The Gen-El!

[nacho]

I'll steal that Cassander term, because he's a hipster living in hipsterville.

The presumptive nominees:  Obama and McCain.  It all begins today, though Hillary is talking like she's going to keep blindly running on fumes through the summer... But that doesn't matter, as Obama's already started ignoring her and shooting arrows at McCain. 

So this thread will round up the campaign as we slog through the hot months and move into the autumn of our dreams...and, as America rejects a black president and Hillary undermines the Democrat party, the winter of our discontent.

[nacho]

So round one is this AIPAC thing:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/04/AR2008060401361.html?hpid=artslot

Where Obama proves he loves Jews just as much as McCain and, so, comfortably secures their vote.

WASHINGTON -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama assured Jewish leaders Wednesday that he will be a steadfast ally of Israel and will not negotiate with terrorist groups, a response to attacks leveled against him recently by Republicans.

Only hours after securing his party's nomination, Obama used a previously scheduled speech to 7,000 pro-Israel activists to try to ease concerns that some Jewish voters have about him and his stance on Middle East matters. He pointedly criticized Sen. John McCain, his GOP opponent this fall, and rebutted claims that he underestimates the threat that Iran poses and would naively enter into unwise talks with U.S. adversaries.

[nacho]

And --

McCain Mounts Immediate Attack on Obama's Record

By Michael D. Shear and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 4, 2008; A04

NEW ORLEANS, June 3 -- Republican Sen. John McCain wasted no time Tuesday night in launching his first general-election broadside against Sen. Barack Obama, casting the Democrat as an out-of-touch liberal who offers a false promise of change.

In a prime-time speech designed to upstage Obama on the night he claimed the Democratic nomination, McCain began what top aides and other Republicans promise will be an aggressive effort to claim the mantles of reform, experience and mainstream values. Obama, he said, is an "impressive man" but one with a thin record.

"For all his fine words and all his promise, he has never taken the hard but right course of risking his own interests for yours, of standing against the partisan rancor on his side to stand up for our country," McCain said less than two hours before Obama spoke in the same arena in St. Paul, Minn., where McCain will claim the Republican nomination in September.

McCain began his speech by praising Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in the Democratic primary race won over many rural and working-class voters that McCain hopes to capture in November. "As the father of three daughters, I owe her a debt for inspiring millions of women to believe there is no opportunity in this great country beyond their reach," McCain said. "I am proud to call her my friend."

Two McCain aides said his speech was the beginning of a "great debate" on the direction of the country. It will be followed quickly by a television ad campaign aimed at reinforcing McCain's core message: that Obama's sweeping rhetoric offers little real promise of changing the political culture in Washington.

Confronting what his aides expect to be Obama's principal attack against him, McCain explicitly rejected the idea that he represents President Bush's third term.

"Why does Senator Obama believe it's so important to repeat that idea over and over again?" he asked. "Because he knows it's very difficult to get Americans to believe something they know is false."

As evidence of his independence, McCain highlighted his breaks with Bush on Iraq, energy and climate change.

In his speech, Obama honored McCain's service but derided the Republican's claim to stand for change, linking him to what he called the "failed" foreign and economic policies of Bush. "So I'll say this -- there are many words to describe John McCain's attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush's policies as bipartisan and new," Obama said. "But change is not one of them."

The speeches were more direct and personal than they have been in the past. McCain said half a dozen times that Obama's "old" ways "are not change we can believe in" -- a play on Obama's slogan -- as he stood in front of a sign that said "Leadership we can believe in." Obama mocked McCain's support for Republican policies, saying his Democratic vision is "the change we need."

On Iraq, McCain said Obama would "draw us into a wider war with even greater sacrifices." Obama accused McCain of supporting "a policy where all we look for are reasons to stay in Iraq, while we spend billions of dollars a month on a war that isn't making the American people any safer."

McCain decried "wasteful spending by both parties" and said, "Senator Obama has supported it and proposed more of his own." Obama invited McCain to travel more to economically hard-hit communities, so "he'd understand the kind of change that people are looking for."

A McCain-Obama matchup means voters will have a stark choice between two men who both assert that they will be the agents of upheaval in Washington. One is a military hero who Americans have known for decades. The other is a Chicago community organizer introduced to the public at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

McCain crossed the nominating finish line long before Obama, but he has struggled to take advantage of the extra time. McCain has spent the past two months unveiling campaign themes and taking swipes at Obama, but he has also been dogged by questions about his age and health, his wife's tax returns and his connection to controversial pastors and lobbyists. And some Republicans have expressed concern about how slowly McCain has moved to match Obama's organizational prowess across the nation.

After watching Clinton beat up on Obama, top McCain advisers say that the Republican nominee faces the likelihood of a revitalized rival who will quickly seek to unify his party and to tap into the obvious energy among Democratic activists and donors.

McCain advisers concede that the battle for the White House will play out in a political environment that is terrible for Republicans: Gas and food prices are high, economic anxiety runs deep, Bush is pushing an unpopular war, and 80 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.

But those advisers say the long Democratic battle has exposed serious weaknesses for Obama, especially among blue-collar voters, and provided a road map for questioning the nominee's lack of experience and judgment.

With the help of the Republican National Committee, McCain's campaign aims to portray Obama as weak and naive on foreign policy, with questionable judgment on big issues.

They will call him a liberal who is out of the mainstream. They will question his record on bipartisanship and cast him as an elitist who cannot identify with middle Americans.

McCain spoke in Kenner, a suburb of New Orleans hit hard by Hurricane Katrina and a place that McCain's campaign said exemplifies the government dysfunction that he vows to fix. A couple of hundred people crammed into a small room at a local convention center, while nearly another thousand lined up outside.

A brass band played, and local high school cheerleaders cried: "Get those votes! Let's go, McCain! Get those votes, let's go!"

[Matt]

Fuck Israel.

[monkey!]

Fuck Israel.

[nacho]

So RC will be there tonight -- Obama's rally at the Nissan Pavilion in Virginia.  Considered to be the kick off for his general election campaign...and also heavily featuring running mate contender Jim Webb.  They'll be appearing together, which sort of makes it sound like Webb is certainly on the shorter short list.

CNN's analysis:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/05/obama.thursday/index.html

[RottingCorpse]

I'll report when I get in tonight.  Mrs. RC and I are heading over about 2:00pm. Doors open at 3:00pm The party starts at 6:00pm.

I love that Virginia is "in play" as they say, though to be honest, I think the Dems will have a hard time here. Sure, there's lots of folks up here in the "yankee" suburbs who are more liberal, but south and west of Richmond, you're in the land of Guns, God, and Government where McCain will really resonate.

[nacho]

Yeah, Obama's in the southwest right now whipping up support.  But VA will go McCain... As an electoral victory. Increasingly, NOVA is leaning Democrat, and that'll be nice as the popular swells early on.

[RottingCorpse]

McCain and Obama: a stark matchup

Washington - The contrasts could not be more stark: an African-American Democrat versus a white Republican. The latter old enough to be the father of the former. One with no military experience, the other with a long Navy career punctuated by a harrowing period of captivity in a Hanoi prison camp. One with a soaring rhetorical style that can light up a sports arena, the other more comfortable in the back-and-forth banter of a town-hall meeting.

Then there are the policy differences between the two presumptive major-party nominees for president. John McCain (R) is one of the Senate's most outspoken supporters of the Iraq war, while Barack Obama (D) has opposed it from the start. Senator McCain wants big tax cuts and less government spending; Senator Obama wants tax breaks targeted at the middle class and greater government involvement in job creation. On healthcare, McCain emphasizes consumer choice and market forces, while Obama favors government action that puts the nation on track toward universal coverage.

As the 2008 general election campaign kicks off, one point is already certain: The outcome will be historic. America will elect either its first African-American president or its oldest first-term president. But just as striking as their differences is a key similarity. Neither was the first choice of their party establishment for the nomination, and both have promised "a different kind of politics" from the highly partisan, divisive wrangling that has come to mark Washington for the past 20 years.

Both men hold appeal among independent voters – about a third of the electorate – and whoever wins a majority of them wins in November. So while both candidates must hold onto the bulk of their party regulars, they will also play to the nonideological center in a way that the nominees didn't in the last two presidential races.

Still, for McCain, the anti-Republican headwind he faces cannot be underestimated.

In any analysis of the 2008 race, "you start with the already-well-described Democratic advantage this time around, beginning with unhappiness over the war and the economy," says Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas, Austin.

President Bush's abysmal job approval ratings also don't do McCain any favors. Even if Bush were doing reasonably well, history would still point toward a Democrat in 2008. Rarely is a two-term president succeeded by the nominee of his own party.

Generic polls show Americans preferring, with no names attached, a Democratic president to a Republican by a double-digit margin.

But McCain's image of independence and working across the aisle gives him a shot in November. So far, he is holding his own in polls versus Obama.

One of the great unknowns is the race factor. With no historical precedents for a nonwhite nominee, it is impossible to predict how or where Obama's race will affect his chances.

While McCain faced some grumbling among key GOP constituencies when he locked up the party nomination – particularly among movement conservatives and evangelical voters – Obama, too, must unify his party after a divisive primary season. He will need the support of the working class, older, and Hispanic voters that flocked to Hillary Rodham Clinton, and thus how she ends her candidacy and whether she works hard for Obama's election loom large over Obama's chances.

Party strategists warn against making too much of the intraparty squabbling.

"I think both candidates will get 80 percent of their party's voters at the end of the day," says Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist based in Los Angeles.

"After eight years of George Bush, I just don't think Democrats will be voting for Republicans," says Mr. Carrick. "And when things calm down, they'll recognize that it's in the Democrats' best interest to elect Senator Obama. And Republicans will have the same feeling about McCain."

This leaves the moderates and the independents as the battleground. McCain is already trying mightily to distance himself from Bush, appearing in public with him as little as possible and pointedly criticizing his administration for its blunders, such as the handling of hurricane Katrina and what McCain saw was mishandling of the early years of the Iraq war.

McCain is also seizing opportunities to highlight his policy differences with Bush, such as his support for limits on greenhouse-gas emissions that the Bush administration resisted.

But every time the debate comes back to Iraq, McCain risks looking in lock step with Bush. McCain was a big proponent of last year's "surge" in US troop presence in Iraq, and so his complaints of the handling of the war have diminished.

Going forward, the mantra that Obama introduced first – change – will now be the theme of both campaigns. From the McCain camp, the question will be whose change do voters want, the change that a "maverick," experienced leader can bring, or the change that a young man who just four years ago was a state senator in Illinois can bring.

From the Obama camp, the emphasis will be on judgment over years of Washington experience.

During the primaries, Senator Clinton failed to gain serious traction over her highly debated advertisement asking voters whom they would want answering the phone at 3 a.m. In fact, analysts say, it may have only served to point to McCain as the most experienced candidate on national-security matters.

But even there, as polls show Americans more concerned about the economy than about Iraq or terrorism, McCain starts his general election run with a big anchor around his legs.

"He's in a tough situation, McCain, given that the major issues are going to be economic and that these issues do favor a Democratic candidate," says Stephen Wayne, a political scientist at Georgetown University.

"McCain can campaign if he wants on national-security grounds, but unless there's a change in the international environment and a perceived threat to the US, I don't know where that's going to get him."

McCain's admitted weakness on economic matters could be helped by selecting a running mate with a strong reputation on economics and finance, such as former Rep. Rob Portman (R) of Ohio, also Mr. Bush's former budget director, or Mitt Romney, ex-governor Massachusetts and a wealthy businessman.

[nacho]

It's gonna be fun!

[nacho]

McCain tows the passively (or not so) anti-veteran Bush line:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/05/mccain-pressed-on-opposition-to-webb-gi-bill/

At a town hall meeting today in Baton Rouge, LA, Senator McCain was asked by a military mother why he opposes the Webb GI bill. In predictable fashion, he starts off by rightly stating that educational benefits for veterans have become outdated, but then goes into his debunked spiel about how the bill is too generous and would harm enlistment numbers. There’s a reason your response was met with zero applause, Senator.

GI Bill round one, in the 40's and 50's, made this country a great place.  Why is such a distinguished veteran against it? 

[Matt]

See, I feel that Hillary supporters would more likely vote McCain than Republicans would vote against McCain. At worst, they'd abstain, but I really feel like the Republican movement is much more of a hive mind that demands you support the party even at its worse choice, while Democrats would get petty and not fall in line.

[Tatertots]

McCain's against it for the same reason he's been changing his position on everything else over the past year ("flip-flopping", as a mouth-breathing Republican from 2004 would call it), which, I suspect, is a result of he willingness to bend over for the Christian-right and his corporate handlers.

That's my conspiracy theory.

When he actually showed up to the Senate this year, he's voted with Bush's wishes every single time. "Change" my ass.

[RottingCorpse]

Rally was good fun, though Obama's speech was a lot of the same as he said on Tuesday night.

Pics soon!

[nacho]

And most other nights, too.  Yes we can, change, we can, changing, change, we can.  Yes.  Obama girl, please visit at 9pm.