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Bill Maher: “This isn’t what I voted for!”

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Marc Ambinder’s blog takes a look ahead.

Who says there will even be a world to run in 2012?

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Republicans

– Spend more per order than other consumers.
– They rely on credit cards to pay more than other consumers.
– They tend to order two large pizzas at a time, and they’re usually
specialty pizzas.
– They are more likely to order online, and more likely to pick up their
orders.

Democrats
– Rely on delivery more than Republicans.
– Pay cash more than other consumers.
– Like more variety with their orders, opting for side items, chicken and
beverages more than Republicans.

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But my reaction? YAAAWWN!

I never would’ve thought I’d be longing for the days of Bush vs. Kerry, but here I am today, almost putting myself to sleep trying to write about last night’s debate. Don’t get me wrong — I like substance, and substance is kind of what we got. But whether it was McCain somehow still tripping over endless regurgitations from his stump speech (”I’ll veto spending and be famous!”), or Obama taking way too much of his own time responding to McCain’s consistent attacks, I can only think of one word to sum up the debate: repetitive.

• Obama’s strengths: Civility, bipartisanship, calm.
• Obama’s weaknesses: Being baited into responding to McCain’s attacks, not spending enough time on his own plans
• McCain’s strengths: Staying on-message, attacking Obama with every single answer
• McCain’s weaknesses: He appeared contemptuous, angry, old and bitter. He was highly partisan.

According to post-debate polls, people are just loving Obama. I don’t totally get it, but I approve of it. I think he did, in fact, have the better debate. His answers were more appealing to everyday folks, and he had more specifics about his plans. McCain only seemed to offer specifics about Obama, and hardly any about himself.

McCain repeatedly interrupted Obama and the moderator, PBS’ Jim Lehrer, often raising his voice and speaking over them until they gave up, which could take up to 30 seconds of crosstalk, just like on Bill O’Reilly’s godforsaken show. This was one of the more annoying traits I’ve seen in a debater.

Other than that, next time bring out the fireworks, boys! Try to convince us that you have at least some passion for the job. (Note: McCain getting angry about Obama’s record does not count. Negativity doesn’t win debates, and the Independents polled proved that.)

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And now we’re getting to know all the juicy details of the McCain stunt, not the least significant of which is that he never actually suspended his campaign, and he never will. Andrew Sullivan notes that all the McCain ads are still up all over the country, and David Letterman was miffed last night to learn that McCain cancelled his appearance on the show because he had to “rush back to Washington,” when, really, he was in New York City giving an interview to Katie Couric instead of Letterman.

So while McCain is happy to call press conference after press conference talking about how eager he is to put his country first (even if he can’t seem to deal with more than one issue in that country at a time), his surrogates are still doing smear interviews, his ad team is still buying ads, and he himself is still not in the senate.

The final joke, of course, was that instead of being in the Senate this morning, helping to get the damn deal done, which was allegedly what the whole purpose of this “suspension” was, McCain was speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. Way to crack that whip over Congress, senator.

And check out this bonus video, where McCain says he’s never actually read the bill that he fictionally suspended his campaign over because it’s so important to pass:

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How about: painfully obvious code.

Clinton’s speech tomorrow, the media has *somehow* found out (I wonder how) will feature her saying things like she’s prepared to do “whatever it takes” to get a Democratic victory in November. Brilliant analysts at CNN have deduced that the phrase is a secret code for Hillary’s desire, or at least willingness, to be Barack Obama’s Vice President.

First, it’s no secret: that’s what the last two months of “no one can win but me!” have been all about. And second, CNN knows exactly what she’ll say, and exactly what she means, because CNN’s employees also double as Clinton employees.

This has been covered ad nauseum on this site.

But will Obama take the bait? He can do whatever he wants and not make a wrong decision — her message conflicts with his, and she represents ‘the old way.’ But also, her supporters would be soothed by her VP role — something which remains appealing, even though most of them have come home to Obama.

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Ever since May 6, when she lost heavily in North Carolina and barely managed to scrape out a win in Indiana — a state which was supposed to represent her base — Clinton’s behavior has been odd, to say the least.

Barack Obama’s status as the party’s eventual nominee seemed to be a certainty rather than a mere likelihood. But Clinton ramped up her rhetoric, choosing to loudly repeat her argument that Obama couldn’t win, rather than live out the remainder of her candidacy in reserved grace.

Some of her comments, such as repeatedly asserting that working class, white citizens would never vote for Senator Obama, seemed to be nothing more than political posturing — predictable, if damaging, ploys designed to rally her supporters in the remaining contests.

Other claims, however, were less obviously useful. And far less obviously true. For example, a mainstay of her campaign this month has been the idea that she is ahead in the popular vote, which she is not. Even if one assumes that she is softening our ears to the argument in preparation for the day it becomes true, which her campaign hopes will happen after Puerto Rico, it doesn’t change the fact that telling this lie with a straight face makes her seem either manically delusional or maniacally Karl Rovian — whichever you think is worse.

But now, today, we can safely say what it was all for. We know the argument that no one but her can win over certain demographic groups, bolstered by the claim that she is the new Al Gore — winner of the popular vote, but pitied loser of the prize — it was all meant to make her irresistible as a Vice Presidential candidate.

We know because her campaign, which up to this point had been mum and ambivalent about whether she would even accept a VP spot, launched a media blitz this morning which was so orchestrated, so calculated, and so transparently contrived that it had already been picked apart and disproved by lunchtime.

First we have Bill Clinton’s brand new interview with Time Magazine, in which he implies that Hillary deserves “nothing less” than a Vice Presidential bid.

That was the opening shot.

By 9:00 a.m. on Friday, rumors were flying around in the media, most of them from CNN, about alleged “secret negotiations” between the Obama and Clinton campaigns for Vice President. And it is no secret that the rumors started with CNN — the network still counts top Clinton advisers James Carville and Paul Begala among its employees.

The scuttlebutt ranged everywhere between talks that were already underway between the two campaigns, which Obama adviser Davide Axelrod decried as false on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe,’ and threats from CNN’s political team that Clinton’s people were planning “Open civil war” within the Democratic party if she was not offered the VP spot.

These are false. All of them. After other cable networks immediately picked up on CNN’s outlandish claims, they actually went and checked with the Obama people, who swatted down the rumors, and the stories were largely gone from the front pages and TV news updates by midday.

But these rumors, which you must remember did not come about organically, but instead via a media firestorm initiated by the Hillary campaign, are meant to do the same thing the Clintons have been doing for nearly a month: to transform the Hillary-as-VP dialog from a possibility to a foregone conclusion.

Will it work? It seems terribly draconian to me. It doesn’t just smell of the old, selfishly opportunistic, strong-armed politics that Barack Obama has campaigned against for over a year now — it reeks of it.

In the end, it will all come down to how well they sell their argument of inevitability. Will the demographics still favor their storyline a month from now? It’s hard to say. But the Obama campaign hasn’t been interested in conventional wisdom thus far, and it’s hard to imagine them starting now, suddenly buckling under the fictitious muscling of the last, most desperate vestiges of the old regime.

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• Issue number one was health care. According to the Obama mailings, Hillary’s plan for “universal health care” is essentially little more than passing a law requiring all citizens to purchase insurance — basically the same as our car insurance laws. The verdict? This is true. The Hillary plan would criminalize people without health care (read: people who cannot afford to purchase it). At the same time, it would make it illegal for insurance companies to deny people based upon current or preexisting health conditions — certainly a step in a positive direction, but it would cause costs to go up, not down. And while the plan promises to “help” people who cannot afford insurance, that aid would come via “tax credits,” which historically just get lost in the shuffle of all other expenses for the cash-strapped middle class. It certainly wouldn’t make insurance cost any cheaper — in reality nor perception.
• Issue number two was NAFTA. The Obama mailing says Hillary’s claims to be against it are false, as the bill was introduced by her husband and has been supported by her, in rhetoric and in congressional votes, ever since. This is, and always has been true.
• Finally, the Obama campaign quotes Hillary as saying that she voted for going to war in Iraq even though she never read the intelligence reports that contradicted President Bush’s reasons for war. Hillary agrees with this claim, her only explanation being to bellow: “But, no one else read it, either!”

Obama said that Hillary’s outrage was “for show,” as appearing wounded has helped her win primaries in the past. I would have to agree.

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For those that don’t remember, Nader is the aging social activist who torpedoed Al Gore’s campaign in 2000 and didn’t help John Kerry in 2004.  Nader is popular among liberals, particularly environmentalists and anti-corporatists.  In 2000 and 2004, Nader received only one percent or so of the vote — but since that was the margin of Kerry’s loss, and Gore actually won the popular vote (but not by enough) the actual influence of Nader’s “1% campaigns” could be called monumental.

Either way, it’s bad news for Hillary and Obama.  But since Democratic voters have been turning out in record numbers for the primaries, and Republicans have generally stayed home, not even Ralph Nader may be able to derail the Blue Party this year.

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