Mike Nelson of RiffTrax brings you some election trax:

More over at his blog.

The GOP is polling people to find out.

Julian once pointed out to me that if Ralph Nader had died or retired from view in 1999, he would have been remembered fondly and positively as a consumer activist who had done a great public good. Instead, he’s spent the last eight years recklessly tarnishing his legacy.

Nader’s “Democrats and Republicans are the same” line was crap in 2000, and it’s still crap now. You don’t have to look hard to see how different things would have been with Gore or Kerry in the White House.

But is he willing to try and sell that same load of crap again? Does he think we’ll actually buy it?

Yep.

A new American Research Group poll has some bad news for our fearless “leader”:

George W. Bush’s overall job approval rating has dropped to a new low in American Research Group polling as 78% of Americans say that the national economy is getting worse according to the latest survey from the American Research Group.

Among all Americans, 19% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 77% disapprove.

19% — that’s the lowest in modern history.

Read on.

(link via Wonkette)

Pat Robertson’s at it again, saying that

…earthquakes that have rocked the [region] recently… had been caused by lawmaking that gave “legitimacy to sodomy”.

Furthermore, Robertson said that h— wait, what? Who?

Sorry. Force of habit. Turns out the idiot bigot fundamentalists in question are of an entirely different stripe:

An Israeli MP has blamed parliament’s tolerance of gays for earthquakes that have rocked the Holy Land recently.

Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the tremors had been caused by lawmaking that gave “legitimacy to sodomy”.

…He called on lawmakers to stop “passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes”.

Read on at the Beeb.

Matthew Burton writes:

I’ve been hearing this more and more lately: Obama is all talk, everything he says is vague, he never talks details, we don’t know what he offers…and on and on. Not only is it crap. The opposite is true: there is much more meat to Obama’s platform than Clinton’s, and I’ll prove it.

Now, before I begin, I want to say that I’m neither a Clinton fan nor an Obama fan (nor McCain, for that matter). My candidate dropped out long ago. Like that candidate, I worship facts and I despise catchy slogans that belie the truth.

You can see his full analysis at his Web site.

(link via Metafilter)

Tired of our longtime incumbent, “Democrat” Paul Casey, I went looking a few weeks ago to see if Casey had an opponent in the primary. I was pleased to discover that not only is Jason Lewis running against him, but that his platform is something I can fully stand behind.

So I donated to Lewis’ campaign, and was pleasantly surprised when he stopped by my house just now while he was out canvassing. Turns out the guy lives literally a block and a half from my house. And he’s quite affable.

Why support Lewis over Casey? wickedlocal.com calls out one particular issue:

One true point of contention between the two camps may arise from their polar stances on equal marriage rights.

Several months ago Casey supported a ban on same-sex marriages in the state, while Lewis has pledged to support equal rights for all residents.

“I support same sex marriage rights and will oppose any effort to write discrimination into the Massachusetts State Constitution,” Lewis explained. “I will work to ensure that our state government protects and respects all families in Winchester and Stoneham.”

Remember when Sen. McCain was a model of integrity? Those were the days.

McCain, who himself endured torture“enhanced interrogation” from the Vietnamese, who cannot raise his arms over his head due to that tortureenhanced interrogation, and who was once outspoken against our use of enhanced interrogation techniques, voted against a bill that would have prevented the CIA from using any enhanced interrogation techniques not approved by the Army Field Manual. So waterboarding is still kosher. Freedom is preserved! Whoo!

Gee, I wonder who McCain might be trying to pander to.

Jack Tapper at ABC News gives a good summary,

I admittedly have a favorite in this race, but I thought this was worth mention:

Obama was expected to poll well among young voters, independents and African-Americans, and he did — taking 60 to 70 percent of the votes in the first two groups and nearly 90 percent of black voters, the polls suggest.

But he also was edging out Clinton among voters 65 and older, blue-collar workers and women, all groups that Clinton was counting on as the core of her support.

…Voters who described themselves as independents made up 22 percent of those who cast a ballot in Virginia’s Democratic primary and 13 percent in Maryland, according to the polling. Those voters favored Obama by a margin of 66 percent to 33 percent in Virginia and 68 to 24 in Maryland.

Read on at CNN.

This video — which, admittedly, is unfairly harsh in its final (although funny) conclusion — asks: are we ready for one of them to be President?

(Thanks to Anise for the pointer.)

In case you needed a little more helpful biographical information.

Declarations – WSJ.com

Peggy Noonan makes an interesting point, here.

[...]

Mrs. Clinton is stoking the idea that Mr. Obama is too soft to withstand the dread Republican attack machine. (I nod in tribute to all Democrats who have succeeded in removing the phrase “Republican and Democratic attack machines” from the political lexicon. Both parties have them.) But Mr. Obama will not be easy for Republicans to attack. He will be hard to get at, hard to address. There are many reasons, but a primary one is that the fact of his race will freeze them. No one, no candidate, no party, no heavy-breathing consultant, will want to cross any line–lines that have never been drawn, that are sure to be shifting and not always visible–in approaching the first major-party African-American nominee for president of the United States.

He is the brilliant young black man as American dream. No consultant, no matter how opportunistic and hungry, will think it easy–or professionally desirable–to take him down in a low manner. If anything, they’ve learned from the Clintons in South Carolina what that gets you. (I add that yes, there are always freelance mental cases, who exist on both sides and are empowered by modern technology. They’ll make their YouTubes. But the mad are ever with us, and this year their work will likely stay subterranean.)
[weathervane]

With Mr. Obama the campaign will be about issues. “He’ll raise your taxes.” He will, and I suspect Americans may vote for him anyway. But the race won’t go low.

Mrs. Clinton would be easier for Republicans. With her cavalcade of scandals, they’d be delighted to go at her. They’d get medals for it. Consultants would get rich on it.

The Democrats have it exactly wrong. Hillary is the easier candidate, Mr. Obama the tougher. Hillary brings negative; it’s fair to hit her back with negative. Mr. Obama brings hope, and speaks of a better way. He’s not Bambi, he’s bulletproof.

The biggest problem for the Republicans will be that no matter what they say that is not issue oriented–”He’s too young, he’s never run anything, he’s not fully baked”–the mainstream media will tag them as dealing in racial overtones, or undertones. You can bet on this. Go to the bank on it.

The Democrats continue not to recognize what they have in this guy. Believe me, Republican professionals know. They can tell.

Time reports that

For much of the year, Democrats have enjoyed a wide margin over any Republican rival in theoretical match-ups. Those margins have begun to shrink in recent weeks.

What might the Democrats do to counter this?

Obama captured 48% of the vote in the theoretical match-up against McCain’s 41%, the TIME poll reported, while Clinton and McCain would deadlock at 46% of the vote each. Put another way, McCain looks at the moment to have a narrowly better chance of beating the New York Senator than he does the relative newcomer from Illinois.

The difference, says Mark Schulman, CEO of Abt SRBI, which conducted the poll for TIME, is that “independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton But they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator.” Independents, added Schulman, “are a key battleground.”

Julian Yap, friend of Bray New World and all-around top-notch Texan, is angling for a spot on the Obama campaign. He writes that

I hope to one day work in professional politics. Sadly, I have discovered that entry into politics requires a fair amount of clout, whether it be huge experience, or, more often, fundraising.

…thus I’ve set up a web page to raise money for him. I was hoping that if any of you do donate now, or in the future, that you would consider doing so through my fundraising page, so you can help two causes at one go: To get both a Democrat and a Julian into the White House. In vastly different positions.

So if you were already planning on supporting Obama, and want to help Julian in the process, do so via http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/JulianYap

Notice the cheap shot he gets in on his way out:

Mitt Romney suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Thursday, saying if he continued it would “forestall the launch of a national campaign and be making it easier for Sen. Clinton or Obama to win.”

“In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

In the Helmand province of Afghanistan, jihadists were said to be gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair. “We were hoping for an easy run for the Democrats,” remarked one leader. “They’ll sit back and let us blow things up with impunity.”

I may have misquoted one of those three paragraphs; apologies to CNN.

The Carpetbagger Report notes that John McCain made this joke at a recent campaign stop in Boston:

“[After introducing former Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas], and from the great state of South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham. After this meeting, if you’d like to talk to senator, either senator Graham, we will provide translators for any of you that need to, find them hard to understand. I find them hard to — anyway…

I’m trying to imagine the right-wing blogosphere’s rabid response if Clinton or Obama had made that crack instead, but I can’t, because it makes my brain hurt.

For those of you who enjoyed it during the 2004 race, electoral-vote.com is back, complete with an RSS feed, now covering the 2008 primaries.

(Thanks to Katherine for the link.)