Primaries

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Perhaps I have my cynical hat on today, but I've been following this closely since it broke this morning, and I actually see this helping McCain more than it hurts him.

As I often do on my lunch hour, I was listening to Limbaugh in the car - please hold the masochism jokes - and he and every caller he had weren't discussing how right Limbaugh was about McCain being a "closet liberal and this is what liberals do" as one might expect, but they were actually defending him, hard. It was all about the evil New York Times and how they'll stop at nothing to tear down the Republican nominee. It's a dumb charge, but it's making the rounds (they could have timed this SO much better had that been the case). The meme appears to be spreading across the right-leaning blogs as well. McCain's already started a fundraiser as a result of this, to help defend him against this "liberal attack."

McCain benefits too, I think, from the Times' lack of hard evidence in the piece and reliance on unnamed sources. They've been working on the story for over 3 months, so it's entirely likely that the story is legit save for a few confirmations, but at present it looks pretty thin. Now McCain can brush this off as an election-year smear from the "liberal media" aligned against him while the right rallies around him. The far right hates McCain, but evidently they hate the NYT even more. Another bonus is the timing - had this come out a month ago it would have knocked him out of contention and Mitt would still have a shot, and it's too early now to do a whole lot to affect his nominee status. Of course, I could be wrong, and this could be the big break the Huckabee campaign has been waiting...er, praying for.

The whole thing is an absurd distraction, to be sure. I personally like McCain a lot and don't think anyone's personal life should be drug out in a campaign like this, on either side (unless, of course, if it's a case of rank hypocrisy like the Ted Haggard or Larry Craig stuff - then it's just delicious). But either the NYT has some solid evidence they can't release yet (we'll know in the next few days), or they're going to look pretty foolish if all they have is what they published, since they're sticking by it.

I also tend to think this McCain story hurts Hillary, though indirectly. Tonight's debate is her last real chance to score some points against Obama and milk it in the headlines. If she does manage to draw blood tonight, I don't see how anyone will know about it since this new McCain story will dominate the next few news cycles.

This campaign is exhausting.

 

Well, that is interesting, that Rush, who was frying McCain just a few days ago, is now taking up for him against the "liberal media." I knew before you posted, DR, that the NYT had broke the story, but I've never considered the NYT to be the "liberal rag" that the right has labeled it. In fact, I've always viewed it as a mainsteam, tepid, "chronicle of record." Which really is how the NYT is pretty much viewed in the larger journalistic community. It's really a corporate, or "company" paper.

Even though the NYT broke the story, I feel in my bones that this was orchestrated by the evangelicals, who are hoping Huckabee will get a big break. It's not even into the general election, so I can hardly see how this can benefit Obama or the "liberal" side of the equation. In fact, I'm sure a lot of progressives would like to see McCain as the Republican candidate. I mean, I will put my liberal/progressive credentials against anyone's and I would much rather see McCain than Huckabee, so Rush must be even more confused by this than the rest of us. To be honest, I don't know if Rush fits with the Evangelicals, since I never listen to the guy.

 

Last night's debate:

Pretty much a draw, I think - with a slight advantage to Hillary. She got booed twice, and though her "change you can Xerox" line was her low moment (my God that was petty - really, she should fire whoever gave her that one), I think it was canceled out by her last response, which was really a good one and garnered her a standing ovation. IMO, her best moment of the campaign that I've witnessed. She did well overall, but Obama didn't slip up anywhere, and she really needed to kick his ass in order to shake things up. She did not. That said, "Change you can Xerox" will be a hot topic of conversation today, so we'll see how that goes.

I will say that she did sound remarkably resigned to the idea of him winning this thing, without saying it, and seemed to be deliberately striking a conciliatory tone. She was (mostly) very gracious and warm. I thought that was mighty big of her, if genuine that is.

 

I'd characterize him as much more neocon than evangelical, and while the two groups certainly have common members amongst them, the groups are not mutually inclusive. I also never considered the NYT to be a "liberal rag" as Chandos mentions, but I do consider it left leaning.

One thing I cannot agree with is that this is some type of organized smear campaign. As DR points out, if you were trying to smear McCain, why do it now? If this was an effort by the evangelicals to get Huckabee the nomination, they waited much too long. They would have had to time this story to come out shortly after Romney dropped out of the race for maximum impact. As it currently stands, it is nearly mathematically impossible for Huckabee to win the nomination, so I don't see this effecting the nomination at all. Similarly, it is much too early for this to have any impact on the general election. While it's never good to have something like this happen during a campaign, if it had to happen to McCain at least it occured at a time where its impact is likely going to minimal.

Onto the debates. Aside from Hillary's snide remark about Barack's plagurism (and her lined bombed really badly - she got booed for it), I felt that Hillary did very well. CNN commentators kind of pooh-poohed the performance as not going far enough - and perhaps it didn't - but I think Hillary did better than Barack during the first half of the debate, with them being about even in the second half of the debate. I certainly don't think either of them did well enough to cause people who were leaning towards the other canidate to change their minds. I also don't think either of them did anything to hurt themselves. I don't expect much change in the polls after this debate.

EDIT: Sorry to have repeated some of DR's comments he was posting while I was! I will agree though that her last statement almost sounded like a concession - which may be smart because if she wants to continue her career in politics, a scorched earth policy during this campaign is not a good idea.

 

Well, the McCain story has their (evangelicals) fingerprints all over it. Who else would care about who McCain was doing 5 or 6 years ago? The liberals, as DR points out, may find the story "delicious," but fairly meaningless in the larger scheme of things. We have more important things to worry about than who's doing whom. I think it was a political dirty trick by his own side. But that's just my opinion. It may be the NYT just trying to grab some headlines and some attention.

 

It does strike me as something the evangelicals would jump on, and I'd normally be quick to agree with you. The only problem I have with it is the timing. If what DR says is true, and the NYT has been working this story for three months, then that opens up a whole host of other questions.

First of all, three months ago puts us in December of 2007. There should not have been any concerted effort to break a story on McCain then, because he wasn't considered a serious contender before the New Hampshire primary (remember that Mike Huckabee won Iowa). If the evangelicals were trying to organize a smear campaign to get either Mitt Romney or Huckabee front runner status, why didn't they target the front runner of the time - which was Rudi Giuiani - back in December?

It wasn't until February 5th that McCain secured his front-runner status, but by that timetable, this story broke three weeks too late. Furthermore the ideal time to break this story would have been right after Romney dropped out of the race. (Let's face it, Romney was not completely welcomed by the evangelicals because of his mormon background - it makes perfect sense that the evangelicals would prefer to support one of their own - a former minister like Huckabee.) But even with that assumption, then the story was still two weeks too late to help Huckabee.

Even if one assumes this was an attempt to smear McCain all along, then the next question is why did the NYT hold the story as long as they did? If it was to make sure they had all of the facts correct and to verify their sources, then this wasn't a smear campaign at all. (It still isn't worthy of being front page headline news, but it's not a smear if it's all true.)

So I'm left with one of two options: A) This was intended to be a smear, but the evangelicals couldn't find anything on Giuliani, but they could on McCain, they got lucky that McCain became the front runner, but were unable to avoid the bungling of when the story came out to have the maximum effect or B) It wasn't a smear campaign and the reason it took so long to come out was the NYT did due dilligence in their reporting. At first blush, Option B sounds more likely.

 

@AFI: Option C is that it was intended as a smear, but whoever tipped off the NYT wasn't counting on them to be so thorough in their research...

Why, no, I don't give the evangelicals credit for much in the smarts-department, especially when it comes to what they think about liberals.

Which way to that thread about cynicism?

 

This thread has gone eerily quiet...at fever pitch time, no less...

 

I'm too busy seducing Snook to post here.

 

DR - Obama appears to be a foregone conclusion, so what's the point? It's actually been rather anti-climatic. I will say that Ralph Nader entered the race again. He appeared on MtP this last Sunday and he was brilliant. I will probably vote for him - and throw my vote away, of course.

 

The chocolates were a nice touch.

However, I'm a little concerned by your grammar. Were you trying to get ME to post here, or were YOU to busy to post because you want to have some sort of inappropriate relationship with me

 

Well, there hasn't been much action in recent days. I watched the debate last night, and that definitely was anti-climatic. Hillary looked annoyed to be there, while Obama just gave canned answered - more interested in avoiding a mistake that making a point throughout much of the evening (and seeing as how he's the front-runner now that makes sense).

The first 20 minutes of the debate focused on health care. Here's my question: Why are the canidates more focused on people purchasing health care, when it seems the root of the problem is that the cost of health insurance is so high? I'm sure they have looked at the issue much more than I have, but most people who don't have health insurance are poor. It's not that they don't want insurance, or feel that they don't need insurance, it's that they can't afford it. Even if you have the health insurance industry cut their rates in half, most of the poor won't be able to afford it. For a family living below the poverty line, it makes little difference whether the cost of health insurance is $2,000 per month, $1,000 per month or $500 per month - they can't afford it anyway. The only way I see being able to have health care for all Americans would be to declare war on the health insurance industry.

 

Yeah, she had a couple of moments--especially early on--where she looked like she was about to stab Obama and/or Russert. I think this was probably the best debate so far, and Russert did a very good job of asking both candidates tough questions and not letting them weasel out of them. My take-away moments would be the 'experienced foreign policy' candidate not knowing the name of the next Russian president, and Obama making Clinton look pedantic on the Farrakhan endorsement.

Obama's plan is to lower costs to the point where everyone can afford it, without requiring they actually get it if they don't want it. Clinton's plan also focuses on cost reduction though it does make having insurance mandatory. One of the reasons why Clinton flew off the handle about those flyers earlier in the week and called them inaccurate is that it made the point that her plan made insurance mandatory while omitting her plan's efforts to reduce costs.

 

You see, I'm still missing the "how" part of it. Both Obama and Clinton have said that they would roll back the Bush tax cuts on those who earn the most. However, I find it hard to believe that taking a extra couple of percent from the richest of the rich would be sufficient to fund the health care costs of the millions of poor who cannot afford it.

Don't get me wrong - not only do I agree with rolling back that 2% on the top earners, but I think that there should be a bunch more tax brackets added to the list. Why stop at $250,000? Make another tax bracket at $500,000, another at $1 million, another at $1.5 million etc. And crank up the tax rate an extra 1% at each level. Those CEOs making 8-figure salaries should be giving a significant portion back (and many athletes and rock stars too).

It just seems to me that we'll need to do more than rolling back the Bush tax cuts to pay for this stuff. And what about people living below the poverty line? Any less than a 100% subsidy may make health insurance unaffordable. Obama pointed out that Massachusettes passed a law that essentially made health insurance mandatory, and then turned around and exempted the bottom 20% of income earners who couldn't afford it. And that kind of is my point - unless you work with insurers to reduce costs, the money is going to have to come from somewhere.

 

@Aldeth,

Stop looking for facts. Don't you know the Democratic nomination is about "Change"

I agree with most of what you are saying. I (being a MA resident) am curious about how our health insurance thing is going to work out. I am a CPA so I'm in the midst of preparing a ton of tax returns and probably the single biggest thing that is holding us up is people lost their proof of insurance form which we need to complete the MA return.

I live in fear of letting the government run health care as I don't see any evidence of them being able to run anything else very well. However, I am willing to give the MA approach a shot as at least it isn't the government running it, it is the insurance companies (did I actually just say that I have faith in insurance companies, God help me).

 

You see, I have no faith in insurance companies either. All of the major insurance companies are for profit, and thus their primary objective is turning a profit. On the other hand, the one thing the government has consistently shown it's good at is not turning a profit.

The other thing to consider is the way all insurance works - the higher the risk the more you pay for it. That's why people with multiple speeding tickets pay more for auto insurance, it's why people who smoke pay more for life insurance, and why people with pre-existing medical conditions pay more for medical insurance. A lot of times, medical insurance companies will refuse to provide coverage to people with serious pre-existing conditions because they are such a poor risk. Or, if they will provide coverage, they'll crank up the cost to extremely high levels to mitigate that risk. Just like you'll have a hard time getting affordable auto insurance if you have multiple accidents on your record, good luck finding affordable medical insurance if you've had a heart attack.

So it's great when I see that Obama and Clinton have plans to reduce health care costs. Are the insurance companies on board with this? Because how are you lowering costs if they are not on board? And seeing as how they are in the insurance business to make money, it seems counterproductive for them to WANT to lower their prices. So are Obama and Clinton really going to lower the prices, or will they use tax money to subsidize the cost of medical insurance? I suspect it's the latter. And that's not lowering the cost, it's changing who's paying for it.

Which brings me back to my original point - where is this money coming from? Getting an extra 2% from the rich isn't going to cut it - if that were enough we would have had this during the Bill Clinton presidency when everyone was paying 2% more. And seeing as how I don't see insurance companies getting in line, it would be nice to see a plan for where the additional money is coming from.

 

Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you Aldeth--on the contrary, I think both Clinton and Obama's plans are wildly unrealistic in how they're going to be funded. The point I was trying to make is that both plans both have a great deal of focus on reducing costs, if a bit vague, via subsidies for payers, reduced costs through modernization, better competition, etc.

Of course, whether the plans are feasible, practical, and ultimately able to pass Congress is a 9-page thread of its own.

 

Seems to me I heard a lot of the same from Republicans in the year 2000. My, my, some have short memories.

I keep hearing about how UHC is "unrealistic" in the US, while most other Western countries seem to have a working UHC program. Maybe they are just better at some things than we are. That seems an odd thing to me, that the European governments are far more able at some things than ours. But then again consider our "illustious" administration and the last 7 years or so, and a few things stand out:

The government incompetence in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the poorly managed Iraq War, Abu Ghrab and other revelations of torture by our "value" driven administration; the lack of government oversite which led to massive corporate scandals in the energy, banking, credit and investment industries; Tom Delay and most of his Republican cronies resigning and being implicated in lobby scandals, Scooter Libby getting a pardon for lying under oath and obstructing justice, former Attorney General, Albeto "Gonzo" Gonzales, and his cronies resigning, copping pleas, taking the "5th" under oath before Congress. Why yes, that was "change" - and in a big way. What a proud legacy GWB and his cronies will leave behind regarding Republican ideas of "change."

 

Well, they certainly have done much to boost the popularity of a distinctly Republican idea - being opposed to big government. In that, their legacy is a memorable one indeed.

Chandos once again raises a valid point: why would UHC be that much harder to implement in the US than in several other Western countries?

 

It wouldn't be any harder to implement - it would be harder to pay for without a bit of an uptick in taxes.