The good news about Obama's drop in the polls is that the people who shifted their support to McCain in the past month belong to that special class of the electorate known as The Swing Voters.  Swing Voters are people who---unlike you or me---really can be persuaded to vote for either a Democrat or a Republican.  Their support for either candidate is always very tenuous.  Barack Obama has plenty of time to win them back.  Whichever way they happen to be leaning at this point is irrelevant.  It is during the last three weeks of October that Obama needs to win them over.  As the man has said over and over, he is a good learner.  Here are a few of the things he needs to learn in order to win in November and win big...

An AlterNet article Republicans Have Handed Democrats a Winning Election Issue (http://www.alternet.org/environment/95469/) proposes that the Democrats, and Obama in particular, should shift the focus of the energy crisis to renewable energy and away from offshore oil.  According to the article, they should place the emphasis on renewable energy and allow the Republicans to filibuster in Congress against a bill proposing to extend subsidies to the renewable energy sector.  The filibuster would expose the Republican’s real agenda, which is to continue to support the oil industry and cut off funding for renewables.

I’m supposed to be finishing another story tonight, but I’ve just come from Darcy Burner’s primary night party...and I have in front of me the results of the important races tonight in Washington’s newfangled "top two" primary.

It is unfair to extrapolate the results of elections in the "People’s Republic of Washington" directly onto a national map, but as I look as these results it seems fair to say that if any Republican strategists aren’t sweating bullets this morning it’s because they’ll be hustling for votes in towns like Maggie Valley, North Carolina (don’t forget to stop by Saratoga’s for the Wednesday night jazz...)...or, perhaps, Bessemer Bend, Wyoming.

For the rest of the Republican community, tonight’s events are not good news.

We have a fair amount to cover, so let’s get to it.

Who knew that the US is currently exporting 1.8 million barrels of oil a day?

To make sure everybody does, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, sent a public letter to President Bush, asking him to "keep our oil at home."

There's a thing going around called, "Why I'm Voting Democrat." As can be expected, it's idiotically wrong-headed and scurrilous, citing false point after false point of jingoism and scare politics. Most of you have probably seen it, or will see it.

Here is my response. If you want to send it out in answer to the Democrat one, or just in general if you like it, feel free to do so. You may use any or all of it, edited or unedited, for content or length. I know it's kind of long, because once I got started ...  

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I’m voting Republican because Al Gore is a Democrat and he has started this hoax about global warming, and wants to make me pay more for gas, or drive a tiny car, instead of my All-American Hummer (which the Republicans gave me a tax deduction for!!). Or else Al Gore will force me to drive a slow electric car, like his gay friends in Hollywood. I believe that if someone investigated it (not the New York Times, which is socialistic) they would find that Al Gore has used the money from all those baloney awards he won to pay off scientists and news liberals to say that there is global warming. Because Al Gore hates my car.  

I doubt the Obama campaign will do it.

I'm not sure if any of the obvious 527 types will do it (Moveon? Votevets? Who?)

I sincerely doubt the DNC has the cojones for it.

But, for the love of god, SOMEONE has to get this guy on the air.

I'm just some dumbass who reads liberal blogs constantly. I don't know how. But I bet this community does. There has to be a way. An ad campaign, viral video, anything, SOMETHING.

This is what Republicans do and do not flinch and do not look back.

We can do it too. If nobody else will, we have to. I don't know how else to put it. Can we draw on the expertise of the assembled crowd? How do we get Philip Butler from a blog story into the overarching narrative of the next couple weeks?

I don't know either. But maybe you do. If you do have insight to lend, lend it here. Please. I'm in for the first thousand dollars. I bet there's a lot of me. Who can lead the charge?

See below the fold for just a taste of the background on this story already starting to percolate out there. It's great, but we must do better.

Post partisan my ass! That MIGHT be a good theme as a campaign strategy. It MIGHT appeal to an electorate tired of the incompetent,  ineffectual and just plain stupid brand of government they have been getting for the last ten years....you know, since the incredibly partisan impeachment of Bill Clinton by the Republican Congress....

It might sound ... nice ...and evenhanded and reasonable and mature and responsible and all that. But it ignores the simple and undeniable fact that since the Republicans lied, cheated and smeared (including smearing their current champion when he was running against Bush) their way into having full unfettered dominance of the government.....just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and the country is in sad, sorry shape.

Because of the Republicans.

Everything the Republicans has touched in the last decade has turned to crap. From the micro (life saving stem cell research) to the macro (Climate Crisis) the Republicans have had full power to implement their vision, programs and policies....and have gotten it wrong every single time.

Off with your tin-foil hats, lefties.  Bush ain’t gonna find sanctuary in Paraguay no more.  It’s his own fault really, because he failed to put freedom and democracy on the march down there.  It’s hard work to be President.  So many wars; so little time.

It's been said that if John McCain succeeds in making this election "about Obama," McCain may stand a chance of winning.

And it seems to be a political truism that the ability to define one’s opponent is crucial on the national stage, and one in which Republicans have excelled in years past, in terms of always being able to come up with a way to paint their opponent, whomever it may be, as somewhat "out of step’ with average Americans (sometimes with the unintentional assistance of the Democratic nominees themselves, and despite that the Republican nominee is almost always even further out of step and divorced from the realities of average, everyday, working citizens of this country, but the Democrats have never let that minor fact distract them from their efforts to...go on the defensive, time and again ((sorry, but as a devout Democrat, some hopefully constructive criticism is always good to keep in mind as we go forward, in my humble opinion)).

There it is again!  McCain questions Obama's judgment.  It was a  drum beat on NPR today.  It is ridiculous.  George Lakoff must be screaming about it and I am unable to resist  ranting here!  How does he question Obama's judgment?   John McCain is promising that he can bring us victory!  Yup, for the first time in world history if we elect this man he will bring us victory in the occupation of another country!  He did not tell us what that meant.  Incidentally, he framed it as a "war".  But GWB declared the war over some years ago.  We are into an occupation.  Just a while ago we had an increase in our occupying forces.  The people who said the war was over some time ago called this increase in troop levels a "surge".  Today John McCain said that Obama lacks judgment because he still fails to acknowledge the success of the surge.  These are the front lines of the framing wars and Lakoff has warned us about them.  It seems that the warning that we can only lose the debate by accepting their framing still needs to be understood.  Look below the break and let's try again.

It seems like Republican House members have decided that they'll have a better chance at reelection if they don't remind voters back home of their existence. We've seen it during this August recess while they flocked to the floor to play at being Congressmembers over drilling instead of hanging out in their districts having to deal with real constituents and real issues.

Now they've announced that they want to stay in DC all fall if that's what it will take to get a drilling bill through.

House Republicans said Monday they would refuse to consider any energy bill that came straight to the floor from the Democratic leadership’s offices, rather than working its way through committee markups — a process that can take weeks or months.

Granted, there's safety in numbers, and they like each other better than anybody else--particularly their constituents -- like them. But this would suggest they really are afraid of voters.

It also suggests that any need to find "compromise" with them on the part of House Democratic leadership is bullshit.

CQPolitics came out with an article today about how the House Republicans don't really want the Democrats to directly answer the energy crisis by immediately bringing a bill to the House floor. Instead those damn Republicans want us to do it through the normal committee process so they can delay the process until the November election:

Asher Heimermann, 14, writes about Jerome Corsi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Madrasah (Arabic: مدرسة, madrasa pl. madāris مدارس) is the Arabic word for any type of school, secular or religious (of any religion).
The Republicans have their own madrassa- their "school" is the airwaves, television, presidential bully pulpit and news outlets.  What is the curriculum and the religion of the  Republican madrassa ?  

Hatred for all things liberal.

For Kossacks, it's not news that a John McCain presidency would be a disaster for working people. The McCain agenda -- more tax cuts for the rich, privatization of Social Security, and war without end -- would mean  the next four years would be just as disastrous for the American Dream as the last eight have been.

But McCain -- and the corporate interests that support him -- don't want Americans to know about the real McCain record. They're ready to do whatever it takes to sell Americans on a false image of McCain and bury the real McCain record deep underground.

Well, working people know a line of bull when they see it. And today nine workers set out on a campaign to call out John McCain for who he really is.

(Learn more and hear some hard questions for John McCain -- and learn how to submit your own! -- after the jump...)

Yesterday afternoon, I received a phone call from the Republican Party. Since I am a registered Republican, they wanted to know who my choice for President was. I have to say, this was the most entertaining conversation I’ve had in a long time.

Here is how the conversation went (it’s not verbatim, just going off of what I remember, near the end, it’s almost perfect!)

FROM LEFT: Kay Warren (wife of Pastor Rick Warren), Cindy McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, at the Compassion Forum. (Associated Press)

Do you remember that song, "Drop Kick Me Jesus?" I think it was by Bobby Bare.
I'm going to look it up, because for some reason this photo makes me think of it.

Ok, this will probably get torn to shreds, and my feelings will not be hurt.

The point I hope to make in this diary:
Due to advances in technology and culture no matter who is president their actions will be attacked/and viewed as an impeachable offense by 1/2 the population.

It started with Nixon and has gotten more pronounced as time has gone on.

I doubt it is because the quality of the presidents has gotten any better or worse. I mean they've always been pretty constant, I would think.

<More after the break>