From TPM Reader TL …

There is a wonderful debunking of the right’s take on Joe Biden in Rosen’s op-ed piece on today’s NYT. The crying shame of it all is that the gentlemanly unwillingness to descend into the miasma of rank political expediency will lose both Biden and Obama the election. The Republicans would have aired all of Clarence Thomas’s dirty laundry until he withdrew his name. They did it against Goldberg Fortas and would do it today if they could, just like they would impeach Clinton again–Bill or Hillary–if given the chance. But it is not just the lack of political shame on the part of the Republicans, but the media’s willingness to judge the two parties by different standards that makes it all possible. That, according to Richard Perlstein’s book, also dates to the Goldberg Fortas era. The party of principle versus the party of slime, an oversimplification perhaps, but not that far off the mark.

I’m not sure I’d say it’s an issue of ‘principle’ precisely. But I’ve actually given a lot more thought over the last few months to the ways in which this pattern is one that is not at all limited to the United States, but shows up between center-left and center-right parties, or often hard right parties, in various times and places at least through Europe and I suspect in other parts of the globe as well. Rather than something in the Democratic party I think this is rooted to the role of authoritarianism in each party’s make up.

(ed.note: I and several readers have been scratching our heads trying to figure out what Reader TL was referring to about Arthur Goldberg. I think he’s referring to the controversy over Abe Fortas. So I’ve broken with customary convention and edited TL‘s email to reflect that.)

New McCain ad sliming Obama for supposedly saying Iran is “tiny” and “doesn’t pose a serious threat” is a comically dishonest distortion of what Obama actually said.

It’s not settled yet but it appears that Rep. Don Young (R-AK) may have pulled out his nail-biter primary against challenger Sean Parnell. He’s now up by just shy of 150 votes out of 84,000 cast. That’s with about 98% counted.

Go Don!

Disgruntled TPM Reader KA …

Hillary barely touched McCain last night. After all of your pleas for democrats to “attack, attack, attack” why are you letting Hillary off the hook? Begala and Carville have also been criticizing the dems for not attacking enough, but nary a word from them about Hillary’s failure to take on McCain beyond “No way, no how, no McCain.” MSM expectations are everything, it seems, and by that standard she did fine, I guess. But, she did not attack McCain in the way Carville and Begala led me to expect or in the way you led me to hope. I guess it’s left for Biden to do that.

From McClatchy …

Avoiding a potential confrontation with Moscow, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter ferrying humanitarian aid to Georgia steered away from the Russian-patrolled port of Poti on Wednesday and docked in this quieter southern harbor instead.

The U.S. decision came as Russia sent a naval task force armed with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles into the waters off of Abkhazia on Wednesday on a “peace and stability” mission, the Russian Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Sullivan understands how dangerous a McCain presidency would be. It’s Bush foreign policy squared.

TPM Reader AM: WTF …

KA says, “Hillary barely touched McCain last night. After all of your pleas for democrats to “attack, attack, attack” why are you letting Hillary off the hook?”

I’ve got a Masters in Political Science so I’m not a complete ignoramus – but my instincts seem to be at odds with so many others on this and many other issues.

I went to sleep last night thinking that Hillary had made an excellent speech and that Obama would be very pleased. Pleased at what she said to unify the party and what she said to attack McCain. You seemed to agree. Then I wake up this morning and a major talking point is that she didn’t do nearly enough because, amongst other reasons, she didn’t say he’d be a good CinC. Then KA says she didn’t go after McCain hard enough.

I read all the stuff about McCain and his houses and thought “This is really going to hurt McCain!” So, what happens? Obama goes backwards in the polls…

I watched Obama in Berlin and thought “That was great. It makes you proud to be an American!”. What happens? His favorability ratings go down…

I watched Obama and Biden in Springfield and thought “Gee that was great. That should bring a little bounce in the polls!” The opposite happens….

What’s going on? Every thing that I think should be a plus for Obama turns out to be much more complicated. I’m a little worried about tomorrow night. 80,000 cheering people. Fantastic speech. Great spectacle. Am I going to wake up on Friday morning and find that all of these so-called positives are bad for Obama?

CBS: Body language analysts agree! Hillary’s heart wasn’t in it.

An anonymous reader points out, it’s a bold move after the unfortunate experience with hand-writing analysis.

From the Politico …

Leahy told Vogel yesterday the media has given McCain a free pass on flubs including mixing up Middle East geography, Shiite and Sunni Muslims, and referring to Russia’s relationship Czechoslovakia — a country that hasn’t existed for 15 years.

“It was the same way with Ronald Reagan in the last few years he was president,” Leahy said, referring to the belief that Reagan experienced early signs of Alzheimer’s disease late in his presidency.

Reprinting an Andrew Sullivan post in its entirety …

The op-ed in today’s WSJ by the McCain duo of Lieberman and Graham is far more important for this election, it seems to me, than parsing the dynamics of the Clinton-Obama marriage. What they are laying out in very clear terms is the agenda of a McCain presidency. The agenda is war and the threat of war – including what would be an end to cooperation with Russia on securing loose nuclear materials and sharing terror intelligence, in favor of a new cold war in defense of … Moldova and Azerbaijan. I’m sure McCain would like to have his Russian cooperation, while demonizing and attacking them on the world stage, but in the actual world, he cannot. Putin and Medvedev are not agreeable figures, and I do not mean in any way to excuse their bullying. But this is global politics, guys, and these are the cold, hard choices facing American policy makers.

And in this telling op-ed Lieberman and Graham simply do not even confront them. It’s all about a moral posture, with no practical grappling with the consequences. It’s the mindset that gave you the Iraq war – but multiplied.

John McCain is making it quite clear what his foreign policy will be like: tilting sharply away from the greater realism of Bush’s second term toward the abstract moralism, fear-mongering and aggression of the first. Not just four more years – but four more years like Bush’s first term. If the Democrats cannot adequately warn Americans of the dangers of a hotheaded temperament and uber-neo-con mindset in the White House for another four years, they deserve to lose. If Americans decide they want a president who will be more aggressive and less diplomatic than the current one, then they should at least brace for the consequences – for their economy and their security.

In my view, the fear card has only one truly compelling target in this election: McCain.

He puts it very well. This danger has actually got me to thinking that should McCain win in November, the likely strong Democratic majorities in Congress will need to begin making a concerted effort to rein in the war powers of the president to keep the country safe between 2009 and 2013 — far more than most of us might normally be comfortable with. I know that sounds hyperbolic. It’s not. And people need to understand this. For better or worse, the reality of the danger for the security of the country that is posed by a McCain presidency is not coming through. So the Democratic Congress would likely be the only bulwark against the gambit of his advisors and his own instability. What McCain is pushing for is much more stark than most Democrats, let alone independents and moderate Republicans understand. Hopefully, we won’t need to face these choices.