Over at TNR, John Judis races to be the first to diss the inaugural address, calling it a "hodgepodge," and the talkbackers pile on to take sides.

I have to say, Judis completely lost me on this one. The speech was beautifully delivered, spoke to our better angels, and had a rational progression:

Hi, everybody, we are in some deep shit. Who cares who's to blame. We're Americans, and we can dig out, if everybody grabs a shovel and if we get past all those false choices, all that either-or, blue-vs-red, GOP-vs-Dem, Free Market-or- Socialism-and-no-in-between bullshit. Here's a few high points of my domestic and foreign policy agendas everybody knows already. Let's finish up with inspiration, exhortations to courage, and calls to service and responsibility, all liberally (if you'll forgive) sprinkled with totally appropriate historical allusions, confidence in the American spirit, and praise of inclusion and tolerance. So let's get to work. God bless us, every one, cuz we're gonna need it.

It was an incantation, calling forth the archetypes that lie in the collective unconscious of America, and an eloquent affirmation that those powers belong to us all.

That's what I heard. Then I went back to work.

So for today the speech was just right.

What will be the ultimate verdict on the inaugural address of Barack Hussein Obama? I don't know. But I do know that verdict won't be passed down by Mr. John Judis. History will judge this speech and, as always, She will do it in Her own good time.

So take a chill pill, everybody, and try to savor the moment. No matter what happens tomorrow, today was a good day.

Rove Calls the Election...

.for Barack Obama, 338 to 200.

Sullydog's 2008 EV Prediction

Here's my prediction, based on the most recent polling. My research materials included 538.com, electoral-vote.com, rcp, pollster.com, cnn and msnbc. Obama wins the Kerry states + FL, IA, NM, CO, NV, NC and VA. He does NOT win OH, IN, MO, MT, AZ (gimme a break), ND or any contested district in NE.

Pennsylvania, McCain and Pickett's Charge

Herewith my own take on the new McCain Pennsylvania "strategy" that Mike Crowley brought up here, reconsidered here, and further eludes to here. This sums it up:

The go-north strategy assumes McCain thinks he can hold Virginia. But, even though VA wasn't named in yesterday's CNN story about states at least one McCain insider considers "gone," his chances there are looking awfully bleak, even if you assume a surprise Bradley effect. If Virginia's gone, too, then PA really is McCain's last shot.

I don't get it.

Looking at the polling in PA, it just doesn't seem like a good play. PA has gone blue for the last 4 elections, and Obama is ahead there by double digits--as much as 12 points in some polls. McCain hasn't been ahead in PA in a single poll since at least May. Even when McCain was surging, he wasn't winning PA.

And poster Mike, responding to Crowley's "reconsidered" post, makes nice point:

It's looking more like the primary where Plouffe's ground game built too many firewalls before Hillary invaded a state. Plus, McCain knows the $150 million in October combined with the flood of new donors means Obama began his version of Rove's final 72 hours when polls opened. McCain can burn his time and money in PA for the rest of the week but by early next week he'll know if Obama has already done the job on the ground. At that point he might save a close down ballot race but won't reclaim any state where 1/3 of the vote is locked in and it shows he's several points behind.

So I have to ask myself: is this a hail-Mary, a head-fake, or a kamikaze mission? Somebody help me out here. I agree that taking PA maybe wins McCain the election, VA or no VA--assuming Obama loses all the other battlegrounds: OH and MO and NV and FL and NC, which is not a done deal by any means. (I don't include CO as a battleground anymore; I think it's solid blue in 2008.)

Okay, sure, in that scenario PA wins McCain the election--but that's kind of like R. E. Lee saying, ca March 1865, that taking the Eastern Seaboard brings victory to the Confederacy. Absolutely true, and totally irrelevant, since Lee had no hope of capturing the Eastern Seaboard. And McCain, to my eye, has next to no hope of capturing PA.

Am I just fucked in the head, here? Because I really don't get it. Somebody please help me out, because PA for McCain looks like Pickett's Charge to me.

Powell Endorses....

...Barack Obama.

It's not exactly an original thought that Obama probably locked up this endorsement some time ago, and kept Powell in pocket until the best time.

This was, undoubtedly, the best time, kicking McCain while he's down.

What will be the effect of this endorsement? It's hard to imaging that it's anything but great news for Barack, but what is the magnitude of this vector? I think there may be competing factors here. On the one hand, it further cements American's greater comfort with the idea of Obama as CiC. Notwithstanding the tarnishing of his rep by the UN presentation, Powell still commands great respect in this country. The endorsement also emphasizes that Obama is surrounding himself with, and listening to, some very smart, mainstream political, economic and foreign policy titans. OTOH, there may be an undercurrent of "Powell endorsed Obama cuz he's black." My guess is this view would be held predominantly by people who wouldn't vote for Obama anyway.

So, yeah, net positive for Obama. But the magnitude? The effect on the polls, and the election? Anybody's guess.

I Just LOVE Electoral Maps

It's a sickness, really. Maybe it's because, perversely, they reinforce the election-as-warfare concept. When you talk about McCain barely holding on south of the Mason-Dixon line, and how Obama has probably taken Virginia and is making inroads in Ohio...jeez, it sounds like something you'd hear in a Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War.

Anyway, I love electoral maps. So here's another cool one to add to your bookmarks. Zogby's interactive electoral map is pretty nifty (not to mention very, very blue right now). CLick on a state and get a succinct analysis of where things stand.

"Racism is a Luxury"

Priceless post from Sean Quinnn at fivethirtyeight.com. They've been tramping across the country, looking at battlegrounds and safe states alike, checking out the electorate, reporting on the ground games (or lack thereof), as part of their "Road to 270" series. Great stuff. But yesterday's installment, on Pennsylvania, takes the cake. Must-read graf:

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

My country, 'tis of thee...

Washington Post Endorses Obama

And I think they pretty much nail the rationale. Read it here.

Craven

Over on the Stump, Noam Scheiber alerts us to Matt Dowd's comments on McCain's "craven" VEEP pick.

"Craven" is the best way to describe it.

This, for me, should be the gist of it for the electorate. In a desperate bid to solidify his base and pander to the XX half of the electorate, McCain put the entire nation at risk by choosing Sarah Palin.

"Country first," indeed.

"Honor," indeed.

Yes, McCain has bragged of being "the biggest deregulator you ever saw." His economic "plans" are disjointed and ad hoc at best. Unlike the thin gruel of the Ayers association, McCain's Keating Five involvement shows that he's been on the wrong side of issues that have tremendous currency. Even now, he continues to repackage the utter failure that is Reagonomics for the electorate. His obstinate subscription to the Bush foreign policy is a huge black eye, and his repeated references to some undefined, mystical "Victory" in Iraq hints at a disturbing Quixotic neurosis. His campaign has been disorganized, flat-footed, tactical (if you'll forgive) rather than strategic, and in some ways more malevant even than the Rove playbook. Last week his campaign had to pull back from incitations to violence.

And the man is fairly starting to dodder.

But forget all that. Palin alone disqualifies McCain, at the most fundamental level, to be Commander in Chief. In a crunch, at a time of crisis, he put himself ahead of his country, and showed that he could not be trusted to make decisions for the nation. Not only should he not be President, he should retire from public life altogether, in disgrace.

McCain is a man I once admired. Now I am ashamed of him.

Hitchens Endorses Obama...

...with his usual rabid eloquence.

Obama Campaign Leaks Prep Video

"It's Too Late" (for McCain)

Uttered by Joe Scarborough on Colbert. Wow.

More, Scarborogough lays out quite an indictment of the GOP and the Bush Administration. I'll try to get the video clip.

Ladies and Gentlemen, John McCain Has Left The Building!

There seems to be an emerging kerfluffle about how Barack and Michelle hung around to press the flesh in the town hall, while John and Cindy had already got out of Dodge.

Well, okay.

More to the point, the insta-polls show that Obama ran away with it.

Even some conservatives think that, maybe, This Was It. There's just one more debate. If the game hasn't changed by then, it's hard to see how the last debate, so close to the election, changes the course of the cyclone.

A very good night for Obama, on style and politics, and to my eye on points as well. Things are starting to solidify for him.

G'night.

Buchannan Speaks

The foxy old bigoted warhorse, whom my wife and I suspect actually lives in television studios, is nevertheless a very smart political observor, and he's the first besides the anchors to make the call on MSNBC. There are caveats peppered throughout his assessment, and he thinks both Obama and, particularly, McCain, helped themselves tonight. But then there's this summation:

"...[Obama] surivived the second battle and....he's nine points ahead." (Emphasis Buchannan's.)

Update: here's TNR's assessment--"Obama Crushes McCain." Partisan? You betcha. I don't think anybody got "crushed."

First Impression

No blowouts, no game changers. Kind of a yawner, actually. If there were any watch-checking moments or major gaffes, I didn't catch them. I think the healthcare responsibility-vs.-right thing may blow up, and not to Mac's benefit. And there was absolutely no mention, not even tangentially, of Ayers, Wright or Keating. And Obama never brought up the issue of McCain's recent pivot to slime.

It seems to me, and yes I'm biased, but I feel as if Obama kept hammering on stuff that's been working for him, and McCain kept hammering on stuff that...hasn't been working for him.

McCain definitely looks like a plausible president, to be sure, and he looks the old warrior, but old he looks, and there's still some anger simmering under the surface. Obama looks confident, relaxed, poised, smart, presidential and....tall. Is Kennedy-esque going too far?

There seemed to be an undercurrent of Rope-a-Dope here. McCain kept swinging, but Obama never really responded in kind. He just kept sidestepping and head-bobbing.

So far in the debates, the insta-polls from the networks have predicted the responses in the polls. We'll see how it goes this time. But I don't see a game changer here. The way things stand, McCain needs a blowout. Obama just needs to maintain.

So I doubt that McCain saved his campaign tonite.

What Don't You Know, and How Will You Learn It?

Question is too clever by half, but Obama's immediate response is affecting: "My wife could tell you all about that." Says "country" when he means to say "world." Talks about the American Dream, and its accelerated decrepitude in the last 8 years. We can't fix it if we keep doing the same things (implicit: as McCain will do.)

With his last words, McCain raises the specter of the unknown, and talks about how he was raised by a single mom, too, because dad was at sea. Trying to project toughness and patriotism. "I'm asking the American people to give me one more opportunity."

And then, an interesting use of the past tense: "The great honor of my life was always to put my country first."

Have We Got Israel's Back?

McCain's approach to the questioner is very effective. Aaaaaannnnnd we're back to the sit-down-without-preconditions non-issue. Iranian nukes are bad.

"My friend." Buvez, mes amis.

What About Vlad?

Mac: "We're not gonna have another cold war." Really? Then he immediately raises the spectre of a successor to the old Soviet Union. The "I saw three letters, KGB" line, again. Waiting for him to nail Obama on his "wrong" call on Georgia. Doesn't come yet.

O, you want to send money to Georgia? Excuse me. Obama is a little too halting in this answer. And he gives us another I-told-you-so riff vis-a-vis Georgia, probably trying to pre-empt Mac from correcting his lapse above.

Brokaw: "Is Russia an evil empire? Yes or no?"

Obama: Not a yes or no answer.
McCain: "Maybe."

Mac never does cover his missed opportunity with the Georgia issue on this question.

Should We Go After Al-Qaeda in Pakistan?

Obama calls his questioner by name, and makes the question about Mess-O-Potamia. His answer is smart and rational. In the first debate, Obama was able to use this issue to sound tougher on terrorism than McCain. Now he's trying to do it again.

Mac: "Teddy Roosevelt is my hero." Then he Walks Softly and Talks a Big Stick. Again, I don't think this argument works against Obama, regardless of its merits, because he's trying to rebut Obama's "I will go in there and kill Bin Laden" argument. Oh, and I visited Waziristan. Yes, John, we know.

Kefluffle about followups.

O: "Nobody called for the invasion of Pakistan." Calls McCain on some of his own rash statements, and puts him on the defensive.

"I'll get Osama my friends." Open wide, puppies.

Bottom line short answer to the question, should we go after Al-Qaeda in Pakistan?

O: "Yes."
M: "I've been to Waziristan."

So far, I haven't seen a game-changer.