Please tell me you are kidding. Mike.  Oh wait, having read you for years, I know that your are the leader of the "great news for Republicans" in every press corps event.

Does this change the race at all? Does it change the dialogue?  Have earmarks suddenly become the number one issue people care about?

Good lord.  let's use a sports analogy.  this is giving up a two out walk in the 8th inning of  a game your team is winning 7-0.  Would it be better if it hadn't happened?  yep.  Does it matter?  only if it sparks the 8 run rally.

Obama didn't finish his thought. What I'm sure he meant is what he said in the first debate:

" But let's be clear: Earmarks account for $18 billion in last year's budget. Senator McCain is proposing -- and this is a fundamental difference between us -- $300 billion in tax cuts to some of the wealthiest corporations and individuals in the country, $300 billion.

Now, $18 billion is important; $300 billion is really important."

He may have opened the door to being attacked on this, but it is a small crack. The media won't really pick it up, because they understand what he meant and if McCain tries to bring it up at the next debate he will be stomped like when he tried to bring up the "talk softly" maxim at this one.

I was also surprised that Obama didn't have the percentage handy, or at least the phrase less than 1%. Maybe he didn't recall at the moment. But of course in the real debate Obama compared that number to the cost of John McCain's tax cut ($300 billion), and pointed out that you can't balance the two figures. So it is only damaging if you take it totally out of context and add an extra word or two. Even then. less damaging than "Bomb bomb Iran" was last night.

Do you think Hannity called him on the mis-quote? Ha ha! Olberman is insufferably smug but even he doesn't hold a candle to Hannity or O'Reily.

Um, I hope by now we've all studied this pie chart, and are ready for the pop quiz:

economistsview.typepad.com/.../image.html

I can't believe noone bit:

"$18 billion here, $18 billion there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money."

Hmm, he didn't really expose himself, because he didn't actually say "only."  He talked about how earmarks are bad, etc., but miss the bigger issue, just as in the first debate.  He could have driven the point home better, but I don't think it's tut-tut-worthy.

I'm pretty sure that should be .6%.  I know spending has gotten pretty bad under Bush but I don't think he managed to get it to 7x the world's GDP yet.

Actually, it's good that McCain has jumped on this.  In the next debate, he'll get creamed, again, over the trivialities he is concentrating on.

"I know spending has gotten pretty bad under Bush but I don't think he managed to get it to 7x the world's GDP yet"

Who knew that much leverage would come back to haunt us?

Fair enough, a blunder in terms of not putting that figure into proper context.  I noted it myself and was a bit disappointed that Obama didn't go on to explain that figure in the larger scheme of things.

But isn't McCain the one ("that one") who defined the middle class as anyone making under 5 million?  Perhaps that was just another example of McDick's lame-ass jokes that liberals such as myself simply "don't get."  I'd like to hear him put that into context.

Luckily for Obama, the "blunder" (talk about lowering the bar for that word) wasn't picked up until Hannity, maybe the least serious person with a TV show in the nation, pounced on it. So as a talking point to actually use against Obama, it's got a built-in lack of credibility.

Well, then, if $5m is the upper end of the middle class then total pork spending equals the annual income of only 3,000 people in the middle class. That is something like only 0.0003% of the middle class. Why should we care!?

Not ".6 percent," or "less than 1 percent."

The operative phrase should be:

"Eliminating every earmark would be the equivalent of removing a single piece of pepperoni from a pizza. John calls that a diet."

Sure $18 billion sounds like a lot to the average voter.  However, when the news has been dominated by discussions of an $81 billion bailout of AIG or a $700 billion plan for the credit markets, $18 billion doesn't sound like so much.

Rhub, ha that is funny. Eliminating all earmarks is a bandaid on the bullet wound of his 300 billion dollar tax cuts and calling it treatment.

Let's not forget that we're spending $10 billion per month just to stay and prop up the government and economy of Iraq.  Think what that $10 B would do spent in the US to lower the deficit that caused the dollar devaluation that led to the mortgage crunch that resulted in the stock market meltdown?

Now that's a comparison people WILL understand.

I think the point Obama makes would be especially powerful relative to how much energy McCain has promised to spend on this.  He's going to "make them famous and you will know their names" over 1% of the federal budget, spending precious time and political capital that could otherwise be devoted to healthcare, energy, environment, etc. and piss off a lot of the people who will be critical to enacting his legislative agenda in the first place? Really? Or is this just erratic ol' John McCain shooting first and aiming later? etc.

jjbman is right.  Anyone who saw the first debate knows what Obama meant.  

He probably shouldn't assume everyone remembered that earlier discussion of the $18 billion, but the people who aren't completely stupid (ie, voting for McCain) probably got it.

Neil

I remember thinking the same thing during the debate.  Right after Obama said $18 billion and didn't offer any context, I said to a friend that he made a slight mistake there because the only thing the public watching at home would here was that number, that is and more importantly sounds large, even though it is less than 1% of the budget.  Probably nothing more than a small error on Obama's part, but a missed opportunity for sure.

I really like Rhubarb's formulation and suggest the Obama campaign use it when McCain inevitably tries to hit him in the next debate with a similar formulation to what he used on Hannity.

It does have the potential to be an effective rope-a-dope move for Obama next week.