I was pretty sure McCain would win the GOP nomination in the summer of 2007 when he was trading really low. If only I had bought some McCain stock then. And I thought McCain would beat Obama the entire time, even when Obama had huge leads in the markets.

Now if only I had the same insight for my Fantasy Football team.

From today's Progress Report:

"In a move that will spare conservatives from a politically difficult vote before the November elections, "congressional Democrats have scrapped plans for another vote on expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program." Democrats concluded "that President Bush would not sign their legislation and that they could not override his likely veto." Bush has already twice vetoed similar legislation."

Is the "Democratic" candidate not running AGAINST the Republicans? Is the "Health Care for All Kids" plank yet another piece of dryrot timber in a fauxward-reaching campaign platform?

In a GE are we really going to make a conscious effort to avoid making it difficult for our political opponents to defend their policies?

Silly me! When you can photoshop phony pics to insult the other side, why would you stoop to challenging them on policy? Yeah, yeah... we're all about change.

if the Obama campaign wants Clinton to run against Palin they should have put her on the ticket.

It's Clinton's choice to support Obama. It's Biden's job, as the VP candidate, to compete against Palin.

------------------------
In a perfect world, it'd be great to have all the votes cast as they were earned, but that would not be in the best interest of the Democratic party. - DNC supporter after the 2008 roll call

I love this job!

i don't think...it should be like OH.

Obama: Recession could delay rescinding tax cuts -- http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5isOFw...

(and of course, the administration is handing off the recession to the next.)

Since when?

Wonder what Bill is going to say to Obama during their meeting on Thursday.

Via Chris Floyd, with the help of Fox News, Joe Biden explained how when he talked about holding the Administration accountable* he didn't mean actually charging anyone, especially George W. Bush, with a crime. Biden responded to this statement "if you guys are elected...you're actually going to pursue criminal charges against President Bush's administration and different people that served there" by saying:

"That's not true," Biden immediately replied. "I don't know where that report's coming from. What is true is the United States Congress is trying to preserve records on questions that relate to whether or not the law has been violated by anyone. Anybody should be doing that."

Biden emphasized that "no one's talking about President Bush. ... I've never heard anybody mention President Bush in that context." He noted that "there's been an awful lot of unsavory stuff that's gone on ... but I have no evidence of any of that. No one's talking about pursuing President Bush criminally."

Biden concluded his comments by explaining that possible misdeeds are "being looked into now, just so it never happens again in any other administration. ... The Obama-Biden administration is not going to start off saying, 'God, let's go take a look at what this --.' The American people want to know what we're going to do, not what happened."

When I first read Biden's comments, I was happy, not because I believed him, but because this kind of talk has a way of taking on a life of its own as a number of people pointed out at the time. Even if Obama/Biden doesn't plan on doing a damned thing, talking about it has a way of getting other people to talk about it.

But now we see it's unlikely there will be much more talking coming from Joe Biden. The SCLM** has pushed back against it. And whenever Democrats are faced with a choice of taking on the media or following their lead, they always opt to go along with the media.

The good news is that, despite his mealy-mouthed walk back here, it would appear that Joe Biden knows that crimes have been committed by the Bush Administration (which is more than Nancy Pelosi will admit). The bad news is that it's going to take a lot of pressure to get these people to do anything about them beyond prosecuting a couple of more Lindy Englands.

* There was a Corrente post on the initial Biden statement, but damned if I can find it.

** This time it was Fox, but I can easily see people from any number of other networks doing exactly the same thing. Our media is killing us.

Via the Left Coaster, I thought this take by a non-American at FDL on both conventions (too much god, family and military) was interesting.

It was as obvious in January that Obama would be a weak and caving candidate as it is now. But I was called a racist for pointing that out.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump... -- "... Palin is such a sensation, and draws such large crowds, that anything she says--particularly attacks on Obama--immediately become part of the campaign conversation. On the other hand, both because she has a knack for delivering barbs with a smile, and because voters don't quite see her as presidential material, McCain suffers less blowback than he would if a more traditional running mate were saying the same things. Simply put, Palin has a much bigger megaphone than traditional running mates, but gets held to a lower standard.

That's a huge problem for the Obama campaign. ...

And when you do respond--say, when Obama points out that she's been making stuff up--there's very little impact, because no one's conditioning their support for McCain on Palin. Call her the phantom menace. ..."

... for Palin on whether she makes stuff up or not.

She's doing a populism of resentment -- which has worked for the Republicans for years. Reagan, for example, lied all the time, except they were called anecdotes.

Worse, our tribunes of the people have made accusations that turned out not to be true, so the truth/lies water is muddy.

Maybe we could talk about the economy, now?

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/article... -- "...But Obama has not done one thing that I was sure he would do by now -- one thing that could have already improved his prospects in the fall. He needs to find an issue or controversy with which he strongly disagrees with his party -- or with a core Democratic constituency group -- to prove to swing voters that he's not merely another elitist Northern liberal.

Obama talks a good game about disagreeing without being disagreeable and about coming together to solve the nation's problems. But Republicans have rather successfully portrayed him as a man who is all talk and no action. And, they are sure to say, when he takes action, it's predictably liberal.

I thought for sure that by now Obama would have found an issue or two to break with his anti-war left or with his labor union allies or with his environmental allies. But so far he hasn't found that Sister Souljah moment that grabs the nation's attention, causes real upset among some of his supporters and proves his political independence. He may need to find one to guarantee victory in the fall. ..."

i bet they all start saying this now....ugh...and that they don't realize just how much he's done this already.

how the electoral map is so much like the recent past?

What happened to all that Obama changing the map thing?

Amazing what suckers the OFB is.