The Democrats have gotten a lot of mileage out of identity politics. By saying they would champion the cause of gays and blacks and Hispanics and Asians and women and other groups, they have managed to drag large voting blocks into he Democrat party, and have created large, reliable constituencies. However, I think now they may find that their identity politics will come back to bite them.

How so?

Well, so long as the Democrats were being represented largely by guilty white liberals, or by representatives of the right ethnicity for ethnic districts (black representatives for black districts, Hispanics for Hispanic districts, and so on), there was no problem. Every pressure group knew guilty white liberals would fold to their every demand. And thus the Democrats held on to large blocks of voters.

However, now the Democrats are running a black candidate as its national representative. While this surely will do wonders for black turnout, it raises other questions.

Democrats tend to think that all minority groups have a common interest, an extension of the Marxist solidarity of the proletariat. They tend to think all the minority blocks will join together to fight against the white male power structure. However, as the Marxists learned in World War II, when nationalism trumped class solidarity, the Democrats are soon going to learn that their model is wrong. The minority blocks do not unite against the majority, they simply look out for their own interests. When the white liberals ran the party, they were united, as they knew backing the Democrats was their best bet, and they could then fight internally over how much each group got. But not now.

With a black candidate representing the party, and not just a black candidate but one who has been linked to Reverend Wright, Reverend Pfleger, even Louis Farrakhan, who is using the code phrases "economic justice" and "social justice", terms which have always signaled some sort of government control and often set asides and quotas, it is becoming clear to non-black minority groups that they may not be receiving as much benefit from the Obama presidency as they did from previous Democrats. Whether true or not, it is easy to imagine that Obama would champion the cause of black pressure groups should he be elected, and, since special privileges is a zero-sum game, that means less for the other minorities.

In other elections that might not matter, as the Republicans have, rightly, not been open to pressure group politics. But this is not a normal election. McCain has been a very non-traditional politician, and, as his position on "comprehensive solutions" to immigration, even his off and on support for amnesty, shows he is open to courting the Hispanic vote, even when it means abandoning some of the Republican party's platform. All of which means that it is possible that Hispanics could be convinced to abandon the Obama camp and cross over to McCain.

Now, none of this means I expect to see mass defections among Hispanics or Asians or women or gays, what it does mean is that there could be a considerable number of individual cross overs, and perhaps an equal number who chose to sit out the election as they can support neither side. I doubt the gay block will be involved, but as far as women (feeling betrayed by Hillary being forced from the race) and Hispanics (who feel left out of the pro-black agenda suggested by Wright and others) are concerned, I could see them crossing over in numbers large enough to throw some formerly blue states into contention.

We will see in November. But should several northeastern states, perhaps a few in the Ohio Valley, and California come in close, or even turn red, I think that will prove what I have been saying all along, that the politics of group identity has finally come back to bite the Democrats.

POSTSCRIPT

What is most interesting is that polls may miss a lot of this. Democrats, by nature inclined to close ranks after the primaries are decided, will often publicly state they support their candidate, even while casting cross over votes. Mondale polled well throughout much of the race, as did Dukakis, but we know how those races went. So don't expect to see massive cross over in the polls prior to the election. It is only in November that we will be able to judge the accuracy of my prediction.

I happened to be thinking about so-called organic farming today when I was struck, as I usually am, by the absurdity of it all.

Rather than go on at great length, let me give you just one example. If I spray a pyrtethrin around my fields to control insects, it is clearly not organic farming. However, if I find a plant which contains "natural" pyrethrins in it, I can grind it up and spray the dust around to control bugs and still call my farm "organic". Why?

Now some are going to say the synthetic chemical is more dangerous than the one found in plants. However, even if I spray EXACTLY THE SAME CHEMICAL as found in the plant, it is still not considered "organic", only if i use the plant instead of a synthetic chemical.

The problem here is that organic advocates engage in magical thinking. They think even if it is the same molecule, if it comes form plants or animals it is "good" and if it is synthesized it is "bad". Ammonia from urine is good, ammonia from synthesis is bad. Yet, to the plants, to the land, to everything on earth except the thought processes of organic advocates, they are identical."Natural" and "synthetic" are not attributes of the chemicals, you cannot look at ammonia and tell its origin.

Of course, this is just one problem, there are many more. From the reduced yields to the reappearance of plant diseases once thought conquered to the shorter shelf life due to spoilage, there are many reasons to oppose the silly organic movement, but time and space are short here. Perhaps later I will return to the topic, but for now, I will simply refer you to my post "The Lie of Environmentalism",because, with its emphasis on primitive methods and the outcome of reduced yields, organic farming is part and parcel of the anti-technology and ultimately anti-man environmental movement. And just like that movement it has, sadly, found wide spread acceptance. It is time we took a second look.

POSTSCRIPT

I know some buy into the belief that organic produce is healthier without buying into the alrger anti-technology and anti-man agenda, however by believing the small lie they inadvertently support the larger one. We did not get to a population of 6 billion by ignoring technology. Once we agree to give up technology, the maximum population we can support goes down drastically. So even if you just demand "organic, non-GMO" food because you want to avoid any risk, you are actually giving tacit support to the population reduction movement among environmentalists, whether you believe you are doing so or not.

As Best of the Web's archives are rather hard to find, I want to record this here, just in case someone wants to refer back to these quotes. And once you read them, trust me, you will want to refer to them as often as possible:

Offered Without Comment
Here are a couple of interesting vignettes from the campaign trail.

• Barack Obama on the U.S. vs. China: "Everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you're starting to think, 'Beijing looks like a pretty good option.' "
 
• Obama on Russia's invasion of Georgia: "We've got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies. They can't charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point."

Now both of these deserve quite a bit of comment, but, being pressed for time, here I am simply offering them for your consideration.

I will say that the clear cut and run message of the second gives lie to Obama's "hawk lite" image he has been cultivating lately, while his glorification of the PRC doesn't help those who are arguing that he is not a socialist. But other than that, I'm afraid you have to wait  a little while for complete comments on both.

It is interesting how, once the government gets involved, we end up with counterintuitive results. When something is a private matter, without any coercion involved, it doesn't matter. If I think something is a crisis or not only matters to me. But once the state gets involved, and it has to adopt one position for every individual in the economy, we end up with bizarre, counterintuitive, often contradictory, results.

For example, if there is a good, which almost everyone buys, which is necessary for survival, and the price suddenly rises, is it a crisis or a benefits/ Likewise, if, following that rise, it suddenly drops, is that a benefit or crisis?

Well, if ti is gasoline, the rise is a crisis, if it is housing, the fall is. Or so have the Solons in congress decreed.

The truth is, it is neither. If you are buying a house, rising prices are a bad thing and falling prices good. If you are selling, the reverse. And if you are doing both, it really doesn't matter, you only care about the spread in prices between what is bought and sold. To call either high or low prices a crisis for everyone  (and then attempt to "solve" the "problem") is just absurd*.

Of  course, as the government artificially deflated interest rates and promoted absurdities such as interest only loans, the government's policies encouraged a number of people to get into adjustable rate loans that did not touch principal, meaning that when prices fell and rates rose, they found themsleves unable to refinance into a fixed rate and their payments skyrocketed. So, in deference to this constituency, the government decreed it a crisis. But the point is, it is a crisis for these people, but for first time home buyers, it is a boon.

But that is the problem with government meddling where it shouldn't. One rule never fits all, nor is it better when the government creates multiple solutions for multiple groups. The truth is, the individual himself know his needs best, and should make such choices. Once the state becomes involved, it ends up calling something a crisis which benefits one person.

Just to give one more example, like most Americans I own some oil company stock*, in my case Exxon Mobil stock. (I bought it yesterday, so don't blame it for my earlier essays on oil.) So, if Obama and congress follow through on their plans to "help" Americans with a "windfall profit" tax, they will help me out of about 50% of the money I invested. Once again, their "solution" for  everyone is really only a solution for a subset of the people.

And that is the problem of government, you always substitute the judgment of a committee for your own, and no committee will ever know you as well as you do. Of course, there are a few areas where we need government. But even then, I would argue we should keep the power as close to the individual as possible, which is why I support federalist solutions, where power is concetrated at the state or even local level, making sure it is as responsive as possible, and can be tailored to the wishes of the local population. But, outside of those few areas where government is essential, why would you argue that it is better for someone else to decide for you? It simply makes no sense.

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* They may not know they own oil stock, but it is not an unusual holding for a mutual fund, especially given the relatively sound profits of several recent quarters. The whole sector still doesn't have great performance when viewing profit to equity ratios, but it is solid enough that many mutual funds seem to have some money in oil.

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POSTSCRIPT

This use of a myopic perspective to declare something a crisis is a topic I have covered before, but in terms of housing it is particularly amusing, as the press has declared both conditions a crisis.

When houses were expensive, they decried the fact that young couples could not afford homes of their own, and they were not going to have the standard of living their parents enjoyed. Now that prices have come down, they are decrying the loss of equity and foreclosures.

The truth we should take home form all this is: Changes hurts some people and helps others. That's it. Nothing more. Change effects different people differently.  But, since without change we stagnate and die, we just have to suck it up and deal with it. Unless we are in the press or politics, when we can decry the harm done by change and use it to sell advertising or buy votes.

Recently I have noticed a second count accompanying the "dead in Iraq" number the press loves, that is foreclosure count. Both serve the same purpose, to show the escalating failure of the Bush administration, at least that is how the press sees it, and, as the conflict in Iraq calms down, the ever increasing foreclosure count has come to work better than the death count, as foreclosures continue to rise.

Now, I won't go into the causes of the "housing crisis" and "subprime crisis", as I have written extensively on both. Yes, the government is to blame, but none of the programs or policies which caused them were unique to Bush, nor did they start with the Bush administration.

What I do want to discuss is how absolutely misleading this number is. While the press presents it as "residential foreclosures" that is true only in the sense that they are properties zoned residential. While the press gives the impression that each of these foreclosures represents an individual losing his or her home, that is simply not the truth.

What the press neglects is that the combination of ever escalating housing prices and the existence of loans with token down payments put property speculation within the reach of most of the middle class, and, thanks to a parade of televised "flipping" shows, many in the middle class decided it was a route to easy money. And for some it was. But when the crash came, a lot of these investors were left holding property they could not sell, but could not afford to carry until conditions improved.

Just imagine this hypothetical scenario. You have been involve din property speculation for some time and now come across a house selling for $500,000. It is worth $600,000 in the present market, maybe more with a few thousand dollars of improvements, so it seems a good risk. You lack capital for both a down payment and improvements, so you get an interest only loan with only $10,000 down. Then the market sours. The house is worth maybe $400,000. You continue to make the interest-only payments, but the market doesn't recover. There is no sense in making improvements, as you still will not even break even.

What is the sensible thing to do? Sell the house and take a $100,000 loss, plus all the payments and your $10,000 down payment? Or simply walk away, let the bank take the house, and just lose $10,000 plus the payments you have made?

And that is the truth in many of these foreclosures. Instead of evil banks driving families from their homes, it is the bank which is losing. Thanks to the government pressing bad lending practices, interest rates dropping to absurd lows, and lenders making loans with inadequate down payments, many of these foreclosures represent losses to the banks more than the borrowers, who are basically sticking the banks with losses that should rightly be theirs.

Actually, that is the great lie of the entire housing story, the line that banks are somehow getting rich on foreclosures. With prices dropping, the banks ar enot making money on foreclosures. When they take a house, it is a last resort move, they are acting to cut their losses, to ensure they don't lose any more. They are not making a fortune on each house, most often they are taking a loss. Banks do not get rich off foreclosures and failed loans. No matter how often politicians and other damagogues say so.

You would hope those in public office would know better. Or, if they do know better, that they would be honest about it. It is sad that it falls to those of us who have not bought into the rhetoric to correct their self-serving tales of greedy bankers. Is there not one politician out there with the backbone to tell us the truth, that bankers, borrowers, everyone was harmed by the fiscal irresponsibility encouraged by government policies?

Shouldn't there be at least one "leader" out there who can tell the truth?

UPDATE

When I say the government "is to blame", I mean in as much as there is any blame at all. For example, when I say "housing crisis" I tend to think not of the dropping prices that concern the press and politicians, but the artificially inflated prices preceding it. A lot of what is being called a crisis is really an adjustment which is long overdue. But if you read my earlier writing you will find this much better described than I can do in this short postscript.

Yesterday I wrote about Obama's attempts to deflect charges of elitism using a very inept advertisement drawing attention to the number and value of homes owned by John McCain. It was a thoroughly pathetic effort at damage control. So, to carry on with a theme, I am now going to look at yet another Obama commercial, this one an effort to rebut charges that he will destroy the economy.

I don't know how many markets have seen the ad in question so let me summarize as best I can. The advertisement is, as all ads seem to be this cycle, a series of still photos and screens of black text on white fields. (Has there been a campaign in recent memory with less variety in advertisements?) A generic narrator provides all the commentary. I don't recall specific wording, but Obama's charges are basically that John McCain represents "more of the same". That McCain is proposing tax cuts for big corporations and benefits for companies moving jobs overseas, while Obama proposes "three times the tax cuts for the middle class" and will work to benefit American business.

First, let us look at the closing claim of the advertisement, the claim that Obama will work to benefit American business. I suppose this is intended to highlight the "outsourcing" scaremongering, but, to be honest, except for "middle class" tax cuts, I really could not identify a single concrete proposal from the Obama camp. I suppose he is also proposing to somehow harm businesses which move jobs overseas, so perhaps two claims.

The problem I have with this claim is that Obama opens by claiming that McCain is, in effect, too generous with corporate tax cuts. However, I think almost any American business, if asked what could be done to benefit American industry, would rank tax cuts for businesses well above "middle class tax cuts" or "penalizing outsourcing". So his vague promise to champion American business is undercut by his opposition to one of the best ways to enact such help, tax cuts.

Of course, the whole advertisement is a bit confusing. Obama seems to be promoting some sort of liberal-populist platform giving middle class voters cash while soaking big business, but he then tries to blend it with a protectionist message, arguing that he will attack outsourcers, and then ending on a technocrat message that somehow this hodge podge of plans will end up benefiting American business as well. It just doesn't work, you can't promise to raise taxes on business and then promise to help business.

Similarly, the promise of more tax breaks to the middle class is a confused message. It is not Obama's fault, but his party has been harping on how bad Bush's tax break were for eight years now, yet he is now proposing not only tax breaks, but three times as large as McCain is promising. It is a confused message. Obama wants to cut taxes, but he thinks existing tax cuts should be allowed to expire. It is just as confused as his message on business.

But perhaps that does make this advertisement the first honest one in Obama's campaign. After all, his entire campaign is based on an ultra-liberal candidate running as a centrist uniter. And in this ad we see that clearly. Following the liberal promise to soak big business, he then runs to populist "middle class" tax breaks, then protectionist opposition to outsourcing, then technocrat business boosting. It is a horribly inconsistent message, one destined to please no one.

In short, it exactly mirrors the Obama campaign as a whole.

I have just realized something, I am not destined for great success.

I knew that a while ago, but I occasionally suffer from the delusion that quality alone will carry one through. But then I see articles such as this one, and I realize that writing is a business as much as any other, and, as my fruitless job selling cemetery lots proved, I am not a salesman. I may be a good writer, I may not, but that is not what matters, there are a lot of good writers out there. Quality does not matter as much as the ability to observe marketing rules and push the product, even when that product is not as good as many others.

Unfortunately, those are areas in which I fail regularly. I simply feel too intrusive forcing myself onto people, I do take "no" for an answer, and I tend to write when the mood strikes me, not when traffic will be at its greatest.

Then again, I already knew all this. My ill-starred fiction writing career told me as much. But sometimes I need to be reminded.

Fear not. Despite the somewhat somber tone, I am not giving up writing. Not even slowing down. I knew when I started I was writing for myself, not for any readers, and that has been my plan all along. I am delighted when someone reads my blog, and even happier when it gets a reaction from them, good or bad. I am very fond of my readers, and they have turned out to be, on the whole, a great bunch of people. Even the critics I have attracted have been, with very few exceptions, polite, reasonable and decent people. But were they all to vanish tomorrow, my writing would continue just the same.

So the realization I am not destined for fame and fortune changes nothing.

It is just a bit sobering to realize that everything is marketing, especially when my own marketing skills are so lacking.

Anyone want to become my agent? I'll happily turn over 15% of my blog revenues. What is 15% of $0?

I know this is a bit off topic, but if anyone has children and needs to occupy them for a while, the cartoon Oswald is a good bet. Not only is it the most soporific (in a good way) show ever made (I sometimes watch the DVDs while working to keep from blowing a gasket when dealing with irritating co-workers), it lacks the usual agenda of children's programming. Except for an occasional nod to telling the truth, sharing, the usual children's niceties, it doesn't have a bit of an agenda. The only downside I can find is that, for those of us of a certain age, it isa bit disconcerting to hear Squiggy's voice coming form a penguin*. Other than that, it is a fine show, and nice to find one children's program without any indoctrination at all.

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* It is also possible that, hearing Fred Savage's voice come from a big blue octopus, some will wait for a voiceover to explain the lessons he learned, but I was not enough of a Wonder Years fan to worry about that.

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POSTSCRIPT

To be completely accurate, there was one episode where Oswald's trip to the dump was interrupted by people who found uses for his garbage. But it was so devoid of overt eco-proselytizing that I will let that pass. And, in any case, I am not opposed to reusing things, nor to reducing waste, I am a relatively frugal fellow, but I don't like to see garbage picking elevated to a moral imperative. So, as it lacks the preaching of most children's shows, I give Owald a pass on this.

I would like to ask Obama supporters: As the Democrats have been telling us for years that it was irresponsible for Bush to cut taxes during war time, yet Obama is promising "three times the tax cuts for the middle class" that John McCain is proposing, does that mean he is going to give up fighting terrorism?

Or does it mean that the Democrats were wrong to oppose Bush's tax cuts? And if the latter, are they going to renew them, or will they allow them to expire even though they helped the economy, benefited every tax bracket and, if Obama's cuts are OK, were clearly not irresponsible?

POSTSCIPT

My previous questions can be found here, here and here.

The Obama campaign may have been expert at getting out the liberal base, even in inspiring a cult-like fervor in them, but when it comes to winning over independents and responding to criticism, the Obama campaign and their defenders, both official and unofficial, have shown a remarkable lack of understanding of human nature.

For example, their strategy, when confronted with any criticism, has been to argue "Well, the other guy is just as bad". I already wrote about this with regard tot he attempts to equate Obama's twenty years with Reverend Wright to McCain's brief contact with Reverends Haggee and Falwell, an absurd attempt to equate two completely incomparable things. But I have dealt with that already, so let me go to a more recent example.

Yesterday, I wrote about an Obama commercial trying to get some political mileage out of the fact that McCain owns several houses worth a total of $13 million. At first I was puzzled by this advertisement. My thought was that Obama was trying to position himself as "the common man", despite his own incredible, if slightly smaller, wealth. In the comments to that article, I asked why Obama would want to bring up elitism as a charge since he was so vulnerable on that front.

What I didn't see was that he was not trying to portray himself as "the common man", instead this ad was an incredibly clumsy attempt to respond to charges of elitism. After his Pennsylvania comments, his "price of arugula at Whole Foods" comment and others, he was concerned about being seen as elitist. So, rather than taking the obvious course and trying to prove his "everyman" credentials, Obama took the absolutely puzzling path of trying to show that John McCain is every bit as elitist as he is.

Of course, it isn't going to fly. The fact that it took me a day to even figure out what he was trying to do is evidence enough that the commercial's message is unclear, and even if it weren't, Obama just isn't going to sell this line to anyone but the true believers. No one in America is going to buy that just because he is wealthier that John McCain is more elitist than Obama. Whether or not it proves anything, five years as a POW makes one more of an everyman than three years at Harvard. Plus, most of America realizes that McCain is just a bit older than Obama, so he should be wealthier. (Not that Obama is hurting with multi-million dollar book deals, a million plus home, and so on.)

Obama may be touted as the great campaigner, but I think the claim is as invalid as his claims to being a great speaker. He is a fair to good speaker when he has a prepared text and friendly audience, otherwise he is relatively mediocre or worse. Likewise, he is a great campaigner as long as he is insulated from criticism and is preaching to the choir, once he has to face real opposition, he doesn't know what to do*.

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* I think it is significant that in his first campaign he chase away the primary race opposition using procedural tricks. That meant he never had to face real criticism. Nor has he since then. It seems his charmed life, being handed sinecure seats without opposition, has made him unaware of how one should respond to criticism. Had the press not coddled Obama, the Democrats would have realized this before everyone dropped out of the primary race. But the press abandoned both their duties and any pretense of impartiality.

I just saw a clip of an Obama ad making a point of telling us McCain owns seven houses worth $13 million. I understand the point is to make us think that McCain is some bloated plutocrat. The problem is, Obama owns a house worth well over a million dollars, including property he bought at a discount from a shady millionaire acquaintance, he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for virtually no work in his supposedly private sector jobs, made a fortune off his book, so how is he exactly the "common man" as opposed to John  McCain?

I just don't see "He has $13 million in housing, while I have a modest  home worth less than $2 million" will win Obama credit as being the common man. The fact that he thinks he IS the common man actually shows just how out of touch he really is.

I was reading Marvin Olasky's column when I was struck by a bizarre double standard. The left seems to think giving government money to charities should give the government the right to set standards for hiring and impose other restrictions upon the groups receiving such funds. However, back in the mid-90's when welfare reform was being debated, the same left argued that taking welfare money could not be used to force welfare recipients to behave in any defined ways, such as requiring job training.

In other words, if you are a productive group and take government money to do good, then the government can force you to live by their rules, but if you are dissolute and take money to maintain your shiftless, dead end lifestyle, then the government cannot ask you to do anything at all.*

Has there ever been a more clear statement of the heart of the Democrat platform?

Then again, this does point out why I am so opposed to school vouchers. By setting up vouchers we let the government define what is a "school" and set standards for the schools receiving vouchers. Rather than benefiting private schools, this will allow the federal government a foot in the door of private education and will in the end turn private schools into clones of our public schools. Who is to say that government funds won't be tied to following a federal sex ed agenda? Or following specific hiring practices? Or using only NEA member teachers? Government funding is the answer to no question, including vouchers for private education. If you want to end public schools and the mess they create, just end them, do not destroy private schools along the way with vouchers.

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* I am not saying all who receive government aid are shiftless. But those who would have to be forced into trying to find a job or better themselves at government expense surely are. Were the government to support me AND pay for free education, I would certainly take advantage. So I think calling those who would not "shiftless" is hardly unwarranted.

How many people recall the marketing hype surrounding "Ginger"? Back in the early part of the year 2000, there was all this talk of "Ginger", a new invention which would change the very way we lived. It was revolutionary and new and most of all, undefined. It was the best marketing pitch one could hope for, as all its claims could not be tested since no one knew what they were describing. Anything can be true when you don't know what they describe.

Unfortunately, every pitch eventually has to deliver, and the same for "Ginger". And when it did it was... the Segway. This goofy looking crossbreed of scooter and parking meter is going to change our lives?  If Moses had gathered up the shattered tablets and said "Guys, it was just a joke" it would have only been slightly more of a let down.

Move ahead seven years, and we see Ginger Mark II. Except this time instead of using vague claims to pitch an unknown product, they are using vague claims to pitch an intentionally undefined politician. Obama is the second coming of the Ginger marketing plan. Rather than a platform or political beliefs he has "change" and "hope". He won't tell us what he believes, where he is leading us, anything. He is an unknown being sold with hyperbolic hype.

And just like the Ginger, he is getting tons of favorable press, and a huge amount of word of mouth.

And just like Ginger, as we learn what is behind the hype, more and more people are feeling tremendous disappointment. And more will come to feel that disappointment, as his real beliefs become ever more clear. He won't be able to hide forever, and, when he finally comes out form behind the curtain, the disappointment about Ginger won't hold a candle to the disappointment many of his backers will feel.

As I ask in the title, would you bet your future on a Segway? Well, why wager it on an unknown like Obama?

It is not much of a secret that the media has been completely won over by Obama and are making no secret of the schoolgirl crush they have on the candidate. Where in the past they were equally biased, but made an effort to hide it, the press is now openly covering Obama as if they assume he is already the president and often answer questions about his opponent with the response "John who? Oh, the angry old guy Obama will beat?"

I wrote before about how this press love ill-served both Obama and the Democrat party, as well as voters, so I won't cover that again here. But I also think, in more recent times, the love affair is proving a dysfunctional one, and like most such relationships, it is serving to destroy both.

First, let us look at Obama. When he recently went on his world tour, pretending he was already president of the world, the press provided what amounted to twenty four hour coverage, making sure that not one minute was missed by the public. It sounds like a candidate's dream, all that  free coverage, but I think Obama will soon learn, if he hasn't already, that it is far from desirable.

Why not? Two reason. One that applies to all candidates, and one specific to Obama.

For any candidate, the pressure of twenty four hour coverage for over a week would be crushing. Yes, Obama reads prepared speeches well and he is great at smiling and waving, but can he make it through twenty four hours without one mistake? Can anyone? That is the pitfall of nonstop coverage, it gives you a huge platform, but it also deprives you of any private time to prepare or relax. Every little mistake will inevitably be caught on camera, every mistake, ever flub, they will all be recorded as the cameras are never off. Unless you are certain you will never make a mistake, a claim Obama cannot make, the risk at least balances out the benefit.

The second problem is specific to Obama, and that is the problem that he really only has about two hours worth of speech. He is still basically running on the content-free rhetoric that swept him to the nomination, and it works, so long as no one notices that it is content free rhetoric. All that "change" and "hope" sounds good the first time, but after the tenth or twentieth iteration, people want some specifics, and Obama is not providing them. Nor is he a particularly good speaker when improvising, so he generally sticks to his prepared speech. Which means if the public sees ten hours of him, they see at least five lops of his campaign speech. It tens make voters change their perspective. Where the first time his speech may be rousing and might win over those less than happy with the current state of affairs, hearing the same rhetoric over and over without specifics tend to make voter begin to see him as a huckster trying to avoid being tied down, who is trying to sell them with pretty words while avoiding telling any details. So, by covering him so thoroughly, the press may actually be depriving him of the chance to win over independents he so desperately needs. And the poll numbers support this.

And the press is no better served. In the past they may have pulled for a candidate, even tried to hide some of his weaknesses or downplayed a scandal, they may have been quite biased, but they still put on a fig leaf of objectivity, tried to hide in some way their bias. Now, they have given up all pretense of objectivity.

Don't they worry about how this will effect them in the future?

Let us suppose the get their wish and Obama is elected. Won't the people be unlikely to turn to an openly pro-Obama press for objective news about his administration? After having blown any claims of objectivity, how can people rely upon them to adopt the necessary adversarial role toward Obama?

And if Obama loses, not only will the new administration be unlikely to work with them due to their open opposition, but, again, will the public trust their reporting on the new administration? How much, they will wonder, is true and how much exaggeration or fabrication driven by sour grapes over Obama's loss?

The press used to recognize that the appearance of objectivity was their greatest asset, they appear to no longer know its value. But the public does, and as the press has clearly surrendered any claim to objectivity, it won't be long before they will reap the consequences of having abandoned their previous unbiased position. No matter how dishonest their claims of objectivity were in the past, they were still enough to let the public know the press would not completely overlook a story just because of political beliefs. The press can no longer make such a claim, and they will suffer because of that.

So, while the press and Obama engage in a great big group hug and congratulate themselves on their sacred alliance to make the world better, while they pat each other on the back for doing the work of the angels, they should take a moment to realize this may be the last hurrah for both of them. Rather than sweeping him into office, the press may have snatched any chance from him, at the same time  they were committing professional suicide. It may not be obvious now, but it soon will be.

Again and again, as polls have come out showing Obama's campaign turning south, I have posted short articles crowing about my early predictions that Obama would self destruct, repeatedly pointing out how I was steadfast in predicting Obama's defeat, and even explaining how my prediction of 49 electoral votes looks more and more likely. But after a while, it starts to sound a bit like bragging. So I was reluctant to post about the latest poll giving McCain 5 points on Obama. But I think it is important to mention, so I am, once again, posting an "I told you so" essay.

The reason this poll matters is not because it accurately predicts the outcome, I have no doubts the numbers will change greatly. What matter sis that Obama started with a huge advantage, Bush was unpopular, the Republicans were supporting an unpopular war, and the Republicans had held the White House for eight years. By all rights, Obama should have started 10-20 points up. He then was surrounded by a media immune system which helped him hide every scandal which arose, he was treated as the presumptive president, he was spared any but the softest of softball questions, and still his numbers dropped. And now, after a triumphal march through Europe, covered by the media with nonstop, twenty four hour coverage, and followed by constant coverage about his vice presidential pick leading up to the convention, he is seeing his numbers drop still farther.

It says only one thing. Obama is in a tail spin.

Circumstances will never be better for Obama than they are now. After the convention, he will face his first hard questions in both the debates and those posed by the McCain camp. He will face his first truly adversarial environment, the first truly critical ads, the first real "attacks". And, from what we have seen of his response to the tepid criticisms from Hillary, he will likely falter when responding.

Worse still, being rather inept at thinking on his feet, it is likely that any debates to which he agrees, and he will surely agree to as few as possible, will be fiascoes. Even though McCain is hardly a champion at public speaking, he is much more agile at thinking on his feet than Obama. Obama's forte is looking good while reading mellifluously from a teleprompter. That does not play well in debate.

All fo which means that the numbers we saw during the grand tour of Europe will probably prove the peak of the Obama campaign. Unless McCain does something monumentally stupid, there is little or no prospect of an Obama recovery, and my 49 electoral votes seems ever more probable.

But I have been saying that all along. It is just that others are coming to see it now.