The ‘Obamacan’ Movement got a nice bump yesterday, when two Republicans, Rep. Jim Leach (IA) and Jim Whitaker, mayor of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in Alaska, endorsed Obama, reports Kate Linthicum in today’s L.A.Times. Whitaker, also a former Alaska legislator (99-03), who supported McCain in the 2000 Republican primary, cited Obama’s stronger “intellectual capacity.”
In his NYT op-ed today, Thomas L. Friedman comments on McCain’s “perfect record” in opposing federal support for renewable energy and Greg Sargent amplifies the point in his TPM Election Central post, “McCain Supports Tax Breaks For Oil Industry — But Not For Wind Power.” McCain is not only a good candidate for the ‘Big Oil’s Errand Boy” meme, but his commitment to ethical campaign finance, especially when Big Oil’s interests are at stake, is being questioned, according to McClatchey reporter Greg Gordon.
CBS News media columnist Jon Friedman urges Senator Obama to bristle less and relax more when confronted by press intrusions, which are only going to get worse — often hard to do, but generally good advice for any candidate, just about any time.
“To help the party doofuses and pundits — and the candidate himself — spare all of us another suicide-inducing election night,” Michael Moore has an advisory up at Alternet, “How the Democrats Can Blow It … in Six Easy Steps.”
Bill Cotterell of the Fort Meyers News-Press reports that Dem registration in Florida is up more than a quarter of a million this year, while new GOP registrants are up less than 100K and independents just under 50K. See also Rachel Kapochunas’s CQPolitics.com piece on the play of issues and demographics in the Sunsihne State.
Writing in The Guardian UK, TNR Senior Editor Michael Crowley echoes the argument that Obama must resist the temptation “to cruise at high altitude” and Dems must get engaged in unraveling McCain’s “political mythology.”
Political Animal Kevin Drum makes the case that Obama’s “McCain is the real celebrity” ad is pretty limp for an ‘attack’ ad.
So that’s what McCain really means by “drilling for oil.”

There’s been some buzz over the last couple of days about a hint dropped by McCain operative Rick Davis that John McCain might revive the earlier-discarded idea of promosing to serve only one term. Steve Benin of the Carpetbagger Report provides a full analysis, and weighs the pros and cons (as does Tom Schaller at Salon’s War Room, where he concludes more emphatically that it makes no sense).
I dunno. McCain’s age isn’t the only issue here. Pledging to serve just one term–aside from creating some serious media attention thanks to the sheer novelty of the strategem–would reinforce McCain’s claim to be just a highly patriotic guy who’s answering a call to service rather than pursuing his own personal ambitions, or his party’s ideology. It might also appeal to voters who have doubts about both candidates, but who might be persuaded to prefer four years of one to a presumed eight years of the other.
But one thing is for sure: a one-term pledge would significantly raise the stakes on McCain’s Veep selection, who would immediately be viewed as a 2012-presidential-nominee-in-waiting. So it could really backfire on McCain if he chooses a running-mate who either (a) offends any of the various tribes of the conservative movement, or (b) has any potential 2008 general-election vulnerabilities. It would narrow his options significantly.

Yesterday I characterized the abortion plank in the draft Democratic Platform as “the most forthright pro-choice plank in party history,” and noted a few factors in the wording that led me to this conclusion.
But today a lot of people who want the Democratic Party to be more hospitable to anti-abortion points of view are hailing the platform plank as a step forward from that of 2004, mainly because it endorses some measures that “abortion reduction” advocates have promoted.
Now it could well be that each side in this argument will notice that the other side seems happy, and reconsider its own positive feelings. But as someone who has been tangentially involved in platform drafting in the past, I know how hard it is to write something coherent on a subject like abortion with everyone watching every turn of phrase. And for now at least, you have to give this year’s Democratic platform wordsmiths a big gold star for coming up with language on one of the most emotional topics in the world that seems to please all Democrats.

So: do you know anybody who is strongly pro-choice but is considering a vote in November for John McCain? If so, you should send him or her a link to today’s New Republic article by Sarah Bluestain, which demolishes the common belief that McCain is a “moderate” on abortion policy, or perhaps even covertly pro-choice. Looking at his voting record in Congress over a quarter of a century, and talking to people on both sides of the issue who know him well, Bluestain establishes pretty clearly that McCain’s brief expression of opposition to the overturning of Roe v. Wade during his first presidential run in 2000 was completely out of character:

To many voters, the McCain of 2000 is the true McCain, with his latest statements constituting an understandable, if undignified, pander to the GOP’s right-wing base. They simply cannot believe that the maverick who defied the party’s hard-core social conservatives on embryonic stem cell research and campaign finance reform would toe the conservative line on abortion. But, in truth, it was his 2000 position on abortion that was the outlier–a short-lived attempt to court the center after George W. Bush had locked up the religious right’s support. McCain is not, and never was, a moderate.

It’s very important that Democrats get across to persuadable voters that this characterization of McCain is accurate on a broad array of issues. His entire campaign depends on perpetuating the “maverick” image he cultivated during and immediately after his 2000 presidential bid, before returing emphatically to his conservative roots on domestic policy and epitomizing the neoconservative point of view on international relations.
Sure, some conservative activists don’t quite trust McCain thanks to his 2000 rhetoric, but he’s done everything within his power in recent years to convince them the “real John McCain” is a man who would continue and on some issues even intensify the conservative ideological commitments of the Bush administration. Given the political dynamics of the country right now, McCain offers the Right the only plausible strategy for hanging onto the executive branch of the federal government, and extending their control of the judicial branch, and with it, the Constitution. So conservatives will cooperate with McCain’s “maverick” deception, even as they rely on its ultimate emptiness.

Although the media is fixated on the implications of the Edwards mess in the context of the current election, it also helps bring into focus a problem of longer-term significance that has been overlooked.
In John Edwards, we had a candidate who offered what was arguably the best package of reforms benefitting working people in decades. I still believe his concern was sincere, that he had some genuine compassion for those who didn’t have basic economic or health security. Yet at the same time, he was willing to risk getting his Party — the one party than can rise to this challenge — crushed in the presidential election by revelations of his sloppy personal life.
I’m sure Edwards rationalized it with the argument that he could do a lot of good if he got elected. But it’s not merely appalling that he would risk having his Party trashed. For me it’s a disturbing revelation of the underlying fragility of the Democratic Party. When even our better candidates have so little regard for the Party as an institution, what have we got?
The examples of Bill Clinton and Gary Hart prove that Edwards was not such an exceptional case in this regard. Earlier Democratic (and Republican) candidates knew that the media would give them a free pass. I’m just hoping Senator Obama is the exceptional case — a candidate who not only has his personal life together, but who also has enough respect for his party (as well as his family) that he would never jeopardize it so casually.
Not to let Edwards, Clinton or Hart off the hook for their personal responsibility. But party loyalty is pretty shallow across all demographic groups. Yes, the percentage of self-identified Democrats has increased significantly recently and the percentage of those who have a “favorable” view of the Democratic Party has increased. But only about a third of voters i.d. themselves as Dems, and evidently party i.d. doesn’t resonate very deep.
You have to go back to the FDR era to find a time when party loyalty was a strong value among many Democrats. Back then, a healthy majority saw the Democratic Party as a reliable champion of their interests, and a lot of the credit goes to FDR’s leadership. Reagan usually gets the cred for the GOP’s inroads into the working class, but really it was Eisenhower who laid the foundation and blurred party lines.
FDR had the benefit of a growing union movement to support his party. In Europe, stronger union movements have delivered better wages, benefits and working conditions, and European unions have helped empower European progressive parties. Strengthening Democratic party loyalty will also require rebuilding America’s trade union movement. Until that happens, my guess is that efforts to invoke ‘party discipline’ will have limited success.
To make this happen, unions must do a better job of informing the public about organized labor’s vital contributions. For example, why the hell is there no AFL-CIO TV network offered in my cable package? There should also be more creative membership options for unorganized service and white collar workers for unions to grow and become strong again.
On another track, the Obama campaign, with its elements of a social movement offers hope that we can begin to deepen party loyalty among Democrats. But much depends on the depth of his personal commitment to strengthen unions if he gets elected. The Democratic Party also needs a more aggressive campaign on its own behalf. We are seeing lots of candidate ads. But you don’t see many ads stating the Party’s commitment to needed social reforms. People need to know that the ‘big tent’ doesn’t mean Dems have amorphous values.
In a couple of weeks, the Democratic Party will convene for our quadreniial pep rally, culminating in a powerful, historic moment when Senator Obama accepts the nomination as the nation’s first African American presidential nominee on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Obama and the Democratic Party will enjoy a surge of support, and hopefully, some of it will last through November 3. On day one after the election, that great energy driving the Obama campaign should be channeled into strengthening the Democratic Party.

The debate over McCain’s “the One” anti-Obama ad that erupted last Friday raises several profound questions about the nature of the McCain presidential campaign.
First, the easy question – does the ad actually intend to subtly suggest a resemblance between Obama and the anti-Christ or was it – as the McCain campaign argues – simply a tongue-in-cheek satire of Obama’s supposed presumptuousness and inflated self-opinion?
One can review the quite substantial body of evidence cited by Amy Sullivan in the Time magazine article that brought the controversy to national attention here, and draw one’s own conclusions, but a very easy analytical short-cut is simply to note that the combination of the faux biblical words “The World Will be Blessed, They Will Call Him ‘The One’” and the image of a politician speaking before huge cheering crowds effortlessly invokes mental images from several dozen major Hollywood films, TV movies and mass market paperback books of the last 30 years dealing with the Devil/Satan/Anti-Christ.
This very substantial genre of popular entertainment began with “The Omen” series in the 1970’s and has continued unabated to the present (leaving in its wake a vast trail of earnest village priests impaled by iron fence stakes, eaten by ants or killed by vicious giant hounds as they raced to warn an unsuspecting world). Quite apart from the massive niche audience of the Left Behind series, there is probably not a single popcorn-eating movie-goer in America who is not familiar with the “Satan or Anti-Christ as sinister, charismatic politician” trope in American popular cinema, TV and paperback books. The ad’s creators, as communications professionals, knew this perfectly well.
If one therefore sets aside as totally implausible a “Gee, it never even crossed our minds” excuse from the ads creators, the remaining possibilities raise several deeply disturbing questions about the nature of John McCain’s presidential campaign. The designers of the ad could not possibly have avoided knowing that during the primaries the “Obama as Anti-Christ” notion was being widely circulated and discussed in conservative Christian circles. This leads to three mutually exclusive possibilities.

1. That John McCain understood that the ad might be interpreted as having an “Obama as anti-Christ” theme and nonetheless approved it.
2. That John McCain understood that the ad might be interpreted as having an “Obama as anti-Christ” theme and disapproved of it, but was overruled by his new campaign managers who ordered its release anyway.
3. That John McCain did not realize that the ad might be interpreted as having an “Obama as anti-Christ” theme because his campaign managers deliberately avoided discussing that possibility with him when they requested his go-ahead.

It is difficult to decide which of these three possibilities has the most disturbing implications, but the press should certainly take it as their responsibility to try and find out. The question goes to the heart of John McCain’s character, his ability to manage and what kind of president he would become if elected.

The Democratic Convention Platform Committee formally approved a draft 2008 platform in Pittsburgh over the weekend, and though the final version isn’t presently available online, the draft they were working from is here. It’s true that party platforms don’t matter remotely as much as they used to (it will almost certainly be approved at the Convention on a voice vote with no real discussion), but they do occasionally reflect party positioning on certain hot-button issues.
According to press reports, the only major changes approved involved the health care language, where a compromise was worked out to accomodate Clinton supporters wanting something closer to HRC’s own plan, and also to head off a proposed amendment endorsing a single-payer system.
Assuming the draft platform’s language on abortion was retained (a good guess absent any publicity about proposed amendments), it appears pro-choice activists prevailed over those calling for a clear endorsement of “abortion reduction” strategies. The brief abortion plank begins with the most unambiguous statement of the party’s pro-choice principles I can recall, and while the nuts and bolts of “abortion reduction” are supported, they are contextualized as measures that might reduce the “need for abortion” rather than the number of abortions, a formulation acceptable to pro-choice activists. The “safe, legal and rare” mantra about abortion first popularized by Bill Clinton in 1992 does not appear in this draft, and there’s also no “conscience clause” explicitly expressing respect for, and acceptance of, differing views on this subject. This is probably the most forthright pro-choice plank in party history.
On another front, there was an unsuccessful effort by some Clinton supporters in Pittsburgh to promote a platform plank condemning caucuses as opposed to primaries as means for selecting future Convention delegates. The proposal was ruled out of order and referred to the Rules Committee, where it probably belonged. In any event, there was never any possibility that the platform committee would retroactively adopt the Clinton campaign’s late-spring effort to deligitimize Obama’s string of caucus victories. But this is an issue that will come up again after Election Day, when–win or lose–Democrats begin looking ahead to the nominating process for 2012.

So on a day when Democrats could use some good news, they got it: contradicting earlier reports that he’d be in an undisclosed secure location, Republicans announced that Vice President Dick Cheney will join George W. Bush in speaking on the first night of the GOP Convention next month.
Know what this may mean? McCain’s revealing his running-mate choice some time that afternoon.

With today’s news that John Edwards is going public on Nightline to admit he’s been lying for a couple of years about an affair he had with a woman who was on his campaign’s payroll, many Democrats are in a state of shock and anger. Aside from sympathy for Edwards’ family (especially his brave wife, Elizabeth) and astonishment at Edwards’ chutzpah at running a presidential campaign knowing the National Enquirer was onto this story, the main reaction has been relief that Edwards didn’t win the Democratic presidential nomination and wasn’t under serious consideration for a second Veep bid. Can you imagine if the presumptive Democratic nominee for president was the object of this story? Talk about a brokered convention!
Jane Hamsher probably spoke for most Democrats today:

I don’t really care what people do in their private lives and nobody can know what the relationship is between two people, so unless their personal lives are at odds with their voting records — demanding that people do one thing while they do another (like being, you know, not gay or something) — I figure that’s their business.
But Edwards did play the family card quite heavily during his campaign, and if he’d gotten the nomination, the Democrats would be sunk right now and we’d be looking at four years of John McCain. So on that count, I’m profoundly grateful that he didn’t get it. He was risking a lot for all of us by doing this stuff and running at the same time. It was incredibly stupid.

And it’s all incredibly sad.

Over at The New Republic, Eric Zimmerman has a brief but interesting report on the behind-the-scenes struggle going on over proposed “abortion reduction” language in the Democratic platform. A small band of anti-abortion Democrats want language committing the party to measures ranging from prenatal health care to greater access to contraceptives in order to tangibly reduce the number of abortions occurring in the country. And while many pro-choice activists have no problems with some of the specific proposals, and wouldn’t mind language about reducing the need for abortion, they unsurprisingly tend to reject formulations that treat abortion as an unambiguous evil.
This particular controversy has become a common one in recent Democratic platform deliberations, and is generally conducted within the boundaries of Democratic support for the constitutional right to choose. Among Republicans, of course, abortion platform fights tend to revolve around radical proposals not only to reverse Roe v. Wade, but to create constitutonal prohibitions that would eliminate the state role in abortion policy.
Speaking of abortion, I’ve strirred up a bit of a blogospheric debate on the question of why white evangelical Protestants consistently provide greater support for restrictive abortion policies than Catholics. My original piece at Beliefnet is here. Ross Douthat of The Atlantic has responded twice, here and here. Those commenting on the exchange have included Steve Waldman and Rob Dreher.