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Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Can you predict the electoral college?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
According to the latest polls, Barack Obama and John McCain are tied in Indiana, a deep-red state that George Bush won by more than 60 percent in 2004. In fact, Obama is doing quite well in a lot of the latest state polls — up by 9 in Michigan, up in Pennsylvania, up or tied in Ohio, up in some polls in Florida, down in others.
My point isn’t to highlight good news for Obama — well, it isn’t my ONLY point. I also want to announce that we’re putting together a contest for this election season, a political version of the NCAA’s March Madness, that will probably be run through this blog.
We’ll give you a map and ask you to predict which candidate will carry each of the 50 states, and we’ll probably use the final national popular vote to break any ties. (However, we could also use the final voting percentage in Georgia — we’re still working out the details).
Will McCain carry New Mexico but lose Colorado? Is Obama strong enough to carry the upper Midwest? Which way will Florida swing?
For all of you political experts out there, it’ll be a chance to strut your stuff.
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John McCain and terrorism
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I have to confess, I just don’t get this one. Charlie Black, a top adviser to John McCain, has been forced to apologize for telling Fortune magazine that he thought McCain’s campaign would benefit if we were attacked again by terrorists.
An Obama spokesman had condemned Black’s remarks as “a complete disgrace,” but again, I don’t get it. Black wasn’t rooting for another attack. He was offering an analysis of what political effect such an attack might produce.
I think Black is probably wrong — McCain has argued that the Bush approach has worked, and another attack would prove that claim wrong. But the faux outrage generated by Black’s candor just makes it more difficult to talk about things honestly in this country, and to talk about things that do actually matter.
For example, the more interesting part of that Fortune article comes when McCain is asked to name the biggest single threat to the American economy.
“Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence,” McCain said. “Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences.”
That’s loony stuff. Radical Islamic extremism cannot possibly “prevail” and does not “affect … our very existence.” Nor is it the biggest threat to our nation’s economy — $140-a-barrel oil and a massive, longterm trade deficit are far bigger problems.
Terrorism is a security threat that must be taken seriously, but McCain is trying to elevate it into a threat as big or bigger than Nazi Germany and imperial Japan combined. That kind of talk actually helps Osama bin Laden, because it blows him up into something far bigger than he and his ragtag bunch could ever hope to be.
Similarly, McCain claimed earlier in the campaign that Iran poses as big a threat to the United States as the old Soviet Union. Again, that’s just absurd. That’s the kind of statement — and poor judgment — that ought to become an issue.
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