Numbers 7/26

Obama now moves into a seven point lead nationally.



Currently, fivethirtyeight.com gives Obama 296 electoral votes, with the possibility of an Obama landslide at about 20%. Rasmussen gives Obama 210 electoral votes without "leaners".
Pollster.com gives Obama 284 EV.

Surprisingly, Obama is only behind by single digits in five Deep South states.
I'm not saying he can win those states, but considering that the GOP is essentially a regional Party these days, it really doesn't look good for the mid-terms. When a 15 point lead in Alabama is the strongest Southern showing for McCain, any sane Republican should start to worry.

McCain casts about regarding the surge

John McCain continues to flounder in his public remarks on his signature issue, Iraq.
Now he is claiming that the "Awakening" (Sahwa) was part of the surge, despite the undeniable facts from the U.S. military itself that the "Awakening" began about six months before Bush even proposed the surge.

“Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others,” Mr. McCain said. “And it began the Anbar Awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history."

Of course "that sheik", Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, was assassinated around the time Petraeus gave his September report. That's just a matter of history. Let's look at Bush's January '07 speech in which he proposed the surge:

Recently, local tribal leaders have begun to show their willingness to take on al Qaeda. And as a result, our commanders believe we have an opportunity to deal a serious blow to the terrorists. So I have given orders to increase American forces in Anbar Province by 4,000 troops.

Now does that sound as if the "Awakening" started before or after the surge was proposed? Bush gave orders in January 2007 to increase the troop levels by 4000 to support the "Awakening". The sheer gall of McCain's statements becomes apparent when one realises that the Administration (and the GOP) spent the first six months of 2007 stridently claiming that the surge had not even started yet. Though many considered the surge to have begun in mid-February, the Republicans shrieked that the surge would only begin when the troop levels were at "full-strength" in late July or early August 2007. Again and again, they repeated that Petraeus' September report was premature because the surge had only been in progress for two months.

Seemingly oblivious to his own previous talking points, McCain neatly re-defined the term "surge" as "a counter-insurgency campaign". If "the surge" and the "counter-insurgency strategy" are simply the same thing, then why did the Republicans deny that the surge did not really start until July '07? Why do we only hear of this new definition of the surge a year after the Republicans claim that it actually started?

“First of all, a surge is really a counterinsurgency strategy,” Mr. McCain said in Bethlehem, Pa. “And it’s made up of a number of components. And this counterinsurgency was initiated to some degree by Colonel MacFarland in Anbar Province, relatively on his own. And I visited with him in December of 2006. He had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in, and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counterinsurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is quote ‘the surge,’ part of the surge, would be, would be, successful.”
“So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to carry out this insurgency,” he said. “Prior to that they had been going into places, killing people or not killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counterinsurgency, the surge, entailed going in and clearing and holding, which Colonel MacFarland had already started doing. And then of course, later on, there were additional troops, and General Petraeus said that the surge would not have worked, and the Anbar Awakening would not have taken place, successfully, if they hadn’t had an increase in the number of troops.”

So there you have it. The surge is whatever McCain says it is. The invasion itself was 'clearly' part of the surge, since the surge nor the Anbar Awakening could have taken place without it. Bush's election was part of the surge. Perhaps McCain's own birth was part of the surge. To say that the surge, itself an increase in the number of troops, would not have worked without an increase in the number of troops sounds a bit silly, but here we are. Everything good is the result of the surge, whatever it is and whenever it happened.

Meanwhile, the Sahwa want more money...or else.

Prof. John Cole writes candidly regarding the "success":

The only evidence presented for the thesis that the "surge" "worked" is that Iraqi deaths from political violence have declined in recent months from all-time highs in the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007. (That apocalyptic violence was set off by the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra in February of 2006, which helped provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war.) What few political achievements are attributed to the troop escalation are too laughable to command real respect.

Proponents are awfully hard to pin down on what the "surge" consisted of or when it began. It seems to me to refer to the troop escalation that began in February, 2007. But now the technique of bribing Sunni Arab former insurgents to fight radical Sunni vigilantes is being rolled into the "surge" by politicians such as John McCain. But attempts to pay off the Sunnis to quiet down began months before the troop escalation and had a dramatic effect in al-Anbar Province long before any extra US troops were sent to al-Anbar (nor were very many extra troops ever sent there). I will disallow it. The "surge" is the troop escalation beginning winter of 2007. The bribing of insurgents to come into the cold could have been pursued without a significant troop escalation, and was.

Aside from defining what proponents mean by the "surge," all kinds of things are claimed for it that are not in evidence. The assertion depends on a possible logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. If event X comes after event Y, it is natural to suspect that Y caused X. But it would often be a false assumption. Thus, actress Sharon Stone alleged that the recent earthquake in China was caused by China's crackdown on Tibetan protesters. That is just superstition, and callous superstition at that. It is a good illustration, however, of the very logical fallacy to which I am referring.

Of course, McCain's claim that "casualties and deaths are at their lowest point" is also false.
McCain is not only wrong about that, either. He has been wrong, so very wrong, for a long time.
Cole sums it up:

Look, it is more important that McCain was consistently wrong. He was wrong about the desirability of going to war against Iraq. He was wrong about it being a cakewalk. He was wrong about there being WMD there. He was wrong about everything. And he was wrong about the troop escalation making things better. The casualty figures dropped in al-Anbar, where few extra US troops were ever sent. They dropped in Basra, from which the British withdrew. Something happened. Putting it all on 30,000 extra troops seems a stretch. And what about all the ethnic cleansing and displacing of persons that took place under the nose of the "surge?" McCain has been wrong about everything to do with Iraq. And he is boasting about his wisdom on it!

Our invasion and occupation of Iraq has removed Iran's greatest foe and increased the profile of Iran throughout the region. The majority Shia 'nation' of Iraq is far closer to Iran than it ever has been. Millions have fled this "success" to live in squalor. Over a hundred thousand Iraqis have died. The 18 Iraqi brigades that Bush was so confident would take over when he made in his speech in January '07 still have not materialised. Provincial elections are moving further away, not closer.

McCain continues to distort the issue of withdrawal "timetables" as well. Obama's 16 month timetable is considered 'surrender' because it is not based on "conditions on the ground".
Yes, surely we must believe that even if Iraq should somehow collapse, Obama will be looking at his watch, and when the 16 months are up he will pull out all of the troops regardless of the conditions on the ground. We believe that, right?
Does McCain have confidence in the surge or not? If so, then let's not worry about "timetables". If not, then all of his talk about "winning" is just froth. Maliki says 16 months is a reasonable timetable, and this whole ugly mess was supposed to be about "liberating" Iraqis and letting them "stand up". If we never make plans to leave, then we never will leave. McCain is now just stalling in hopes of getting some oil concessions out of this mess.

Republicans are merely talking to themselves in GE

There seem to be two main thrusts to the aimless campaign of Sen. McCain: security and patriotism.

The "patriotism" angle is nothing more than what the GOP has trotted out for the past five or so years. The term "patriotism" is re-defined to mean "unquestioning support for the Republican agenda", with the corresponding corollary being all Democrats are traitors. Ann Coulter even took the time to document this sad meme in her book "Treason". Unfortunately for Coulter and the GOP, the public isn't buying this concept. With Bush's approval rating sinking to a new low last month, this attempt to shame the public into support for Bush (and by extension, McCain) just hasn't paid off.
As one would expect, though, this approach works well on the Republican base, so the GOP considers it a winning strategy because they believe that the vast majority of the public really, truly, deep down agrees with them. That's why we see the wingnuts constantly employing terms such as "real Americans" or "true Americans" so often. They live in a bubble world where everything that is good is due to the Republicans, and everything that is bad is the fault of the Democrats. Meanwhile, the numbers of those self-identifying as Democrats has risen to record highs. It is a startling exercise in self-delusion that deserves to be dissected and analysed by the MSM after Obama wins, which means that it will probably be overlooked and ignored. With this "patriotism" meme, the GOP is graciously offering us all a chance to love America, which apparently is considered impossible to do if you are a Democrat.
So, faced with a choice between loving America and hating America, naturally (in the mind of the wingnut) the public will come down on the side of the GOP and make the requisite embrace of torture, huge tax cuts for the wealthy to spur investment that never seems to happen, police-state surveillance that would never be abused, hatred of immigrants, hatred of Muslims, ramming fundamentalist Christianity down our throats, endless wars which are vitally necessary and which we will most certainly 'win', and a belief that America can do no wrong.

The second thrust is that of "security", in which we are supposed to be simultaneously terrified and completely confident. Shadowy, ill-defined, and incredibly malicious 'terrorists' are constantly seeking to kill us in this meme. When they aren't, they are trying to force your daughter to wear a burqa or make us all bow down to Allah at gunpoint. Only the heroic Republicans can save us, because they see through these evil schemes and have the courage to do the nasty things that are needed to 'win'...at least in the mind of the wingnut. At the same time, all is well because we are constantly getting valuable intelligence from detainees at Guantanamo and we are 'winning' in Iraq, which somehow means that we are fighting "them" over there instead of fighting them here. By fighting sectarian militias struggling for dominance in Iraq, we somehow are crushing Al-Qaeda, which has become a generic enemy which can freely be employed to describe anyone who disagrees with us regardless if they are Sunni or Shia. Extensive warrantless wiretaps are allowing us to keep tabs on these shadowy evil-doers and thwart their schemes. Brave citizens are constantly keeping their vigilant eyes on any brown-skinned people, as well as any potential lighter-skinned Quislings among us. Fear not, America, the wingnuts are on the job.

As always, though, those nasty polls have a habit of countering the wingnut bubble world, which is why they are continually dismissed out of hand as "biased" - unless they support the wingnut meme, in which case they are crowed over as "proof".
In this case, Rasmussen (an organisation that I personally consider slightly leaning to the Right) has released new results showing that the seeds of the Republican "security" meme are unlikely to fall on very fertile ground in this election campaign. Note that Republicans seem to be ones most likely to buy the "we are safer today" line, while the independent voters (the ones that are supposed to be swinging to the "maverick" candidate) are not really lapping up this meme in any convincing numbers.
Further, the issue that McCain is most relying on to win over voters is the wonderful success in Iraq. This is a tough sell, however, when half the country thinks Iraq will go down in the history books as a failure. The figures for those who think Iraq will be considered a success are eerily similar to the approval numbers for the Decider. Who would ever have thought that?

Of course, the wingnut optimist would point to this and say that these results merely show the potential for the "fear meme". If we really don't think we are safer, then Republicans can beat the drum of fear and drive the voters to the Party that offers security. The trouble with this is, of course, that the Republicans are really only offering a continuation of the policies that have made only 39% think we are safer.

Full story from Rasmussen:

Just 39% of American voters think the nation is safer today than it was before the 9/11 attacks. A larger percentage (44%) disagree. Again, there are big partisan differences on this question. Seventy-percent (70%) of Republicans believe the nation is safer, while just 18% of Democrats agree. Just over a third (34%) of unaffiliated voters believe the country is safer today.

Voters are split on the situation in Iraq in terms of the near future. While 34% think the situation in Iraq will improve in the next six months, 32% believe it will get worse. Another 25% think things will stay about the same.

In the long-term, half of voters (50%) think the War in Iraq will be deemed a failure. Just 32% believe it will be go down in history as a success. Those numbers have changed little over the past month.

Okay, but just how big an issue is "security" for the voters? If the "patriotism" meme is more or less just Republicans talking to themselves, is the "security" meme likely to gain them more traction with public in general?
Rasmussen again:

However, 24% say that national security issues are most important. Among these voters, Republicans lead on the Generic Ballot 51% to 34%. Democrats also lead among the 11% who see domestic issues like Social Security and Health Care as most important. McCain leads among the 9% who say fiscal issues are tops and among the 6% whose primary interest is in cultural issues.

During Election 2004, more than 40% of voters consistently rated national security issues as most important and just one-in-four thought economic issues were the key voting issue.

And which issue is the most important to voters? Can that offer some kind of encouragement to the McCain campaign?

When it comes to issues, 41% of voters consider economic issues to be the highest priority. Among these voters, Democrats lead 59% to 25%.

Uh-oh.
These numbers support my contention that not only is the GOP living in the past and running on the winning issues of the last election, but also that the McCain general election campaign is little more than a primary campaign in which the Republicans are simply talking to themselves. Time and time again we see Fox News "analysts" looking back to the 2000 and 2004 elections and drawing conclusions from those days as if the 2006 elections never happened. The punditry class as a whole seems to similarly be living in 2004 and is basing their views on voters that simply do not exist in sufficient numbers for McCain to win on.

Thus far, very little of the attacks of the attacks the GOP has thrown at Obama have gained any traction at all: secret Muslim, secret Hindu, scary preacher, Rezko, Ayers, secret communist, traitor, scary wife, elitist, defeatist. The sole issue that has gained some traction is "inexperienced". Ironically, this is the only issue employed thus far that has a basis in truth, so the GOP has been somewhat slow in taking full advantage of it, since they seem to have a strong preference for slander. However, how experienced was the Decider in 2000? McCain has not held any executive office, either. And since all of McCain's 'experience' only leads him to be Bush's third term, how much value can be derived from it?

Military abandoning support for the GOP

Early last month, a commenter without a profile named Jason left the following:

If you think the military on the whole does not support their President, you are mistaken, and therefore attempts to characterize them as some poor captive audience that would surely speak up if they could are misguided.

The comment was in response to Bush's penchant for making speeches before military audiences, where anyone who booed him would be subject to severe punishment. March was the last time Bush made an appearance to anything but hand-picked or military audiences, when he was booed and jeered at the opening pitch of the Nationals game.
Now we see:

In its annual reader surveys, the Military Times specialist news group found Bush's approval rate among the military had plummeted from 60 percent in 2005 to just 48 percent in 2007.

Gosh, Jason, it sure seems like someone in the military might want to boo the President if they could get away with it.
Now we find out that the support for McCain among the military and their families is at most 50%. Late last year we found that that support for the Iraq effort was slipping within the military community as well. The Republicans are running a war hero whose campaign mentions his service and POW status every single day, and the military isn't buying it.

McCain has long had a "problem" with veterans groups for his stinginess on vet benefits. Backing the neocon vision of Eternal War hasn't helped win over military families, either. It's somewhat ironic that, while the wingnuts froth over "military service" and re-define the word "patriotism" to mean "complete support of the Republican agenda", more than half of those people actually serving would be considered unpatriotic by the Right because they don't support Bush, McCain, or the premise of the Iraq occupation. Thus we have a complete logical breakdown on the wingnut end: criticising the troops is unpatriotic, but the troops don't support Bush, so the troops are unpatriotic, but that is criticism, so the wingnuts are unpatriotic.

The neocons and wingnuts overplayed their hand years ago when they conflated dissent on the Iraq occupation to treason. Too many people knew too many dissenters whose patriotism was not in question for that to work. Now a strong majority says that Iraq was a mistake or not worth fighting for - in other words, unpatriotic traitors, America-haters, and defeatists. With that sorry gambit, the wingnuts lost the magic talismanic power of the word "traitor", much like the words "liberal", "appeaser", and "terrorist sympathiser" no longer elicit guaranteed rage from the public. Republicans, however, have not realised this because they know that such words work on them. Thus, the GOP will continue its bizarre effort to cast 60% of Americans as treasonous, while simultaneously imagining that these 'traitors' will vote for them. And they will continue to invoke 'the troops' in attempts to stifle dissent, even though half of those troops disagree with the GOP.

full story from AFP:

Iraq undercuts Republican support among military

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Five years into an unpopular war in Iraq, many US military voters are eschewing their traditional Republican ties to support Democrat Barack Obama for president against John McCain, observers say.
...
"I think now you're going to see -- not that it's going to be overwhelming -- but a back away from the Republican Party ... At least (the military vote will) be split this year rather than overwhelmingly Republican," said Korb, a deputy defense secretary under president Ronald Reagan.
He predicted that McCain, the 71-year-old Republican senator for Arizona, will get "at most half of the military votes," instead of the three-to-one ratio that Republican President George W. Bush won in 2004.
The main reason for the defection is the Iraq war, where 4,113 US troops have died since the 2003 invasion and for which the US government has come under fire even from the military, despite recent security improvements.
...
A Los Angeles Times survey of 1,467 people, including 631 soldiers, veterans and their families, in late 2007 found that 57 percent of military respondents believed the Iraq war was not worth fighting -- nearly the same as the overall population (60 percent).
Asked which party they trusted most to handle important issues, the military families chose Democrats over Republicans 39-35 percent, compared to a 39-31 percent ratio among the general population.

And clueless Republicans are still looking backward to 2000 and 2004 for confidence, even though things have changed radically for the GOP.

Qualifications?

Let's look at the comment by Gen. Wesley Clark that seems to have the wingnuts all up in arms and completely rabid:

CLARK: He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has travelled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn't a wartime squadron. He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come in and say, "I don't know whether we're going to be able to get this point through or not, do you want to take the risk, what about your reputation, how do we handle this publicly? He hasn't made those calls, Bob.

SCHIEFFER: Can I just interrupt you? I have to say, Barack Obama hasn't had any of these experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.

CLARK: I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.

What, exactly, is untrue about Clark's statement of opinion?
If "riding in a fighter plane and being shot down" really is a qualification to become President, then we have never had a qualified President, have we?
It's hard for me to see how the general is "attacking McCain's military service". McCain and his supporters have made a great deal about McCain's military service. Hillary even joined in with her "threshold for Commander in Chief" remark. Clark is merely stating that McCain's particular military service, however honourable, does not automatically make him qualified.

I have a very good friend who served in the Navy handling heavy construction equipment. Does this make him qualified to be President? If I say "no", am I attacking his service?
Just as it would be highly unlikely that a President would be called upon to handle heavy construction equipment, it would be highly unlikely that a President would be called upon to fly a fighter jet, even he or she weren't 70 years old. And Commander in Chief is only one of the roles the President has to play, as Clark pointed out. In the same interview, immediately previous to the remarks above, Clark specifically honoured McCain's service.

The real issue, however, is that one particular Party devoted itself to smearing a Presidential candidate's military record four years ago. One particular Party mocked that candidate's Purple Heart by handing out purple Band-Aids. One particular Party contended that non-combat service in the National Guard was far more honourable than another candidate's combat experience in the same war. How does this happen?

It happens because Republicans want us to believe that military service only matters if you are a Republican. They have no problem attacking a former four-star general who has been decorated by portraying him as a traitor and anti-military. It's perfectly "patriotic", in their view, to attack the military service of Gen. Wesley Clark, while simultaneously beating him up for putatively doing the exact same thing. This is not about military service. It's all about calling anyone who disagrees with you a traitor, and that is simply un-American.

But Obama hasn't served in the military? So what? McCain is one mentioning his time as a POW on an almost daily basis and having his surrogates tell us about how McCain's military service makes him the only qualified candidate. If Obama said that going to college in Hawaii made him the only qualified candidate, certainly the Republicans would question that premise. And would they be "attacking his educational achievements" if they did so? No, just the premise that this makes him uniquely qualified for executive office.

The President is more of a CEO than a military commander. Which candidate admits that he doesn't know how to use a computer? What corporation would hire a CEO with that lack of skills? Which candidate graduated near the bottom of his class? Shouldn't this be considered for qualification for such a position?

It’s crucially important that we have a political debate in this country that’s at least sophisticated enough to be able to handle the following rather basic idea: Arguing that a person’s record of military service is not a qualification for the presidency does not constitute “attacking” their military credentials; nor can it be described as invoking their military service against them, or as denying their record of war heroism.

Unfortunately, we have one particular Party that does not have much going for it on the issues, and that Party is relying on military service as a defining qualification. Nearly eight years of practical experience has shown us, however, that a President with military experience has made a complete disaster of the military efforts he engaged in. Thus, it's not particularly abstract to consider that "riding in a fighter plane" really doesn't provide you with any critical insights needed to wage a successful military effort. Experience has, indeed, validated General Clark's opinion.