Author: Eliot Lear

As I wrote previously, when you throw mud you had better make sure that your aim is true, and that you are pretty clean yourself.  The McCain/Palin ticket cannot make either claim, and the results are in.  An Washington Post/ABC Poll has Senator Obama now leading by 10%.  This would be the official “I told you so”.  There are perhaps other reasons why the Republicans are doing poorly, like the fact that Senator McCain’s message is not well received by a majority of Americans, or that he is viewed as part of the old guard that caused many of the problems we faced today.

Here is what we can expect for the next few weeks: intense campaiging by both sides, with a change of the message on the McCain side.  As they can read polls as well as anyone else, they have probably already realized that mud slinging hurt them.  Unfortunately, their latest approach is unlikely to work either.  Senator McCain is proposing additional tax cuts.  A change in the message at this point will demonstrate what Republicans often accused President Clinton of: waffling.  While these times do call for some amount of flexibility to react to changing economic circumstances, Republicans break out the same old tune to all problems: tax cuts.  That’s not flexibility – that’s a form of intransigence to play to their base.

Meanwhile, Senator Obama has rolled out his own plan.  While he has already discussed middle class tax cuts, and that message hasn’t changed, he is now discussing something more valuable to Americans in distress: protection from being evicted from their homes.  If overdone, this policy could be abused by people who have many homes, or who really have no intention of paying their fair share.  But if administered judiciously, the policy provides for a limited period of relief for those who need to either renegotiate the terms of their loans or simply pick up and start again.

The wisdom of such a plan is this: banks don’t really want to foreclose right now.  Flooding the market with distressed properties harms neighborhoods, and makes it increasingly difficult to actually recover equity.  That is what has happened in central California and other places.

Showing vision and poise in the face of a serious global financial crisis is the sign of a true leader, and that will earn Barack Obama a slightly larger bump in the polls than he has now, probably another 2 to 4%.  But we can then expect the race to tighten slightly at the end of the month.  I predict nationally that Obama will win with an 8% margin, nationally.  This says nothing about the electoral college count.  I’ll leave that to others.

As of today John McCain is trailing Barack Obama in almost every measured poll, and his electoral count looks grim.  What’s more, Obama is raising considerably more money as McCain, which gives you a pretty good idea where the bets are from a corporate standpoint.  And so the smear campaign has begun in earnest.

Last week Governor Palin accused Senator Obama of consorting with domestic terrorists, a charge based on a New York Times article that reported that Obama had known a member of the Weathermen.  The problem with this is that the article also went on to state that their ties were very limited to several business meetings and an occasional chance interaction in the neighborhood in which they both lived.  Other media have similarly debunked this charge.

Now the Republicans are claiming that Obama is taking money from overseas, only that have not produced a single shred of evidence to support their request for an investigation by the Federal Election Commission.  Here’s the problem for the Republicans with both of these charges: they’re baseless.  When people repeatedly make baseless charges, we are reminded of the boy who cried wolf.  Just how many times can one get away with it without hurting his reputation?

In Governor Palin’s case, since she has very little going for her already, it’s a short trip to the bottom, from which she will not return.  She did herself a disservice by accepting this nomination and being McCain’s bulldog.  Had she not done so she could have probably slipped right into a U.S. Senate seat.  Now she’ll have a difficult time running for dog catcher.

For nameless GOP operatives filing lawsuits, it won’t be so bad for them as it will their entire party.  The mud must stick somewhere, and if it won’t stick to the target, and it won’t stick to a nameless flinger, it will stick to who they represent.

Republicans should be pretty frustrated with such tactics because as 1992 demonstrated it is perhaps better to lose one election and attempt to hold the moral highground, and then come back two years later and try again.  For John McCain it’s just sad.  I view the man as a hero from Vietnam, one who stood as a sometimes lone voice for veterans of that mess, and who has now authorized behavior that should be beneath him.

Dear friends in Charlotte,

I recently read in the New York Times that right now many of your residents are suffering because of the near failure and impending purchase of Wachovia, one of the two major banks in town.  Apparently friends know friends who have been laid off, probably through no fault of their own, but through, as someone who works at the competitor said, a bad decision.

It sounds like times are tough because either of the new owners will probably move the headquarters out of Charlotte, the two contenders being Wells Fargo and Citibank.  And those of us who have lived in a town where such a large business has pulled out know that many other businesses close, and many others must shrink, and the economy must absorb all of that.

The reason I mention this is that I lived in San Francisco, the former home of Bank of America, former home of the Bank of America Building, where Nations Bank bought them and removed the headquarters to, guess where?  Charlotte.

We wish you a speedy recovery, particularly if Wells Fargo gets the gig.

Sincerely,

(some former) Californians