That loud sharp sound you just heard was the sound of millions of Democrats slapping their hands against their foreheads

Ok, it's bad enough when one of them attacks the other with what's sure to be one of the Republicans' points of attack in the fall, but it's a hundred times worse when one of them---in this case, the one being Obama---uses a Republican talking point against himself!

Democrat Barack Obama, who often argues that John McCain is the same as President Bush, said Sunday that the Republican presidential candidate would be better for the country than Bush has been.

"You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain," Obama said to cheers from a rowdy crowd in central Pennsylvania. Then he said: "And all three of us would be better than George Bush."

AAAAAAAGGGGGGGH!

No, Senator.  Two of you would be better, a whole lot better.  One of you, John McCain, would at best be absolutely no better.  The point, which you've been making---and not as often or as forcefully as you need to be, and ditto for Senator Clinton---is that a McCain Presidency amounts to a third term for George W. Bush.  The only difference is where McCain would actually be worse!

There are countless Republicans, Conservatives, and fellow-travelling Independents who know that George Bush has been a disaster.  They want him gone as much as the rest of us do.  But they don't agree on the reasons.  It may have dawned on some of them that Bush has been such a spectacular failure not because he's not a compassionate conservative, but because he's a conservative period and they might be considering voting for a Democrat for the first time in their lives because they're coming around to the idea that Democratic and liberal positions are saner, wiser, more economic, more practical, and better all around for the country.  But most of the rest are thinking, It's that goddamn Bush!  And they're considering voting for not Obama, not Clinton, but Not-Bush.

They're willing to put up with President Not-Bush for four years, if the only President Not-Bush they can have is a Democrat.

But they'd rather have a President Not-Bush who's also not a liberal.

Now Obama has gone and told them that there is another, Republican Not-Bush.  A conservative Not-Bush.

I've been saying I don't mind if Obama and Clinton have to fight it out right onto the convention floor because the long campaign has been good for the Party.

I hadn't considered how it might not be good for the candidates.

They're exhausted.  They're losing focus.  They're growing surly.  They're getting punch drunk and goofy. Both Hillary and Obama have developed bad cases of foot in mouth syndrome.  They need to be saved from themselves.

In this case, Obama's advisors need to sit him down and remind him that he won't be running against George W. Bush in the fall.  He'll be running against John McSame.

Stay on message, Senator.  As your own spokesman Bill Burton says: "It's hard to imagine a president doing a worse job than President Bush but one thing is clear, John McCain wants to do his best to emulate Bush's failed economic and foreign policies and even his divisive political tactics."

Comments

[Bias is as bias does]

I find your reaction odd. Hillary has been going around for weeks claiming that she and McCain are better than Obama, as if running for McCain's VP. Where were you then?

[Jan]

Actually, Clinton has NOT gone around saying she and McCain "are better" than Obama.

She has said that she and McCain have experience, and that Obama doesn't.

And, obviously, Obama doesn't.

[lina]

This was a gaffe by Obama, but I too find the outrage laughable considering Hil's commander-in-chief threshold remarks.

[Mary]

Yes, he stepped in it. It was a stupid thing to say, though I think it can be successfully recovered from.

But it's splitting hairs to say that Clinton did no wrong when she deliberately and repeatedly said that she and McCain had "crossed the CiC threshold" and Obama hadn't. No matter how you spin it, she ended up ranking herself and the Republican candidate ahead of Obama on that measure. She didn't "misspeak" there any more than she "misspoke" about sniper fire in Bosnia.

(Yes, she has now started saying that voters should support either Dem over McCain. But that doesn't undo what she said weeks ago.)

[Ken Houghton]

"They're exhausted. They're losing focus. They're growing surly. They're getting punch drunk and goofy. Both Hillary and Obama have developed bad cases of foot in mouth syndrome. They need to be saved from themselves."

Give you a subtle hint: the winner of the primary isn't going to get a bleeding vacation for the next four month or so until the Convention.

Obama's "eloquence" advantage is fading, and his Repubican-talking-points positions are becoming more obvious.

I fear what will be left by October. (Fortunately, I'll be in another country by then, watching in horror.)

And for those who call this the same as Hillary's C-in-C comment: What World do you live in? How many votes would you expect to win by claiming that a Veteran, a former POW, and a long-time Senator would not be fit to be C-in-C? (My number is large, and significantly different than zero—on the negative side of the ledger.)

McCain has qualifications that should make him clearly capable of being C-in-C, and denying that would have been silly. The claim that he will clearly be a better President than GWB is, otoh, idiocy. (He has the same domestic agenda, a similar determination to expand the current war, and the intent of increasing the deficit even more. This is not a basis for claiming he will be an improvement, and that sound-bite will be prominent in the final weeks of the actual election.)

[Mary]

Ken, what world do you live in that a candidate escapes criticism for deliberately and repeatedly bringing up an issue that potentially favors the opposing party and damages their own? And alleging that McCain is "clearly" capable of being CiC doesn't impress me, either. He has military experience, granted. But he is also rash, lazy, and judgmental, with a hair-trigger temper. He is the least fit to be CinC of all of them.

Obama said something dumb in this case, obviously. But to try to spin this as full-scale praise for McCain, or as an example of pandering, or as something way dumber than deliberately kneecapping your Democratic opponent strikes me as some otherworldly partisanship for Clinton.

[Chester]

I agree with Mary. Clinton's comments were worse since they were used to attack her fellow Dem.
But Obama does need to get back on message.

[Vir Modestus]

Obama's people backpeddled by saying something to the effect of "Anyone would be better than Bush." Not sure if it helped since the original statement was a big gaffe by Obama. But both of the Dems need to keep in mind who the true opponent is. No CiC threshold crap, no anyone would be better than Bush crap. Eyes on the prize, people. Eyes on the prize.

[calling all toasters]

Obama definitely stepped in it here. If he wanted to match the Hillary Responsible Rhetoric Test, he would have said that either he or McCain would be better than Hillary, but instead he said that he or Hillary would be better than McCain.

And he calls himself a Democrat?

[David Wilford]

The overreaction here and elsewhere is more annoying than what Obama said. It is possible to be a blogger without being a drama queen at the same time, no?

[Victoria]

Mistake to say it. Yes, surely a result of fatigue... unlike Hillary's carefully wrought dis: "and Obama has a speech he gave once."

I'm hearing from more and more people who are also fatigued and fed up with the ongoing silly season this has become. Just today, my mother - a PA voter and enormous Bill Clinton fan (she read both of their bios, cover to cover) - emailed that she was watching Bill on C-Span, heard him say something so spurious that she got up and turned him off. "I couldn't take any more Bill Clinton! Imagine that," she wrote under the subject line "Hard To Believe." It may be that with 24-hour cable, blogging drama queens, and internet intensities, we have entered a new world where it's harder than we think for Dems to come back together for the general.

[gypsy howell]

I saw Obama make that speech during his whistlestop tour in PA on Saturday, and the reporter is quoting it out of context. The line about George Bush was clearly meant to slam Bush, not praise McCain. Obama went on to talk about the failed presidency of George Bush, and emphasized, in great detail, that McCain was going to pursue the same policies, or worse.

To the crowd watching the speech, I can assure you it was plain as day what he was saying, and there was absolutely no mistaking what his message was: if you want more of the same, vote for McCain.

Having seen Obama deliver the speech live, I was really pissed when I later read the dishonest spin the reporter put on it, trying to suggest that Obama was saying that McCain was somehow an acceptable choice in November.

When your choice is to believe the candidates or believe the press, your first choice shouldn't be taking the press' word for it. Surely we've all been burned enough times to know that.

[gypsy howell]

"McCain has qualifications that should make him clearly capable of being C-in-C, and denying that would have been silly."

Getting shot down in your plane and being a POW does not make you C-I-C material. If it did, I'd be head of the Dept of Transportation because I've been in a car accident.