McCain's VP weekend

James Forsyth 7:47pm

This weekend John McCain is hosting several of the people most frequently touted as possible running mates for him at his ranch. Considering McCain’s age, if elected he’d be the oldest ever first-term president, there then is going to be particular attention paid to his pick. Here’s the guest list and the pros and cons of each of them as possible VP candidates.

Charlie Crist, Governor of Florida:

Pro: A governor of a swing state with impressive approval ratings is always going to be an attractive option as a running mate....

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Now it's personal

James Forsyth 7:19pm

In my piece for the magazine after Obama effectively wrapped up the nomination on May 6th, I wrote that things would get personal very fast. Today, McCain released a scorching statement from him—not some campaign spokesmen—responding to Obama’s comments about McCain and veterans benefits

Here’s how it starts:

“It is typical, but no less offensive that Senator Obama uses the Senate floor to take cheap shots at an opponent and easy advantage of an issue he has less than zero understanding of. Let me say first in response

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Talk about a silly question

James Forsyth 7:14pm

Jonathan Martin posts up a newspaper ad from the Republican Jewish Coalition which asks a series of questions about Obama’s position on the Middle East. The first one is spectacularly dumb:

“In an interview, you called for a summit of Muslim nations, including Iran and Syria, but excluding Israel. Why?”

To which the obvious answer is, because Israel is not a Muslim country. Now, you can make an argument about whether it is right to segregate countries by religion like this—does secular Turkey qualify as a Muslim state or what about India which has the world’s second largest Muslim population yet is a Hindu-majority country—but complaining about Israel not being invited to a summit for Muslim nations is ridiculous.

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Obama starts to get concrete

James Forsyth 12:12pm

One of the challenges that Obama has faced in this campaign is how to blend his elevated, inspiring rhetoric with mundane policy detail. His speech last night, after he had secured a majority of pledged delegates, found a neat and effective way of doing this; starting each policy section with the line ‘Change is…’.

The address was, as you would expect an Obama speech to be, well crafted and delivered. He hit the patriotic high notes which are so potent coming from him, a black man. His peroration that “a...

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Hillary takes Kentucky

James Forsyth 12:33am

CNN are projecting that she might have won by as much as 30 points. The exit poll suggests huge numbers of Clinton supporters in this state would cross over and vote for McCain in the general if Obama is the nominee.  

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Obama almost the nominee now

James Forsyth 9:22pm

Tonight with the Oregon and Kentucky primaries, Obama should win an absolute majority of the elected delegates. Considering that he now leads among super delegates and in the popular vote, this shows just how close Obama is to being officially confirmed as the nominee.

Obama will be in Iowa this evening which is both the state where he proved that this presidential bid by a first-term senator was for real and a state that the Republicans won by only the slimmest of margins in 2004. But he won’t be...

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Today's Iran back and forth

James Forsyth 9:00pm

It started with Obama's comments yesterday donwplaying the threat posed by Iran:

Which drew this response from McCain this morning:

Obama then punched back:

 

My hunch is that this will continue for a fair while as both sides think it favours them. The McCain campaign know that its best chance of winning is to turn this into a national security election. Yet the Obama people know that if they can negate McCain's advantage on national security by tying him to the Bush administration and the its handling of the Iraq war then the election is in the bag.

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A transparent success for the McCain campaign

James Forsyth 6:18pm

One of the McCain campaign’s key aims at the moment is to expose Obama’s talk of a new politics as just that—talk. So, it’ll have been delighted by this week’s column by Jonathan Alter, Newsweek’s liberal political columnist. Alter applauds McCain for his commitment to go before Congress and take questions as President and challenges Obama to sign up to it.

“When I asked Obama's campaign about the idea, I got a hedged answer. That's too bad, because it could be a fresh and exciting way for Obama to convey that

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Obama draws quite the crowd

James Forsyth 5:23pm

The crowds not only keep coming for Obama but they are getting bigger. Yesterday, in Portland, Oregon he drew 75,000 people. Now, Portland is the kind of liberal city where Obama is going to do very well. But one really has to wonder how large his crowds are going to be the weekend before the presidential election.

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McCain is picking the wrong fight with Obama over Iran

James Forsyth 9:43pm

Last week, John McCain joined in the argument between President Bush and Obama over the principle of talking to Iran. But it is not the principle that McCain should be hitting Obama on.

At some point, the Americans are going to have to talk to Iran. America must be seen to have gone the extra mile if an administration is going to persuade either domestic or international opinion that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is necessary. (This is, obviously, assuming that Iran continues trying to develop nuclear weapons capability).

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