20 Comments

1. David Thomson:

I am totally stunned by Obama’s jump in the polls. This is exactly the opposite of what I expected. The trip has been a total mess—and logically should doom Obama’s campaign. Is anyone paying attention? Well, we will see what happens when things settle down and people have a chance to think about the recent developments a bit more thoroughly.

Jul 25, 2008 - 10:08 am 2. LSD:

Well, Icarus did fly, for awhile.

It just reminds us of the sober fact that darn near half of the voting population is below-average. This group probably constitutes the largest voting bloc and every candidate needs their support. Bill and George certainly figured that out.

Jul 25, 2008 - 10:21 am 3. Steven Schindler:

I find it just plain weird that of all the places on the planet, Obama would choose that location to have his European coming-out party right after visiting Israel. Nothing is accidental in the world of pre-planning visual images for a presidential campaign. From the Wall in Jerusalem to Berlin with a quarter-million Germans cheering him on? Sorry, but that creeps me out.

Jul 25, 2008 - 10:39 am 4. David Thomson:

Roger L. Simon is indirectly describing the Barack “Barry” Obama phenomenon as something akin to the hysteria that surrounded Benito Mussolini. The pervading anti-intellectualism and a general contempt for facts cannot be ignored. We are living in very dangerous times. Obama consistently makes a fool of himself. I can well remember the grief visited upon the head of Dan Quayle when he misspelled potato. Obama does far worse than that on almost a daily basis—and yet, his adoring followers look the other way.

Jul 25, 2008 - 12:29 pm 5. srlucado:

“We are watching a Shakespearean epic unfold before our eyes.”

True, but in a Shakespeare play, nobody actually dies; the players dust themselves off and go out for a beer (or whatever actors drink these days).

The body count will be for real if Obama’s luck holds through Election Day.

Scott

Jul 25, 2008 - 12:31 pm 6. David Thomson:

I must add one more important point. John McCain should still easily win the election. He merely needs to unhesitatingly push for more oil drilling. This is the issue that will destroy Obama and the Democrats. They are too afraid of the radical environmentalists to reverse their present position. The Democrats will only advocate for energy options that have a low chance of success in the near future. Only the Republicans are willing to deal with the here and now realities.

Jul 25, 2008 - 12:42 pm 7. Roderick Reilly:

I’m voting for McCain. I made up my mind ages ago to hold my nose and vote for McCain come November. I’m going to make a contribution to his and the Republican’s campaign. Nothing will dissuade me from voting for McCain.

My words above are the same ones all of you who are appalled by Obama should be repeating to yourselves (the donation part is optional).

Remember the Bunker Hill adage, “Don’t Fire ’till you see the whites of their eyes!” Hold steady, stay true to the course, and unload one hallacious volley on Nov. 4.

Need more history? How about Truman vs. Dewey in 1948?

Jul 25, 2008 - 3:02 pm 8. sestamibi:

I am a GOP county chairman in a rural part of a very urban western state (not California) and keep getting frustrating feedback about “when is McCain going to start campaigning?”, but people who panic this way don’t quite get McCain’s strategy, which is to let the slavish media fawning over B. Hussein Obama continue until the electorate starts a) getting sick of it, b) discovers that there’s no there there.

At that point, which will come around the first week in October, the second thoughts voters already have will be reinforced by the GOP campaign’s theme: “Do you really want this guy to be your president??”

Now there’s no guarantee that the voters will in fact say NO! resoundingly, but at least the issue will be framed accordingly. If the answer is YES!!, the it will be clear at that point that the American people no longer have the will to defend our nation and prefer instead a politics in which barbaric Third World values are exalted. It will be clear at that point that the American people also choose a feminized culture which places the primacy of “feelings” over objective evidence, and holds (contrary to traditional liberalism, which stood for a “safety net”) that life must be all bliss all the time, and government is there to make it so.

Jul 25, 2008 - 3:39 pm 9. Terrye:

Let’s give this a bit more time before we declare that Obama is upon us. Fox has him 1 ahead and after the news of his snubbing our soldiers gets around he might not look so good.

Jul 25, 2008 - 4:58 pm 10. Terrye:

Tracking polls are not the best indicators anyway.

Jul 25, 2008 - 5:09 pm 11. Sylvia in Denver:

If McCain is planning on starting his push-back in October he’s not giving himself much time.

The MSM wouldn’t report it if McCain suddenly sprouted wings and a halo. (It would be their job to photoshop them onto Barry).

The only hope I see is if Obama really hoses up any debates. My guess is his handlers will try to heavily script them (teleprompters anyone? scripted questions from the “audience”), or somehow manage to avoid them altogether. They know Barry can’t handle even simple questions regarding US history let alone anything else.

Yes, I did notice that dear Barry went to greet his fevered throngs in Germany after pandering…uh…visiting Israel.

Perhaps he is planning on being elected Chancellor?

Jul 25, 2008 - 5:26 pm 12. jedrury:

Has America really entered that era by suspending its reality to engage in this fantasy? The network press surely has.

In the Summer of 2004, John Kerry was the odds on favorite to defeat Bush. The political savants wrote off the dumb guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. At the end of July, the Swift boats hit and Kerry started to slide.

Three months is a long time in a presidential election. I listened
to David Brooks on Lehrer tonight defend the press coverage as “well, because I am a member of the press,” and then go off to talk about
how the press are better educated people from Washington, New York and LA.

The American people are listening to this Times-ian self promotion and conceit and they tie it to the uncritical Obama coverage and they don’t just accept the press opinion anymore. That may be one reason McCain is still within a whisker of Obama in the polls.

Jul 25, 2008 - 7:29 pm 13. jedrury:

It was quite laughable listening to Mark Shields, the Democratic shill and David Brooks, the supposed conservative, on Lehrer tonight opining that McCain was hitting “below the belt,” by saying that Obama would rather lose a war and win an election. They also offered their sage advice that McCain should move on to the future, to domestic issues and beyond Iraq and the success of the surge. Isn’t it so nice to know that there are such mendicants out there offering John McCain such wonderful tasting Kool Aid?

Jul 25, 2008 - 7:39 pm 14. Terrye:

jedrury:

I think David Brooks is getting pretty tired of Obama, he also said this about Obama:

The Berlin blockade was thwarted because people came together. Apartheid ended because people came together and walls tumbled. Winning the cold war was the same: “People of the world,” Obama declared, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together and history proved there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

When I first heard this sort of radically optimistic speech in Iowa, I have to confess my American soul was stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet quintessentially American campaign.

But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more.

When John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, their rhetoric soared, but their optimism was grounded in the reality of politics, conflict and hard choices. Kennedy didn’t dream of the universal brotherhood of man. He drew lines that reflected hard realities: “There are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.” Reagan didn’t call for a kumbaya moment. He cited tough policies that sparked harsh political disagreements — the deployment of U.S. missiles in response to the Soviet SS-20s — but still worked.

In Berlin, Obama made exactly one point with which it was possible to disagree. In the best paragraph of the speech, Obama called on Germans to send more troops to Afghanistan.

The argument will probably fall on deaf ears. The vast majority of Germans oppose that policy. But at least Obama made an argument.

Jul 25, 2008 - 7:46 pm 15. glenn:

Big picture here is that the last large population group of serious grownups is 65+ and is being supplanted in the electorate by the gang that never grew up. They (The gang) need a daddy to tell them what to do. And a passel of serfs to do their bidding and bring them num-nums. All I ask is that you keep the country going for another 10 years. After that it won’t make a bit of difference to me. And to be candid if you’re a boomer or younger I really don’t care what happens to you.

Jul 26, 2008 - 6:30 am 16. jedrury:

Terrye:

I watched Lehrer and he pulls out Brooks and Shields as the political commentators. First things first, NewsHour is a liberal crew. Lehrer puts on who he is comfortable with and he likes Shields, a mouthpiece for the Dems, who makes Jim laugh with all these stories about who he talked to “on the Hill” and he said “this and that.” One ex Marine loves another ex Marine. Shields does not move off his backside for a story. He calls himself a columnist but his writing (if you can find it – it sure does not appear in the DC newspapers) is silly, unreadable and porous. So he does the talk show business on Lehrer and Washington Week in Review, a local political commentary program watched by maybe fifty people. So this is where his bread is buttered. His wife is a former office holder with the Clintons. So need I go on. Suffice to say, he is a bought man. For liberal balance, Lehrer should go with Tom Oliphant of Globe; smart and poised and fair, not the Dems “made man” like Shields.

Brooks is a treacherous conservative who came out early (when the war went bad) against the president and has remained so. He is a token conservative at the Times along with Bill Kristol who has the guts and moxie and intellectual credentials to remain a voice of reasoned conservatism. But not so with Brooks, he is a “mamby pamby” conservative who has a good money gig on Lehrer and demonstrates his lack of toughness when he allows Shields to spout off incessantly with his silly DNC attacks. Brooks has no cojones.

Jul 26, 2008 - 11:45 am 17. marymcl:

~ Steven Schindler:

I find it just plain weird that of all the places on the planet, Obama would choose that location to have his European coming-out party right after visiting Israel. Nothing is accidental in the world of pre-planning visual images for a presidential campaign. From the Wall in Jerusalem to Berlin with a quarter-million Germans cheering him on? Sorry, but that creeps me out. ~

I couldn’t agree more. Not only that, he’s up there talking about people of destiny and remaking the world.

And this is the man who wants to set up a civilian national security force as powerful as the military. That is what he said, isn’t it? Good grief – the only thing missing is Leni Riefenstahl

In any case, his handlers (and the adoringly attendant American press corps) either think about these things, or they don’t, and either way it gives me the creeps.

Jul 27, 2008 - 7:15 am 18. John:

Obama got a bounce, but not the surge (so to speak) that Bill Clinton got in July of 1992 and never surrendered. Of course, Clinton’s surge came after Perot temporarily dropped out of the race and after the fawning media adulation of the DNC convention and the Clinton-Gore bus trip, so we’ll have to wait and see how the Obama theatrics (like the Mile High Stadium acceptance speech) play out at the DNC gathering in Denver next month before knowing if he can produce the kind of bounce that carried Clinton to victory 16 years ago.

Jul 27, 2008 - 9:39 am 19. Barry Dauphin:

It depends upon whether enough Americans want the fluffy campfire crap right now. Given that Iraq is considered basically won, the MSM is saying how well this works for Obama!?! Cokie Roberts talks about what a great job Pelosi is doing (9% Congressional approval rating!). MSM is in lahlah land, but the latest Karl Rove electoral map indicates Obama already above the magic number. National tracking polls are not enough. Kerry won 252 Electoral votes in 2004. Obama simply needs to hold that and add 20 more.

By October, I don’t think Iraq will be the talk of the town (an unbelievable success will be virtually ignored so we can “move on”). The economy will be the issue. Neither candidate has a good foothold on that yet, but it will be the economy and not foreign policy.

Jul 27, 2008 - 5:22 pm 20. Gary Rosen:

“The economy will be the issue. Neither candidate has a good foothold on that yet, but it will be the economy and not foreign policy.”

Barry, if you are right about this it is very bad news for McCain.

Jul 27, 2008 - 10:40 pm

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