With about 24 percent of the expected vote counted in the gubernatorial race, Gov. Chris Gregoire had about 48 percent of the vote, and her Republican challenger Dino Rossi had nearly 46 percent, and both advanced easily to the general election in November.
We’re not saying this is definitive, in fact we don’t know what to make of it, but here it is: MSNBC reports that Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, the flavor of the moment on the Democratic vice presidential front, just left his house with golf clubs and had this to say to assembled reporters:
“I’m not the guy.”
Asked where he’d be on Saturday, when presumptive nominee Barack Obama has a big rally scheduled in Springfield, Ill., Biden pointed down at his driveway and answered, “Here.”
Of course, how would he know?
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, another top prospect, also gave away nothing today.
The Arizona senator has regularly muddled the names of countries or the sequence of important overseas events, and has contradicted himself on important issues.
But his blunders have very largely gone unreported by the main US television channels and in leading newspapers, with CBS even facing strong claims that it edited out an incorrect McCain response to a question on Iraq during an interview with its star presenter Katie Couric.
Prominent columnists and bloggers, as well as Democrats, are now asking if Mr McCain’s cordial relations with the press - fostered by years of easy access and long press conferences - could make a real difference in his battle for the White House with Senator Barack Obama.
John McCain is soaring to new heights of hypocrisy on his wife’s personal jet. He flies around the country bent on duping the public into believing he’s “one of them,” a regular guy who can empathize with Americans facing an overwhelming economic crush. What’s more, he disparages those who oppose his ridiculous policy proposals as “elitist.” But who’s the real elitist?
The REAL McCain is a multimillionaire who owns ten luxurious homes. The REAL McCain backs President Bush’s tax cuts for big corporations. The REAL McCain empathizes only with the interests of our nation’s wealthy minority, not its money-strapped majority. But far too many are buying into McCain’s deceit because the corporate press won’t present the whole picture, so we created this video to educate the public about the REAL McCain.
Here is a crazy idea to address the United States’ gaping fiscal deficit: persuade corporate America to start paying taxes.
An investigation by the Government Accountability Office found that almost two-thirds of companies in the United States usually pay no corporate income taxes. Big companies, those with more than $50 million in sales or $250 million in assets, are less likely to avoid Uncle Sam altogether. Still, about a quarter of them report no tax liability either.
Sen. Barack Obama has decided on who will be his running mate, but as of late Monday night he had yet to notify the candidate, ABC News has learned.
Obama is expected to make his decision public by the end of this week, ahead of next Monday’s Democratic National Convention.
[...] Although a dark-horse candidate is always possible, aides suggest that Obama has pared his short list down to Biden, Bayh and Kaine. Each comes with advantages and disadvantages for the Democratic nominee.
Who do you think he should pick? We’ve got a new poll up–vote here: http://www.lewiscountydemocrats.net
So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they’re “hearing too much” about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It’s past time for that pressing educational need to be met.
What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.
With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.
The Obama campaign said on Saturday that it received more than $51 million in July — including contributions from 65,000 new donors — slightly less than the previous month.
The report on donations to Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, followed by one day figures made public by the campaign of Senator John McCain, which took in a more modest $27 million last month.
This Time the Press Does Not Wait to Hit a Swiftboater’s Claims
[T]his month, a bestselling anti-Obama book — by a co-author of the most prominent “swiftboat” anti-Kerry book in 2004 — has predictably been published (by Mary Matalin’s imprint) and has gained immediate and wide attention in the mainstream. But this time, in many cases, the media response has been a “swift” kick to its credibility.
[...] A Washington Post editorial for Friday’s paper calls Corsi an “expert of misrepresentation,” and adds, “footnoting to a discredited blog item does not constitute careful scholarship, and the bulk of Mr. Corsi’s book has nothing to do with issues. He gets facts wrong. … He makes offensive statements.”
[...] A New York Times blog item on Thursday connected Corsi to the “9/11 Truth” fringe, citing his questions about the official explanation of why the twin towers collapsed. Earlier this week, in a front-page article, the Times charged, “Several of the book’s accusations, in fact, are unsubstantiated, misleading or inaccurate.”
It makes sense for Barack Obama to slug it out with Jerome Corsi, whose new book paints the presumptive Democratic nominee as a dangerous radical, analysts said Friday.
But Obama’s strategy also carries some risks.
“The old saying is that when you get in the gutter, everybody gets dirty,” said Kevin Wagner, an assistant professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University, particularly with information flying across the Internet.
Corsi’s book, “Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” is number one on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list. The Obama camp responded Thursday with a 41-page, point-by-point refutation of the key charges.