One Utah

Desperate after seeing their precipitous drop in the polls, Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin have decided to go relentlessly negative for the last month until Election Day. They are essentially conceding that their proposals to continue and extend the Bush administration’s policies are so unpopular that they can’t talk about them truthfully [...]

Yesterday I wrote:

Palin, tonight, has to prove to the people who are tuning in to laugh at her that she’s not a punchline. She actually has to prove tonight that she knows things. Sarah Palin has to prove that she can rise to the challenge of leading a nation in which the overwhelming majority feel [...]

One of Joe Biden’s biggest strengths is the fact that he’s knows a great deal about a great many things.
One of Sarah Palin’s biggest strengths is that she doesn’t know much but she’s very confident.
Palin’s history as a debater has been described as “glittering generalities.” One of her previous political opponents has written an [...]

I watched Senator Obama’s speech live from Grand Rapids, Michigan this morning. It was another grand slam. Talking Points Memo has a full transcript and video. Bottom line: Obama is connecting with voters, while McCain is still running a campaign of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.
Senator McCain just [...]

McCain: “We’re going to win this victory. Tragically, we will lose American lives. But it will be brief. We’re going to find massive evidence of weapons of mass destruction . . . It’s going to send the message throughout the Middle East that democracy can take hold in the Middle East.” (Fox News, Hannity [...]

Sean Quinn writing on the excellent election site FiveThirtyEight.com:

SUNSET SANDSTONE RED, Utah projects as John McCain’s safest state in 2008. It was the number one Bush margin state in 2004, and set the baseline for the most conservative state in the Likert scale. 57 percent of voters identified as Republicans in 2004 (the most) and [...]

I’ve been trying to get a handle on today’s events. Based on what I’m reading, I think most people are a bit in shock.
Here’s what happened:
The bailout failed to pass the House.
The Dow crashed 777.68 points.
I don’t think anyone really has any idea what to do now.
House Republicans had a crazy ass plan (TM) [...]

What the Democrats should have done: Told President Bush to wait until after Election Day, and then taken the time to write progressive legislation aimed not at bailing out Wall Street billionaires, but at restoring the financial regulatory system that the Republicans wrecked, and helping out their victims.
What the Democrats did: Went along with demands [...]

Senator McCain is fond of saying in just about every speech that, unlike him, Barack Obama “wants to raise your taxes.” This is not true unless you make over $600,000 a year. But what about McCain’s tax increase proposal? What, you didn’t know?
Joe Klein wrote:

John McCain wants to tax your employer-provided health [...]

Via HuffPo:
A new video guiding viewers to VoteforChange.com features a mock MSNBC newscast showing John McCain winning the election, 51 percent to 49 percent.
“‘John McCain elected 44th president’ and ‘Voter turnout lower than expected’ are the mock captions with an MSNBC ‘Breaking News’ headline under a smiling Mr. McCain.”

This election isn’t really happening [...]

Well, not in reality. He won it in McCain World, where this morning McCain campaign manager Rick Davis declared: “McCain won the debate– hands down.” Of course, the actual real-world presidential debate doesn’t take place until tonight.
The subject of the first debate between Senators Obama and McCain will be U.S. foreign policy. [...]

Yesterday, at the insistence of Senator John McCain, there was a White House meeting about the Wall Street Bailout (aka Save the Billionaires Fund). According to witnesses, McCain sat silently through nearly the entire meeting until…

Towards the end, McCain finally spoke up, mentioning a counter-proposal that had been offered by some conservative House Republicans, [...]