The race is heating up and this is still the political doldrum month of June. Here are some links to websites of varying viewpoints. Links do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
Barack Obama Told Supporters At A Fundraiser To Get Ready For The GOP To Play The Race Card and to Ed Morrissey this smells of political McCarthyism. Plumb Bob blog argues that the Democrats are the ones who are racists. Was this a political “sucker punch”?
BUT IN THE CASE OF SOME OF THESE POLITICAL CONFLICTS are they real or created and perpetuated by the news media? Here’s one view.
HAVE THE DEMOCRATS SET A TICKING POLITICAL TIME BOMB FOR THEMSELVES BY BACKING THE EXPANSION OF EXECUTIVE BRANCH POWER? Atrios thinks so.
IT LOOKS LIKE FOX NEWS TRIED TO GET A CERTAIN RESULT ON DEMOCRAT BARACK OBAMA WITH A POLL ON PATRIOTISM and it boomeranged..
SPEAKING OF POLLS, A NEW POLL FINDS THAT AGE IS MORE IMPORTANT IN 2008 VOTING THAN RACE…or so the Washington Post/ABC poll says. Read James Joyner for an excellent and detailed look at this poll. My view: don’t trust polls when pollsters ask people if race matters. People will not always answer honestly. The bottom line is that both Obama and presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain are walking political tightropes and are candidates who are blessed/cursed with variables.
HAS OBAMA IMPRESSED ABC’S CHARLIE GIBSON the wrong way? Gibson is irked about Obama’s decision to nix public campaign financing. The decision has irked some on the left, in the center, but especially on the right. But some have applauded his decision because they feel public financing is flawed.
SPEAKING OF THE NEWS MEDIA, A QUESTION HAS BEEN: WAS THE NEW YORK TIMES’ COVERAGE OF HILLARY CLINTON SEXIST? Clark Hoyt, the Time’s public editor (they used to call that person an “ombudsman”) says the paper performed well enough but pointed to columnist Maureen Dowd and the “relentless nature of her gender-laden assault on Clinton.” Must-read details HERE.
Two things: (1) Hoyt was my managing editor briefly before I left the Wichita Eagle-Beacon to work for the San Diego Union, and he is a person of impeccable integrity and perception. (2) He makes the point that Dowd is A COLUMNIST which means she most assuredly is allowed and really expected to write stuff that is a bit edgier. The key questions then are what is PC, when is PC PC and are there times when PC is politically-motivated PC (to lash out at someone who wrote something you didn’t like). And, indeed, some people will attack the NYT for a column and say the entire paper is sexist, the same way Fox’s Bill O’Reilly generalizes about the Los Angeles Times…which he hates. And the LA Times is a great newspaper with some superb reporting (I am a 25-year subscriber to it and read it each day).
McCAIN’S CAMPAIGN IS BEING PANNED ON TWO FRONTS. Some says he’s giving out inconsistent and confusing messages about whether he is a loyal conservative Republican or the 2000 John McCain Independent model and that this suggests an inept campaign operation. Others wonder if he is beginning to lose his base. I’ve argued here for more than a year that McCain is walking a shaky tightrope. The irony is that independent voters are more likely to give him a bit more leeway that Bush-loyal Republicans. Obama faces a hurdle in winning over Clinton supporters but the ideological differences between a Clinton supporter and Obama are fare less than between McCain and a typical Bush-loyal party base Republican. The result: McCain will take some criticism about his campaign, no matter what he does, but he has little leeway for a major error in the way he is specifically defined (by his own actions and successfully by the Democrats).
BUT MCCAIN NEEDS TO BE GIVEN A LOT OF CREDIT because, despite all of the criticism his campaign is getting (see above), his war chest is in a lot better shape than expected.
CAN MCCAIN GET THE GAY VOTE? Pajamas Media’s B. Daniel Blatt thinks he has a better chance than many think.
THIS WEEK BOTH PARTIES FELL INTO PREDICTABLE POLITICAL PATTERNS, writes Arianna Huffington.
THERE’S SPECULATION THAT GEORGIA’S SAM NUNN COULD BE SERIOUSLY IN THE RUNNING AS OBAMA’S VEEP but Ezra Klein is having Nunn of it…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.