After writing my last post about Sarah Palin’s odd lack of knowledge about Supreme Court decisions that are considered critically important by anti-abortion activists, I ran across a fascinating analysis by Beliefnet editor Steve Waldman of the segments of the Katie Couric interview that are directly about abortion policy.
I won’t reduplicate the whole thing here, but basically, Couric keeps trying to get Palin to clarify whether her hard-core pro-life position means she actually wants to make nearly all abortions illegal, and Palin keeps retreating into vague language about the “culture of life” and abortion as a “choice.” She finally does say she wouldn’t want to jail women who have abortions, though that’s not really relevant, since the Right to Life movement’s strategy for eliminating abortions has always relied on making them unavailable by cracking down on providers. Palin also at one point suggests that overturning Roe would simply return the issue to the states, which is true, but doesn’t deal with (a) the question of whether, as a governor, she’d support a state prohibition, or (b) the language of the Republican platform, which endorses a federal constitutional amendment to ban abortions, or (c) the fact that Congress could, if Roe is overturned, preempt state laws with a federal statutory abortion ban, much as it’s already done on so-called “partial-birth abortions.”
There’s nothing new about tactical duplicity among anti-abortionist extremists, who’ve always tried to act as though they are motivated only by shock over late-term abortions, even though they support policies that would restrict or ban the vast majority of abortions that occur very early in pregnancy. But Palin’s language in this interview is so incredibly evasive (as pointed out repeatedly by Waldman) that you might be left with the impression that her pro-life self-identification is just some sort of personal preference that has no impact on what she thinks the law should say on this subject. Indeed, what she really sounds like is one of those “personally opposed to” pro-choice Catholic politicians that anti-abortionists have so thoroughly excoriated over the years.
Best I can tell, right-to-lifers are confident enough that Palin’s “one of us” that they’ll let her get away with this sort of talk, as a way to reassure swing voters and help get her into office. But for such a brave maverick, she sure doesn’t seem to have the courage of her convictions.

There’s been a lot of talk about the yet-to-be-released segment of the Katie Couric interview of Sarah Palin in which the Veep nominee apparently lapsed into silence when asked to name a single important Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade.
In general, I’m with Atrios in noting that most politicians don’t know a whole lot about Supreme Court decisions, whether they pretend to or not. And clearly, the best response for Palin to have offered was the perennial crowd-pleaser, “I’m not a lawyer.”
But what makes her non-answer startling to me is that Supreme Court decisions are actually the one area of public policy in which Palin’s core constituency, the Christian Right, is extremely well-versed.
Any anti-abortion activist worth his or her salt knows all about Griswold v. Connecticut, the famous “penumbra” decision that first established a constitutional right to privacy, and thus provided the key precedent for Roe. They’d also know about Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed Roe and demonstrated the eternal perfidy of Reagan appointees O’Conner and Kennedy. And more than likely, they’d be familiar with Gonzales v. Carhart, the 2007 decision that validated the federal ban on so-called partial-birth abortions, with Kennedy performing remarkably gymnastic judicial contortions in squaring the decision with Casey. And social conservatives focused on gay rights would be able to remember Lawrence v. Texas, yet another Kennedy decision, which struck down state statutes illegalizing gay sex, and scandalously (to conservatives, at least) citing international law as a relevant factor.
Beyond these recent decisions, every Republican politician knows the importance of ritually denouncing Dred Scott v. Sanford (1856) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the first validating the Fugitive Slave Act, and the second establishing “separate but equal” racial segregation as constitutionally acceptable. This is a time-honored dog-whistle to anti-abortion activists who want to identify their cause with that of civil rights, while reminding people that large Supreme Court precedents have been overturned in the past.
That Palin apparently locked up and didn’t name or even allude to any of these cases is indeed surprising, not because it reflects ignorance, but because it separates her from the base of knowledge characteristic of those most avid to see her elected vice president.

As the U.S. Senate today seeks to put the Humpty-Dumpty of the financial bailout back together again, John McCain’s getting a lot of advice from “nervous” Republicans, according to a piece by the Politico’s Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin. And that advice is: change the subject! Get away from all this “substantive” stuff and attack Obama!

Several state GOP chairmen in interviews urged the McCain campaign to be more aggressive in hitting Obama’s vulnerabilities, such as his past relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and other problematic associations from Chicago….
Among those goading McCain to be more aggressive is Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Robin Smith, who said that “people need to see a gladiator who’s willing to defend what exactly he stands for.”
“We’re not talking, for instance, about the radical associations that Barack Obama has, with Mr. Ayers, Tony Rezko and so on,” Smith said. “More could be done.”
Murray Clark, the chairman of the Indiana Republican Party, said he is eager for Obama’s “troubling relationships” to be aired in his state. “I think those things will come up in Indiana again and they do have an impact on mainstream voters in Indiana. You call it going negative, [but] whoever … is in a position to point out these relationships, I think it’s helpful.”

What’s happened is that the Real World has interrupted the efforts of the McCain campaign to frame the electoral contest as a choice between “mavericks” focused on doubts and fears about his opponent:

McCain’s first signs of life only came after his campaign mocked Obama as a celebrity and sought to make the best of a race that had increasingly been defined by the Illinois Democrat. Then, thanks in part to Palin, McCain pulled even or took a lead in some polls after a convention that savaged Obama and featured only a brief video from President Bush and no appearance at all by Vice President Cheney.
Now, with the financial crisis front and center, Bush has reappeared on the landscape and the race is no longer an Obama referendum.

It’s hard to see how McCain will be able to distract attention from real-world problems with so little time remaining before November 4. But many Republicans clearly think it’s his only hope for victory.

Tim Fernholz has an insightful American Prospect article on Chris Van Hollen’s DCCC strategy and expected Dem gains in the House of Reps.
Chris Bowers’ latest House forecast at OpenLeft predicts a 13-18 seat pick-up for Dems.
Kos considers Dem prospects for winning a filibuster-proof Senate majority and Electoral-vote.com sees a seven seat pick up for Dems in the U.S. Senate for a total of 58 seats, while electionprojection.com sees Dems with 56 seats in the next congress.
Five-Thirty-Eight‘s Nate Silver takes a look at the bailout vote among reps from swing congressional districts
MyDD‘s Todd Beeton has a great quote from Al Franken, on the importance of a Nov. 5 landslide for a working congressional majority.
James L at Swing State Project reports on “the biggest single-day money dump for the DCCC so far this cycle” — and who gets how much.
The Wall St. Journal‘s Easha Anand reports on Senate GOP candidates attack ads in CO, LA and MS.
Freedom Watch is rolling out the big bucks to support conservatives in House and Senate races. Chris Cillizza has a report on their target races at The Fix.
Put your money where your mouth is at Act Blue: The Online Clearinghouse for Democratic Action

I’m often critical of New York Times columnist David Brooks for finding countless ways to reinforce Republican talking points despite beginning almost every column looking at politics from a lofty, independent perspective.
But in yesterday’s column, Brooks threw off the party yoke, and flayed the House Republicans who killed the financial bailout bill as “nihilists” on a “single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party,” and who may “go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century.”
Over at Political Animal, Steve Benen welcomed the Brooks column as a “pleasant surprise,” that occurred “better late than never.”
I usually agree with Steve, and I probably have a more positive overall opinion of David Brooks than he does, but my reaction to the column was: “Why did it take you so long to figure this out, David?”
The path that led to Monday’s vote can be directly traced back to those days just after the 2006 Republican midterm debacle, when conservatives talked themselves into the bizarre conviction that George W. Bush and the GOP had lost their way because of insufficient ideological rigor, and excessive concern for “respectable” mainstream opinion. Ever since, they’ve been determined to place ideology first, and have exerted stronger control over Republican orthodoxy than you’d ever imagine to see in an embattled party.
And that same path was strewn with rose petals by the presidential campaign of John McCain, whose incessant pitch to conservatives was that he and they were fellow “mavericks” against the unpopular GOP establishment, ready to win in Iraq, take on Iran and Russia, slash federal spending, “reform” entitlements, revive the supply-side gospel, and finally win the big cultural fights that Bush and Rove would only use as election-time base-bait.
McCain’s “maverick from the Right” campaign in his own party was clinched once and for all when he looked far down the GOP bench and came up with a running-mate who was without any doubt a “maverick from the Right,” mocked as much by neocon double-domes and mandarin pinstripes in the GOP as by any “liberal elites.”
So when conservatives were presented with an opportunity to simultaneously repudiate George W. Bush and express a neanderthal economic ideology, while annoying elites across the political spectrum, of course they jumped on it with both feet. The only surprising thing about it is that the conservative “maverick” John McCain didn’t follow them.
Folks like David Brooks should pay more attention to, and learn to respect as genuine, what conservative activists in and out of Congress say every day. They really do think that criminalizing abortion and demonizing gay people is a lot more important than bailing out financial institutions. And they really do think that economic catastrophe is a small price to pay for resisting “socialism” They aren’t just feckless foot soldiers for the “responsible” GOP establishment that Brooks adores. They are the Republican Party now, and they aren’t going away. Get used to it.

In the very brief recent period between John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate and his erratic behavior during the last few days, very serious and fundamental questions about McCain’s character, behavior and temperament have become widespread.
But observers have found difficulty in fitting McCain’s various behaviors into any single recognizable pattern. Each critique focuses on a different and apparently unrelated issue – his instability, recklessness, tolerance for mendacity and self-righteousness among others.
There is, however, one very interesting psychological framework that actually does seem to fit the broad pattern of behavior we are now seeing.
Consider the following personality profile:

1. The person is impulsive and does not think about consequences – he or she seems to embrace the philosophy – “just do it”
2, the person is a risk-taker and thrill-seeker. His or her conduct often seems reckless and blind to possible damage or harm. There is a lack of normal prudence and caution.
3. The person exhibits an attitude of “the rules don’t apply to me.” The person clearly understands the difference between right and wrong and even becomes outraged and furious when other people violate the rules. But the person simply cannot apply these rules to his or her own conduct. These individuals’ own violations are always “no big deal” or somehow justified by circumstances.
4. The person exhibits a significant degree of self-centeredness and narcissism – He or she seems to operate according to a philosophy of “it’s all about me”. These individuals have an inability to see events in a larger context than how they affect the person him or herself.

Gee. Seems pretty on the mark, doesn’t it.
Yet, in fact, the description above is actually a profile that is familiar to many people in the juvenile justice system – it is a description of the behavioral syndrome seen in many adolescents – often from stable, good families — who become enmeshed in the criminal justice system because of repeated delinquent behavior like speeding, drunk driving, promiscuity, low-level drug dealing or burglary (not for survival but “just for kicks”) and a whole panoply of other juvenile misbehavior.
Traditional psychological approaches were not very successful in developing a coherent theory to explain this behavioral syndrome. Until the mid-1980’s, in fact, the attempts to understand these different personality characteristics were usually presented in separate chapters of standard textbooks.
The revolutionary advances in cognitive neuroscience in the last 20 years, however – and particularly in CT and fMRI based brain imaging – have provided a dramatically new perspective. It has been found that, although these different personality characteristics are localized in a variety of locations within the brain, they all appear to be mediated (“densely interconnected,” in neurophysical terms) through the prefrontal cortex.
This fact, together with the discovery that the prefrontal cortex often does not completely develop until the early 20’s, has led to a tremendous rethinking of youthful delinquency. An emerging body of legal theory, in fact, considers that neural imaging of the prefrontal cortex may even provide a legal basis for a defense of diminished capacity in young adults.
But what does this possibly have to do with a 72 year old man with a long career in political life? John McCain is clearly not going to hotwire a Mustang and drive off on the beltway at 90 miles an hour.
The answer is that some individuals consistently tend toward the expression of these personality characteristics throughout their entire lifetimes. In McCain’s case simple observation also suggests two additional conclusions:

1. That the above noted, seemingly unrelated personality characteristics which McCain is exhibiting are actually part of a single, coherent behavioral syndrome.
2. That, for whatever reason, the expression of these characteristics in John McCain’s behavior has dramatically increased in recent months.

A number of years ago I observed as a leading expert in delinquent behavior delivered the news to the distraught parents of a young man that there was no easy answer or quick fix for their son’s behavior. The expert concluded:

“You just have to wait and trust that time will help to reduce his problematic conduct. In the meantime, just use common sense – don’t go out of town and leave him alone in the house, and –whatever you do – don’t give him the keys to the car.”

Gee, that sure sounds like good advice to me, doesn’t it.

There are plenty of theories circulating right now–including the provocative take by James Vega here at TDS–about the origins and nature of John McCain’s recent erratic behavior.
But just over a month before Election Day, a second and arguably more pressing issue is how McCain’s behavior is being perceived by voters. Polls get in the general vicinity of such perceptions with questions about “leadership” and trustworthiness, but these categories are often just placeholders for other factors, include agreement on the issues. And at this moment, it’s unclear whether McCain’s recent slide in the polls is attributable to his behavior over the last couple of weeks, or to (a) a general refocus of the electorate on the economy, an issue invariably helpful to Democrats this year, (b) the specific Republican fingerprints all over the financial crisis and the failed bailout; or (c) simply a return to fundamental strengths and weaknesses for the two candidates after McCain’s post-convention “surge” and the boom and bust of the Palin phenomenon.
In the absence of clear empirical evidence about changing perceptions of John McCain, one theory’s as good as another. But I’d draw attention to one articulated today by Republican operative Patrick Ruffini, who thinks McCain’s behavior during the financial crisis exposed him as senatorial, not presidential:

McCain dramatically overestimated his ability to control the battle space with a single grand maneuver. It was the starkest example in recent history of a candidate gambling — and with seemingly no frickin’ clue what would happen at that — and coming up short.
But more than a misjudgment — hey, those happen all the time in politics — it surfaced a problem that should have been clear all along: McCain’s inability to create a Presidential persona apart from his legislative persona.
Announcing that you’re dropping everything, going back to Washington, and singlehandedly forcing a deal is not a Presidential thing to do, but it is a very Senatorial thing to do. Even in crisis, our Presidents have tended to project a calm, above-it-all demeanor that leaves the sausage-making to Congress, even if the behind the scenes reality is always somewhat different.
By injecting himself into the process so directly, and staking his campaign on it and eventually failing, McCain showed an impulsive nature shaped by years as the maverick of the Senate. When Americans wanted a steady hand at the helm, McCain’s behavior last week seemed not a little erratic. That’s not uncommon for Senators who always have to jockey for position — but unusual for a President.

It’s often noted how rarely senators are elected president, and that fact is often attributed to the long records legislators accumulate that offer all sorts of targets, or to voter doubts about politicians with no executive experience. But Ruffini’s hitting on something else: there is a distinctive senatorial persona that exibits itself in strange, parliamentary language; a heavy emphasis on positioning if not posturing; and a habit of showboating that becomes second nature to people who have to struggle for media and public attention against 99 fellow narcissists. None of these tendencies come across as “presidential,” especially in a crisis, and especially at a time when Congress is held in such terribly low esteem.
Going into the 2004 cycle, I recall a very smart friend expressing a preference for John Edwards on grounds that “he hasn’t been in the Senate long enough to forget how to act and talk like a real person.” As it turned out, my own candidate, the eventual nominee, John Kerry, definitely suffered from a senatorial air. One of the, if not “the,” defining moment of the general election campaign, the “I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it” quote, was actually an inartful expression of a legitimate legislative position (the vote “for” was on a failed amendment to an underlying bill Kerry found objectionable).
McCain’s own senatorial persona has been obscured somewhat by his “maverick” reputation. But as Ruffini implies, the “Senate maverick” role is as hoary and as un-executive as any other senatorial pattern of behavior. Indeed, it may be worse when it leads the “maverick” to positions and posturings more irresponsible-looking than that of the standard-brand solon.
Like John Edwards in 2004, Barack Obama probably hasn’t been in the Senate long enough to become a complete Senator. That looked like a problem initially, particularly in comparison to McCain’s long record in Congress. But it may turn out to be an unanticipated blessing for Obama, and a curse for McCain.

Senator Obama has opened up a narrow lead in recent NC polls, in the wake of growing concerns about the financial meltdown, Sarah Palin’s qualifications and McCain’s performance in the first televised debate.
In a survey of 1,041 NC LV‘s conducted 9/28-29 by Public Policy Polling (m.o.e. 3.0), Obama leads McCain 47-45. In more good news for Dems, Senate candidate Kay Hagan increased her lead over Senator Elizabeth Dole to 46-38, a 3 percent net gain from a week ago.
The poll also shows Obama winning 36 percent of NC’s white voters. PPP believes he can win the state with 35 percent. In addition, Obama increased his edge with NC independents by 6 percent over last week to 48-37.
A Rasmussen poll conducted 9/23 also indicates a narrow lead for Obama in NC, 49-47 percent.
Democrats have registered 194,000 new NC voters since January, compared to 28,500 for Republicans. An estimated 1/3 of all new voters are African Americans. NC voter registration ends 10/10, but voters can register and vote at the same time at “One-Stop Voting Sites” across the state between 10/16 and 11/1.
Charlotte is now the nation’s second largest banking center, having overtaken San Francisco, and employs an estimated 83,000 people in the integrated banking and insurance industry, reports Facing South‘s Chris Kromm. Turmoil at Wachovia and Bank of America, two of Charlotte’s banking giants, has raised the specter of a round of layoffs before the election. B of A alone is expected to layoff as much as 10 percent of it’s workforce in the weeks ahead. Wachovia already slashed 11,000 jobs in the area earlier this year, and more layoffs are likely. NC unemployment was 6.3 percent in August, higher than the national average. The PPP poll indicated that Obama has a 55-38 percent lead over McCain among NC voters whose leading concern is the economy.
There is some concern among NC Dems about the so-called “Bradley effect,” in which voters who are polled tend to overstate their support for African American candidates, as happened when Harvey Gantt lost to Jesse Helms in NC’s 1990 senate race. However, Obama’s election percentage in victory and defeat was close to his poll performance, and Nate Silver has concluded that the Bradley effect is no longer a factor.
The Obama campaign has slated new ad-buys and public appearances by the Dem ticket. NC has 15 electoral votes, tied with GA and NJ in ranking 10th among the 50 states, and ranking 3rd in electoral votes on Chris Bowers’ latest short list of swing states, behind only FL and OH. Lots of interesting discussion about the tarheel state’s political transformation awaits readers at Daily Kos.

Even as Republicans try to blame today’s House defeat of the financial bailout legislation on Democrats, some conservatives are coming forward with suggestions on how the requisite 12 House Republicans might be induced to flip their votes.
Predictably, the first with his hand out is K Street Strategy maestro Grover Norquist, whose Americans for Tax Reform opposed the bill. Grover’s prescription is less than modest:
–allowing companies to repatriate foreign earnings to the U.S. tax-free if the money were used to purchase distressed assets in 2008 and 2009
–creating a capital gains tax holiday for 2008 and 2009; short of this, the capital gains tax rate for corporations could be temporarily cut to the individual rate of 15 percent (down from 35 percent today) in order to encourage corporations to sell assets and purchase distressed assets
–providing that current income and capital gains resulting from the purchase of distressed assets would be permanently free of taxation
–lowering the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent in 2008 and 2009 for companies that agree to purchase some significant amount of distressed assets
In other words, Grover wants to take every bad and regressive conservative taxation idea of the last couple of decades and apply it to corporations buying “distressed assets,” along with a two-year elimination of, or radical reduction of, capital gains taxation for corporations generally.
I don’t have the wherewithal to cost out these pithy suggestions, but the corporate capital gains tax “holiday” alone is bound to be quite expensive, not to mention more than a bit unjust.
Seems to me if we’re talking about buying twelve Republican votes, it would be a lot cheaper to just give them, say, a billion dollars each in one-year appropriations earmarks. Perhaps the great patriot and earmark specialist John McCain could broker the deals.

Shortly after House Republicans killed the financial bailout bill today, a Democratic friend sarcastically asked if John McCain was going to re-suspend his campaign and return to Washington, now that there’s a real crisis.
Now comes Bill Kristol to argue that McCain should do exactly that:

No one wants to take ownership of the task of rescuing the economy right now. The Bush-Paulson plan has failed. The administration, House Democrats, and House Republicans (above all) have all proved unable to deliver. But there is someone who might be able to save the economy–and incidentally the Republican party: John McCain.
He should come back to D.C. But this time he needs to take charge–either by laying out the outlines of his own plan, or presiding over meetings at which a real plan that can pass is cobbled together. He might also insist on the immediate passage of a couple of provisions (raising or removing FDIC insurance limits, for example) that could mitigate the damage that could be done over the next few days.

In other words: since the trick didn’t work first time around, why not try it again? Hell, if he timed it right, McCain might be able to get Sarah Palin out of her Thursday debate with Joe Biden!
Here’s the witty reaction of honest conservative Ross Douthat to this bright idea:

Per Kristol: John McCain flies back to Washington and finds a way to get the bailout passed. The markets recover; the papers trumpet McCain’s heroism, and he’s elected by a thin margin in November.
Unfortunately, I’d place the odds against this happening at roughly – oh, what the hell, I’ll just choose a really large number at random – seven hundred billion to one.

But Ross isn’t in a terribly positive mood about any GOP tactics today. In an earlier post, he said this:

The most likely scenario, as of 3 PM this afternoon: The stock market continues to drop. Some version of the bailout passes in the next week. The American economy staggers into a recession, but passes through the storm without 1930s-style suffering; the Republican Party is not so fortunate. Even though most Americans claim to oppose the bailout, the House GOP’s obstructionism is widely viewed as having worsened the economic situation; the fact that these are contradictory positions does not faze an electorate that wraps all of the country’s current troubles up, ties them with a bow, and lays them at the feet of the Bush-led GOP. John McCain loses by a landslide in November. The Democratic Party regains years or even decades worth of ground among the white working class, consolidates the Hispanic vote, and locks up a large chunk of highly-educated voters who might otherwise lean conservative. The much-discussed liberal realignment happens. And a politician running on a Ron Paul-style economic platform does very, very well in the GOP primaries of 2012.

He also notes that public opinion began to turn in favor of the bailout over the weekend. D’ya think a 777-point drop in the Dow might accelerate that trend?
Maybe Barack Obama should come back to Washington and talk to a few folks, or maybe Democrats should try to put together a bill that would pass with just a few Republican votes. McCain’s had his chance. He failed, while trying to take credit for light duty on what he thought would be a successful vote. He doesn’t deserve a second chance to play Americans for fools.