newsrackblog.com

This is about my last twelve hours or so of work — Monday evening and Election Day — for the Obama campaign in Virginia.  It may not be all that riveting to you, but it was a privilege to be a part of it, and to meet so many smart, hard-working people in such a short time.

I had canvassed twice in Leesburg, and it was my intent to rejoin the Leesburg office for final GOTV (”get out the vote”) work on Monday night and Tuesday.  While I assume that would have been welcome, I also needed a place to stay, and that proved difficult to arrange.  I had needed to leave quickly on Saturday; as I tried to recontact people at the Leesburg office on Sunday and Monday about where to go,  I came to suspect I was becoming more of a  problem for the people there than a potential asset for them.

I had rented a car for the occasion (I would need to drive straight from Virginia to Ohio for a funeral).  By Monday afternoon I’d resolved to book a Leesburg motel room as well and just show up at the Obama HQ there when I got a call from one Lynne Weil, who said she’d been given my name.  Having established that she wasn’t in Leesburg, Virginia but in the vicinity of Chantilly, that that didn’t matter to me, and that she had a place for me to stay, we agreed I’d arrive around 8.  But between a late start, traffic, and eventually needing to buy a Loudoun County map to find my way, I finally arrived at the address I was given around 9 pm.

Precinct/turf situation board, South Riding hub,
Chantilly, VA, night of 11/3/08
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew
Slideshow here.

Talamore Drive
Somewhat to my surprise, it really was just another single family home among many in a prosperous looking neighborhood — big, fairly new houses, usually several cars per driveway.  But the house turned out to have been all but handed over to the Obama campaign by its owner — the garage was a canvassing staging area, the kitchen had bowls of salad and multigallon coffee containers, the dining room was occupied by four or five people entering data on their laptops.  I had arrived between shifts, and stood to the side eating an unexpected dinner on a paper plate and listening in to low conversations in the living room about how urban or rural a given “turf” was, were there enough flashlights, when the door hanger work would start.

I got to talking with another volunteer clearly also waiting for work to do — and it turned out he was part of the Senate Foreign Relations committee staff.  We talked about Iran briefly; he seemed to approve of pressure on Iran on the basis of their past nuclear weapons work, and noted that a problem with the “MIT solution” is the fear of a breakout — the Iranians might work with an international uranium enrichment facility for a while, then appropriate the facility and/or the expertise gained and go back to nuclear weapons work on their own.  I suggested that no matter what, there will be the possibility of disappointment.  But I didn’t want to press things much further than that — we’d both come to do get out the vote work, not have a debate on Iran.

Around 11:30pm, that’s what we did.  I couldn’t even say where we went — he had the map and address list, I had the flashlight and the bundle of door hangers (”Obama / Warner”); we got into a process of me shining our flashlight on the mailboxes, confirming we were at or near the right spot, and jumping out to hang up the door hanger.  After jingle-jangling my way to a couple of doors, I emptied my spare change and car keys into the back seat.  I was forever braced for Rover the dog to start barking — and not sure what I would do –  but thankfully that didn’t happen.  The whole thing took maybe an hour and a half.

Read the rest of this entry »

“We’ve put about $45 billion into Iraq’s reconstruction . . . and they have not spent their own resources,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.). “They have got to have some skin in the game.”

–from paperwight’s brief post, “Rahm Emanuel: Soulless Shitheel.” Of course, minus the unfortunate mention of “skin”, this is not much different from Obama’s frequent mention of Iraqi surpluses on the campaign trail.

While Emanuel may or may not be a soulless shitheel, Robert Gates is definitely a narrow survivor of the Iran Contra scandal in the Reagan administration, when he served as a Deputy Director for Intelligence starting in 1982 and advancing to acting director in 1986.  From Chapter 16 of the FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL FOR IRAN/CONTRA MATTERS:

Gates consistently testified that he first heard on October 1, 1986, from the national intelligence officer who was closest to the Iran initiative, Charles E. Allen, that proceeds from the Iran arms sales may have been diverted to support the contras. Other evidence proves, however, that Gates received a report on the diversion during the summer of 1986 from DDI Richard Kerr. [...]Notwithstanding Independent Counsel’s disbelief of Gates, Independent Counsel was not confident that Kerr’s testimony, without the support of another witness to his conversation with Gates, would be enough to charge Gates with perjury or false statements for his testimony concerning the timing of his knowledge of the diversion. [...]

The evidence established that Gates was exposed to information about North’s connections to the private resupply operation that would have raised concern in the minds of most reasonable persons about the propriety of a Government officer having such an operational role. Fiers and Cannistraro believed that Gates was aware of North’s operational role. The question was whether there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Gates deliberately lied in denying knowledge of North’s operational activities. A case would have depended on the testimony of Poindexter. Fiers would not testify that he supplied Gates with the details of North’s activities. In the end, Independent Counsel concluded that the question was too close to justify the commitment of resources. There were stronger, equally important cases to be tried.

I mention these things because I’ve been hearing from well-informed people — and then finding ample support in news reports — that these two may be the chief of staff and continuing Secretary of Defense in an Obama administration, should Obama prevail on Tuesday.

Not surprisingly, Obama was not forthcoming when asked directly about Emanuel, saying only “I’m trying to win an election” and “David Plouffe is my chief of staff” (Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times).

One rationale for Gates is supposedly that unbroken chains of trusted command would remain in place as two wars are being waged — i.e., that top brass would be reassured that they wouldn’t be “switching horses in midstream,” as the saying goes.  But it seems to me like this is the movie every time a Democrat takes the White House — it is the president who must for some reason accommodate the Pentagon, rather than the other way around.  Clinton played the Republican card with William Cohen; it’s time the Democrats had a Democrat for Secretary of Defense.

Moreover, it would be nice to have one who hadn’t narrowly avoided prosecution for covering up actions that defied specific legislation against supplying terrorists (i.e., Contras) with weapons.  The United States is a country of three hundred million people; surely we can find someone else?

=====
NOTE: With all due dislike of Rahm Emanuel for his Iraq statement above in particular and his role in the failed Democratic opposition of the past two years in general, I don’t know why a headline should identify him as a “Prominent Jewish Congressman“; is FOX Network expanding its race-baiting beyond Hispanic- and Arab-Americans?

Lieberman’s Heartbreak
Copyright Zina Saunders 2008.
www.zinasaunders.com
Published here by permission of the artist.

Senator Joe Lieberman (”Lieberman for CT”-CT) is busy rowing away from the sinking McCain campaign as fast as his little arms will let him — but not without a few shots of his own at the burning wreckage.

On Saturday, the Hartford Courant’s Greg Pazniokas reported on a rather testy conference call between Lieberman and several Connecticut newspaper reporters.  Lieberman on Sarah Palin:

“She’s not going to have to be president from day one because McCain is going to be alive and well. I’ve been talking to actuaries and doctors,” Lieberman said. “He can be expected to live to his mid-80s and probably longer.”

When pressed about when she would be ready, Lieberman replied, “Well, let’s hope she never has to be ready.”

Right there with you on that one, Ace — and I know just how to make sure of it.  Lieberman also wants it known how deeply he respects Obama after all:

“When I go out, I say, ‘I have a lot of respect for Sen. Obama. He’s bright. He’s eloquent.’ Someday, I might even support him for president, but now in the midst of this series of crises, John McCain is simply so much better prepared that that’s who I am proud to support.” [...]

“[McCain] is ready to be our president at this very difficult time,” Lieberman said. “And Sen. Obama is not as ready. It’s as direct as that.”

(Emphasis added.) As the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg notes, that “not as ready” is pretty precious:

Google “lieberman obama ‘not ready’” if you need a few thousand samples of the unqualified way Joe talked about Barack’s readiness before the ship hit the iceberg.

Lieberman has a novel theory about why the campaign has turned so nasty in the last weeks:

“You guys are going down a road, you have contributed to the demeaning of our politics by this kind of focus,” Lieberman said. “I mean, give me a break. Have any of you been out listening to me?”

That’s the problem, Joe — we have.

McCain and Obama after their third debate, Hofstra University, 10/15/08.

The image comes via Jonathan Schwarz, who is kinder about it than I will be: “In any case, the point here really isn’t that John McCain is a ridiculous person. It’s that he’s a person, and hence ridiculous.” That’s true. I have no doubt if 100 photographers were snapping away at me for 15 minutes, they’d catch a ridiculous expression or five by the time it was over.

But it’s also true that this particular moment didn’t come out of nowhere; for me, the image captures and crystallizes a difference between the two men.

First, throughout the debate, McCain was fidgety; Obama was calm.  McCain was dismissive and derisive of incredibly inappropriate things, rolling his eyes when Obama mentioned the murders of labor leaders in Colombia, and sneering about a mother’s health as a valid reason for late term abortions.  He also would jump in to interrupt Obama frequently.  To me, Obama was more polite and, for lack of a better word, more mature than his elder rival.

Second, rolling the tape clarifies the moment a little.  McCain had (somewhat inexplicably) begun following Obama around the table to shake moderator Schieffer’s hand, even as Schieffer was continuing to move in the opposite direction, to meet McCain on his side of the table.  McCain caught himself, and executed an exaggerated, “look how loose I am,” …. what’s the word I’m looking for …. erratic doubletake to reverse course.  “Must attack” had been replaced by “must shake hands and appear friendly.”

The debates themselves are generally uninformative compared to reading the news, and generally disappointing in that even the preferred candidate often makes concessions to conventional wisdom and the putative “center” that I wish he or she wouldn’t.  (Still, here’s a transcript of the third one via the L.A. Times.) I sort of hate watching them in the same way I hate watching gymnastics or figure skating competitions: things can only go wrong, a stumble or a spill often determines the winner more than their best effort does.  I can’t even handle the second hand pressure of it all.

But the candidates need to be able to handle it; there will be tougher challenges than that in store for the winner.

And in an election that has a subtext about who’s ready for that 3 a.m. phone call, who’s the “steady hand at the tiller,” it seems to me that Obama has won that comparison by now — and by quite a margin.  The photo above isn’t necessarily evidence, but it is an apt symbol.

=====
UPDATE, 10/23: At lies.com, “>jbc goes into the goofy moment in more depth, and links to good commentary by Atlantic Monthly’s James Fallows.  Among jbc’s many good observations: “But in the contrast it makes with Obama’s much more serious tone, it really highlights a difference in temperament between the two. Obama takes this effort really seriously. McCain, on some level, not so much.”;

• Michigan: It’s still just based on “two Republicans,” no confirmation from the McCain/Palin camp, but Politico.com’s Jonathan Martin reports McCain pulling out of Michigan:
  

  McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.

• Virginia:  Greg Sargent of TPM Election Central forwards a copy of an ad now playing in southwest Virginia:
  

  A Virginia Democrat sends over a new radio spot that Obama is airing in the southern part of the state — it stars homegrown bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley vouching for Obama’s values and character to the tune of some banjo pickin’ in the background.
  

  
  Click To Play

  “Barack’ll cut taxes for everyday folks — not big business — so you’ll have a little more money in your pocket at the end of the year [...]

  I also know Barack is a good man. A father and devoted husband, he values personal responsibility and family first.”

• Lawrence of Arabia:
  

  “No prisoners.”
  “Damascus, Lawrence.”
  “No prisoners.”
  “Damascus, Lawrence. Go around, Lawrence.”
  [...Lawrence draws sword] “NO PRISONERS!”

  Metaphorically speaking, that is.

=====
UPDATE, 10/2: A Washington Post story (Scherer, Cohen) provides more details, including the sources being a “senior Republican official” and a “McCain campaign advisor”. Offices will remain in Michigan because leases are already signed.

I didn’t get to see the knockout blow by Obama last night I confess I’d been crossing my fingers for; instead, the debate was a vivid demonstration of how narrow the field of debate is, and/or how unwilling Obama is to run outside the hash marks and set up some of that change he’s been promising. Examples (debate transcript via the New York Times):

I actually believe that we need missile defense, because of Iran and North Korea and the potential for them to obtain or to launch nuclear weapons  [...]

Senator McCain is absolutely right that the violence has been reduced as a consequence of the extraordinary sacrifice of our troops and our military families.  [...]

And to countries like Georgia and the Ukraine, I think we have to insist that they are free to join NATO if they meet the requirements, and they should have a membership action plan immediately to start bringing them in.  [...]

[Iran has] gone from zero centrifuges to 4,000 centrifuges to develop a nuclear weapon.

To the contrary: if we’re ever hit by a nuclear weapon in the U.S., it will almost certainly arrive here not by missile, but in a container on a ship, truck, or train. The surge didn’t reduce violence, the successful conclusion to ethnic cleansing and al-Sadr’s decision to pocket his gains did. Fast-tracking Georgia into NATO is of less than no value to American interests compared to locking down loose nukes, something Obama said in the next breath was something he also wanted; he may have to choose. And while I seem to be the last person on the East Coast who remembers it, it was not one year ago that a National Intelligence Estimate stated, and I quote, “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.“

Even on Iraq, Obama couldn’t forebear to lead his criticisms with the observation that “We have weakened our capacity to project power around the world because we have viewed everything through this single lens,” as if our capacity to project power is itself the goal and point of American foreign policy.

I think Josh Marshall misses the point here: “I know that many Obama supporters are disappointed that he passed on various opportunities to deliver a smackdown that McCain couldn’t recover from. But having watched the guy for 18 months now, for better and worse, that’s not who he is.“  I realize that Obama is temperamentally not inclined to go for the jugular, and that may even be smart politics.  As hilzoy argued, his graciousness compared to McCain’s rudeness may be the dominant impression that many take away from the debate — something that burnishes his “bipartisan, get it done” credentials (not to mention his “not an angry old coot” credentials) much more than McCain’s.

The point wasn’t that Obama failed to smack McCain down, though I wish he had — say, on voting against the Webb G.I. bill, given McCain’s teary praise for vets.  (Bonus: would have got McCain mad, always good to watch for those just tuning in.)  No, it was actually and simply that he agreed on too much with McCain. As Jim Henley wrote after the debate:

As a symptom of the constriction of elite opinion, the debate was instructive less for the answers than even the questions. “Foreign policy” consists of wars and nothing but wars. It’s about whom you bomb or don’t, and whom you do or don’t convince to help you bomb someone.

The debate certainly also proved that there’s plenty of important stuff Obama is right about and McCain is wrong about.  But even if and when Obama wins this election, that will not be the end of all that’s wrong with our military and foreign policy.

Not all of that is Obama’s fault by any means.  Tonight, I saw a video by a group heretofore unknown to me: United Against Nuclear Iran.  It featured lots of ominous music, and repeated yet again the claim that Iran was building nuclear weapons. The video has one Richard Sokolsky talking about military measures as a way of stopping Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions. And while known neocons Fouad Ajami and James Woolsey were two of the talking heads involved, so were ex-Clintonistas Dennis Ross and Richard Holbrooke.

With all due skepticism about Joe Biden, at least he’s no Sarah Palin, who as far as I can tell has three and only three simple virtues: two X chromosomes, a pulse, and paleolithic political views.

She also appears to have the de rigeur Alaska scandal brewing — a kind of mini-Attorneygate featuring a state police officer she may have tried to improperly force a public safety commissioner to fire (the trooper was in the middle of a messy divorce with her sister). More will doubtless bubble up about this at Talking Points Memo in the days ahead.

A common point being made now is “there goes McCain’s argument about Obama’s lack of experience.” And that’s true enough.

But there’s a deeper, more damaging message Obama and Biden should hammer home mercilessly. It’s that the two leading candidates — after long, secret, and full deliberation — made diametrically opposite calls about who they would tap as their potential replacements: one chose a veteran, the other a tenderfoot. One chose conservatively, the other chose a news cycle bump. One chose to ensure and insure the future of the country, the other chose to risk it.

Biden may not be a “harbinger of change,” as I put it when his nomination was announced. But were he to succeed to the presidency because Obama were incapacitated or dead, people including myself would accept that he would have a good idea of who to talk to, what to say, and what to do. So would any number of other choices, of course, but Biden’s the one, and he’ll do on that score.

By contrast, to be brutally frank, I think about 90 percent of the country would immediately break out in an ice cold sweat if a Vice President Sarah Palin, 44, learned she was to be the next president of the United States.

Having insinuated over and over that Obama isn’t ready for the job, all of a sudden it’s McCain — not Obama — who has chosen to gamble the future of the United States on an unvetted unknown. And it’s McCain — who if elected would be the oldest President ever — who did this as a transparent campaign ploy.

It’s one thing to say Obama doesn’t have enough experience on the national and international stage, and that that matters more than judgment, temperament, and wisdom. Obama knows otherwise, but he also knew he had a responsibility to nominate someone both he and the country knew was a reasonable choice for the job of the Presidency in the event of his death — rather than pull some eccentric stunt to shake up the election campaign.

To put it another way: when they need it and can get it, grownups make different choices about life insurance than gamblers do. Same with vice presidential picks.

=====
SELECTED REACTIONS: Not too surprised Andrew Sullivan had similar thoughts; quite a bit more surprised that NRO’s David Frum and Rannesh Ponnuru share them, and share them publicly. Ezra Klein, watching the teevee, writes “The base may be happy, but the coverage here is reminiscent of nothing so much as the reception that greeted Harriet Miers.” That didn’t work out so well for Harriet, as I recall. Eagleton II?
EDIT, 8/30: “when they need it and can get it” added.

UPDATE, 9/2: Wow. When I said “unvetted” I meant by the country; now it looks like she was essentially unvetted by the McCain campaign. The New York Times’s Elizabeth Bumiller reports: “A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice.” Via hilzoy, who points out that means McCain isn’t just reckless with the country’s interests, he’s reckless with his own — making him an essentially unpredictable man. Talking Points Memo relays an Andrea Mitchell NBC report that more vetting is currently underway — days after the announcement — confirming an Alaska GOP rival’s report forwarded by John Cole.

Had to admit… no, glad to admit: damn, he’s good. Maybe I’ve missed it before, but Obama gave McCain and the Republican Party a bunch of richly deserved rhetorical punches in the nose I’d begun to think he was too noble to deliver.  From his speech (video here):

“John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to take a ten percent chance on change. [...]

Now, I don’t believe that Senator McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of Americans.  I just think he doesn’t know.  Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year?  How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans?  How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

It’s not because John McCain doesn’t care.  It’s because John McCain doesn’t get it.  [...]

“In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.  Well it’s time for them to own their failure.

And the long setup about the sacrifices his grandmother and mother made — followed by

I don’t know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine.

My satisfaction wasn’t completely undimmed.  On issues I’ve tracked, he still speaks of now being “the time to protect Social Security for future generations,” when it seems to me that issue is among the least pressing ones he needs to tackle.  While he spoke of Iran, at least he just spoke of “preventing” that country from getting nuclear weapons, which I suppose can be reconciled with our intelligence services’ best estimates that they’re already not trying to build any.  I wish he’d mentioned his opposition to torture as forcefully as Al Gore and Bill Richardson did in earlier speeches at the stadium.

But he remains an advocate of health care reform, and he remains committed to a time frame for getting out of Iraq.  And I’m relieved to see that he gets that he’s in a fight, that he knows what to do in that fight, and that he gets who he’s fighting for and who he’s fighting against.

For all that I focus on the text of his speech, though, it was seeing his family walk out on stage to thunderous applause when it finally sunk for me how far they’ve come, and maybe how far we’ve all come.  He always had my vote against John McCain.  Tonight, he earned back some less grudging support as well.

=====
SELECTED REACTIONS:

• eRobin (”fact-esque”) found plenty to be skeptical about, but her lede was still “My first impression, which is the one that matters most, was that this was the first time during the convention that I was able to suspend disbelief.    I heard “We are the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy” and I literally cheered.”
• Avedon Carol (”The Sideshow”): “That was pretty much the speech I’ve been saying he should give, and I believe he made some sales with it.”
• Jim Henley (”Unqualified Offerings”): “I thought Obama’s speech was effective politically, and I thought the schmaltzy intro video was even better. Whoever was in charge of picking out the stills and video clips had the eye of a genius. he/she/they did a masterful job of picking figure arrangements and body language that rebutted the “aloof, elitist” caricature.”
• Thomas Knapp, via Henley: “Make no mistake about it: Barack Obama isn’t running against John McCain, he’s running against George W. Bush. Tonight, he finally and firmly stood McCain next to Bush and stuck an “I’m With Stupid” t-shirt on him.”
• Roy Edroso (”alicublog”): “Everyone expected a strong speech from Obama, but its unexpected and best quality was confidence. He sold the package — traditional Democratic values with a dash of new-generation pizzazz — without any trace of doubt or apology, as if the Republicans hadn’t been going ahead of him for months, doing negative advance work.”
  

Sure, Biden voted for the Authorization of Military Force against Iraq. (So did Clinton, McCain, and Bayh.)

Sure, Biden voted against the Levin Amendment, the last, best hope to forestall that war vote and that war. (So did Clinton, McCain, and Bayh.)

Sure, Biden cast both of these votes even though he allegedly did read the 2002 Iraq National Intelligence Estimate. (Bayh and Feinstein were the only other Democrats to pull off this particular stupid trifecta.)

Sure, he voted for the Bankruptcy Bill. (So did Bayh and McCain; Obama voted against it, Clinton wasn’t there –her husband was sick, if I recall correctly.) Sure, he voted for the Patriot Act — who didn’t?

But in fairness, he also voted against the Military Commissions Act. (So did Obama, Bayh, and Clinton, while McCain voted for it.) He voted against the FISA Amendment Act. (So did Clinton. Obama, Bayh, and McCain all voted for it.) He voted against ending debate on the Alito nomination. (So did Clinton, Obama, and Bayh).

And by my admittedly subjective scoring, Biden had the best presidential powers survey score of all the candidates at the time. I gave him slightly better scores than Obama on questions on executive privilege and signing statements, because I think I found them to be briefer(!), more definitive answers. In retrospect, Obama’s curiously passive answer to the warrantless wiretap question (”The Supreme Court has never held that the President has such powers”) should have got him a lower score than Biden’s on this question as well.

So Biden has gotten some big issues wrong that Obama got right, and at least one right — the FISA Amendment Act — that Obama got wrong. Biden may also be a bit more of a voice for reining in the executive branch. On the other hand, his views on the matter won’t be as important as Obama’s — and they may melt away he’s part of that branch, just as Obama’s may have once he was in hailing distance.

Visually and by resume, he’s not exactly a harbinger of change to believe in. But it could have been worse. And at least Delaware’s 3 electoral votes are now all but guaranteed this November.

=====
SELECTED REACTIONS, 08/24:

• Radley Balko (”The Agitator”), libertarian — disappointed, points to Biden’s support for key measures in the “war on drugs,” the Iraq war (initially), for interventionism generally (Kosovo, Darfur), and for expanding the list of death penalty offenses. “He’s an overly ambitious, elitist, tunnel-visioned, Potomac-fevered Beltway dinosaur, with all the trappings. He may well have been the worst possible pick among congressional Democrats when it comes to the drug war and criminal justice.” (Via Jim Henley, who reports that on the other hand, Biden has an 82% ACLU rating.)
• Bill Day (”Web Undone”), – “Biden has a reputation as a street fighter; and we need a bruiser to sink the Swift Boaters. Hopefully, Biden will not sink himself first.”
• Mick Arran (”fact-esque”) – “So Biden is a corporate slug. What’s important, as all the papers bleated in unison today, is that Biden has foreign policy experience.”
• Andrew Sullivan — “…suggests a serious, adult attitude toward the enormous burden that the next presidency will be, especially in foreign policy.”
• Ezra Klein: “They needed an arguer. Someone able to make the case that the other guy is wrong, and Obama is right. That’s, fundamentally, what Biden represents. Biden doesn’t presuppose belief. He’s a persuader. [...] For progressives, this is encouraging pick. More encouraging than Bayh, or Kaine, or even, in a way, Sebelius. More encouraging than picks who might have been more progressive, but less pugnacious. Elevating Biden suggests that the Obama campaign has decided to have an argument.”

Dear Senator Obama, I realize we Internet folks have been asking you NOT to do a lot of stuff. Please don’t vote for telecom immunity. Please don’t make Evan Bayh your VP. Nag, nag, nag… right?

Well, this time we’d like to ask you TO do something. There’s a great independent ad up on youtube, you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBfngOsvmA0

We think your campaign should get behind it, and buy it some air time on TV! Its a great ad on its own merits, and it would show that you understand the power of user-created media.

So please, Senator, get behind this ad.

(Text and ad via the facebook group named, appropriately enough, “Hey Senator Obama! Why not buy some airtime for this great ad?”)