are legitimate and truthful, and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that — things that this is — this is dramatically different, and either you haven’t — didn’t see those things in 2000…
I went ahead and bolded part of that for you. You know why robocalls are tolerable to McCain now, but they weren’t in 2000? Because they’re working for him. He’s clawing his way back into the race, and if it means throwing away every shred of respectability he ever once had, it doesn’t bother him a bit.
Some people argue, including Douthat, that Obama supporters should stop whining, that everything’s fair in politics. But its only fair if both sides get to do it; whinging whenever its done to you while wholeheartedly embracing it when you’re doing it to the other guy is hypocrisy beyond all reason. There’s no reason to pretend otherwise.
Douthat meanwhile…he can pretend he’s different, but unless he starts facing up to his party’s worst instincts (like everything they’re busy doing right now) instead of blaming his opposition for them, he’s more of the same, in a somewhat younger frame. Big whoop.
“History shows us where unlimited amounts of money are in political campaigns, it leads to scandal,” McCain said…
Who says this guy isn’t classy? He just insinuated that Barack Obama is getting his money via illegal means. Between that and alleging that Obama’s trying to perpetrate the biggest fraud in American electoral history, what won’t this sad old man say? Absolutely pathetic. Everybody supporting this guy owes us an explanation for their support of this disgusting candidate and his pathetic attacks.
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