Entries for October 2008

Polls always tighten right before an election, no matter how far ahead the front-runner is. But I still refuse to jump on the MSM bandwagon and predict with impunity that Tuesday will bring a landslide victory for Sen. Barack Obama. Two new polls reported by Politico.com show McCain gaining in two swing states. Most important, from my perspective, is that one of them is Missouri, which has gone against the presidential victor only one time since 1904 (and that was for Adlai Stevenson of neighboring Illinois).

So with that in mind, I point your attention to the following:

Barack Obama and John McCain are evenly matched in the swing states of North Carolina and Missouri, though Obama is strongly outpacing McCain in two of those states' crucial battleground counties, according to new Politico/InsiderAdvantage polls.

In a campaign rife with ugly moments, Sen. Elizabeth Dole's new TV ad accusing Democratic state Sen. Kay Hagan, Dole's opponent for a U.S. Senate seat from North Carolina, of accepting "godless" money is one of the ugliest. It is emblematic of Dole's desperation mode in the final stages of what looks like a losing campaign for re-election.

If Sen. John McCain or some of his high-level campaign staffers knew how to run a presidential campaign, they would have turned information such as this, presented by my U.S. News colleague James Pethokoukis, to voters, combined with Senator Obama's "spread the wealth around" comment. If they had, McCain's poll numbers would look a lot better than they do at this late date.

Yes, too many Americans (unfortunately, in my view) want nationalized healthcare. Yes, they want Social Security to be made fiscally sound. But do they want Daddy Government to reach this far into their beloved 401(k) retirement plans and wreak fiscal havoc? Methinks not. Jimmy P. reports:

Once again, this election season shuttles us through the looking glass and into the world of illogic. A new survey tells us undecided voters have already decided.

Here are the findings produced by researchers led by Prof. Brian Nosek at the University of Virginia who asked Web users about their preferences in next Tuesday's presidential election:

"During the task, participants are told to push a key on their keyboards when they see pictures of Obama and positive words such as 'love' and 'friend,' while pressing another key for negative words such as 'enemy' and pictures of McCain. The participant completes several iterations of this task where the lineup is switched and you have to press one key for McCain and positive words, and another for negative words and Obama.

It's been debated for more than a century. But when this historic presidential campaign comes to a close next week, will we know the answer to the following question with any degree of certainty: Which more fervently permeates the fabric of American society, racism or sexism? I think we will, and I think the answer will be sexism. The 2008 campaign has demonstrated it is more politically correct to be sexist than racist. American culture tolerates sexism to a degree it would never tolerate racism.

The election's a week away, and the McCain campaign is burying itself before the electorate has a chance to do so. Could McCain's bid turn out to be the worst-run campaign in American presidential history?

It's certainly gunning for the honor. Read on, dear reader, George Stephanopoulos's take:

I had never heard of Elaine Lafferty before yesterday, but apparently she's a recovering left-wing journalist now consulting for the McCain campaign as an adviser to McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She took me on for questioning Governor Palin's intelligence:

It's difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin's "intelligence," coming especially from women such as PBS's Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I'm agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high-toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her—love her or hate her—offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart.

The "Susan Sontag of journalism moniker?" Inapt, inept, and poorly written. While Lafferty seems to think that Sontag, an influential essayist and writer, should be my role model, she's way off base. Sontag is perhaps most famous for writing: "The white race is the cancer of human history." (Partisan Review, Winter 1967, p. 57.)

This is not a philosophy with which I concur, nor is it one with which I should like to be associated. It's as racist, overwrought, and incorrect as any rash generalization about race could possibly be.

I find high irony in the coincidence that as this former editor of Ms. magazine and self-proclaimed Democrat dissed me, I was simultaneously E-mailed by a PR firm (Gehrung Associates), offering up an interview with a former high school acquaintance of Governor Palin that read as follows: