Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled, My Friends

~Snooper~

If you are a member of the Leftinistra, a member of the Armies of the Socialist Liberal, or if you are voting for Czarbie, I don't much care what your heart does. If it were to stop beating, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I would more than likely throw a block party so please feel free to let your hate-filled racist heart be troubled.

There is good news. Really. There is. Let go of that defeatist cowardly nonsense, pull up a chair and learn something. And, while you are at it, ignore the polls and run away from anyone that thinks they mean something.

Ace has a Pep Talk:

Time for a pep talk.

Take a breath, folks, it's all going to be okay. I know the polls have looked bad the last few days, but this election isn't over yet.

1. As quickly as things turned sour, things can turn around.
The last week's sudden surge of support for Obama isn't the result of anything his campaign is doing right. Nor is it the fault of McCain doing something wrong. Obama's bump is a result of the sudden shock of economic crisis. Formerly skeptical voters of the yellow dog persuasion are running home to mamma.

You will note that McCain's numbers aren't that bad. His national average is right around where it's always been: 44%. In effect, he's simply lost his convention bump, something that most people were predicting would happen all along. Obama's soaring, but there's no reason to expect his new supporters are all that solid. Things aren't over yet.

2. Today's debate format favors McCain.
Now, I thought McCain was going to bomb during the first debate; that turned out to be wrong. Maybe he'll have trouble tonight, but based on past performance I doubt it. McCain has an amusing tendency to get under Obama's skin whenever they're in the same building. I anticipate that Obama's going to be puffed up on his good press, which will make him extra-sensitive when McCain starts to prick him this evening.

Sure, we expect the so-called "undecided voters" that Gallup is rounding up for this townhall to be center-left, but that type of crowd is actually McCain's type of crowd. The burden is going to be on Obama to distinguish himself from McCain, not the other way around. My greatest worry is that McCain is going to be too centrist for Republican tastes. But, things aren't over yet.

3. McCain is finally, finally on the attack.
I'm glad he's forcing the media to at least mention Obama's connections to Bill Ayers and Fannie/Freddie, even if major news organizations misleadingly shrug it off as "going negative." Too many people are completely ignorant of both. I know you almost don't believe me (and I still can't quite believe it either), but it's true. People who are generally well-informed have no idea that Obama held his inaugural political event at Ayers' house. They have no idea how much money Obama has taken from Fannie/Freddie PACs and individuals. That needs to change.

McCain and his proxies need to remind people that Obama's path to the presidency has been paved by extremists, racists, and crooks like Father Pfleger, Reverend Wright, and Tony Rezko. Sure, everyone has known that stuff since May and it's lost all its force. But it wouldn't hurt to call this to the minds of centrist voters. Contrast the ideal of corruption-fighter Obama with the truth that he took a sweetheart deal from a criminal to buy his house. Contrast the ideal of the post-racial candidate with the truth that he took a pew at the church where refrains of "U.S. of KKK A." are commonplace.

There's still time to turn this around. McCain needs to explain it slowly and without taking a tone. If he gets nasty, people will just say he's having a temper tantrum, the "last gasp" of a dying campaign. That doesn't have to be the case.

Remember, last year at this time McCain was supposed to be finished, too. We have four weeks to go. Let's not give up just yet.

And that isn't all there is...The Campaign Spot has a Pep Talk as well...a few of the points I have already addressed...DAYS ago...

Be of Good Cheer, My Rightie Friends

Reason for good cheer on a Tuesday morning if you're a Republican.

1) If it were a 1996 election, with the perception of "peace and prosperity", Obama would be ahead by 20 percent. Clinton won a solid reelection running on the v-chip for television, school uniforms, curfews for teenagers, cracking down on deadbeat dads, etc. Instead, we're holding an election during two wars and amid one of the greatest economic crises in generations.

The other guys nominated a lawyer/community organizer who's never run anything larger than a Senate office who never served in the military, who's been in the U.S. Senate for less than four years. Our guys nominated a war hero.

How solid is the public's faith in the ability that Obama could manage a crisis?

2) This story, if accurate, is huge and demonstrates how circumstances can change in a New York minute. An American policy in Afghanistan, repeatedly derided as failing, has spurred the Taliban to turn on al-Qaeda? If this pans out, shouldn't this prompt the candidates to revise and extend their assessment of our Afghanistan policy? Doesn't this blow up the "we're losing in Afghanistan because we're distracted in Iraq" argument?

3) Think about what McCain and Palin have had thrown at them this cycle - every Obama ad, every 527 ad, the ubiquitous Obama posters, the "Fact Checks" that don't actually check any facts, the all-out cheerleading from so many corners of the press, etc. There is nothing more that the press could do to help Obama, short of having Keith Olbermann screaming on all channels at all times. And yet McCain and Palin are hanging in there. Sure, Obama's up 5.8 in the RCP average. (Who would have guessed that Zogby, CBS News, and James Carville's Democracy Corps would be showing the smallest lead, each showing 3 percent?) But remember Clinton won by 8 in 1996, and he had the advantage that Perot was splitting the anti-Democratic vote. Newsweek's Evan Thomas once contended that friendly media was worth 15 percent in the polls. With almost everybody in the MSM making an all-out push, they've got their guy up six a month out. This is it, the press's ability to influence the election is spent. A six percent lead is an uphill climb, but very far from insurmountable.

4) Palin brings up William Ayers, and the AP declares it racism. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank says that criticism of Congress' oversight of the subprime mortgage meltdown is driven by racism. Criticism of Gwen Ifill for not disclosing her book to the Commission on Presidential Debates is, we are told, racism.

I've been very skeptical of the Bradley effect; for a long time, I thought most Americans who don't prefer Obama would just say, "I prefer the other guy." On the other hand, we're in a political environment where criticism of white Democrats is enough to generate cries of racism. The American people see this. They know it's horsepuckey. Heck, the first Saturday Night Live debate sketch depicted Obama promising to play the race card on Kim Jong Il.

In these circumstances, it does seem plausible that white voters could tell a pollster, "yes, I'm voting for Obama, please don't call me racist."

Juan Williams of NPR and Fox News puts the Bradley effect a lot higher than I do. "Obama's got to have a buffer of 5 to 8 percentage points," Williams said. "So if you have a race in which McCain is at, you know, 41, and Obama's at 41, then imagine that really what you're looking at is McCain at 49, Obama at 41."

And there you have it. Stop whining.