Thursday Archive

McCain-Obama So Far: Positively Negative

By Dan Balz
Washington Post
Thursday, June 26, 2008; A06

A campaign between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain once offered enormous possibilities for something new. Instead, the two presumptive nominees have opened their campaigns for the White House with what looks and sounds like a repeat of the kind of politics both have promised to leave behind. Since Obama (D-Ill.) wrapped up the Democratic nomination a few weeks ago, he and McCain (R-Ariz.) have served up a series of indignant exchanges over foreign policy, terrorism, the economy, energy and campaign money. Their aides have gone further, with snarling put-downs in conference calls and taunting e-mails that flow constantly out of the Chicago and Crystal City headquarters...

GOP 'Survivors' out of luck?
'Enthusiasm gap' could cause larger Democratic voter turnout

By Amy Walter
National Journal
Wednesday June. 25, 2008

WASHINGTON - I'm the first to admit to a "survivor" bias. If an incumbent has survived a serious challenge or two -- especially in an unfavorable political environment -- I assume no challenge is too tough. But that's a dangerous assumption to make about even the hardiest Republican House incumbents this year. On top of the obvious troubles -- such as a serious fundraising disadvantage for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the unprecedented number of voters who say they want Democrats in charge of Congress -- they also face new and unforeseen dangers. Here's the big one: No one can figure out just how many new or non-chronic voters are going to show up on Election Day...

Time to make candidates answer on Iraq

By James Rainey
Los Angeles Times
June 26, 2008

If you go to the Republican National Committee's website, you can watch the clock labeled "Days Since Barack Obama Visited Iraq." Tick, tick, tick. Nearly 900 days and counting. Over at moveon.org, a young mother in a 30-second ad looks into the camera and tells John McCain -- who must be plotting to send her adorable baby boy to fight in his 100 Years War -- "You can't have him." We've spent roughly $1 trillion, lost more than 4,000 Americans, seen tens of thousands of Iraqis die. And the debate in this country over the war amounts to a bout of locker-room towel snapping...

Another wedge issue
Exploiting the Muslim- Jewish divide is the wrong way to win votes.

By Salam Al-Marayati and Steven B. Jacobs
Los Angeles Times
June 26, 2008

There's a disturbing trend in this 2008 election. We are witnessing the manipulation and exploitation of Muslim-Jewish differences by political candidates in pursuit of votes. As advocates for our respective communities, we believe it's in America's interest that it stop. It appears that the political logic of the candidates and their handlers calls for winning Jewish American support at the expense of Muslim American voters. This takes the shape of aggressive outreach to the Jewish community while Muslims go ignored. That strategy may be politically expedient, but it is inherently flawed. Muslims see their exclusion as a betrayal of American values, and many Jews are alarmed by the parallels to their own historical political exclusion...

Voting's Neglected Scandal

By David S. Broder
Washington Post
Thursday, June 26, 2008; A19

When Barack Obama decided last week to throw off the constraints on campaign spending that go with the acceptance of public financing, he was rightly criticized for rigging the system in his favor. That was a predictable response. For the better part of four decades, the media and public interest groups have focused on campaign spending as the most serious distorting force in our elections. Meanwhile, they have paid much less attention to what may well be a larger problem: the way that district lines are drawn to create safe seats for one party or the other, in effect denying voters any choice of representation...

Building a Wall Against Talent

By George F. Will
Washington Post
Thursday, June 26, 2008; A19

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Fifty years ago, Jack Kilby, who grew up in Great Bend, Kan., took the electrical engineering knowledge he acquired as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois and as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin to Dallas, to Texas Instruments, where he helped invent the modern world as we routinely experience and manipulate it. Working with improvised equipment, he created the first electronic circuit in which all the components fit on a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. On Sept. 12, 1958, he demonstrated this microchip, which was enormous, not micro, by today's standards. Whereas one transistor was put in a silicon chip 50 years ago, today a billion transistors can occupy the same "silicon real estate." In 1982 Kilby was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, where he is properly honored with the likes of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison...

ENPR: Despite National Polls, Obama-McCain in a Dead Heat

By Robert Novak and Timothy P. Carney
Evans-Novak Political Report
June 25, 2008

OUTLOOK
1. The state of morale in the Republican Party is such that the expected bump by Sen. Barack Obama in the polls after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination has collapsed all GOP optimism. Talking to Republicans outside Sen. John McCain's organization, the presidential campaign looks like "mission impossible." The mood is: How can we possibly win the presidency for a third straight election considering the state of the party?
2. This is unrealistically pessimistic, considering the true state of the election, which we still consider close. But it contributes to the negative feeling about McCain from elements of the conservative base. This lack of enthusiasm about McCain leads to an extreme level of criticism about how the campaign is being waged—reminiscent of a year ago when his campaign for the nomination appeared dead. What was McCain doing last week in the non—competitive state of California? What was McCain aide Charlie Black thinking when he publicly...