Obama has so far been unwilling to touch McCain's POW time or military service, except to praise it.

OK, we all understand why.  Getting into a spitting context on that issue makes him come up the loser every time.

But why not PRAISE McCain's experience... but do so CLEVERLY.

I've written 2 killer commercials for Obama.  Tell me what you think.

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Youth Protecting Age

(image of McCain with pals, looking old, scary music)

John McCain has spent decades fighting the same old tired Washington political battles with the same tired old Washington ideas.  

He's experienced, but could he be a little too experienced with Washington ways?

(image of Obama chatting amiably with gray haired folks, warm acoustic guitar)

Barack Obama is only 47 and hasn't spent as many decades in the Senate as John McCain, but maybe some new energy is just what we need to protect America's seniors.  

(white haired Pennsylvania woman nods and says) We need someone who has the strength and the heart to protect our social security and retirement savings...)

I'm Barack Obama and I support this message because America's seniors need someone who will fight with all his strength to protect social security and their retirement."

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Second one below...

"Republicans Prepare to Dump McCain at Convention!"

At least McCain and I can agree on one thing: that would be a total disaster!  

Although McCain is holding a respectable 41% in national polls there is an undeniable undercurrent of unease among the Republithugs.  Just Google "dump mccain" and you'll find all manner of forum and blog postings (eg. Here's the google search ( http://www.google.com/... including the link to Hannity which I have now deleted. ) showing all sorts of folks talking about just how bad their nominee is and praying for some kind of coup at the September 1-4 convention.  Mostly it seems to come from movement types, but one wonders if there might be a few corporate boardrooms where the thought of stepping in has crossed the mind and been whispered behind closed doors.

I don't think it is overly sensitive to point out how the NYT continually puts an anti-Obama spin on lead items about Obama.

Consider this: http://www.nytimes.com/...

In Iraq, Affection for Obama ... but His Proposal?
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and RICHARD A. OPPEL JR

There are conflicting emotions about Barack Obama in Iraq, the place outside America with perhaps the most riding on its relationship with him.

The real story in the article is that the Iraqis are worried about Obama's policies and feel more comfortable with McCain's policies.  Yet somehow that gets spun into Iraqi "affection" for Obama... a framing which amounts both to a distortion (indeed a reversal of the main content of the article) and a subtle smear.  

How does the New Yorker magazine fail to discern the difference between irony and slander in its recent cover depicting Obama as a terrorist?

Easy.  It is locked inside a world in which the idea of Obama as a Muslim or terrorist is so absurd that just to say it is to see the stupidity of it.

Unfortunately most of America is not inside that insular little world on Manhattan island.

To think that "Obama is a muslim" is so obviously absurd is to be madly out of touch with the reality on the ground.  It would be like printing Nazi caricatures of Jews on the grounds that every sensible person could see they were obscene.  Hello!  What planet are the New Yorker editors operating on.  Everybody most certainly doesn't get it.

Let's consider what Irony and Libel are.

Disappointed as I am in the Obama reversal on immunity to the telephone companies, I'm more or less willing to forgive him that if he thinks doing so is necessary to win the Presidency.  

The question is, why might he think doing so is necessary to win the Presidency?

The obvious reason is that he wants to take a "national security" issue off the table.  He wants to be seen by the public to support the most draconian national security efforts, and to deny McCain the opportunity to make any claims that he is weak on national security.  That seems reasonable but there is a problem about that thesis.  

There is a profound asymmetry between those who care about this issue and the vast majority who don't.  Would anyone have not voted for him over a word and a concept so obscure as "immunity"?   Does anyone love the telephone companies so much that they would object to having them pay a fine for being "bad"?   I really doubt it.  Not defending the telephone companies  just doesn't hurt Obama very much with any obvious constituency out there.

But not doing so hurts him with one  very important one:  the telephone companies themselves.

More below:

John McCain was the only Senator to miss a vote today on Medicare, and his absence raises important questions about his health.  (There are certainly other possible purely political reasons for his absence, but the absence is also consistent with the health concern.)

Air travel is uniquely tiring for a man of his age.  We know that McCain's body has been wounded, although we do not know how badly and in what specific ways.   I'm going to bet that he is already limiting his time at 8,000 feet air pressure (rough cabin pressure).   He's very old, and he has to husband his strength very very carefully.

More below:

Think of this as a neurophysiological analysis of the winning Obama strategy.

Amidst all the excitement about FISA and refinements of the Obama position on withdrawal from Iraq, I think people are missing the essence of the Obama strategy.  

This is particularly true in the online world where people actually care about issues and policy.

Obama's single minded goal on his course to the White House is simple:  stay cool, stay boring, say nothing, do nothing, threaten nothing.

His goal, it seems clear, is to become an empty vessel, a mirror on to which people can project their own fantasies about who an American president is, what he should look like, how he should sound.   You can't be that mirror, that empty vessel, if you say things that enable others to define you as "controversial" or "flip flopping" and if you become perceived that way.  You've got to keep people's limbic systems (the fight or flight response system) quiet, so that they can hear your discourse, keep in mind their aspirations for a better America, and accept you as a President.

How should Obama counter-spin the accusation that he has a pre-September 11th mindset?  We've heard this recently and will hear it again.

"Once again, we have seen that Senator Obama is a perfect manifestation of a September 10th mindset," McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann said.

Since Obama has recently hired me to be his speech writer and political strategist (he hasn't heard this yet, but would I make that up?), I thought I'd publish my first contribution to his campaign here.  

In essence he needs to claim September 12, 2001 as his... and every day since then too.   Here's what he says:

There are many ways to lose a war, but sometimes losing is the only victory that is possible.

The question isn't whether we will lose.  We will lose... and we already have lost.  

The question is whether we have the strength to lose, and the wisdom to lose, and the moral fiber to lose.

Hey I guess this just proves that Portland is hopelessly out of the mainstream, but I think it's pretty cool that my fair city just elected a (gay and out) policy wonk named Sam Adams (protege of the former Mayor Vera Katz) to be our mayor.

http://www.kgw.com/...

I didn't see this diaried on Kos.

Oh, I know there is no point in complaining about the way the media writes stories without checking facts, but this one in the NY Times annoyed this Oregonian. http://www.nytimes.com/...

The arguments over the cold math of the nomination contest play out against a backdrop of two states that are likely to once more reveal deep divisions among Democratic voters: Mr. Obama is expected to win sizably in Oregon, a largely white, affluent state with a fairly liberal Democratic base, while Mrs. Clinton is expected to win in Kentucky, which has a strong working-class vote.

Party leaders are going to pressure (undecided) Democratic Super Delegates to make their votes public by a certain date.

Wall Street Journal article:

That creates an interesting first mover dilemma for all the delegates.

You probably don't want to vote for the loser because that will freeze you out of Democratic Party policy making for 8 years.

So, policy and personal preference aside, each super delegate's task is really to select the candidate he or she thinks a majority of the other super delegates will choose.

The news is full of complaints that the primary race between Obama and Clinton has gone on too long and will be damaging to the party.

For example, here's the LA Times on the Texas process and the larger nomination process.  

You've read many stories like it.

Well, it's time to reframe that narrative, and stop accepting the premise that political combat is a bad thing.

Today's Washington Post opinion piece by James Carville sums up everything that is wrong and sick about him and the two Clintons and their brand of American politics.

Carville reminds us...

So, when asked on Good Friday about Richardson's rejection of the Clintons, the metaphor was too good to pass by. I compared Richardson to Judas Iscariot. (And Matthew Dowd is right: Had it been the Fourth of July, I probably would have called him Benedict Arnold.)

Well, I suppose that makes Hillary Clinton into Jesus and George Washington. (Keith Olberman made that observation.) But that's not how we should do politics in a democracy.

The complete freedom of superdelegates is a given.  

What the superdelegates will do, and should do, is to vote for the candidate who will win.  They should do that AGAINST the will of the voters if necessary.  I say this as an Obama supporter, with a clear preference for his candidacy.

The only obligation I see that the superdelegates have is to the success of their party.   I don't see how they have an obligation to ratify the voters' views, other than with regard to the impact of failure to ratify on electoral success in November.

Obama is trying to win by not emphasizing divisions.... Clinton (through Ferraro) is trying to win by helping people think about them.

They are both pursuing strategies to win... Obama no less then Clinton.  But the strategies and game that is being played is different from the "She's a racist" versus "I'm not a racist" narrative you see in the press.

As a key advisor to the Obama campaign (in my dreams), I would have Obama actually put a comforting metaphorical arm around Ferraro, congratulate her on her long years of service, acknowledge her valiant struggle against cancer, thank her for willingness to raise money for Obama should Obama win the nomination (she said it!), and say, "Geri, you are so right, racism is wrong, and I KNOW you are against racism, and I know you were just complementing me and the AA community on my success."  

I know it doesn't taste very good but it is actually the better jujitsu move.

A recent post by Kagro X. beautifully sums up the near impossibility of Congressional control over federal spending under existing Constitutional arrangements, when faced with an executive determined to press for every power available under the Constitution. (This diary is based on my comment there.)

As far as I (and he) can tell the power of the purse amounts at most to the power to shut the entire government down or not.  Efforts to constrain what is done with the money, particularly regarding "national security" are inherently fruitless if a President doesn't wish to honor Congressional intentions or work with Congress.  

In this moment of constitutional crisis we need to consider how to re-make our government in a way that is closer to the parliamentary democratic norms of most democracies around the world.

In those normal democracies the majority party in the People's house sets the direction under the executive leadership of the leader of that party in the parliament.  In America, effectively, that means that our chief executive would be (and should be!) someone we would call the Speaker of the House.

More below.