Happy Election Day!

Bonus points for anyone who can tell me what Biden's image stands for.

I'm sorry to bump traca's and Pete's posts, but I hope there are a lot more posts today and tonight, and lots of photos of this truly historic day. Local thoughts this morning: Last night here, as Obama's grandmother headed toward glory, Leonard Cohen, 74, sailed through a 2.5-hour show that would shame folks 1/3 his age. "What an honor it is to be back in Rotterdam," he said. "It's been fifteen years since I was last here. I was sixty back then, just a kid with a crazy dream."

When he sang "Hallelujah" I was abruptly lifted by the angels, and sobbed uncontrollably in my chair, overcome by the realization that these years of wandering in the desert are finally over, that we are approaching the promised land where we can begin to rebuild all we've destroyed and lost and squandered. As if reading my mind he then played, as I had hoped, "Democracy," which he said was his "love letter to the USA." Some lovely person at the Swedish show caught these two songs together, and it is amazing. The old poet has actually gotten better at singing since his years on Mt. Baldy.



Many may know this version of "Hallelujah" better, or Bow Jenkins'.

Here are the lyrics to "Democracy" -- let them lift your heart this day!

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the war against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

The world has spoken

This is the first election eve that's found me giddy in a long time (helps that I'm going to a Leonard Cohen show). I feel increasingly sure of getting what I want, which is pretty amazing as it is the biggest political wish I've ever had. And I look forward to it almost as I looked forward to learning how being married felt -- I know it will be great, but I really can’t be more specific than that until it happens. But here's a taste: For the last several months, 'The Economist' has been hosting a global electoral college in which readers from 195 countries participated. The results are not surprising but are still extremely uplifting: of the 55,000 votes cast, Obama took 44,000. Ninety percent in favour of Obama. He nabbed 9,115 delegates to McCain’s shoddy 203. (For the curious, McCain won Cuba, Algeria, the Congo, and Iraq. I’m thinking they’d just like to fight with him.) Enjoy your election day -- it’s going to be amazing.

Over your shoulder

That Studs Terkel thing I found got me thinking: who will be over my shoulder when I'm in the booth voting in this historic election? It's a personal question, I think, and it would probably be cheapened were I to answer it out loud, or at least cheapened by my self-consciousness at answering it out loud. But wondering out loud-- that's another thing altogether.

The truth is there are a lot of people. Family; historic figures; and yes, fictional characters. Maybe it's silly, but I'm making a list and I will be reciting it to myself in the booth before I cast my vote.

Who will be over your shoulder? You can answer if you're inclined to. Or maybe just think about it.

Somebody's gotta remember

Studs Terkel less than two weeks ago:

The important thing is memory. You know in this country, we all have Alzheimer's. Obama has got to remember his days as an organizer. It all comes back to the neighborhood. Well I hope the election is a landslide for Obama.

A good note for going into Tuesday. I'm kind of sad that he didn't make it to Wednesday- get to see it. So let's all see it for him then.

Wish I Had a Camera

Election Day, 5 Days Early

I happened to be off work yesterday (here in Chicago) and decided to do a little early voting. I ran by my early voting place at about 10am, on a workday, and found the line out the door of my little neighborhood public library. Drove by around 1pm. The line was still there. At 2pm, I joined the line and waited 2.5 hours to vote. The line wrapped around my neighborhood branch, and inside the library the line snaked through all the stacks and around the entire inside of the library ending in a room where another 30 people waited in chairs for an electronic booth to open. There must have been at all times 200-300 people. When I left at about 4:30, the line outside was twice as long, all the way down the block. Probably 500 people. Polls were to close at 5pm.

As I was waiting outside, the energy buzzing around was palpable and electrifying. People driving by kept stopping and asking if this was a voting line. When someone answered yes, they almost always smiled this sort of fantastic, happy smile of wonderment and all-is-right-in-the-world-ishness. High school kids doing some sort of project for school where going up and down the line interviewing people. Dozens of people walking to the grocery store nearby stopped, pulled cell phones from pockets and took pictures. Some stopped to talk to people in line. It felt a bit like those moments after a catastrophe when there is no more Me as much as there is Us, except this was a joyful occasion, rather than a terrifying one. It felt appropriately historic.

My neighborhood is full of African immigrants, Muslims, and elderly Old World immigrants (along with your friendly mix of gentrifiers). It was so fantastic to see, especially among the African immigrants, the barely surpressed grins when people got to that final leg of the line, into that room where the voting booths surrounded us. I heard several people talking about getting tickets to the rally in Grank Park, which are much coveted. The seventy thousand that they put out seems at least 1/10th too small, and dozens of people talked about planning to go down there anyway.

Don't get me wrong, 2.5 hours is a long time to wait. Exhiliration gave way sometimes to annoyance, only to be perked back up to exhiliration by something else. There are 51 early voting locations in the city, and from what I've read in the papers, almost all of them have been similarly swamped for the 2 weeks or so that they have been open.

I know that Obama is much beloved here. I'm sure there is no city in this country that will probably vote more heavily for him. So it's not as if we were there to assure his victory in our city and state. And there really aren't any hotly contested legislative or local elections this year (Durbin is a shue-in; Schakowsky is shue-in). I think what really got me was that all of us were willing to put up with 2.5 hour waits in order to register our belief in this guy and in order to register our severe discontent with the current administration.

My reluctance to early vote was partly due to the fact that I've always enjoyed the euphoria I feel voting on Election Day. It was a treat to find that I didn't miss that one bit. Seems like that energy's been floating here for 2 weeks already.

I'm trying to reign in my optimism, but it's hard after yesterday: Tuesday is shaping up to be a good day.

The least scary Halloween in 12 years

For nervous pollwatchers... a simple equation remains:

Kerry states
+ Iowa
+ New Mexico
+ any other state
_________________
President Obama

He is comfortably ahead in every Kerry state. Here are Pollster.com's charts for Iowa and New Mexico:





What about that one last state? Well, Obama is also ahead or tied in Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, and North Carolina. McCain has to win ALL NINE of those. Obama has to win ONE.



















As if that weren't enough, two additional Bush states seem to be in reach: Montana and Georgia.

DFW feature in Rolling Stone

David Lipsky's absolutely terrific piece on what happened to David Foster Wallace is available online, in case you haven't bought your souvenir Obama-on-the-cover copy. I bought it in the airport, read it, walked right back to the store and bought Infinite Jest (I had wanted to start with Broom of the System, but no dice).

Daughter of slave votes for Obama

Wow. Check out Amanda Jones.

Best political web video

Andrew Sullivan put up a list of 10 web videos for us to vote on for the best of the season.  You may have seen some already, but they're worth a look.  I personally enjoyed Palinex, The Vet Who Did Not Vet, and, of course, Wassup.

A question about election-night returns

I can't remember how 2004's election-night returns rolled out on TV.  Do the networks start showing returns as soon as each state's polls close, or do they wait until all the polls close everywhere to report on anything?  

I am assuming it is the former since the latter would have meant staying up very late, and everyone knows I don't like to stay up late.

Titles

When I took Ethan's novella class, at one point he described his theory about titles (that is, how to decide upon one for your own story).  It was a bullet-pointed list of things not to do, from what I recall.  One of the points was something like "Don't make your title half of a cliche" -- like don't title your story "Desperate Times" and then have it be all about desperate measures.

Does anyone else remember any others?  I ask because I was taking a revision class last weekend, and this question came up.  I think Ethan's list would be helpful to the other people in this class, but I cannot find my notes on the subject.

(Alternatively, please feel free to weigh in with your own philosophy of titling.)

Obama rally: Indianapolis

I didn't get many good pics. I arrived at 10 a.m. -- he was supposed to start at 11 but didn't arrive till almost noon. Just standing there in one spot for two hours played havoc with my lower back. Then a cheer went up ... but it was Evan Bayh. Who introduced ... some lady who had lost her health insurance. Finally Barack took the stage to wild cheering, but I must say the excitement had nearly worn off for me by then. His speech was a pretty harsh and political, not a lot of uplifting stuff, just the tit for tat argument of these final days.

What was uplifting was seeing 36,000 white people and black people in Indianapolis getting together, talking, laughing, dancing together to the nice selection of tunes. It's a pretty segregated city. You go a block here, a block there, and all of a sudden everyone is a different color. But not that morning. I hadn't seen such unified multiracial action here before. Hopefully that was just a taste of the cultural shift, the racial healing that's coming for the entire country. And Indiana is not used to mattering in elections. It's been 44 years since it has voted for a Dem for president, but polls here right now are tight as a tick. I asked my dad, a lifelong Republican, who was going to win Indiana. "Obama will," he said.

A proposal

Let's do a photo essay on Election Day here at Earth Goat.  Whether you're voting that day or, having responsibly voted early, just going about your daily business, post photos of what's going on where you are -- lines at the polls, people with their campaign buttons*, etc.  Goats are all over the place, and it would be nifty to pass the time until the polls close by seeing what's going on all around this beleaguered (but possibly hopeful) nation of ours.

In election-related news, my brother sussed out that my mother voted for Obama.  This was in question since she voted for McCain in Texas's open primary.  But, whoa, she HATES Sarah Palin.  And she claimed my father is sitting out this election -- he doesn't like McCain/Palin but can't bring himself to vote for a Democrat.  I consider that a victory.

*Apparently, wearing campaign-related garb and accessories counts as "electioneering" in some states, so put that button in your pocket or turn your shirt inside out when you go to the polls.

One-shot photo essay: Dogs on North Sea beach

Home work?

On Nov. 3, Marilynne R. is reading here in IC, presumably from Home, and some of my students will be going. I want them to have read something from Marilynne's earlier work, even just 10-15 pages. Suggestions?

Early voting

I voted last week.  No small part of me wanted to go vote on Election Day and to enjoy what should, I hope, be a glorious and historic day.  But then my natural paranoia made me think: what if there are earthquakes in San Francisco and Los Angeles on November 4, and the Central Valley ends up deciding what happens with the presidential election and on odious proposition 8?  

And then the rational part of me also said that lines might be long, and the ballot here in San Francisco, particularly if you live in a district electing a supervisor (which I do), involves four separate ballots and takes a while to fill out.  It was decided: I would vote early.

So I went down to City Hall -- mind you, this was neither in the exuberant rush of people eager for the first day of early voting, nor was it close to Election Day itself, nor was it even at the lunch hour or some other busy moment -- and I had to wait 10 minutes to get a ballot.  And now come reports of long early-voting lines in many states, as well as surges of new voters registering at the deadlines, suggesting that there will indeed be long lines on Election Day.

My point is: why not go ahead and vote now if you can?  Or if you're not already doing absentee?  The Google has most of the answers about how to vote early if your state allows it.

Election metaphor # 3

More on the debates

Interesting visual analysis for all of us wordies.

Debate

Who Caused the Gigantic International Financial Krakatoa?

New York magazine has been hosting IM (in a loose sense) conversations for the last week or so on the election, the economy, and politics in general. None of them come close to the hilarity found in this conversation between Byron York of National Review and Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone.

It's worth reading the whole thing, but this portion of the exchange is one of the highlights:

M.T.: What a surprise that you mention Franklin Raines. Do you even know how a CDS works? Can you explain your conception of how these derivatives work? Because I get the feeling you don't understand. Or do you actually think that it was a few tiny homeowner defaults that sank gigantic companies like AIG and Lehman and Bear Stearns? Explain to me how these default swaps work, I'm interested to hear.

Because what we're talking about here is the difference between one homeowner defaulting and forty, four hundred, four thousand traders betting back and forth on the viability of his loan. Which do you think has a bigger effect on the economy?

B.Y.: Are you suggesting that critics of Fannie and Freddie are talking about the default of a single homeowner?

M.T.: No. That is what you call a figure of speech. I'm saying that you're talking about individual homeowners defaulting. But these massive companies aren't going under because of individual homeowner defaults. They're going under because of the myriad derivatives trades that go on in connection with each piece of debt, whether it be a homeowner loan or a corporate bond. I'm still waiting to hear what your idea is of how these trades work. I'm guessing you've never even heard of them.

I mean really. You honestly think a company like AIG tanks because a bunch of minorities couldn't pay off their mortgages?

B.Y.: When you refer to "Phil Gramm's Commodities Future Modernization Act," are you referring to S.3283, co-sponsored by Gramm, along with Senators Tom Harkin and Tim Johnson?

M.T.: In point of fact I'm talking about the 262-page amendment Gramm tacked on to that bill that deregulated the trade of credit default swaps.

Tick tick tick. Hilarious sitting here while you frantically search the Internet to learn about the cause of the financial crisis — in the middle of a live chat interview.

Candidate metaphors

You may have seen this elsewhere on the Web (created by some brilliant commmenter named Kdoug:


I started dicking around with Photoshop and came up with this:

I'm going to be doing more of these as the election approaches... I expect them to get weirder. Give me ideas in the comments!

Hey, Sarah Palin

This made me laugh. A lot.

Coolly named French fellow snags Nobel lit prize

I have to admit, I had never even heard of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio until he won the coveted honor today. And I'm sure that says a hell of a lot more about me than it does him.

It seems he really likes deserts (he lives near your neck of the sands, dunkeys -- go interview him for Earth Goat).

Europeans, who account for 11% of the world's population, have grabbed 12 of the last 14 Nobel literature prizes (that's 85%). As Wikipedia notes, "The absolute majority of the laureates have been European, with Sweden itself receiving more prizes than all of Asia."

Maybe they should give out one per continent every year. Then all I'd have to do is move to Antarctica. And, you know, finish my novel. And publish it.

Donna Brazille puts down the talking points and grabs the country by the lapels

She goes on a beautiful four-minute unscripted tear re: progress, racism, sexism and the election.

Curtis Sittenfeld interview: American Wife

Curtis Sittenfeld is the New York Times bestselling author of the highly acclaimed Prep and The Man of My Dreams. Her third and latest novel, American Wife, chronicles the life of Alice Blackwell, First Lady -- a character inspired by Laura Bush. We were delighted when Curtis agreed to sit down with us for our third chat.

EG: I must admit, when I heard what your book was about, I was like, what the? The least-liked president ever, and Curtis has written a book about the one person who loves him the most? But then I started thinking ... yeah, but why does she love him? It suddenly seemed like a great idea for fiction to explore, and I started thinking of works like Autumn of the Patriarch, Primary Colors, Citizen Kane . Was it hard to sell the idea to your agent or publisher? Were there pitfalls you wanted to avoid?

CS: I was under contract with my publisher for a third novel, and the subject of it was up to me (or at least I had this illusion!). Basically, I did know that a novel loosely inspired by Laura Bush could turn out to be a disaster in any number of ways, so I started writing it as a secret experiment and didn't tell my editor until I was hundreds of pages in. My concern was not that the book wouldn't be sellable but more that even if it turned out to be really bad and cheesy, it had enough of a hook that it could probably still get published -- and I didn't want it to be published for the wrong reasons. But ultimately I was happy with it, and so was my editor -- all she saw before I finished the whole thing was a 30-page excerpt, but she was always enthusiastic. The most difficult thing to explain to people who hadn't read it was that even though I'm a Democrat, it's not a satire.

EG: In a 2004 Salon essay called "Why I Love Laura Bush", you wrote: "How can she really be a good person if she's married to him? How can she be married to him if she really is more liberal than he is? But ambiguities are the foundation of fiction; it is only in the world of politics that they're met with hostility." Did you write the book partly as a way to explain our recent history to yourself?

CS: I definitely think I wrote this book to try to examine some of those questions that most intrigued me about Laura Bush. I suppose I also wrote it to try to show that famous people don't exist just for us to judge and critique -- they have their own stories, experiences, private wishes and regrets.

EG: Alice says her life is "lived in opposition to itself." She justifies/rationalizes her shared responsibility in her husband's conservative administration while disagreeing with much of it. She tries to separate out her love for Charlie from her distaste for his political job. Do you think Alice is happy with how she's handled her life? And do you think her down-to-earth father, who had his saying about fools appearing in public places, would have approved?

CS: I'd say that, by design, American Wife explores these questions more than it answers them. I don't think the answer to whether Alice is happy with how she's handled her life is as straightforward as "yes" or "no" -- it's probably a mix, and it changes depending on the day. This would be a difficult question for any of us to answer, don't you think? As for whether her father would approve, he'd probably feel wary about her living so publicly, but he'd also probably be a bit wowed, as most of us are, by that level of fame and power. By the way, former or current residents of Iowa City reading this interview might be amused to hear that when I read at Prairie Lights last week, Julie Englander asked me if I too lead a life in opposition to itself.

EG: I'm curious who you envisioned as your reader. Liberals might not be interested, thinking it's fluff, and conservatives might assume it's a hit job.

CS: Oh, believe me, I thought of this as I was writing -- that there's enough in the book to turn off Democrats and Republicans for different reasons! But the topics in this book were endlessly interesting to me, and I tend to let my own preoccupations be my guide. I guess that I imagine the people who read American Wife will mostly just be people who like novels, who are interested in the various complications of human relationships and aren't necessarily political junkies.

EG: What has the reaction been from conservatives? Have you heard whether anyone on the "inside" has read it? Were you worried about that aspect? It's funny how a sex scene, for example, that wouldn't raise an eyebrow in a "normal" book suddenly seems fraught with danger and controversy here. We are still talking about fiction, after all.

CS: Mrs. Bush's spokeswoman told a reporter that she herself didn't plan to read it, that Mrs. Bush didn't plan to read it, and that they don't comment on fictional characters, which I thought was pretty diplomatic. If anyone on the inside has read it, I haven't heard, though I do know of some political reporters or former political reporters -- including Maureen Dowd and Joe Klein, who both have written about American Wife and seemed to enjoy it. Their affirmation meant a lot to me because they'd certainly be in positions to notice my gaffes or false notes more easily than the average reader.

EG: Laura Bush has surprised many liberal writers, who presumably loathe her husband, by her knowledge of their work. She is by all accounts a devoted reader, as is your Alice. You describe Laura Bush's approach as "stealth independence." There was that poetry symposium where she invited many writers -- but once it was announced that there would be anti-war poetry, she canceled the event. In your essay you speculate that the poetry might have been acceptable if it had simply happened in the moment, but once it was foretold it became untenable to allow it. What is your view of the benefits of Laura's/Alice's stealth independence?

CS: In a weird way, a person has more credibility if she's not known for consistently voicing the same viewpoint, or even for voicing any viewpoint. For instance, a few months back, Laura Bush made generous comments about both Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, and those comments got much more attention than they might have coming from a Democrat (Rosalynn Carter, for example).

But I also think it's presumptuous for any of us to say what someone in Laura Bush's position should or shouldn't do -- we have to take into account her specific personality and temperament, and what she's comfortable doing. In writing American Wife, I was very influenced by a great biography of her, The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush by Ann Gerhart, and a question Gerhart grapples with is, given that a first lady can be very influential, is it her duty to exercise that influence? Is it a cop-out not to? But, of course, as a Democrat watching Mrs. Bush root for various Republicans at their convention in September, I was wishing she'd use her influence a bit less!

EG: You also wrote: "Literary fiction acknowledges the discrepancy between how we act and what we feel. When I teach creative writing to teenagers, I tell them to think about going with their parents to a party. The people are boring, and the house smells bad, and you just want to leave. In real life, you say to your hosts, 'Thanks so much! I had such a great time!' But fiction admits how boring and smelly it was." That seems like a great way to introduce young writers to the possibilities of writing fiction -- the tension between the interior life and one's exterior actions. How has that worked with your own students?

CS: Hmm ... you should probably ask them! In recent years, I've found myself teaching workshops for adults (like the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference, or a summer course at the Iowa Writers' Workshop) more than for teenagers. But when I've taught teenagers, I feel like part of what's exciting for them is realizing they're "allowed" to write about situations or feelings that they could actually get in trouble for discussing in another class.

EG: I loved Alice's ruminations on her unsolicited fame -- how people come out of the woodwork, people you barely knew, and they all seem to want something, and how she and her husband have to wonder whether they can trust anyone to simply be their friends anymore, and once you reach a very high level of fame that all goes away because you are insulated by a barrier of handlers and so forth. What are you trying to get at in your own mind when you explore these questions of inequality in social standing and unequal access to resources and comfort?

CS: This might sound facile, but the world is an outrageously unfair place, and a lot of us, including me, often choose to pretend this isn't so -- maybe because otherwise we'd be paralyzed by guilt, or just bewildered by the senselessness. Certainly I'm interested in what the obligations are of people who are more fortunate to people who are less fortunate. And I do struggle with feeling like being a fiction writer is a fairly self-indulgent profession, that I am not exactly improving people's lives in any important way. I have often thought that I'd have a lot more respect for myself if I were a social worker instead of a writer.

EG: How is the real-life presidential campaign looking in Missouri, with the country about to "turn the page" on the Bush years? What's your take on how history will view the Bushes?

CS: Well, my fingers are tightly crossed for an Obama victory, and if that comes to pass (please, please, please!), then I suppose a case could be made that some people will have voted for Obama partly in reaction against Bush. It definitely seems like Democrats have learned from some of the mistakes of the 2000 and 2004 elections. Here in Missouri, I take note of every new yard sign in my neighborhood for either McCain or Obama. The Obama ones outnumber the McCain ones, but my fear is that people voting for Obama are excited enough to put out a sign while a lot of people voting for McCain will do it sort of quietly and unenthusiastically. I think an Obama presidency would be (will be?) thrilling.

Draper-Approved

What do we think of the new Atlantic design? In a vacuum, I like it. But back here in the time-space continuum, it strikes me that retro is never really a vehicle forward, though maybe here, at the end of history--after the universe has begun at least a metaphorical contraction and progress is marked by our ability to parse ever-smaller spaces-- staring hard across the diameter of some illusory cycle of culture has something to recommend it. At least this gerbil, we can say, has managed to build its own wheel.

A Grain of Sand

I just saw this wonderful (short!) piece in the NYT by Steven Millhauser about the particular ambition of short stories, which live generally in the shadows cast by novels, but which can exceed novels, too. I kind of love it.

Moosifest

The Post Turtle on Obama:

"This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America," she said. "We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."

Sure, it's an obnoxious, desperate thing to say. But I don't really care about that. The truth is they've been saying obnoxious, desperate things since July. I doubt it's going to suddenly do what they need it to do.

But this is the second time now that Palin has made a pretty ironic malapropism with the word "exceptionalism." I think she means to say "America is exceptional" rather than "America is full of people who think America is exceptional--like me, for example!", which is actually quite a different statement. She might be surprised who agrees with her on that one.

(I would think, maybe, that a true commitment to American exceptionalism would necessarily include a willful ignorance of the very concept--an historian's term, really-- because it suggests a possibly critical awareness of American Bestitude. To define the belief that America is exceptional with so many syllables, with that stamp of subjectivity, "-ism," after all, is to admit the existence of alternatives--maybe even legitimate ones. That's probably why, in Polk's day, they just called it "manifest destiny." Destiny--the perfect word for the true believer, really, because it removes all inkling of agency, alternative, or qualm.)

I haven't seen any particular coverage of this gaffe. Maybe it's an elitist sort of thing to remark upon, so the real elites are actually too horrified to mention it, lest they be exposed (true story- I had to check wikipedia the other day to be sure that David Brooks isn't the bastard son of a toothless sulphur miner/pentacostal banjoist. He hides it well) .

$60

Like Bush, but Angrier

--and a shittier pilot to boot.

I don't know that there's a lot of new material here-- it all feels sort of vaguely familiar. But RS puts together the personal case against McCain in the face of perhaps the most puzzlingly successful branding of a politician in our lifetimes.

In what might be irony, the McCain brand reminds me of the way people sometimes talk about Obama: as more the symbolic reconciliation of a national shame than as a guy with a platform--or a nuanced and flawed personality. The crucial differences, of course, are in the substance of each candidate that lies underneath that symbolism.

But there are differences in the symbolisms, too. McCain's vietnam is mostly generational, resonating most powerfully with the descendent baby bommers; Obama's is our oldest, and perhaps most persistent national challenge, one that's recurred in every generation of Americans since the first. That's not to say the difference is entirely in Obama's favor. Sure, it seem that Obama rides the bigger symbolic wave. But the bigger the symbol, the deeper the conflicts it contains. The question I wonder about is if--ala Deval Patrick, an easy, if flawed correlary-- the warm and fuzzies he inspires in people make for an inevitable backlash once he's in office.

But yeah, it's not exactly on the top of my list of concerns right now. Right now, I just want to make sure our next president isn't the type to have tantrums so fierce they cause him to pass out.


$50.

Elizabeth McCracken's memoir is out

Buy it, read it, be melted, amazed, and uplifted all at once.

Election Day, Springfield

a heartbeat away

apparently fifty is the new forty, which makes seventy-two the new sixty-two?
see here the top ten oldest world leaders...

Robert Mugabe is the oldest leader in the world.
mmm.

Detached Yankee navel-gazers unworthy of Nobel literature prize

Top Nobel jurist says Americans are too isolated and insular to merit top literature award, touches off verbal scuffles with Yankee literati.

I do think Horace Engdahl has a point when he says, "They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."

How far afield does your reading routinely take you? Glancing at my own bookshelf, I would say 80% to 85% of it is American. And I'm a book-crazy ex-pat.

Last foreign book I read: Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan (Nigerian novellas and stories). The book is stunning, marvelous, horrifying. But I automatically snapped back and plowed through three or four American novels in a row without reflecting on my choices -- as if returning home from vacation. That is insular, I think, or at least shows a strong insular tendency.

I think I know why I instinctively reach for the Campbell's soup, though: the rhythms of American speech. That's my mother's milk. When I'm reading a translation, or hell, even something British or Irish, I am aware of the fact throughout. I may like it a great deal -- looking at you, Garcia Marquez, Dickens, Dostoyevsky -- but stylistically it's something else, a relatively exotic work coming out of a different tradition. And my own writing will never sound like it.

I would like to vow to try for a 50/50 split from now on.

Stills from a Training Montage

Cue the Survivor, people. Sarah Palin is training on grass.

Expectations game? Well, I don't know if it's a game this time. Is it a game if you can't win? If success or failure normally exists in the shorthand of a one-dimensional scale in zero-sum, her failure will contain multitudes: chaotic fractals of non-linear and infinite ratfucking not seen since the screensaver you had for a short time when you first got Windows 95.

But it's true: maybe she can make up a little bit of the difference by only being quite awful rather than the disastrously awful we all expect. This overachievement in and of itself maybe gets her all the way to moderately awful in the final calculus, sort of like that kid whose been getting Ds all semester and then writes a B- paper and you give him a A- for it because... oh wait. That kid hasn't come to class in three weeks? He's failed the course with 8 absences? Nevermind. Don't tell him, though. I just saw him and he's planning BIG things for that paper.

But my point is actually this: step out of the microcosm of the moment and the expectations not only of HER but also what we are all supposed to have to say about it afterward, step out of that, and you see that that moderately awful is still pretty awful. Maybe even pretty damn awful, because consider this: if the McCain camp is pushing hard for superlow expectations, then let's not allow it to go unnoticed that they are conceding the larger point: that she will be shitfacedly awful. And that larger point, on which we all agree, apparently, is the most salient one.

My spread: somewhere between very awful and fuckyermother awful. There's a Biden wild card here-- some possibility that he says one thing half as stupid as twelve things she says, and the coverage of this one thing eclipses all else-- but in the long run I don't think that really matters. People are going to see this one for themselves.

$40 on 10/9.

Venetian gondoliers, for example

A friend sent me this. There's something really touching about it. In case you were wondering, the rest of the world is on pins and needles hoping Americans will do something right for a change.



Last time I was home, my sister's father-in-law asked me, "So, but don't they really hate Americans over there?" I shook my head. Nobody gets it! "They love Americans," I said. "They hate Bush, and what he's done."

Even in Turkey, where many said we were the first Americans they'd seen in their town, their eyes would light up when I said where I was from. "Oh! I love America," one man said. "Bush, PFFFFT. But America. It is the best country."

Btw, today is the deadline to donate for September. Give $30 by midnight and you get a free t-shirt by Election Day.

A turtle on a post

I'd never heard the phrase before I was forwarded the story about the old rancher who calls (variously, depending who is sending the email) McCain, Bush, Palin or Obama a Post Turtle...

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'Post Turtle'."

The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she don't belong up there, and she don't know what to do while she's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with."

and what if we put lipstick on the turtle? is it still a pig?

More of the Couric interview

Horrifying!  Horrifying!

Jeez, this is painful

Palin's interview with Katie Couric.  Sheesh.

Can this work?

Since we're all former graduate students, all of us have had some experience teaching college students, right?  And since we've all taught for at least one semester, we've all had some experience with students' excuses, right?  Like when someone's eighth grandparent dies and they have to miss class?  Or, as in MSF's case, when a student blamed her woman parts for her regular  absenteeism?  Or, as in my case, when a student missed six of the eight summer classes and afterward claimed she'd had to rush out of town because her immune system had been compromised by mono and there was some sort of outbreak in Iowa City that threatened her, and could she have an incomplete for the course?  

Anyway, doesn't this strike you as similar?  Keeping Sarah Palin sequestered from the press (it's sexist to ask a lady questions!) was apparently not enough.

And, in a related note, watch this horrifying clip from The Daily Show.  (The particularly horrifying part is of our President.)  If only Bush had read Earth Goat and followed my edict to watch the recent Fresh Air with Michael Greenberger explaining the financial crisis.   I mean, seriously -- why is he even trying to discuss the markets?  It is so embarrassing!  

Due to my embarrassed condition, professor, I will have to miss class.

Absentee ballot finally arrives

Now, if I could just figure out who to vote for...

Barack Obama of Illinois / Joe Biden of Delaware / Democratic
Um, I'm a little too hip to fall for this? This ticket is waaay overexposed and far too popular. This would be like saying U2 is your favorite band. Plus, I dig that Obama's a brother and all, but the other geezer clearly has a rug and false teeth. What if they fell out during an important meeting? Our country's peoples would look like fools, that's what.

John McCain of Arizona / Sarah Palin of Alaska / Republican
Not a chance. One has a foot so far in the grave they think it's a new species of Chinese mushroom, and the other shoots wolves from planes with a rifle, which is the dumbest thing I've ever seen, because anyone with half a brain would use an AK on fully automatic or at least hand grenades.

Chuck Baldwin of Florida / Darrell L. Castle of Tennesee / Constitution Party
Much as I'd get a chuckle out of hearing "President Baldwin" on the radio, I just don't think any country should have to have a vice president from Tennessee named Darrell. That's asking for trouble.

Cynthia McKinney of California / Rosa Clemente of North Caroline / Green Party
An actual chance to break that cracked glass ceiling. However, I think you need to have a bit more imagination than naming your party after a color. Duh! A lot of people like blue, red, etc.

Bob Barr of Georgia / Wayne A. Root of Nevada / Libertarian Party
I am stoked that the top dude thinks it's cool to smoke spliffs and all, but when I look at this ticket I immediately hear the Beastie's, "I Kick It Root Down, I Put My Root Down, It's Not A Put Down, I Put My Foot Down," which is a killer track I grant you, but not for four straight years, let alone eight, which is how long the Libertarians would be in if they ever won.

Gloria La Riva of California / Robert Moses of Maryland / Party for Socialism and Liberation
Another ceiling buster, but another mental song problem. "President La Riva said today..." I would be thinking "La Riva, arriba, andale, andale, epa, epa, epa!" No can do. I mean, I like Taco Bell and all, but we are talking the US presidency here, not some superfast way to find cheese.

Ralph Nader of Connecticut / Matt Gonzalez of California / Peace and Freedom Party
Ralph Nader is from Connecticut? And his party has that name? Didn't know that. But I can never forgive him for what he did in 2000. (He cut in front of me at the Minneapolis Airport Cinnabon.) And I'm sorry, someone came here from Mexico and named their kid Matt? Seriously? Doesn't bode well on the judgment issue.

Brian Moore of Florida / Stewart A. Alexander of California / Socialist Party
As much as I think it's high time to have a president named Brian, I can't vote for that Wall Street philosophy. We lost all our money! Give us all the tax dollars! You know what? Give me a break. I work for my money and I don't go around asking for welfare checks.

James Harris of California / Alyson Kennedy of New Jersey / Socialist Worker's Party
Again there would be an investment banker's slant on everything, this time I guess for the people who clean those sky-rises, the janitors and elevator engineers and whatnot. Again I ask, what about Main Street? And I don't see a lot of difference between this party and the last one. Shouldn't you at least make yourself different in some way besides adding one word?

So, I dunno. Maybe I won't vote at all. But according to the instructions, I have to send the ballot back even if I don't want to vote, marking -- get this -- "Not Voted" on the envelope. I have totally entered a vortex of responsibility that includes the responsibility of participating in order to not participate. And that's just stupid. Not even vice president Darrell would come up with that, I'll bet. Maybe I should give him a second look. Also, you have to mark it in pencil. Why do they require you to use the one type of writing instrument that can be erased? So they can erase it, that's why.

At any rate, I look forward to seeing all these people in the debates! Maybe that will help me decide.

Sunday Times profile of Marilynne Robinson

I've never been a fan of the Sunday Times, but they have a profile of Marilynne R. that's worth reading.

The future of our collective fret

If I had to bet money on the future of publishing (and maybe libraries), I'd put money on this technology over e-books at 3 to 1.

The machine is still way to expensive for anything but humongous, well-funded libraries. But as the price falls, watch for the intuitively flip dismissal of tangibility in reading to go down with it.

Too often with the e-book thing, we fall into an intellectualized rationalization of preference-- and the assumption that preference has such intellectual dimensions by default. But why should it?

Sure, it makes no sense that consumers prefer paper-- but it seems that most of us do. The why of it is really an academic question. And it just seems to me that the technology that embraces that preference seems more likely to thrive than the one that disdains it.

I find it useful to think of it all like this: the development of technology in a capitalist, consumption-based economy is defined by the tension and interplay between profits (for the producer) and practice (for the user). Progress, to the extent that the term is meaningful, mostly comes into play as a function of one or the other. We're conditioned to equate "new" with "better"-- maybe that's the root of consumption itself- but it's not necessarily more true with technology than it is, say, with fashion.

(Note, please, that I say "necessarily." I'm not saying new technology can't be preferable, just that we shouldn't assume that it is preferable, or even that being preferable in one manner makes it preferable in all possible manners.)

The best explanation of the financial crisis I've heard so far

From today's Fresh Air.  Seriously, go listen to it.

Obama/McCain primer

You may have already seen this, but this diary (updated regularly) at DailyKos gives you the information and ammunition you need to win arguments with Republicans and undecideds:

Know Your Stuff, Obama Supporters

Single-issue voters

Lately, I've been thinking a great deal about the single-issue voters out there.  Just in my own circles, I've come across people whose vote is decided by one issue alone, from abortion (pro-life or pro-choice) to Israel (who's the most pro?) to taxes (lower) to regulation of particular industries (less).  

While I more or less used to give these people a pass (since, hey, if that's the most important thing to them, then maybe nothing else does matter in their minds), even if I disagreed with their position, I now find myself getting all riled up on the issue.  Like, to the extent that I sometimes think it is fundamentally immoral to vote on one thing alone. 

Certain family members of mine will say things like, "Well, I don't agree with all that stuff that the social conservatives want, but taxes matter most to me."  My response is that these family members are still making those other things (like constriction of civil rights) happen, and they have a moral obligation to admit to that.    And this doesn't only go one way; it's just that the Republican single-issue voters have been more visible and more exploited in recent years.

But maybe my blood pressure is rising because of the stress of the election season, and I'm not thinking rationally.  What do you think about single-issue voting?  Is there one issue for you that trumps all others and would change your vote?  

About Time

Saunders on Palin.

Tally: $30 to Obama on 10/9.

Burying the Treasure

A friend once told me a story about a jazz musician he knew who had so many LPs in his basement that he had to come up with an elaborate system for listening to each on a regular, if infrequent, basis. He had them alphabetized by year, listened to one a day, and kept metadata on his listening. It seemed absurd at the time, but now I have the same problem. Actually, I think probably have it worse. He, at least, was constrained by the tolerance of his wife and the dimensions of his basement. All my music fits on a thin drive that sits on an 9 X 2 in foot print on my desk. And that drive is only a third full.

The more music I have-- and I'm up to about 90 GB-- the more I feel this nagging anxiety about not listening to any of it with a depth of experience. When I was a teenager, I walked about 45 minutes a day, back and forth from the T. I was occasionally annoyed with my inability to carry more than a few tapes with me. In four years, I probably listened to a total of twenty different tapes, albums and mixes both. Somedays, when my batteries were low, Black Francis fell down a few registers to a tenor and Minor Threat became a midtempo grind. But otherwise, I was tracing the same handful of grooves everyday. It was a ritual, a privacy, and something like meditation.

Now I am overburdened by choice. The choice becomes the experience in a way I don't much enjoy. It seems, in fact, like a problem representative of the times: digital technology and late stage capitalism together make for some absurd conundrums and anxieties. Give a man 15000 options and even after he's decided, the thought of the other 14999 can linger--sometimes unpleasantly so.

And so I am hereby indefinite moratorium on new music. I simply have too much music to rediscover.

So if you guys don't mind, I'm going to use this forum as a vehicle for slowing down and appreciating my music. Here's what I've slowed down to appreciate today:


Talk Revolution, by Peter Tosh

God, this is one of my favorites, and I practically forgot it exists. A living room session with Peter Tosh, an acoustic guitar in need of a new truss rod, and a bunch of his songs in new, gloriously bare arrangement. He even stops in the middle to tell the story of how he was beat by a bunch of corrupt cops. At another point you can hear a woman practically swoon from the intimacy of the performance. I'm a Tosh fan more generally, but this album is my favorite because it's exactly opposite to his production-heavy studio work. Wonderful stuff.




In Name and Blood, The Murder City Devils

A lot of the music I loved in college-- loud, fast, obnoxious-- hasn't aged too well. That's probably the way it should be. I'm not as loud, fast or obnoxious as I used to be, so neither are my tastes.

I would have thought to lump MCD in with the rest of it, but I found this album in an old book of cds and thought I'd give it another try. Turns out that for all its bellow and gloom, this album still speaks to me. It's a showy sort of doom; theatrical and howling, all about sailors, Atlantis, and public hangings. But it's a little too waterlogged and garagey to be truly campy- ironically, perhaps, its the farfisa that grounds things.



There's more- late Dylan, early AC/DC, Smog, Modern English, Loudon Wainwright... but I have homework to do. Maybe some other day.

Dutch condom ad campaign

I'm told this campaign is being sponsored by the government. There are TV ads and free postcards distributed everywhere. This is one of the postcards.

DFW commits suicide at 46

This is very shocking and sad.  I know people have mixed views on him, but when I read Infinite Jest, it was one of those thrilling, eye-opening moments for me -- like, you're allowed to do this in a book?  I loved it.

Updated on 9/14:

This obituary has more information.

Questions

1. Do the people who want "someone just like me" as President or VP use that as their primary criterion when choosing an oncologist, surgeon, airline pilot, defense attorney, statistician, etc.?

2. Would the people who apparently held such low expectations for Sarah Palin in her first interview that she exceeded them have applied similarly low expectations to Hillary Clinton?

3. Does lying matter?  (Someone should ask John McCain this directly.)

Big Al

Ian mentioned Al Giordano in a comment-- I just want to square that enthusiasm. A paragraph I liked from yesterday:

...pay no mind to the armchair generals that try to get you riled up over their (mostly terribly errant) obsessions regarding "messaging" matters (the "What Obama Must Do" crowd), few of whom have any real experience managing, much less winning campaigns of any magnitude at all. To them who hold themselves up and out there as "experts" on campaign strategy and tactics, I'll borrow a line that Beckel applied to politics a quarter-century ago: "Where's the beef?"

The beef is in the ground game. And the rank-and-file volunteer making phone calls and going door to door is a hundred times more important this year than any fool shouting "'hit them' is a strategy" from the bleachers. Register someone to vote: that's the square hit to the jaw, and multiplied by millions, it's the knock out punch. This year, the boxing gloves are not in one man's hands. They're in yours.

If you want to see why he thinks so (it involves some seriously convincing cocktail napkin math regarding RV files and census data), you can read the rest of the post here.

Certainly, I'm an armchair general like anyone. More like a corporal. But anyway, the point is to act, not just to talk.

Tally: $20 to Obama on 10/9.

Words fail

Sarah Palin's Churches and The Third Wave from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo

Sarah Palin's church is terrifying.

Oink

So a number of commentators are unhappy with the dem response to this pig malarkey, complaining that it's somehow weak. But at least one suggests that maybe Obama set the lipstick line as a trap, so as to divert the Palin narrative and re-moor the McCain campaign in the gutter.

Who knows? But I do wonder: among those who don't think Obama has been aggressive enough, he is all but guaranteed to yield 99% of the available votes, and that's a pretty good reason not to give them what we want if doing serves some other purpose. These are the same people still smarting from Kerry's inaction against the swift boaters in 04, the hyper-informed and jittery liberals-- people like us. Our emotional state is understandable, sure, but it might also be self-defeating. We want the emotional satisfaction of a winning newscycle (though really, I'm not sure we lost this one). But what does the persuadable, swing state voter want?

In the end, we should want Obama to give them what they want. Assuming basic competency, I think that must be what his campaign means to be doing here-- the lipstick comment aside (or not). I don't think we should take his high-mindedness at face value anymore than we do when McCain tries to come off similarly.

This new wolf ad from McCain seems to affirm the strategy. I won't link to it. You can go find it if you don't know what I'm talking about. But the point is they're on the defensive about their own tactics.

I don't know if it will work. That's another question. But this ridiculous notion that we're not getting what we want from the campaign because of some fundamental character flaw endemic to our politicians and strategists is sort of silly. These people are professionals. At the very least they have a reason for what they're doing.

TALLY: $20 to Obama on 10/9.

The biggest problems facing America today

From watching the Republican convention and listening to John McCain and Sarah Palin since then, I've gathered together a list of the top problems that the Republicans believe are facing America:

1. Damned earmarks!   They're .6% of our annual budget!

2. Liberal Washington and the Eastern elites who have governed the past eight years!

3. Sexist Democrats!

Anything else you'd like to add to the list?

Disregard today's Palin quote

If you saw a Sarah Palin quote at the top of this blog today, don't believe it. An alert reader points out that the quote about dinosaurs is likely a hoax. Sorry and shamed. For about an hour, I was no better than people who forward false email smears about Obama. I was ... hideous.

Voicemail from John McCain

This message, left by John McCain on Sarah Palin's voicemail, is extremely entertaining and not to be missed. Thanks to Jason Marcuson for the alert.

Give Give Give

Give Give Give Give Give Give Give Give Give Give Give Give Give Give Give.

A and I just gave $75. For the next month every post I write on politics here gets the Obama campaign $10. Starting with this one.

I'm sure a lot of you guys already have contributed- but if not, please consider it. Talking on the interpoo is good but it's not enough. Even small donations matter.

A and I will also be canvassing in either IA or IN at some point too- if anyone might like to coordinate, please get in touch.

Sarah Palin and the Media

Of the many, many things that irk me about the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate and about Sarah Palin herself, this is the one that I think should be the most upsetting to everyone: that we're to believe she is fully capable of becoming VP (and landing first in the succession line to the presidency) in 4.5 months but that she cannot take Q&A from the media (even Fox News) until she's "comfortable."  Which may be, like, never.  Or not before the election.

Are we insane, America?  

Don't answer that.

Talking Points Memo has a nice, concise analysis of this.

American Blackout

Required viewing for 2008 elections.

It's that time of year again

... when the oddest book title is awarded. (This year's winner is Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers. Congratulations to the author, Derek Willan.)

It's not the funniest thing we've seen so far...

...but it's still pretty funny. Apparently Walter Reed Medical Center and Walter Reed Middle School are not the same thing. (Not to mention the added giggle from finding out that the middle school picture was the backdrop for Jimmy Smits's acceptance speech on the West Wing, our former, more benevolent source of politics porn.)

Catching Up

I think that was a fine speech by McCain. But did it do anything to counteract one of the most resonant lines of Obama's speech? "It's not that John McCain doesn't care, it's that he doesn't get it."

I don't think so. He seemed noble and old and all that, but when he says things like "we must catch up to history" it reinforces the notion that he's still behind. It's a little close to "I want to get it!" It's like my grandmother, fresh off her first email check, offering to do IT support. No thanks, Grammy.

His attempt to claim the change mantle will probably only work with people who were looking for a reason to vote for him anyway, who are trying to "catch up" to this idea of change being what they want, after all. It's sort of hard to claim you're an agent of change when you've long been closely associated with, if not instrumental, in what needs to be changed. Even if we allow him uncynical intention in this, I think it reinforces the "doesn't get it" idea. It doesn't go well, either, with the standard conservative malarkey about the economy and taxes. That is, after all, part of what got us in to this mess and it doesn't take an economist to see that. That section of his speech doesn't do well when juxtaposed against Obama's "tax cut for 95%" line-which is pretty memorable-- and his litany of specific economic proposals.

They'll get their bump but I think it'll be fragile and short-lived.

This is my most favorite thing ever. Or at least for right now.

I tried to embed this, but I am too moronic.  So just follow the link.

It's not 1860 or 1932 or 1980 -- it's 1992

Sarah Palin's speech last night changed the dynamics of the election. Before that, I saw this contest as reminiscent of 1860, when a green-stick Illinois lawmaker became everyone's hero against all odds. And it felt like 1932, when the failures of Republican governance ushered in a sweeping realignment in which the Democrats reclaimed a broad ruling coalition that lasted more than three decades. And I also saw Obama as a new Reagan, a sparkling, optimistic newcomer whom people weren't quite sure about till he took care of their doubts by easily handling Jimmy Carter in the debates. But now I am reminded of 1992.

What we had in 1992 was an exciting young Democrat, new to the national scene, who picked a solid middle-of-the-road Senator as his running mate, facing an older moderate Republican who, after fending off a conservative challenger in the primary, was consistently losing in the polls and a big yawner to the party base, running with a goofy, grating, not-ready-for-prime-time social conservative. The Republican Convention in 1992, in which Pat Buchanan declared a culture war against politically correct far-left liberal East Coast baby-killing atheists, sealed the deal for Clinton-Gore, who suddenly looked conclusively reasonable to the independents who decide our elections. That convention brought the rabid 28% to its feet but frightened everybody else.

True, one big difference is that Bush the Greater and Quayle had already been in office for four years. But Bush the Lesser -- who is sort of a male Sarah Palin -- has been in for eight and has let the economy unravel, massively added to the debt, ensnared our troops in wretched conflicts, and seriously damaged our reputation in the world. His legacy is far worse than his father's. It's one of those times when nonpartisan people are saying, "Okay, okay, I get it, we screwed up by picking someone who has screwed up, so I'm open to new ideas." They looked around, saw Obama and McCain and said, "Hmmm, they both seem okay enough. Now, which one is better?" Biden fortified Obama in their minds. Palin? ...I'm thinking not so much. I'm thinking people have had enough of belligerent, stubborn halfwits running the show and are in no mood for more. I think that group even includes most Republicans -- after all, McCain did win the open Republican primary.

The other difference is that other big-eared Texan, who captured nearly 19% of the vote that year (Clinton: 43%, Bush: 37.4%). There is no wild card like Perot this time (unless Bob Barr catches fire), so his vote, if it goes according to exit polls from 1992, would go 1/3 for Obama, 1/3 for McCain, and 1/3 for staying home on the La-Z-Boy. That would still produce a Democratic winner by 5%. This morning, the RCP average has Obama by 5.8%.

Then again, every time I think I have a handle on this swerving race, it slips from my grasp and morphs again.

So, what do GOP insiders really think about Palin?

You gotta love the live mike.  Check this out -- seriously.  It is only a little over a minute long.  The good parts start about 20-30 seconds in.

Out of Hiding and on to Primetime

Get ready now for an adequate and vague speech by Palin that will, per the expectations game, be hailed as a triumph.

My guess is it just doesn't matter. There are several aspects of the last few days' coverage that will stick in the long term, even if the media coverage swings away from onslaught in the near term.

In fact, a short term boon for McCain in this might be a long term loss. Their best bet for damage control is a backlash to an ad nauseum media onslaught on Palin. The sooner that onslaught declines from its frenzied peak, the less likely a backlash is. In other words, they might benefit most from the pot boiling over. If it stays on at a steady simmer, they're basically fucked.

Of course I'd prefer that she totally screw the pooch tonight. But the dimensions of the pick are pretty much the same as they are now even if she doesn't.