Obama needs to pass the bills he wants to pass right away - and he needs them to pass with no surprises. There's no way the Obama people haven't spend huge amounts of time and effort analyzing the disaster of the first 2 years of the Clinton Administration.

They're planning out the chess game in advance - just as they did with all the arcane caucus rules in the democratic primary states.

McCain is psychologically vulnerable. He's not going to run for President again and he's spent his whole life running for President. He's got to fill that void with something. Before the election, he said "Don't feel sorry for me - I can go back to the Senate" over and over - too many times - it's not enough for him to just go back to the senate and toe the Republican line - unless he's truly a wuss and a tool.

I don't know what McCain wants, but that's what Obama's going to ask him - "What's your price for voting for, and publicly supporting, bills x, y and z?".

Every man has his price and if I were Obama, I'd be sorely tempted to pay McCain because what he offers in return is a lock on a successful first series of initiatives.

Regardless of the fates of Franken and Martin, a significant amount of power is represented by McCain's single vote in the Senate, even without any other influence he might be able to bring to bear. The same could be said of Graham, but if he has any mavericky tendencies, he's certain kept them well-hidden during the Bush years.

It would be a huge coup if Emanuel and Obama could carrot and stick these two into pledging their support for any issue or issues (such as healthcare or the green job initiative to solve unemployment, global warming and oil revenues for islamic extremists in one fell swoop). With them, Lieberman and Begich, you've got 60 even if Coleman wins. And that's not even counting Collins, Snowe and Specter. If McCain could be convinced of the importance of any aspect of the Obama agenda, and offered a measure of credit for its success, he could single-handedly make it cut through Congress like a knife through butter.

"The gays" is a wasting asset. Every day that goes by, homophoebia becomes more of a joke. Television, for better or worse, plays a huge role in the cultural mores of low info America. Many television shows have gay characters, but more important is how they're portrayed. For example, the American version of "The Office". Every time the gay character is shown, the punchline is always the stupid, awkward and backwards attitude of the office manager. A subtle, but even more telling aspect is another running gag - the office manager's latent homosexual tendencies.

This kind of portrayal has a very clear subliminal message: If you are homophoebic, you're probably a latent homosexual in denial.

I've noticed this metamorphosis even among hardcore Limbaugh macho types. They still want to prove to the world that they're straighter than straight, but to do so, they have to have a modern attitude towards gays.

This is reinforced by multiple news items - Ted Haggard, Senator Craig, Mark Foley, etc. etc. etc. - all frantically and vocally condemning homosexuality only to be exposed as hypocrites.

We're at the same point in the gay saga that we were at in the late 60s when two movies came out: "In The Heat of the Night" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner". That was the turning point in the acceptability of racism - even in the south.

Getting back to your original point, by the time the Republicans have another chance to use the gay wedge issue it may well backfire.

https://services.myngp.com/ngponlineservices/contribution.aspx?X=NqjXO81IXYZntPaqXypreP1LqSo0CHUy

Make sure to tell him in the comment field that your contribution is in hopes that he'll support Obama's initiatives.

However, Occam's Razor says that 90,000 votes is more than enough to reconcile the polling data.

Ugh ... what a thought! I've been operating on the assumption that Palin could never ... EVER ... command more than 28% of the vote - but that 28% of the whole would be enough to win the nomination, guaranteeing a Republican loss in the general. But this Bush analogy of yours is very disturbing.

On the other hand, the combination of Bush followed by Obama should be enough to convince even the dreaded 28% that being an adult is an absolute prerequisite for the presidency. The US couldn't be stupid enough to elect Palin ... could it?

All right ... keep her out of the Senate!

The good news is that we've got an increasingly strong chance of 6 years of Begich. Given the pre-election polls and the missing 90K votes, I'd say it's a very strong chance.

oy ... do you think Lieberman might vote against healthcare or the green energy initiative to spite the dems?

Chambliss, Toobz and Coleman would be even sweeter, but this is a huge one. Every senate vote is golden.

I'm hoping that they can appeal to Snowe, Collins, Specter and ... hmmm ... are there any other semi-sane Republicans in the senate?

also brilliantly put!

brilliantly put

And on behalf of the whole country, even those who don't realize it yet, I think we have finally, collectively, GOTTEN A LIFE!

Of course I think she's guilty as hell and has been arrogantly lying about the contents of the previous report, so she certainly deserves whatever trouble comes from this - but so far she seems to be made of teflon on issues other than her ... uhhh ... complete incompetence to serve as VP.

Since Katrina and the implosion of the Iraq "rebuilding" effort, they just seem sluggish and stupid - as if no one is steering the ship. Maybe Plame and Abramoff rattled Rove so much that the big picture slipped away from him. I don't know, but this entire campaign, going way back to pre-Fred Thompson, has been consistently pathetic.

Not that I'm complaining ...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/31/03654/518/249/647590

I hate to use a sports analogy, but these last weeks remind me of the end of a basketball game where the team that's behind keeps fouling - hoping that the other team will miss the free throws and they can score quickly and then foul again - it's been known to work but it usually winds up increasing the margin of defeat.

In this case, McCain is committing one flagrant foul after another but if Obama keeps sinking the free throws he's going to wind up winning by a much larger margin than he would if McCain would just run a normal McCain 2000 campaign.

Degrading the vaunted GOP GOTV that helped Bush so much seems like the most desperate move since the Palin pick.