Prepping McCain for final debate

Tonight is John McCain's last best chance to address the American people. Granted, this will likely be the smallest of the debate audiences, but it will still be substantial -- 50 million plus I would guess. Its far more than any advertising buy will reach, and its a chance for McCain to speak directly to the voters. Its a chance that he has had twice before and largely squandered. If he has any chance of winning, he cannot squander it tonight. But its a tall order for McCain -- who has both been hampered by an inane campaign (Bill Kristol says McCain should "fire" the lot of them), and his unwillingness to go for the jugular against Obama's obvious weaknesses. McCain sees it as beneath his dignity to play "dirty" with Obama -- as if going after the Senator's associations and past are off limits. This is noble in a game of chess, but not when the presidency of the United States is on the line. While McCain sees it as somehow honorable to not bring up the Reverend Wright because it touches on Obama's religion, he is really doing a disservice to the very people he wants to represent as president. As Tony Blankley writes today, McCain's unwillingness to go strongly after Obama and his past is a very critical and relevant issue that most Americans don't know anything about:

During the past few weeks, as I have been traveling extensively across the country, I have yet to find anyone (including a few reporters and producers at local news stations in Florida, California and New York) who has heard of these facts. The response when I recite the facts is always about the same. More or less: "Really? Wow!"

For those who follow politics closely, this may seem shocking. But it really isn't -- a huge part of the population is both uninterested in politics and uninformed. To me it is unreal that people actually are "undecided" up until the time they actually cast their ballot -- but that is because I understand the stark differences between the candidates and follow it closely. But many do not. They don't know ANYTHING about Barack Obama except that he is black, smooth, well-spoken and young -- all things that are, at first glance, attractive. And this is as far as most people get. That's why Obama's whole schtick about "hope and change" and "post-partisanship" had so much traction in the beginning. And even now, people look at Obama and think he represents change and a new style of politics.

But it is all a farce; Obama is a standard-issue liberal with an even more radical left-wing background than probably 95% of those in Washington. He's left of the left in Congress. He's just packaged himself perfectly. As I've written previously this is a great hoodwinking of the American people.

What McCain must say is this: Barack Obama is not like "you and me". He sat in an openly racist, anti-American church for 20 years. He's worked with a domestic terrorist who set-off bombs designed to kill Americans. He has had financial dealings with a known felons. He was the attorney for ACORN in Chicago and his campaign has recently given them $800,000 to register voters -- which they are doing illegally. He needs to make it clear: Barack Obama is a radical, not a mainstream Democrat. He's no Bill Clinton. And he's certainly no Jack Kennedy.

And he must say this as well: the history of one party rule in this country has not been successful. It is a blank check for the party in power to legislate its agenda. And in this case it will be big spending and big tax increases -- never mind what Barack Obama is saying on the campaign trail. If the Democrats are in charge of both branches of government, hang on to your wallet!

That's a message that will resonate with people.

Tax increases aren't popular -- and McCain must make the case that if Obama is president with Pelosi and Harry Reid in charge of the Congress, the country is going to get tax increases like never before. Why? Because Obama's stated tax plan is a lie -- he'll say and do anything to get elected. But once in the Oval Office, "circumstances" will have suddenly changed, and he'll be "forced" to raise taxes on everyone "for the good of the country". Oh, and to pay for his massive health care program and ten-year energy boondoggle.

That's what McCain must say tonight. And he must say it with confidence, warmth and compassion.

Look Obama in the eye and let him have it -- Just the facts, ma'am. In this case, the facts are all he needs.

Obama's America: Be very afraid

Here is what American voters need to know. The following information has been completed on my own time and not on behalf of any group or organization. It is based upon my own research and uses contacts I have in all branches of the US government, conversations with think tank leaders, policy experts, election law attorneys, sources within the McCain campaign, and top political consultants. Obama belonged to a Socialist Party. New Information has come out confirming that Obama was a member of a radical socialist political party in Chicago called the "New Party," composed of former Black Panther members. Several documents have confirmed Obama's membership as recently as 1996. Obama's supporters have attempted to "scrub" websites clean of this information but fortunately, researchers made copies of it before it disappeared. So far, the media is refusing to cover this story.

Obama continues to hide his past. Obama has continued to block reporters from gaining access to any and all medical, school, and even legislative records from his state senate days. The media should be screaming about this but they are not. This makes Obama the least known presidential candidate in perhaps American history. All of McCain's records have been made available.

The only thing we do know about Obama's time at Columbia University is that the title of his thesis was "Soviet Nuclear Disarmament" but he will not release it. I wonder why.

Michelle Obama has written a racist thesis. Access to Michelle Obama's senior thesis at Princeton was also blocked until recent effort by researchers to gain access to it. I can understand now why access was initially blocked.

In her thesis, Michelle identifies herself as a black separatist and is clearly hostile to the notion of blacks integrating into the larger society with all the evil whites. This is Farrakhan type racism that could have easily been written by a Klansman from a white perspective.

Do you think if Cindy McCain had written a thesis about white separatism, it would be news?

Illegal foreign contributions are pouring into Obama's campaign at an unprecedented rate. Analysis of Obama's disclosures reveal he has received around $32 million dollars from overseas, much of it from the Middle East. There are 11,500 foreign donations. 520 of the donors list their country as "IR" which is Iran. He received millions from "Palestinians" and others hostile to US policy. Such contributions are illegal and the Republican Party has asked the FEC to investigate.

Even more alarming is that $190 million of his contributions are unidentified. The donor is not listed. Many donors are clearly using fake names such as "Good, Will." The problem is that the FEC has no power to freeze Obama's campaign or even stop him from continuing to receive foreign money.

All that will happen is that Obama will be fined AFTER the campaign is over. With 10% of Obama's money coming from overseas, this means that for the first time in American history, foreigners will influence the outcome of a presidential election.

Anti-American dictators are praising Obama. Just about every anti-American dictator in the world has issued words of praise for Obama: Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, North Korean ruler, Kim Jong-il, Venezuelan strongman, Hugo Chavez, Libyan dictator, Moammar Qadhafi, and so forth.

Never before in American history have so many enemies of America praised a candidate for the presidency. Not only that, but an array of communist and socialist parties both here and abroad have praised him. Even terrorist groups such as the pro-Al Qaeda HAMAS and the Columbian terrorist group (and heroin producing) FARC have praised him.

And what did Obama promise in return? Such praise and endorsements do not come casually. This means that people representing Obama must have met with these groups and leaders and have promised changes in US policy favorable to them.

Obama's extremist friends go into hiding. The Obama campaign is frantically covering up all Obama's socialist and Marxist connections by keeping his wacko friends away from the press. They just need to keep Americans in the dark for one more month! Moreover, documents that show Obama's work with extremist groups are disappearing. But I don't hear our crack reporters yelling "censorship!"

Forced union dues used for Obama. The unions are gearing up for the largest campaign mobilization in US history. We now know that they have allocated over $100 million dollars of forced union dues to a massive independent effort attacking McCain and supporting Obama. On election day, hundreds of thousands of union workers will mysteriously call in sick and will work on getting the vote out for Obama.

Polls are showing some discouraging trends. They show that people are blaming the fiscal crisis upon the Republicans, even though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by Democrats and banks were forced by Democrats to make high risk loans to low income people all in the name of "equality" and "compassion".

Indeed, it was Obama's group, ACORN, who played a key role years ago in pressuring these agencies to implement such policies. Three of the key architects of this policy are now involved with Obama's campaign. Moreover, McCain is the one who authored sweeping legislation to reform all of this and it was blocked by the Democrats.

Americans don't know who controlled Congress the last two years. Polls also show that most Americans do not know that the Democrats took power in late 2006 and thus had oversight over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; nor do they know that the Democrats shut down every inquiry into these rogue agencies and ignored every sign of trouble.

Nor do Americans realize that right after the Democrats took control, the economy went south. Except for the foreign policy arena which the Constitution explicitly grants power to the presidency, Bush has been a lame duck for two years in all other policy areas.

Indeed, every economic indicator plunged downward AFTER the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006 - inflation, unemployment, job creation, etc, and yet, a misinformed public is blaming Bush, and by extension, McCain for the economy and sadly will be voting based upon ignorance of basic facts.

McCain is not Bush. Most Americans also do not know that McCain fought Bush on Iraq strategy, earmarks, spending, tax policy, education policy, homeland security issues, etc, etc, and that he is by far the most independent member of Congress while Obama never crossed the aisle and was just an isolated far left senator.

It is now clear that we are paying a price for the vulgarization of American culture. We have polls showing many Americans get their "news" from Saturday Night Live, John Stewart, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and even from incoherent ramblings by such popular cultural figures as Alex Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, and so on.

Americans engage in less serious reading and far more in entertaining themselves than any previous generation of Americans. This is truly sad and will cost our country in ways we can't even predict.

Obama has hordes of attorneys ready to challenge votes. We now know that the Obama campaign has around 10,000 lawyers volunteering to work on election monitoring. As the Kerry campaign had four years ago, there will once again be an effort to decertify absentee ballots sent in abroad from military personnel, based on petty mistakes often made with such ballots.

Thousands of military personnel were disenfranchised four years ago and since they usually vote Republican, the Obama campaign will repeat this effort.

Obama is registering thousands of illegal aliens. While the Obama campaign works hard to disenfranchise the men and women fighting to protect us from terrorism, at the same time they're working feverishly to register illegal aliens, felons, and the homeless by the hundreds of thousands.

Video clips have already appeared on You Tube showing the Obama campaign registering illiterate homeless people. Most states do not ask for proof of citizenship to register to vote, so hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens will be voting for Obama.

The group that has specialized in registering illegal aliens for a decade is, in fact, Obama's former "community service" group -- ACORN. While ACORN has been in legal trouble repeatedly for this work, the Obama campaign has contracted them out do to "voter registration." Wink, wink.

Lots of felons will be voting. Not by coincidence, democrat governors and democrat legislators are granting felons the right to vote. Just last week, the Virginian Democrat governor gave thousands of felons the right to vote. Remember, crime pays! The Governor claims this action has nothing to do with the coming election. Right.

Democrats are already disqualifying ballots in Ohio. In Ohio, the Democrat Secretary of State is already disqualifying thousands of Republican absentee ballots, claiming they didn't check some obscure box on the absentee forms. The GOP is filing suit here. But expect Republican ballots to be challenged all over the country by the legions of left wing trial attorneys who are volunteering their time to help steal the election just in case it's close.

Taxpayers groups are being ignored by the media. There are four major taxpayer groups in Washington DC that monitor taxation and spending issues full time. All have now rated Obama as one of the worst senators on tax, spending and pork issues, while also rating McCain as one of the best senators on these issues. All have issued press releases but the media has purposely ignored this story.

Obama supports gay marriage. Recently, both Obama and Biden have made false statements about opposing gay marriage. They know the vast majority of Americans oppose gay marriage, but in both private messages and private speeches, the Obama campaign has informed the homosexual community that they favor repealing DOMA.

DOMA is a federal law that if repealed, means all states will have to recognize married homosexuals who move there from states which have already legalized homosexual marriage - like Massachusetts and California. It's a back door way of legalizing gay marriage nationwide and it's why all the radical gay groups have mobilized for Obama unlike any other candidate before.

None of the above mentioned developments is being covered by the major media in any meaningful way, with the exception of Fox News, All have been given this information. We all know, however, that if McCain took millions of dollars from Middle Easterners, was praised by a half dozen foreign dictators, and hid all his medical and school records, there would be huge stories on TV, radio and the newspapers for weeks on end.

The media is protecting this candidate to a degree never before seen in presidential campaign history.

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Predictions if Obama Becomes President

I have been asked for my predictions of what will happen if Obama were to win the presidency and take solid control of both houses. Put your seatbelt on:

Jobs will leave America and job creation will decline. The capitol markets are starved for cash due to the credit crisis. What is needed more than anything right now is tax cuts for corporations so they can survive the coming recession. This is the worst possible time to raise corporate taxes as Obama is proposing.

Our corporate tax hikes are already among the highest in the industrialized world and this was killing us BEFORE the fiscal crisis. But Obama doesn't understand how the economy works. He views corporations as a source of funding for his social programs. Period.

If he goes through with his corporate tax hike, look for corporations to 1) Outsource jobs overseas 2) Move the entire corporate headquarters overseas, 3) Delay expansion plans, 4) Lay off workers.

Obama's proposal for a government takeover of health care insurance will send the stock market plunging in regards to health care plans, due to the instability such a proposal would create. Obama's plan will drive private plans out of existence, eventually taking over the entire health care market. Also, as in Canada and other nations with "universal" health care, the good doctors leave the profession, creating a shortage, and waiting lists will be instituted for most procedures.

The doubling of capital gains taxes will bring job creation to a grinding halt. There aren't many economists who argue with this point. But Obama doesn't seem to understand this. If this goes through, look also for the unemployment rate to rise.

There will be a flurry of lawsuits against private Christian schools, churches, etc. on the gay issues, all due to the legalization of gay marriage which creates a legal framework for a full frontal assault on American culture.

With the Obama administration using its power to promote homosexual marriage, gay attorneys will work in tandem with Obama's justice department to chip away at religious freedom, claiming gay rights now trump constitutional rights. Lawsuits will be aimed at forcing private Christian schools to admit gay teachers and to teach gay sex alongside heterosexual sex in sex ed courses.

Similarly, churches that refuse to marry gay couples will be the subjects of lawsuits as well. Indeed, gay legal groups are already laying plans for the final assault on what's left of America's Judeo-Christian culture.

Union power will have a negative impact on the economy. Obama has promised the unions he will remove the secret ballot which means unions will be able to intimidate workers as they did in the 1950s. This means more power, more money, and more demands on industry. This also means more corporations moving offshore or filing for bankruptcy.

The cumulative impact of higher corporate taxes, higher capital gains taxes, and stronger unions - on top of a severe fiscal crisis -- means America will likely have a recession lasting 3-4 years.

Criticism of Obama's agenda will be suppressed. Similarly to the Clinton administration, Obama will use the power of the government to harass opponents with IRS audits. He will also suppress criticism of his agenda by passing the "Fairness Doctrine" which will cause radio stations to remove talk shows. The talk show industry is already preparing for the assault. This is not a joke.

Illegal alien rights will be federalized. Obama has spent much of his career fighting for the "rights" of illegal aliens. There is little doubt he will use his Justice Department to fight for these "rights" which in turn will attract millions of additional illegal aliens. What little gains made in the last few years in fighting for a more secure border will be lost.

The reemergence of bogus race-based rights. Obama believes in wild racial conspiracy theories such as quotas for police arrests and pull overs, reparations for blacks based on the notion all whites are guilty of perpetrating slavery in the past, and that lending agencies based their lending policies on race instead of credit risk.

Indeed, it was the last issue used by Obama's group, ACORN, to fight for high risk lending policies which caused the mortgage crisis we have today.

This worldview will mean that Obama's Justice Department to spend its resources on charging businessmen with racism for not hiring enough minorities, spending millions on federal studies "proving" racism in law enforcement, and going after universities for not implementing race-based admission plans.

Internal Security will be weakened resulting in America becoming more vulnerable to terrorism. Obama has been critical of our internal security apparatus, including the program that monitors the phone calls of foreign terrorists and other elements of the Patriot Act. What most Americans don't know is that Bush's aggressiveness on internal security prevented dozens of terrorist plots, many of which the public never knew about.

Obama's close ties to ACLU type attorneys make it likely that he will weaken internal security measures such as the Patriot Act. This will send an "open season" message to Islamic terrorists.

Just this week, a court has ruled that we must release terrorist prisoners from Guantanamo and grant them all the rights US citizens have. Obama supported this decision. Then we have Obama declaring in his own book (Audacity of Hope), "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."

Gas prices will rise. Obama's hostility to drilling and nuclear power means he will rely totally on "alternative" forms of energy to meet our energy needs but there isn't an energy expert alive who will claim this will enable us to meet our energy needs anytime in the next few decades. Coupled with Obama's proposal to increase taxes on an already over-taxed oil industry - which will be passed on to consumers - you can expect to pay steep prices for gas for many years to come.

Welcome to Obama's America.

Steve Baldwin is a Washington-based consultant and former state assemblyman in California.

The real Ayers threat

I've been researching a piece on the Ayers connection, so was glad when Palin started focusing on Obama's relationship with this "unrepentant domestic terrorist", and have, like many in the conservative blogosphere focused my own blog often on Obama's work with Ayers at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. I'm glad that the mainstream media is finally being forced into addressing the issue -- even as they continue to whitewash the issue in their determination to make Obama president. But in looking deeper into the Ayers connection, I realize that part of the story has not been effectively told -- and that is the practical impact that Ayers will have on the education policy of an Obama presidency. The most significant aspect is a focus on "education debt" -- essentially paying reparations to minorities for the "history of oppression" perpetrated by Whites. This is a cornerstone of Bill Ayers' education reform program, and is also a key element in the race-based education philosophy of Linda Darling-Hammond -- a Professor of Education at Stanford, Obama's primary education adviser and prospective Secretary of Education in an Obama administration.

Here's part of what I found -- excerpted from my piece entitled "Reading, Writing and Radicalism": The radical orientation of Ayers as an “educational reformist” should be well known, as he has written more than a dozen books on the subject and has been a leading educational scholar and advisor in Chicago for the past two decades. Ayers was recently elected vice-president for curriculum for the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association -- the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. His work with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has been highly emphasized by the Obama campaign as a form of “legitimization”, and Daley was recently quoted in the New York Times as saying “People make mistakes. You judge people by their whole life”. Daley’s view is likely based on a politician’s appreciation for Ayers’ role in doling out $100 million in grants within the city during the 1990s rather than any deep analysis of Ayers’ political or educational views – none of which have changed since the 1960s. Ayers continues to describe himself as a “radical, leftist, small ‘c’ communist”, and has written that he believes “teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression”. He sees teaching as a natural extension of the quest for social justice – which he feels requires a revolution in the capitalist economic, political and education system. In a speech given in November, 2006 before Hugo Chavez and the World Education Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, Ayers said the following:

As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion! It is in this context that the Obama-Ayers relationship should be viewed. While the Ayers’ terrorist connections are significant retrospectively, his education goals that were actively endorsed and sponsored by Barack Obama are prospectively even more important.

And this is where things get interesting. While it is obvious that Ayers will not have a formal role in an Obama administration, it is equally obvious that Obama’s experience with Ayers and the CAC will animate his education policy as president. The Obama Campaign’s primary education adviser is Linda Darling-Hammond, a Professor of Education at Stanford University, and well-known expert in school design and teacher training. Hammond has been mentioned as a possible Secretary of Education in an Obama administration, has been a vocal supporter of traditional teacher certification programs, current union control of public education and opposes charter school programs. She also has been a vocal critic of the implementation of the current No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. More importantly, she is an advocate of a race-based paradigm for education that fully embraces the concept of “education debt” – a form of reparations for generations of racial bias perpetrated by White America. Hammond argued forcefully last year in the liberal magazine The Nation, for example, the importance of “pay(ing) off the educational debt to disadvantaged students that has accrued over centuries of unequal access to quality education.” The concept of education debt is an idea laid out in 2006 by Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings of the University of Wisconsin, the then-president of the American Education Research Association and actively supported by Ayers. Ayers wrote himself in January of 2008 on his website the following:

The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white…the monster in the room: white supremacy. Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound—America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans…transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up. Further, the long-standing professional relationship between Ayers, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings – and thus Barack Obama -- is well established. As legal analyst Steve Diamond writes at No Quarter, a chapter called “Education for Democracy” by Darling-Hammond appeared in a volume co-edited by Ayers called “A Light in Dark Times”. In addition, a chapter co-authored by Ladson-Billings on “racing justice” appeared in a book co-edited by Ayers called “Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader”. Ladson-Billings wrote the foreword to Ayers’ book “To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher” and Ayers and Ladson-Billings are co-editors of “City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row” just published. All have been consistent in support of a radical education reform program.

Linda Darling-Hammond’s piece in The Nation is an excellent illumination of what may underscore education policy under a President Obama. She makes abundantly clear that she supports the notion of education reparations and that this should be paid in part by a wholesale revamping of NCLB to focus on more on investment and less on testing – modifications that the Obama Campaign’s education platform also supports . She calls for a “New paradigm for national education policy…guided by dual commitments to support meaningful learning on the part of students, teachers and schools; and to pay off the educational debt, making it possible for all students to benefit from more productive schools.” This is education code-speak for vast sums of money to be poured into minority schools and community programs to atone for past sins.

The Ayers-Hammond approach to education debt has been essentially supported by Barack Obama on the campaign trail. In fact, Obama has spoken repeatedly about the need for reparations to make amends for the past oppression of minorities. On “Meet the Press” in July he said:

The biggest problem that we have in terms of race relations, I think, is dealing with the legacy of past discrimination which has resulted in extreme disparities in terms of poverty, in terms of wealth and in terms of income…And that involves investing in early childhood education, fixing the schools in those communities, being willing to work in terms of job retraining. And those are serious investments.Obama’s education platform as outlined at his campaign website is full of community-focused programs that will be ripe targets for massive “reparation” investments in a reformulated NCLB. His K-12 Education Fact Sheet discusses at length the expansion of Head Start programs, universal preschool and includes “enlisting parents and communities to support teaching and learning”, including “school-family contracts” and a massive school redesign project that includes increased funding for teacher recruitment and retention. It is a blueprint taken almost whole-cloth from one written by Darling-Hammond that calls for a “Marshall Plan” for teaching and the institution of a more authoritarian structure for driving curriculum development, testing and investment. Like Ayers’ own admiration of Venezuela’s centralized educational dictatorship, Darling-Hammond has expressed support for countries such as Singapore that have instituted highly structured systems that are the antithesis of school choice – signaling what will certainly be a strong emphasis on the unionized public education system in the U.S. under an Obama administration.

The real impact of the Obama-Ayers relationship is not in Ayers’ radical past but rather in his radical present. The influence that Ayers’ has had on Obama’s view of education during his time at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge can be seen in his appointment of Linda Darling-Hammond as his primary education advisor, and signals what is certain to be radical reform at the core of Obama’s education policy as president. This will include more investment into the current public school monopoly at the expense of free market solutions like vouchers and charter schools, and a more aggressive social change agenda that will result in greater control by unions and community organizations – all orthodox elements of the William Ayers radical agenda.

Early Debate Returns: Bad for McCain

I watched the debate tonight with growing frustration at John McCain's failure to attack Obama squarely on his confiscatory economic policies. I've finally come to the conclusion that John McCain is unable (or unwilling) to promote the kind of conservative economic message that I think much of this country is wanting to hear.  Instead, he's splitting hairs with Barack Obama on the economy -- and losing in the process. I'm always interested in the views of Steven Hayes at the Weekly Standard -- he's a smart, reasonable writer who I read frequently.  His review of the debate is that Obama won. Here's part of what he had to say:

"John McCain had a very strong debate tonight. It’s too bad for him that it came on a night when Barack Obama was nearly flawless.

The debate began with questions on the economy and for thirty minutes Obama answered those questions with the kind of substance that I suspect anxious voters wanted to hear and with exactly the right tone – empathic, aggravated and determined. Most important, he spoke to voters in their own language. In his first answer, in response to a question about things the government can do to help average Americans through these tough economic times, Obama spoke of a $400,000 junket that AIG executives took after the government bailed them out. “Treasury should get that money back,” he said, “and those executives should be fired.” Sure, a little demagoguery. But it’s exactly the kind of story – in a debate that included back-and-forth accusations and lots of statistics – that voters will remember and talk about tomorrow with their neighbors.

McCain took that first question and he turned immediately to energy. “Americans are angry, they’re upset and they’re a little fearful. And it’s our job to fix the problem. Now, I have a plan to fix this problem and it’s got to do with energy independence.  It didn’t work. Two months ago, when gas prices were nearing $5 and the cost of oil dominated the headlines, the McCain campaign deftly used anxieties about energy as a proxy for anxieties about the economy. So when McCain proposed to lift the ban on offshore drilling, voters responded positively and the polling reflected their enthusiasm."

This is what I was afraid of: McCain being unable to clearly articulate why Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress is a danger to our economy. The reflexive return of McCain and Palin to the energy issue is a comfort zone and understandable -- but not good enough in this economy. McCain seems unable to explain to the American people that Obama's tax policies and his liberal record will be a poison pill to an economy that needs liquidity. It needs low taxes to fuel growth -- something that simply isn't possible with Obama's tax-and-spend plan.

Even worse, McCain's populist instincts are taking him down the wrong path. Rather than returning to a free-market solution to what should be a free market problem, his instinct is to increase regulation and government control -- exactly what Obama and the Democrats want to do. He again misses a chance at differentiation. Here's Hayes again:

"But while energy issues remain important and cannot be separated from the broader economic picture, the convulsions in world markets over the past two weeks and the need for a $700 billion federal bailout have rendered worries about gas prices and energy independence to second-tier status. It’s not that these issues don’t matter, it’s just that they matter less now than they did over the summer. He later broadened his answer to include spending, tax cuts and his jaw-dropping plan to have the federal government buy up “the bad home loan mortgages in America” to “let people make those payments and stay in their homes.” So bigger government is bad, quasi-governmental entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “ignited” the current economic crisis, too much government spending is leaving us broke and we want the U.S. Treasury to renegotiate individual home mortgages? Seriously? No thanks."

No thanks is right. The correct and powerful answer here is to reignite the economy through lower taxes to stimulate jobs and growth so people can pay their mortgages -- NOT to have the government take over that role. This mess in the housing market is partly an issue of personal behavior -- not simply predatory lending. I, for one, am not interested in my tax dollars going to bail out people who made bad decisions. I think many Americans would agree with that. Unfortunately, McCain's instincts don't lead him down that path. He's still in the "Wall Street greed" mode.

I hate to throw in the towel here, but...it is now clear that the issues that many conservatives have with McCain are legitimate and real. That despite his great personal story, his maverick personality often betrays a message that would greatly appeal to a great swath of America. He's actually give people less of a choice by co-opting the position of Obama on so many issues.

My guess is that the polls are not going to be good for McCain after this performance tonight. In a debate where he really needed to help himself, I'm afraid he's come up short.

We'll see.

Set Sarah free!

I mostly listened to the Vice Presidential debate on radio, though I did get to see some of it on TV. Palin held her own and well exceeded the low expectations that the media had set for her. She was confident, poised and articulate -- even as she faced off against the verbosity machine that is Joe Biden. Biden was...Biden. He spoke quickly with an authority that is designed to make his statements seem like fact -- even when they aren't. Palin took him on effectively, and wasn't afraid to confront Biden's frequent exaggerations. I thought that had John McCain done that well last week against Obama the Republicans would be in better shape today.

Palin missed some chances tonight, specifically to refute the Obama-Biden claim that McCain was responsible for deregulation which got us into this mess. That's clearly only part of the story; Congress has been a big part of the problem by forcing too much regulation on Fannie and Freddie. If Fannie and Freddie had been forced to react to market risks on loans, they would never have made the vast number of sub-prime loans that they did.

Palin also missed a big chance to wack Biden on the War in Iraq -- specifically on his claim that Obama supports the same withdrawal plan that Maliki and Bush are negotiating about. Hello? The only reason anyone is talking about a withdrawal now is because of the surge that John McCain supported and Biden and Obama opposed. I wish that Palin had hit him over the head with that.

One thing that I didn't like about Palin's performance tonight: her consistent use of "corruption" and "greed" to describe Wall Street.  Certainly, some corruption always exists at the nexus of money and public policy -- but to make blanket statements that tar and feather an entire sector of our economy is populism worthy of John Edwards, not the Republican Veep candidate.  The mess we are in is more about the corruption of Capitol Hill and the lax interest rate policies of the Fed than it is any systemic disease on Wall Street.  Banks took advantage of the rules and pushed the limits to make money.  With risk comes reward -- and often failure. 

Also, I would have liked to hear Palin say also that the behavior of  borrowers played a role in this mess, too -- and that it wasn't just the responsibility of "predatory lenders".  People have to take personal responsibility for their decisions, and if this is not a theme promoted by McCain-Palin then they become nothing more than the victim-baiters that Obama-Biden are. 

In any event, my suggestion to John McCain is this: Set Sarah Free!

Let her go. Let her be spontaneous. Let her be the maverick, fun woman that she is. She's the only candidate who can relate to the American people as a real person. It is something that helps to differentiate the McCain-Palin ticket from Obama (effete, Chicago intellectual) and Biden (career Senator). It's what turned on the Republican base and got independents excited about McCain after the Convention. He needs to let her work her magic.

McCain's campaign -- and thus his chances to be president -- are in bad shape at this point. All polls in the battleground states are now leaning for Obama. He needs to do something dramatic to turn this around.