Bill Kristol in Today’s NYTIMES Editorial:

Maybe. But the fact is the only Democrats to win the presidency in the past 40 years — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — distanced themselves from liberal orthodoxy. Obama is, by contrast, a garden-variety liberal.

He also has radical associates in his past.


The most famous of these is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and I wonder if Obama may have inadvertently set the stage for the McCain team to reintroduce him to the American public.

On Saturday, Obama criticized McCain for never using in the debate Friday night the words “middle class.” The Obama campaign even released an advertisement trumpeting McCain’s omission.
The McCain campaign might consider responding by calling attention to Chapter 14 of Obama’s eloquent memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” There Obama quotes from the brochure of Reverend Wright’s church — a passage entitled “A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.”

Bill, I really think you should see this before you give this advice to McCain, et al:

“Man of Motion?!”

Calling McCain a ‘man of motion’ is the understatement of the century:

Biden on CBS:

Watch CBS Videos Online

Biden on MSNBC:

Biden on MSNBC (follow-up):

Biden on CNN:

Where’s Sarah?

This ABCNEWS note may explain it:

But there was a difference: Democrat Joe Biden made the round of post-debate television shows. NBC and CNN said they invited McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has granted only three interviews since joining the ticket a month ago, but she declined.

Palin: “Thanks, but No Thanks on those Post-Debate Interviews.”

Confirmed by the NYTIMES:

After Barack Obama and John McCain stop talking on the debate stage Friday night, their surrogates will start spinning. But one high-profile supporter of Mr. McCain will be missing: his running mate Sarah Palin.[...]

Ms. Palin is scheduled to be at a debate-viewing event in Philadelphia, covered by a limited group of reporters, and she is not listed by any networks as a post-debate guest. On NBC and CBS, the former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani will be commenting on the debate performances.

UPDATE:
SARAH PALIN FOUND

She was at a bar!

Palin grabs a seat at the bar | Philadelphia Daily News | 09/27/2008

Perhaps it was coincidence that the song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was playing as Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin worked the crowd at the Irish Pub last night.

…

Palin did not take questions from reporters nor did she talk policy. She posed for pictures and chatted with supporters, many of whom were from outside the city limits, and made an approximately minute-long statement.

From the NYTIMES:

Watch it Live at: NYTIMES.COM
CBS News:

ABC News:

CNN:

Fox News:

MSNBC:

Politico:

Huffington Post:

Daily Kos:

NPR:

MSN:

BBC:

Associated Press:

Google News:

USA Today:

Yahoo News:

Lies? Economy? Trends move away from McCain/Palin:

Pop Goes the Weasel:

Data is coming in from all sides:

NYTIMES / CBS:

(CBS) In a sign that John McCain’s convention bounce has dissipated, Barack Obama has taken a 48 percent to 43 percent lead over his Republican rival among registered voters in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.

McCain had a two percentage point lead among registered voters in a CBS News poll released on September 8th, just after the Republican National Convention. Prior to the party conventions, Obama led McCain by 3 points.

In the new poll, the gap among likely voters is the same as it is among registered voters: Obama leads among those seen as likely to go to the polls in November 49 percent to 44 percent.

Gallup Confirms slight Obama Edge:

Obama Edges Ahead as Economic Negativity Grows

Obama: 47
McCain: 45

Based on Registered Voters

Obama Takes 7 Point Lead with Independent Voters

Obama: 47
McCain: 40

Based on Registered Voters who identify themselves as independents

NYTimes flies to Alaska to cover Palin’s Hair Salon.

- More Facts
- More Details
- More Investigative Journalism

See for yourself:

Hillary Clinton struggled for years to achieve hair credibility. Now Ms. Palin’s upsweep is being praised and derided across the Internet. Do her bun and bangs signal that Ms. Palin does not want to attract attention to her appearance — even as she wants to remain presentably attractive?

Followed by a zinger of facts and figures, even detailing the square footage of the salon Palin goes to:

The ballerina-pink Beehive, in a 1,400-square-foot ranch house, is a cut-and-color shop. A haircut is $30, discounted to $20 if you get the $95 color treatment. In a downstairs nursery, the stylists’ babies play with mannequin heads. In a phone interview, Mrs. Steele, 37, described a kind of “Steel Magnolias” on permafrost, featuring Ms. Palin as a recurring presence.

Illuminating:

When Mrs. Steele expressed frustration with her industry, Ms. Palin told her to stop complaining and “run for something!” (She didn’t.)

Waste of space #1:

John McCain likes things that go fast, as we know not only from his career as a Navy pilot, but also from his appearance at a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota last month. So it was very much in keeping with that penchant that Mr. McCain, back on the campaign trail after a day away, turned up Sunday at the Sylvania 300, a Nascar event held here each September.

Waste of Space #2:

Many reporters who fill the rear of the plane watched Tina Fey’s portrayal of Ms. Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, but were left to muse about what Ms. Palin herself had thought of it — or whether she had watched it at all.

This, on a day where Krugman writes:

Will the U.S. financial system collapse today, or maybe over the next few days? I don’t think so — but I’m nowhere near certain. You see, Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank, is apparently about to go under. And nobody knows what will happen next.

The NYTimes reporters for the Caucus are neglecting their role in this election.

In covering this election cycle like we’re 52 weeks, rather than 52 days out from the election, they’re willfully surrendering their power, voice, dignity and responsibilities to the politicians who use them as an instrument to achieve and exploit their power.

See more wasted space at: The Caucus Blog

Updated: Comment Round-Up

Major referrals coming in to this article from:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/mccain-appears-at-nascar-event/

Because of at 2 comments posted there:

Great editorial :

There were several creepy subtexts at work here. The first was the choice of Truman. Most 20th-century vice presidents and presidents in both parties hailed from small towns, but she just happened to alight on a Democrat who ascended to the presidency when an ailing president died in office. Just as striking was the unnamed writer she quoted. He was identified by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal as the now largely forgotten but once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler.

He goes on to say:

The same gang that once fueled Internet rumors and media feeding frenzies over the Clintons’ private lives now express pious outrage when the same fate befalls the Palins.

And:

They want the bar for admission to the White House to be placed so low that legitimate scrutiny and criticism of Palin’s qualifications, record and family values can all be placed off limits.

And most importantly:

How do you run against that flashy flimflam? You don’t. Karl Rove for once gave the Democrats a real tip rather than a bum steer when he wrote last week that if Obama wants to win, “he needs to remember he’s running against John McCain for president,” not Palin for vice president. Obama should keep stepping up the blitz on McCain’s flip-flops, confusion, ignorance and blurriness on major issues (from education to an exit date from Iraq), rather than her gaffes and résumé. If he focuses voters on the 2008 McCain, the Palin question will take care of itself.

“The trigger-happy John McCain has indeed found a soul mate. Trigger squared.”

If Sarah had been reading about the world she feels so confident about leading rather than just parroting by rote what Randy Scheunemann and the neocons around McCain drilled into her last week — Drill, baby, drill! — she might have realized that as heinous as Russia’s behavior toward Georgia was, it was not completely unprovoked. The State Department has let it be known that it warned McCain’s friend, Misha, the hotheaded president of Georgia, not to send troops in to crush the rebellion in two breakaway states.

And she might not have had to clench her jaw and play for time when Gibson raised the Bush doctrine, the wacko preemption philosophy that so utterly changed the world.

The really scary part of the Palin interview was how much she seemed like W. in 2000, and not just the way she pronounced nu-cue-lar. She had the same flimsy but tenacious adeptness at saying nothing, the same generalities and platitudes, the same restrained resentment at being pressed to be specific, as though specific is the province of silly eggheads, not people who clear brush at the ranch or shoot moose on the tundra.

Wrapping up with:

Being quick on the trigger might be good in moose hunting, but in dealing with Putin, a little knowledge might come in handy.

Dowd: Palin vs. Thinking