England for Obama

Want to know what happened when Barry met Johnny? Here you go:

And here was the eminently sensible Bill Maher’s take on it, via The Rachel Maddow Show. Sorry: The Arianna Huffington Show (Note to MSNBC: this woman certainly has great views, and can certainly write. But please, please, please never get her to anchor a show again. She doesn’t have what might be called a voice for radio):

Barack Obama and The Politician Formerly Known As The Old John McCain - John McCain - are sitting down together on Monday. According to HuffPo, they’re set to “bury the ax”. Which I think is American for: “bury the axe”.

Announcing the meeting, an Obama spokesman said:

“It’s well known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government, and will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality.”

And here was Keith Olbermann’s take on the news last night:

Blimey. First Joe Lieberman, then Hillary Clinton, now John McCain. Has Barack ever met a politician he didn’t like?

Now, I know I said I wasn’t going to give this woman the oxygen of publicity any longer. But somehow, I think I should make an exception for this story. Because I want Sarah Palin to have the oxygen of publicity about this story. Oh, yes.

“The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin’s attacks.”

This revelation came out of the recently released, seven-part Newsweek report (I haven’t made it to that part yet) and has been picked up by a few news outlets, including our own Daily Telegraph above.

Somehow, I think it should have been picked up by a few more.

Sod John McCain’s gracious concession speech. Sod Sarah tryin’ to be all cute, bein’ filmed bakin’ and talkin’ about huntin’ back in her kitchen’ at home in’ Alaska. She and that campaign tried to instill blatent hatred and fear about Barack Obama - and, not suprisingly, The Angry Mob took up that baton and ran with it… to its logical conclusion. To mix my metaphors somewhat.

Oh, and one more thing? Sarah Palin is still giving her stump speech. Still.

I knew when she said she “didn’t blink” that this woman had no self-awareness - because she was just about the only person in the country to think that her lack of experience, intellectual curiosity and gravitas were not a problem when deciding to run for the second highest office in the land (well, her and John McCain and his advisors).

And in that sense, Palin is absolutely a product of the Right (a lack of self-awareness and truth about a situation being their MO).

But her continuation as if she did nothing wrong; the talk among Republicans of her being a candidate in 2012… Both of these things are signs that the GOP just doesn’t get it - still - and continues to be filled with people who think that it’s perfectly acceptable to campaign and talk this way.

GOP: don’t you dare, dare choose this woman to be your candidate in 2012. Keep her in Alaska. And far away from all of us*.

*Except Russians, who she can see from her house

Bob Cesca talks about the sheltered place that the Right inhabits -

“So the far-right needs to remain insulated from unfriendlies, which is why talk radio is a more comfortable format - calls can be screened and reality can be obfuscated. In other words, it’s a lot easier to suggest that the president-elect is a terrorist on a talk radio show where, you know, a tidal wave of facts won’t get in the way of the lies.”

- and he’s right. And this is one of the reasons why, as I told my friend Nick on election night, the Republicans’ choice of Sarah Palin pick went so horribly wrong for them. Why it was such a horrendously, massively, wrong choice.

And I’m not talking about favourability ratings here. Or about one’s own personal take on Palin.

I’m talking about the fact that, throughout the campaign, John McCain and his peeps were trying to attack Barack Obama on, well, anything that came to hand. He’s an elitist! He’s scary! His name sounds funny! He doesn’t know what he’s doing! He’s naive! He’s not like you and me!

And the thing is: all of these attacks simply didn’t marry up with the objective truth. The McCain camp spouted their ‘truths’, endlessly, and yet the American people saw something quite different. They saw a man who wasn’t scary. Who did appear to be just like them. Who was capable and who did seem to know what he was doing.

That’s why the attacks didn’t stick.

And yet: there was one line of attack that, in actual fact, was reasonable. That did have its basis in objective reality and not simply in the narrative that the Republicans wanted to carve out.

That line of attack was that Barack Obama was inexperienced.

And then they went and blew it all on choosing Sarah Palin.

‘Inexperience’ was the one line that McCain et al could have stuck to - and which could have worked withe public. Because it was the only line of attack against Obama that was reasonable and possibly valid.

People have been commenting on how Fox News and the right-wing shock jocks have contributed to the Republicans’ eventual demise because they have, in fact, been a massive sticking plaster over a gaping sore. A gaping sore that the Right have refused to acknowledge… partly because they’ve had the undying devotion of, yes, Fox News and the right-wing shock jocks.

The Right haven’t been living in our world. They’ve been living in theirs. And I don’t even mean that in a partisan way. They’ve been living in the bubble that they created, and not the real world, with all its changes, all its flaws, all its liberalism and all its, erm, reality.

One would like to think that the bubble will, now, finally burst. I’m sure that Fox will do its best to maintain it - and as Bob Cesca points out, post-election day, it doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of bursting - but it really isn’t in the GOP’s interest to remain in their parallel universe, no matter how cosy and safe it feels to them.

Like the Conservatives over here in 1997, they’re back in their cave, defeated, in-fighting, letting blood and licking their wounds (and it’s no mean feat to do all those things at once). But the Republicans will have to emerge from that cave/bubble/insert metaphor here in order to work out where they went wrong, and what they need to do to to regain ground with the average American voter.

And hopefully, like the Conservatives over here, it will take them at least 10 years to do so.

Here’s your reading for the next seven days, folks.

Newsweek magazine had reporters inside the Obama and McCain camps for a year in the run-up to the election - but they were only allowed to be there on condition that their stories would be published after the election was over.

So now you can read these behind-the-scenes reports - and boy, are they fascinating. No, really. From tantrums to tactics, they’re an amazing insight into what the candidates (and those around them) are really like, and what really happened on the campaign trails. And I’ve only read the first three chapters…

Ch. 1: Barack Obama: How He Did It

Ch. 2: John McCain: Back From the Dead?

Ch. 3: The Long Clinton-Obama Siege

Ch. 4: McCain Camp Retools, Targets Obama

Ch. 5: Obama Sweats the Clintons, McCain Gambles on Palin

Ch. 6: Battling it Out in the Great Debates

Ch. 7: The Final Days

Enjoy. It’s like The West Wing - only real.

Last night I was very impressed with McCain. For the first time during the campaign he showed his humanity.

This has to go down as possibly the best speech of his entire campaign.

Watch how he deals with the boos at the start and the line “Obama is my president..” very classy.

There’s only one man less popular than the least popular President in history. That man is Vice President Dick Cheney, and he just endorsed McCain:

Here’s what Obama said in response at a Colorado rally:

“I’d like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it. That endorsement didn’t come easy. Senator McCain had to vote 90 percent of the time with George Bush and Dick Cheney to get it. He served as Washington’s biggest cheerleader for going to war in Iraq, and supports economic policies that are no different from the last eight years. So Senator McCain worked hard to get Dick Cheney’s support.

“But here’s my question for you, Colorado: do you think Dick Cheney is delighted to support John McCain because he thinks John McCain’s going to bring change? Do you think John McCain and Dick Cheney have been talking about how to shake things up, and get rid of the lobbyists and the old boys club in Washington?

That endorsement should seal it for Barack. Gobama!

Yay! John Cleese was on Countdown last night, and talked about elitism, Joe the plumber and John McCain. He also unveiled a new poem - about Bill O’Reilly - which involved a priceless explanation of Cockney rhyming slang to Keith Olbermann:

Keith Olbermann takes a look at what’s happening on the campaign trail right now, and what will happen over the weekend. As Howard Fineman says, almost a third of the electorate will probably have voted by the end of Sunday. Wow:

Just brilliant: