Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat looks at new poll numbers in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, seeing a race that still favors Barack Obama but that is closer than it should be. And much of the blame is placed on what is seen as Obama's "refusal" to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate. 

While the Quinnipiac numbers show Obama leading in all three states, BTD argues that McCain will ultimately win FL and OH because of state demographics, i.e. male and white voters, which aren't correctly tabulated in the survey:

Obama still wins the election because he will flip Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado for sure. But there is no reason why it should be this close. His stubborn refusal to pick Hillary Clinton, his insistence in causing political trouble for himself with the VP pick, will make this a closer election than it should be. The political obtuseness on this critical decision is amazing to me.

Hillary Clinton has been publicly supporting Barack Obama since she excited the race for the Democratic nomination. But the Moderate Voice's Tony Campbell is hearing rumors that Clinton supporters are still actively pressuring delegates to switch their votes from Obama to Clinton:

I talked to a Clinton delegate here in Maryland and he told me that they have been instructed to vote for Hillary on the first ballot. To make things more interesting, there is a movement to swing 160 delegates from Obama to Clinton. If that occurs, Clinton could re-establish her campaign and face John McCain in the fall.

Honestly, a floor vote for Clinton seems far-fetched, let alone an effort to swing more than 100 delegates her way. If Obama's candidacy were flailing, that scenario would have some plausibility. But what would such an effort, almost certainly guaranteed to fail, do to Clinton's reputation within the party? I'm guessing it would leave the entire Clinton legacy in tatters. If Obama held off the mutinous effort and won the general election, the Clinton's would be outcasts. But if Obama actually lost the election, HRC would be seen as nothing short of a Judas.

John McCain has yet another new web video going after Barack Obama. This one compares Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and includes footage from Obama's Berlin speech. From the ad text:

"He's the biggest celebrity in the world ... but is he ready to lead?

Over at Blog P.I., William Beutler has a fascinating look at how Wikipedia editors are dealing with the National Enquirer's story alleging John Edwards fathered a child out of wedlock. No mainstream media outlets have handled the story, with the exception of The Fox News Channel, who was merely able to confirm that Edwards was at the hotel where the Enquirer claims he was visiting the woman they say he had an affair with. Beutler notes that more than 26,000 words have been written by Wikipedia's volunteer editing team discussing the merits of the story, but that the actual John Edwards Wikipedia page has been "locked," meaning that no actual updates have been published:

I've now read about half the debate, which is the whole extent of it before new people start showing up and re-arguing old points. Based on my own knowledge of how Wikipedia works and what I've seen in the press, I've come to the conclusion that, even though it sure looks like Edwards' goose is cooked, Wikipedia's editors are currently doing the responsible thing by keeping it out of the article.

Dana Milbank's column today on Barack Obama's transformation into the " presumptuous nominee," has been making its way around the blogs today. Conservative outlets are largely having fun with the piece, as it aligns with their narrative of Obama as arrogant.

However, liberal bloggers are in fact-checking mode, and have discovered that the key quote from Milbank's piece is likely to have been quoted out of context. In his piece, Milbank cites a source at a meeting between Obama and congressional Democrats, where Obama says:

"This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

But some bloggers like Matthew Yglesias are pointing to a post by Marc Ambinder, which says the actual quote went like this:

It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.

Also, Milbank's colleague Jonathan Weisman, who first reported the alleged Obama quote, now acknowledges its accuracy is being challenged by the Obama campaign.

In the wake of Ted Stevens' indictment, CQ Politics has changed its ranking in the Alaskan Senate race from leans Republican to leans Democratic. Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich wasn't at the top of too many political radars before today, but with a weak remaining GOP field and polls showing Barack Obama posing a serious challenge in the state, that could all change.

In the meantime, some leading progressive bloggers are taking umbrage at the reaction to the Stevens' indictment from Democratic senators, including Daniel Inouye and California's Barbara Boxer. Even though Inouye's comments were limited to "he's innocent until proven guilty," and Boxer simply said she needed more information before commenting, the reaction from some bloggers like Matt Stoller has been swift:

Is everyone that comments part of the 9% of the country that approves of Congress?  Do you realize how out of touch you are when you defend this kind of behavior?  Don't you see that when you cheer the Bush Department of Justice and excuse the enabling Democrats in the Senate you are part of the problem? 

Stoller also links to a Swing State Project post from earlier this year, noting Inouye held a fundraiser for Stevens.

Oh, the fun you can have when not running for president. Like taking pictures with drunk, potentially underage, college girls in Nantucket. And what's the shape of that straw on the bottom right frame? Since this is a family publication, let's just say it rhymes with Venus. View the entire series of John Kerry party pics here.



Also, Kerry's office put out a statement on the pictures:

"As Sen. Kerry and two friends left dinner at the Straight Warf restaurant on Nantucket and walked down the dock, a large group on a boat recognized Senator Kerry and asked if they could have a photo taken. The group came off the boat and onto the dock, took a photo with Sen. Kerry and his friends, and then Sen. Kerry and his two friends immediately walked away. End of story"

As Wonkette's Ken Layne notes: "And you know what? That's probably the truth."

The indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens presents a number of opportunities and challenges to both national Republicans and those in his home state of Alaska. Stevens is already facing a steady stream of challengers in his Republican primary, but the bench of viable replacements for him is somewhat thin. MyDD's Josh Orton notes that Stevens can be replaced on the ballot if he resigns before September 17th.

Stevens has become infamous amongst younger voters for his comments describing the Internet as a "series of tubes."

While Stevens and Rep. Don Young remain scapegoats of wayward Republicanism, Gov. Sarah Palin is a transcendent political figure right now, with approval ratings hovering around 80 percent and a vice presidential draft movement afoot. But Next Right's Patrick Ruffini says:

But who to replace him? Sarah Palin? I suspect it's too soon to bury this rising star in the Senate.

Stevens has been a punching bag for John McCain when the presumptive Republican nominee discusses spending and government corruption. National Review editor Rich Lowry blogs that the indictment allows McCain a chance to do what he does best, without suffering fallout from the party faithful:

McCain should absolutely unload on Stevens, and frame it as the sort of dysfunction and corruption in Congress that he has long railed against. A good way to get some indie cred without upsetting any conservatives.

Meanwhile, Swampland's Michael Scherer says Stevens' possible exit from politics could change the way no-bid government contracts are awarded.

As I argued in an earlier post, John McCain is hoping this is a tortoise vs. hare race in his race against Barack Obama. While McCain lacks high-profile events or huge crowds, he is making intimate contact with voters in his signature townhall settings. Their bet is that voters will go for the candidate they know over the candidate they like.

Richard Cohen's latest Washington Post column compares the two candidates' records and finds Obama an unknown quantity, while conversely listing McCain's legislative and personal accomplishments, particularly those that run counter to party orthodoxy.


Matthew Yglesias says Cohen is playing favorites and that Obama is not a blank slate if you look at his policy positions:

Now in an ideal world candidates for office might release statements, speeches, documents, etc. about their policy ideas. People could scrutinize these ideas.

But NRO's Mark Hemingway questions Yglesias' standards of judgment:

So why again is Yglesias insisting Cohen give Obama credit for his stated intentions rather than his comparaitively small record of achievement?

Ed Morrissey says Obama is deliberately vague:

That doesn't make Obama an "unknown", as Cohen's headline reads, but a cipher.  Obama deliberately obfuscates his positions in order to make his outlook as opaque as possible.

John McCain's campaign has released another hard-hitting ad today, this time going after Barack Obama for not visiting with American troops during last week's overseas trip. The ad is an improvement over previous McCain efforts because it plays into themes about Obama that the Republican base wants to hear, i.e. that he's not a strong commander-in-chief type like McCain. The ad has also reached more than 300,000 views on You Tube in less than two days - very impressive for a McCain ad. The one downside for McCain: Even his own successes are still all about Obama and not about what McCain would do as president.



Conversely, this new MoveOn.org sponsored ad "Hope: It Could Happen to You" for Barack Obama lacks the serious tone of McCain's effort. That can be mostly explained by the fact that it's targeted for a MTV audience. But the insanely popular Will.i.am video demonstrated that Obama supporters don't need poor man's Daily Show fodder to connect with young voters. Of course, Jon Stewart himself has noted that MoveOn has an uncanny ability to make even winning issues for liberals look bad.

Last week, John McCain's campaign launched what I described as another example of their improving media outreach with a pair of videos lampooning the media's "love affair" with Barack Obama. The videos have been a big success for the McCain campaign on You Tube, with more than 200,000 hits. The videos were also forwarded to McCain supporters via email, where they were encouraged to vote on their favorite version and further encouraged to donate to the campaign.

However, Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland reports that the McCain campaign has been forced to remove the videos because Warner Bros. music said the use of Frankie Valli's old hit, "Can't Take My Eyes Off You."

The campaign has reposted the video, without the original tune. It's picked up about 10,000 views since posting this weekend, but isn't the same...

 

When the Human Events website broke the news this morning that conservative columnist Robert Novak has been hospitalized with a brain tumor, the reaction was swift from bloggers on the left and right. Novak has been called a "traitor" by some on the left for his role in the Valerie Plame affair. It's also been a tough week for Novak publicly, after he was seemingly duped into reporting on John McCain's vice presidential selection timeline, and being cited for an alleged hit-and-run on a DC pedestrian.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey writes:

It will be interesting to see how this news gets received by the media and the blogosphere. When Ted Kennedy got a similar diagnosis, the outpouring of attention and good wishes spread across the political spectrum. Novak, who has reported on American politics for longer than Ted Kennedy has worked in it, will probably not get the same reaction.

Of course, even long-established and respected journalists rarely rise to the same stature as elected officials in the eyes of the public. Tim Russert was an exception, not the rule. Nonetheless, some in the media have been pretty harsh to Novak as the news broke today.

Celebrity/entertainment gossip site TMZ heckled Novak after the hit-and-run story last week and today says, "Right wing bad driver Robert Novak has has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Does that affect your motor skills?"

Josh Marshall of liberal news site Talking Points Memo recaps the news and says: "We wish him the very best."

Meanwhile, it's the comment boards on progressive sites like Think Progress and Democratic Underground that are offering some less-favorable comments on the news.

The official trailer for Oliver Stone's upcoming biopic of President Bush, "W," doesn't premier until later tonight. But I've come across a leaked version that you can watch below. There's been a lot of skepticism about this film, as Oliver Stone hasn't had a critical hit in years and his previous political films have been a mixed bag. But on first glance, this looks interesting, and potentially good. It's scheduled to debut in theaters in time for the election:

Elisabeth Bumiller has a solid article in The New York Times today on John McCain's rough week, as he struggles for attention while the media is largely focused on Barack Obama's overseas trip:

Senator John McCain's presidential campaign recovered from a near-death experience almost exactly a year ago, and political candidates stumble in and out of troughs all the time. But it is safe to say that Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is not having a spectacular week.

Most of the attention on McCain this week from the media has concerned whether he was being "ignored" by the press in favor of more Obama coverage. But a number of progressive bloggers have read the Bumiller piece and come away with a different take: The media's own "love affair" with McCain is over. At least for now,.

Firedoglake's Scarecrow:

Sure, it's tough to follow President 27%. But the fact is, whatever John McCain once was, campaigning against Obama has revealed McCain as an angry, resentful, often befuddled old man.

BarbinMD adds in her Daily Kos diary that McCain may have a point about focusing on domestic votes, but that our image abroad should not be ignored:

Does John McCain have a valid point? Or, could it be argued that while there aren't any electoral votes to be won in Germany, we do have many shared interests that need our attention? And given that Germany is a friend to our country, wasn't Obama's speech both necessary and appropriate?

This is something I've been thinking about this week. McCain is essentially hoping for a tortoise vs. hare campaign. While Obama gets the center stage and big crowds, McCain is slowly massaging the Republican base while connecting with real voters in his more intimate town hall settings. As McCain aide Mark Salter put it:

"I think he's getting his message out -- go look at some of the local press and the local TV packages," Mr. Salter said. "It's John McCain on energy and the economy."

(On Thursday in Pennsylvania, The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre prominently featured Mr. McCain's comments in the state on Social Security; The Morning Call in Allentown covered Mr. McCain's stop at the grocery store, including his remarks that $4-a-gallon milk was putting a strain on American families.)

With so much attention on how much more successful the netroots has been compared to their conservative counterparts, I thought it would be interesting to compare the traffic and trends of three of the biggest progressive web operations: Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos.



Everyone says they want to read more reporting on partisan outlets. But out of the three sites compared here (via Compete.com), TPM actually has the lowest readership, with 364,633 readers over the past month and a 7.9 percent upswing in total readers. In comparison, DailyKos.com is often cited as the most influential political blog, but is focused on activism and analysis. DailyKos had 655,577 readers last month, with a 2 percent drop in traffic. Finally, Huffington Post has by far the largest monthly haul of the three, with 2,523,545 readers. While initially launched as a counter to the Drudge Report, HP has expanded its focus to include reporting, commentary and analysis. They also acknowledge that half of their traffic upswing has come from newly implemented entertainment and lifestyle news posts. 

The bottom line: In the great traffic wars, it's clear the public would rather be entertained than informed.

Over at the Politico, Jonathan Martin writes, "GOP losing the new-media war." The article is generating some thoughtful discussion from conservative tech folks inside the Beltway, even though it has already been addressed by mainstream outlets (yours truly on more than one occasion) and other conservative bloggers. 

In his piece, Martin writes:

While conservatives are devoting much of their Internet energy to analysis, their counterparts on the left are taking advantage of the rise of new media to create new institutions devoted to unearthing stories, putting new information into circulation and generally crowding the space traditionally taken by traditional media. And it almost always comes at the expense of GOP politicians.

Very similar to a point I made yesterday, while discussing recent moves by Matthew Yglesias and Spencer Ackerman. I also think it's worth noting that Martin himself worked briefly at National Review, and for Republican Rep. Christopher Shays before being hired by the Politico. So, he's a firsthand observer of the dilemma he's writing about. But it also calls into question this quote from David Brooks in the article:

"In the past 60 years, only one employee of the National Review, Weekly Standard or any conservative magazine has actually been hired as a reporter for a newspaper," says Brooks, who researched the question a few years ago.

With apologies to the crack research team Brooks enjoys at The New York Times, I can offer two examples within the past three years of employees of National Review being hired as reporters for mainstream publications: Jonathan Martin and myself. Yeah.

The Weekly Standard also employs at least four top reporters and editors: Stephen F. Hayes, Matt Labash, Matthew Continetti and Jonathan V. Last. With the exception of Continetti, these guys don't get a lot of attention from conservative bloggers, but that doesn't negate the insightful and often groundbreaking reporting they do.

While the American media has taken a largely positive view of Barack Obama's overseas trip this week, cartoonists in the Arab world have a decidedly different take on the situation. Obama's candidacy may have indeed brought some hope for change to those in the Middle East who feel White House policy has been too tilted towards Israel over the past 30 years. But after Obama's comments about an undivided Jerusalem, and his meetings this week with Israeli leaders, that view may be quickly changing.

Al-Ghad, June 9, 2008
Headline: "Obama, the American Candidate."

The Anti-Defamation League has compiled a series of cartoons that portray Obama and John McCain as being puppets of, or unfairly favoring, Israeli policies. Some of the images are fairly benign, while others have a clear anti-Semitic bent, and a few portray Obama in a racially insensitive fashion. For what it's worth, McCain isn't treated any better. From the ADL release:

The American elections have provided an excuse for the Arab media to promulgate perverse, bigoted and age-old conspiracy theories that portray Israelis and Jews as controlling the candidates.

It's not too often that a presidential election features a contest between two media darlings. Nonetheless, John McCain's campaign is still pretty upset about the press advantage that appears to be swinging Barack Obama's way. I'll be discussing this unusual argument on MSNBC today from 12:-12:30pm EST.

The story bloggers are following most right now according to Memeorandum has nothing to do with the presidential election, but is instead about political reporter Robert Novak. Novak admitted to striking a pedestrian on a bicycle while driving his black Corvette, but said he was unaware of the incident until another pedestrian informed him. It's been a long week for Novak, who appears to have been taken for a ride by sources claiming John McCain would announce his vice presidential running mate this week.

The Moderate Voice's Shaun Mullen alleges Novak wasn't following traffic laws:

Novak, 77, has earned a reputation around the capital as an aggressive driver and has said that his secret desire is to be king of . . . er, a race-car driver.

Not a lot of Novak sympathy out there, especially from Jane Hamsher, who speculates of Novak's motivation:

Trying desperately to get home before sunrise, no doubt.

Talk Left links to a Politico piece, which interviews the intervening pedestrian. The details are rough:

As he traveled east on K Street, crossing 18th, Bono said a "black Corvette convertible with top closed plowed into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed onto the windshield."

Bono said that the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a "Walk" signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and that Novak then made a right into the service lane of K Street. "The car is speeding away. What's going through my mind is, you just can't hit a pedestrian and drive away," Bono said.

CQ Politics colleague Jonathan Allen just noted on MSNBC that Bono is a former editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Two days ago I mentioned Matthew Yglesias moving from Atlatnic to the CAP. I also recently noticed Yglesias' colleague Spencer Ackerman moving his Attackerman blog from The American Prospect to Jane Hamsher's Firedoglake. Their passionate discussions might better suit the 20 something "hardcore punk" fan. After all, his top Google search return is his now-dormant "Too Hot for TNR" blog, referencing his former employer, The New Republic. His blog's new url is his fourth Google search return.

The Yglesias and Ackerman moves to more grassroots organizations helps illustrate a broader truth that while progressive bloggers substantially lead in the partisan tech race, readership tends to be focused more on activism. Conversely, conservative bloggers often establish themselves at more traditional media outlets, offering punditry and analysis of current events.

Sen. Tom Coburn took part in a blogger conference call today organized through the Senate Republican Communications Senator. The call covered topics including Coburn's showdown with Harry Reid and the housing bill. But Coburn opened his remarks talking about Republican efforts on energy, specifically their desire to open up more offshore drilling.


Corburn returned to the topic when answering a question on "Reid's attempt to push through bills Sen. Coburn objected to," by saying he and other Republicans were pushing a stalemate. "I don't think Republicans will be ready to move on anything until we have energy," he said. Coburn added, "If we don't, we will have failed the American people." 

A blog post by Ilan Goldenberg is getting a lot of attention today over at Democracy Arsenal. It's about John McCain's possibly false understanding of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq. Goldenberg uses a series of examples, (Katie Couric/CBS, NY Times, Foreign Affairs magazing and fellow blogger Spencer Ackerman) including quotes from Col. Sean McFarland, stating that the awakening happened before President Bush first announced the surge.

Also, The Jed Report has put together this video which adds some information from a Keith Olbermann segment on the same story. For what it's worth, Olbermann doesn't hat tip either, at least not in the video provided.







Several high-profile bloggers, including Marc Ambinder and Atrios, have cited CBS and the Obama campaign instead of Democracy Arsenal. So, it's not an argument that Democracy Arsenal "broke" the story. But during his show last night, Anderson Cooper did a segment on the story that paraphrased Golodenberg's post, while using several of the same sources (CBS, Foreign Affairs, NY Times) without citing Goldenberg. They're even cited in the same sequence. It's all public information, so this isn't an accusation of content theft. But shouldn't Cooper or the AC360 producers at least given a hat-tip?

You can compare/contrast the post vs. Cooper's script after the jump...

A You Tube video of President Bush speaking at a Houston fundraiser for Republican House candidate Pete Olson began making the rounds last night because of comments the president made saying, "Wall Street got drunk."







But also interesting, is the fact that Bush prefaced his remarks by asking that all cameras and recording devices be turned off before he made the "drunk" remarks. This comes about a week after making a similar request before a Tuscon fundraiser, in which he told donors, "I don't know a lot about technology, but I do know about YouTube."

The consensus, including on this blog, is that Obama's overseas trip has been a boon to his campaign. Here are some dissenting takes.

While appearing on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday, Andrea Mitchell complained that Barack Obama has been giving "fake interviews" during his visits to Afghanistan and Iraq. Mitchell says they are fake, because no independent journalists were allowed to interview Obama, with the footage instead being provided by the U.S. military and the Obama campaign:







A pair of Iraqi bloggers have weighed in on the trip as well. Omar and Mohammed Fadhil say Obama is basing his travels on electoral politics and is benefiting from Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki being in a campaign fight of his own:

This visit, for Obama, is just a necessary evil -- part of an electoral campaign and not a sincere fact-finding mission. The fact that Obama made Afghanistan his first stop (after arriving in Kuwait, just next door to Iraq) suggests that it's his electoral campaign that sets his priorities when it comes to the war on terrorism, not the actual map and course of the war.

The Talisman Gate blog also weighs in on the trip, saying Obama needs to better explain his goals for the country and the larger Middle East region.

The Nation's Ari Melber and Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas have won a battle against Time magazine and its reporter/columnist/blogger Joe Klein.

Klein produced a story on last year's Netroots Nation in which he described Hillary Clinton being booed at the event. Trouble is, Melber and Kos say Clinton wasn't booed by the audience. Klein's inaccurate description was included in a version of a story covering this year's Netroots National event in Austin, Texas. Time initially rejected calls for a correction to Klein's piece, leaving Kos understandably agitated:

I already fired off an email to Time asking for corrections to that and several other glaring errors in that terrible piece. But as we've learned with Joe Klein, Time considers itself and its writers infallible, so there's slim chance of any corrections.

But with Melber and Kos bringing attention to the erroneous piece, the Time editors have since abdicated:

The original version of this story said that Hillary Clinton's appearance at a 2007 Netroots Q&A session was greeted by boos. The writer confused that event with accounts of another Clinton appearance that had taken place earlier. Clinton was not booed at the Netroots event.

UPDATE: Another Netroots Nation story bites the dust. This time an attempted humor piece, apparently, from the Austin American-Statesman.

With rumors circulating that a McCain vice presidential pick could come as early as this week, The Ethics Guy, aka Bruce Weinstein, outlines some of the ethical considerations of picking a VP. Weinstein argues that the pick should go beyond simple electoral vote calculations:

With so many critical issues before us, including a flagging economy, rising food and energy prices, a housing crisis, almost 50 million citizens without health-care insurance, and the ever-present danger of terrorism, it's reasonable to think that the next President may continue in the tradition of having a Vice-President who plays a significant role in determining the direction of our country.

I still think Novak's story was a distraction from the McCain campaign to put a dent in Obama's overwhelming, and overwhelmingly positive, blanket news coverage from overseas this week. But if the news is accurate, this would be a foolish decision on team McCain's part.

Unless, of course, you buy into my theory that McCain has already resigned himself to losing the election and is going to select Mitt Romney as his running mate because his dislikes Romney so much that he wants to critically damage his chances of being the 2012 nominee by putting him on a losing ticket this year. Zing.

Get all the latest on VP chatter by checking out CQ Politics' VP Watch.

The McCain campaign sent an email to supporters this morning asking them to vote on their favorite song to exemplify how "the media is in love" with Barack Obama. The accompanying You Tube video shows clips of the news media, particularly MSNBC, either making positive comments about Obama, or commenting on how other members of the media favor his campaign.

From the McCain campaign email:

It's pretty obvious that the media has a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama. Some may even say it's a love affair.

The video is pretty funny, even if it uses examples like Chris Matthews that has already been hashed out by media critics for some time. Still, it's another good example of the McCain campaign's increasing media sophistication. When the progressive blogger reaction does hit, expect them to point out the hypocrisy of a man who has joked, "the media is my base," now complaining about positive press coverage of his opponent.

The Campaign for Americas Future and Democracy Corps have released the results of a new polls this morning taken at the Netroots Nation conference of online progressive activists in Austin, Texas over the past weekend.

Several interesting trends emerged from the more than 2,000 activists who attended the conference. Of those who participated in the survey, 19 percent said "Energy and global warming" was their top concern, with "The war in Iraq" garnering 11 percent for a fourth place finish. However, when asked which issues should be the top priority of the next administration, the top choice was Iraq, getting 23 percent of the vote. Energy and global warming was a close second, with 20 percent of the vote.

The views of Congress were quite dim, with 68 percent saying Congress had accomplished "Not too much," and just 2 percent saying "A great deal." In fairness, 16 percent did say "A good amount," but that's still barely over 10 percent. 12 percent said "Nothing at all."

"This straw poll was designed to help us understand a little more about who our netroots activists are and where they stand," said Toby Chaudhuri, communications director for the Campaign for America's Future. "There's a sea change happening in American politics and it's growing on the Internet. Progressives are gaining popularity, strength, capacity and political sophistication, far outpacing conservatives online."

National Review endorsed Mitt Romney in the Republican primary and hasn't been a big fan of John McCain since his 2000 primary run against then-Gov. Bush. Nonetheless, editors Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru offer some strategic vision to the main campaign. The main lesson: Copy the Hillary Clinton from the second half of the Democratic primaries and go after Obama hard. To Some extent, I think the McCain campaign has already warmed up to this message and is incorporating it into their strategy. Nonetheless, Lowry/Ponnuru say the hard-hitting strategy might work better for McCain than it did for Clinton:

McCain is in a better position to use this strategy against Obama than Clinton was. She was never wholly convincing in her adopted role as a working-class warrior. McCain, on the other hand, has the warrior part of the persona in his genes. Nor does McCain face the constraints Clinton did. Going negative in a primary makes party loyalists deeply nervous, and explicitly attacking cultural liberalism in a Democratic primary is unthinkable. Obama has more evident weaknesses than he did when the Democratic primaries started and he was freshly on the scene. His core audience, finally, is a smaller proportion of the general than of the Democratic-primary electorate.

Over at Talk Left, Big Tent Democrat actually agrees with Lowry/Ponnuru's advice, but still isn't shaken:

The good news is that McCain is an inept campaigner and his campaign is also inept. The other good news is that the Media does not want to play along. ... It is because McCain is so weak a campaigner that Obama seems a shoo in to me. A better Republican candidate could have a chance. McCain is not that candidate.

UPDATE: I'll be on Sirius Satellite Radio at 5:30pm EST tonight on "Make it Plain with Mark Thompson," discussing Obama's overseas trip.

John McCain has been deservedly mocked online for his mediocre awful campaign advertisements and speeches. But there's been a slow evolution evident at Team McCain, first witnessed a few weeks ago with the campaign ad "Love," which mirrored the Summer of Love with McCain's POW experience. That ad still had its share of problems, but it ended with the catchy line, "Don't hope for a better future, vote for one."

Today, the McCain campaign has released a new web video ad entitled, "Pump," which addressing energy prices. "Pump" corrects many of the "Love" video's shortcomings: It replaced the grave sounding Fred Thompson knockoff narrator with a mature, female voice. It also drops the 60's negative nostalgia in favor of relevancy. It also shows a continued wit and attention to creative detail.




In the ad's text, the narrator asks, "Who can we thank for rising prices at the pump?"  and is answered by audio of crowd chanting, "Obama! Obama! Obama!" It also evolves the "don't hope for a better future," line into, "Don't hope for more energy, vote for it." Still not up to the levels of the Obama media venture, but overall a vastly improved effort from the McCain campaign.

Michael Whitney ran into Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr and found out that the former Georgia lawmaker writes his own entries on the social networking site Twitter. Whitney has some fun with the discovery, noting that a few of Barr's entries are semantically challenged.

A couple of other interesting things I noticed while looking at Barr's Twitter account: He's following far more people (4,795) than he has followers (767). That can't be a good sign when you're a candidate for federal office. Especially when his closest ideological counterpart is Ron Paul, a true Internet phenomenon. However, he's also only posted 24 entries so far. So, maybe the number of followers will spike in the coming days/months.

Barr is using the account mainly as a promotional device, but you have question some of the content he's putting out there. Out of those 24 "updates," 7 are requests to follow his website and/or Twitter account. 5 updates are links to Bob Barr You Tube videos and the rest are links to articles about/by Barr.

On the home front, liberal bloggers spent the weekend in Austin, Texas contemplating what a Barack Obama victory in November would mean. Meanwhile, the presumptive Democratic nominee took a trip overseas and is in Iraq today meeting with high-level Iraqi and American military officials.

The Confederate Yankee says it's ok to call Obama's trip a success so long as you realize that the trip is only possible because President Bush ignored Obama's original opposition to the war and his claims that the surge would fail:

So by all means, let the journalists of the New York Times paint his visit as an accomplishment of some sort. Just keep in mind that if we had followed the starter Senator's judgment at any point during his political career, Iraq could have been too dangerous a place for his flight to even consider touching down.

Much of the debate surrounding Obama's trip so far concerns whether or not Iraq's Maliki-led government has endorsed a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Liberal bloggers say he's repeatedly made such demands, while conservative sites like Red State say the media was too quick to interpret Maliki's remarks.

James Joyner smartly points out the bright side of the double-talk coming from the Iraqi government:

Well, yeah.  Which is precisely how governments everywhere act.  Indeed, this would appear to be a sign that Maliki and company are more ready for prime time than it had appeared.

Is cheering on duplicity a sign of how low our expectations are for Iraq's government? Possibly, but when the agreed upon end point for the war is a government that can stand up on its own, this may ultimately prove more important than whether the government's leaders endorse a particular candidate's short-term political goals for the region.


UPDATE: I'll be WDEL radio at about 12:45pm EST discussing Obama's trip. You can listen here.

The ever-mobile Matthew Yglesias is leaving his perch at the Atlantic for new blogging digs over at the liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress. Over the past few years, Yglesias has largely shed his image as an independent thinker for one that is more overtly partisan and liberal. That doesn't necessarily mean his value as a blogger has devalued. In fact, it was probably a smart business move, as politically centrist views rarely equal high readership in the blogosphere. But now that Matt is working for an openly partisan political operation, I'm wondering if his soon-to-be former colleague Andrew Sullivan will revise the already antiquated "Yglesias Award Nominee," given to conservative and liberal bloggers who buck their side's dogma to express a poignant and independent opinion?

The Dark Knight broke several box-office records this weekend, is the second-highest rated movie of the year so far by critics. And (in a fine testament to internet hyperbole, is currently ranked as the #1 movie of all-time on the Internet Movie Database. So, what does a new Batman movie have to do with politics? More than you might think. Critics have correctly pointed out the film is the first critically and commercially successful film dealing with 9/11 and terrorism. The film has philosophical debates about negotiating with terrorists, whether torture is justified, and the civil liberties trade off of using warrantless wiretaps to track criminals. And unlike most recent films explicitly about the Iraq War, it manages to fairly look at both sides of the debate with nuance. Oh, and Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy has a cameo.

The Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last, who also blogs at Galley Slaves, has strong praise for the film:

As such, The Dark Knight, like Batman himself, takes a dim view of liberal (meaning "classical Western," not "lefty Democratic") pieties. Nolan's argument is that the invisible ropes binding us together are not as strong as we might like, or imagine. A snip here, a cut there, and our rules begin to break down. Liberalism is well-suited to managing the competitions and collisions of liberal peoples. But it can be fatally ill-equipped for confrontations with those not grounded in the same basic traditions.

Most of the political left are enjoying the movie as well, including The New Republic's Christopher Orr.

I'll be on the News8/Federal News panel tonight at 7:30pm EST to discuss the week in politics, including Barack Obama's oversees trip and forthcoming "time horizons" for the war in Iraq. You can watch the panel here.

I have spoken with a number of Republican operatives today concerning political attacks on Michelle Obama. While all stressed that they believe Michelle is "fair game" because of her regular appearances on the campaign trail and engagement in political debate, an interesting tidbit emerged concerning John McCain's views on the subject.

According the operatives, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the topic, McCain has been very clear in asking the national party apparatus and the state parties to not attack family members or spouses.

While I have no doubt that's true, it does conflict somewhat with how a few of the state Republican parties have handled Michelle Obama. First, there was the Tennessee GOP going after her, and then there's this new video from the Washington State GOP:

Charles Krauthammer is leading the blog discussion today with his Washington Post column detailing Barack Obama's love affair with himself. The Obama as egotistical theme has been running through conservative circles for a few months now. So, rather than examine the merits of Krauthammer's column, what's most interesting to me is to see how the convergence of conservative talking points has made its way here from the blogs, to the party mouthpieces and now to the respected columnists.

But is a politician supposedly  full of themselves really all that surprising? Consider the tremendous amount of ego it takes to believe you are the most-qualified person to be the leader of the free world. Regardless of his merits as a person and candidate, does anyone sincerely believe McCain suffers from an abject poverty of ego? In Obama's case, the test case seems to be more about how well he balances confidence against cockiness. In other words, you may in fact be arrogant, but don't act like it.

Ed Morrissey takes a similar route, noting:

In ways large and small, Obama has demonstrated arrogance and conceit in ways not before seen in presidential politics.  Americans may like their Congressmen and Senators to be arrogant and haughty at times, but not Presidents.  They want humble men -- or men who at least can act humble -- in the White House.

And Firedogla