I called it first that McCain will campaign as a Democrat (albeit a Conservative one) I just never expected that Hillary would run as a Republican. McCain denounced the ad, has Hillary?

"On NPR yesterday Mike Kinsley predicted Obama will get the nomination but lose to McCain "

Interesting. I can report from DC that most people here think this will be a walk in the park against McCain. The guy tied himself to the Iraq war even more firmly than Bush. And that's about to blow up again. And his incompetence on economic issues? He already has enough gaffes to make for a full slate of "Does he really care about you?" ads in October.

Kinsley's on the mark.

Re right-wing talk radio, there's plenty of racist and other slime to be heard, but every time I've called in to give my contrarian $0.02 to the local, saner right-leaning radio hosts I've had a respectful hearing. Where I see a huge opening is on the populist economic front, ESPECIALLY with universal health care.

Consider: most listeners of these programs are ripe for a solution to this mess that gets the burden off of the back of businesses, given that radio listeners are by and large either self-employed contractors or businessmen or else non-unionized working people employed in small shops or else driving around all day on business. It should be easy to poach a large number of them by

a) treating them with enough respect to at least make your case to them and ask them to hear you out-- yes, this means appearing on not Limbaugh but the sane, local market rt-wing shows

b) positioning UHC as the sensible PRO-BUSINESS solution, esp for small businesses

c) calling the opposition's bluff and using logic and facts, relentlessly applied, to win over a large enough number of these voters to make a difference in the battleground states.

These people are low to moderate income voters. They should be OURS.

Assuming, of course, that our side's willing to get out in front of them, treat them with respect and try to persuade them. As opposed to preaching to the choir in Pacific Heights mansions and college-town tent revivals.

McCain SHOULD campaign against Bush.  Let him win, there'll be plenty of time after Jan. 20, 2009 to apologize to W.  What, you don't think they haven't already talked about it?  I guarantee you that W said to do what you have to to win, don't worry about me.

tep, you're spot on, but that's a BIG assumption there at the end.  If y'all did that, the GOP would never elect anyone.  But I have faith in your side.

Wait, didn't McCain ask for the Wright ad to be pulled? What do liberals have to do with it?

Yep, tep, logic has won more people than emotion throughout history.

"Assuming, of course, that our side's willing to get out in front of them, treat them with respect and try to persuade them."

That happens a lot, tep. And guess what? All they talk about is how our side can't fucking bowl. Or that he asked for the "wrong" kind of cheese on his Philly cheesesteak. Or his camo hunting jacket isn't sufficiently wrinkled.

Pacific Heights is a neighborhood in one of America's great cities, by the way. Ask Tony Bennett. Should a candidate pretend that it doesn't exist? Or studiously avoid it? Maybe make snide, hateful jokes about it? Why does the phrase "San Francisco Democrat" make you pee your pants and get the yahoos listening to national AND local conservative talk radio all frothed up? But if I or someone else was to say a disparaging word about, oh, Alabama or Tennessee, I/they would be an out-of-touch elitist? Why do you buy into the double-standard that I have to respect one man's NASCAR but he can sneer at me because I eat sushi? (just had it for lunch, by the way - delicious.)

Sure, nonevent, emotion's always won for our side. Ask President Dean.

We don't need Pacific Heights. Obama doesn't even need their money. But we desperately need to win OH, PA, or FL, all of which turn on the  kind of voters who listen to talk radio.

And there's another double-standard I don't understand - emotion is so very good for Their Side, but so very bad for Our Side. Why is that? Why is that considered the norm? The next time you're enabling some extreme right-wingers, can you ask them that?

tep,

What's in it for them (right-wing media)? Nothing.

The shock jocks have been feeding meatballs to Rottweilers. You're asking them to switch to tofu. They're not stupid.

Nancy Pelosi is a meatball. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a meatball. Barack Obama is a meatball. Each favors moving substantially in the direction of universal coverage.

Go ahead, tep. Feed the nice doggy a tofu burger.

Naw. We don't need to pander to anyone. Just need to run a solid campaign. Fight back against stupid superficial smears, make up some of our own to hit McCain with, and then ride the tide. The issues weren't on our side in 2000. They weren't on our side in 2004. But they are now - by a huge majority. It'll be easy.

Woody I agree, I am tired of the whole idiocracy campaign of Clinton. Education, elitist bad. Boilermakers, pander good. Meanwhile America imports more and more engineers and scientists from India and China. Except, as china and India become wealthier more and more will decide to stay there do to the increased opportunities, and frankly because it is their home, where their family is and (for the chinese especially) they can speak their own language. We will still get a fair share, but the cream of the crop not so much anymore.

Tep, just because we have facts and logic on our side doesn't mean we can win over low income people. Honestly, you don't really know many such people do you? Make your pitch and watch their eyes glaze over. But hey, did you see Kobe the other day? And then the light comes on.

We have our very own right wing shock jock on prime time radio for the Friday drive, and he works a treat. They're lapping the indignation, outrage, shock and ratings up.

Teplukhin's talking sense and good strategy. A Sun-Mondeo Man Blair would eat that demographic up. I hope Obama makes that pro-business case. Sounds like a winner.

ha, Billiard. No, I'm not talking about national shockjocks-- Savage Rottweilers and Flatulent LimSchnauzers and their ilk. I mean the local guys, Ron Owens of KGO (?) in SF, Greg Knapp and Mark Davis in Dallas, others of their ilk. Well-educated, reasonable for the most part, not haters. Yes, they're the majority of talk radio hosts out there, they have large localized audiences, and they need to fill a lot of airtime.

Why do I love Michael Kinsley, even though I think he's wrong about , oh, 25% of the time, but never read, say, Bob Herbert in the Times, even though I probably agree with Herbert most of the time?

Because Mike is funny, a clever writer whose stuff is always interesting, while Bob Herbert is a predictable bore.

This is one of those moments where the predictable bore has it right, and Mike, much as I love him, is wrong.

There's a really great short story by Kurt Vonnegut from early in his career called "Harrison Bergeron" (I think), which involves a vision of an America in which everything is mandated equal, and anybody with any kind of talent is deliberately hobbled to make sure that nobody without that talent feels disadvantaged.  Thus the newsreaders all have speech impediments, and sportsmen and women have to wear weights to slow them down, and people are sanctioned for expressing any kind of complex or interesting thought.  It's kind of a weird amalgam of leftie super-PC politics and conservative "anti-elitism."

It seems to me that one thing which is being flushed out this election season is an old American problem about intelligence.  We don't like it, and there's a kind of sixth-grade notion of democracy out there that says that intelligence skews equality of political citizenship, because smart people know more and might be taken more seriously.  This was the root of the opposition to "eggheads" and scientific or academic advising of government that grew in the early 1900s when people like La Follette recruited their "brains trusts."

We are looking at a really striking reemergence of that phenomenon, especially in relation to BHO, but there's something odd about it that I can't put my finger on.  In many ways, Hillary Clinton with her PowerPoint-style wonkish speeches is totally in the tradition of scientific policy-making, and maybe if she were to face McCain that would be her weakness.  But now she also has a kind of populist uprising going on, and Obama has become the target of the "elitist" accusation.  Why are Wellesley and Yale not elite but Columbia and Harvard are?  I wonder is the "elitist" remark a kind of psychic transfer, a code that says "uppity black guy"?

Harrison Bergeron escapes from the America of oppressive equality, but is hunted down because his skills are an embarrassment, making people see their own weaknesses.  Obama's intelligence wants to escape, but perhaps it will be hunted down too, eventually, and forced to bend.  But we need somebody to do some thinking, and I don't know that pandering to the paranoia about intelligence that so many Americans seem to suffer from is the best way of getting it on the agenda.

Here in NC Obama's ads are completely on economic issues.  Tep would love his campaigns here.  It's the "laser-like" focus on the economy that he's been arguing about for months now.  The NC GOP still wants to manufacture false outrage that means nothing; this is the reason why I don't want to see a campaign just on "issues" waged by BO.  He needs to show his Chicago mean streak and fight back dirty.  I see no reason for him to play nice anymore.

tnmats - sound good, more like this pls.

Tep, you have a strange reverence for McCain and an equal disgust with Obama. The irony is that you hammer Obama for being too vague in policy prescriptions, but come on, McCain talks in nothing but generalities and slogans. Victory in Iraq. More tax cuts to keep money in people's pockets. The true American president. Give me a break. He has no plan for Iraq, shit we can't stay forever, and no plan for the economy, except "I don't really know much about the economy except taxes breaks are great, universal coverage is socialism and ear marks are bad. He's starting to seem like an old fool.

Irony - your post was awesome.

Thanks Wandrey -- but it's really that Vonnegut at his best was awesome.  As it happens, I read the post again and I'm not sure what I'm saying at the end.  It's really enigmatic, what's going on out there in people's heads -- we're in a new situation.

I second Wandrey.

I always wondered if Obama would be eaten alive because can't be categorized or stereotyped.  

He just can't.  An astringent - yet gentle hearted - black professor from Hawaii with epic, literary political skills? A politician who refuses to backslap or pander? The human animal becomes anxious and hostile when confronted with something freakish, which Obama is of course - in the best possible way. A natural yes, but just some guy too, very obviously.  He makes people uncomfortable.  

I saw Vonnegut (whose books allowed me to survive a grim adolescence) speak a year or two before he passed.  He was kind of Obama-ish in that way - grumpy and astringent, unapologetic, expecting the best from you and assuming you can take it (we could).   He was heartbreaking and heartbroken and soo soo funny, wise.  Not sure if you caught his last book, as close to an autobiography as he ever got.  I forgot the name now, it doesnt matter - just run and get it. Now.  Somehow he made it his finest.  Hilarious and heartbroken, so human and so talented.

A Man without a Country, is that it?  I should get hold of it.

Irony. I think that is all fine and well regarding elitism. But I also think the idea must needs be tweaked a bit. Conceit and hubris know no boundaries. Intelligent or no, this alone is enough to make a fool of anyone. If I put forth intricate, well developed logically justifiable hogwash not much has been gained and truly throws the question of intelligence up for contention. I think the elitism which is being disparaged is of a particular flavor. That which is so enamored of itself that it doesn't understand or allow for its own limitations. The kind to presume to know that which it simply can't.

Naturally you're being a studious guy would be more forgiving and to an extent less likely to see such a failure in the intellectual arena. I would submit that plenty of bullshit is promulgated by those who have 'credentials'.

Your projected juxtaposition is insightful and happens to be an area of intense interest for me personally. There is some precious metal in that mine. There is a lot more to be explored and I'd be happy to kick this further down the road. But for now I must needs a little sleepy time.

Mike listens to right-wing talk radio on his long-haul overnight truck routes. I listen to NPR during