Politics

Obama Campaign Remembers Earliest Donors

I just got an email from Barack Obama telling me something interesting -- I was one of his earliest donors: You were one of the first 100,000 people to own a piece of this campaign. You provided the strength needed to build a movement. Back then, few pundits or insiders thought we had a chance. But thanks to you, we overcame steep odds. Twenty months later, millions of Americans all across the country have joined you, working for change. But in these final three weeks, our opponents are ... (read more)

2008/10/13

Sarah Palin: 'How Dare They Boo Piper!'

My favorite Amy Carter moment was when a reporter asked her if she had any message for the children of America. She looked at the reporter square in the eyes, thought for a few moments, and then gave this brilliant reply: "No." -- Danny Miller, Huffington Post Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin dropped the puck at the Philadelphia Flyers game Saturday night and was greeted with either a loud chorus of boos or a mixed response, depending on which media account you read. On the ... (read more)

2008/10/12

Scoring the Second Obama/McCain Debate

On a night when he had to change the dynamics of a presidential race he's losing, John McCain wandered all over the place during Tuesday's presidential debate, both figuratively and literally. Sometimes walking around to no purpose as Barack Obama spoke, McCain even had the bad luck at the end of blocking the camera, an Abe Simpson moment that separated moderator Tom Brokaw from his teleprompter. As the faltering economy dominates the election, McCain continues to struggle to put together a ... (read more)

2008/10/08

Campaign Ad: 'Maverick Maverick Maverick!'

The ad agency Goodby, Silverstein and Partners has created some inventive fake campaign ads for the presidential campaign. This one's good enough to be a real ad for Obama. Two more over-the-top ads from the agency can be found on Stunningly Bad.Com. I've thought for a while that the world needs an ad agency that specializes in creating attack ads for subjects outside of politics. Our most sarcastic voiceover actors shouldn't be put on a shelf for three out of every four years. If Madison ... (read more)

2008/10/07

Rich Lowry: 'I Think She Just Winked at Me'

Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review for the past 11 years, posted this comment on The Corner about Sarah Palin's performance in the vice presidential debate: I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ... (read more)

2008/10/04

Scoring the Biden/Palin Debate

The summer before third grade, I became the oldest kid on my block to ride my bike with training wheels, a subject of increasing ridicule among my peers in Garland, Texas. My dad, attempting to solve the problem as dads are prone to do, decided the best solution was to take off the training wheels and push me down our steep driveway on my bike. Instinct would kick in. I would navigate the incline with increasing confidence, execute a deft 90 degree turn down the alley and ride through the ... (read more)

2008/10/03

Debate Moderator Writing 'Age of Obama' Book

A lot's being made today of the fact that Gwen Ifill, the moderator of Thursday night's vice presidential debate, has a new book coming out on Inauguration Day titled The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. The story's drawn hundreds of comments on the Drudge Retort. Ifill has made no secret of the book, which has been mentioned for months in media reports. On Aug. 21, she wrote an essay for Time magazine that describes her motivation for writing it: ... Obama is just one ... (read more)

2008/10/01

Scoring the First Obama/McCain Debate

This is a pretty traditional debate performance for Obama. Strong on substance. Few mistakes. Little in the way of killer instinct or decapitating lines. McCain, by contrast, is offering an uncommonly strong performance powered, as far as I can tell, by his raging contempt for Obama. -- Ezra Klein I thought both candidates were strong in last night's presidential debate at Ole Miss, but I'd give the edge to Barack Obama because he had more to prove and John McCain showed so much contempt for ... (read more)

2008/09/27

McCain Campaign Goes After Andrew Sullivan

The McCain campaign has been attacking the media all week, a move that seems like idiotic strategy to me. The people who are persuaded by that kind of attack already are voting for McCain. Everybody else will just dismiss it as whining, which is pretty low on the list of presidential verbs. McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb recently leaked two private emails from blogger Andrew Sullivan to the media: 1. "I'm very sorry to say, it's come to this: can you confirm on the record that Trig Palin is ... (read more)

2008/09/24

Sanders: Socialism for Rich, Free Enterprise for Poor

Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, makes a point I haven't heard anywhere else in his response to the bailout plan: We must end the danger posed by companies that are "too big too fail," that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up. Right now, for example, the Bank of America, the nation's largest ... (read more)

2008/09/22

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