By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only.

Josh Marshall and John Cole write as if they just discovered what Republicans do. Cole cites Marshall thusly:

Hopefully, everyone can now see the McCain strategy for running against Barack Obama. Yes, we have some general points on taxes, culture wars and McCain as war hero who can protect us in ways that flash-in-the-pan pretty boy Barack Obama can’t.

But that’s not the core. The core is to drill a handful of key adjectives into the public mind about Barack Obama: Muslim, anti-American, BLACK, terrorist, Arab. Maybe a little hustler and shifty thrown in, but we’ll have to see. The details and specific.

Um, duh? But they miss the bigger point -- to withstand this onslaught Obama will need to retain his Media Darling status. NOW we see Marshall is worried about NBC. After spending months defending NBC for its outrageous bias against Hillary Clinton. As Bob Somerby regularly notes about Marshall and TPM, it is a little late to get religion on the outrageous work of NBC.

Just out at The Nation:

A senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has told The Nation that if elected Obama will not "rule out" using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The adviser also said that Obama does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009, when a new President will be sworn in.

Obama's campaign says that instead he will focus on bringing accountability to these forces while increasing funding for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the agency that employs Blackwater and other private security contractors. (Hillary Clinton's staff did not respond to repeated requests for an interview or a statement on this issue.)

Bottom line, according to Obama's senior advisor:

. "I can't rule out, I won't rule out, private security contractors." He added, "I will rule out private security contractors that are not accountable to US law."

More...

Due to the volume of people trying to access TalkLeft during live events like debates, our server has had "issues" to say the least. The site slows down and often becomes inaccessible. One reason is there are controls on how many people can try to access it at once so the server doesn't crash. TalkLeft is on its own server and it's a big and powerful one, but it's just not enough to handle the intense traffic bursts that these events bring. Also, the average time visitors spend on TalkLeft is huge compared to other sites...almost 5 minutes.

In anticipation of Tuesday's election night, we're adding another server today to share the load. Colin at Scoophost, our webmaster, is also tweaking some other things.

Normally we'd do this at night, so that if the site goes down during the process, fewer readers will notice. But, we're doing it now.

Should the site go down today, that's why and it will be back up as soon as any kinks get ironed out.

Thanks for your patience and your readership. And yes, site donations are always appreciated.

You can use this as another open thread if you'd like.

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only.

That Crazy Lanny Davis:

Hillary supporter Lanny Davis added a new dimension to the Hillary camp's bash-the-press-for-being-soft-on-Obama strategy, asserting on Morning Joe that "it's very hard to criticize Senator Obama without being accused of playing the race card"...

Greg Sargent thought that was over the top. I would have thought so too. But then I read this from Attaturk:

And now Gail Collins comes forward today and says:

...people here worry that Barack Obama is getting show-offy

I believe the word all of you are thinking, but not typing, is...

U-P-P-I-T-Y

Let's just get it out in the open and call it for the racist bullcrap it is.

As I card carrying member of the PC police, I would urge that Gail Collins take care with her words in general. But Attaturk just called her a racist. I wonder what Hilzoy and John Cole think about that?

Via Attorney D.D. in MO:

The George W. Bush Presidential Library is now in the planning stages. Surely, you'll want to be the first to make a contribution to this great man's legacy.

The library will include:

• The Hurricane Katrina Room , which is still under construction.

• The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you can't remember anything.

• The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't have to even show up.

• The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don't let you in.

[More...]

Update: Now that Ralph Nader has selected Matt Gonzales as his running mate, which I did not know when this post was written, I've written a follow-up here.

*****

Matt Gonzales is a progressive and the former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He's also a former public defender, former Democrat and green party candidate who ran a well-respected and close campaign against San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. (Bill Clinton campaigned for Newsom, who won.)

He started thinking he didn't know too much about Barack Obama other than the change meme, so he did some pretty exhaustive research on his voting record. As a result, he says, "Count Me Out." Check out his issue by issue comparison and then his conclusion:

Once I started looking at the votes Obama actually cast, I began to hear his rhetoric differently. The principal conclusion I draw about “change” and Barack Obama is that Obama needs to change his voting habits and stop pandering to win votes. If he does this he might someday make a decent candidate who could earn my support. For now Obama has fallen into a dangerous pattern of capitulation that he cannot reconcile with his growing popularity as an agent of change.

I remain impressed by the enthusiasm generated by Obama’s style and skill as an orator. But I remain more loyal to my values, and I’m glad to say that I want no part in the Obama craze sweeping our country.

I think Gonzales' view is even more telling when you consider who supported him for Mayor in 2003. It wasn't the Democratic establishment, it was the change folks, including: [More...]

David Gergen, former advisor to President Bill Clinton confirms to CNN that Hillary Clinton did not support NAFTA:

And for Clinton supporters out there, here's a late nighter: Hillary's new Texas ad, One of a Million

There's a new LA Times/Bloomberg national poll. The key findings:

• Between McCain, Obama and Hillary:

  In head-to-head contests, the poll found, McCain leads Clinton by 6 percentage points (46% to 40%) and Obama by 2 points (44% to 42%). Neither lead is commanding given that the survey, conducted Feb. 21-25, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
  

• On the economy, Hillary beats McCain 43% to 34% while McCain beats Obama 42% to 34%. That's a big difference.

[More...]

Ohio is considered an important state in the general election. It's generally been a barometer of how the country will go.

A little history: No Republican has won the presidency that didn't take Ohio since Abe Lincoln in 1860. The only Democrats in the last century to win the presidency while losing Ohio were FDR and JFK.

Ohio favors Republicans, although Bill Clinton won the state both in 1992 and 1996. Al Gore and John Kerry both lost the state to George W. Bush.

Here's a map showing in red and blue how Ohio counties voted in past elections.

So how did Bill Clinton win Ohio? He went after the rural vote, not just the urban areas. [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

More thread.

By Big Tent Democrat

An Open Thread to continue ongoing debates or commence new ones. Go Gators! Beat the Bulldogs!

NOTE - This thread is at 215. Now closed. New thread above.

By Big Tent Democrat

In the spirit of speaking up when I think the blog CW is wrong, I want to address this argument from Markos. He cites Texas blogger Anna, who writes:

[A]nd let me just add to what karl sent you last night about the obama campaign doing more to rebuild the party in two weeks than the party's done in years.... he's 1000% right.

[W]e have - in [T]arrant county alone - 3400 volunteers and over 600 precinct captains. that means that we could fill almost every single precinct captain spot in [T]arrant county. [O]ne of our goals has been to ask these volunteers to continue to serve their local parties, and we are urging our precinct captains to become precinct chairs where ever there is an empty spot. [I]f our people will fill the empty spots, we could have a precinct chair in every precinct in [T]arrant county for the first time in over 15 years.

(Emphasis supplied.) Here's my question -- does Obama volunteer translate into Democratic volunteer? That is the assumption of both Markos and Anna. I have serious doubts that a post-partisan Unity campaign will produce the type of partisans who will become regular Democratic Party activists. "If" is the operative word in Anna's post. My reading of that "if" is "not likely."

NOTE - this thread is now closed.