So Chuck Hagel is saying his ideas are closer to Obama's, but he doesn't plan to endorse either candidate. Could mean he's still trying to negotiate himself a spot on the ticket (seems unlikely), or he doesn't want to offend his friend John McCain or hurt himself further within the GOP, or he wants to burnish his non-partisan credentials by being not even partisan enough to support a presidential candidate.
Who knows? But it occurs to me that Hagel could draw some more of the attention he seems to relish, and earn some good will from congressional leadership, if he stays neutral but pipes up every now and then to slap back some of Joe Lieberman's ridiculous attacks on Barack Obama.
Back in a day not too long ago, Bob Schieffer was one of two remaining television journalists with a hint of spine (the other being Keith Olberman). Every other TV news head in America was afraid of making Condoleezza Rice cry on camera and was just plain afraid of Donald Rumsfeld, but not Schieffer. Schieffer once snapped "let me just ask you to answer the question" at Condi and growled at Rummy, "Well, you really have not directly answered that question, if I may say so, Mr. Secretary."
I don't know what ever happened to that Bob Schieffer, but he was nowhere to be found on last Sunday's Face the Nation McCain campaign ad featuring Joe Lieberman. Last Sunday's Bob Schieffer was Tim Russert reincarnate.
A new Quinnipiac University poll has Obama beating McCain 56-35 in Connecticut.
This maybe doesn't come as much of a surprise, but it should be recalled that Rasmussen polled CT at the end of May and found Obama up by only 3. After that some of the McCain team started talking excitedly about a possible "Lieberman effect", and if I recall correctly they marked CT as a possible target state on the McCain website strategy briefing.
Well, doesn't look like they'll be following up on that one. The internals don't provide any comfort for McCain either - Obama leads in every category the pollsters could think of, except Republicans.
Ever since Obama sewed up the nomination we have seen a new type of troll hunter here on Daily Kos, the "purity troll hunter." Who are these intrepid adventurers, and what is their mission?
They are friends, peers, compatriots, patriots, and Democrats. They are people who are absolutely sure not just that Obama winning is the best thing for our country, but also that criticism of him is just plain wrong and destructive to his campaign. I agree with the first part. I reject the second. I reject the second for a pretty simple reason. Everybody, you see, has their deal breakers. What the purity troll hunters are really telling you is that THEIR deal breaker has not been hit yet, so it doesn't matter if yours has.
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Joseph Lieberman is handling his job as United States senator?
Approve 45 (52)
Disapprove 43 (35)
That's a 15-point downward swing in support, from +17 approval to +2.
The crosstabs:
Tot Rep Dem Ind Approve 45 70 26 47
Disapprove 43 18 62 39
Yup. There is little doubt among Democrats and Republicans in the state about their senator's allegiances.
Remember we polled a hypothetical Lamont-Lieberman rematch back in April, and on that poll, Lieberman had a better 47-40 approval/disapproval rating. Matched up against Ned Lamont, Lieberman lost 37-51.
I've got another poll in the field this week asking that same questions again. If that Q-poll is any indication, Lieberman may be looking even worse against Lamont this time around.
I've never written a diary, posted a comment, or even uttered a word that attacked Joe Lieberman.
To me, he's always been a bread-and-butter Democrat. After all, he was our party's well-respected vice presidential nominee eight long years ago. Even in the past few years, I respected that he transcended 'party' altogether--and I refused to join the bash-Lieberman train, even when I disagreed with him about the war on terror. Even when I disagreed with him about the Democrats' ability to handle national security issues. Even when I disagreed with him about the war on terror, the next seventeen times.
I am pretty certain that either I'm completely starting to lose it, or that I am in desperate need of a reality check by my fellow Kossacks. Now, didn't Charlie Black get into some pretty serious hot water last week for inferring that it would be a 'good thing' for McCain if there were to be a terrorist attack on the United States prior to the election? Yeah, I think this 'misstatement' was all over the news, and as I recall, there was a formal apology from Charlie Black regarding his statement. I even recall watching Keith Olbermann talking about the fact that this continual fear mongering was now becoming a pattern by members of the McCain campaign and of course, the Republican party in general. So regardless of Charlie Black's mea culpa....
Wes Clark, Joe Lieberman's nemesis, followed Lieberman today on Face the Nation via satellite from Little Rock. General Clark did a great job on behalf of Barack Obama, which I'll get to in a moment.
But it was the General's tie that got my attention. I wondered whether perhaps his wife Gert had picked it out for him. And if so, I thought, what enjoyment they must have had choosing it. Wes usually sports a pretty standard tie in red or blue, something traditional. Today he was wearing a black and white tie. And I thought of Michelle Obama's black and white dress that she wore on the view.
That tie spoke volumes to me....it was so supportive of what the Obamas are trying to do for this country.
Lieberman is now using the fear card and attacking Barack Obama.
"It's now working," Lieberman told Schieffer. "If we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do for the last couple of years, today Iran and al Qaeda would be in control of Iraq. It would be a terrible defeat for us and our allies in the Middle East and throughout the world. Instead, we've got a country that's defending itself, that's growing economically, where there's been genuine political reconciliation, and where Iran and al Qaeda are on the run. And that's the way it ought to be."
It is true that the Democrats have a "Lieberman problem". But in addition to getting some facts wrong, Sunday's TIME Magazine article from Jay Newton-Small does not really measure the magnitude or breadth of the problem. So I have.
The pathetic Democratic capitulation on FISA is depressing to be sure. Sen. Feingold sounded pretty depressed when spoke to us about it yesterday on our show. He echoed the same frustration we have had for months now:
"It's the latest chapter of running for cover when the Administration tries to intimidate Democrats on national security issues. It's the most embarrassing failure of the Democrats I've seen since 2006, other than the failure to vote to end the Iraq war ... It's letting George Bush and Dick Cheney have their way even though they're that unpopular and on their way out. It's really incredible."
Richard Clarke told Keith Olbermann the other night that McCain's campaign seems determined to fight the election on national security and fear.
Given that the only issue on which McCain is currently out polling Obama is national security, it's no wonder that Charlie Black, McCain's strategic adviser and a Middle East lobbyist blabbed that a terrorist attack would be good for the McCain team in November. Holy fear mongering, Bat Man!
Barack Obama's campaign rightly fired back that this kind of talk is reprehensible.
One can hope that Americans, after 8 years of George W Bush's catastrophic belligerence, have been immunized against the fear tactics, but the traditional media, e.g. Tweety, are mesmerized by McCain's so-called national security credentials.
Robert Greenwald and his Brave New Films have started an online petition to have Joe Lieberman stripped of his chairmanship of Homeland Security. So far 20,325 have signed to remove this blight. Feel free to do so, too!
Let us review the most recent occasion an insurgent won the Democratic nomination against bitter and organized establishment opposition. It was 1972 and George McGovern, caretaker of the Kennedy delegates after California in 1968, had been given the party rules committee slot that would have gone to RFK and, failing that, should have gone to Gene McCarthy. In the 1972 primaries McGovern used his knowledge of the rules to defeat the presumptive nominee, Hubert Humphrey, with an outbreak of enthusiasm Humphrey could hardly understand, much less emulate.
But then at the convention he tried to reach out to the establishment wing of the party by nominating a labor hack, Tom Eagleton of Missouri, as his running mate. It was a sickening blow that the old politics delivered straight to the reform breadbasket. It also showed that McGovern did not have the strategic cunning or the tactical brass to dance with who brung him.
