You already knew that two of McCain’s closest campaign allies, senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, are set to visit Georgia, apparently on McCain’s behalf.
Now key Obama ally Joe Biden is also set to visit Georgia this weekend.
Some nervous leading Democratics are calling on Barack Obama to do a better job converting his overall popularity into a stronger sense among voters of how he plans to improve their lives in concrete ways. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Sunday Roundup.
The McCain campaign wants an apology from NBC for failure to fluff.
As a side note, we keep hearing that McCain is ‘reluctant’ to talk about his POW experience. But he sends out his press spokespeople to use it to deflect questions about his honesty. Said Nicolle Wallace: “”The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.”
McCain, in speech this morning: Obama wants to lose in Iraq because of his “ambition.”
With so many instances of corruption and influence-peddling around him and whatever problems with the candidate that are keeping the campaign from letting reporters interview him anymore, John McCain is now again charging Obama with what amounts to soft treason — wanting to lose the war in Iraq in order to make himself president. The lack of any consistent lines of attack against McCain is becoming palpable.
From TPM Reader AG …
I find it disconcerting that Obama, after all this time, is still playing with kid gloves with McCain on issues of security and national defense. If Obama thinks he can win with McCain cornering the market on security issues, he and Kerry will have lots to talk about next year in the Senate Cloakroom.
McCain’s first reaction to the Georgia crises was to urge action that would commit the United States to war with Russia (by having Georgia immediately admitted to NATO). Obama needs to point out that, in this test for whether McCain is ready to be commander in chief, McCain grossly overreacted. Indeed, several days later, after McCain had time to cool down, he retracted his statements, saying that military intervention should not be considered. McCain fundamentally does not understand the purpose of NATO. Obama needs be repeating this series of events like a broken record. McCain overracted, and then changed his mind 3 days later. A President has no such luxury. McCain is no
match for the calm and calculated actions of a player like Putin. Words such as “confused,” “hot headed,” “overreacting” and “indecisive” need to become synonymous with the Obama campaign’s portrayal of McCain. Don’t just answer back with Celebrity ads.
Don’t whine that McCain had previous exposure to Warren’s questions. Drive the debate into his territory.McCain is playing his Georgia actions as a victory in every speech, and unless unanswered, it will become common wisdom. We keep waiting for Obama to do what we were promised he’d do: take McCain down at the knees on his one point of perceived strength. It is so much harder to do this after the narrative continues to harden.
The crisis in Georgia provided all the potential vice presidential candidates a crucible in which to do some last-second cramming for the big #2 job. We see how they did in today’s Sunday Show Roundup …
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
I just noticed that CNN is saying that Biden’s the big buzz for VP down in DC political circles today. So I’m trying to process what I think of Biden as a potential pick.
On the one hand, it’s not the most exciting choice. He doesn’t bring a state. Delaware’s going to go Democratic. And it’s barely a state at that. And I’m not sure you’d rate it as a first: “history is made — first sixty-something white senator with deep foreign policy experience chosen to be vp nominee!” Biden clearly thinks well of himself and likes to talk. But he’s been a US Senator for pretty much his entire adult life. (He’s 65 today and was elected at 30.) So I’m not sure you can expect anything different. Finally, Biden also occasionally says something really whacked, which we’ll probably find out more of if he’s the pick.
On the other hand, wholly separate from the cosmetics and electioneering calculus, I think he’d be a good choice. On substance, maybe a really good choice. Most senators grasp of foreign policy is fairly thin — and it tends to be heavily influenced by whatever lobbyists or power players are in their orbit. But Biden has a pretty deep knowledge of pretty much every big foreign policy question. And his ideas and judgment strike me as fundamentally sane.
Back in 2004, when I was writing a piece for The Atlantic about John Kerry, I did long interview with Biden in his office on Capitol Hill. And I remember coming away thinking, this is the guy you’d want to have making big decisions on the key foreign policy questions. To the extent that we think Obama needs someone with deep foreign policy knowledge in a constitutional office (i.e., non-fireable) to add ballast to his foreign policy vision I’m not sure I could think of a much better person.
From NBC’s FirstRead …
Is Obama having a Jon Lovitz-as-Dukakis SNL moment: “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy”? Well, Obama isn’t losing — he still has a small single-digit lead in most national polls, and he’s ahead narrowly in current electoral-vote projections. But his tone changed a bit campaigning in Reno yesterday, his first full day on the campaign trail since his vacation. To put it simply, he was much more aggressive on the attack. As the AP writes, “So much for hugging in church… [A]fter praising the Arizona senator as a ‘genuine American patriot,’ the Democratic presidential hopeful got back to business — methodically tearing into McCain’s health care, tax and energy policies and criticizing his advisers. More: “The Illinois senator also criticized McCain’s advisers as ‘the same old folks that brought you George W. Bush. The same team.’ He noted many had been lobbyists in Washington before McCain asked them to sever all lobbying ties.” We’ve been hearing for a few weeks that the Obama campaign believes it hasn’t been tough enough on McCain. Might we have seen a preview of a rougher treatment of McCain from Obama at his Reno stop yesterday? And does this mean the convention week will be tougher on McCain than either Gore or Kerry were on Bush?