"In the mourning we find hope": Biden's somber recast of Obama's story of America

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In his remarks on this week's civil unrest and Trump's authoritarian response today, Biden hit some vitally right notes.  He committed himself as president to obtaining equal justice for all. He spotlighted the depravity of Trump's words and actions in response to this week's demonstrations, accurately recalling their echoes of the vicious police chiefs who assaulted the civil rights demonstrators of the 60s. He spoke of his own crushing personal losses and, with humility and obvious sincerity, modeled the empathy that Trump lacks for suffering triggered by economic inequality and racism. 

Most strikingly to me, he recast Obama's heroic narrative of American history in somber tones even as he echoed Obama's signature tropes -- the pursuit of a more perfect union, the arc of history that bends toward justice.

With Biden's public option, who needs Biden's Medicare buy-in?

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Joe Biden's healthcare reform plan, released last July, is a light sketch of a familiar reform model: "Medicare" for all who want it, centered on a public option that anyone can buy into on a subsidized basis.

Biden proposes a public option offered within the ACA marketplace, paying Medicare rates or something close them to providers (though the language is vague here) and available on a subsidized basis to people whose employers offer health coverage as well as those who lack access to employer-sponsored insurance (though the language on this front is also ambiguous*). The public option, and private plans within the ACA marketplace at the same benchmark metal level, would cover between 80% and 100% of the average enrollee's costs, diminishing with income, at premiums ranging from zero to 8.5% of income.**

A bill introduced in the House by Reps Jan Schakowsky and Rosa DeLauro, the Medicare for America bill, has this basic structure but integrates the new public option into a more comprehensive healthcare system overhaul, revamping and folding in both existing Medicare and Medicaid, and offering buy-ins to employers of all sizes.  Biden's bill leaves Medicaid and existing Medicare intact and does not offer buy-ins to employers, only employees.

That leaves an opening of sorts for Biden's latest initiative: opening existing Medicare to adults aged 60 and over. Such a step is imaginable as a stopgap that could be effected more quickly than Biden's more sweeping overhaul. But Biden is proposing that the opt-in to existing Medicare co-exist as an option beside "the Biden Medicare-like public option — as well as other subsidized private plans available to individuals through the Affordable Care Act."

New colors in the spectrum of Democratic healthcare reform plans

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For some time, Democratic next-gen healthcare reform proposals have fallen on a spectrum  that I've thought as anchored by three main proposal types. Here they are, in ascending order of cost and degree of system change:

• ACA 2.0 - Improve the ACA mainly by a) bulking up the subsidies and extending them farther up the income scale, and/or b) introducing a national public option within the ACA marketplace framework. Chief exemplars: Elizabeth Warren's ACA 2.0 bill; Senators Bennet and Kaine's Medicare-X. 


• Medicare for all who want it: Introduce a strong public option that anyone can buy into on an income-adjusted basis, even if they have access to other affordable insurance, e.g., insurance offered by an employer. Chief current exemplars: The Center for American Progress's Medicare Extra, which is the basis of Reps. DeLauro and Schakowsky's Medicare for America bill.


• Medicare for All (that covers everything for everyone at no cost to anyone except via taxes). Private insurance essentially ends. Chief exemplars: - Bernie Sander's Medicare for All bill, and Rep. Jayapal's House variant.

Our failures of political rhetoric are asymmetric

The study of rhetoric can yield great insights into the way power is structured and masses of people are moved. But those who study rhetoric closely are prone to mixing up cause and effect.

So it is with an essay by New York Times CEO Mark Thompson that usefully traces The Dark History of Straight Talk -- that is, of politicians' claims to authentically channel the mystical will of the people. Simpson begins with Shakespeare's rendition of Mark Anthony's funeral oration for Caesar, in which he claims to be "no orator," but a "plain, blunt man," eschewing the rhetoric that was the chief marker of political authority in Rome. He moves on to reaction against the rationalist language of the Enlightenment, to the hookup of "anti-rhetoric" with nationalism and Heidegger's fetishization of "authentic" language, culminating in his embrace of Hitler. Finally he focuses on the anti-elitism and demonization of out-groups by the current crop of authoritarians in western democracies, culminating (for the moment) in Trump.

All good so far. But here's where I think Thompson confuses conditions that make large numbers people responsive to "authenticism" with the current condition of rhetoric itself:

What we have lost and must strive to regain is a conception of rhetoric that strikes a balance between the demands of reason, character and empathy, and that strives for genuine truthfulness rather than theatrical “authenticity.”

That makes me wonder whether Thompson has ever listened to a certain Barack Obama, who won the presidency by sheer force of rhetoric -- and whose rhetoric has arguably balanced "reason, character and empathy" as powerfully as any president's since Lincoln (whose rhetoric Obama constantly, consciously channels).

Re the qualities Thompson thirsts for: for empathy, I suggest watching Obama tear up when speaking of the Sandy Hook shooting, or listening to him sing Amazing Grace after the Charleston, or read how he delineates the emotional logic of those who perceive reverse racism in his More Perfect Union speech in March 2009*, or lays out the plights of individuals who lack health insurance in his speech to rescue the health reform bill in September 2009.**

Biden in Pilgrimage to Democrats' Matron Saint

In honor of James Fallows' found art department: The NYT 'weekend briefing' on my phone had the image below directly beneath the headline below

Biden, Considering White House Bid, Meets with Elizabeth Warren



Let us hope he found what he was seeking.

Article here. The image was actually attached to this one.

The Obamaquester according to Harry

Harry Reid's view of the sequester -- and how we got saddled with it -- has been seeping into the national political narrative in recent weeks. Notwithstanding his alleged renewed bonds and recent successful teamwork with Obama, his view is not a pretty picture for the president.

In Twitter exchanges with Greg Sargent and others -- I think Jonathan Bernstein and Brian Beutler -- I have sought a convincing account and analysis and possibly justification of the Obama administration's thinking at the fiscal cliff -- why Biden, with Obama's backing, cut in on Reid's negotiations with McConnell and settled for half a revenue loaf and only a short-term sequester postponement. I haven't found one. And today's somewhat triumphal narrative by Sam Stein and Ryan Grim of the Democrats' short-term shutdown victory -- a purported tale of renewed harmony and mutual trust -- also provides the opposite of what I've sought: Reid's indictment of Obama's fiscal cliff conduct.

 He complained that Vice President Joe Biden had undercut fiscal cliff negotiations at the end of 2012, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was offered a more generous deal on tax revenue and sequester spending than Reid felt he could have crafted.
It didn't escape his notice, Reid said, that the deal Biden made conveniently postponed the budget cuts two months, or just long enough to allow the Inauguration and the State of the Union address to pass without the sequester's shadow. Senate Democrats had been pushing for a two-year delay and had been prepared to settle for just one.

No, Bob Woodward, the White House did not move the goalposts on the supercommittee's charge

Bob Woodward claims to have proof, in the form of statements by the principals, that the idea of using sequestration as an enforcement mechanism in the Budget Control Act of 2011 originated with the White House. That may be.*

Woodward also asserts that "the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester." He provides no quotes in this article to back that statement up. If there was any such agreement, it was never put in writing and it is not reflected in the legislative language or in official descriptions of the deal immediately following its announcement.

A CBO statement put out on August 1, 2011, described the supercommittee's task as follows:

Create a Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to propose further deficit reductions, with a stated goal of achieving at least $1.5 trillion in budgetary savings over 10 years

The BCA itself describes the supercommittee task as follows:

GOAL.—The goal of the joint committee  shall be to reduce the deficit by at least $1,500,000,000,000 over the period of fiscal years (Sect 401b, p. 52).

"Reduce the deficit" does not mean "by spending cuts only."

Publicly, from the moment the deal was announced, Republicans insisted that the supercommittee was tasked with considering cuts only, and Democrats insisted that new revenues would be part of the mix.  Announcing the deal on July 31, 2011, Obama said this of the supercommittee (my emphasis):

If Dems scotch a deal, cont.

Reports that Biden, taking up the fiscal cliff baton, is on the point of giving away the store have sparked deep depression in the left-side twittersphere this morning, leading me to this acid flashback:

@xpostfactoid1 another past pattern possible: Dems balk as crappy deal takes shape; O makes a last-minute ask to pacify them; Repubs reject & go home 7:53 AM - 31 Dec 12 · Details

And on cue, we have this from Senator Tom Harkin this morning:

December 31st, 2012 11:13 AM ET Washington (CNN) - Sen. Tom Harkin, a veteran Democrat and a leading liberal voice, told CNN Monday that he and other Democrats may try to block the fiscal cliff deal that's being furiously negotiated ahead of the year-end deadline.

Maybe I shouldn't do debate assessment

I begin to think I'm not a good reader of debates. While not looking at commentary, I was afraid that Biden would be laughed off the national stage. He shouted nonstop until his voice gave out; he grimaced far too much and failed to look at Ryan when confronting him (though I may have been misled in that by the C-Span split screen; when I switched to PBS he seemed more natural in this regard), he interrupted incessantly, and I thought he was often incoherent on domestic policy (though generally effective on foreign), failing to answer Ryan's allegations systematically and jumbling a bunch of not-fully-articulated assertions together. Ryan, on the other hand, struck me as methodical, systematic, unruffled and precise -- never mind that his characterizations of Obama administration policies -- and Romney's -- were wildly misleading.

"The most important thing Joe Biden can do"

I'd like to offer a quick elaboration of a wise tweet by LOLGOP:

The most important thing Joe Biden can do tonight is describe the Ryan Budget in the clearest terms possible.

The essence of the Romney/Ryan campaign is to hide the ball. The task is to make concrete the scope and the impact of the cuts Ryan calls for.  The template was laid down too long ago by a certain Barack Obama:

Instead of moderating their views even slightly, the Republicans running Congress right now have doubled down and proposed a budget so far to the right it makes the Contract with America look like the New Deal. In fact, that renowned liberal, Newt Gingrich, first called the original version of the budget “radical” and said it would contribute to right wing social engineering. This is coming from Newt Gingrich. And yet this isn’t a budget supported by some small group in the Republican Party. This is now the party’s governing platform.

'Ware Nemesis, Obama

Courtesy of the Dish, a tweet from Jeffrey Goldberg in immediate reaction to Joe Biden's Convention paeaen to Barack Obama, Osama-killer:

@JeffreyGoldberg I've been told I'm a bloodthirsty warmongering neoconservative, but for whatever reason, I just don't like all this bragging about killing. 6:51 PM - 6 Sep 12

For the record, I was on the same page. Below, excerpts from that section of Biden's speech, and my immediate reactions on Twitter.

With Kafka in Obama's War Council

Once more, indulging in the vice of commenting on a book while still reading it...

Woodward's Obama's Wars is structured as a kind of coming-of-age novel:  can Obama assert his authority over the military? Can he avoid simply acquiescing to their favored course of action in Afghanistan -- a fully resourced counterinsurgency? I've just passed what seems to be the climax of this plot: when Obama protests that the four-option menu they've drawn up at his insistence is really only one option: two choices are utterly unrealistic, and one of the remaining ones is a minor variant of the military's favorite plan, differing in little semantics -- tinkering with the mix and timing of a 40,000 troop surge.  And the denouement is already clear: Obama narrows the mission, speeds up the timetable, adds the controversial draw-down date, and reduces the American troop commitment.

And yet to me, the closely narrated grueling deliberations that are the guts of this hero's journey have a Kafkaesque feel.  That's because the commitment to a counterinsurgency mission -- however stripped down -- remains intact, despite clear and often repeated articulation -- by Biden, Eikenberry, Holbrooke, Peter Lavoy of the DNI, and General James Cartwright, of the following facts and uncontradicted hypotheses:

1) The Taliban itself is not a danger to the U.S.  

Biden:..asked, "Is there any evidence the Afghan Taliban advocates attacks outside of Afghanistan and on the U.S., or if it took over more of Afghanistan it would have more of an outward focus?"
     No evidence, Lavoy said (187).

2) The Karzai government is not a viable partner.

Are we aligned with the Kabul government? [Eikenberry] asked. We assume yes. "I would challenge that assumption," he said. They were severely hindered by Karzai's weakness as president, the absence of a strong central government.
     "Right now, we're dealing with an extraordinarily corrupt government" (218).

Biden broke in for a question. "If the government's a criminal syndicate a year from now, how will troops make a difference?
     No one recorded an answer in their notes (221).

Gates...[said] that he had little confidence in a civilian surge or in serious governance reforms by Karzai (258).

3) The Taliban feeds on our presence.

The two weakest links were corruption and the Afghan police. "Our presence is the corrupting force," Holbrooke announced. All the contractors for development pay the Taliban for protection and use of the roads, so American and coalition dollars help finance the Taliban. And with more development, higher traffic on roads, and more troops, the Taliban would make more money (226).

Obama sticks the shiv in Cheney

I gasped as I watched a smiling Obama unload this in his White House Correspondent's Dinner speech:

Dick Cheney was supposed to be here but he is very busy working on his memoirs, tentatively titled, "How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People." (Laughter.)

That looks like carefully calculated (and calibrated) payback for Cheney's loud, frequent assertions that Obama is risking the country's security by abjuring the Cheney torture regimen. But does it sound like Obama? Am I crazy -- is this just bonhomie, in a class with comparing Biden to an eager puppy dog? Or did Obama deliver the deadliest insult leveled by one national politician against another in recent memory? He implicitly summed up Cheney's career as an exercise in treachery and torture.

Getting used to change

In "It's a Wonderful Life," after a highly eventful day at the office, newlywed George Bailey gets a buzz from his altered life condition when he's told that "Mrs. Bailey is on the line" and realizes that it's his wife, not his mother, calling.

I got a similar frisson from the very ordinariness of this lede:

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- White House officials warned Americans that economic prospects are darkening as they sought to ensure rapid Congressional approval of President Barack Obama’s $825 billion stimulus package.

Vice President Joe Biden told the CBS program “Face the Nation” that “it’s worse, quite frankly, than everyone thought it was.” Larry Summers, Obama’s top economic adviser, said the economy faces “very difficult” months, speaking today on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

"White House officials" triggers a conditioned reflex: skepticism, wariness, brace for outrage. Don't want to entirely let go of that. All administrations spin, and screw up, and yield to the wrong pressures. But the distrust reached pathological proportions over the past eight years -- across the political spectrum, eventually. Now hope is fresh that most of the time at least we'll credit the rationality and good faith of what we hear from "Administration officials."

Hillary packs a punch in Scranton

In primary season, Barack Obama proved himself a much better speechmaker than Hillary Clinton. But in Scranton today, Hillary's attack on Bush-McCainonmics packed a stronger populist punch than Obama's usual fare. Her riff below shares a core theme of Obama's: that "prosperity" isn't real or sustainable unless it's shared. But it's got a couple of zingers he could do worse than borrow.

In the runup, she spun a narrative in which Republicans ignored the housing crisis, despite her warnings and proposals (no mention of Obama's), but sprang to action when the crisis hit the banks. Then this:

According to the Republicans in this new global economy, America can’t win unless most Americans lose. It makes absolutely no sense, but that is truly what they believe. That’s why they ignored the home mortgage crisis until it became a financial crisis.

That’s why John McCain and has even proposed more tax cuts for the oil companies and the drug companies. That’s why John McCain has said repeatedly that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Because to John McCain and George Bush the middle class isn’t fundamental, it’s ornamental. They don’t understand that we are at the core of whether this country goes up or down.

That’s why my friends sending the Republicans to solve this economic crisis is like sending the bull to clean up the china closet. They broke it and we’re not buying it anymore. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will be leaders who will lead us out of this economic crisis. They will once again clean up this economic mess that Republicans have left behind.

In case anybody doubts we can do this – I want you to think back. By the close of the Clinton Administration, America had created 22 million new jobs. Our nation had built an economy with the lowest child poverty rate in 20 years. Wages were rising and prosperity was shared. We produced a balanced budget and a budget surplus.

Now, 8 years later we have to add a digit to the national debt clock. It took a Democratic President to clean up after the last President Bush. It’s going to take a Democratic President to clean up after this President.

Make no mistake about it and we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again. America will once again rise from the ashes of the Bushes.

Back in March, Obama offered a memorable diagnosis of the financial crisis: ""What was bad for Main Street was bad for Wall Street. Pain trickled up." It was vintage Obama: a cerebral cause-and-effect narrative. Hillary transcribes the diagnosis of trickle-down economics into pure populism: According to the Republicans in this new global economy, America can’t win unless most Americans lose. That's gold. The middle class isn’t fundamental, it’s ornamental [to McCain and Bush] is silver. "Sending the Republicans to solve this economic crisis is like sending the bull to clean up the china closet" is copper -- pedestrian but solid fare. "America will once again rise from the ashes of the Bushes" -- pithy, but unfair to the elder Bush.. In any case, going back two decades to attack Poppy serves the Clinton's interests, not Obama's -- it dilutes the overwhelming case against W. and "more of the same" McCain.

For Obama, the middle class is "you"; for Hillary, it's "we." Bogus, but in the later primaries the Appalachian belt seemed to buy it. The speech was larded with references to her grandfather buried in Scranton, his elementary school education, etc. etc.

Bill, btw, delivered a warmup almost straight out of Saturday Night Live. He showered some praise on Biden but had practically nothing good to say about Obama. Bill "endorsed" him essentially as a fill-in-the-blank Democrat.

The debate format helped Biden

For last night's vice presidential debate, the McCain camp insisted on a formula that reduced rebuttal and response time. As with Hillary's delegate rules agenda and her Convention agenda, Obama yielded on some procedural points and was excoriated as a wimp. As in his dealings with Hillary, the agreed-on procedures worked out just fine for the Obama camp.

With the shortened format, Biden's powerful rebuttals of Palin's attacks on Obama generally went unanswered. The pattern was reinforced by Ifill's rigid adherence to formula, and by Palin's failure to insist on opportunities to counterattack (instead, she created opportunities to change the subject). So in most cases, a discussion closed with Biden's assertions unanswered. Some examples:

1. Invited to defend McCain's health care plan, Palin outlined it competently:

....he's got a good health care plan that is detailed. And I want to give you a couple details on that. He's proposing a $5,000 tax credit for families so that they can get out there and they can purchase their own health care coverage. That's a smart thing to do. That's budget neutral. That doesn't cost the government anything as opposed to Barack Obama's plan to mandate health care coverage and have universal government run program and unless you're pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately, I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds. But a $5,000 health care credit through our income tax that's budget neutral. That's going to help.

Then, Biden:

Now, with regard to the -- to the health care plan, you know, it's with one hand you giveth, the other you take it. You know how Barack Obama -- excuse me, do you know how John McCain pays for his $5,000 tax credit you're going to get, a family will get?

He taxes as income every one of you out there, every one of you listening who has a health care plan through your employer. That's how he raises $3.6 trillion, on your -- taxing your health care benefit to give you a $5,000 plan, which his Web site points out will go straight to the insurance company.

And then you're going to have to replace a $12,000 -- that's the average cost of the plan you get through your employer -- it costs $12,000. You're going to have to pay -- replace a $12,000 plan, because 20 million of you are going to be dropped. Twenty million of you will be dropped.

So you're going to have to place -- replace a $12,000 plan with a $5,000 check you just give to the insurance company. I call that the "Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere."

IFILL: Thank you, Senator. Now, I want to get - try to get you both to answer a question...

2. Taxes: Palin charged (rightly) that Obama voted for the pork-laden energy bill that McCain voted against, granting tax breaks to the oil companies; she then took credit for imposing higher taxes on oil companies in Alaska (so high, according to Andrew Halcro, that they're likely to go slow on drilling in Alaska when oil prices drop). Biden's response:

Again, let me -- let's talk about those tax breaks. Barack Obama -- Obama voted for an energy bill because, for the first time, it had real support for alternative energy.

When there were separate votes on eliminating the tax breaks for the oil companies, Barack Obama voted to eliminate them. John did not.

And let me just ask a rhetorical question: If John really wanted to eliminate them, why is he adding to his budget an additional $4 billion in tax cuts for ExxonMobils of the world that, in fact, already have made $600 billion since 2001?

And, look, I agree with the governor. She imposed a windfall profits tax up there in Alaska. That's what Barack Obama and I want to do.

We want to be able to do for all of you Americans, give you back $1,000 bucks, like she's been able to give back money to her folks back there.

But John McCain will not support a windfall profits tax. They've made $600 billion since 2001, and John McCain wants to give them, all by itself -- separate, no additional bill, all by itself -- another $4 billion tax cut.

If that is not proof of what I say, I'm not sure what can be. So I hope the governor is able to convince John McCain to support our windfall profits tax, which she supported in Alaska, and I give her credit for it.

IFILL: Next question.

3. Palin charged twice that Obama voted to cut off funding for U.S. troops in Iraq, because he voted against a funding bill that lacked a timeline. Biden pointed out on both occasions that McCain voted against a funding bill that had a time line. The second time, he pivoted to attack McCain's whole record on Iraq.AGain, the format -- and Ifill, sticking to it, and Palin, failing to assert the classic "first I've got to respond to that" precluded rebuttal:

PALIN (end of riff)...Anyone I think who can cut off funding for the troops after promising not to is another story.

IFILL: Sen. Biden?

BIDEN: John McCain voted to cut off funding for the troops. Let me say that again. John McCain voted against an amendment containing $1 billion, $600 million that I had gotten to get MRAPS, those things that are protecting the governor's son and pray god my son and a lot of other sons and daughters.

He voted against it. He voted against funding because he said the amendment had a time line in it to end this war. He didn't like that. But let's get straight who has been right and wrong. John McCain and Dick Cheney said while I was saying we would not be greeted as liberators, we would not - this war would take a decade and not a day, not a week and not six months, we would not be out of there quickly. John McCain was saying the Sunnis and Shias got along with each other without reading the history of the last 700 years. John McCain said there would be enough oil to pay for this. John McCain has been dead wrong. I love him. As my mother would say, god love him, but he's been dead wrong on the fundamental issues relating to the conduct of the war. Barack Obama has been right. There are the facts.

IFILL: Let's move to Iran and Pakistan.

4. Diplomacy: When Palin went after Obama's YouTube promise to meet with the world's rogue leaders, Biden again dispatched the charge quickly (so quickly he could have been easily countered), then broadened the frame to attack McCain's whole approach to diplomacy. Again, there was no rebuttal after Ifill moved on:

PALIN: But again, with some of these dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms, our democracy, our tolerance, our respect for women's rights, those who would try to destroy what we stand for cannot be met with just sitting down on a presidential level as Barack Obama had said he would be willing to do. That is beyond bad judgment. That is dangerous.

No, diplomacy is very important. First and foremost, that is what we would engage in. But diplomacy is hard work by serious people. It's lining out clear objectives and having your friends and your allies ready to back you up there and have sanctions lined up before any kind of presidential summit would take place.

IFILL: Senator?

BIDEN: Can I clarify this? This is simply not true about Barack Obama. He did not say sit down with Ahmadinejad.

The fact of the matter is, it surprises me that Sen. McCain doesn't realize that Ahmadinejad does not control the security apparatus in Iran. The theocracy controls the security apparatus, number one.

Number two, five secretaries of state did say we should talk with and sit down.

Now, John and Gov. Palin now say they're all for -- they have a passion, I think the phrase was, a passion for diplomacy and that we have to bring our friends and allies along.

Our friends and allies have been saying, Gwen, "Sit down. Talk. Talk. Talk." Our friends and allies have been saying that, five secretaries of state, three of them Republicans.

And John McCain has said he would go along with an agreement, but he wouldn't sit down. Now, how do you do that when you don't have your administration sit down and talk with the adversary?

And look what President Bush did. After five years, he finally sent a high-ranking diplomat to meet with the highest-ranking diplomats in Iran, in Europe, to try to work out an arrangement.

Our allies are on that same page. And if we don't go the extra mile on diplomacy, what makes you think the allies are going to sit with us?

The last point I'll make, John McCain said as recently as a couple of weeks ago he wouldn't even sit down with the government of Spain, a NATO ally that has troops in Afghanistan with us now. I find that incredible.

IFILL: Governor, you mentioned Israel and your support for Israel.

In defense of Obama and on attack against McCain, Biden was pitch perfect. He didn't patronize Palin, he didn't personalize his dismissal of her "bogus" (his word) charges -- he refuted them briefly, then broadened the field to attack McCain more generally. He never went after Palin herself -- as he could have, when she claimed to cut taxes as mayor (she raised Wasilla's sales tax, its main revenue source, by 25% to pay for a hockey rink). He made Palin seem like simply a mouthpiece for McCain, and he pounded the absent McCain at will.

Killing McCain with kindness

Perhaps the most effective riff in Obama's convention speech was his attack on McCain's policies anchored by the refrain, "It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it."

A lot of Democrats have been wringing their hands because they feel Obama isn't Rovian enough. But Obama's counterattack is double-edged: full frontal attack on McCain's "failed policies of the past," and a pointed contrast between his own policy-based criticism of McCain and McCain's character-based assault on him.

The policy attack is straightforward: McCain is offering to continue the failed policies of the Bush Administration. The character issue is a bank-shot: contrast the way my opponent speaks about me with the way I speak about him.

The convention made plain that Obama has put his stamp on the party. The Democrats all attacked his way. Bill Clinton, Kerry, Biden, and then Obama himself killed McCain with kindness. Their tributes went far beyond the obligatory attack preface: "John McCain is a great war hero, but..." They emphasized personal friendship, paid tribute to McCain's love of country, noted past stands he's taken that Democrats could admire. Then each pivoted to McCain's recent flip-flops (on taxes, immigration, climate change), fervent early support for invading Iraq, descent into Rovian attack politics, and 90-95% support of Bush.

First, Bill Clinton:

The choice is clear. The Republicans will nominate a good man who served our country heroically and suffered terribly in Vietnam. He loves our country every bit as much as we all do. As a Senator, he has shown his independence on several issues. But on the two great questions of this election, how to rebuild the American Dream and how to restore America’s leadership in the world, he still embraces the extreme philosophy which has defined his party for more than 25 years, a philosophy we never had a real chance to see in action until 2001, when the Republicans finally gained control of both the White House and Congress. Then we saw what would happen to America if the policies they had talked about for decades were implemented.

They took us from record surpluses to an exploding national debt; from over 22 million new jobs down to 5 million; from an increase in working family incomes of $7,500 to a decline of more than $2,000; from almost 8 million Americans moving out of poverty to more than 5 and a half million falling into poverty - and millions more losing their health insurance.

Now, in spite of all the evidence, their candidate is promising more of the same: More tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that will swell the deficit, increase inequality, and weaken the economy. More band-aids for health care that will enrich insurance companies, impoverish families and increase the number of uninsured. More going it alone in the world, instead of building the shared responsibilities and shared opportunities necessary to advance our
security and restore our influence.

Kerry:

I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let's compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain. Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain's own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against theimmigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you're against it.

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what's more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same "Rove" tactics and the same "Rove" staff to repeat the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.

Biden:

John McCain is my friend. We’ve known each other for three decades. We’ve traveled the world together. It’s a friendship that goes beyond politics. And the personal courage and heroism John demonstrated still amaze me.

But I profoundly disagree with the direction that John wants to take the country. For example, John thinks that during the Bush years “we’ve made great progress economically.” I think it’s been abysmal.

And in the Senate, John sided with President Bush 95 percent of the time. Give me a break. When John McCain proposes $200 billion in new tax breaks for corporate America, $1 billion alone for just eight of the largest companies, but no relief for 100 million American families, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.

Even today, as oil companies post the biggest profits in history — a half trillion dollars in the last five years — he wants to give them another $4 billion in tax breaks. But he voted time and again against incentives for renewable energy: solar, wind, biofuels. That’s not change; that’s more of the same.

Millions of jobs have left our shores, yet John continues to support tax breaks for corporations that send them there. That’s not change; that’s more of the same.

He voted 19 times against raising the minimum wage. For people who are struggling just to get to the next day, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.

And when he says he will continue to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq when Iraq is sitting on a surplus of nearly $80 billion, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.

The choice in this election is clear. These times require more than a good soldier; they require a wise leader, a leader who can deliver change the change everybody knows we need.

And finally, Obama:

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans? How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.

Well it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America.

Lest the contrast between these clean-cutting attacks and McCain's middle school taunts be lost on anyone, Obama took it upon himself to spell it out. As in his fight with the Clintons, he positioned himself as the adult in the campaign:

what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other’s character and patriotism.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America.

So I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

Back in March, as Hillary was ratcheting up her attacks on Obama's readiness to be commander in chief, David Brooks mocked the Obama campaign's purported belief that "they can go on the attack, but in the right way. They can be tough and keep their virginity, too. " But that's more or less what Obama did. Successfully.

When the Clintons went fiercely negative, Obama said they were mired in the same old "say-anything, do-anything" politics that Americans were tired of. While Hillary renewed and ratcheted up her attacks at intervals, Obama managed to shame her into shutting them off for long stretches, during one of which -- from late January to the end of February -- he essentially wrapped up the nomination.

It was hard for Obama to go on the offensive against Hillary because there was so little policy difference. Against McCain, he and his party have got a literally clean shot -- as the four-barrelled assault showcased above makes clear.

At the same time, eschewing character attacks, Obama style, constitutes the most devastating character attack. That's what happened in the primary: the long fight evoked the candidates' characters, and in Hillary's case it wasn't pretty. As she threw everything she could get her hands on at Obama, he was pointedly magnanimous at strategic intervals: praising Hillary as a "fierce and formidable competitor," asserting that she should stay in the race as long as she wanted, dismissing her bizarre allusion to RFK's assassination as a product of campaign fatigue.

At Denver, Obama started sculpting a similar character contrast between himelf and McCain. This time, he had the whole party carving with him.

Related posts:
Obama does it with Integrity
Changing "The Rules" on Clinton
Truth and Transformation

Biden and Kerry: hail to the chief

John Kerry and Joe Biden packed quite a one-two punch tonight. Both of them did a superb job hammering the Hillary Clinton-originated nonsense that McCain is more qualified than Obama to be Commander-in-Chief. Both got specific contrasting Obama's foreign policy judgment with McCain's. Kerry's refrain was, who can we trust to keep America safe? Biden's: John McCain was wrong, Barack Obama was right. Both emphasized that on multiple fronts even the Bush Administration and McCain himself are coming round to adopt Obama's policies: agree to a timeline in Iraq, shift troops to Afghanistan, talk to Iran. Both recited the same catalog of Obama's good judgment vs. McCain's bad judgment: Iraq would be a cakewalk/invading Iraq would fan the flames of the Middle East; we should stay in Iraq for decades/we should shift responsibility to the Iraqis; Afghanistan is taken care of (McCain three years ago)/we should shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Obama's major foreign policy speeches have shown wide-ranging strategic acumen. But he hasn't gotten much credit for it. Biden and Kerry placed his record of good judgment in sharp relief tonight.

That support also of course buttressed Bill Clinton's more general but monumental affirmation: he is ready to be President. Clinton stated the proposition; Kerry and Biden provided supporting evidence in spades.