A thrill went up Chris Matthew's other leg.

"Josh Marshall, I'm falling in love with you."

"[I]t is absurd for any government to prevent people from growing a naturally-occurring plant that requires no processing to provide humans with pleasure."

"It's pretty basic, actually. This is a core freedom for human beings and requires an insane apparatus of state control and police power to prevent it from occurring. All you have to do is burn a plant and inhale the smoke. If humans are not free to do this in the natural world in which they were born, what on earth are they free to do?"

Andrew Sullivan, pushing back Josh Marshall, who writes:

... I just don't know if I think marijuana should be legalized at all. Maybe it's that I'm getting into my 40s. And maybe I'm a hypocrite.... But [my Dad] had this very contradictory and hard to rationalize position which was that he was fine with people smoking pot but keeping it at least nominally illegal kept public usage in some check. Again, how to rationalize that in traditional civic terms? Not really sure. But frankly, I think I kind of agree.

So, for Marshall, it all comes down to who's skittish or formal about law? This is a pleasure that is open to everyone except those who adhere to the law. Everyone else can go ahead, but — perhaps as a sop to the rule-followers — they'll have to feel uneasy about it.

"... Williams can come out of the closet as a full-on wingnut cartoon character."

"No more living a lie as a one-time journalist playing a fake liberal on Fox News."

Sayeth Josh Marshall.

Witch! Whore!... Nazi!

A (Republican) Senate candidate has been called a witch. A (Republican) gubernatorial candidate has been called a whore. And now... a — guess which party? — House candidate is tarred with Nazi.

"Why is This GOP House Candidate Dressed as a Nazi?" You may click to see Rich Iott — posing and smiling in 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking uniform with 3 of his closest Nazi friends... I mean... with 3 of his fellow WW2 reenacters.  "It's purely historical interest in World War II." Hmm. Yeah. The high-profile article — by Joshua Green in The Atlantic — goes on, stoking your suspicion that a guy who dresses up and plays the part of Nazi has got to feel some affinity for Nazis. Sample:

Iott participated in the group under his own name, and also under the alias "Reinhard Pferdmann," which has also been removed, and which Iott described as being his German alter ego. "Part of the reenactor's [experience]," Iott said, "is the living-history part, of really trying to get into the persona of the time period. In many, not just in our unit, but in many units what individuals do is create this person largely based on a Germanized version of their name, and a history kind of based around your own real experiences. 'Reinhard' of course is 'Richard' in German. And 'Pferdmann,' 'pferd' is a horse. So it's literally 'horse man.'"

I was very far into the position of thinking man, this guy should not have been the candidate, what a screw-up for the Republicans when I got to this information — buried at the end of the 13th paragraph of the 15-paragraph article:

[Iott] added that he has participated in re-enactments as a Civil War Union infantryman, a World War I dough boy and World War II American infantryman and paratrooper.

What?! Green should be ashamed of himself for minimizing this. The 13th paragraph is about follow-up email with Iott. Did Green have the whole damning article written when he encountered this crucial piece of information? And then he decided — what? — to stick it where it's least likely to be read? A decent journalist would have ascertained how many war reenactments Iott has done and which roles Iott played in them. What is the proportion of Nazi roles he assumed compared to the number of times he played WW2 American infantrymen or paratroopers? Who decides, when war reenactments are done, which side somebody plays? Give me a realistic picture of what participation in war reenactments is really like so I can assess what Iott did.

Instead, Green's article is filled out with the well-known information that the Nazis were bad and that Jews and others are offended by signs that a person is sympathetic to Nazis. It's pretty obvious that Green is hot to smear Iott and help the Democrat in the race. And, unsurprisingly, the Democratic blogosphere welcomes Green's hearty slab of biased reporting.

TPM's Josh Marshall types up "Marcy Kaptur's Good Night's Sleep" ("whatever worry she may have had about reelection, I think that's over now that her opponent Rich Iott has been revealed as an avid Nazi reenactor"). Also at TPM ,Evan McMorris-Santoro has a long piece that looks like a rewrite of Green's piece, except that it leaves out the crucial information about other reenactments altogether. How incredibly slimy!

Look! Over there! Nazis! They're eeeevil! Sorry, but I'm looking over here, at journalists who should be ashamed of their shoddy political hackery.

"So is Rand Paul, on a personal level, just a deeply unlikeable guy?"

Asks Josh Marshall, and I'm trying to understand what his problem is:

One of the weird things about his acceptance speech last night was that he held it at the local country club -- to what looked uncannily like a members only crowd.

So Josh's uncanniness-sensors were activated. That is weird.

More to the point, news came out overnight that Paul allegedly refused to take Trey Grayson's concession phone call last night.

But he goes on to admit that the "news" wasn't too reliable and hedges "So who knows?"

But I am getting the impression that Paul -- aside from just being very unlikeable in personal terms...

Getting the impression... Josh's sensors are a-tingling.

... may be a much more divisive figure than one might from any Tea Party candidate who snatches away a nomination from an establishment party figure. 

Than one might... what? I assume Josh is hoping for divisiveness.

... But a poll out yesterday showed that Grayson supporters in Kentucky simply hate Rand Paul in a way that goes way beyond the normal aftermath of a contested primary. From PPP's write-up of their poll ...

53% of likely Grayson voters for today have an unfavorable opinion of Paul to only 23% with a positive opinion of him. More importantly though just 40% of Grayson voters say they'll support Paul in the general election if he wins the Republican nomination with 43% explicitly saying they will not.

I get the sense there's a whole issue of personality (and messianism) that's going to be in play in that race beyond quite apart from ideology narrowly construed.

Well, I guess I'll have to start paying attention to Paul, because I have no idea what Josh Marshall is talking about.  My sensors are saying Marshall is terrified of Paul and hot to bring him down. If so, he'll need more substance. That was really an inanely empty post.

"Why Do You Believe What You Do? Do our beliefs form the basis of our partisan and ideological affiliations?"

Here is Josh Marshall asking what, for me, have always been the most interesting questions about politics. I've taken a lot of flak for it too. I've found it really annoys people to take a political or philosophical discussion in this direction. But Josh Marshall isn't really going where I hoped he would with this. He's going where I'd expect Josh Marshall to go, toward showing why Republicans are bad:

There's been a lot of recent evidence not only that Republicans disproportionately disbelieve the evidence for man-made global warming but that their skepticism is growing.

Yeah, but isn't there skepticism growing because there is a whole load of new evidence that the scientists were not being too scientific? Is that "disbeliev[ing] the evidence" or paying attention to evidence?

I think that trend is fairly classed under the general heading of Republican/conservative hostility to science.

Aw, come on now! Why do you, Josh Marshall, believe what you do? Why do you believe that skepticism is hostility to science as opposed to the methodology of science? Why do you believe that the evidence for man-made global warming is real evidence and the evidence of misbehavior by scientists is not real? Is it because you are committed to the policy choices that of your partisan and ideological affiliations?

Marshall makes absolutely no attempt to look into the structure of his own mind. He's a politico using interesting questions not because he's curious about the truth but because he seems to think they work well to attack the people he already wants to attack.

There's more to Marshall's post, and it may get a little better, but it's also vague and meandering. Please read it and let me know if you think I'm being unfair to Marshall, but I think he wanted to take a shot at those bad anti-science Republicans and the rest is vague gesturing at the fact that he went to college and could write a coherent essay on the theme he wanted to take the trouble to do it.

"But I still find the greyness (which is mainly the non-backlitness) of the Kindle inferior to my iPhone."

Josh Marshall and I are on the same page about this:

It's designed that way in part because it allows the battery on a Kindle to last an insanely long period of time but also because it's supposed to be easier on the eyes. Maybe I just spend so much time in front of a monitor that my eyes are trashed and I don't know the difference. But for me, on the iPhone, it just looks more crisp and readable.

Can we just have an iPhone with a big screen? Or is this all about the batteries?

Marshall, unlike me, quickly settles into reading on the Kindle, then mulls over the prospect of a future without actual paper books and newspapers:

There's a lot I miss about print newspapers, particularly the serendipitous magic of finding stories adjacent to the one you're reading, articles you're deeply interested in but never would have known you were if it weren't plopped down in front of you to pull you in through your peripheral vision.

I miss that too, but I canceled my NYT subscription a while back because I was leaving the folded paper on the table as I read what I wanted, free-form, on the computer screen. As Josh says:

... I regret not reading [newspapers]. But I just don't. I vote with my eyes.

Yes, I've done that, and now my eyes — and my brain — have changed. It's hard now to read an unlit page.

There's an awful lot of instinctive revulsion toward Bobby Jindal.

Expressed by Josh Marshall ("absolutely cringeworthy"), Andrew Sullivan ("Jindal's entrance reminded one of Mr Burns gamboling toward a table of ointments"), and others.

Why are all these people so confident that they are not manifesting racism? There's just something about this man that doesn't seem right, that you don't care to examine exactly what it is, but you know it deep down in your gut somehow. Seriously. How do you know this is not racism?

ADDED: Andrew Sullivan proffers an answer to my question: "Maybe because there is not a trace of evidence of any kind that we are. Unless comparing Jindal to Kenneth the Page or Mr Burns taps unknown wells of racist hate in my heart. I mean, seriously." I think deeper reflection is needed. Why the urge to paint him as a white white man? Where did that come from? Of course, there are unknown wells inside us all. When you have an instinctive response to a person of another race, why not seek knowledge?

Josh Marshall cannot believe what John Hinderaker wrote.

Link to Marshall (who misspells Hinderaker -- think rake, Josh, not rack). Here's the quote:

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated.

Political stories I'd blog if I felt more like it.

1. Obama wants to bankrupt to bankrupt the coal industry (and the SF Chronicle sat on the audiotape).

2. Josh Marshall slurs Joe the Plumber as "Joe the Skinhead."

3. Jonah Goldberg pretend-looks back on the Obama presidency -- his "precipitous fall from would-be messiah, to near pariah."

4. "We’ve got to have a civilian national security force..."

5. Sarah Palin receives a (Canadian) prank call.

6. Old radical rag referred to community organizing and had a circular logo.

7. Fred Thompson speaks for John McCain, and John Kerry speaks for Barack Obama. Both do a nice job.

8. Another Senatorial candidate files a defamation lawsuit. The matter in dispute: godlessness.

9. Instapundit had more traffic in September than in October. Me too. Political fever peaks in September. By October, we're just trying to make it to the end.

10. And now, it's November, and this list hits the round number 10. The feeling is: Let it end!

"Beyond dirty campaigning... to something truly dishonorable."

Laying great emphasis on the treatment of Rashid Khalidi, John Judis condemns the McCain campaign:



(Via Josh Marshall.)

ADDED: More on Khalidi here:

Mr. Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia, was born in Manhattan in 1948....

He taught at universities in Lebanon until the mid-’80s, and some critics accuse him of having been a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Khalidi has denied working for the group, and says he was consulted as an expert by reporters seeking to understand it.

He was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation during Middle East peace talks from 1991 to 1993. From 1987 until 2003, he was a professor at the University of Chicago, where he became friends with Mr. Obama.

At Mr. Khalidi’s farewell party in 2003, according to the Los Angeles Times article, Mr. Obama fondly recalled their many conversations, saying they provided “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.”

I don't know what the whole quote was, but I see subtlety in that statement. Obama is speaking at an event honoring a colleague, so it's no time for insults. Obama gracefully uses self-deprecation as he speaks of his own flaws, which Khalidi reminded him to see. We don't know from that whether Khalidi successfully argued that Obama had blind spots and biases or whether Khalidi served as an example of blind spots and biases. I think we see a polite and circumspect man -- perhaps even a man who follows the teaching of Jesus:

Matthew 7

1 "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

"No, no ma'am. He's a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements."

John McCain, interrupting a woman who began her question "I'm scared of Barack Obama... he's an Arab terrorist...," from a Swampland blog post titled "McCain Denounces Pitchfork-Wavers."

ADDED: Video:



AND: The video shows that Ana Marie Cox did not transcribe the quote correctly. It's not: "I'm scared of Barack Obama... he's an Arab terrorist..." It's: "I can't trust Obama. I have read about him, and he's not he's not he's a uh he's an Arab." "Terrorist" is simply not there. The McCain quote is a bit off too. He says: "He's a decent family man citizen that I just happen to have some disagreements with on fundamental issues." Don't pin "terrorist" on the little old lady in the audience, and don't pin "whom" on the presidential candidate.

AND: Note that Time's Cox (or whoever did the transcription) not only added "terrorist" but also substituted "scared" for "can't trust." What does that say about the mind of the transcriber? It suggests the press is looking for evidence of fear and fear mongering. I think we're seeing a grasping for more evidence to justify blaming the campaign for deranging the minds of McCain's supporters. But if this woman's concern is that Obama is an Arab and that you can't trust him because of that, then it has nothing much to do with the Ayers connection that the McCain campaign promoted this week. So spike the quote with "terrorism" and "scared."

BUT: If she only said "he's an Arab," why did McCain say "no" and "He's a decent family man citizen..."? "No" makes sense as a simple correction of fact, but why "He's a decent family man citizen" as if Arab-Americans are not decent citizens who care about their families? I think McCain blurted out an accidental, implied ethnic slur.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall is conspicuously struggling to say that the woman -- her name is Gayle Quinnell -- really did say "Arab terrorist":

You can see the video I've embedded below. The gist is that Quinnell apparently did say "Arab terrorist." (ed.note: It would be more accurate to say that she insisted he was one in the interview. It's unclear from interview whether she actually used the second word with McCain.)

No, dammit. Here's the transcript of what she says in the interview. She never says "terrorist." It's obvious that she doesn't say that word to McCain. In the interview, the interviewer tries to put that word in her mouth, but she does not say it.

Here are the relevant parts from the interview transcript:

Quinnell: I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to this country.

Aigner [Adam Aigner of NBC News]: What would you think would happen? Do you think it would become Muslim country and what would that mean?

Quinnell: It would be bad...

Noah Kunin, Senior Political Correspondent from The UpTake: ... And just to be sure to make sure we got your quote OK, you called Obama and Arab terrorist?

Quinnell [P]ardon?

Noah: You called him an Arab terrorist? Is that correct? Why do you think he is an Arab?

Quinnell Because his dad is....

Did she hear the first question and mean to respond to it, or is she responding to the second question that leaves off the word "terrorist"? That's an awfully unfair way to ask the question, and Kunin ought to have followed up and pinned her down. The woman is, 75 and there is noisy music in the background, and she has to lean her head in and say "pardon." Under the circumstances, ascribing the word "terrorist" to her is patently unfair.

Come on, Josh! Take it back.

"And John McCain either doesn't know who the Prime Minister of Spain is, thinks Spain is a country in Latin America, or possibly both."

Writes Josh Marshall (about this interview).

After the interviewer presses him a couple times on the point and tries to focus him on the fact that Prime Minister Zapatero isn't from Mexico and isn't a drug lord either McCain comes back at her saying, "All I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the Hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not. And that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region."

Then there's a moment of awkward pause before she says. "But what about Europe? I'm talking about the President of Spain."

McCain: "What about me, what?["]

Interviewer: "Are you willing to meet with him if you're elected president?"

McCain: "I am wiling to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are for humans rights, democracy and freedom. And I will stand up to those who do not."

At this point, the interviewer gets tongue-tied presumably because she can't get over McCain not knowing what Spain is.

I've listened to the audio, and what Marshall is missing is that when the interviewer says "But what about Europe?" it sounds as though she says "But what about you?" That's why McCain says "What about me, what?"

There's not as easy an explanation for why McCain is unresponsive about Spain initially, but goes back to the previous subject of Latin America and goes on about Mexico. It's impossible to believe that McCain doesn't know where Spain is. But it is possible that he didn't recognize the name Zapatero or doesn't know enough about the country to want to say anything coherent about it. It seems more likely that he was getting tired of the interview or finding the interviewer a little hard to understand, and he was just trying to get to the end and it showed.

UPDATE: First, please note that my comment above isn't meant to completely absolve McCain. I have taken a vow of cruel neutrality. I say what I think regardless of whose ox is gored. Now, here's the update: WaPo reports:

McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Sheunemann said McCain's answer was intentional.

"The questioner asked several times about Senator McCain's willingness to meet Zapatero (and id'd him in the question so there is no doubt Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred). Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview," he said in an e-mail....

Asked to explain McCain's apparent shift in tone and position since April, Scheunemann gave almost no ground.

"In this week's interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally," he said in an e-mail. "If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America's adversaries. It's called keeping your options open, unlike Senator Obama, who has publicly committed to meeting some of the world's worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office."

In other words, bumbling as it sounds, he meant to do that.

Obama on Olbermann was much worse than I'd originally thought.

Last night, with the help of TiVo, I watched Barack Obama as he simultaneously appeared on O'Reilly and Olbermann's shows. I thought he was terrific on O'Reilly, that he benefited from having the blowhard pushing back at him, and pretty useless on Olbermann, where, I thought, Olbermann was doing his, thing railing about McCain's "lies" and leaving Obama with nothing to do but figure out how enthusiastically to agree with him. I said:

Olbermann was insipid, feeding Obama overstated arguments, and leaving Obama struggling to seem appropriately well-modulated and ending up insipidly nodding and smiling. Olbermann showed a McCain/Palin ad -- this one -- and exploded about all the "lies" and insisted that Obama agree that these were lies. Ugh.... Obama seemed trapped.

Here's what I was looking at:

[Embedded video removed. You can see it here.]

Now, I'm seeing this news story from yesterday, time-stamped before the Olbermann show:

Barack Obama ripped into John McCain and Sarah Palin as never before Monday, accusing his Republican White House foes of "shameless" dishonesty with their claim to be "mavericks" ready to shake up Washington.

McCain and Palin were "lying about their records," the Obama campaign said after the Republican running mates advertised themselves in a television spot as the "original mavericks" who would stand up for hard-pressed voters.

And here's that new Obama ad.



So it wasn't that Obama got stuck in the insipid world of Keith Olbermann. Olbermann was feeding Obama Obama's own campaign material.

***

Here's the O'Reilly interview, the one I think is much better. (Don't miss the low blow: "I don't care if I live in a hut." Obama acts like he doesn't hear it or doesn't get it.)

***

You know, yesterday, Josh Marshall lashed out at Sarah Palin for planning to do multiple interviews with ABC's Charlie Gibson. Marshall pronounced it "unwatchable" in advance. He said that Gibson had "gelded" himself by agreeing to the multiple interviews format.

With that in mind, I wanted to know if Marshall had something to say about the way Olbermann fed Obama his own message of the day. Over on Marshall's blog, here's the first thing I see:

We've now had a week of blaring headlines and one-liners about Sarah Palin as the mavericky, pork-busting reformer from Alaska. But we seem to be witnessing the first stirrings of a backlash and a dawning realization that the 'Sarah Palin' we've heard so much about over the last few days is a fraud of truly comical dimensions.

The McCain camp has made her signature issue shutting down the Bridge to Nowhere. But as The New Republic put it today that's just "a naked lie." And pretty much the same thing has been written today in Newsweek, the Washington Post, the AP, the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday even Fox's Chris Wallace called out Rick Davis on it....

Think about that. On the stump, not a single word that comes out of her mouth -- or not a single word that the McCain folks put in her mouth -- is anything but a lie. I know that sounds like hyperbole. But just go down the list. None of them bear out.

So, let's see. You're saying it's a good thing when all these major media repeat the Obama campaign's message of the day? That's journalism as it should be, bearing out the truth. But when Charlie Gibson sets up multiple interviews, that's journalism gone to hell.

Josh, seriously. Aren't you just a teensy bit embarrassed?

Charlie Gibson agreed to have his nuts cut out -- according to Josh Marshall.

How so? Because his interview with Sarah Palin will be multiple interviews. Marshall says:

Political interviews are never done like this. Because it makes the questioning entirely at the discretion of the person being interviewed and their handlers. The interviewer has to be on their best behavior, at least until the last of the 'multiple interviews' because otherwise the subsequent sittings just won't happen. For a political journalist to agree to such terms amounts to a form of self-gelding. The only interviews that are done this way are lifestyle and celebrity interviews. And it's pretty clear that that is what this will be....

It will be unwatchable.

Previously, Marshall had been dogging Palin for not submitting to an interview:

[McCain campaign manager Rick Davis... says Palin won't give any interviews until she feels "comfortable" giving one. And this morning he added that she wouldn't give any "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."

Sarah Palin could be the President of the United States in four and a half months. We tend to think of this as an abstraction; but it's true. And yet today she's so unprepared and knows so little about the challenges and tasks facing the country that she can't even give a softball interview.

So, okay, maybe she's found her softball -- or no balls -- interview in Gibson.

We'll see how soft it is. It's unlikely to be complete fluff. So let's watch it -- not just pronounce it "unwatchable" -- and stand ready to rip Gibson apart -- if there's anything left to rip after he's gelded himself. And then we can go on to insist that Palin step it up and submit to something tougher.

Man, Marshall is really freaking out over Palin. He slashes Gibson for falling short of journalistic standards, but what are his standards? Look at this gush of testosterone:

As is so often the case, Palin is the incarnation of the Republican slurs. The darling of the hard-right; she gives stem-winding speeches. She pushes all their buttons. But she's such a lightweight, they can't risk letting her answer a few questions.

Continuing to browse through Marshall's posting, I run across this:

New Poll
09.08.08 -- 12:56AM By Josh Marshall

USAToday/Gallup: McCain 54%, Obama 44% among likely voters.

That must cut like a knife.

Was Day 1 of the convention too sweet?

Josh Marshall kept yelling "Attack, Attack, Attack."

And James Carville groused that the night was wasted on emotional, personal fluff (and the Republicans will go right for the jugular).

Do these hardcore political males have any sense of how ordinary Americans — especially female Americans — feel about politics?

Clinton can't win on pledged delegates.

But can she still somehow win? Howard Fineman explains:



And, you know, I didn't set out to attack Keith Olbermann again, but...

ADDED: Josh Marshall has this:

Now, Fineman is something of a paragon of the mainstream media. So his comments probably raise some suspicion among some readers.

A paragon of what?

But this is a pretty straightforward mathematical question. Doesn't really matter what Fineman or either campaigns say [sic]. Folks paying close attention are as likely to accurately predict the outcomes as the folks in the campaign. So is this true? Is a pledged delegate win for Clinton no longer a realistic possibility?

AND: Is "pledged delegate" the new term for the elected delegates, to go along with the transition from "superdelegate" to "automatic delegate"?

In a sign that the spin war over the significance of super-delegates is underway in earnest, Harold Ickes told assorted Hillary supporters on a private conference call yesterday that the campaign wants them to start referring to super-delegates as "automatic delegates," according to someone on the call.

The person I spoke to paraphrases Ickes, who is spearheading Hillary's super-delegate hunt, this way: "We're no longer using the phrase super delegates. It creates a wrong impression. They're called automatic delegates. Because that's what they are."

"Pledged delegate" sounds confusing to me, because I've heard plenty of talk about how superdelegates were pledging to vote for one candidate or another.

"Hillary can be relentless and like a sledgehammer delivering tendentious but probably effective attacks."

"But whatever you think of those attacks, Obama isn't very good at defending himself."

Josh Marshall on last night's debate.

(My comments on the subject are back here, delivered contemporaneously.)

Bill!

TPM snips together a great clip show... and saves the best for last. My, but Peggy kicks little Doris!

ADDED: Josh Marshall on Bill Clinton:

What troubles me is seeing the man who is in many respects still the de facto leader of the Democratic party, certainly its elder statesman, inject himself as an attack dog into a intra-party contest. I think it's damaging to him and more importantly I think it's damaging to his party.

"Now, it was clear that a lot of the people in this particular focus group were as dumb as posts."

"One of the guy's Luntz interviewed explained how Mitt was obviously more credible on the pro-life issue than Mike Huckabee. I mean, I had no idea Mitt could do so well bamboozling these folks. Seriously, it was so surreal...."

Josh Marshall marvels at that Frank Luntz focus group after last night's debate (which we talked about — and you can watch — here).