Needlenose

Thanks to Matt Yglesias yesterday for making the argument that my modest donations to John Edwards’ presidential campaign weren’t a total loss:

Repeatedly throughout his campaign, Edwards served as a useful progressive foil. He was never really up there with Clinton and Obama, but he was always close enough that they couldn’t simply ignore the possibility that his efforts to appeal to the base would work. So when Edwards unveiled his four point plan for achieving universal coverage—a plan based on exactly the pillars of ObamaCare—it made a huge difference and swiftly became the benchmark by which Clinton and Obama were judged. . . .

. . . The see-saw of the political expectations game is such that by the Spring of 2010 many people had convinced themselves that this approach to health care was a disappointing sellout. But back in the Spring of 2007, it was considered radical—a left-wing idea by the standards of a Democratic presidential primary. . . .

. . . Three years ago, few thought it was politically realistic. Tomorrow, it will be signed into law. But the whole thing easily could have never been taken up if not for the pressure Edwards put on others to shift in his direction.

The barrage of bullshit that has been the Republican-corporate-psychotic wingnut counterattack against the prospect of healthcare reform has many historical echoes, from the swift-boating of John Kerry to the “partisan spit” the same villains drowned Bill Clinton’s healthcare proposal with in 1994.

But maybe there are some lessons that can be drawn from the most recent parallel — the avalanche of lies, feigned outrages, and scurrilous rumors that John McCain’s campaign unleashed on Obama in last fall’s presidential race.

You remember that, right?  “Lipstick on a pig”?  TV ads insinuating that Obama wanted to teach sex education to kindergarten students?  In the end, it didn’t work, and Obama overcame an early September deficit in the polls to win the election.

Of course, some factors that helped then aren’t around now.  It’s unlikely that a major, unexpected event like the sudden economic collapse of late September will boost Obama’s political prospects now.  And he doesn’t have the advantage of running as an either-or choice against the increasingly implausible duo of John McCain and Sarah Palin.  (Whatever you may think of Obama’s first seven months, can you imagine having those two in the White House?)

But really, the main element that helped Obama survive last fall’s mudslinging was his ability to dominate the airwaves, thanks to his campaign’s enormous fundraising advantage.  Then, as now, you had random, stray fact-checks in the media that debunked the lies.  But the crucial multiplier was Team Obama’s ability to leverage those into hard-hitting ads that defined McCain far more vividly than the GOP’s smears did Obama… even as the Democratic campaign was protecting its own image with an equally heavy onslaught of positive commercials.

Is the famed “bully pulpit” of the Presidency going to be enough to replace that?  Obama’s campaign advertising enabled him to play good cop and bad cop at the same time.  We know he can still do the former; Obama has an almost limitless ability to present himself as reasonable and above the fray.  But how is his soft-spoken calm going to drown out the noise machine — and define and discredit them the way his campaign was able to do last fall?

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

In the New York Times on Monday, pollster Stan Greenberg bade farewell to the infamous “Reagan Democrats” of Macomb County in Michigan:

For more than 20 years, the non-college-educated white voters in Macomb County have been considered a “national political barometer,” as Ronald Brownstein of National Journal described them during the Democratic convention in August. After Ronald Reagan won the county by a 2-to-1 margin in 1984, Mr. Brownstein noted, I conducted focus groups that “found that these working-class whites interpreted Democratic calls for economic fairness as code for transfer payments to African-Americans.”

I’m sure that the oh-so-honorable McCain campaign had no awareness of this when they ran this ad in the final week of the presidential campaign:

It’s not much of a mystery what unspoken attitudes Team McCain was hoping to evoke with that “JUST LIKE YOU SUSPECTED” line, is it?

I wonder if Mr. “Country First” was sad on election night that the racist vote didn’t come through for him, that many of them finally realized there was something more important than skin color of when it came to presidential candidates.

Sorry Sarah, not only was there be no ‘talent portion‘ to the beauty contest, but there will be no consolation prize either.

Shame somebody hasn’t put together a ‘fantasy U.S. Cabinet’ game.  I’d really like to see:

Secretary of Defense: Wesley Clark

Secretary of Interior: Bill Richardson

Secretary of Health & Human Services: Howard Dean

Lots of other positions, including Treasury, Attorney General (Damn you, Spitzer!), Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, HUD, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veteran’s Affairs.

I’d just abolish the misbegotten “Homeland Security.”  Or at least give it a non-Nazi name, like “National Security” or something.  Nah, better just get rid of all those fuckers and any money we are wasting there.

What do all of youse think?

Shrubya is promising full cooperation for a smooth transition for Obama’s team.  I bet that means he and his staff are busy removing all the “Ws” from White House keyboards.  Say…all he really needs to do is just remove one “Dubya” and the nation will be happier.  Why do we need to wait until January?  He could just give 2 weeks notice and Obama could start as early as the 3rd week of November!  Now that would be something to be truly thankful for this Thanksgiving!

Poll analyst extraordinaire Nate Silver wrote on Monday:

It’s amazing how much convergence there has been in the national numbers over the past 24 hours. . . . Has the race settled down some?

Perhaps in some proverbial sense it has. But I also think that pollsters peek at one another’s results, and that there’s something of a herd mentality not to be the one who falls out of line. Remember, folks, it’s these final sets of national numbers that will go down on the record for all time’s sake. Remember also that a pollster has a lot of legitimate wiggle room for how they put their turnout models together. I’m not accusing anyone of anything in particular, but this is the time of year when a lot of pollsters might be tempted to put their fingers on the scale.

In case you’re wondering who Nate was pretending not to talk about, the TIPP poll sponsored by Investor’s Business Daily (an even further right-wing imitator of the Wall Street Journal) showed Barack Obama leading John McCain by a mere 2 points on Sunday, leading to much fantasizing among Republicans about a McCain comeback.

With the actual election closing in on Monday, though, the TIPP/IBD poll suddenly shifted aggressively toward Obama, who soared to a 7-point lead on the strength of its final-day sample and a lopsided “allocation” of undecided voters (2 to 1 in favor of Obama).  The final result brought TIPP into line with all of the other major pollsters, and thus was not embarrassingly far off from Tuesday’s actual voting.  Convenient, eh?

Kudos, by the way, to Silver for projecting the final popular vote within a tenth of a percentage point (52.3% Obama to 46.2% McCain, versus 52.4% to 46.3% in the not-quite-final tallies), and the Pew Research Center, which projected a 52-46 result two days in advance based on its (apparently more scientific) allocation of undecided voters.

The percentages aren’t final yet, but it looks like it’s a six-point spread with Obama beating McCain 52% to 46%. In terms of delegate count the current count stands at 349-163. If current trends hold, MO’s 11 delegates will go to McCain and NC’s 15 will go to Obama, for a total of 364-174 (for the record, on the DailyKos vote prediction contest, I pulled out of my ass predicted 365-173 — so suck on that Nostradamus!)

In the next few days, the talk will inevitably go to the nebulous concept of mandate. The Republicans, naturally, will be grasping at anything that can bring that into question (never mind the fact that Bush claimed one after beating Kerry by a mere 51%-48%). Since it’s hard to argue with the reality of population and delegate counts, we are certain to hear arbitrary metrics like the proportion of red vs. blue states (there are unconfirmed reports that Tom Brokaw was taking that one out for a spin this morning). This might have probably held more water four years ago:

But even that’s turned weak this time around:

Nevertheless, you can bet that the total land-mass argument will be trotted out, to which we submit this counterpoint:

In the article linked in the caption contest below, CNN reports on Sarah Palin’s trip home to vote:

Savoring her final solo appearance as a vice presidential candidate, Palin lingered for several minutes in front of local and national media, taking question after question despite multiple attempts by her staff to end the press conference. . .

An hour later . . . a local reporter asked the governor how she envisions her role in national politics if McCain loses the election. Palin did not hesitate to muse about a future that might not include being vice president come January.

“You know, if there is a role in national politics it won’t be so much partisan,” she said. “My efforts have always been here in the state of Alaska to get everybody to unite and work together and progress this state.”

“It would certainly be a uniter type of role,” she added.

Tonight is the first night of the Palin 2012 campaign, and in her typical hamfisted, buzzword-heavy style, she’s already beginning the image makeover I envisioned yesterday.

I wouldn’t be surprised if after spending the last two months evading impromptu TV interviews where she might be asked embarrassing questions about the issues, Palin is all over the airwaves tonight now that the subject will be something she cares more about — herself and her political future.

Update 1: (7:35 pm PT) Will Palin be the one who gives the formal concession announcement as McCain sulks silently in defeat?

Update 2: (8:35 pm PT) Okay, scratch that thought.