I’m surprised that Will didn’t insinuate that Obama has pushed off the Afghanistan decision because it will fracture his party at a time when he needs the Democrats unified around healthcare. If true, Obama may be sacrificing success in Afghanistan in order to screw with American healthcare policy.

Funny that we’re less than a year into Obama’s term and we’re already printing “Don’t blame me. I voted for McCain” bumperstickers. It took at least two years for Bush!

Obama stirred similar expectations among supporters during his campaign. The video of an Obama-ite, Peggy Joseph, announcing that Obama would pay for her gas and cover her mortgage was a big hit on youtube. Unfortunately, Obama has so far only managed to hurt the financial prospects for most poor Americans (myself included).

First, the Obama administration backed the “Cash for Clunkers” program. Whatever the environmental or macroeconomic effects of “Cash for Clunkers” (and I would argue that they are harmful), one clear consequence of the program is to raise the cost of purchasing and maintaining a used vehicle. Cars that once would have been resold in the used car market are now removed from supply. Used car parts which once were mailed all over country to make car repairs more affordable are also no longer in supply. The end result is higher prices for used cars and higher repair bills for used cars. Since used cars are owned in disproportion by poorer Americans, the Cash for Clunkers program is essentially a regressive tax on the poor.

Second, on Friday Obama drastically increased the import tariff on Chinese-made tires. We don’t yet know the full effect of the resulting trade war on American exports (though it will undoubtably be bad), but we do know the consequences for poor Americans. The tires that are imported from China have been sold under a number of American brands like Cooper and Goodyear. These Chinese made tires typically fill out the cheapest tier of tires which are marketed to budget conscious consumers. The increased tariff will make these cheap tires significantly more expensive. So not only are used cars more expensive, but the cheap tires that most poor Americans choose are more expensive as well. (It is worth noting as well, that since Obama approved this tariff increase in order to get labor union support for healthcare reform he has given the lie to his campaign promise to change the way Washington works.)

Third, I should mention proposed legislation that could hurt poor Americans. If the House-approved Cap and Trade bill passes the Senate energy prices will skyrocket. Since poor Americans spend a disproportionate amount of their income on utility bills, higher energy prices will act as a regressive tax.

With all this in mind, it is hard for me to believe that low income voters still overwhelmingly approve of Obama’s handling of the Presidency. If I were a Marxist I’d have some choice words about false consciousness!

[Add. 10/6/09] – The verdict on Cash for Clunkers is in. We are poorer as a result.

Yet the Evangelical Left should be heartened. As this article in the Economist notes, the fastest growing segment of American evangelicalism, Latino pentecostalism, is signficantly more open to the politics of the left than their white counterparts.

I am willing to bet that the anti-immigration stance of conservatives, especially during the summer of 2007, has exacerbated the leftward drift of our Latino religious brothers/sisters. This is why I have long supported pro-immigration conservatives. We have done our best to turn our natural political allies into political foes; I can only hope we fail.

It’s one thing to be embarassingly slow to respond (ie the Iranian elections; here’s a blistering opinion of Obama’s mishandling of Iran in general), but it’s on another magnitude to hedge on the side of the Chavistas! The whole “it’s a coup, but we’re not going to officially call it a coup” bit… I get playing the middle, but I’m afraid that Mr. Obama is going to find out that if you do it too often you just end up with both sides upset at you.

Addendum (7/5): Another good article from Slate.

Addendum (7/14): O’Grady with a revealing essay at WSJ.

Addendum (7/25): I told you so Mr. Obama.

Addendum (8/3): A lack of change you can believe in.

I’m sure Obama supporters will claim McCain started it first, and they may be right. But I believe this strategy will backfire big time.

Obama has been running on image, a fresh new way of engaging in politics. By getting down in the mud his campaign runs the risk of sullying that image. I even wonder if older voters, who already trend toward McCain, will be driven further into the Republican fold as Obama’s campaign mocks John McCain for his inability to email.

The new Obama ad campaign might run into further trouble if articles like this spread into the general conciousness. McCain can’t type because of his war injuries in Vietnam. It seems like the Obama campaign has, I hope unintentionally, started by attacking a war hero for his disability. I bet the demographic of tortured, slightly-disabled veterans over the age of 70 is small and already trending toward McCain anyways, but I just don’t think this is a smart, or particularly ethical, move.

Up until this weekend “experience” has been the primary narrative of McCain 2008. The Republican party had selected a war hero who had served in Congress for as many years as his opponent, Barack Obama, had been post-pubescent. Although McCain’s campaign brandishes his lengthy resume, he likes to be seen as a maverick, willing to buck his own party for what he believes is right.

The Democratic Party countered attacks on Obama’s inexperience by transforming it from a liability into a strength. They present a young, fresh visionary who has not been tied down to special interests. Obama is a new kind of politician who will reform Washington.

Since politicians are elected largely on image, McCain needs to burnish his own maverick identity while simultaneously poking holes in Obama’s reputation as the rebirth of JFK. The experience debate has served McCain well, but over time it may have lost its bite. Voters who find experience a compelling argument have already been won over. No point in beating a dead horse. Experience could even be a liability if the opposition can paint McCain as a professional politician whose values are divorced from those of ordinary Americans. McCain is old enough to remember the 1960 Nixon v Kennedy campaign. In an environment more congenial to Republicans than today, Nixon ran on his superior experience, but still lost to the youthful and exciting Kennedy.

Palin provides the McCain campaign with the opportunity to switch the dialogue from experience to reform. Obama has dominated this conversation so far with talk of change and a different style of politics. Yet McCain and Palin could subsume Obama’s message. (Subsume is a debate term for taking your opponent’s premise, or primary issue, and arguing that you can do a better job with it than they can.)

McCain has been something of a political outsider for the last decade in Congress. The conservative base has distrusted McCain since his centrist campaign against George W Bush. McCain has not been afraid to buck the party line on immigration and other issues. He even cosponsored legislation with conservative archenemy Ted Kennedy. It seems that Palin has managed to annoy nearly the entire Republican establishment in Alaska. She publicly supported investigations into the infamous pair Don Young and Ted Stevens. She resigned from an energy commission in protest at a Republican commisioner’s corruption. How’s that for bipartisanship and reform?

The McCain campaign should push this reformist image on the news shows and in their campaign analysis. Republican operatives should then highlight Obama’s thin record on bipartisanship and perilous connections with shady politics back in Chicago.

Obama likes to tell the story of how he couldn’t even gain admission to the 2000 Democratic National Convention. What explains his meteoric rise through the state legislature and into Congress? Obama made several connections to the notorious Chicago Democratic political machine. Ever since Obama began making waves in the Democratic primary, there has been an undercurrent of articles, and a book, written about his relationships to shady Chicago political operatives.

One story that has gotten some play in the national media is his relationship with Tony Rezko, a man who was a major fundraiser for Obama’s Senate campaign. Rezko was also found guilty of federal fraud this May and is currently under indictment for several more fraud charges. Obama was understandably embarassed after Rezko’s indictment and said that he had never done Rezko any “favors.” However Obama had written a series of letters to Illinois government officials on Rezko’s behalf in a bid to get taxpayer money ($14 million) to build apartments for the elderly, $855,000 of which went in fees to Rezko and Obama’s former boss, Allison Davis. Whether or not Obama thought he was doing Rezko a favor, it seems that Rezko was grateful enough to sell the Obama’s a strip of land next to the family’s new house for over $500,000 less than what the political fixer had paid for it six months earlier. Keep in mind, this land deal came after the feds investigation into Rezko was already public knowledge.

Furthermore, Obama began his Congressional campaign under the patronage of Emil Jones, then the Democratic leader of the Illinois Senate.

“You have the power to elect a US senator,” Obama told Emil Jones, Democratic leader of the Illinois state senate. Jones looked at the ambitious young man smiling before him and asked, teasingly: “Do you know anybody I could make a US senator?”

According to Jones, Obama replied: “Me.” It was his first, audacious step in a spectacular rise from the murky political backwaters of Springfield, the Illinois capital.

Jones used his leadership in the Senate to block anti-corruption legislation from becoming law even though the bill had already unanimously passed through the lower chamber. Jones also recently announced his retirement and filed to have his inexperienced son take his position, nepotism worthy of Richard J. Daley himself in the 1970s.

Finally, Obama’s campaign manager, David Axelrod, ran Richard M. Daley’s mayoral election in 1989 and is still one of Daley’s advisers. He surprised liberal Chicago reformers by running the campaigns of several other distasteful Cook County politicians. In his defense Axelrod may have just done it for the money and to gain influence. But when comparing clients, Axelrod makes Karl Rove look like a boy scout.

So Obama’s campaign manager, political patron, and a major fundraiser are all connected to a sordid Chicago political machine. Sure, Obama himself has not been directly accused of corruption, but when a man runs a campaign about change and reform, surely he should be held to a higher standard of association than Rezko, Jones, and Axelrod, Inc.

While the Republicans’ experience argument was based upon how much we know about McCain’s impressive resume, it left Obama’s record in the dark (which was the point). But if the McCain campaign switches the dialogue to reform, highlighting McCain’s support for campaign finance reform and his pledge to abide by public financing limits (unlike Obama who welshed on his promise), the burden of proof shifts to Obama and focuses on his past. If Republicans can focus the public’s attention on Obama’s seedy Chicago connections, than Obama’s image will suffer severely, especially among Independent voters.

Who is Sarah Palin and how does she benefit John McCain’s presidential campaign? These questions are intertwined and so I’ll discuss them in tandem.

1) Sarah Palin is a woman. Voters tend to pull the lever for the candidate with whom they most identify and more than half of those voters are women. Palin’s selection is a transparent bid for female voters who supported Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary. The political buzz during the Democratic National Convention centered on the unknown numbers of Hillary fans who had yet to succumb to Obamamania. Sarah Palin gave a shoutout to those undecided voters by honoring Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton during her acceptance speech. Even if you don’t end up voting for her, how can you help but respect a woman who rides snowmobiles, hunts moose, shoots assault rifles, marries a semi-professional snowmobile racer, raises five children, oh and governs Alaska in her spare time?

2) Sarah Palin’s candidacy was designed to upstage Barack Obama. The news cycle is king in politics (read George Stephanopoulos’s All Too Human sometime). Barack Obama gave an excellent speech in Denver Friday night and the Saturday morning news gave him full coverage. But after only 12 hours of headlines, “Barack Obama Gives Historic Acceptance Speech” gave way to “John McCain Surprises With Alaskan Hockey Mom.” The political wonks have enough new material for discussion to carry them into the Republican National Convention next week. If McCain had chosen a safe candidate like Pawlenty or Romney no one would have been surprised and most of the upstage value would have been lost.

The Obama campaign wanted Americans to connect Obama’s speech at the DNC with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech 45 years before. Obama had received the Civil Rights mantle. So the McCain campaign calls the opening bid and ups the ante by presenting Sarah Palin close to the anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Adding insult to injury, Palin ended her speech co-opting Obama’s slogan:

If you want change in Washington, if you hope for a better America, then we’re asking for your vote on the 4th of November.

3) Sarah Palin reinforces John McCain’s maverick image. McCain is famous, or infamous depending on your perspective, for bucking the Republican establishment on everything from immigration to campaign finance reform. Palin has caused great consternation among the incumbent Republican legislators in Alaska. She pushed ethics reform and turned whistle-blower on Republican colleagues. She draws a favorable contrast to Obama who ascended the political ladder under the auspices of the Chicago Democratic political machine.

4) Palin’s selection energizes the conservative base. Many leading conservative lights had backed Mitt Romney in the Republican primary and have nursed sore feelings and misgivings ever since McCain’s victory. But the some of the same Republicans who actively opposed McCain, and even proposed voting for Hillary Clinton instead, have found themselves newly excited by a McCain-Palin ticket. She is a social conservative and an evangelical (she used Biblical phraseology during her speech when talking about “blessings” and having “a servant’s heart.”). Conservatives who had been concerned that McCain would choose a pro-choice Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman are relieved. Now James Dobson is on board and even Rush Limbaugh exults over having a conservative “babe on the ticket.”

5) Sarah Palin could energize independent voters. She mentioned in her speech that she took on big oil and special interests in Alaska, populist rhetoric that plays well among independents. She is a former union member herself and is married to a current United Steelworker, perhaps another appeal to working class Reagan Democrats.

The buzz about Palin is not all positive. Democrats were quick to pounce on her inexperience. The argument goes like this: “You accuse Barack of being inexperienced because he has only served in the Senate for four years, but then you nominate a candidate who was the mayor of Nowhere, Alaska just two years ago!” I’m sure the McCain campaign is hedging on his surplus of experience to make up for her lack. Still it is worth noting that Palin is the only one of the four campaigners to have any executive experience since McCain, Biden, and Obama are all legislators!

There is also an ongoing investigation of Palin possibly misusing her powers as Governor to fire someone for not firing her brother-in-law. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens, but I’m sure Democratic operatives will make this a talking point on the Sunday morning news shows.

Now that McCain has already made his choice for VP this weekend how will he be able to keep people interested in the upcoming Republican National Convention? On the first night of the convention former Democratic senator Joe Lieberman will mount the platform and warmly endorse John McCain for President. Three nights later John McCain should stand before his supporters and declare an end to partisan politics by announcing that Joe Lieberman will be the next Secretary of State.

Yet national polling shows Republican John McCain in a dead heat, and at times with a slight lead, over either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Incroiable!

The principal cause of McCain’s domestic “surge” in the polls has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the conduct of his two potential foes in the general election, Obama and Clinton.

Both candidates have sorely wounded each other and spent money that would otherwise have been hoarded for a general campaign war chest. Hillary has just reminded everyone of her instincts for skullduggery and managed to alienate some of her natural supporters like the New York Times.

Republicans rejoiced Tuesday over Clinton’s double digit win in Pennsylvania, ensuring that the inconclusive status quo be maintained for at least several more weeks. Yet even if Hillary had received a 20+ point mandate from PA or Obama had finished her off once and for all, I think each candidate is copiously bleeding from primary-inflicted wounds.

Clinton is famously unpopular among Republicans, so her candidacy would arouse the conservative base around even that popular bugaboo John McCain. She is seen as intensely partisan, which would scare off many independents and some moderates. She carries a good deal of political baggage from her husband’s term of office and her more moderate years in the Senate, like Bill’s support for NAFTA and her vote for war in Iraq, positions which cool sympathy for her among the liberal elite.

At first Obama appeared to be the candidate of “change” who would be able to garner support from all corners. However, this campaign has started to wash out that image. His possibly duplicitious response on the gun control survey, the constant attacks on his associations, and his elitist comment about rural Pennsylvanians has worried some “Reagan Democrats.” Sure, he can win 92% of the black vote in PA, but if working class white men don’t vote for him, than he will be in trouble. That demographic defected once before rather than vote for a perceived liberal elitist (Mondale); there’s little reason why they shouldn’t again.

Obama leads Hillary in most national polls, but I don’t think he is a significantly stronger candidate over all. The Clinton campaign is right to point out Obama’s struggles in key contested states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida. Take a look at the exit poll data for any of those states. I’ll highlight the Ohio data for sake of example.

Obama won in the major cities, Cleveland, Cinncinati, and Columbus, but Hillary dominated the more rural counties (indeed the map looks like that infamous 2004 Red State-Blue State Map). As already mentioned, Obama dominates the black vote and the educated liberal vote whereas Hillary does better among whites and the less educated. This reveals that Obama finds his greatest support from the solid Democratic base. This is great for a primary campaign, but a Democrat needs more than blacks, college graduates, and urbanites to win in the general election.

The trend is exacerbated by the way the age groups skew. Young people are more likely to vote for Obama. Older people are more likely to vote for Clinton. While enthusiastic college kids may make great volunteers for the campaign, they simply don’t vote in large enough numbers compared with the ever reliable elderly vote. Aging communities in the rustbelt and in the sunbelt are typically a bit more conservative than their younger counterparts and have been more likely to back Hillary.

Come November, all these divisions within the Democratic Party can translate into voter defection to John McCain. Obama will win overwhelmingly in securely Democratic states, but may falter in the same states he lost to Clinton, and for some of the same reasons. “Frustrated” working class gun owners, 2008’s “soccer moms,” might find more in common with a hardnosed war veteran than with an Ivy League educated lawyer. Older folks in Florida might decide to vote for someone who was more than a tween when Vietnam ended. Residual racism may encourage some cultural Democrats to vote for a McCain rather than for a black man or simply not vote at all.

Both Democratic candidates have potentially fatal flaws.

John McCain for President 2008 should have about as much of a prayer as Herbert Hoover in 1932. Yet McCain has something Hoover couldn’t have had in his wildest dreams: a fractured and bruised Democratic Party that has been hamstrung by its own system (Thanks George McGovern. Proportional delegating has really worked out swell!).

About 30 minutes before Clinton arrived, Bobo Beck and I staked out a spot that was just outside the inner circle reserved for Hillary partisans and photogenic types.

The first thing I noticed was that something was missing in the crowd, a pretty big something for Philadelphia: there were no black people. Out of the several hundred bystanders around me, only a few cops and one cameraman were black.

This crowd should be Hillary’s bread and butter; largely white blue collar middle class families from traditionally white ethnic neighborhoods. Her audience certainly seemed to appreciate her arguments with periodic “Hill-a-ry, Hill-a-ry” chants.

She did the usual, proposing lower taxes for the middle class, protection of union (ahem American) jobs, and mortgage default forgiveness. Her best line came in response to Obama’s criticism of her husband’s record in the 1990s. She said, and I attempt to reconstruct this from memory, “I don’t know what part of the 1990s he didn’t appreciate. Was it the peace or the prosperity?”

To put it in terms of Philadelphian politics, if Hillary can win most of the Frank Rizzo crowd, then maybe she can counteract Obama’s stranglehold on the John Street folks.

Unfortunately we conservatives reveal our lack of political principle in the way we oppose a candidate like Barack Obama. Anything seems to go in the hurly-burly of current politics. Perhaps this tendency is the natural result of the anonymity offered by the internet or the direct proportion between inflamatory language and the likelihood of being heard.

Not all the blame can be shifted to yellow journalism. News outlets dig up and report sensational stories because they sell…the consumer is as much to blame as Al Franken or Rupert Murdoch. So what reasons have conservatives articulated to explain their opposition to Barack Obama?

I have heard people scoff at his slogan/book title, The Audacity of Hope. A conversation with a friend about Barack’s claim to epitomize a new path for America went something like this: “Obama only offers hope to inner city crack dealers and welfare moms.”

Now, I don’t personally know many welfare moms or crack dealers, but I’m pretty sure the groups aren’t synonymous. Also, it is hard to argue against “hope.” I might as well try and argue against apple pie, babies, and global peace. But the fact that Obama chose a fuzzy feeling vague slogan to rally his peeps with is not a reason to oppose his candidacy. Remember Bush and his “Compassionate Conservatism?” Anywho, I rather doubt that Barack woke up one morning, rolled out of bed, and said, “You know Michelle, I think I’ll focus my campaign on drug dealers and poor mothers.” When you actually listen to the (few) details of Obama’s platform, he proposes tax cuts aimed at the working poor and the middle class.

Another way of stirring opposition is to go ad hom on Mr. Obama. One day someone spreads an internet rumor that little Barack was educated in a radical Islamic madrassa. The next time a picture of Obama in traditional Islamic garb is floated on Drudgereport. Let me put it simply; I despise these dirty tricks. Unfortunately conservatives tend to protest loudly when unfair accusations are leveled at their candidates (remember the Bush DUI scandal right before the 2000 election), but are willing to acquiesce to similar attacks on liberal reputations.

Recently another avenue of attack has been presented. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s spiritual mentor, was revealed to have made some comments that were as inane as Fox News’s coverage of Anna Nichole Smith. Why should Wright’s admittedly idiotic comments impact our opposition to Obama? Once you get past Wright’s incindiery language, he is only purporting the same government-backed social justice movement as most liberals. I don’t think that a candidate’s pastor should be a significant factor in our opposition.

So why should we oppose Barack Obama? There are two criteria that are useful in determing whether a candidate would make a good President: 1) His character. 2) His ideology.

In all the talk we have heard about Obama recently, his character, as yet, has remained largely inviolate. He has not been accused of anything more than the usual level of dishonesty found among politicians, and unless his connections to a shady former Chicago associate are substantiated, Obama seems a pretty decent guy. So, my opposition to Obama is not based upon any major flaw in his personal integrity.

I believe Barack Obama would make a poor President because of his ideology. During his time in Illinois politics and in the US Senate, Obama has proven his hardcore liberal positions. Obama would raise the tax burden for those most responsible for creating wealth and stimulating the economy while increasing the size and expense of government. He has said he would quickly pull all American soldiers out of Iraq. He supports national healthcare insurance, affirmative action, and a form of the Kyoto treaty. He opposes privatizing social security and expanding free trade.

These are substantial reasons to oppose Obama’s candidacy. So why do we spend the overwhelming majority of our time discussing the incidental? I am sick of hearing about his wife, his pastor, and his image. Let’s talk policy for once.