Lies, condemnations, and shame

Today, Israel's invasion of Gaza was condemned by Qatar, Turkey, and Mauritania.
Qatar and Turkey host large American military bases, while Mauritania is one of very few Arab League nations that have chosen to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco are all under heavy domestic pressure to back away from Israel.

story from The Daily Star:

Erdogan blames Israel, Hamad charges 'war crime' and Mauritania pulls envoy
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Compiled by Daily Star staff
Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Regional leaders have stepped up their criticism of Israel's blistering assault on the Gaza Strip, as Mauritania withdrew its ambassador to the Zionist state in protest and Turkey's premier accused Israel of provoking the outbreak of fighting. For its part, Qatar continued to push for an emergency Arab summit over the Gaza attacks, which the nation's emir described as a "war crime."

"The Israeli aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip is a war crime," Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said late Sunday in a televised address. He also renewed an earlier call on fellow Arab leaders to hold an extraordinary summit in support of Gaza.

"The mobilization on the Arab street and several peace movements in the world have proven that this is the least the people expect from us. I believed and still do that we can do something," the emir said.

Sheikh Hamad said that "calls for a mutual cease-fire treat the culprit and the victim as equal and justify the aggression."

Mauritania, one of only three Arab League countries that has full diplomatic ties with Israel, has withdrawn its ambassador in protest over the Gaza offensive, a Foreign Ministry source said on Monday.

Since Israel's offensive in Gaza started 10 days ago, Mauritania has seen daily protests, mostly from students who demanded that Nouakchott break all ties with the country.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday blamed Israel for the ongoing conflict in the battered Gaza Strip, saying it "provoked" the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the enclave.

The premier noted that Israel had continued a stifling blockade on Gaza despite pledging to lift it under the terms of an Egyptian-mediated truce, which Hamas had complied with by reining in fighters launching rockets into Israel.

Erdogan told Al-Jazeera: "A return to the situation before the truce happened because Israel continued the blockade, so I consider Israel the one which provoked and incited, not Hamas." - AFP, with The Daily Star

And for what? Apparently to remove Hamas from power. From The Guardian:

Livni's determination reflects a growing confidence in the upper echelons of the Israeli establishment that the assault will fatally damage the foundations of Hamas's control and, in time, drive it from power. Intelligence and military officials have told the cabinet that "not much" remains of the Hamas administration in Gaza and that its ability to take control again has been undermined by the destruction of a large part of the physical infrastructure of administration, including the parliament building and many government offices.
The intelligence services also told the cabinet that they believe the Israeli bombardment is turning Palestinian popular opinion against Hamas and that terms can be forced on the Islamist party that will further weaken its control.
Israeli officials have generally been reluctant to say that the attack on Gaza is intended to force Hamas from power out of concern that it would undermine the international support they have won by portraying the assault as a purely defensive measure to stop Hamas rockets.

So, much like the strategy the U.S.-sponsored "contras" employed in Nicaragua, the idea is to make life so abysmally miserable and the task governing so impossible that a "good" government takes over. We also see the Israeli government is employing sham justifications for public consumption, while promoting a hidden agenda that their allies would be ashamed to support.

Looking back, looking forward

As I see it, this year the bottomless arrogance of the Republican Party was tested and came up wanting.

The Party selected McCain as a candidate in an attempt to win over the centre. Of all the possible nominees, McCain was the one who least represented Republican "core values" and had even made a nominal reputation opposing his own Party. It was a fairly smart move on the part of the Party to distance itself from Bush.

From there, it all went wrong.

The Party pushed McCain to the right, forced 'advisers' on him who were really little more than smear artists, and turned their man into the "anti-Obama" rather than a candidate with superior policies and qualifications. Resting on their laurels, they utterly failed to create state organising efforts or conduct voter registration drives in the period between McCain's nomination and Obama's nomination. Chronically behind in polling, the Party then selected Palin in a horribly misguided belief that women will vote for another woman regardless of their policy positions. And thus, any hope of winning over the centre was lost.

Beyond that, the Party arrogantly took for granted that any state that voted for Bush in 2004 would do so again. By "energising their base", the McCain campaign further repelled the centre. To seal their fate, they then pinned all their hopes on racism.

Now they are left with a Party firmly convinced that the new President is a Muslim radical with a secret agenda, bent on destroying America. Early indications seem to be that the Party intends to move further right, and deeper into the artificial reality created by their media voices. With no capacity for self-reflection (that's for wimps and those who don't understand God's Will), they once again arrogantly believe their own spin. And even more importantly, they believe that the vast majority of the country also believes it. This is not the path back to power.

We still have the same punditry that cheered on the McCain campaign and dutifully passed on all of the Republican smears as truth. In 2009, we can continue to count on the pundits to wring their hands in public over Obama's "excessive liberalism", to second guess every decision, and to constantly point to signs of Obama's "fading popularity". Any policies that do not come straight from the wingnut realm will be portrayed as "divisive". The economy will not improve overnight, and most people realise this. The majority also see that what passed for a "plan" from the Republicans will only make things worse.

The Republican Party lacks the ability to win the electorate over to their side, but they have the ability to make Obama look unpopular. We have to keep asking where the Marxist hell that these people predicted would emerge from Obama's election is. We have to keep making clear what the Republicans would do if they were in office. And we have to stand up to those who insist that not continuing Bush's policies is "divisive".

Republican post-mortem

Well, here we are, post-election and nearly post-holidays.
Apparently the nation has "been defeated", as McCain put it before it the election. Socialism is now to be the order of the day, if the weak and desperate spin of the McCain campaign is to be believed. Let's pause to look back at what the Republicans offered to the nation in their defeated effort.

They offered FEAR, and lots of it. Obama has something to hide, and "questions remain". The "questions" were, of course, answered, but the Republicans simply didn't like the answers or didn't believe them. Thus, these 'questions' remained. And there never really was any way to "answer" these so-called 'questions', because they weren't really questions at all; they were slanders designed to induce vague doubts that could not be proven or really disproved. All that was clear was that Republicans were completely convinced that Obama was some kind of Marxist radical who had a diabolical (but absolutely vague) scheme to destroy America. There was no evidence, merely associations backed up by an incredible amount of exaggeration, speculation, and wild leaps of logic. Republicans believed in the validity of these 'questions', largely because other Republicans believed in their validity, and that was good enough for them.

One of the biggest (and stupidest) gambles the Republicans made in the election was in believing that their Party still had credibility. Thus, if the Republicans said Obama was a Marxist radical bent on destroying America, then the electorate would believe it. The Republicans had spent so much time in their echo chamber, isolated from the rest of the world, that they had really come to believe that those outside of their artificial world agreed with them. Anyone outside of the bubble could have seen that the Republicans stopped trying to persuade anyone over to their beliefs years ago. Instead, they wrote off the non-Republicans as some tiny core of "far-leftists" who were universally despised as traitors, defeatists, and degenerates. Their messages were drenched in circular logic and the premises of those messages were only accepted by the "faithful". Apparently, everyone "knew" that the typical Democrat really longed for a Soviet-style state, cheered on terrorists, and rejoiced at our nation's every troop casualty. On top of this, the typical Democrat was "known" to have no "values", and they celebrated every abortion, engaged in promiscuous and dangerous sexual acts, were addicted to hard drugs, and would probably kill you if you didn't have several guns already.

Thus, it was inconceivable to the typical Republican that Americans would embrace a Democratic candidate. It was "obvious" that the Democratic party stood for Satanism, Stalinism, and the Sixties. The Republicans merely had to point this out, and McCain was guaranteed to win.

The truth is that Republican credibility suffered a mortal blow in 2005, and never really recovered. Katrina showed the inept and incompetent Administration lackeys, who were given jobs solely based on loyalty and their ability to parrot talking points. As Iraq became a quagmire, the Decider made wildly upbeat and optimistic statements on an almost daily basis, backed up by his Party. Expressing doubt or scepticism was clearly a sign that one was a traitor or a terrorist sympathiser who wanted America to "lose". The nation saw a Party that not only demanded blind obedience and faith, but that also put on a bizarre Tinkerbell-like performance: if we all clap loud enough and believe in the Decider, then we will win the War On Terror. In general, the nation saw an Administration that chose the outcome it wanted and then believed that the outcome was guaranteed simply because they envisioned it, with facts and arms twisted to conform with that vision. The economy began a slow slide that ended with a sharp drop off the cliff just before the election, and the Republicans continued their sunny, logically-deficient optimism until it was far too late to back-pedal.

And yet they still believed that they had credibility.

The GOP had essentially turned itself into a religion instead of a political organisation. They were the Believers, in more ways than one. No dissent was tolerated, for that would be a sign of Doubt. If one did not believe, completely and blindly, in the Party, then one did not believe in America and one wished for the nation's demise. Just as fundamentalist Christians dismiss all other religions as cults, idol-worshipping, or just a variation of good old-fashioned Satanism, so too did the Party set up a false dichotomy in the political arena. There were only Patriots and Communists, and the only way to be a good Patriot was to be a good Republican. To believe otherwise was contrary to the "religion", and since the majority of Americans did not want to see the country destroyed, then they would surely vote Republican.

This is why we see the promulgation of the "centre-right country" myth. It is a feeble and desperate attempt on the Republicans' part to preserve their "religion". The country still believes in everything that the Party believes in, per this myth, but the electorate failed to cast their votes for the Party. Thus, if a Marxist hell is avoided, it will be because the electorate firmly believes in the Republicans' ideals, not due to anything that the Obama Administration does or does not do. If Christians are not persecuted and hunted down, it will be because the vast majority believe in the GOP and will not permit the Democrats to carry out their Satanic schemes. And so forth and so on. The religion of the Republican party is thus preserved among the Faithful.

Aside from ramming fundamentalist Christianity down the nation's collective throats, what else did the Republicans offer in the McCain campaign?

War, and lots of it. There are always unfortunate situations that require military action, especially when this is the only permissible tool in the policy toolbox. Thus, the only way to be safe is to bankrupt our economy in more quagmires, which we can never disengage from lest it be seen as a sign of weakness. To do anything less is the equivalent of lining up our nation's children and shooting them - which is probably one of the Obama Administration's secret plans, anyway.

Police-state powers, and lots of them - to preserve our freedom, of course. Total, absolute secrecy is regrettably required, because the "terrorists might be listening". Scapegoats must be created and identified, with guilt presumed beforehand. Some will not confess immediately, in order to make our leaders look bad, but eventually it will become clear that we were right all along to suspect them if we are allowed to "take the gloves off". Who really knows what torture is, anyway? The Party with blinding moral clarity and simplistic answers at the ready is oddly philosophical here, isn't it? Suddenly, "moral relativism" can be embraced in this situation.

So we have fear, war, and paranoia as the primary campaign themes. The only real policy issue that was covered by the McCain campaign was health care. In reality, the Republican scheme would have caused millions to lose their coverage, since employers would drop their health plans in response. Certainly, nothing in the Republican plan requires the employer to do so, but it seems obvious that if the government is providing a deduction for individuals to buy their own health insurance that the employer can safely get out of the health care business. And somehow, simply giving people $5000 to buy insurance is not socialism, though it is a refundable tax credit. And giving everyone $5k doesn't cost any money, because it's just taxes the government wouldn't be collecting in the first place, right? Really, though, you would never even see that money. It would go straight to the insurance company. And McCain promised that his Administration would "work with" insurance companies on the issue of pre-existing conditions. What does that mean, exactly? It means nothing, except that you would not be covered for pre-existing conditions, meaning that only the healthy would have health coverage. What a step forward. Likewise, any idea that a "high-risk pool" would ensure coverage under the $5k limit was abandoned as 'regulation'.

In states where auto liability insurance is mandatory, there is a "high risk pool" mandated to be maintained by the insurance companies. This means that if you have had seven accidents in the past year and a DUI on your record, you can still obtain insurance at an astronomical cost from the "high risk pool". You cannot be denied liability coverage if you are a licensed driver.

Now, suppose you are a sick person with leukaemia and require about $15k a year in medical treatment. What insurance company will provide you with coverage for only $5k a year? None of them. Either that, or they would sell you coverage and deny all claims based on a "pre-existing condition". How would a McCain Administration persuade an insurance company to lose $10k a year when they "work with" them on coverage for pre-existing conditions? The answer is, they don't. The likely result is that our hypothetical patient would get $5k of the $20k needed to obtain health insurance, meaning they would still pay as much for health care as they did when they were 'uninsured'. This is how the insurance industry would "work with" the Administration on pre-existing conditions.

Meanwhile, the loss of $5k per taxpayer in revenue is a definite "cost", isn't it? Is there a real difference in the bottom line between the federal government paying a certain amount of money and not getting a certain amount of money to begin with? Only in ideological terms.

Republicans argue against "single-payer" not only on ideological grounds, but also on cost.
"If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free", is the glib mantra. The problem is that, under the McCain proposal, more people would have coverage than they do now and costs would go up. The only way to limit cost is to deny treatment, or provide treatment in a pro-active manner. The latter method costs money up front, and saves money in the long term. The former method means that more uninsured individuals show up in the emergency room with avoidable conditions at a greater cost for treatment. It is notable that one of the McCain "advisers" on health care policy claimed that everyone is "insured" under the current scheme because they have access to emergency room care. Likewise, the idea that the average person is going to "shop around" and contest payments is absurd. Who has the time to "shop around" for the lowest price on an office visit, then "shop around" for the lowest price on a certain lab procedure, then search out the lowest price on follow-up care, and then "shop around" for the lowest price on a prescription? Is there transportation to get you to the slightly cheaper lab, doctor, or pharmacy 40 miles away? What happens to continuity of care when you spread your medical treatment out between a dozen different providers? Mistakes are made, efforts are duplicated, links are missed, and costs go up. But we manage to avoid the ideological hazard of 'socialism', so it's okay.

So we see that the McCain campaign was not only peddling very, very few actual ideas, but that these ideas were bad in practical terms. By and large, they were trying to sell fear and doubt, with a side of jingoism.

But what really killed the Republican effort was the economy.
This was not some magical mishap that befell the Party, but rather the logical result of their policies. The real collapse of the "mortgage industry" was not in making bad loans, but rather in the sale of insurance for those bad loans. Insurance on mortgages was traded by institutions that had no idea how risky those loans were, to people who had no idea that they were on the hook if those loans failed. They were merely pieces of paper that gained value every time they were traded, as if by magic. We allowed institutions to act as banks without the regulations governing banks. And the Republicans pointed to the money being made by these institutions as "proof" that regulations were bad. At the same time, those tax cuts that were supposed to be invested domestically in the creation of jobs were, once again, ploughed into offshore ventures or kept "within the family" by way of huge bonuses. Just as with Reagan's supply-side economics, the wealthy once again failed to step up to the plate and instead took the money and ran. Pointing this out, of course, is "class warfare" to Republicans. Republicans are fond of putting their shills on parade and parroting talking points, such as "I've never been employed by a poor man". You know what, though? If nobody has money to buy what the rich man is selling, that shill won't get employed in the first place. History has shown that the wealthy have repeatedly balked at employing that shill, when they can move their operations to China and employ people at less cost. Then Wal-Mart sells the wealthy person's products at a lower price, killing off local jobs. The end result is we all end up working for Wal-Mart, looking over our shoulders at some poor desperate sap who is willing to take our job for ten cents less an hour, while our government has less money to invest in infrastructure or training to improve the economy, and the wealthy get a bigger pile of cash which they refuse to risk by lending to us.

But we avoid those terrifying ideological hazards of 'socialism'. Instead, we work harder for less money and no benefits, with no job security, while every means to better ourselves is eliminated by budget cuts due to declining tax revenue. That is the economic vision the Republicans offer. We keep more of our "hard-earned money", while making it ever more unlikely that we will see it to begin with and working even harder to earn it.

I would respect the Republicans more if they were willing to take the wealthy to task for failing to hold up their end of the supply-side "bargain", but they won't. Instead, they abjure the middle class to spend more, while berating them for accumulating the consumer debt that enables them to do so. Oddly, the solution is always more tax cuts for the wealthy, because this time the wealthy will use it to our benefit. Really. We really, really mean it this time. And if that doesn't work, well, there's always more tax cuts for the wealthy. It can't fail now. And so forth and so on.

And so, the last defence for the Republicans is the Culture War.
Yes, re-fighting the Sixties is completely relevant to people who never lived through it, right?
It turns out that it really isn't. Not only that, but the people who did live through it aren't at all interested in re-visiting it. Ward and June Cleaver are dead. We aren't going back to the Fifties, which was a time of widespread poverty that is glossed over in nostalgia. Besides, a case can certainly be made that the worst excesses of the Sixties were in response to the heavy-handed repression of the Culture Warriors to begin with. The "values" that the Republicans are really pushing are bigotry, conformity, unquestioning obedience to authority, and "knowing one's place" in the social order. It doesn't matter who you are, it matters who people think you are. All of the other "values" preached by the Republicans are readily sacrificed with pride in the name of preserving the values I just mentioned. Thus, beating someone up that doesn't conform is your sacred duty, not some aberration of "values", for example. If the police arrest someone for a crime, obviously it is because they were guilty, so let's not "second-guess" authority. Any violation of the Republican's putative "values" is also acceptable if nobody finds out about it. It's an ugly paradigm that guarantees that those on the bottom will stay on the bottom, as part of God's Will, or something.

Now that a Democrat is soon to be in the White House, we can expect that the Republican concept of "criticising a sitting President during time of war is tantamount to treason" to conveniently disappear. Once again, dissent will be one's sacred duty, and not something that only whiners and traitors engage in. Republicans who presided over Bush's record debt will now be very concerned about fiscal restraint. We also will be admonished about the limits of Executive power by those who once asserted that those limits did not exist. Government "intrusion" will soon be something to be terrified of, not at all like the warrantless wiretaps, data mining, and rampant use of 'security letters' that the Bush Administration was so brave in carrying out. We can also look forward to the very odd phenomenon of criticising foreign policy as part of 'supporting the troops', when just yesterday it was 'undermining the morale of the troops'. Magically, criticising the Bush Administration and it's policies will suddenly become "divisive" by those who will showed no quarter in employing the basest of slanders against their opponents.

Because, you see, the Republicans are "the good guys", and anything that the good guys do is okay. When the bad guys do the same thing, however, it merely proves how bad they really are. For example, if Georgia attacks Russia and gets slapped down, that is disproportionate and evil. If Gaza does the same thing, anything goes in the name of self-defence. It's not so much that there are two standards as that there is one standard that is only applied in selected cases. For all of the talk about "American Exceptionalism", the bottom line is that it really means that America is excepted from the rules it applies to to other nations, and Republicans are excepted by virtue of being the voice of "true Americans".

So watch for that.

Nine days out

I just had to get this McCain quote up for posterity.
If Obama wins, McCain says "the nation" will be defeated, and he's got Obama right where he wants him. Hilarious.
From the BBC:

"I will never allow this nation to be defeated ... my friends, we've got them just where we want them. We love being the underdog and we're going to win!"

Nine days to go.
Fivethirtyeight.com has Obama projected to win 348 electoral votes. 270 are needed to win.
McCain's "master plan" is tragic in its hopelessness. He is going "all in" in Pennsylvania to get its 27 EVs, which will serve to partially counteract some of his other expected state losses.

The problem is that McCain has never led in any reliable polling in that state. The closest he ever got was a tie on Rasmussen 9/14, which looks like an outlier in retrospect. Subsequent Rasmussen polling showed a steady increase in Obama's PA support:

• 9/21 Obama +3
• 9/24 Obama +4
• 9/28 Obama +8
• 10/6 Obama + 13

Bear in mind that Rasmussen has generally been showing lower levels of Obama support in PA than most other pollsters. For example, SurveyUSA (whom I consider to be a Republican-leaning pollster) showed Obama as +15 on 10/6 when Rasmussen showed +13.
On 10/22, SurveyUSA placed Obama ahead by 12%.
Yet this is where John McCain is making his final stand, and this is right where he wants Obama to be.

Even if McCain wins PA, he must win Florida or it is all over. That scenario is not supported by the polling, either. Rasmussen polled McCain ahead by 1 point 10/21, well within the margin of error. Other pollsters show Obama 3 or 4 points ahead.

Missouri is another must-win state for McCain. Rasmussen polled it in Obama's favour by five points on 10/19.
If McCain loses North Carolina, Obama moves in to the White House. Polling there is mixed, with Rasmussen giving McCain a two point lead (within the margin of error), while other pollsters show Obama with a single-digit lead in the state.

Indiana is a state that McCain cannot afford to lose, either. Like the others mentioned, if McCain loses it, there is no way he can reach 270 EVs. SurveyUSA polled Obama ahead by 4% there on 10/22.
Ohio is another must-win. Rasmussen favoured McCain by two points (again within the MOE) on 10/19.

There is also the western option: Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico all favour Obama (19 EVs right there) , while ND and MT are toss-ups (6 more).
Georgia, with her 15 EVs, is three points away from going to Obama.

McCain now has to get very lucky multiple times in order to win. It's like flipping a coin seven times in a row and calling it correctly.

But the truth is that these polls under-estimate Obama's support. Rasmussen relies on a tight "likely voter model" that excludes a lot of Obama supporters. If you are first-time voter in this election, Rasmussen would not count you as a "likely voter". Even though statistics show that newly-registered voters turn out to vote nearly 90% of the time, Rasmussen would not consider a newly-registered voter to be "likely". Even if you voted in the primaries, but not in previous general elections, Rasmussen would not count you as a "likely voter". That hardly seems realistic. And Rasmussen is not alone in maintaining this tight model.

Consider the massive registration drives conducted during the Democratic primaries/caucuses, in which new records were set in registering new voters. Consider the massive turnouts in the primaries. Consider the truly unprecedented ground game of the Obama campaign in mobilising voters to turn out this election. None of that is being taken into account by any pollster that uses a common likely voter model. In fact, in comparisons between "registered voters", and registered voters who self-identify as likely voters, Gallup has shown very little difference (about 2%) between the two groups. And the Democrats hold a huge registration advantage in these seven crucial states.

Many of the pollsters seem to simply be assuming that Democrats won't turn out this year, despite the historic character of this election. They are far off the mark.

Republicans are looking back to 2004 for reassurances, but that was a pre-Katrina world, a world in which the Decider was still popular and Iraq was not yet judged a miserable mistake, and the economy was not in a state of disaster. Republicans have completely ignored 2006 and the mid-term elections that brought them sweeping losses. No, it's still 2004 to them, and they are relying on imaginary 2004 voters to rally and save the day.

And, in spite of Obama showing higher "favourables" than McCain, the Republicans are still pushing Obama as a scary candidate. People simply are not afraid of Obama. They have seen him at the debates, the Convention, and in campaign stops, and they have seen a reasonable, well-spoken, and intelligent man. The more McCain pushes his wild terror of Obama, the more rabid and un-hinged the Republicans appear to the public.

So Obama is leading the national tracking polls by about eight points, and he is leading in the states he needs to win 270 electoral votes, with the chance to pick up a few more.
And this is, apparently, right where McCain wants Obama to be.

Devilishly clever of him, isn't it?

My prediction is that Obama wins with 349 electoral votes. The second most likely outcome is 375 EVs, in my view.

Bachmann's "politics of the false dichotomy"

Michele Bachmann has a putative "apology" making its way onto the airwaves here in Minnesota.
The video is here.

In this "apology", she never apologises for anything. This is as close as she comes to an apology:

"I may not always get my words right, but I know that my heart is right, because my heart is for you - for your children, and for the blessings of liberty to remain for our great country."

Nothing in those words apologises for her remarks accusing Obama or fellow Congressional members of being "anti-American". She is instead sticking with her line that she never said what she said; that her remarks were merely misconstrued. Bachmann seems to be saying that she tends to say a lot of crazy stuff, but her heart is in the right place.

And, coming from someone who works for the government, this is bizarre:

"Once again, our nation is at a crossroads, and it's a time for choosing. We could embrace government as the answer to our problems, or we could choose freedom and liberty."

It's hard to see how this fits in with her previous characterisation of Democrats as "anti-American". She questioned Obama's allegiance to the country based on his weak association with Bill Ayers, not because of some "Big Government" agenda. She has always been one of those Republicans that condemns as "treasonous" anyone who criticises the President or the Iraq occupation. She has consistently voted to retain the most onerous parts of the Patriot Act, and has strongly defended the illegal wire-tapping programme. Bachmann has never seen any legislation promoting a police state that she didn't like. And she has seldom failed to impugn the patriotism of anyone opposing more government intrusion and surveillance.

This has always been the basis of her "anti-American" thesis: that "liberals" are, in effect, working for "the enemy". Now, however, she has made a radical shift and claims that 'liberals" are "anti-American" because they want Big Government and are opposed to "freedom and liberty". This isn't an apology, it's a distraction.

Many people have seen Bachmann on television and wondered about Minnesota voters. How could Minnesota have elected this crazy woman?

The answer is her made-to order, gerrymandered district and the weak Democrat who ran against her in 2006.

Bachmann was elected in 2006, at the same time as Keith Ellison was elected to the House and Amy Klobuchar was elected to the Senate. These were both Democrats, and both won by large margins. Ellison is notable for being a Muslim-American; the first in the House. So the idea that Minnesotans are crazy wingnuts should find a full stop right there. Bachmann's district is a long and fairly narrow swath to the north of the Twin Cities metro area. This mostly exurban and suburban district has undergone a profound change in the past twenty years. The long-time rural citizens have seen a massive influx of "refugees" from the urban core. They were fleeing pretty much the same thing: minorities, crime, and the ordinances of the city. They were also attracted by much lower prices for land and much cheaper housing, and the chance to raise their children free of "corrupting influences". They bought themselves long commutes into the urban areas as part of the bargain, and were hard hit by the increase in gas prices.

Mostly, however, these refugees brought all of those "corrupting influences" along with them into their new Paradise of liberty. Huge housing developments crammed people into treeless refugee zones that were not much more spacious than the urban yards they left behind. Property taxes went up markedly as localities had to expand waste-water treatment, roads, parks, landfills, etc. The new residents found their neighbours' proximity distasteful and begin to demand ordinances to deal with the problems of sharing space with farms and with the activities of their fellow "freedom-seekers". Police departments expanded. Strip malls moved in. "Big box" retailers squeezed out the local businesses. What were once friendly communities became mere groupings of individuals jealously guarding their tiny fiefdoms, screaming for the local government to simultaneously "do something" about their neighbours and to "get off our backs".

The inherent contradiction with exurban development is that it requires strong regulation to avoid massive inefficiencies and steep tax increases, while the people you are trying to attract are fleeing increased regulation and high taxes.

The metro area was facing a wave of communities further and further away demanding increased amenities without increased taxes. The Metropolitan Council at last put its foot down and drew a boundary for waste-water and water services. These exurban communities would have to find local solutions to get rid of their sewage, dig local wells, and lay their own water lines. This meant that these "enclaves of freedom" had to enforce ordinances covering septic tanks and drain tiles that simply dumped the refugee's filth into local streams. The alternative was severe contamination of the drinking water. Environmental regulations stopped people from simply dumping waste oil on the ground or draining their radiators into storm drains. Treatment plants had to be built to deal with a massive local increase in waste from the new residents who wanted an urban lifestyle in a rural infrastructure. Landfill space became scarce, and developments were being built closer and closer to them; regulations were demanded for noxious odours and vermin.

Thus, the influx of "liberty-seekers" became their own undoing.

And local politicians were simply not up to the task. These refugees moved into local politics, bringing a simplistic libertarian view and a visceral hatred of taxes. Thus, precious lead time was squandered with stop-gap solutions that made no one happy and merely made more expensive options inevitable. This made it even easier to frame "government" as the "problem". And the interests of the long-time residents consistently lost out to those of the new refugees.

Culturally, the district was a seething battleground of people unable to come together for the common good due to the "get off my back" ideology of the refugees. Evangelical churches made big inroads, due to the refugees' desire to raise their children in an uncorrupted environment. And so the stage was set for Republican domination of the district. The evangelical church communities were organised into political influence groups, and the Republican message of less regulation and "traditional values" found fertile ground. The one thing everyone agreed on was their profound hatred of the "other": racial minorities, immigrants, non-Christians, and those "communist" city folk.

Into this breach stepped Michelle Bachmann.

Strongly evangelical, she claimed that God chose her for Congress. Who can argue with God, after all? If one didn't vote for her, you were then voting against God. Jumping fully on the fading Bush Bandwagon, her election was seen by Party officials as some kind of rebound in a year when Republicans were generally kicked out of office. In spite of a fairly narrow win margin, she behaved as if she had been crowned Prom Queen. She proudly tied herself to the national neo-con agenda and forgot all about her little backwater district. She said all of the right things, sucked up to all of the right people, and voted as she was told to by the Republican Party masters. Bachmann was the perfect drone for movement conservatives.

The voters in her district were completely taken for granted. When gas prices hit these refugee commuters hard, she had a typical and grossly simplistic solution: drill, baby, drill. Regulations were the problem, not her constituents' choice to live an hour away from their jobs or their lifestyles' complete dependence on multiple vehicles. When foreclosures threatened the dreams of these urban refugees, it was the damnable regulations that were to blame. And when the economy crashed, it was again "hyper-regulation" of banks and investment firms that caused it. Meanwhile, she made regular appearances on local Christian radio programmes to keep up the drumbeat of hatred against gays, Muslims, and "baby killers".

While many see her remarks on "Hardball" as her downfall, the truth is that the handwriting was on the wall with the Petters' scandal. Bachmann endorsed a con man with a shady history, and on the strength of that voucher many Christian charities and churches were fleeced on a large scale. Pastors lost their homes, charities shut down, and churches were in a financial crisis.
Bachmann did some public hand-wringing for evangelical consumption, but this was one case where she could not blame regulations for the situation. If Michelle was truly guided by God, how this could immense lapse of judgement have occurred? Faith was shaken, angry people wanted answers, and so Bachmann did what movement conservatives always do: created a distraction.

Never mind about Bachmann's links to the con man Vennes - the real thing we all need to fear is the "anti-American views" of Obama and other members of Congress. She creates another false dichotomy similar to her endorsement by God: if you don't vote for me, people who hate America will gain power. Bachmann is on the job, folks, guarding against excessive regulations and the treasonous elite out to destroy us. That makes you trust her again, right?

Bachmann really said nothing different on Hardball that she hasn't said before to neo-con audiences, or that movement conservatives don't say on a regular basis to each other. It's the Party line narrative: Democrats hate America, they want us to lose in Iraq and in the GWOT, they are guilty of treason, they have a socialist agenda, they hate Christians and God, etc.

Bachmann's real mistake, the one for which the GOP has taken her to task for, was to speak those internal talking points to the masses. To the Republican faithful, Bachmann is merely a big-mouth, not a crazy McCarthyite.

And so she claims she was taken out of context. She claims she never said what everyone can plainly see in the video she said. She denies saying that she thinks "liberals are anti-American", when nobody ever said she did. She said Obama is anti-American due to his "associations with Ayers", and she said that members of Congress should be examined for potential anti-American views - not "liberals".

Then she announces an "apology" in which she frames the issue as a struggle between "liberty" and "government", which has nothing to do with putatively "anti-American views".

If Bachmann loses this election, it will mean that movement conservatism cannot prevail in a district tailor-made for that philosophy. It will mean that her "politics of false dichotomy" are not strong enough to prevail in Minnesota. And it will mean that the neo-cons will lose another pawn in Congress.

Bachmann bites

Michele Bachmann did an interview on "Hardball" in which she said, regarding Obama, "Absolutely, I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views".

Not content with that, she called for a McCarthy-esque witch-hunt on members of Congress, to determine if they are "pro-American" enough.

"The news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would, I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out are they are pro-America or anti-America."

Chris Matthews gave her repeated opportunities to back down and moderate her remarks, but she continued to stand by them. She was just repeating the standard far-Right talking points, after all. She fully expected a pat on the head from the Party for being such a good parrot. Apparently "everybody knows" this stuff, so who could take issue with it?

Now, however, the media is just a bunch of Big Old Meanies who "misunderstood" her.
The video is here. See for yourself.

"I think the people that Barack Obama has been associating with are anti-American, by and large."

How can you take that any other way than what it says? Especially when you also say, in reference to Obama:

"Absolutely, I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views"

Michele, you just said that Obama has anti-American views. You said that you were concerned about that. You can back-pedal about his "anti-American views" and say that they just aren't your views, but why would that make you "concerned"?

One can only wonder what Bachmann's proposed "investigation" of Congress would be like.
It doesn't take a genius to see that she is "concerned" about Bill Ayers. So we would likely see an investigation into everyone that each member of Congress has ever worked with, along with PTA boards, charities, and maybe even church choirs. Then we would have to look at everyone that every member of Congress has ever visited, because one of the scary things about Ayers is that Obama visited his house. We could then look at college professors, legislative aides, donors, neighbours, and of course, friends.

Since Obama has clearly and repeatedly expressed his love for America, such declarations will mean nothing to the investigators. Obviously, the truly "anti-American" among us would simply lie. Such an investigation would have to rely on others to "rat out" these traitors, possibly in exchange for clemency. Sadly necessary, if we want to ally Bachmann's "concerns", though.

How else are we to get to the bottom of what has Michele Bachmann so "concerned"?

Sure, it's an ugly job. But can we really afford to have someone in Congress who once went out to dinner with a college classmate without doing a thorough examination of their political views? Surely no "real American" would show up at the home of someone who, for example, thought that the Iraq War was a mistake, even if it was only to drop off a graduation gift for the traitor's child. And wouldn't we all like to know, if it were possible, that the woman who runs the checkout at the grocery store our Representative shops at once failed to put their hand over their heart at a baseball game? Or that one of their old college professors was married to a Muslim?

Seriously, the Republicans have already said that things like failing to wear a flag pin on your lapel is a suspect sign. They have already said that anyone who criticised the Iraq effort was a traitor and a terrorist sympathiser. These are the kind of criteria that would be applied to Bachmann's investigation.

But perhaps I just "misread" her. Perhaps she should clarify what qualifies one as being "anti-American". But I bet she won't.

Bachmann knows that the "base" agrees with her. Her mistake was simply in saying it out loud and on camera, not in believing it. The public isn't supposed to know that, unless you are a loyal Party member and an evangelical Christian, that you are considered to be a cowardly, despicable traitor in the eyes of the far-Right. Bachmann failed to keep that secret.

This is the American equivalent of the Taliban. They think they are the "real Americans", and they get to write the definition of what "American" is.

McCain's Convention Bounce?

I still think that McCain will not get much of a Convention bounce at all. Seriously, a bounce from what?

At the DNC, the Democrats unified their Party, slammed McCain, and introduced Obama to the nation while wiping out the idea that he is scary, unpatriotic, and wants to raise taxes - all to an immense audience across the nation.
They got a bounce from that, and Obama is up by 8.

What will the Republicans do?

Talk up the Iraq war, drilling, God, God and a bit more God thrown in for good measure. They will repeat several dozen times that McCain is a war hero and a POW. They will repeat all of the smears that have failed to gain traction over the past year.

This is all just re-hashing what they have already been saying for a year now. But people think that now, because it's said at a bloody Convention, that the nation will sit up and change their minds?
The Republican base is already solidified going in to the Convention. They have been un-enthusiastic, yes, but always ready to vote as they are told.

So what does anyone imagine they will get a bounce from?

I am so bloody sick of people pointing to 2004 and thinking that everything will play out the same way. This is an incredibly unique situation that is hardly comparable to 2004 or 2000. The entire electoral map has changed, but everyone still continues to think in terms of 2004: PID, Republican organisation, turnout, how Kerry did in certain states, 2004 exit polling, etc.

It's not 2004 anymore. Isn't that obvious? The Republicans have too much ground to defend. They have put their strongest candidate (most moderate), one that has made a career out of standing against them, against the Democrats...and the Republican is losing. In effect, they have put the candidate who least represents their core values against the Democrats, and even that hasn't done them any good. The McCain candidacy itself is a sign of desperation on the GOP's part, but everyone just wrings their hands over CW that doesn't match reality. It's so pathetic.

The Palin Pick

Wow. The Republicans' heads are spinning around.

By picking Palin, McCain takes the "Obama is too inexperienced" issue right off the table, which was his only non-smear issue.

By picking Palin, McCain gives up on the independents. Palin is a complete 28%-er who backs Bush completely. She is also a creationist, hard-line pro-life, and evangelical Christian. You don't pick up independents with someone like that. If independents had those views, then they wouldn't be independents - they'd already be Republicans.

By picking Palin, McCain actually alienates women voters. It takes a Republican Kool-Aid drinker to believe that women will vote for McCain simply because a woman is on the ticket, especially since that woman is completely out of the mainstream political views that the strong majority of women hold.

This is a move to appeal to the Republican base, which it will. The problem is, though, that McCain already has 87% of that base locked up. And that base is a lot smaller than it was in 2004, while the number who self-identify as Democrats has increased by 10% to record highs.

Palin will definitely improve the turnout among Republican evangelicals, but their numbers have also dropped since 2004 in a generational split.

Palin will be under intense media scrutiny in the next two months to a degree that the Governor of Alaska never was. It is almost certain that she will make some gaffe, which Republicans will be forced to defend. They will cry that the media and the Democrats are "picking on a woman", while at the same time crying about "picking on a war hero". It will be the ultimate whiner's ticket, and it will sound like these two aren't ready to face 21st century challenges.

Meanwhile, all McCain has left against Obama are smears: Ayers, Rezko, secret Muslim, crazy radical, and unpatriotic. None of these have gained traction despite being given heavy play in the primary and by McCain surrogates for several months. And Biden, HRC, and Bill will be attacking McCain constantly on his weaknesses. Being a "war hero" just won't cut it.

And the big issue about this pick that makes even Republicans pause is that McCain is 72 and has recurring cancer. If McCain dies or is incapacitated in office, then Palin takes over. Can anyone imagine Palin commanding two wars (plus any new ones that McCain has started while in office), staring down Putin, handling negotiations with Iran, Venezuela, or Pakistan? Can anyone imagine Palin convincing our allies to go along with whatever crazy foreign policy McCain has left her? Telling the rest of the world not to "pick on a woman" is not going to work in those circumstances.

Palin is not a scholar along the lines of Obama. She has no foreign policy experience, whereas Obama has been to Iraq, toured Europe, been briefed extensively on military matters, and has served on the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate. Palin would inherit all of McCain's "yes men" advisors, and be completely out of her depth on the national and international stage. If the crises the country faces in the next four years all involve attending hockey games, then she can handle it. If it's more complex than that, we are all - Republican, Independent, and Democrat alike - in big trouble.

More electoral analysis

I cover polls a lot on this blog. This is because it is the only refutation to wingnut assertions.
Currently, Obama is leading McCain on Gallup by 48 to 42 in the national polls. Obama has led for almost two months now, proving that McCain's negative ads are only speaking to his base and not to the general public. Independent voters, the group that is supposed to make all of the difference to McCain's chances, still break evenly among the two candidates (Obama 43%, McCain 41%). Usually, effective negative campaigns drag down the victim's "favourables". In this case however, it is McCain's favourables that have dropped for the past month, with a current virtual tie (Obama 58%, McCain 56%).

On Rasmussen, Obama has been between 43 and 47% since early June. He's been between 44 and 45% for the past two weeks. In spite of the attacks, Obama's support seems stable among likely voters. McCain has been between 40 and 44% since early June, and in that same range for the past two weeks. There was a tie for two days in early August.

Both Rasmussen and fivethirtyeight.com give Obama the win in electoral vote projections.

One commenter on fivethirtyeight.com broke the electoral vote situation down this way:

What we are talking about, though, is that Obama has a ton of winning maps, while McCain has very few. Kerry+IA/CO/NM is a win, and he's up in all of those. Same with IA/CO/NV. Now, those fairly likely scenarios aside, if he wins Kerry+IA (which he should) then a win pretty much anywhere else, like OH, VA, NC, FL, IN puts him in extremely good shape. That's why the 50-state strategy is such a better idea than the campaigns Gore and Kerry ran, and why people do think it's going to be different this time. It might not be, but the odds are a lot better at least.

And that is essence of this election, and what makes it so very different from 2000 and 2004. The Republicans would love to make this a battle over Florida and Ohio, but the Obama campaign is too smart for that. It's fairly certain that the 2 or 3 state "battleground" approach is the route Hillary would taken as well.
Republican support is so weak that states that once were solid red are now within reach for he Democrats. And the idiotic "battleground" approach has left several states with little in the way of organisation. Those mired in the old paradigm see the "50 state strategy" as a waste of effort, but Obama is doing the work that the Party needs done by organising these putatively "red" states. Even if none of them break for Obama, the Party has fantastic data for House and Senate races, as well as future Presidential races. However, the odds are that a certain number of these states will "flip", and then Obama wins. McCain has only one or two "paths" to victory.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is targeting only 19 states. Among those 19 are very safe states for Obama: Maine, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Washington. And with the abbreviated Republican primary season, the GOP was cheated out of a Party's best chance of updating and expanding their lists of contacts. They are left with the old lists from 2004 in many cases. Thus, we are seeing the McCain campaign rely more on ads than usual.

The GOP won in 2000 and 2004 by conducting massive registration drives and bringing in millions of new voters. This year, however, the numbers netted by the GOP in nearly every state fell far below those of the Democrats. In Indiana alone, the Democrats registered more voters during the primary than voted for Kerry in the previous election.

Conventional wisdom says that 5% is the maximum lead that can be overcome by a ground campaign. Right now, the polling shows Obama with a 5 point lead in Wisconsin, and an eight point lead in Pennsylvania. New Mexico is projected to go to Obama by 5.5%, with Iowa about the same. Ohio and Virginia are still evenly split. McCain leads in Florida by a little over 3%. Obama is projected to win by a bit over 2% in Colorado.

The issue is that a lot of these polls use the "likely voter" model to skew their data. The Obama campaign has registered hundreds of thousands of new voters who will not show up as "likely voters". We are left to believe that none of these people will vote if we accept the likely voter screen on the polls. Another issue is the weighting of the polls in party identification.

The Republicans seem stuck in a rut, obsessing over Obama's inability to gain a decisive advantage. They seem to forget that McCain has failed to score any advantage. More than that:

The primary "underperforming" that's going on in this election is John McCain. Where Bush consistently polled in the 45-47% range, on average, all year in 2004 in swing states, McCain polled all summer in the 40-42% range, on average. In an electoral system where +/- 3% in national polling gives rise to +/- 350+ EV landslides, that's a huge ground that needs to be made up. If you want to see the difference, go to electoral-vote.com and click on states like IA, PA, WI, MN, MI, OH, VA. McCain is generally polling 3-5% less than Bush across the board.

With numbers like this, relying on past scenarios for a Republican win is dangerous.
Other polls show McCain's support among evangelicals is 9% weaker than Bush's 2004 numbers. And this time around, evangelicals are less of a monolithic bloc. In Texas, McCain is polling 11% weaker than Bush in 2004. Republican states such as Nevada, Montana, North and South Dakota, and North Carolina are all within 5%. McCain has immense defensive work to do that Bush never did. And of those five, he only has ground campaigns targeted for Nevada and North Carolina. That is 9 electoral votes he has given up on, or at least decided to rest on his laurels in.

McCain is also relying on a national campaign with national issues. Obama is targeting states based on local issues. The objective is to win states, after all.

The jingoism the Bush campaign employed is now yielding diminishing returns. Iraq is regarded as a mistake; whether we "win" or not is unimportant in the big picture as far as using it as an issue to rally around. And, sure, McCain is a war hero. Everyone knows he's a war hero already, though. The people likely to vote based on that are already on his side, and he's still behind Obama. He's not going to become any more of a war hero in the coming months. Likewise, McCain has hit a ceiling on his "favourables". Everyone already knows him. Everyone likely to like him already does. He can only go down or stay steady.

Lastly, his ad campaign to tear down Obama has not only met with no perceptible results in the polls, it says nothing about him. Putting down Obama does not make McCain look any better, and these ads show no contrast between McCain and Obama. At best, they make McCain the default alternative to Obama, which is very weak tea.

Back again

I'm back again after a sojourn in the blogosphere wilderness.
I've been a reader and commenter on other blogs that I don't usually frequent in an effort to broaden my perspective. This has also brought me into contact with quite a few Republican and right-wing trolls, which is refreshing because it shows that their movement is bankrupt.
A few of my observations:

• Obama's lead dropping even a point on any given day somehow means that McCain is "winning". To most people, if your candidate is still behind, it means they are losing.
• There is always something, some minor event, which is allegedly going to "break things wide open" for McCain. Perhaps a GOP hack makes a disparaging remark about Obama. OMG! McCain is gonna win now fer sure! Or Regnery Press releases another one of their slimy character assassination books ("ObamaNation") - now the public is going to find out the "truth" about Obama and he is going down in flames. It never dawns on these fools that they said the same thing two weeks ago, and Obama is still ahead.
• Republicans still think the public believes every unsubstantiated assertion they utter. Apparently the GOP has immense credibility to the nation at large, at least in the minds of these partisans.
• If a state has a military base within its borders, it means that state will vote for McCain. Obviously (to the wingnuts) voting for Obama means that you don't support the troops, and the presence of a military base means that the vast majority of the state's residents support endless war.
• Obama wants our troops to die at the hands of terrorists, per wingnut CW. This is so incredibly obvious that Obama won't even try to deny it, which is "proof". Yeah.
• Spending a few days (seven years ago) in a rural part of a state that holds less than 10% of the state's population gives you a keen insight into how that state will vote. Thus, there is "no way" that Michigan will vote for Obama - polls be damned.
• Likewise, if a wingnut polls a half dozen people in the rural area of a Deep Red state where he lives, you can easily infer from that "poll" that Obama doesn't have a chance to win on the national stage. 'Nuff said.
• One wingnut heard from another wingnut, who heard from their pastor, that Obama is a "socialist". Again, the result is that McCain will win "in a landslide".
• Unless Obama himself explicitly denies something, then it's completely true. And if he does deny something, he's a liar, so it's true anyway.
• Everybody hates liberals, and the only way they ever get elected is because illegal immigrants vote them in. Uh-huh. Likewise, numbers of registered voters don't matter because Democrats don't vote - they are too busy watching TV and doing drugs. That's why McCain wins this time.
• Everybody hates popular people. Nobody is excited about McCain, so that unpopularity means that he wins. Obvious, isn't it?

Overall, Republicans are deeply stuck in a world where it is 2002 forever, and 2006 never happened. Rush Limbaugh and Bill Kristol are believed by everyone. The "success" in Iraq proves that America wants yet another war, as long as this means a lot of Muslims will die. Christians are a persecuted minority, but yet they are so strong and numerous that this is a "Christian Nation" that shouldn't tolerate Muslims.

One would also think that the current portrayal of Obama as the Antichrist would be a good way to get evangelicals to vote for him. If Obama wins, that means the Rapture is at hand, and the evangelicals claim to want that. Sadly, the fundamentalist hypocrisy is so deep that they don't even see the contradiction. If they truly believed that Obama was the Antichrist and that the End Times are at hand, wouldn't they be repenting and selling their possessions to donate to the poor? Instead, it's just another opportunity for slander in the name of being a good Christian.

So, I'm back from the wilderness to tell you that the GOP is screwed.
They are delusional victims of their own rhetoric, resting on their laurels and hoping for legions of imaginary voters to heed the Idiot Call and follow their orders.

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.