Prosecutors have unsealed the long-awaited indictment against Abramoff crony Kevin Ring, according to the AP. Ring is charged with 10 counts of conspiring with Abramoff to bribe congressmen and their aides.
From TPM Reader JA …
Josh, in dismissing the Gallup poll this morning, you describe the Obama campaign as reactive and “unwilling or unable to take the initiative.” Huh? We just watched a GOP convention in which the nominee for the incumbent party agreed the election was about change. In the major speeches given by Republicans, speakers used the word “change” 30 times–more than any other theme, including “reform.”
The McCain campaign wanted to frame this election on experience, but had to abandon that when the polls didn’t move. The surge issue has likewise attracted no great interest. Although McCain continues to discuss it, as a theme, he has ditched it in favor of this murky “change/reform” theme. (By selecting Sarah Palin, the campaign has officially ceded the point.) This all works to Obama’s advantage because if the discussion becomes one of change, it must necessarily shift to policy–the last place McCain wants to go. But he’s backed himself into a corner.
Obama has run his general campaign with exactly the kind of pacing he ran the primary. It’s not always clear why he’s doing certain things because they don’t correspond to the daily news cycle. That’s because he has planned the entire campaign in advance. You can see how he’s hit his marks as he’s gone along: after he won the primary, he immediately tacked right and demonstrated his “working across the aisles” theme. The trip abroad was designed to elevate him to a presidential figure and deflate the claims of his inexperience. The convention was a way to simultaneously build momentum among the base and lay a foundation for elevating the discussion above Rovian BS and placing it directly on issues via the change argument.
We exit the convention right on schedule. Obama has set the table, and the Republicans have come to dine. I have little doubt but that the Obama camp feels it’s right where it wants to be.
I don’t think this negates my point about taking and holding the initiative. But I do think this is a very good point. And I was thinking along these same lines over the weekend. Embracing the idea that this is a change election puts McCain in a possibly winning but also extremely perilous position because the claim to represent change is inherently preposterous. The Obama camp should grab onto this concession, bank it and fight the rest of the election on these terms. How can a senator who’s been in Washington for 26 six years and embraces all the policies of the president of the last eight years be change? It answers itself.
Is she ready to be Commander-in-Chief? Too late to ask now – Sarah Palin is already the vice presidential nominee for the man who would be the oldest first-term president in American history.
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
The refrain I always hear from Dems ‘they’ve got to fight back’. But once you’re ‘fighting back’ you’re at best holding your own and probably losing. You have start the fight. Let the other guy fight back.
Just more evidence. Over the weekend Gov. Palin said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.”
Only they’re not even taxpayer funded. It’s only the government takeover, which Sen. McCain supports, that could change that.
I understand that the TV networks and the big papers feel like they’re not allowed to criticize Gov. Palin. But we’re in the middle of a housing and credit crisis and she doesn’t even know what Fannie and Freddie are. It’s an embarrassing level of ignorance that would sink a candidate for house or senate.
Yglesias has a good point here. The McCain campaign’s ability to frame their message around a series of demonstrable lies is only possible because most of the press takes an agnostic position on whether his messages and ads are true or not. But if the press won’t, don’t we need to stop relying on the mainstream press to make that point? That’s a very tall proposition. But this is a pattern we’ve seen cycle after cycle. Complaining about it only achieves a sort meaningless moral victory.
The TPM email bag this morning is chock of emails saying, in so many words, is it time to panic? I’m actually not taking much summary license here. Most of the emails I’m talking about actually ends with some form of that sentence. Since a lot of you are asking this I thought I should provide some sort of answer.
First, I think the USAToday/Gallup poll is an outlier. I wouldn’t put much stock in it. It’s clear that McCain is getting a sizable bump out of his convention. But remember, Obama did too. It quickly subsided, as was expected. And we should expect McCain’s to as well. We’ll know more by the end of the week.
Polls aside though, I continue to see a campaign in which the McCain camp has a consistent and aggressive message. They’re constantly on the attack and largely defining the debate. The Obama campaign is largely reactive, parrying the attacks — sometimes rapid response, sometimes slower response, but defined largely by response. It seemed that way to me in July, in August and it seems that way to me now.
At several points over the last year, I’ve underestimated Obama’s campaign. And I take it that their position now is that they’re not going to get knocked off their game. Instead they’re staying focused on the ground game in the dozen and a half states where they believe the race will be won or lost. That’s difficult for someone in my position to evaluate. The messaging and air war is something that is inherently visible. The ground game is very difficult to evaluate because it’s much more difficult to see. So we’re left to take it on faith that they know what they’re doing, without having much way of seeing for ourselves.
I certainly hope they do. But what I see is a campaign that is for some reason either unwilling or unable to take the initiative in the national messaging war. It’s all reactive. And, yeah, that worries me.
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