"An even bigger clash involved a proposed city ordinance backed by Stambaugh to close the town bars at 2 a.m. instead of 5. Stambaugh says he believed this would help curb late-night drunken driving at a time when, according to Stein, the former mayor, 'people were driving out from Anchorage to the valley for more alcohol and crashing.' But Palin, as a council member, had voted against the measure-making her the favored candidate among bar owners, one of whom held a fund-raiser for her." [Newsweek, Photo]

So the United States is entering financial turmoil, what with all of our banks collapsing and the world's largest insurance company needing a bailout from the State of New York and the stock market tumbling and thousands of fancy jobs on the line. Honestly, though, let's get to the heart of the matter: will this news secretly (or openly!) thrill political partisans? It seems, on its face, that news of Wall Street turmoil helps Senator Barack Obama. And why not? The initial careful ventures into political exploitation of this maybe-catastrophe are already underway. How will it play out? How To Attack Josh Marshall tosses out a readymade almost-true attack line: "The man most responsible for the financial services and banking deregulation that made today possible, fmr. Sen. Phil Gramm, is the man John McCain wants to put in charge of the whole economy." Ok. The "man most responsible" part is defensible, if exaggerated. Gramm deregulated the hell out of the banking sector as a senator. And he lobbied for lax oversight of predatory lending as vice chairman of UBS's i-banking arm. The "man McCain wants to put in charge of the whole economy" bit seems a little less true. We don't know who the hell McCain would let run things. McCain does love Gramm, and Gramm taught McCain everything he needs to know about the economy. McCain's limited grasp of economics basically consists of Gramm's strict anti-regulation philosophies with a bit of pandering to the middle class tossed in. But Gramm is McCain's former campaign co-chair. All signs point to a bigger role played by the less unpopular Carly Fiorina handling the economy in a McCain presidency, even if Gramm's ideas rule the day. Still. That's the kind of fact-checking that gets us nowhere! It's a fine line to use: McCain doesn't get the economy, and the guy he has around to explain it to him is personally responsible for this mess. Some variation on that line will probably be repeated by the Obama campaign over the next week. (Obama has already siezed on a mostly innocuous McCain remark—way to adapt, guys!) Watch Your Own Ties But here are some of the potential pitfalls for Obama. This bit of trivia has already made it to Politico:

Ron Fournier, the new Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief? Definitely a tool, possibly a Republican. Some of the AP campaign coverage this season? Annoying at best, misleading at worst. But recently liberals (led by the usually serious Talking Points Memo) have all but declared the Associated Press an arm of the John McCain communications office. Well we can seek out and link to only the AP dispatches that fit our preferred spin too, guys! Today the wire sent out a remarkable analysis piece on how the McCain campaign just lies, all the time, about everything. And everyone calls them on their lies, and "fact checks" them, but it doesn't matter, because they don't care. And the AP under Fournier has actually done a better job with this fact-checking than lots of other outlets. The AP has no compunction about explicitly reporting that a statement is deliberately misleading, even if they sometimes shy away from the word "lie." Take a look:

Sarah Palin burst on to the national scene with that lovely speech about how Barack Obama wasted his time helping "communities" while she personally destroyed the Bridge Over the River Nowhere. Everyone loved it, and the nation fell in love with the cheerfully bitchy makeup-plastered trollop. Ever since that day, every time we see Sarah Palin she is delivering the exact same speech, in the exact same cadence. It was so good she never bothered to find a second thing to read into microphones! But there are some oddities with the remarks that made her famous. Like, who wrote it? Bush speechwriter Matt Scully is credited with it, but some of it seems a bit at odds with his typical work. Like the person delivering it, and the bit with the reactionary old anti-Semite that was thrown in there. Who's Matt Scully? Time explains:

That's two weeks of media coverage dominated completely by Sarah Palin and her doddering creepy old uncle John McCain. The Palin/McCain ticket is still enjoying a residual "bounce" in the polls from Ms. Palin's selection and the GOP's 1.5 night mini-convention. Obama's been on the defensive for a remark he made that somehow threw the McCain camp on the defensive in such a way as to make Obama look on the defensive. Barry Hussein Obama did acquit himself pretty well on Letterman last night, but the headlines continued to be dominated by the "pig" comment (at least in the New York Post, which FORGOT ABOUT 9/11). What does he do from here? Look, we're no expert. But we're something better than an expert: a blogger. So we know what to do! Keep On Keepin' On Fundraising concerns aside, the Obama camp has and is spending money on targeted advertising in states it will probably win and states it hopes to win. They're still building their ground game in the four or so states that will decide this election. They're still polling above 50% in enough states to win it, national polls be damned. GOTV drives in swing states will win this thing. Debate Prep! There's a large number of Americans who tune out or actively avoid political coverage, tuning in only for the big events—conventions and debates. There's no doubt in our mind that Obama can "win" a debate against McCain on strength of positions, grasp of issues, and temperament. Where he'll falter is in his delivery—he's thinky and halting, as we all know, and McCain is glib and confident. Obama's debate coaching is probably focusing on that right now, while McCain's is focused on cramming to make sure he doesn't fuck up Sunni and Shiite again without Joe Lieberman around to help him out. Advantage: Obama, slightly. Don't Worry About Biden and the Clintons Biden is the king of the Gaffes, but the national press has known him forever and ever. He's generally liked and also expected to put his foot in his mouth again. Unlike a screwup by the candidate, a screwup by Biden will be largely forgiven. As for the Clintons, even if Bill says something idiotic, well, Obama's hardly associated with him. In fact it's generally assumed that they hate each other. So Clinton behaving himself = good for the party, Clinton not behaving himself = drawing distinctions between Obama and The Angry Old Man (hey, what a useful frame). As for Hillary, she won't do anymore more than she has to unless specifically asked. They'll specifically ask her to if they actually seriously need her. Angst Is Good. According to the Wall Street Journal and Politico, Obama's bewildered by the Palin phenomena and his campaign is struggling to keep up. Democrats are freaking out! Frustrated at Obama's inability to get back on the attack! Some of this is concern-trolling from passive-aggressive old Clintonites, some of it is genuine worry, all of it has the potential to be helpful. Worry boosts fundraising. Worry energizes volunteers and staffers. It's good motivation. You don't want it to become defeatism, obviously, but that feeling of inevitability that suddenly began following Obama around as he slowly destroyed Hillary was not helpful against John McCain, even if that guy did seem like a loser. The Media War This largely pointless except as a diversion and game. This is Steve Schmidt and David Axelrod's war, and they're enjoying it as their candidates suffer. (You think either McCain or Obama like the inane umbrage-fest this has become?) So try to plant some messages about how Palin is lipstick on McCain's pig! Claim McCain is too old and addled to understand the economy! The GOP is painting Obama as a sexist baby-killer who wants to teach your 6-year-old how to use a dental dam, so you can feel free to go nuts too. Honestly, it's just something to occupy the news until September 26. Related: Hasn't Gail Collins been kinda great lately?

"Back in 2000, after John McCain lost his mostly honorable campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he went about apologizing to journalists—including me—for his most obvious mis-step: his support for keeping the confederate flag on the state house." That is Joe Klein, an exceptionally annoying Time columnist. He sorta gets why that is ridiculous, now, but in case he isn't all the way there, let's try to break it down for him:

Do you ever have one of those days where you just want to pack it in because everyone else in the world is so patently, transparently intellectually dishonest and/or un-self-aware as to defy any and all stabs at serious criticism or even derisive mockery? Do those days ever last for the entire month of September? Are you outraged over Obama's lipstick remark or outraged over the outrage over it? Either way you are part of the problem! How does this shit happen? It's very simple. There's nothing happening. Except Palin. The conventions are over and the campaigns now are focused on debate prep and early voting drives. Those are the only things that actually matter, right now, for both campaigns. The rest is just back-and-forth noise-making. Except for Palin who is a media sensation! So everything Palin-related will make headlines. So McCain's team just made up a Palin headline, to keep her in the news. That's all. But you know that is not a very interesting post, is it? So let's pick through this in a sad and doomed search for anything relevant or even slightly interesting! We're trying to work through this rationally. Give us a minute. Did the McCain campaign think they'd be able to convince the media that they're genuinely outraged about a sexist comment made by Barack Obama? That didn't actually seem to matter—no one on earth thinks this outrage is anything other than a political ploy, that does not affect the serious coverage one iota. When the McCain campaign accused Governor David Paterson of "playing the race card" this week, it made headlines but got no real traction. This, though, is leading everything. The story is that Barack Obama used an ancient Washington cliche, while talking about McCain. A cliche every politician, including McCain, uses in an attempt to sound folksy. A cliche surely familiar to most Americans. The McCain rapid-response team seized on the term and applied it to Palin, with help from Jake Tapper. Now through endless repition they are attempting to implant the idea that Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a "pig," and that that is a sexist term. Which does not make sense. Because no one has ever thought of Sarah Palin as remotely "piggish," and "pig," we thought, was a term of derision for men. We can't figure out the strategy here, at all, on either side. Will the base get riled up about this? Sure, why not, but they get riled up over everything, that's why they're the base. Will the vast mushy middle think Obama was being sexist? Even if they do, will they care? In a 'rational' world, this would make McCain look defensive—the supposed usual position of stupid stupid Democrats. It's desperate and weak. Do the Democrats have the "guts" to use the "playing the sexism card" card? Are we going to shoot ourselves if we keep talking like this? We don't know the answer to either question. But we honestly don't think this will last through the day, this outrage, and as far as how it relates or adds to the ongoing 'framing' and 'narrative-building' by both campaigns, we're stumped. There is maybe some residual "Obama is a sexist" stuff from the primaries, but the vast majority of those complaints were lodged against The Dreaded Media. And "the media is biased against Sarah Palin" still seems to be a charge with a better chance of sticking. It has already stuck so well, in fact, that maybe everyone just seized on this to deflect criticism. And what should Obama do? Daniel Radosh has a sensible Rovian response but so far the Democrats just continue saying "this is a distraction, wtf, how do you get away with this," which is also how we feel about it but, you know, when you chant that so much for so long without getting anyone on your side, you might want to rethink your strategy. But frankly even though Obama clearly did not mean it that way he should now just continue on as if damn straight he was making a snide remark about Sarah Palin. Because you might as well paint Sarah Palin as a total bitch, which is, we seem to recall, what she painted herself as when she said she was a transvestite pitbull or whatever the fuck.

Democratic strategist Peter Feld, who recently warned Radar readers that the polls are indeed bad news, checks in occasionally to rain on your parade. Today he explains the visceral appeal of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

I wouldn't have counted on Maureen Dowd to illustrate the cluelessness of the liberal media who are losing the election for Obama. But she did. The conceit of today's Dowd column — burdened, as so many of hers are, with an ill-fitting pop culture framework (My Fair Lady, this time) — is that Sarah Palin's interview later today with ABC's Charlie Gibson is a moment of high peril for the putatively unprepared VP candidate. Dowd mirthfully suggests a few questions for Gibson to ask Palin, such as: "Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn't all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?" It's a question a lot of the fight-the-last-war press seems to be asking. The savaging of Kerry four years ago still rankles Joe Conason, whose Observer column today about Palin is subtitled: "She was for ill-conceived pork projects before she was against them." And, like Dowd, Clarence Page still expects America to wake up and notice that McCain didn't vet Palin sufficiently. Like Dowd — and the Obama campaign — Page believes that when Americans learn that Palin once supported the bridge boondoggle she now boasts of stopping, her selection will "backfire" on McCain. And Politico counts yesterday — a day when six fresh polls showed McCain even or ahead of Obama — as an Obama victory, because his campaign had succeeded in getting the media to fact-check Palin's bridge-blocking claims. "Bridge to nowhere" is an apt name for this Obama strategy. What Obama ("You can't just make stuff up!") and his sputtering media supporters miss is that the "for-it-before-I-was-against-it" quote damaged Kerry, not because America hates a flip-flopper, but because it captured exactly what made him seem so ridiculous. It was a line Kerry had used on himself, something Palin would never do. Palin may be many things — unprepared, phony, right-wing, LensCrafter model, aerial wolf-hunter — but she's not John Kerry. Her appeal, as at least Tom Friedman seems to understand, is visceral, not logical. The swing voters who have to decide between McCain and Obama recognize themselves in her, something the Obama campaign considers unimportant. The indignant, sputtering media think that they can undo that appeal with careful fact-checking of Palin's record. Good luck — if someone doesn't wake up soon, it looks like you'll have the chance to fact-check Palin for the next four years.

We thought the bizarre GOP attacks against "community organizers" were just commonplace venom against those dumb enough to try to "change the system" with anything other than money and its attendant political power, not necessarily coded messages (the disdain Rudy Giuliani displayed when snarling the words was surely his own ad-lib, as a noted enemy of communities, and ferrets). But one can forgive New York Governor David Paterson for reading a racial element into the odd slurs—"community organizing" does just sound like something the black communities need, right? But in stating as much, Paterson wandered into the national political fray, and now a McCain spokesman is accusing Paterson of "playing the race card" and also this is Obama's fault, because they are desperate, and this is all divisive and shameful. So ok! The "community organizer" thing has nothing to do with race, at all. Sheesh! Poor white guys, always in trouble for saying utterly harmless things, like calling NBC journalist Ron Allen (who is black!) "uppity". As we all know, uppity is just an all-purpose general term for "elitist," which is a post-racial term for fag. Right?

Ed Koch, lovable weird old probably gay former New York mayor, is a Democrat, yes, and wrote a book about how much he hated Rudy Giuliani, but lately he's been talking a lot about how great the Bush administration is (when he is not reviewing movies), so most people assumed he'd endorse ol' John McCain for president this year. But then something funny happened! McCain selected this woman named Sarah Palin to be his Vice President. So today, Koch endorsed Barack Obama! What's up with that? Koch's written statmeent says Barack Obama will protect us from terror, and help the poor people, but to really understand why he endorsed Obama we turn to his statement to Politico's Ben Smith: "Any time someone goes to the library and says, 'I want to ban books,' and the librarian says 'no,' and she threatens to fire them — that's scary." She's speaking of Sarah Palin, of course. But it might not be just the book-banning that turned ol' Ed off! See, Sarah Palin is a super-Christian self-described "pitbull" whose church is maybe trying to convert all the Jews. Also Ed Koch just proved us 100% correct. She terrifies the old Jews who might otherwise be wary of that Obama kid. Time to invest in more Florida air time, Axelrod! Even more awesome: according to Radar, Koch had the best critique of Giulinai's Republican National Convention speech ever:

"Prior to the reelection of General Grant in 1872, there was a superstition prevalent that no man possessed of a middle name could be elected President a second time. The notion was based upon the fact that every President so endowed, up to that time, had, for one reason or another, failed to be reelected: John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren-if his was a triple name,-William Henry Harrison, and James Knox Polk. Even since Grant, who may be said to have been exempt from all rules, the tradition has held good. Rutherford Birchard Hayes, James Abram Garfield, and Chester Allan Arthur, were not reelected; William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt were; also Grover Cleveland, after the lapse of an intermediate term,-who, it may be suggested, escaped the hoodoo by dropping his first name, Stephen, which his parents incautiously gave him." [The Atlantic via Andrew Sullivan]

Hey, everyone stop complaining that Sarah Palin won't grant anyone except Uncle Charlie Gibson any interviews and therefore we have no clue if she knows anything about foreign or domestic policy besides "drilling good, wolves bad." Because you guys had your chance back when she was just a little-known governor and you wasted it! Here's a clip of Palin in the green room of Charlie Rose. She is talking about her first jobs, waitressing and babysitting, and how those are a lot like her new job, governing a couple thousand crazy Alaskans and making sure they get their welfare checks from the privatized Marxist oil scheme they're running up there. Click to watch! (Later in the interview, btw, she names her favorite authors of all time. They are Christian children's book writer C. S. Lewis and a columnist for Runners' World magazine.)

Isn't it bizarre how no one could shut up about Obama and how he'd get a "convention bounce" and then it was maybe not very big but then it suddenly got big, and everyone was all "Obama is ahead hooray!" And the RNC looked like a terrible stupid joke for a couple days, until Sarah Palin gave that well-regarded venomous speech of lies and America said "we like her!" (Though her negatives are high and she is polarizing!) And McCain gave his speech that everyone universally panned—except that it attracted a huge football-lead-in audience and was kind of explicitly geared to appeal not to raging party faithful types (despite pandering lines here and there) but to dumb undecideds who haven't paid attention until just this last week, when they are "supposed to." When will the McCain bounce happen? everyone asked. Your answer: today. Ok? So stop hyperventilating and turn off your iPhone electoral map application and maybe have another beer. Let's look at some of the analysis from "experts": As Slate's election scorecard puts it: "A post-convention bounce puts McCain ahead of Obama in a few national polls for the first time, prompting Pollster.com to shift its overall national trend from 'strong Obama' to 'lean Obama.'" Panic!! Five Thirty Eight says, yes, the RNC and Sarah Palin energized formerly wary right-wing Christian Republicans and now they're answering more pollsters and identifying more strongly with the party and the ticket and more likely to call themselves "likely voters." Right now, the race seems strictly polarized, right down the traditional, predictable lines, and it looks like Obama will try to win Kerry's states and hope for one more. He'll be aided by the economy, probably. And it's stupid reporting or analysis to obsess over each slight shift in the polls (outliers aside, each candidate's individual numbers have barely shifted from the mid-to-high-40s since the beginning of the summer), especially when you predicted those bounces and setbacks.

Governor Sarah Palin is, according to the Anchorage Daily News, "stonewalling" the investigation into allegations that she abused her power by firing the Alaska public safety commissioner. They also say Palin's lawyer is threatening to sic the secret service on the Alaska legislature's investigator. ABC reports that Alaska state senator Hollis French is now fast-tracking his investigation into the scandal, dubbed "Troopergate." But in MORE IMPORTANT NEWS: the guy Sarah Palin maybe had an affair with (it seems like she probably didn't?), her husband's former business partner, filed an emergency motion yesterday to have his divorce records sealed. The motion was denied! Hooray! [Alaska Trial Court Cases via Andrew Sullivan, who has become a madman.]

While watching the McCain speech last night, we suddenly noticed the big video screen background (which only looked cool when it was neat rippling water behind Rudy Giuliani) suddenly shifted to what looked like a greenscreen. Oh wow what a stupid and terrible fuckup, we thought. Because everyone remembers what happened last time! It turns out the fuckup was so, so much bigger and more hilarious: it was not a greeenscreen. It was a lawn in front of a mansion-looking building. Which was a middle school, called Walter Reed. Let's actually try to itemize the fuckups here:

Have an iPhone? Obsessed with checking the oft-misleading results of state-by-state polls constantly from now until November? You're insufferable! Which means, of course, that there is an iPhone application just for you. [Gizmodo]

No plans for 9/11 day yet? Why not enjoy Barack Obama and John McCain at Columbia, one of those Elitist East Coast Ivy League Colleges of The Elite, where they will talk about civic duty for "ServiceNation, an organization that aims to increase public service participation." You know, "public service participation" like "community organizing," which, as we all know, is gay and elitist and not something seriously important like shooting wolves from airplanes. Anyway. We assume Obama will talk on behalf on public service and McCain will become confused and angry and speak against it. [CollegeOTR]

The Daily Show did one of their patented "public figures contradicting themselves on tape" routines last night, and this time they had a wealth of material. It was all related to Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for Vice President. She is by all sane accounts inexperienced. Also she has a bit of family drama with her unwed teen daughter being all pregnant and stuff! This, obviously, is "off-limits" because everyone has declared it "off-limits" to talk about children that way. Unless those children are, like, related to famous people and on TV sometimes! Then their parents are nimrods. Just click through for Bill O'Reilly to explain it all.

We think the conventional wisdom, now, is that Sarah Palin is a cynical appeal not to Hillary voters but to the Republican "base," which means religious white people. It's a last-ditch effort to win just one more with George W. Bush's coalition, not to bring in those moderates John McCain supposedly appeals to most. But here's the risk: the old, conservative Jewish vote McCain's had in the bag since day one? They might not like this lady so much. As you can see in this clip (attached below), even Ben Stein—the Nixon speechwriter so happy to pretend to be something other than an educated East Coast elitist that he'll hop in bed with creationists—is insulted and shocked by the Palin pick. This is just the beginning. The New York Sun, that probably doomed organ of intellectual Zionist conservatism, seemingly also can't quite believe this selection. Allow them to tell you about Sarah Palin's grand plans for The Jews!

We are rarely, these days, surprised by much. Especially the behavior of the national political press. We devoted a couple paragraphs yesterday to predicting their reaction to Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's speech before the Republican National Convention last night, but this morning we are having a genuine crazy pills moment. Are we trapped in Peggy Noonan's bubble? Seriously, people? The speech blew you away? It was a generic stump speech with a couple killer lines, delivered competently. It was the Republican equivalent of John Kerry's speech at the DNC, just given by someone America doesn't hate (yet) while the national networks were listening. We honestly can't believe the same media that knew full well that they were playing into the expectations game became so convinced that Governor Palin would massively fuck up that the fact that she was perky and pleasant and funny—the fucking reasons she was selected—was some revelation, or the birth of a new political superstar. We can't believe everyone gave her a pass on the 'bridge to nowhere' bullshit. We can't believe people keep calling her a "reformer" and "maverick" even though as a politician, completely outside her self-constructed narrative, she introduced focus-grouped wedge politics to small-town Alaska and lobbied for the most corrupt politicians in America. Is it really this easy? We know this miserable woman. We are from the great white north, the land of Ms. Palin's congressional doppelganger. We still can't help but feel that the "just folks" everyone images they understand better than everyone else will find Ms. Palin to be, well, as Ken Layne put it: