Is it possible, I wonder, for anybody who doesn’t know anything about business or economics to shut the fuck up for the remainder of the financial crisis?

I am just so totally sick to death of turning on the TV and seeing these half-smart half-wits coughing-up furballs over their half-understanding of what’s going on. The greatest indicator of ignorance is when the commentator makes reference to what the Dow did during the course of the day as though that were some sort of final verdict on the effectiveness of the action taken that day.

There are so many reasons that that is not true. Here are a few:

1) A simple market dictum: “buy the rumor, sell the fact”. When people think good news is coming, they tend to bid-up the stock market. When it comes, it’s almost never as good as they hoped (the very act of bidding things up induces a frothiness that inflates expectations even further than the initial cause for optimism) and so they sell into strength. We saw this a lot during the early stages of the “bailout” discussions - markets rallied on the rumor that there would be a big bailout, then dipped a bit when it was announced. They dropped a lot when the bailout collapsed but rebounded when it was announced that the congress was going to vote on it again. When it finally passed, the market barely moved. The movements of the Dow are totally out of synch with the day’s headlines, if you are taking only a simpleton’s view of cause and effect. Stop it.

2) The bailout package is “evolving”.

I’m not a big fan of the way Paulson has handled some aspects of the bailout. Some of the decisions he made are clear only to have been mistakes in retrospect. My biggest complaint with Paulson is the arrogant Goldman Sachs approach he and his cronies have taken at every step here, from the 3 page bailout bill which insisted on no oversight, to the initial refusal to accept provisions that punished Wall Street bankers or gave taxpayers a chance of getting their money back or gave any relief to home owners, through to his appointment of Neil “the chump” Kashkari. It’s over-confident Dicks like Kashkari that (partially) got us into this mess, and the idea of bailing out people like him that infuriates taxpayers.

But one thing I can’t really fault him for is the way the bailout package, or packages, have changed from week-to-week.

Nobody knew how big the problem was, or where the bodies were buried, and nobody really knows what it will take to get money flowing again. Perhaps he could have made this more clear at the beginning, instead of suggesting that the three page $700 billion (a number we now know was pulled from thin air, or somewhere more suspect) was the final answer. He also could have been stricter about closing loopholes and preventing abuse. There is no good reason to allow GMAC to become a “bank holding company” to get part of the bailout money, or to allow banks to pay big “retention” bonuses to top executives, none of whom have the immediate prospect of another job.

Given the changing environment, the rapidly developing news and the lack of any useful blueprint on how to deal with this kind of situation, he has had to improvise and experiment as he went. I would like to have seen the experiments structured a little better (again, this is clearer in hindsight). For instance, the initial infusion of cash into the banking system should have a) been a little smaller and b) come with a provision that said that if the money wasn’t put to work in the form of loans to businesses and restructuring of home loans, it would be taken back within 45 days. Instead, the banks are sitting on whatever cash they have been given to bolster their own stability, while the rest of the economy is being squeezed.

My guess is, the people who are adding up the totals of each version of the plan that comes out as though each one is additive will prove to be way off in terms of the total cost of the bailout. Some of this is because a lot of the money being pumped in to various institutions is in the form of loans, or equity stakes, or buying troubled assets. All of these stand a good chance of recouping most of the cash outlay. Some of the money is in the form of guarantees - for example the government has “only” parted with $20 billion in cash to Citigroup, with the $306 billion number being for guarantees; the theory being that if the government guarantees the debts, the creditors won’t panic and call it - that money will probably never get spent. Also, some of the money is being re-purposed. The initial TARP program (the “$700 billion bailout”) wasn’t working, but most of that money had not been spent. So, what hadn’t been spent is being spent on TARP II, the Citi bailout etc

When you just read the headlines and add-up the numbers, the totals seem enormous, but between the overlaps, the guarantees that wont get called and the “investments” that should pay back, my guess is the total cost of this bailout will, over five years, be much smaller than it appears now

3) There were two things inflating the Dow in the last few years: one was unsustainable amounts of debt flowing through all sectors of the economy (LBOs, home mortgages, credit cards, leveraged stock investing) and the other was unrealistic expectations about the economy. The former has been sucked out of the stock market’s value with alarming rapidity - that’s why the Dow is down around 40% for the year. But the market is only just beginning to impound the reality of the underlying economy: rising unemployment, declining real household incomes etc etc. Good news - however temporary - like the price of oil coming down, is conflicting with bad news - which may be more lasting - as the effects of both the real economy (people with fewer jobs and less money) meet up with the effects of the financial crisis (less credit available for everything).

On any given day, changes in the Dow reflect an attempt by the market to accurately reflect hundreds of pieces of news about individual companies and the economy as a hole. Given how unprecedented some of the news is and how difficult to judge some of the rest of it is, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Dow experiencing a lot of volatility in the next few months, with an overall downward trend (though who knows how much further down).

So, on any given day, don’t confuse what is happening with the Dow with any kind of instant market reaction to the headlines of the day. Leave that to the dickheads on CNBC.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: Today, I am fortunate to be joined by General Motors Chairman and CEO Mr Rick Wagoner. Mr Wagoner, thank you for joining me.

WAGONER: My pleasure.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: Mr Wagoner, how critical is the condition of the American car industry?

WAGONER: Very critical. Very critical indeed.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: If you had to put it in medical terms, is the patient chronically ill or having a heart attack?

WAGONER: Are you familiar at all with Walt Disney’s current condition? I think that is probably the most apt analogy available to us in the medical sphere.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: So, how did we get into this position?

WAGONER: Well, it’s a very complicated situation with many, many factors at play. International trade, the pace of innovation, climate change and the growing importance of renewable energy sources, the current economic downturn of course, changing consumer preferences, the declining competitiveness of the American regulatory and tax environment … there’s a host of factors.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: Could it be put more simply that American car manufacturers don’t seem capable of making cars that Americans want to buy?

WAGONER: It certainly could be put that simply, if simplicity was the goal here at the expense of all other things, yes. But I think that is grossly unfair.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: In what sense?

WAGONER: Well, in the sense that the American car industry – in very large part – has been the victim of circumstances well and truly beyond its control.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: What circumstances are these?

WAGONER: Well, for starters, of late the American consumer has become fashionably obsessed with fuel economy.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: When you say of late, how recent is this development?

WAGONER: Oh very recent.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: Well, when did it start?

WAGONER: 1974.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: That doesn’t seem very recent to me.

WAGONER: Well, in journalistic terms it probably doesn’t. Relative to how long it takes you to read through your question cards and pop-off down to the lobby bar for a couple of single malts with your media elite comrades, I don’t suppose it does. But in manufacturing terms that is practically instantaneous.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: Why is that?

WAGONER: Oh dear, it’s time for manufacturing 101 is it?

THIS IS OF INTEREST: If you don’t mind.

WAGONER: Look son, making cars is a very big undertaking. Lots of factories, with big machines and lots of highly skilled employees. The machines are designed to make a certain type of car part and the employees are trained to work on a certain type of machine. When you decide to make different types of cars, you have to design and build different types of machines and train people to use the new machines. It’s a very significant undertaking.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: I see. And how long would all of that take.

WAGONER: Potentially as long as two years.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: So why wasn’t this all taken care of by 1976?

WAGONER: Oh dear, oh dear. You may only be familiar with the dynamic industrial relations environment in which we operate today, but I’m afraid you’re woefully ignorant of the highly contentious environment that prevailed in this country for most of the last 50 years. The minute we started talking about changing things down at the plant we would have had a full on strike before lunchtime.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: So, how did you respond?

WAGONER: We began a series of very carefully structured negotiations.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: And how long did they last?

WAGONER: They’re still going. As a matter of fact, can we keep this short? I’ve got to be over at the UAW by 3.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: Certainly. You were saying that the American car industry has been overtaken by events.

WAGONER: Exactly. The American consumer, quite suddenly, decided that they wanted a completely different type of car than the one we have traditionally offered them.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: What type of car is that?

WAGONER: Compact, fuel efficient, comfortable, stylish, well appointed and affordable.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: And what types of cars do you offer?

WAGONER: Oh keep up son: big, gas guzzling, shoddily made, pig ugly and above all catastrophically bad value for money.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: Hmmm… does that seem very sensible?

WAGONER: Well, it was enormously sensible for the better part of the twentieth century. We were just blind-sided by a development we couldn’t have foreseen.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: What development was that?

WAGONER: Competition.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: I see. So what happens next?

WAGONER: Well, it seems clear that the natural next step would be for the federal government to provide us with a small infusion of capital to assist us in navigating this temporary phase of market turbulence.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: How small?

WAGONER: I would think that $25 billion should see us through.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: Until when?

WAGONER: Until February of next year.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: And what happens in February?

WAGONER: There’ll be a new lot in power them. We can hit them up for another 25 billion.

THIS IS OF INTEREST: Mr Wagoner, thanks very much.

Many polls show that a majority of Republicans want Sarah Palin to run for president in 2012. Of course, many of these people can’t even count to 12, let alone 20. These are the same people that voted for McCain. Actually, these are two thirds of the people who voted for McCain. McCain lost. Getting two thirds of the number of votes McCain got is not a viable electoral strategy, even if you use “fuzzy math”.

Some rueful republicans believe that Palin is like a rose plucked before it was time to bloom. This is the sort of creepy imagery that has haunted Palin’s nomination since that first moment when Bill Kristol met her on a Weekly Standard cruise to Alaska and suddenly thought he was on The Love Boat. These people thought she was an “attractive” candidate, who could, with a little coaching, charm the pants off the electorate. But, the electorate sobered up and realized they had a wife to go home to in the nick of time, leaving Palin to sob into her cosmo in the DoubleTree lobby bar that is the wreck of the republican party.

I do not see a path to her winning the republican nomination in either 2012 or 2016.

I have more ruminations on the future of the GOP that I will leave for another post (lucky you). However, I do think that in the near term the party will lurch further right and in the longer term it will come back to the center. My bet is that Obama and the democrats will avoid the risk of overplaying their hand in the next few years, putting them in a strong position in 2012. Like the democrats in 2004, the strongest contenders will keep their powder dry for the next election. Accepting that premise for a moment, the republicans will be in the market for a sacrificial lamb and there could be a window of opportunity for Palin to run for President.

Here’s why I don’t think it will happen:

Palin made a horrible first impression on most Americans. The base loves her, but the base is, was and always will be, from now until forever and ever amen: too fucking small. To win the white house, you need the support of independents. These people hate Sarah Palin like Sarah Palin hates saying the “g” at the end of words. They regard her as a know-nothing and an extremist, christianist, whackjob and she is all of these things.

Some say that she can redress at least the first part of the problem by “studying hard”. By this, they don’t mean actual book learnin’ and all night swat sessions, they mean picking one or two issues on which she might be credible e.g. energy policy and becoming a national leader on the issue.

But from what platform? Governor of Alaska? She’s going to find out really fast that the state of Alaska was getting attention because she was the VP pick, rather than the VP pick getting attention because she is from Alaska. Nobody gives a shit about Alaska. All of that guff about Alaska being a critical energy-producing state was bogus; Alaska produces a small minority of the oil America consumes and even less of our total energy load. You can be sure Obama is not going to allow drilling in ANWR, so the opinions of governor Drill-Baby wont be of much interest to anybody.

In addition, she will have to deal with the consequences of her re-negotiated deal with the oil companies, which was a boon when oil prices were going up but has downside risk when they come down. Guess what, they’re coming down. Also, she has to live without the pork barrel earmarks she so loved as Mayor of Wasila and Governor of Nowhere but so despised as Vice President of Nothing. And she has to go back and finish negotiations on that big oil pipeline with the big oil companies she spent weeks bashing on the campaign trail. And she has to do all this with zero support in the congress and the senate. Being governor of Alaska is a much tougher job now than it was when she left Juneau two months ago.

She could, of course, try to appoint herself to Ted Steven’s senate seat. It’s unclear to me (due to my total lack of research into the subject) whether she can actually appoint herself senator or whether she’d have to run in a special election. But let’s say she makes it to the senate. She just doesn’t wear vary well on extended exposure. She could go the Hillary route and try to curry favor with other senators, learn the ropes, master policy detail, perhaps champion the energy independence cause along with some religious right priorities like abortion rights and stem-cell research. But there won’t be many opportunities for her to do any mavericky reforming in the minority party.

And if she wants to run in 2012, she won’t have much time to accomplish anything. She’d be in the senate for two years before she started the campaign for 2012, just like Obama this time around. She would be revealed as the arch political opportunist that she is.

Of course, she could wait until 2016 and really earn her bones as a senator (per Hillary’s path). But by 2016 her expiration date will have come and gone and the republican party will, I predict, be drifting away from the extreme right. Also, the pack will be a lot stronger in 2016.

There’s one other scenario: she runs out her term as governor, then becomes a kind of political celebrity, cashing-in with a book and maybe a TV talk show (like Mike Huckabee) and traveling the country building a base of support for a run.

Her choices, if she wants to run are: run in 2012 against President Obama with the taste of her stupid still in everybody’s mouth or wait until 2016 and get crushed by a stronger field and a reformed or reforming party? Why not just cash-in on her fifteen minutes and become the white, right-wing Oprah? Or Bill O’Reilly with lipstick?

I think that Sarah Palin is full of ambition, perhaps to the exclusion of everything else. But I am not convinced that it is purely political power that she cares about. Perhaps she sees politics as a means to an end, with the end being her as popular, perhaps wealthy, and with a voice that everybody has to pay attention to. If she could get that without the hassle of running for office, I think she’d be tempted. We might note, for comparison, that Geraldine Ferraro got a big book contract after her loss in 1984 and never did take-on her VP opponent when the chance came in 1988.

There’s one final thing that she may be debating in her own mind right now… On the one hand, she got a lot of attention and there are plenty of people who are encouraging her to run again. It must be tempting to pursue the chance to be the first female president. But on the other hand, there are all those scandals, lies and skeletons in the closet - Troopergate, Triggate, Travelgate, Librarygate, Closetgate, Nepotismgate, Bridgegate… Who knows if all of them are true, but some of them definitely are. If the media doesn’t get to the bottom of them in the next few weeks, it’s a sign that her star is fading and perhaps her fifteen minutes are over. Regardless, she’d never survive the barrage of criticism and parody that would be entailed in a lengthy primary.

If she goes back to being governor, she can write a book (or have one ghost written) now and bank that cash, then move over to TV in 2010, claiming that politics is too tough on her family and seeking an “alternate way to speak directly to the nation on these issues that matter so much”.

What will she do? I don’t know, but I’m thinking this… Sarah Palin: Whacko, Diva, Hillbilly, Know-Nothing, Mudslinger, Fuckwit. Pragmatist.

Buh-bye.

One might suppose that the end of this historic campaign might mark the end of this blog. Or at least that the pace of posting will remain at it’s recent lull of once every couple of weeks. Don’t be so sure! I have had many such enquiries from my reader, and I can assure them (used in the sense of a non-gender-specific singular rather than the plural) that I still have plenty of fodder to write about.

The election is not the most information-rich part of the governing-cycle. It is often the most drama-rich phase, but the task of actually governing presents many more opportunities for debate, analysis and satire. And dick jokes.

I am still savoring the election results, but have a few topics on my mind that I hope to write about soon. Here is a brief preview:

1) What does Obama need to do in government? Item number one: get over it. Get over the adulation of adoring crowds and get ready for criticism from all directions; get over the 9/11 mindset that allows civil liberties to be sacrificed in the name of a concept of “absolute” security that cannot be achieved; get over the panicky attitude towards the current economic downturn - it is a challenge, not a crisis.

2) Why we should not forgive John McCain. It has started in some quarters already, with laudatory reviews of his self-deprecating appearance on Saturday Night Live and of his gracious acceptance speech. Election post-mortems can be crushingly dull (although this cycle they are being enlivened by all the terrific republican infighting) but I do feel the need to record my own thoughts on the McCain campaign, which uncorked something desperate and dangerous. We may have dodged a bullet, but we need to learn the lessons of this campaign

3) Sarah Palin will never be president, but the future for women in national politics is enormously bright. Hillary Clinton did some incredible groundwork and the primary and general election processes unearthed some incredibly talented female politicians - fortunately for us all of them are on the left side of the aisle. As for Sarah Palin, she won’t ever be president. I highly doubt she’ll be the nominee in 2012 and am skeptical that she’ll even run.

4) What will become of the GOP? People who are talking about the republicans spending decades in the wilderness should remember that as recently as 2004 Karl Rove thought he had created a permanent republican majority. But, the republicans do need to decide what they stand for in order to regain the ground they’ve lost since 2006. The fight will be between the know-nothing, hillbilly evangelicals of the Palin and Huckabee wing and the small government conservatives on the Brooks and Sullivan wing. It will also be between the party elders and the youthful insurgents like Reihan and Douthat. The GOP of today is a coalition of the religious right, the neocons and the small government conservatives and libertarians. They forged a successful marriage of convenience under Bush and Rove but it seems the strain of living with people you disagree with has begun to show. I am constantly being told that America is a center-right country, by raving right wing fanatics. Can they build a center-right party?

As dramatic and exciting and, ultimately, exultant this election has been, I think the future will be even more fascinating. One of our national parties has an opportunity to create fundamental change in the country, and must avoid over-reaching in the process; the other must redefine (or perhaps just recommit) itself and articulate what it stands for. How exciting.

The emergence of Joe the Plumber put me into the intellectual equivalent of a food coma. It was bad enough that McCain kept referencing him throughout the final debate, but then Joe turned up on TV the next day. And then he just would not fucking go away.

I know the culture war territory of “the liberal media elite” is well-worn, but the depressing thing for me about this election is how awful the media are at doing their jobs. They have totally capitulated to the idea of even-handedness rather than doing the work required to get to the truth. As I have said before, I’m biased - we all are. My bias is towards Obama. But all I want is for journalists to report facts, instead of hearsay.

We all learn from courtroom dramas on TV that hearsay is inadmissible. This is not quite true. Hearsay evidence is admissible only as evidence that the person heard someone say something. In other words, a witness may testify that somebody told them “I killed Bob.” This evidence has merit only as proof that the person said “I killed Bob” not that he actually killed Bob.

Journalism, however, has completely lost sight of this distinction. When John McCain says Barack Obama is planning to raise your taxes and Barack Obama says he isn’t, the media reports the hearsay in an attempt at even-handedness; “Rivals clash over tax policy” would be the typical headline. But facts really should matter. Without them, talking points are just endlessly repeated.

And so a creature like “Joe the plumber” is born. Sure, his name isn’t Joe. Sure he isn’t a plumber. Sure he doesn’t have a chance in hell of buying his boss’ business. Sure the business actually doesn’t earn “250-280 thousand dollars a year” as he claimed in his question to Obama. And sure he actualy earns something more like forty thousand dollars a year and so would get a tax cut under Obama’s plan. Despite all of this, he is allowed to roam around the country, being introduced as Joe the Plumber, and ranting about how Obama’s tax plan is going to kill small businesses. The media, however, doesn’t ask the question “Why is John McCain dragging this willfully uninformed bullet head around the country spreading lies?” Instead they ask, “Has McCain finally found a message that will resonate with working class Americans?” Fuck. Me.

Joe’s had some issues recently. Particularly fun was the time when he stood up John the Senator. The best part of this was that he blamed the campaign staff for not confirming the event with him, and said he was displeased at being called out when he wasn’t there. Even Joe the plumber is throwing McCain under the bus! Maybe Kristol can take him on at the Weekly Standard? Or maybe we’ll see Palin-Wurzelbacher in 2012?

Joe the Plumber and Sarah the Fuckwit are two peas in a pod. A pod full of stupid. They both share an incredible faith in their own homespun wisdom. Nevermind their complete lack of understanding of any of the major issues facing the country, by gum they have a point of view and it’s their God-given right as Americans to express it. It’s galling enough to be lectured by these know-nothing mouth-breathers about economic policy, but when they trot out the neo-con talking points on Israel enough is enough.

And apparently enough is even enough for Fox news. They may have been willing to return Sarah Palin’s nods and winks with nods and winks of their own at her inch deep understanding of everything, but John McCain and Joe the Plumber aren’t getting off so easy. Neil Cavuto ripped into John McCain’s lack of any coherent economic policy on his show on Fox Business Channel (sadly, it was seen only by 8 people, all members of the Cavuto family).

The bigger shocker was when Shep Smith decided, finally, that facts do matter, particularly when you’re using fear-mongering over Israel to push a fascist agenda against Obama. Just watch as Smith realizes in the middle of a phone interview with Joe the Plumber that he is dealing with a dangerous, uninformed, nut case. Please watch the clip. The end, when Smith shakes his head in genuine dismay at what he’s just heard, is mind-blowing.

So, we have entered the “end of days” of the campaign and the “mainstream media” are allowing McCain campaign talking points to go unchallenged for fear of seeming biased and the right wing media are having pangs of conscience. The twists in this campaign truly never end. But the campaign itself does. With any luck, on Tuesday night Obama will win and that will mark the end of Sarah and Joe’s fifteen minutes.

For all the talk that Palin is the face and future of the Republican party, I doubt it. Very few defeated Vice Presidential candidates go on to much of a future and I can’t think of one since 1900 that ascended to the Presidency after losing as VP nominee. She may well go back to Alaska and serve as governor for many years, but it will probably feel like small beans to be back in Alaska after a couple of months on the national scene. Her real future probably lies on TV as a homespun Ann Coulter. God help us.

Joe, meanwhile, reportedly has a PR agent and is looking for a record deal. Writing a book is apparently beyond his ambitions but he plans to belt out a couple of tunes on his gee-tar. I can’t wait to hear him wail mournfully about the death of Israel to the tune of Achey-Breaky Heart.

I suppose the neocons and theocons have good reason to scorn General Powell. Powell is a war hero who lead America’s most successful military operation since World War II and who gave his name to a military doctrine that required the use of overwhelming force only in the defense of America’s vital national security interests and always with an exit plan. They hate him for that alone. But they disdain him because they were able to twist him into presenting their trumped-up case against Iraq to the UN. You cannot trust anybody that you have lied to. They believed that they had housebroken General Powell, and imagine their surprise that he is standing-up to them at this moment. And so they have set about diminishing his credibility.

Today, Rush Limbaugh has said loudly (does he ever say anything any other way?) and often that Powell’s endorsement was “about nothing but race”. I don’t like to over-react to the provocations of buffoons, but it’s a disgraceful comment, one Powell and Obama are too dignified to respond to. And yet it deserves a response and it isn’t hard to provide one. Here it is:

So, Rush, are you supporting McCain just because he’s a white guy or are you opposing Obama just because he’s a black guy?

That’s the next stop on the tramline of logic Limbaugh is applying to Powell’s endorsement. The most generous interpretation is that any endorsement of a candidate by a person of the same race is racially motivated. Of course, nobody will ask Limbaugh that question. But if they did, I assume he would suggest that he is supporting McCain because of his myriad qualifications; it’s just Powell who is voting purely on race.

So, Rush, white folks are capable of weighing the issues but black folks just vote on race?

I know Limbaugh is just a clown who is paid millions to spew right wing jibberish. It seems silly to be outraged by his comments. But when you follow the logical thread of this one, it is so deeply racist that it cries out for response.

I don’t think every attack on Obama or his supporters is motivated by racism, but I know enough to call a spade a spade.

The boxing metaphor seemed to be the only one anybody had recourse to last night. Obama, ahead on points, needed to follow those golden rules that every boxer learns as a boy: stick and move, don’t let your guard down, use your jab to keep him out of arm’s reach and clobber him on the healthcare issue. McCain, meanwhile, kept looking for a knockout punch but couldn’t find one and ended-up looking like the broke-dick old tomato-can that he is. The fight was fixed, and McCain had no choice but to drag his ass off the stage and sob quietly to Lindsey Graham “I could have ben a contendah”

Enough with the boxing. As i re-read my post about the last debate, I regretted how long it was. It shows how badly I need an editor. So I will have to self edit, and try to keep this entry much shorter.

I thought John McCain lost the debate; I’m not so sure Obama won.

I thought it was one of Obama’s weakest debate performances in some respects - it reminded me in parts of his last debate with Hillary. He seemed flat and I found it grating the way he laughed and smiled when McCain attacked him. I would have liked to see him respond more forcefully to McCain’s attacks. I don’t think he needed to go tit-for-tat, Keating-for-Ayers, but when McCain said that he had repudiated comments that he thought were over-the-line, Obama missed a chance to make a stronger statement. I thought something like “But John, your running mate says every day that I ‘pal around with terrorists’ and you constantly question my patriotism. I know you can’t repudiate your whole campaign but I don’t see how you can claim to be running an honorable one” would have done very nicely. But that’s me - I’m not as cool-tempered as Obama. I do think there is a slice of the electorate that wont vote for a man who will stand for being attacked like that to his face, but perhaps Team Obama believes that slice to be small, or out of reach. Judging by the worm on CNN, that slice of the electorate is called “men”.

Obama’s approach did succeed in reinforcing the now strong impression that people have of him: he’s calm, he’s smart, he doesn’t take the bait, he knows the issues and most importantly, he’s presidential. Those were clearly the main objectives of the debates for Obama and he accomplished them. Hopefully, that will be enough.

McCain on the other hand had a tough night. He seemed to be scoring points in the first 30 minutes, and I wondered that whole time whether he was winding up for the long-awaited knockout blow, but he couldn’t (to mix a metaphor) get the bat off his shoulder. He seemed trapped by the whole Ayers thing - forced to bring it up for fear of looking weak otherwise but unable to push his point for fear of appearing negative. When Obama calmly rebutted his points about Ayers and ACORN, McCain went literally into overblink. It seemed as though McCain’s goal had been to make Obama lose his cool. When it didn’t, he lost his instead. He sputtered and stuttered and rolled his eyes and licked his lips and, most of all, he blinked - more than 3000 times according to one count. I’m not joking. I’ve seen strobe lights that blinked less.

My favorite moment was during the exchange on healthcare. Obama did well with the worm showing his grasp of how healthcare really works and how his policies would help. He was boring and a bit meandering at times, but the overall impression was that he gets it. McCain, by contrast, seemed to have only a nodding familiarity with the details of his own healthcare policy. He went back once more - once too often as it turned out - to Joe the plumber and asked Obama how big a fine he was going to give him for not providing healthcare to his non-existent employees (remember, Joe is the guy who would like to buy the small business he works for but can’t). Obama stared straight into the camera and told Joe how big his fine would be: zero. “Zero?!” gulped McCain and then sat for 10 or so seconds just blinking, blinking, dumbfounded. He couldn’t even close his mouth. Lawyers say that in cross-examination you should never ask a question unless you know the answer. This probably means McCain shouldn’t ask any questions at all, and that might have been a better strategy last night. After that exchange, McCain was deflated and everybody just wanted to look away.

The discussion on abortion also showed McCain’s Elmo-like grasp of subtle domestic issues, when he mocked the idea of protecting the mother’s “health” (as he put it in air quotes). I also wonder whether he knows the difference between autism, the condition he incessantly referenced in relation to special needs children, which Sarah Palin knows so much about, and Down Syndrome, which Sarah Palin’s special needs child actually has?

But cruelest of all were the split-screen visuals. McCain: old, short, stiff, snarling, blinking, angry, pale white, confused. Obama: young, fit, strong, tall, lean, relaxed, appealing, energetic.

I’m still concerned that the race could be up-ended and that Obama could lose. I think people will fall in love with the idea of a John McCain comeback (although, to quote an Australian politician from twenty years ago “that would be like Lazarus with a triple bypass”) and forgive him the sins of the campaign so far. I also think there is some strength in the argument that an Obama-Reid-Pelosi government would be a “runaway train” - I just don’t know whether McCain has undermined his ability to mount that argument by lurching from one message to another for the last 6 weeks.

But if voters walk in to the booth with that split-screen visual in their heads, Obama should be the next president.

Specifically, they are seizing the opportunity to say that the financial crisis has thrown the media’s and the country’s attention almost entirely onto the economy, ground that tends to favor democrats. There’s some truth in that, but it is only a convenient excuse and if republicans ignore the major reasons for their defeat - if defeat it turns out to be - then they are in for a long walk in the wilderness.

I’m not entirely convinced that the public automatically trusts democrats with the economy and republicans on foreign policy. That is certainly what the media always says. Certainly too the republicans have spent a lot of money trying to establish themselves as the party of foreign policy strength and the democrats have all too often ceded them that ground. I do think people think of the democrats as the party that cares about kitchen table issues like healthcare, education and social security, but that’s not the same as sound economic stewardship.

If you look at the recent track record, Bush Junior, Bush Senior and Carter all presided over recessions, downturns, economic calamities; Reagan and Clinton presided over 8 years each of economic prosperity. There’s no real reason for people to assume that the democrats will do a better job with the economy. Of course, there is a recency bias and things are going badly right now, so there is a tendency to want to “throw the bums out” but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are hugely unpopular and yet the republican advantage on foreign policy persists.

I think that democrats start out with an edge on kitchen table issues and republicans on foreign policy, but it is ultimately all about your actually policies and how well you communicate them. If Mitt Romney were the nominee, he may be trailing for a bunch of other reasons. He might be behind because he doesn’t seem to know much about foreign policy, or because he’s a mormon, or because his hair hasn’t moved since 1986. But you can’t convince me he would be behind on preparedness to lead the economy.

The truth is that McCain has proven himself to be a very inept candidate and that is where the blame must squarely be placed for his so far awful performance. I will save the post-mortem for when the campaign’s heart monitor officially goes flat (and - please god, saints be praised and inshallah it will) but consider this:

* He started the race as the only republican running ahead of the generic republican ticket. Perceived more as an independent than a republican, he was the only nominee the GOP could pick that would have a fighting chance given the political climate
* He squandered the three month lead he had between sealing the nomination and Obama sealing his by trying to remind everyone that he was a war hero and very very experienced - Jesus fucking Christ who didn’t know this already? His campaign should be fired for “reintroducing” someone so familiar while Obama was actually introducing himself - and his ideas - to the country
* He spent a lot of time, money and free media in the summer taunting Obama for being … popular? Is he not aware that this is about getting the most votes? It is, in its most basic sense, a popularity contest
* He has repeated the mistakes of the Clinton campaign, relying on an expensive and unfocused “air war” of ads and PR versus a balanced air and ground attack. If the polls end up under-estimating Obama’s lead / margin it will be because of his ground effort, and the fact that he conserved cash through the summer to allow for a final month bombardment
* Then things got whacky, when he capitulated to his grumpy but inert base and picked the radically under-qualified Palin as his running mate, trading three days of “he’s a maverick” press and poll bounce for six weeks (and the rest of his life) of “Oh, actually, he’s a dickhead. What was he thinking?” coverage
* When Palin’s numbers started to crater with everyone but the base, he got desperate - the whole campaign suspension and his role (or non-role) in brokering a deal (or non-deal) on the financial system bailout began a series of miss-steps on the economy

And that, in the end, is the main point: the economy has crushed McCain, but not because it was impossible for him to win on the economy, because he failed to do it. Perhaps had he picked Romney as VP the race would be very different. Even with Palin at his side, he might have positioned himself as a wise old man who would be (as he said in the second debate) “a steady hand at the tiller”. The problem is, he just isn’t. His message has bounced around all over the place - I’ve got experience, I’m a reformer, I’m a maverick, I was a soldier in the Reagan revolution, I’m a true conservative, I’m a Teddy Roosevelt republican and now, I’m a fighter. He has not presented a clear and consistent image of who he is beyond a POW with a bad temper and none of his incarnations has been very appealing.

Here’s a tip for McCain, for the remainder of the campaign and the next debate in particular: if you want to convince people that you’ve got a steady pair of hands, try to keep the mic still when you’re doing it.

As I have said before, individual declarations of who won are not all that useful - the republicans will tend to say that their guy won and the democrats will say that their guy won - big deal. And I’m a democrat and I thought the democrat one - big deal. But they are fun to write. And there are plenty of reasons to believe it despite the fact that I’m saying it.

First, it is interesting to note how few republicans thought he won, and how many more were anxiously trying to declare it a tie (and getting few takers). These were same the people that claimed McCain won the last debate and that Palin won hers, so you can calibrate their real feelings about this one against those data points.It was also interesting to see the poll and focus group reaction on Fox, CNN and CBS - they all scored the debate for Obama.

But if you don’t believe any of those criteria for victory, there’s one that is inarguable: he won, because as sooooo many people repeated sooooo many times in the lead-up to the debate, McCain needed a game-changer and he didn’t get one. If anything, the debate was another snoozer. If so, Obama won.

I watched on CNN because I was interested to see via “the worm” how independent voters would respond if McCain attacked. I became hypnotized by the worm. It wasn’t until after the debate, when they spoke to the independent voters controlling the dial-testers, that I realized I had been watching the real-time reactions of a group of morons.

Their biggest complaint was that they didn’t hear anything new in the debate. So the fuck what? What do they want the candidates to do, completely change their policies between debates? Wouldn’t it be more interesting if last night Obama decided he was in favor of staying in Iraq for 100 years and McCain said he liked Obama’s tax plan? Gee I guess so, but would it make any sense? This is a presidential election, not desperate housewives. These people were pissed-off because they felt like they’d been billed a season premiere and it turned out to be a re-run. Fucking. Morons.

Anyway, since nobody relies on my blog for real-time news, or even reads it at all, I didn’t feel the need to “live blog” the debate. But I did take notes and have now had a chance to sleep on them. Here are my reactions, in chronological order but (thankfully) not blow-by-blow:

* Obama did his best job yet of connecting both emotionally and specifically on the economy. He convinced me that he understands how this is affecting people in real, simple terms - they’re losing their jobs, they’re losing their homes - and he seemed to have some specifics about how to respond. McCain introduced a new bailout - the stepchild of the mother of all bailouts - which I think just had everybody confused. He couldn’t explain why it was different from the bailout already proposed, and why he was suddenly in favor of pumping even more taxpayer money into the system.

* Interestingly, right from the opening and throughout the debate, the worms took a dive when the candidates talked about specifics (which they did a lot) and then afterwards the focus group said they wished the candidates talked more about specifics. The worm clearly indicated that they found it boring when the candidates talked about specifics and probably tuned out. At best, this is just people telling pollsters that they believe in diet and exercise, charity and education but actually being selfish, fat, lazy, dumbasses in real life.

At worst, this is what worries me about the undecideds - they keep saying that they want Obama to talk about more specifics, but it’s really code for them wanting him to not be black. This guy gets tangled up in specifics, he talks in specifics all the time. He has so many detailed policy prescriptions that he could bore the pants off Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, McCain’s entire policy platform is written on the back of a napkin. And yet the undecideds keep asking for more specifics from Obama.

Last night showed me that people will say they want specifics even in the face of proof that they don’t. I think “lack of specifics” is the comfortable reason to not vote for Obama and I think Chuck Todd is right - the undecideds are going to break big for McCain

* The format was awful and Brokaw was pathetic. Again, apparent early but true throughout. The time allotted for “discussion” was much too brief and both candidates went over time repeatedly. Brokaw could do nothing but plead with them to try to do better. At some point he really should have agreed on the fly to relaxing the rules a little bit - both candidates seemed keen - but he stuck to the script. Also, the refusal to allow follow-ups ensured a superficial discussion.

Had they allowed follow-ups in the VP debate, Palin would be on her ski-doo and halfway to Juneau by now, but I think both McCain and Obama could have handled it and it would have made a better debate. Specific instance: Brokaw asked McCain who he’d pick to be treasury secretary. His respone was absurd - Warren Buffet? Meg Whitman? Now, Obama didn’t do much better (”Warren would be a good choice”) but McCain was clearly dodging what Brokaw wanted him to address. I think it was a dumb question but if you’re going to ask it, make people answer it. What he should have asked and probably wanted to ask was, “I see you didn’t mention Phil Gramm - isn’t he the person you’ve always favored for the job?”. Toothless Tom made Gwen Ifil look like Torquemada.

* Regarding the worm, some additional observations: 1) men were difficult to move all night, but women were very responsive to both candidates when they talked about pocket-book issues or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in personal, as opposed to policy, terms; it seemed women in the group were actively searching for something in the debate whereas the men in the group were sitting back and waiting to be convinced. 2) Overall, Obama did much better with women than McCain; 3) McCain moved out of the neutral zone much less frequently than Obama throughout the debate; perhaps this is related to the previous two points - he does better with men and they were harder to move - but he went further into negative territory than Obama, perhaps because 4) The worm didn’t like negativity, and they perceived McCain as more negative. Obama would often move into positive territory, sometimes hitting the maximum, and then slip back to slightly less positive if he said something negative about McCain; McCain on the other hand was often just bumping around in neutral when he laid out the best of his positive positions and then slid negative when he attacked Obama. 5) McCain got his only really positive responses when he talked in platitudes - mostly his repeated assertion that “the American people are the best in the world” and variants thereof; Obama got equally positive reactions from some almost as “motherhood and apple pie” stuff - attacking fat cats, saying we need to fix healthcare etc - but also on some policy specifics

* McCain failed to call for sacrifice, which was a big opportunity. When asked what he’d ask people to sacrifice, he said he’d get tough on defense spending (he of the continued commitment to Iraq at $10B a month) and then prattled on and on about earmarks yet again. In a similar vein, McCain wouldn’t even prioritize among his top three policy initiatives - “we can do it all at once, we’re Americans”. He came off as vague and slightly unhinged and certainly not very realistic.

* Obama, on the other hand, talked about shared sacrifice and successfully presented a progressive economic message. This was a minor miracle. For years, the republicans have reliably won by scaring people that the democrats will raise your taxes (and molest your dog and cuddle with Osama). Last night, McCain tried the same thing and the crowd hated it. They liked it when he talked about tax cuts but not when he tried to claim Obama would raise taxes. When Obama got to respond, he clarified his tax policies and explained that most people would get a tax cut but people who didn’t need one would see their taxes go back to the level they were at when Reagan was president. He also brought it to life by talking about how it wasn’t fair t give CEOs a tax cut while asking school teachers to tighten their belts. He rounded off by saying that the economic policies of John McCain and George Bush didn’t work and weren’t fair. Great word, fair. Like “truth” and “lies” it is under-girded by a belief in absolute truth and justice. Obama has made one breakthrough already this year by calling out John McCain’s “lies” instead of just calling them “attacks” or saying “he’s trying to mislead you” as John Kerry would have. I think bringing back the word “fair” could be his second linguistic breakthrough.

* On the environment and healthcare, Obama was clearer than he’s been on what he plans to do and McCain came across as clueless and cranky. Talking about energy, McCain talked up his support of nuclear power and said that “Senator Obama insists that it needs to be safe … or clean… whatever” - that’s an almost verbatim quote. On the Bush-Cheney energy bill he said, “I voted against it. You know who voted for it? You’ll never guess {points at Obama} that one.” I don’t think that is quite as bad as when Howard Cosell referred to a black running back by saying “Look at that little monkey go!” but it was a memorably bad moment for McCain - will be interesting to see how it plays (my guess is the media will forgive him because “that’s just how he is - he calls people jerk, cunt, you know, that stuff all the time”). On healthcare, McCain said it was all about efficiencies and his $5K tax credit. He just isn’t credible when he’s talking about anything other than war, and he doesn’t seem to care as much either. Asked whether healthcare was a right, responsibility or privilege, McCain said responsibility; When Obama tried to address McCain’s claims about his healthcare plan, Brokaw tried to cut him off and restrict him to answering the question Obama said it was a right - that we had a moral duty to provide it. He then talked about his mother dying of cancer and basically dared Brokaw to speak again, therefore buying him five minutes to outline his healthcare plan. Another powerful argument grounded in the long-absent notion of social justice. I swear, little starbursts came out of the teevee.

* The foreign policy debate was a rehash of last week with McCain somehow doing less well than he did last week. Obama turned McCain’s line from last week against him when he said “Senator McCain said last week and tonight that there are things about foreign policy that I don’t understand. Well, he’s right… I don’t understand how we went to war with a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 …” you can imagine where it went from there. McCain had to stand there and cop it sweet as his stub of a smile gradually retreated from his face

Overall, I scored it a blowout for Obama. He was more articulate, more intelligent, connected better with voters on the issues that matter and landed punches that snapped and stung but were never cheap. McCain looked stiff, he couldn’t get a sentence out without mangling it, which was particularly noticeable when he was using prepared lines, his canned jokes didn’t land without the aid of a laugh track and his attacks were petty and weak.

Worst of all, after all his “taking off the gloves” bluster in the lead-up, he revealed himself as the cowardly little chicken-hawk he is, too gutless to say to Obama’s face what he says constantly behind his back. The sooner this guys shuffles off the national political stage, the better.

The talking heads are saying that McCain has to hit Obama hard to change the game, and maybe he will. If he does, I assume Obama will try to just rise above it, and that will probably work.

But I am not as even-keeled as Obama.

If I were standing across from McCain and he attacked me on Bill Ayers, I’d probably pull an “Okay, let’s talk about it” type answer, lay out the facts and then pivot to something like “John, if you want to spend the rest of the campaign talking about Bill Ayers, go at it. And if you, the voter, think that is the most important issue in the country, don’t vote for me. People are losing their jobs. People are losing their homes. I want to be president to help those people.”

And if he attacked my honesty or honor, as he has done on the stump, it would be something like this:

“John, when are you going to drop the charade? You parade around the country, pretending to be a maverick, but you voted with George Bush 90 per cent of the time and you have been totally whipped by the right wing of your party. The truth is, John, you are the son of an admiral who was the son of an admiral, and everything you’ve ever gotten in your life was given to you by your family or bought by your wife. You were very brave in Vietnam, but that doesn’t excuse the way you’ve chosen to conduct yourself for the other 66 years of your life. You’re the same person you were in school, whose class mates called you “Punk” and “McNasty” and who used to hold your breath until you passed out when you didn’t get your way. You’re a hothead and a bully and you’re not fit to be the president. Try telling the truth to yourself. It gets easier after that.”

I would give a million dollars (which I’d have to pay off over time) to see it and I’d place odds on McCain leaping across the stage to strangle Obama or just dropping dead on the spot.

Failing any of those things happening, I think tonight will be a replay of the first debate: McCain will score points in the moment, Obama will seem presidential, everyone will claim victory and McCain will continue to sink in the polls.

I’ll be entertained if it plays another way, but surprised too.