Taken today with a crappy cellphone camera.
Archives for October 2008
What Ta-Nehisi Coates Said
There was no conspiracy to keep Democrats down, and there is no secret explanation for why Obama is winning. He is just running an incredibly good campaign. The idea is so rusty for Democrats and Republicans alike that it just seems like magic.
I believe in competition. John Kerry wasn’t swift-boated–he was beaten by a superior campaign. I guess Al Gore lost because of Nader and the Supreme Court. But why was it ever even that close? What is the use of being a Southern senator when you can’t carry a single state in the South? I mean no disrespect to any of those guys, I really don’t. But this notion that mystical and nefarious forces deprived them from claiming what was rightly theirs is odious and self-serving.
No one has conspired to deprive us of power over the past few decades. The American people aren’t stupid. We’ve sucked at articulating our message. If you have any interest in a more progressive country, we need to be honest. At the presidential level, at least, conservatives have hammered us. Give them their due. Don’t blame Rush. Don’t blame Kristol. Don’t denigrate states you’ve never visited. Give them their due. Give them their respect. Study them, and then get better.
Denial is bad for two reasons. First, if you can’t accept that you lost, you don’t have a prayer of getting better. If you think Kerry and Gore lost because they were too “high-minded,” then you miss the basic fundamentals at work, and spend your days congratulating yourself for being up on the latest Paul Krugman. This is a war, and you don’t lose wars because of abstract principles, but because of hard immovable facts. Is your army bigger than theirs? Are you attracting more recruits? Are you deploying in the right places? Who has more resources? Who has the technology edge? These are the reasons I voted Obama in the primary. I didn’t think he was “more principled” than Clinton, nor did I really care. I thought she was tough, but I knew he was tougher. I thought her campaign was smart, but I thought his was smarter. I thought one person was talking about being a fighter, and another was out there actually being a fighter. The general is bearing all of this out, because right now, Barack Hussein Obama is beating John McCain like he stole something–from Toot, no less.
Democrats are luckier than we have any right to expect thanks to the convergence of two independent events. First, the grisly suicide of American Republicanism is finally reaching a climax. Second, Democrats somehow found a candidate with the raw political skill to make the most of it. Either one would spell a good year; together the two could be an epoch making event.
Fifteen Minutes and Counting…
This would be teh awesome:
Move over Sanjaya and tell William Hung the news: Joe the Plumber is being pursued for a major record deal and could come out with a country album as early as Inauguration Day.
“Joe” – aka Samuel Wurzelbacher, a Holland, Ohio, pipe-and-toilet man – just signed with a Nashville public relations and management firm to handle interview requests and media appearances, as well create new career opportunities, including a shift out of the plumbing trade into stage and studio performances.
Then he can write patriotic songs and perform them at the Palin/Huckabee rallies in 2012- he can call his backup band Joe (not Joe). Some suggested song titles:
She Chews Tobaccy And She Votes Huckabee
Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Marxists
Everybody Wants to Go to the White House
No dancing, though. Remember, good Christians only in the new GOP.
If he works quick, I bet they can squeeze a few songs in for the DVD release of An American Carol. I am sure harnessing the power of Joe the Plumber can do for that movie what it has done for the McCain campaign.
(via the GOS)
Decisions, Decisions
Poor K-Lo:
I feel like the primary campaign isn’t over as fingers point to Mitt Romney supposedly trying to take down Sarah Palin. The whole thing is a distraction Dems must be grateful for.
If the former Massachusetts governor is trying to do Palin in for the sake of his future, why has he been on TV and radio defending her? (Thanklessly, too; conservatives don’t even see him when he’s on David Gregory’s show — just my hunch.)
What is a fangirl to do? Why should she have to choose between the gorgeous piece of Mormon man-meat Mitt and that everyday working girl from Wasilla, Sarah Barracuda? Can’t she have them both?
Why is the world so cruel?
Kay Hagan, Godless American (True Story- Ask Liddy Dole)
Via the Washington Monthly, this Politico piece about an ad Liddy Dole cut accusing her opponent, Kay Hagan, of being a “godless American.” My favorite part is the voice impersonator at the end saying “there is no God.”
Now I am not big on the whole God thing, so I am not sure what qualifies someone as being godless, but Kay Hagan is a Sunday School teacher, which would seem to suggest to me that she has at least a passing relationship with God.
Kay Hagan, Godless American (True Story- Ask Liddy Dole)Post + Comments (266)
Friends Don’t Let Friends Tire Swing
I had not seen this before, but it goes with what we were talking about earlier.
What a disgrace.
A Survey
Your help is being requested:
A research team from the Psychology Department at New York University, headed by Professor Yaacov Trope and supported by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the cognitive causes of voting behavior, political preferences, and candidate evaluations throughout the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. This stage of the study focuses on the information people use to inform evaluations in the days immediately preceding the election. They seek respondents of all political leanings from all over the country (and from the rest of the world) to complete a 15-minute questionnaire, the responses to which will be completely anonymous. All respondents are entered into periodic random drawings for prizes of $100. Respondents will also receive detailed information about the research findings after data collection is completed.
The survey is here.
Totally unrelated, but the Princeton University Press has a new blog.