The Washington Post has a new poll, but they are holding the topline numbers for release tomorrow I assume. Which makes for an interesting experiment. Today, WaPo released other results from the poll. On the commander in chief question (which is faulty imo for the reasons expressed in this dkos diary) produced the following results:

[72%] said McCain would make a good commander in chief. . . . Obama's [at] 48 percent[.]

The problematic question notwithstanding, it will be interesting to compare the topline presidential preference result with the C-i-C question results. If Obama holds a comfortable lead with that sizable a gap, it will be a bad sign for McCain having any chance of winning this election. More . . .

Via Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money who has some thoughts of his own, Kathy G at the G Spot gives a rundown and her rankings of possible vice-presidential candidates for Sen. Barack Obama. Her longer post with her reasoning is here.

Kathy's top three: Sherrod Brown, John Edwards and Kathleen Sebelius.

Scott likes Sebelius and Edwards.

My thoughts right now: The only ones that create any sense of enthusiasm are Hillary and John Edwards. My past thinking on Sebelius is here.

Sen. Barack Obama is headed to Israel and the West Bank next week:

U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama will visit Israel and the occupied West Bank next week, Israeli and Palestinian officials said on Monday. Obama will be in Israel on July 22 and 23 and hold talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, President Shimon Peres and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli official said.

Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said Obama would also meet President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah next Wednesday.

More...

This column in the WaPo today is quite good:

James Monroe had one, and so should we. That seems to be the theory behind the rampant and premature speculation among national security wonks about what kind of new doctrine President Obama or President McCain would use to guide U.S. foreign policy. But let's not get carried away thinking about what a McCain or Obama doctrine might be. In today's complex world, a president doesn't need to have a one-size-fits-all template for handling foreign affairs. In fact, the next president would be better off without one.

Indeed. Enough with the doctrines. More . .

Sully found a very interesting 1996 piece by Tom Edsall on Bill Clinton. I defy anyone to read it and tell me Barack Obama was not, until recently, reprising Bill Clinton's 1992 election campaign.

But what is really interesting is Edsall's focus on the mandate Clinton won in 1992:

Clinton not only overestimated the magnitude of his election victory but initially proceeded to govern as if cultural and social post-sixties liberalism had won, when in fact a moderated centrism had won.

Of course, that seemed to be what was possible in 1992 - a win for moderated Democratic centrism. In 2008, we can seek more for the mandate. We must. More . . .

A funny thing happened to Obama's "Move To The Middle" tour. After two weeks, it has abruptly ended, as the AP's Liz Sidoti writes:

Barack Obama has found something that eluded him during the primary season — contrast. And, he's basking in it. . . . [V]ast disagreements with McCain — on everything from economic philosophies to security proposals — seem to have given Obama license to more aggressively and enthusiastically go after his foe. . . . These days, Obama assails McCain's position on the issues every chance he gets. He levels his charges with a commonsense tone and lighthearted touch that couches the criticism while making his core argument: McCain and President Bush are the same.

"If you are satisfied with the way things are going now, then you should vote for John McCain," Obama says before rattling off a list of current concerns, including rising gas prices, home foreclosures and job losses as the country fights two wars.

The New York Times interviews several progressives, including bloggers about their support for Sen. Barack Obama given his recent FISA vote and the other centrist positions he's staked out in recent weeks.

Will it cost Obama in votes? I hope not. I want a Democratic president. But if it does, it's Obama's own fault. He's now at risk of "being viewed as someone who parses positions without taking a principled stand." On this, the Times quotes liberal writer and blogger David Sirota who says:

“I’m not saying we’re there yet, but that’s the danger,” said David Sirota, a liberal political analyst and author. “I don’t think there’s disillusion. I think there’s an education process that takes place, and that’s a good thing. He is a transformative politician, but he is still a politician.”

I disagree. I see no transformational quality to either Obama or his candidacy. Obama said he was a new kind of politician. He sold an entire younger generation on the theory of change, a new kind of politics in Washington and he's delivered the status quo. He's shown us that on FISA, the death penalty, guns, religion, Iraq, Afghanistan and trade policy (so far) he's all about preserving the status quo and not rocking the boat in his quest for votes. How much more "politics as usual" can you get?

Other Obama supporters interviewed for the article are angry at Obama. One says she's going to vote for the Green party candidate. [More...]

Miami's large Cuban population, often referred to as "Little Havana" has always been predominantly Republican. Sunday's New York Times Magazine has a five page article questioning whether Cuban support in Miami might shift and vote Democratic in November. Primarily it examines some Democratic challenges to traditionally Republican House seats in Florida, But it also touches on the Presidential election.

Backstage, something very new is happening. Call it the Miami Spring, or Cuban-American glasnost. This community that has clung for decades to its certainties — about the island itself, about the role the exile community would play after the Castro brothers passed from the scene, about where Cuban-Americans should situate themselves in terms of U.S. domestic politics — is in ferment. This matters not only in terms of the destiny of the Cuban-American community itself but also in terms of the 2008 elections since, despite claims made on background by some of Barack Obama’s advisers, Florida is likely to play a pivotal role in determining whether Obama or John McCain becomes president, and the Cuban-American vote is likely to play its usual outsize role in deciding which candidate prevails in the state.

The Times recounts Obama's May speech in Miami seeking the Cuban vote. The Times reports:[More...]

In a mailed in column railing at Clinton supporters, Michael Kinsley proves how little he understands about politics and the Obama brand:

[O]ther Democrats are upset at Obama's recent moves toward the center. T[his] complaint is childish. Securing your base and then moving to the center is the fundamental move of politics, like the basic steps of the fox-trot.

(Emphasis supplied.) It is as if Kinsley did not watch the campaign. The one thing Obama ran on was CHANGING politics. Now I thought it was ridiculous - I want him to change the governing policies of the United States, not change politics - but I know what he was selling. He can not now blatantly pretend he did not run on "changing politics." Some of the stuff coming out of the national press is so ignorant it defies belief. And Kinsley says he is arguing FOR Obama here. With friends like these . . .

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

My title is a joke. As is Newsweek (here is J's writeup on the poll):

Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience--an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who'd slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama's reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage.

More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics. . . .

While the latest CNN poll has Sen. Barack Obama 8 points ahead of McCain, a new Newsweek poll shows Obama ahead of McCain by only 3 points.

A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama's glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month's NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.

Is it a fluke? Or, if it's accurate, what's the reason for the drop and is it temporary or permanent?

Personally, I don't think it's due to buyer's remorse or dropping support among liberals. I think it's that his recent changes of position on multiple positions have made people unsure of where he really stands -- and whether his new stands reflect his true beliefs or are caluclated to get votes. It could be a trust issue. [More...]

Wisconsin has ten electoral votes. John McCain has little chance of winning them, but he sealed that fate today. During an interview with a local television station in Pittsburgh:

McCain told a rather moving story about his time as a P.O.W. "When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates." ...

[T]he Steelers aren't the team whose defensive line McCain named for his Vietnamese tormentors. The Green Bay Packers are. At least according to every previous time McCain has told this story.

In Wisconsin, the only thing more important than God, country, and the right to hunt deer is Packers football. (Speaking of, Favre wants to come back and the Packers don't want him? Say it ain't so!) Whether McCain was honestly mistaken in this version of an oft-told story, whether he was pandering to Steelers fans, or whether the story has always been a fiction (a possibility that would never be considered had McCain not changed a key fact), he has messed with the Packers. In Wisconsin, that's unforgivable. Tally ten EV's for Obama.