This is the last post I will write this cycle that addresses the two critical arguments of the McCain campaign — Ayers/Acorn/Jeremiah Wright and Obama’s alleged socialism. I am sick of discussing these two topics, and as the polls indicate, so is the majority of the electorate.

Guilt by association was the cornerstone of McCarthyism. Americans were blacklisted and ruined because they were related to, friends with, or themselves had attended meetings hosted by members of the communist party. The core argument of Senator McCarthy was that any American who associated with communists was a traitor and anti-American. This is the same argument McCain is making about Obama.

Obama is his own man — he is not an extension of William Ayers or Jeremiah Wright. He should be judged by his own actions and his own words. He has repudiated Ayers and the Weathermen, and he very publicly condemned Jeremiah Wright’s words and actions during the primary. Unless you have actual evidence of Obama supporting the views of either individual, then you have to take him at his word. By ignoring what Obama himself says and continuing to push for “answers about the full extent of his association,” the McCain campaign and their supporters are turning into a broken record. The charges have been answered and dispelled — Obama does not endorse the views of Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright. There’s no evidence in any of his speeches, writings or interviews to suggest that he does.

I have much closer associations with family members who have committed crimes or been incarcerated than Obama has with Bill Ayers. Should I be held accountable for every action of every person I’ve ever been friends with or related to? Get a fucking grip. By that standard, few of us would pass the association test. Not even John McCain.

If that’s not enough for Obama’s detractors, then there’s nothing that can be said to sway them. It’s a circular argument that loops back to the same starting point. Either you believe it matters or it doesn’t. I think it’s unfair and unjust to hold one man accountable for the actions of another man. Nothing anyone says will sway me on this.

As for charges of socialism — again, get a grip on reality. Socialism is the massive redistribution of wealth and taxing of society similar to what’s done in Europe. Obama has called for raising taxes on the top 1% by a few points and lowering taxes for people who make under $250,000 by a few points, not turning the progressive American tax structure into a European tax structure. To listen to McCain, you’d think Obama was Karl Marx, arguing for the destruction of American capitalism in favor of some European welfare state utopia.

Do these people honestly think the Democrats would be stupid enough to turn the U.S. into a socialist state? Do you think Bill Clinton and the New Democrats never happened? Come on, look at the historical record. The last president to expand government and increase entitlements was George W. Bush, aided and abetted by a Republican-controlled congress. Bill Clinton cut government and shrunk entitlements. Obama’s campaign promises are relatively mild compared to Clinton’s stab at socialized medicine. Again, there’s nothing I can do to sway Republican hardliners on this — no amount of evidence to the contrary will disprove the fantasy that Democrats are secret communists engaged in a conspiracy to undermine American capitalism. If you believe this, I can’t change your mind.

If you want to talk socialism, then why not look at Bush and his Treasury Department and their redistribution of $700 billion of taxpayer money to Wall Street? Democrats (including Obama) supported that bill, but it originated on the request of Bush and his “conservatives” allies, including John McCain. All of Washington is responsible for that one, but it was spearheaded by a Republican president. If that’s socialism, then both parties are advocates of socialism.

The fact is, McCain has no plan for the country, no policy prescriptions for the problems that ail us. All he has is guilt by association and charges of socialism. Just like John Kerry in the last cycle, he has no positive agenda for the country — the only argument for McCain is that he is not Barack Obama, just like the only argument for Kerry was the he was not George W. Bush. Historically, candidates who cannot articulate what they are for do not win.

The Republican talking points and attack ads have lost their meaning — the public has heard these arguments made for fifty years. After a while words lose their punch, turning them into a cliche’, a joke. Play the McCain/Palin drinking game and take a drink whenever the words “Ayers,” “terrorist” and “socialist” are brought up. You’ll be a good and drunk in a matter of minutes. Once your arguments turn into a drinking game, it’s over. They’ve failed.

But this does not mean that McCain still can’t win the presidency — he can. But luck and race, I suspect, will be the two deciding factors.

I have closed this post to comments, because I am sick of this fruitless argument. We’ll all just have to agree to disagree on this one and leave it at that.

This will also be my last political post until election day. Fallout 3 comes out today, and I have supermutants to kill and post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C. to explore. You might say I need to prepare myself for life after a possible McCain/Palin administration.

Finally, SNL manages to figure out how to have fun at Barack Obama’s expense, as they speculate on how Obama may spend his 30 minutes of network airtime next week.

My personal theme song (at the moment):

i know we’re going to meet some day 
in the crumbled financial institutions of this land
there will be tables and chairs
there’ll be pony rides and dancing bears
there’ll even be a band
cause listen, after the fall there will be no more countries
no currencies at all, we’re gonna live on our wits
we’re gonna throw away survival kits, 
trade butterfly-knives for adderal
and that’s not all
ooh-ooh, there will be snacks there will
there will be snacks, there will be snacks.

Yes, there will be snacks. There are snacks.

David Kurtz at TPM:

Barack Obama is noted for his powerful intellect, but I don’t think he gets nearly enough credit for the mental dexterity it takes to be simultaneously an Islamic theocrat, atheistic communist and national socialist while posing as a center left candidate. Those must be the compartmentalization skills they taught him at that Manchurian madrasah in Indonesia.

LOL.  Of course, what’s funny is that John Kerry was portrayed as merely a pinko commie coward who didn’t earn his medals, Al Gore was a tree-hugging limp-wristed elitist, and Bill Clinton was a womanizing creep.  The GOP’s depiction of Obama’s “evil” cranks the rhetoric up to nearly comic extremes, which I think in some ways indicates the desperation of the Republican high command.

What troubles me is how willing the Republican base is to believe that half the country (and I imagine, this would include me, my mother, my wife and most of my friends and associates) are either treacherous or naive in that we nominate and support candidates who the GOP claims are capable of such things.   

The irony is that a tactic that worked so well during the last couple elections does not seem to be working so well now.  Bush changed everything for the GOP — after ruining the economy, dragging the country into an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq, and presiding over corruptions and scandals and embarassements from Terry Schiavo to Katrina to Mark Foley and Larry Craig — he sunk his own party.  

I believe very strongly that most Americans are neither liberal or conservative, but exist in a middle area between the two parties.  They are not strongly idealogical — so appeals based on partisanship or idealogy are not effective coming from a party that has lost credibility.  It wasn’t that Americans agreed with the GOP so much as they trusted them in two major areas — national security and the economy.  And when the GOP was perceived to fail in those two areas, they no longer had the trust of the middle.  So these kinds of arguments fall on deaf ears, because the public just doesn’t trust the source.

If the Democratic party were to suddenly push a radical left agenda (despite what the GOP claims, there’s really nothing radical about the center-left policies Obama, or many of the Democrats are currently espousing), they would find themselves in much the same boat, particurlarly if they experienced a number of policy scandals.  Remember, the GOP rose to power in the 1970’s and 1980’s after decades of liberal policy failures.  The term “liberal” became a dirty word not only after the left’s opposition to Vietnam, but also due to what the public perceived as the excesses of the Great Society and various social welfare programs.  Welfare, particularly AFDC, was widely considered a failure.  Reagan’s “Welfare Queens” refrain about freeloading welfare mothers driving Cadillacs was successful because the public believed it to be true.

Bush has brought the GOP the same journey into the wilderness the Democrats took 20 years ago.  When a party has numerous policy failures and over reaches and pushes too ideological an agenda, that party gets a rebuke.  A generation of Americans turned their back on the Democrats, and now another generation is poised to turn their backs on the GOP.

Provided he wins, Obama will need to stay in the center and push a progressive agenda on the margins if he wants to stay successful and popular.  There will be a lot of pressure from the left for him to enact some radical social change, but if he’s smart (and I know he is), he will stay moderate and not push too far.  It’s a far cry from the risky, radical and extremist figure promoted by the GOP, but go back and read Obama’s books, particularly “Dreams From My Father,” and you will see that he is a very moderate and realistic man who knows not to overreach.  For instance, a lot of Democrats want a single-payer health care program, but they will have to live with Obama’s more modest approach which doesn’t include mandates for adults and relies on the existing insurance companies for delivery.

Some may want to believe the claims about the “dangers” of Obama, but I think the facts — and our future history — will prove the opposite.  Obama’s crime on the left will be that he is not progressive enough.  Just as many Democrats were disappointed that Bill Clinton governed as a centrist (despite being a part of the centrist DLC), many will be disppointed about Obama governing from the center.  The Republicans and the conservative base will claim that Obama is a radical socialist, and if they stick to those shrill remarks, they will continue to lose, because in practice he will be less of a socialist than George W. Bush and the “conservative” politicians who just nationalized the banking system.  And the public will know it.

Of course, Obama still needs to win the election.  I’m not a triumphalist — I know that McCain still stands a good chance to win.  And given McCain’s record, I suspect conservatives have much more to fear from him than they do Obama.  Because McCain holds no idealogical commitments, he is no party true believer — his only compass is his gut.  And I think we’ve seen in recent weeks how unreliable that compass is.

Will Ferrell makes one last appearance as George W. Bush on SNL. Is it wrong that this makes me feel somewhat … nostalgic?

This guy’s voice is practically a falsetto, but I love this song:

No artist has moved me in recent years more than Damien Hirst.  When Tina and I discovered his work at the now-closed Satchi gallery in London, I was blown away by how terrible and moving it was.

Now he addresses the issue of the subprime mortgage crisis.  Those familiar with his past work will definitely get a kick out of it.

CLARIFICATION: This is obviously not a real piece by Damien Hirst. But it is funny nonetheless.

I’ve been coughing so hard and so much these past four days, I suspect I’ll soon have an aneurysm.  I just spent the past couple days at my mom’s, trying to recover.

Through that time, I went to see Oliver Stone’s W., and listened to Colin Powell deliver his endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press.

Maybe it’s the cough medicine talking, but I felt think the critics have been a bit too harsh on W.  There’s no question about Oliver Stone’s biases, but overall I think it was a fairly straightforward and even sympathetic biopic.  Yes, it assumes that you believe as Stone does — that George W. Bush has oedipal issues, that he was out of his depth as President, and that he is incurious and incompetent.  Provided you’re on board with that premise, you may — as I do — view the film as a tragedy about a man who has spent his life both living up to and challenging his father, a relationship which brings him to make some very bad decisions.  

It’s certainly not Stone’s greatest work, but it’s not at travesty, either.  In the end, Stone made me feel sorry for Bush — it’s a point missing from the reviews and the trailers that suggest the film is a comedy.  I also felt angry at him for pursuing and achieving the presidency and for listening to cranks like Dick Cheney.  We may never figure out just what we feel collectively about George W. Bush and what he did, but this was a decent attempt at starting the discussion.

Colin Powell is painted as the failed voice of reason in W. — a tragic figure in his own right — and there is no greater example of that than in his endorsement today for Barack Obama.  A career military man and lifelong conservative (and anyone who would like to dispute this fact, should really go back and look at what he’s said on record before blathering on about how this isn’t true), it clearly wasn’t easy for Powell to make his decision.  But like Christopher Buckley and others, it seems that all the smart people have been run out of the Republican party by the guys with pitchforks and torches.  This doesn’t make them Democrats, but we’re more than happy to welcome them into our Big Tent.

I’m not sure if it will change anyone’s minds at this point, but it may make moderates in the Republican party who question the overall tone and tactics of the McCain campaign (as well as McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin) feel a little better about voting for Obama on Nov. 4. 

A part of me would like to see Powell get a second shot at the State Department to fix the things he couldn’t fix in the first Bush term.  I know this won’t happen, but I love nothing better than a good redemption story.

Well, although I think that McCain’s performance was improved, I don’t think he managed to turn the race around.  Obama was even, calm and well-prepared — just as he needed to be.  McCain continued to play to his base, when he needed to play to independents and conservative Democrats.  I think he scored points with his base, but he didn’t sufficiently make the case to the middle.  But I’m an Obama partisan, so take that for what it’s worth.

Two big mistakes for McCain: 1) he referred to the pro-choice position as pro-abortion.  This may be technically true, but it’s going to alienate a lot of pro-choice moderates who may be inclined to vote for him.  2) He expressed contempt for late-term abortion bans that contain a provision for the health of the mother.  Many people like myself — people I would refer to as moderately pro-choice — support bans on late-term abortions, but do believe the health of the mother should be a game-changing consideration.  He just lost a ton of independent women.

Also, the thing I hate most about politicians on both sides is when they invoke some random voter and use them as a prop for their policy proposals.  Bill Clinton, John Kerry, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and John McCain all do it, and I hate it.  It’s pandering bullshit.  Joe the Plumber was tonight’s meat prop, and I was sick of how McCain and Obama both pandered to this mythical everyman.

Why stop with plumbers?  How about Tad the Zookeeper, or Howie the Short Order Cook?

I first discovered The Daily Beast, as did many others, with Christopher Buckley’s endorsement of Barack Obama.  Days later, Buckley has been cast out of the pages of the magazine his father founded, and is now writing exclusively for The Daily Beast.

The Beast is apparently a project from Tina Brown, the former iconoclastic editor of The New Yorker, and it takes a refreshingly trashy, yet highbrow approach.  It’s comparable in some ways to Salon in the days before the 2004 election when Salon held a variety of viewpoints and hadn’t allowed itself to be subsumed by the greater blogosphere.  Now Salon is a dull shadow of itself, really just a lesser voice in the liberal blogosphere, and the Daily Beast is like the old Salon reborn.  

Definitely worth a read.