This is too cool

Why McCain lost

Driving in to work this morning I turned on one of the wingnut AM stations and listened as they took calls about “What went wrong” and “Why McCain lost.”
The responses were unsurprisingly stupid. One woman blamed the “liberal media” and was incensed that some anchors on CNN appeared to be “giddy” after Obama won. She also blamed Oprah.
Another caller said the problem was that Obama simply looked better than McCain and was more attractive (i.e. Kennedy vs. Nixon).
One guy claimed that if McCain had come out strongly against the Wall Street bailout package he would have won. As if just being against something without offering an effective alternative would have been a winning campaign theme.

The answer is not that simple. McCain lost because he was weighted down by eight years of Republican policies that failed to achieve the things they were supposed to do. Let’s review the long list of Republican policy failures:
• Failed to capture Osama Bin Laden seven years after 9/11
• Launched unneccessary war in Iraq that has cost far more in blood and dollars than they claimed.
* Doubled the national debt to $10 trillion all while Republicans controlled both the Executive and Legislative branches.
* Tax cut policies failed to spur promised economic growth. After eight years of Republican economic policy, the economy is in a recession and Wall Street has collapsed in spectacular fashion.

There are countless other failures in the areas of education and healthcare, emergency services (Katrina), infrastructure and transportation, small business development and science research. In addition, there has been a plethora of corruption and cronyism that has tarred the government and damaged the public trust.
Things have been so screwed up by these Republican policies that there was really no way any Republican could win election in 2008. If Hillary had won the Democratic primary, she would now be our first woman president. Instead, Obama won and we now have our first African-American president.

Now that doesn’t mean that McCain could not have won. But it would have required Obama to run a bad campaign as opposed to McCain running a good one. I think as long as the Democrat ran a compentent campaign - and Obama’s was by all accounts nearly flawless - there was not much hope for a Republican in this race.
McCain might have done somewhat better had he chosen a different running mate, but I think ultimately he would have still lost regardless. Bush’s unpopularity was too big of a drag for any Republican candidate this year. And Bush was unpopular precisely because Republican policies failed so miserably throughout his two terms.

Election aftermath, elation and disappointments

I’m not sure how I feel about the election right now. I’m not shocked or surprised. I knew Obama was going to win, I even got pretty close with my predictions.
I think more than anything I am just relieved that it is over.
There were lots and lots of things to be happy and even giddy about....

Obama won Indiana!!
Ciro!!!
Kay Hagan defeats Liddy Dole!
Jean Shaheen ousts Sununununununu....
Udall times 2
Bexar County goes Blue, votes for Obama!!
Term limit extentions pass!!!

And there are the inevitable disappointments...

John Cornyn re-elected.
Nick Lampson loses.
Mitch McConnell doesn’t lose.
Homophobes pass anti-marriage referendums in several states.
Texas House remains in Republican hands.

But overall this was a great election and it isn’t even over yet.
I predicted that Obama would win 375 electoral votes to 163 for McCain. Right now it stands at 349 - 163 with two states still outstanding - North Carolina (leaning Obama) and Missouri (leaning McCain). If they both go to Obama, then it would match my prediction dead-on. However, if Missouri goes with McCain then they will lose their distinction of being the bellweather state that always seems to side with the winner in every election. LOSERS!!!!!

I may have been overly optimistic in my Senate predictions, although I haven’t been proved wrong yet. I said the Democrats would pick up eight seats and so far it looks like they might only get five. I knew that I was taking a risk going with Al Franken in Minnesota, but he is much closer than I had feared and will go into a runoff that won’t be decided for several more weeks. He’ll probably still lose.
And Jeff Merkley has been trailing Gordon Smith in Oregon although Atrios seems to think he might still pull it out.
Finally, probably the biggest shock of the evening is that Alaska appears to be ready to buck the polls and re-elect a convicted felon to the U.S. Senate. That would be a shame for Democrat Mark Begich who is clearly the better choice, but it would also be fitting for Republicans to have a convicted felon as their senior most member in the Senate. I figure that if he wins he will get expelled and then Sarah Palin will run for his seat.

Update
Jeff Merkley wins Senate seat in Oregon!
Obama wins North Carolina!

Yellow journalism

Here is the Doonesbury strip that the San Antonio Express-News was too scared to run...



Shocking, isn't it?

Winning isn't enough!

The Waiting is the hardest part...

Barack Obama is going to win. Of that, I have no doubt. What eats at me though is that I don’t want him to just win. I want him to kick some serious butt. I want this election to be a blowout like no one has ever seen. A Democratic tsunami that sweeps every Democrat within five points of polling margin to victory.
That’s a hard thing to set one’s hopes for, but I can’t help it. Every state that Obama does not win is going to eat at me. Every Democrat that falls short is going to sting for me. This is a no-brainer election year for me. The Republicans have royally screwed up the country to an incredible degree. And it is not just the incompentence of George W. Bush that is to blame, it is the Republican policies that he faithfully put into place and which John McCain is sworn to continue that have screwed things up for us.
The Republicans need a come-to-Jesus thrashing this election or they are never going to change and they will just continue down this path until it totally destroys this country as we know it.
My favorite Express-News columnist Jonathan Gurwitz had a piece on Saturday about A Conservative Reckoning in which he speculates on what went wrong for Republicans this election (he assumes McCain will lose big). Gurwitz’ problem is that he believes the only thing Republicans did wrong in office was to spend too much money (although he doesn’t think spending on Iraq is the problem) and allowed themselves to be corrupted by Washington lobbyists.
So if Obama wins, but not by a whopping margin, then people like Gurwitz will take solace that their ideas are still good and that it was just some character deficiences among some incumbent Republicans that made them lose this time around. They will advocate for redoubling efforts to push for the same economic and international policies that have been tearing the country apart and in four years they might be back stronger than ever.
I want to see them smashed now. I don’t want my country to have to go through even more economic misery and international crisis before people realize that the policies are wrong and not just the people.

And she voted for Obama....

Breaking news: 92-year-old takes ambulance to the polls

Determined to participate in a history-making election, 92-year-old Betty Owen rode in an ambulance to her polling place Tuesday and cast her ballot in a parking lot.

I was also glad to learn late last night that the residents of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire went overwhelmingly for Obama - the first time they have supported a Democrat since 1968.

Senate predictions

I predict that Democrats will pick up eight Senate seats tomorrow giving them effectively a filibuster-proof margin on most issues when moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter can be counted on to fill the gap.
The surest of sure things is in Virginia where there has never been any doubt that Democrat Mark Warner was going to sweep into office to replace the retiring Republican John Warner. Heck, John Warner has even endorsed Mark Warner over the hapless Republican opponent Jim Gilmore.
Next, the Udall cousins, Mark and Tom, are locks to take over open Republican senate seats in New Mexico (Domenici) and Colorado (Allard), while Democrat Jeane Shaheen looks like a sure thing to toss Republican John Sununu out in Blue New Hampshire.
Next, Democrat Mark Begich of Alaska had the good fortune to challenge Republican Ted Stevens just as he became a convicted felon.
Closer races are expected in Oregon where Democrat Jeff Merkely is trying to shake loose moderate Republican Gordon Smith (ironically also a Udall cousin) who has been desperately trying to attach himself to Obama’s coattails in the Northwest, and in North Carolina where Democrat Kay Hagan is poised to topple Republican Liddy Dole who recently resorted to one of the most despicable and pathetic attack ads in memory by trying to label her Sunday school teaching challenger as an atheist.
Finally, while Democrat Al Franken has run a very weak campaign in Minnesota, never attracting more than low-40s support in any polling, he still appears to be close to toppling Republican Norm Coleman whose campaign has collapsed in recent weeks along with support for McCain/Palin in general.
I think those eight races will go for the Democrats.

I am less optimistic about Georgia and Kentucky and even less still about Mississippi and Texas. While I would love to see Democrat Jim Martin cast out the despicable Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, it looks as if he may come up short. Same with Democrat Bruce Lunsford’s bid to unseat Republican Mitch McConnel in Kentucky. And Democrat Ronnie Musgrove seems to have lost traction sometime ago against Republican Roger Wicker in Mississippi.
And unless a miracle occurs on election day, Republican John Cornyn is likely to trounce Democrat Rick Noriega in the Lone Star State. Sigh.

Still, there is a lot here for Democrats to celebrate and we can always cross our fingers and hope for a 2006ish tidal wave that will sweep the Lunsfords, Martins and Noriegas into office the way it did Jon Tester, Jim Webb, Clair McCaskill and Sherrod Brown.

Censoring Doonesbury

The contempt that I feel, the utter disdain I have for my local newspaper - The San Antonio Express-News - just continues to grow each day.
Today, I learned that editorial page Editor Bruce Davidson has decided to ditch this week’s Doonesbury comics because they have a story line that predicts an Obama election victory. Here is Davidson in his own words:

Bruce Davidson, the Express-News Editorial Page editor, says Trudeau's "stunt was self-indulgent and reckless," and he's not going to use the Obama-wins strips. Here is how Davidson explains his decision:
"Trudeau's decision to declare Obama the winner created a number of problems for us. We had no way of knowing whether he would be right. We can't trust polls to be foolproof.
"Even if Trudeau turns out to be correct, we have (election night) production issues. What if the results are unclear at deadline time? We would have to decide whether to take the risk of being wrong. That kind of gambling is unacceptable for a newspaper."

Risk of being wrong?!?! Gambling?!?!? THIS IS A COMIC STRIP, YOU MORON!!!!!

My God. I don’t know if I can take this stupidity much longer. How asinine. How ridiculous. I really don’t know what else to say. Does Davidson really believe that his readers are as stupid as he apparently is? Does he really think people will wake up Wednesday morning and be mislead about who won the election based on a comic strip on the editorial page?

So they are going to publish old re-runs of Doonesbury this week, forcing readers to abandon the print media and go online to read the current strips.
In the meantime, they have no qualms whatsoever about publishing all the garbage that Mallard Fillmore spews forth on a daily basis. If Bruce Davidson feels the need to hold Doonesbury to such a high level of accuracy, why not the right-wing duck cartoon? Mallard Fillmore is filled with false and malicious garbage nearly every day and it gets published without question. Today, for example, the Mallard strip implies that all members of the mainstream media believe that people who will vote for McCain are racist. Is that what Bruce Davidson believes? I must assume as much since he allowed the strip to be published.

Happy Halloween!

Here is what my kids are wearing for Halloween.



A pink Zebra and a Panda Bear.
I'll be passing out treats and watching old Frankenstein movies.

Can Obama outperform in Texas?

Barack Obama is not trying to win in Texas. We have clearly been written off as a solid red McCain state, and I can’t much blame them. Texas hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since Jimmy Carter in 1976. I have no expectations that is going to change this year, especially with the campaign making no effort in this state. But I am curious how well Obama will do despite not trying. Will he do better than previous Democrats?
The high-water mark for a Democrat in Texas since 1980 was the 44 percent of the vote that Bill Clinton drew in 1996 during his successful re-election race against Bob Dole and Ross Perot. Every other Democrat has drawn less support as a percentage (I’m not sure about total votes). In 1980, Carter won 41 percent of the vote in Texas. Four years later, Walter Mondale set the low mark with just 36 percent of the vote. Hell, I didn’t even vote for Mondale that year.
In 1988, Michael Dukakis (with some help from Lloyd Bentsen) managed to get 43 percent of the Texan vote. Clinton took an unimpressive 37 percent his first time around in 1992 against Carpetbagger Bush and Ross Perot at the height of his popularity.
Since 2000, Democrats have been stuck at 38 percent which is what both Gore and Kerry polled against the former Governor of Texas.
But what about this year? There are no Texans on the ticket on either side for the first time since 1976, and the polling average for the state currently has Obama at 43.5 percent. So will he do better than Clinton in ‘96? What’s your guess?

Closing argument

This is sooooooo embarrassing...

Here is evidence that nearly a quarter of my fellow Texans are complete and utter morons.

When asked to identify Obama's religion, 45 percent of respondents accurately identified him as Protestant; however 23 percent erroneously identified him as Muslim.

Please, people, stop watching Fox News! You are making all the rest of us Texans look bad.

Beneath contempt

Yesterday Republicans launched two new attacks that were beneath contempt.
First, Sen. Liddy Dole, R-N.C., released an ad attacking her Democratic opponent Kay Hagan because a member of an atheist advocacy group was one of 40 sponsors of a fundraiser that she attended. The ad accuses Hagan of taking “Godless money” and goes so far as to have a voice impersonator make it sound like she says “There is no God.” at the end of the ad.
Kay Hagan is a Sunday school teacher and an elder in her church. The ad is despicable and Liddy Dole has disgraced herself by airing it.
But guilt by association is all the rage now on the Republican campaign trail and Sarah Palin tried to spook her audiences the other day by noting that while he was a professor at the University of Chicago, Barack Obama actually knew and had cordial relations with a MUSLIM!!!!! Shreeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!!!!!
I assume that the only acceptable thing that Obama could have done in that case would have been to spit in the guys face everytime he saw him. Apparently that is what Republicans do when they see a Muslim, assuming they dare to get that close. Most probably just point, screech “TERRORIST!!” and run for cover.

Update

SLAM!! Back atcha, Liddy!

Bitter and misleading attacks

Jonathan Gurwitz sure is bitter. Like most Republicans these days, he has given up on McCain/Palin winning the presidency. But he is still using his gold-plated soapbox on the Express-News editorial page to lash out at Barack Obama with unfair and misleading statements.

Here is the first example from today:

....recent events have broken Obama's way — amazingly, since Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress for the past two years, and Obama has been a Fannie Mae patron, while John McCain has been one of the few voices calling for reform.

First, Gurwitz acts like Democrats having control of the House and slim control of the Senate for the last two years means they and not the Republicans should be held responsible for the mess that Bush and the Republican policies have created. He knows better. The change in congressional leadership in 2006 has kept Republicans from putting any new policies in place, but it has not allowed for the reversal or elimination of any of the existing policies due to veto threats and filibusters.
Second, he knows full well that it is ridiculous to call Obama a “Fannie Mae patron” when it is McCain whose campaign staff is filled with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lobbyists (including Chief of Staff Rick Davis who was on Fannie’s payroll up until just a few months ago.)
And it just boggles the mind to hear him call McCain a voice for reform when his chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm, was the author of the bill that created the deregulation disaster to begin with.

Obama promises everything to everyone: entitlement reform and full benefits; spreading the wealth and a tax cut for all; a unilateral rewrite of treaties and free trade; gun ownership and a ban on handguns.

Like most rightwingers today, Gurwitz falls into the fallacy of treating everything like it is only black or white, all or nothing. You can have entitlement reform and maintain full benefits for those that need it. You can have a tax cut for most by rolling back the tax cuts for the wealthiest. You can rewrite treaties and still have free trade. You can have responsible gun ownership while supporting common sense restrictions that protect the public and law enforcement. All you need is someone in charge who doesn’t where ideological blinders and only sees the world in black or white.

Obama's meager record of legislative accomplishments, his non-existent record of bipartisanship and his lengthy record of working with and seeking the counsel of individuals and organizations far outside the American mainstream.

The Walter Annenberg Foundation is far outside the American mainstream!?!? Whatever.
Spew on, Jonathan. It’s all you have left.

Endorsement extravaganza

Barack Obama has been mopping the floor with John McCain when it comes to newspaper endorsements.
According to the latest tally from Editor & Publisher, Obama has been endorsed by 222 newspapers with total circulation of more than 20 million compared to just 93 newspaper endorsements for John McCain with circulations of just over 6 million.
Obama’s total includes 43 papers that have switched from endorsing Bush in 2004.

Four years ago I compiled a list of celebrity endorsements for the 2004 presidential race.
This time around Wikipedia has done the job for me with Obama supporters here and McCain supporters here.

Bonilla threatened government bank on behalf of swindler

In the Better Late Than Never category comes this Express-News story over the weekend about former Republican Congressman Henry Bonilla doing favors for some guy who was swindling a government-sponsored bank out of millions of dollars.

A San Antonio businessman, while defrauding a government bank of millions of dollars, convinced a member of Congress to help put pressure on the bank so it would speed up processing loans to his clients, a San Antonio Express-News investigation has found.

Then-Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio, intervened on behalf of Andrew Maxwell Parker, president of San Antonio Trade Group, in 2005 as the Export-Import Bank in Washington was growing suspicious of Parker's business.

Greater scrutiny had slowed the bank's backing of his clients' loans, so Parker wasn't making money.

Bonilla's letters to the Export-Import Bank, written at the behest of Parker, were followed by e-mails from one of Bonilla's staffers, Patrick L. Anderson. He left Bonilla's staff in November 2005, and by the next month Parker had paid him $20,000 to lobby for SATG.

The Export-Import Bank discovered many of his clients were defaulting on loans it had backed, forcing the taxpayer-funded agency to make good on them.

Officials also found Parker had manipulated information in the loan paperwork before submitting it. So the bank stopped or delayed considering applications involving his firm.

So the Ex-Im Bank was suspicious of this guy and was trying to back off on making loans to his clients who were defaulting on their loans and leaving the taxpayers to pick up the tab.

So what did Congressman Henry Bonilla do after jumping into the fray?

Parker complained to lawmakers, prompting Bonilla to propose a $7 million cut to the bank's budget in June 2005.

Unbelievable! The bank is trying its best to be a good steward with the taxpayers’ money, and Henry Bonilla, like some Mafia enforcer, is punishing them for it by trying to slash $7 million out of their budget.

And Bonilla was ENDORSED by the Express-News Editorial Board over Ciro Rodriguez while all this was going on.

Bonilla’s response to all of this? He doesn’t recall. Can’t remember a thing. Probably some low-level flunkies on his staff are to blame. Pass the buck. Whatever.

What a great public servant you were, Henry Bonilla! Thank you so much E-N Editorial Board for trying to foist this guy on us again and again.

Rivard: It's Not My Fault!

In his latest column, San Antonio Express-News Editor Robert Rivard blames the Publisher Tom Stephenson for the paper's ill considered endorsement of John McCain for president.
Already, the dopey decision has caused more than 40 people to cancel their subscriptions to the local newspaper - the only daily serving the 7th largest city in the U.S.
Rivard makes no excuses for the endorsement and only tries to distance himself and his news staff as far from the decision as possible, noting that the editorial board staff is not even in the same building as the newsroom. Heh! I'd want to shun them too.
I certainly do not condone people canceling their subscriptions, however. I think that is ultimately self-defeating and you end up with an even poorer newspaper that is unlikely to improve. What we need is more readers flooding the paper with letters and emails expressing their disdain for an editorial board that has continued to try and steer us off of every cliff that comes along at full speed. Rivard says the publisher is just conservative, but McCain/Palin/Bush/Cheney are not conservatives but radicals and wrongheaded to boot.
Spare us the excuses, Mr. Editor. I find it hard to believe that the top editor at the paper has absolutely no sway in the editorial direction of the newspaper. Someone needs to grab that steering wheel and put us back on the right path.

Obamacons

The list of Republicans and conservatives abandoning the GOP and throwing their support behind Barack Obama is growing steadily as this article in The Economist notes - The rise of the Obamacons and this earlier piece in The New Republic.

Here is my tally of Obamacons so far:

Colin Powell - former Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff for Reagan; Sect. of State for George W. Bush
Arne Carlson - Gov. of Minnesota ‘91-’99
Larry Hunter - former chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; helped devise Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” in 1994.
Richard Whalen - conservative author
Scott McClellan - former Press Secretary for W.
Bruce Bartlett - Domestic policy advisor to Reagan and Treasury official under Bush Sr.
Douglas Kmiec - Head of Office of Legal Counsel under Reagan and Bush Sr.
Lincoln Chafee - former Sen. from Rhode Island
Rita Hauser - Bush fundraiser and former member of Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Jim Leach - former Congressman from Iowa
Jim Whitaker - Mayor of Fairbanks, Alaska
Susan Eisenhower - Granddaughter of former president.
Christopher Buckley - son of William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review magazine.
William Weld - Gov. of Massachussetts ‘91-’97
Ken Adelman - foreign policy advisor to Reagan
Frances Fukuyama - neocon author and scholar
Michael Smerconish - Rightwing Radio host
Christopher Hitchens - Former leftist turned Clinton hater and Bush booster.
Charles Fried - Harvard Law professor and former Solicitor General for Reagan.
U.S. Rep. Wayne Gilchrest - R-Maryland
Linwood Holton - Governor of Virginia ‘70-’74
Andrew Sullivan - conservative blogger
David Friedman - son of Milton Friedman
Jeffrey Hart - senior editor of National Review and former Nixon/Reagan speech writer
Wick Allison - former publisher of National Review
Andrew Bacevich - Boston University professor

Update

Former U.S. Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., the first Vietnam Vet to serve in the Senate throws his support to Obama.

The Best Celebrity Endorsement Ever

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Update

Commenter Dervish is a musician who made this music video endorsing Obama. I think it’s pretty good. Check it out.

Bold presidential prediction time

We are still 12 days out from the election, but I’ve already cast my vote and there isn’t much more to do than make predictions.
So here goes my BOLD PREDICTION OF THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

(Drumroll, please)

Barack Obama will win!

OK, that was too easy. What states will he win? How many electoral votes will he get? Those are the hard questions.
So here goes my best guestimate on how the chips will fall on election night.

Obama will win all the Kerry states — Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, D.C., Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachussetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine — plus the following Bush states:

Iowa, New Mexcio, Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana.

There are recent polls that have show Obama with leads in West Virginia, North Dakota and Montana, and he seems to be catching up in Georgia. But I’m going to assume these are all outliers and will just fall short of switching to Obama on election night.
I might change my mind before the election, of course, but right now I think that is the safe bet.

The above scenario gives Obama 375 electoral votes to McCain’s 163.

I had held out hopes for West Virginia to switch back to the side of light and goodness this election, but a recent survey revealed that more than 40 percent of respondents still think Obama is a Muslim.
My God. It’s like these people are living in North Korea or something. How ignorant can you get?