Buck Naked Politics

Is Obama uncorruptible?

by Adam | Barack Obama's September fundraising numbers have been announced, and they are simply staggering.  He raised over $150 million dollars in the month, shattering the previous monthly campaign fundraising record of $65 million set by... you guessed it, Barack Obama in August.

The most remarkable number in my opinion, however, is buried below that topline.  That number is $86.  That's the average donation size in September.  That number doesn't tell the whole story, because there's a lot of $25 donations there and a few $1000+ donations balancing it out.  But the fact remains that Obama's fundraising would probably be record-breaking even if we ignore the big donations.

Largest industry bailout in history. Largest government spending splurge ever.

by Adam | The more I read about the financial industry bailout, the more angry it makes me.  I have a hard time thinking rationally about this, but I think that's because the entire idea of the bailout is fundamentally irrational.  This is really an unfathomable amount of money (i.e. more government debt) being tossed around, and I don't think the benefit is even close to being worth the cost.  That's not even bringing up the enormous moral hazard issue here, and the basic lack of moral fairness in a plan that bails out investors and industry powers but leaves individual morgage-holders and taxpayers holding the bag.

Any time you can find ample commentary from the left and the right that something doesn't make sense, it looks bad.  Here's  Newt Gingrich arguing he doesn't like the plan.  Paul Krugman, a New York Times economist who generally tilts very liberal and pro-government action, also sees this as a big bailout.  He does a pretty good job explaining what got us here.  Bill Kristol, a conservative NYT columnist, is equally skeptical.  The Nation, a reliably liberal magazine, has a exquisite takedown of the current plan which could have easily been written by someone in the National Review (he basically calls it socialism).  Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin (a regular on Fox News) opens up a huge can of whoop-ass on the plan.

Welcome to the age of corporate welfare: heads they win, tails we lose

By Adam | Anyone want to try to guess the author of the following quote?

[The] state considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the state for the direction given to production.

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the state are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.

I'll give the answer to our mytery quote after the jump.  But let's take a minute here and take in the sheer magnitude of the federal government's bailouts of Bear Stearns, Fannie May, Freddie Mac, and now AIG. 

If one were planning to steal an election, what would it look like?

by Adam |  In general, I'm no conspiracy theorist.  I do think there's strong evidence that Gore would have won the election in 2000 were it not for a coordinated strategy in Florida of denial of ballot access by Bush supporters which was augmented by the butterfly ballot fiasco.  I think there is some evidence that denial of access and/or corrupted/broken voting tabulation swung the outcome of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, although it seems ambiguous to me.  But I tend to believe that these are isolated actions and that there was not a top-down effort to steal the presidential election in either year.

That said, events of the last few days have me carefully looking over the election equipment status in key swing states, and worrying that chicanery in Virginia or Florida or Jefferson/Arapahoe counties in Colorado will end up being the deciding factor in this election.  The reason for my worry is that I posed a simple question to myself: if I were in charge of a "vast right-wing conspiracy", and I was planning on stealing this election, how would I go about it?

The answer breaks down into three parts:

Tabloid-style coverage of the campaign finally blows back in the MSM's face

by Adam |  Yesterday, I read a devastating takedown of the mainstream media's coverage of the DNC by Eric Boehlert of Media Matters.  I highly, highly recommend that piece in it's entirety; it's a meticulous deconstruction of the media's artificial focus on the non-story of Hillary Clinton's embrace of Barack Obama.  As he says at one point,

I suspect if a truth serum poll could have been conducted in Denver to find out how many professional pol watchers within the press corps actually thought that Bill or Hillary Clinton would refuse to "embrace" Obama at the convention, the answer would have been zero. But how many within the press pretended for days that that was a possibility? Almost all of them.

Reactions from the stands, and from the pundits, to Obama's speech

by Adam | As I worked my way through the crowds, onto the train, and back to my house last night, I had nearly two hours to digest the speech before I had a chance to hear what any talking head or internet commentator had to say.  I'll admit that I was a bit surprised by the almost uniformly high praise.  Not because I thought it was anything short of a fantastic speech, but because, for me, it wasn't really anything new.

Attack on Nearby McCain Headquarters

by Adam |  McCain's Colorado headquarters, located in Centennial, Colorado, is about 500 feet away from my office.  At the moment, thanks to some "white powder" and a death threat, the road is blocked off, police cars are parked out front, sirens are periodically blaring, and news helicopters are circling overhead.  The construction crews are still hard at work grading the (soon-to-not-be) vacant lot across the street, though, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'm not in any grave danger.

Not much to report, really, but it feels a little strange to be right next to a national news story like this.

Memeorandum has more commentary.

Soon-to-be-obsolete ramblings on the VP

by Adam |  It seems pretty likely that Obama will announce his VP in the next 24 hours.  As such, this is my last chance to weigh in on major options before it becomes a moot point.  So, here's a brief rundown of the major choices that are being mentioned, in order from my most favorite option to my least.

To be clear, this ordering is based almost entirely on TACTICAL considerations.  I tend to believe that Obama's presidency will be pretty much the same in character no matter who his VP is.  Your mileage may vary.  Anyway, on to the list.  I include everyone who was trading above 4% on Intrade a few days back:

Kathleen Sebelius, the Veepstakes, and the glass ceiling

by Adam |  There's loads of speculation about the VP.  The most commonly floated choices are Kathleen Sebelius, Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, and Evan Bayh.  Of those four, I'd be happy with the first two, and worried about the other two (Biden because of his mouth, age, and the skeletons in his closet, and Bayh because he would cost the Democrats a spot in the Senate, barring a miracle turnaround in the Indiana governor's race).  I'd also be quite happy with Bill Richardson or Brian Schweitzer, but the former seems to have dropped out of the running (presumaby, like Jim Webb, he was a bit too controversial and knew he would fail the vetting process) and the latter, unfortunately, has never really picked up steam.  (Don't be shocked if Schweitzer gets the pick, though - the Obama campaign is not very leaky and has their cards close to their chest on this one.

John McCain's incredible shrinking path to victory in Iraq

by Adam | John McCain is in a very tough spot this year.  He represents an unpopular party going for a third straight term in the white house (something only accomplished once in the last 60 years), his party has a large and growing registration gap, and he lacks the charismatic appeal of his opponent.  But most fundamentally, a majority of the public prefers Obama's policy proposals to McCain's on nearly every major issue, from health care to tax policy to foreign policy.  These issues have become more and more difficult to deny.

As such, McCain really only has one clear path to victory.  He must paint Obama as unfit for office and make the election a referendum on his readiness.  His only hope is that Obama's negatives can outshine all the issues that matter.

Media Narrative vs. the Real Campaign, part 2: uniting the party

by Adam |  As I mentioned in part 1, the media has a strong incentive to create issues where McCain seems to "beat" Obama, because this helps create the impression that McCain and Obama are locked in a tight race, despite strong evidence otherwise.  In this second part, I will take a look at another issue where the media narrative seems to run opposite to the facts on the ground: how unified each party is.

Open letter to Sen. Salazar on FISA

by Adam |  Good morning all. This is the first of what will hopefully be an occasional series of guest posts of mine. Those who read Deb and Damozel's posts regularly know that I've been spending time here commenting since early February.

What follows is the text of an e-mail I sent my lone Democratic senator, Ken Salazar, yesterday. Salazar voted for the previous Rockefeller FISA bill which had contained retroactive immunity for the telecom companies, and he voted against the Dodd Ammendment (along with 16 of his fellow Democratic senators). The actual bill passed the senate with essentially the same set of senators crossing the aisle.