John McCain

Bob Fertik — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:58:56 -0500

Display this full page for our collections of important facts about John McCain.

For ongoing stories in the news, check our blog:
http://democrats.com/john-mccain

McCain Has No Path to Victory

Bob Fertik — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:48:12 -0500

All the Republicans on my teevee insist McCain still has a "path to victory" that starts in Pennsylvania. They are counting on a massive swing among white voters resulting from the despicable racist Reverend Wright ad that is only running in Pennsylvania. But looking at the latest polls, all I can say Bullshit. After concentrating on PA for six weeks, McCain is exactly where he was before the bottom of his campaign fell out on Lehman Monday. And all of McCain's attacks on Obama have shaved .5% off his lead. McCain's final "path to victory" is a lie, just like every other part of his campaign.

Q:What do you get when you cross John McCain and Sara Palin?

benson4progress — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 14:19:56 -0400

Q:What do you get when you cross John McCain and Sara Palin?

A: McPain that lasts for four years, if your don't vote!

McCain Campaign Attacks 'The Disabled'

Bob Fertik — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:25:39 -0400

Last night, Rachel Maddow made fun of Kit Bond's attack on "the gay," but no one has demanded an apology from McCain-Palin for Bond's attack on people with disabilities.

Disability Rights Organizations Express Outrage Over Attacks at McCain-Palin Rally

(Washington, DC) The National Coalition for Disability Rights (NCDR) pushed back today against the McCain-Palin campaign for ridiculing the legal rights of people with disabilities. News reports describe McCain-Palin campaign representative Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo), joining Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin at a rally in Rush Limbaugh's hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, mocking Presidential candidate Senator Barak Obama for stating that he's looking to nominate judges who empathize with "the disabled."

"It's Halloween and it seems that Sarah Palin's mask of support for people with "special needs" is slipping. Despite past pandering to people with disabilities, McCain-Palin are actually opposed to vital disability legislation like the Community Choice Act and they want to appoint judges who will further roll back the civil rights protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act," declared NCDR's founder and president, Jim Ward.

NPR's Nina Totenberg has reported that McCain-Palin's and conservatives' "most oft-mentioned prospects" for nomination to the Supreme Court include Ohio Judge Jeffrey Sutton. Sutton was opposed by hundreds of disability organizations when he was nominated by President Bush after successfully weakening the ADA with states' rights arguments. As a sitting judge, he has recently supported the execution of criminals with developmental disabilities and has undermined the Help America Vote Act(HAVA).

Disability rights advocates are further incensed that the McCain-Palin campaign has reframed this civil rights struggle, one founded in concepts of equality, dignity and self-respect, as an issue of "special needs."

Disability rights advocate, Steve Gold states, "Yes we need support services. Yes we need inclusive education. Yes we need integrated employment. Yes we need equal rights. This not "special". These needs are based on us, people with disabilities, equal members of our communities. We are not inspirational nor are we "special". We are PROUD PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES who should push back when anyone describes us as anything but equal members of our communities."

The National Coalition for Disability Rights is a nonpartisan nonprofit that does not endorse political candidates. We are a coalition of national, state and local disability, civil rights and social justice organizations united to protect and promote the human rights of children and adults with physical and mental disabilities.

FOX Declares McCain the Loser

Bob Fertik — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:55:48 -0400

Notice something strange next to "McCain" in the text ("chyron") below? Yes, that's a D for Democrat. All FOX-ologists know that chyron "errors" are never accidental. Instead, they are meant to send a message from Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.

Their messages have two intended audiences: the viewers who see the chyrons, and the politicians who are in them.

By putting a (D) next to McCain, the message for viewers is: this guy you see who's done something bad is a Democrat. Don't argue with us: only Democrats do bad things, so whenever you see someone doing something bad, it's a Democrat.

And the message for the politician is: you're a loser! They mean it both in the narrower sense (you're going to lose the election) and in the broader sense (you suck). They also mean it in the "actionable" sense - we hate your guts and we're running you out of our party.

Here's a previous example of when a Republican did something really bad.

To add insult to injury, McCain's own party has "disappeared" him from their homepage, while Obama is the star of his party's website.

Campaign Endorsements: Obama Gets Colin Powell and McCain Gets Al Qaeda

Chip — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:53:57 -0400

Campaign Endorsements: Obama Gets Colin Powell and McCain Gets Al Qaeda
Ivan Eland | Independent Institute | October 27, 2008

In the battle for endorsements in the presidential campaign, Barack Obama snared a strong nod from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and John McCain received an equally strong recommendation from al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda? Yes, you heard right, al-Qaeda! This endorsement indicates what has long been known: al-Qaeda is fairly sophisticated politically. And this doesn’t mean McCain is the more accomplished candidate—in fact, apparently the group believes he is the more gullible of the two men.

Quite bluntly, al-Qaeda says it wants McCain to win essentially because it thinks he is most likely to continue Bush’s macho “bull in the China shop” war on terror. There has been a lot of bull in the China shop, and al-Qaeda wants to make sure it continues.

According to al-Hesbah website, which has close ties to the group, “Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election.” The website was confident that McCain would continue the “failing march of his predecessor.” The site argued that a terrorist attack could push the election into McCain’s column, and thus lead to an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world in an attempt take revenge on al-Qaeda. The website already brags about having lured the Bush administration and the U.S. into a trap that has “exhausted its resources and bankrupted its economy” and expects that to accelerate if the even more hawkish McCain gets elected.

Most terrorism analysts would agree that al-Qaeda has successfully duped the Bush administration. Whether McCain, if elected, would fall into a similar trap is unknowable before the election. Sometimes politicians turn 180 degrees from their campaign rhetoric after being elected—after all, during the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush promised to give us a “more humble foreign policy” compared to the Clinton years of profligate small scale military interventions in the developing world. During the 2008 campaign, McCain has been a bigger hawk than even the president on Iraq, but I suppose it is at least possible that he could wise up after taking office.

Both Bush and McCain have macho tendencies and that’s what al-Qaeda brutally exploits. It is standard practice for weak actors, such as terrorist groups and guerillas, to bait the stronger party by attacking and then hope for excessive retaliation. Such overreaction makes it easier for such groups to garner more money and recruits for their causes and also to overextend the giant. Instead of trying to go after the al-Qaeda leadership using intelligence, law enforcement, and surgical Special Forces strikes in the shadows, Bush launched a high profile invasion and occupation of the Muslim land of Afghanistan—the very thing that drives radical Islamists to morph into terrorists. He then compounded the error by unnecessarily blundering into a second invasion and occupation of a Muslim land—Iraq—that had nothing at all to do with neutralizing the 9/11 attackers. Al-Qaeda is betting that McCain is an even bigger stumbling cowboy than Bush.

But al-Qaeda also may have lost sight of its original objective. Originally, the major goal of its attacks against the United States was to get “infidels” off Islamic lands. Now al-Qaeda seems to hope to provoke the United States into invading and occupying ever more Muslim lands—in order to exhaust the U.S. beyond being mired in its two existing quagmires and to drum up even more recruits and money for its cause. As with most maturing organizations, organizational survival and expansion become goals in themselves.

The Obama campaign, seemingly much more sophisticated than McCain’s effort, must be smirking as it holds its tongue about the endorsement of its rival by what is probably the most famous terrorist group in history, especially after McCain has ham-handedly attacked Obama’s association with Bill Ayers, a washed up domestic terrorist turned community activist, who hasn’t committed terrorism in decades. But the Obama campaign probably just wants to let al-Qaeda’s endorsement speak for itself. Ironically, in spite of getting an endorsement from the most heinous terrorist group in world history, McCain will probably try to continue to beat Obama over the head with Bill Ayers rap—much like the draft-evading Bush questioned the war heroism of John Kerry during the 2004 campaign.

If Bush fell into al-Qaeda’s trap from the right, however, Obama, if elected, could very well fall into it from the left. Muscular liberals often think that their foreign policy is very different from Bush’s neo-conservative fare, but it often gets us to the same place—in al-Qaeda’s crosshairs. Such liberals tend to use military power for “humanitarian” reasons. Even when such interventions don’t have ulterior motives—which, as in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti, they almost always do—they often make somebody very mad. For example, in the Muslim land of Somalia during the Clinton administration, bin Laden helped Somalis with the attack that killed 18 American troops and caused the U.S. to withdraw its forces from that country. Also, Obama has talked about getting more involved in the Muslim-inhabited region of Darfur in Sudan.

With talk of terrorist strikes this close to the election, it is possible that al-Qaeda could be once again trying to influence the outcome. In late October 2004, bin Laden released a video tape several days before the U.S. presidential election that warned of an attack, which John Kerry’s campaign believed tipped the electoral balance against them. According to Richard Clarke, the chief counter-terrorism advisor in the Clinton and Bush White Houses, U.S. intelligence analysts believe that that is exactly what bin Laden wanted to do. Similarly, in March 2004, al-Qaeda bombed a Spanish train in a likely attempt to throw the election against then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who had been one of the few major U.S allies sending troops to help out in Iraq. It worked, Aznar lost, and Spanish troops were withdrawn from Iraq.

Let’s hope that the rhetoric on al-Qaeda’s website is just bluster, as in October 2004, rather than turning into an attack, as it did in Spain in March 2004. We want a fair election with no outside interference from evildoers.

Ivan Eland

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Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He is author of the books, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.

Full Biography and Recent Publications

McCain's Closing Argument

Bob Fertik — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:52:11 -0400

Here is John McCain's closing argument:

At a time when America is facing historic crisis we can't put our fate in the hands of an untested, inexperienced candidate. John McCain has served his country all his life, and he is the most prepared to restore our economy, bring back fiscal discipline, manage the two wars, and keep Americans safe.

America facing an historic crisis? Yes indeed - thanks to George Bush, John McCain, and the Republican Party dictatorship that misruled without dissent from 2001-2007.

Untested, inexperienced candidate? That's Sarah Palin, you betcha.

McCain served his country all his life? Sorry, McCain has always put himself ahead of his country.

Most prepared to restore our economy? Sorry, merely being a drama queen won't fix anything - especially when McCain's economic policies are identical to Bush's:

Bring back fiscal discipline? Sorry, the Iraq War was the biggest fiscal disaster in American history - at least until Paulson's Plunder.

Manage the two wars? Sorry, there shouldn't have been two wars, but now we're losing both.

Keep Americans safe? Yeah, just like George Bush did.

Don't Poke the Barracuda

Bob Fertik — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:22:32 -0400

McCain's advisors are making a big mistake going after Palin privately with attacks like this:

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser, “she does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: divas trust only unto themselves as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

As Kevin Drum notes, Sarah Barracuda will get her revenge, sooner rather than later:

And you know the part I'm really looking forward to? Sarah Palin's role in all this. I expect her to rip McCain absolutely to shreds. On background, of course, but it will be no less vicious for that. Her future, such as it is, lies with the wingnut rump of the party, and she knows what her audience wants: John McCain's blood. And lots of it. They never liked him in the first place, and I expect them to be howling for his head on a platter starting at about 8:01 pm EST on November 4th.

I'm Calling the Race for Obama

dlindorff — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:36:54 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I’m ready to call this election. It’s going to be a big win for Barack Obama.

I know this because of a story I heard from an employee of a major
polling organization. He tells of a poll worker who was interviewing
homeowners in a small town in central Pennsylvania, part of that “real”
American hailed by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
The man knocked on the door, and when the woman of the house answered,
told her he was a pollster and wanted to know how her household planned
to vote in November.

The woman turned and yelled into the house, “Honey, how are we voting this year?”

From inside the house, a male voice yelled back, “I guess we’re voting for the nigger.”

The woman turned to the stunned pollster and, without a hint of embarrassment, said, “I guess we’re voting for Obama.”

Simply put, Obama has won the racist vote, a core Republican constituency since the late 1960s.

Indeed, it is likely that instead of the famed “Bradley Effect”
(named after the Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, who famously lost a
race for California governor which the polls said he would win
handily), according to which some white voters supposedly tell poll
takers they are voting for the black candidate in a race for fear of
appearing racist, while in fact they plan on voting for the white
candidate, the opposite is going to occur. That is, there are probably
many white racist voters like the one in this small Pennsylvania town,
whether in some northern suburb or village, or in Southern states like
Virginia, North Carolina or Georgia, who are fed up with the Bush
years, want a change, and are planning to vote for Obama, but would not
want their friends to know they were voting for a black man. Call it
the “Obama Effect.”

If I’m right that this anecdote is reflective of a broader
phenomenon, look for just the opposite of what we saw happen in the
2004 election, when the exit polls and the networks were calling the
election for John Kerry, and in fact key states like Ohio, supposedly
solidly in the Democratic column, went for Bush. (Sure there was voting
machine chicanery, but there were also problems with the exit polls.)
This year, if there are substantial numbers of white voters who vote
for Obama but sheepishly tell exit pollsters that they voted for
McCain, we may hear that races are close, or that states are going for
McCain that will ultimately, when the actual votes are counted, go for
Obama.

In a broader sense, even based upon the pre-election poll numbers
we are seeing, with Obama ahead in Virginia and North Carolina and
within the margin of error in Indiana, Georgia, North Dakota and
Montana, what seems to be happening in this election is the collapse of
the long-successful Republican strategy of using “social issues” and
fear-mongering, particularly fear of African-Americans and immigrants,
to convince white working class Americans to vote for a party whose
interests were and are clearly against their own. Republican campaign
ads and candidate speeches are larded with code words that seek to
appeal to those fears: “pals around with terrorists,” “don’t know who
he really is,” “anti-American preacher,” “wife not proud to be an
American,” “community activist,” “socialist,” “not really born in
America.” But they’re not working. Neither is the old Republican
nostrum of cutting taxes for the rich on the pretense that it will lead
to jobs for the poor. When McCain charges, as he has been doing
frantically of late, that Obama has been outed by “Joe” (sic) the
Plumber as a “socialist” and that he will be taxing the rich "to spread
the wealth around,” most people today are probably thinking, “Hey, that
idea of spreading some rich folks’ money around sounds pretty good to
me!”

That is to say, Obama’s populist rhetoric, whether it is sincere or
not, and particularly his promise to cut taxes for most Americans while
raising taxes on the wealthy and on the large corporations, and to make
college and health care affordable to all, is winning over a large
number of Americans, including many who for decades have been
responsive to Republican fear- and race-mongering and to Republican
"free-market" ideology.

There are many people on the left who argue that Obama and the
Democrats are a sham, and that they won’t really tackle taxing the rich
and corporations in any serious way, or offering real help to
struggling working class Americans. They may well be right. Certainly
the flood of campaign contributions from Fortune 1000 corporations
suggests that corporate America will have a big seat at the White House
table in an Obama administration, as they do already in the Democratic
Congress. At the same time though, the rhetoric of this campaign is
setting up a major expectation among millions of ordinary voters for
real progressive action on economic issues. This hope, given continued
organized political pressure after November 4, could lead to real
action.

I would argue that when the real “Joe’s” and “Jane’s” of America,
the ones who have been suckered in for years by cynical Republican
fear-mongering and race-baiting campaigns finally turn away and vote
for hope—even if that hope is being over-sold--it creates the chance
for a real movement for progressive change in the country.

At any rate, it certainly looks like my theory will be put to the test come Inauguration Day.
_____________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006
and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Joe the Plumber Gives Obama a Mandate for Progressivism

Bob Fertik — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:26:11 -0400

Thanks to Joe the Plumber, the battle between Obama and McCain came down to one of basic economic philosophy: whether our tax system should be used to "spread the wealth," which the McCain-Palin-Plumber ticket call "socialism." That battle is now over and "spread the wealth" won.

Of course "spreading the wealth" through the tax system isn't remotely like socialism, which requires government ownership of industry. George Bush has given us that, but only for failed companies - that mutant version of socialism is called "lemon socialism."

If "socialism" is a European word, there's a red-white-and-blue American word for "spreading the wealth" through taxes - Progressivism. And if Obama wins, he will have a mandate for strong progressive policies. Here's Bill O'Reilly complaining to Newt Gingrich:

But let's face it. We've had three debates and McCain has made that point over and over again. That his policies of tax cutting are better than redistribution policies of Obama. But the public hasn't bought it.

As David Sirota writes,

Thanks to McCain's polarizing economic message, millions of Americans will now walk into that voting booth with a very crystal clear question in mind: Do we vote for the deregulatory, free-market fundamentalism of business tax cuts, corporate welfare and everyone-for-themselves health care policies that McCain says is needed right now? Or do we vote against that, and for something McCain insists is very, very different? Yes, many people will cast a ballot thinking they are making a choice between Reaganism and socialism. After all, the latest CBS/New York Times poll shows Americans already see the race in these terms. And therefore, if Obama wins, it will be a huge rejection of Reaganism, a huge declaration that demonizing the Left with the argot of Soviet communism no longer works, and a huge endorsement of 21st century progressive economics, only years (or really, months!) removed from an era where if you even uttered the word "inequality," you were billed as a communist and written out of the debate by the media and political Establishment.

That's quite a change from the ideology of the past 28 years, all because of Joe the Plumber. Thanks a (quarter) million, Joe!