(cross posted at DKos and Show Me Progress )

We all know that the GOP is willing to stoop to virtually any low in order to disenfranchise Democratic voters or to intimidate courts deciding on the legality of recounts.  But what are they willing to do in order to achieve the oh-so-important objective of being able to hold signs in front of cameras on college campuses?  This last week offered a couple of examples of obnoxious GOP tactics being employed in order to create the illusion that college students actually like the McCain-Palin ticket.

Yesterday, in conjunction with over 300 other cities, St. Louis's MoveOn Council hosted a Bush-McCain Challenge table on the Delmar Loop in St. Louis.  I wasn't sure what to expect (some people had expressed trepidation about the action being to "gimmicky"), but it turned out to be a really great event.  Volunteers and the public had a lot of fun with the challenge.  And people were really shocked when they heard things like "McCain received a zero percent rating from the league of conservation voters on his record last year", or "McCain voted against a proposal to ban water boarding."  I left wishing that we could do this event much more often.
(more below the fold)

In a diary still on the rec. list, even after the following has been pointed out, it was claimed that Dartagnan at Dailykos.com called Maya Angelou a "radical poet" and said the following:

Just what is Hillary's relationship with this...

...radical poet???

Friends with MALCOLM X??????

This raises serious, serious  questions about Hillary's fitness to lead this country.

by Dartagnan on Thu Apr 24, 2008 at 01:31:53 PM PDT

This was presented as evidence that Dartagnan was "showing hate" and saying "nasty things" about May Angelou.  Here is a quote

Unfortunately, many over there have allowed their hate to blind them of even the smallest hint of positivity from their political opponents.  Unfortunately, the hate flowed freely from their fingertips onto their computer screens.

However, Dartagnan's extended quote reads

"This raises serious, serious  questions about Hillary's fitness to lead this country.  Has anyone determined how many conversations she has had with this violent terrorist sympathizer?"

which is obvious snark.  But, this diarist deliberately left out the rest of the quote and passed it off as serious.  In other words, the diarist presented deliberately misleading information and used it as an attack on someone's character.

I think people are going to write what they want in diaries, but the community that recommends this stuff has an obligation to make sure it is honest, particularly when it is accusing other people of "being hateful."  Dishonesty, used against anyone (including McCain) does nothing but discredit this site and the community of people who participate on it, so I sincerely hope the Recommender' Guild can start exercising more restraint in the future.

Some folks in the msm and mydd perennial rec-listers have been very worried lately about Obama's electability.  They are particularly concerned about the question: why can't Obama "close the deal?"

There's actually a pretty easy answer to this question: Hillary is a great candidate.  She's been a central figure in the Democratic Party for fifteen years, she has connections to any of the powerful people she wants to talk to, she's been a good, mainstream Democrat and her candidacy has inspired a lot of people.  And there are millions of other reasons why she is a good candidate which you can find by perusing the mydd archives.  

Given that she's a good candidate, it's not surprising that Obama hasn't "knocked her out."  It's because of the same reason Frazier didn't beat Ali in the first round.  It's the same reason the 1980 Lakers didn't sweep the Celtics in four games.  And just like Frazier is considered a damn good boxer and the Lakers were one of the best teams in NBA history, none of this implies that there is something wrong with Obama's candidacy.  It just means he has a good opponent.

More importantly, it doesn't have any bearing on whether he will win the primary.  He will win the pledged delegates, and will win the popular vote using any reasonable metric.  Therefore, he will win the primary.

So please, Clinton supporters, show your candidate some respect and stop suggesting that the fact that Obama hasn't beat Hillary by 50 points shows that he is a terrible candidate.  The fact that Obama is leading such a good candidate is actually a tribute to how impressive his campaign has been.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but after a long, fun ride, it appears that bittergate hasn't sunk Obama in the primaries or even ruined his chances in the general election. But though we weren't quite able to achieve victory, we still have made some important strides that we should be proud of.  We did really well in getting the msm (and especially Fox) to repeat our talking points, showed great message discipline in coordination with McCain, and were able to reinforce some key GOP narratives against Obama!  Any way you look at it, it was a great success!  But even so, this wave has now crested, and we need to start looking for some new trivial criticism of Obama that we can use to declare that his candidacy has completely self-destructed.

Fortunately, through our short but distinguished history of sounding the funeral bells for Obama, we have learned some great lessons, and the next "gate" will be even easier than the last.  With that in mind, I'd like to provide a few tips for how we can best achieve the next anti-Obama gate!

Here's some basic logic in response to some recent bad arguments.  Obama's original quote was:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

First, I think it's obvious that this is purportedly describing a cause-effect relationship.  Now there's a lot in the first two sentences so I'll just shorten the cause part to "Because the jobs have been gone for 25 years..."  If you don't like that, you can add any part of the first two sentences you want into the causal part; it really doesn't make any difference.  With my shortenened version, you then get

"Because the jobs have been gone for 25 years, [people] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations" (more on the flip)