Us Primary Politics

McCain Fights to Refocus on 'Maverick' Image

BY TAYLOR MARSH The first video above is a McCain flashback, compliments of the Obama’s rapid response team. The second video is McCain moving away from the attack ads, then reintroducing himself as "The Original Maverick." Obama’s spokesperson Bill Burton responded earlier today: "Senator McCain wants Americans to forget that during the Republican primary, he said that Americans were better off than we were eight years ago, and that he thinks we’ve made ’great progress economically.’ ...

Race in the campaign - who started it?

After bubbling under the surface since the primary campaign, race has popped to the surface - and both the Barack Obama and John McCain camps are pointing their finger at the other as the culprit. McCain has accused Obama of playing politics with race for predicting that the likely Republican nominee and others in the GOP would try to scare voters by saying the Democrat "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." Obama's spokesmen denied he was referring to being black, ...

Obamanomics to the rescue

Salon composite / AP photo Near the end of John R. Talbott's hagiographic "Obamanomics" we are presented with a handy list of the 25 "Greatest Threats to Our Prosperity." The breakdown makes for an imposing compendium of approaching doom, including everything from "world poverty" and "global warming" to "imperialism," "animal rights," "religious fundamentalism" and "international trade with China." There's also "uncontrolled growth and population," "commercialization of media," "demise of worker...

Black History: The Second Klan

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlarge From Wikipedia: The second Klan rose in response to urbanization and industrialization, massive immigration from eastern and southern Europe, the Great Migration of African Americans to the North, and the migration of African Americans and whites from rural areas to Southern cities. The Klan grew most in cities which had high growth rates between 1910 and 1930, such as Detroit, Memphis, Dayton, Atlanta, Dallas, and...

Netroots Nation Report

I thought our readers might like to get an insight into how last week's annual Netroots Nation convention went, and how it keeps the blogging world energized. Here is an inside look at the event. ('Netroots' stands for the online, networked, "bottom-up" grassroots of democracy.) First of all, Austin is like a big, very very very very very very hot Santa Cruz. The daily high temperature was between 96 and 104 each day I was there. The convention facilities were great, and are located right downto...

WAR/POLITICS: Are We There Yet? Victory in Iraq and the 2008 Election

"Events, dear boy, events." --Former British PM Harold Macmillan on the greatest threat to any government's plans. "In chaos there is opportunity" --Variously attributed. It's time for Republicans to decide: are we willing to stake the election on the proposition that we have won the war in Iraq? I. Prelude: Early 2007 Way back at the beginning of 2007, at the beginning of the marathon primary race, the Republican frontrunner, John McCain, and the Democratic upstart, Barack Obama, committed them...

The Buzz About a McCain-Romney Ticket

Mitt Romney, Senator John McCain’s rival in the Republican primary, is now dutifully raising money and campaigning for the presumptive Republican candidate.

Clinton Doesn't Support Any Effort that would Hurt Obama

BY TAYLOR MARSH Will you hear her now? A spokesperson for Sen. Clinton implicitly distanced the candidate from Lieberman’s effort, telling the Huffington Post: "Senator Clinton fully supports Senator Obama. She continues to urge all of her supporters to get behind him. ... She continues to do everything she can to rally folks behind him. We don’t support any effort that doesn’t." Clinton Distances Herself From Anti-Obama Hillraiser But regardless of what Senator Clinton wants the Hillary h...

IFC LIST MONTH: The 15 Best Documentaries About Elections

Politics is, by nature, a game of smoke and mirrors. An entire industry has been created to manage image and control message yet the following documentaries offer up behind the scenes observations of the very machinery of elections, free of spin and full of fascinating insights. 1. PRIMARY (1960) Robert Drew and a crew that included doc film legends Richard Leacock, Albert Maysles and D. A. Pennebaker set the precedent for political documentaries with this vérité look at the 1960 Democratic no...

Another bad week for John McCain

I recorded this week's Current video, about John McCain's rough week, before I'd actually watched footage of the worst McCain moment of all: the GOP nominee struggling to answer a question about whether he believes insurance companies should have to cover contraception (for the record, he voted against a bill that would have compelled them to). On CNN Thursday night, Republican Ed Rollins said it might be the most painful political spectacle he'd seen in his 40 years in politics. It really is th...