GOP to McCain: be more aggressive.

Biased media? Yes, with good cause.

Purge yourself with this:

(Via Miller and the Anonymous Liberal counter-respectively.)

Outspoken leftie Rachel Maddows scores “surprisingly” successful ratings. Certainly no surprise to me, I’ve been an admirer of Maddows since her coverage of the primaries (which she described as ensuring the candidates didn’t take over the asylum) and her ascent is entirely deserved and her ratings utterly understandable. She presents her views in a firm and forthright fashion that is lacking from much of the left, refusing to squander the confidence she and her ilk have earned through rational superiority and supreme empirical support. Instead of cowering before right-wingers she confronts them, instead of weaselling her views into nothing she states them without fear.

The rest of the American Left, not to mention the British, could do well to learn from her example.

It’s easy to forget just how controversial a figure John McCain was amongst the Republican Party, so firm has he been in stressing his jingoist credentials and especially with the selection of the base-appeasing Sarah Palin. But McCain was derided heavily for decades prior to his current position and although the partisans have largely come around (either a testament to their shamelessness or McCain’s power as a uniter, although perhaps it was Obama…) his position as a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) seemed fairly secure for many years.

Although suitably bellicose to compensate John McCain remains the man who believes in global warming, does not believe in torture and loves the immigrant. This blatant opposition to the three grand shibboleths of the American right (the former new but increasingly vehement, the latter old and insidiously dynamic and the center vital to all apologists for Bush and perhaps the most important for the past two years) render him a rather strange choice for the representative of their party, but he has spoken little of them during the campaign.

Although he made some early campaign videos relating to climate change he has since demurred to the raucous cries of “Drill baby, drill!”, He has distanced himself but not disowned Bush: playing up the “Maverick” line but sticking away from the denunciations of a severity that only an eloquent torture victim confronting a torturer could deliver. But of the three his integrity to at least one has remained strong. Observe the following:

A stronger defence of the place of the endlessly (and ironically) maligned figure of the immigrant you are unlikely to hear leave an American politicians lips.

So the sleaze, the lies, the distortion, the fact that he backed a deranged war when it mattered, still does and is backing another, may well start another World War, has next to no knowledge of an economy that is currently collapsing and will need someone to stop it continuing, picked an utterly inexperienced, inappropriate and inadequate figure for his Vice President and is prone to breath-taking errors even in the subject which is supposedly his speciality, that all still matters?

Yes, but let us not simply demonise this man. There are instances where he threw his weight behind bloody folly and others where he has acted against the full onslaught of his party. He is a jingoist, but not some bland partisan who falls into line behind convenience (more than can be said for his distinctly new-found supporters).

In quite a remarkable outburst, reported by Politico, McCain advisor Steve Schmidt attempted to demonstrate how the media was not focusing upon the sinister nature of the Obama campaign, his method being largely to talk about how the media was focusing on all the wrong things and then telling them what they should talk about. Making all of the examples sound more interesting by lying about them.

If this is the form of relationship McCain will have with the press until early November it is hard to imagine him pulling off a win. Or getting an easy ride. Especially from on particular newspaper:

“Whatever the New York Times once was, it is not today by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama organization that every day attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama,”

The Musem of the Moving Image present every US Presidential Campaign Ad since 1952. Excuse me if I spend the next two to three days absorbed in their archives, but this is wonderful…

Another approval rating slide. This returns him to his nadir, but expect this number to plunge yet further. Also expect this to assist Barack Obama, who’s ramming home of the “McSame” line has been vigorous.

Just seen this:

That has it all. McCain’s incompetence, neatly balled into one, negligent slip of the tongue; the lack of personal charisma or speaking skills flagged by the literal slip of the tongue in the slurred speech; and another nice picture with Bush, just to hammer home the McSame line. The ad skewers McCain on his own words. Just right, then.

Numerous.