"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.

Open Mike Night: Political Commentators Caught Doing Political Commentary

Chuck Todd thought he was cutting to some governor. Oops. Instead, he and his round-table, including conservative commentator Peggy Noonan and former McCainiac Mike Murphy, got caught on an open mike, unwittingly telling the world what they really think. Below the clip there's a transcipt, courtesy of my new heroes LAT and Andy on the discussion board at Five Thirty-Eight. This is priceless.




Noonan: [Can't hear since Todd (who is still on air) is talking over her]

Murphy: Um, you know, because, I come out of the blue swing state governor world. Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, I mean, and these guys, this is all how you win a Texas race, just run it up, and it's not gonna work.

Noonan: It's Over.

Murphy: Still, McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech and do himself some good.

Todd: [can't really tell what he says, but he mentions something about "insulting to Kay Baily Hutchinson]

Noonan: [says something I can't understand]

Todd: She's never looked comfortable up there..

Murphy: Oh, fuck that.

Todd: I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they can obtain?

Noonan: The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives...[couldn't hear the end of it]

Todd: Yeah, but what's a narrative?

Murphy: I totally agree.

Noonan: Every time Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

Murphy: You know what's the worst thing about it, the greatest of McCain is no cynicism, and..

Murphy and Todd together: This is cynical.

Todd: And as you called it, gimmicky.

Obama Flip-Flops; Decides Not To Be Putz After All

Everything we hear from the McCain camp on Obama's funding reversal is just a mixture of sour grapes and fear. They know that by opting out of public financing, Obama will have the option of carpet-bombing McCain in the general--as a look at Obama's first ad buy clearly demonstrates.

On the ABC roundtable this week, Matt Dowd tries to make the case that this move will tarnish the Obama brand, and he won't get that much extra juice out of it anyway--Obama would find it difficult to spend the extra moolah during the general. Roberts counters that Obama spends his money very wisely, on a state-of-the-art ground game. Donaldson and Dowd retort that in the states where Obama outspent Hillary...he lost.

That's true, but Donaldson and Down miss the point. In his recent massive ad buy, Obama is targeting states he knows he won't win. I mean, really--Alaska? But as he did with Hillary, Obama can use his money to engage McCain everywhere, and bleed him dry. By opting out of public financing, Obama will have the luxury of forcing McCain to compete in states that should be safely red.

At some point during this exchange, Stephanapoulous notes that Brazile has been very quiet. He calls her out, and she nails it:

"I'm sitting here laughing at people who think that Senator Obama will be harmed by going outside the system."

On the other hand, Dowd makes the most succinct and incisive formulation of the general I've heard so far:

"This is an election that Barack Obama could lose....but John McCain can't win."

Exactly.

Fair and Balanced Fox Fires Fairly Unbalanced Fox

After she suggested that the dap Michelle gave Barack on the night he won the nomination was some sort of super-secret terrorist fist bump (no doubt Al-Qaeda Manchurian double-agent code for: Osama--we're in), E.D. Hill, a member of Fox's Stepford Stable of Distinctly Aryan Anchors and the host of America's Pulse, was forced to apologize. The apology itself is a thing of beauty for its own ugly little genre, neatly associating the word terrorist with Obama by apologizing for...associating the word terrorist with Obama. The "moving right along" moment is also nicely done. And, damn, she looks good doing it, doesn't she?

Apparently, however, neither the conspicuous leg nor the non-apology-apology did the trick--Hill lost her show, but will continue to serve Fox "in a capacity to be determined." I'll just let that one go by. I will say, in all fairness, that I actually think the lady has a point when she pleads that she was just reporting on what others had said, and I'm not sure she deserved to lose her show. I'll also admit that when it comes to Fox, schadenfreude overwhelms my sense of fairness every time. I'm always happy to see Faux step in it.

To celebrate, I offer this:



Enjoy.

If It's Sunday, We'll Be De-Pressed

I was in the middle of an emergency department shift when I heard of the death of Tim Russert. I took a moment between codes to check cnn.com, just to be sure it was real. A resident, reading over my shoulder, noted that Russert had just returned from Italy (a long and potentially clot-inducing flight), and wondered aloud whether Tim had succumbed to a pulmonary embolus. "Why don't you focus on your own patients?" I snapped. Then I got back to work myself. I was in a foul mood the rest of the night.

Well, it wasn't a massive PE, it was a lethal coronary occlusion, and that just makes it worse, because so often we can save those lives. But Tim's MI apparently resulted in an immediate lethal tachyarrhythmia, and he could not be resuscitated. It is a terrible, unexpected loss, all the more painful because he was clearly so engaged with and excited by Election '08. Tim was living through history, and as James Kirchick has noted, the pity is he won't get to see how it turns out.

Maybe you loved him, maybe you hated him. More probably, like me, you indulged in a little bit of both, depending on who he was talking to and how hard he pressed them (or not). But, love him or hate him, you could not dismiss him. One can argue that the moment Hillary's campaign finally crumpled was when Russert said so.



Men and women of phenomenal power and stature, presidents, pundits, senators and scientists, gladly lined up to sit in his hot seat. Political junkies like me ate it up. I can't remember how many times, watching MSNBC political coverage, I would think, enough with the lightweights already. What does Russert have to say? The man had juice.

Less than 24 hours after his death, it's already a cliche, but there's no other way to say it: Sunday morning just won't be the same. Be at peace, Tim.