First time all year either candidate has hit the magic majority. Bush 50 (well, 49.6) Kerry 46 (actually 45.9).

Meanwhile, Zogby, who's tended to be one of the worst pollsters for Bush (and best for Kerry), shows Kerry emerging with a very-much-inside-the-MoE one point lead, 46-45.

I think Bush was badly damaged by that first debate. However, I think the damage was not as catastrophic as it might have been, and furthermore his second debate performance was much, much stronger. Many fewer people watched this second debate, but they'll hear from the pundicracy that it was either a draw or slight Bush win. Bush didn't deliver a knockout, but he did manage a smooth and reassuring appearance, much-needed after his weak first performance.

Long story short: If that first debate wasn't enough to put Kerry ahead outside the MoE, I don't know what else could do at this point.

Well, except for the obvious-- a major terrorist attack of the sort that could plausibly be blamed on American negligence for failing to prevent.

Update: Ipsos/AP has it all knotted up at 47% apeice.

Not as bad as it seems. Kerry on his best week manages a tie. Bush on his best week manages a 6-8 point lead.

Kerry could win-- no doubt about that. But he'll have to have a great week at the end of October, whereas Bush only needs a fair week to take home the prize.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Comments (2)
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Via Allah, who should know, Afghans are proudly wearing "I VOTED" stickers on their way home from the polls.

Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (1)
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It appears that the liberal media is getting closer to taking the advice of conservatives and simply admitting they're liberals, and that their coverage is necessarily and sometimes deliberately skewed to the left.

It's pretty mind-blowing, actually:

We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that," the memo continued.

"It's up to Kerry to defend himself, of course. But as one of the few news organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public interest, now is the time for all of us to step up and do that right."

Let us postulate that Halperin is an honest man, or is at least not conscious of any dishonest motives he may have. This memo is the smoking-gun that proves that the liberal media simply cannot, as they claim, report the news neutrally.

Halperin's assumption is that Bush's alleged "distortions" are much worse than Kerry's. That assumption is certainly a politically-sensitive one. Certainly I don't share it, and if you're reading this blog, you probably don't either.

The tricky thing about logic and reasoning and argumentation is that, as formalistic as a piece of formal logic might be, it almost always relies, at its base, upon inherently unproveable assumptions which are just something one believes in one's gut. Even mathematics relies on numerous key assumptions which haven't yet been proved (and, in a couple of cases, upon assumptions which by their own implications cannot ever be proven-- they can only be accepted provisionally, with all logic flowing therefrom).

Even the common dictionary is, at its heart, built unavoidably upon assumptions. It's been noted, for example, that there is no good definition for the word "word" -- all definitions of "word" are ultimately just tautologies which use the word "word" in order to define the word "word."

Reporters can claim -- certainly incorrectly and probably often dishonestly -- that their logic and reasoning and analysis proceeds, to the extent possible, along non-partisan and neutral tracks. But they cannot avoid the fact that all that analysis is built inevitably upon a foundation of assumptions -- nearly all of them liberal -- which they cannot prove and in fact are utterly unproveable. They don't even attempt to prove these assumptions, probably for the disingenuous reason that attempting to prove these assumptions would reveal, in piercing starkness, that these assumptions exist in the first place.

And that's something they will just never admit.

Halperin thinks that Bush's "distortions" are more important than, say, John Kerry's obvious demogoguery on recruiting additional "allies" to sacrifice blood and treasure to do America's (and Iraq's) job for us. Can he explain why he believes that to be the case -- and, more importantly, prove in objective terms that that is in fact the case? Of course he can't, and he dares not try. Instead, he just circulates an internal memo -- meant for liberal eyes only, of course -- instructing his liberal colleagues to act upon the assumptions they all know in their bones are true.

And yet which cannot be proven.

Halperin will of course just claim that he's trying to give ABCNews' audience the (dubious) benefit of his professional news judgment. But that gives the game away, doesn't it? For years the media has attempted to explain away liberal bias as simple, neutral, objective "news judgment." What they seem to mean is that the fact that they went to journalism school, and work in in the paid legacy media, gives them some special insight on "the truth," especially with regard to matters political, an insight apparently not to be found quite so well developed among any other class of Americans.

And furthermore, we now see that "news judgment" is just a euphemism for "liberal political assumptions."

The full memo is here, republished by the indispensible Drudge.

Now, Matt: This is a hurricane. Or a "hellstorm," as you like to say.

Thanks to Ron for bringing this to my attention.

Posted by: Ace at 08:33 AM | Comments (9)
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John Howard Prevails in Australia; Increases His Ruling Majority

Tim Blair has a round-up.

The media always looks to elections in the West for tea leaves for our own election. Frankly, I don't think there's much correlation. Still, it looks like the war is less popular in Australia than here at home and yet the public decided to stick with the more aggressive man in the war on terror.

Australia has fought side by side with us in every war since at least WWII. Good on 'em.

Thanks to Stan.

Posted by: Ace at 07:34 AM | Comments (7)
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I've only watched the foreign policy section of the debate so far, but Bush is definitely far stronger, crisper, clearer, and more passionate this go-round.

I think Kerry is still doing reasonably well, but he's not coming across nearly as well as he did the first time. He reminds me of that Far Side cartoon where all the dog hears is "Blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah, blah Ginger." The only thing I hear him saying on terrorism is "blah, blah, blah, France, allies, blah, blah, France, allies." I don't think Bush attacked him hard enough here -- I'd like him to ask John Forbes Kerry precisely how many foreign troops joined us in the first Gulf War and actually engaged in fighting ; I'd like him to give us a number of how many foreign troops he'd attract now; I'd like him to explain why, if he cites Bush's father's efforts as the paradigmatic Grand Coaltion, he voted against that war anyway.

That said, Bush is actually responsive to most of Kerry's attacks this time; last time Bush seemed determined to say "hard work" no matter what Kerry's charge. He's on the defensive most of the time, but despite that disadvantageous stance, he's battling back all right.

I'm trying to put my partisan bias aside here. But thusfar, I'm frustrated that Bush hasn't laid this guy out cold, but I still have to give it to him on points. No knockouts, but Kerry's face has gotten scuffed up pretty good.

Other Opinions: Allah's sampling indicates wide disagreement. But hey-- at least disagreeing between a draw or slight Kerry win or Bush win on points is better than well-nigh universal agreement that Bush lost.

Posted by: Ace at 06:31 PM | Comments (28)
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Marcland notes an eerie similarity between John Edwards and the Crown Prince of Crime.

Posted by: Ace at 02:34 PM | Comments (6)
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is here (click on Good to be in DC) Not as good as the first one, but it does have a good Clinton moment again.

Actually, it's sort of the same Clinton moment.

But it's still good.

Posted by: Ace at 02:31 PM | Comments (3)
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Sullivan's been a bear for Bremer's statement that we didn't have enough troops in Iraq-- a critique that once again dovetails nicely with Sullivan's partisan interest in attacking Bush while simultaneously protecting his ego from an admission of fault on his own part.

Greg tips to this fuller statement by Bremer:

It's no secret that during my time in Iraq I had tactical
disagreements with others, including military commanders on
the ground. Such disagreements among individuals of good
will happen all the time, particularly in war and postwar
situations. I believe it would have been helpful to have
had more troops early on to stop the looting that did so
much damage to Iraq's already decrepit infrastructure. The
military commanders believed we had enough American troops
in Iraq and that having a larger American military presence
would have been counterproductive because it would have
alienated Iraqis. That was a reasonable point of view, and
it may have been right. The truth is that we'll never know.

But during the 14 months I was in Iraq, the administration,
the military and I all agreed that the coalition's top
priority was a broad, sustained effort to train Iraqis to
take more responsibility for their own security. This
effort, financed in large measure by the emergency
supplemental budget approved by Congress last year,
continues today. In the end, Iraq's security must depend on
Iraqis.

Partisan critics of the war feel free to make inconsistent criticisms. On one hand, they make much noise about the American forces feeling like "occupiers" to the residents of Iraq (or Afghanistan). But they will often in the same breath argue for much higher troop concentrations in these countries, apparently forgetting, conveniently enough, their previous claims about the need for a light footprint in Muslim countries. They forget this other criticism, one made from the left, just long enough to make a tough-sounding criticism from the right.

Life is a series of tradeoffs and guesstimates and just plain winging it, and war especially so -- but with many more life-and-death consequences. Sullivan pounds what he calls kneejerk partisan defenders of Bush, who never seem willing to concede any mistake on the President's behalf. But it is it any less kneejerk-partisan to make these conveniently-simplistic critiques without full exploring the tradeoff implicit in the decisions?

Is it perhaps the case that Kerry, and his champion Sullivan, are not quite nuanced enough in their analysis? Surely they must be ashamed to make arguments about war and peace which are so filled with troglodytic American simplissime.

Update! Corrected Link! Sorry for the loose shit.

Posted by: Ace at 06:38 AM | Comments (14)
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In the run-up to the war, there were in fact a number of reasonable, and yet partisan, Democrat war-supporters who advocated for the removal of Saddam Hussein while simultaneously blasting Bush for agitating to do so. They didn't object to Bush's plan to oust Saddam in principle; no, it was always this detail or that they found wanting.

They were quite transparent about the fact that they thought war was the right policy and yet, being partisan Democrats, they needed Bush to be wrong in every detail of that policy. They had to slice the salami pretty thin to make the case that Bush lied, and yet people under Saddam died.

Andrew Sullivan has of course long since joined the ranks of partisan Democrats against Bush. And he has been particularly blatant about criticising every single aspect of the war -- its justification, its theory, its execution -- without ever really acknowleging any personal fault. He makes a quasi-Kerry case against the war -- not enough trooops, "arrogance," not enough allies, general incompetence -- but he's very careful to avoid any suggestion that he, personally, was wrong about any of this.

The argument that "Bush made mistakes in the conduct of the war" only gets one so far. Bush has, of course, made mistakes in conducting the war, which is to be expected and also to be noted for the historical and political records. But the biggest "mistakes" of the war -- and I do think they were mistakes -- were mistakes that Andrew Sullivan is equally guilty of. And yet no clear expression of sorrow for his own mistakes, even while catigating Bush for his failure to apologize.

Liberal proponents of the war -- a category which must contain Andrew Sullivan -- were especially keen on the Wilsonian, "people want to be free"/"they will greet us as liberators" type of arguments for the war. Sullivan was especially strident and, to be fair, sometimes quite eloquent addressing this point. Now, the Bush Administration was/is also a big proponent of this neo-Wilsonianism-- and it is certainly fair at this point to wonder about the naivete of the pure Wilsonian position.

FWIW, I was also a believer, despite my reservations, in the Wilsonian justification for war; to the extent this justification is wrong, so was I. I'm not certain this position is wrong, although I have to say the evidence thusfar suggests that perhaps it was. But I'll say this: If it does turn out to be wrong, then I personally was wrong, and I can't blame Bush for "misleading" me or for botching the conduct of the war. If the idea that Iraqis actually want to be free, more-or-less democratic citizens of a modern, normal state, and will take steps to make that come to pass, turns out to be a wrong idea, then I was entirely wrong about that assumption.

Bush was wrong, yes. Wolfowitz was wrong, certainly. But I was wrong too, independently of either man. I cannot pass off my own error (if it is in fact error) on the "misleading" statements of Bush or the decision to fire the standing Iraqi army. If this key assumption, criticial to the path to success in Iraq, turns out to be wrong, then I turned out to be wrong, too.

And, of course, Sullivan would be quite wrong too-- enormously wrong, since so much of his passionate prose was dedicated to the idea that Iraqis craved a better, more decent nation. But note that Sullivan doesn't seem eager to examine this key assumption This assumption was either right or wrong from the get-go; it's hard to argue that some error of Bush's caused this assumption to go from true to false over the course of a year.

Sullivan neatly avoids any reconsideration of, or even any discussion of, the areas in which he may be a "failure" in this business. This seems strange. Sullivan is forever praising himself as an "independent," and someone courageous enough to challenge conventional thinking (and suffer the associated "heart-ache," of course).

And yet, for all his, ahem, intellectual courage, he seems to conveniently avoid scrutinizing his own possibly-erroneous contributions to the case for war. With all due respect, I suppose it does take some degree of intellectual courage to challenge a like-minded partisan. It takes very little courage at all to challenge someone to whom you're strongly politically opposed (as Sullivan is strongly politically opposed to Bush, and has been for some time).

The real test of intellectual courage and intellectual honesty is to unflinchingly examine one's own failings. One cannot simply attack a political opponents in a conveniently-partisan manner and be considered a serious and thoughtful analysis; if one could, I'd be considered such a serious thinker, which I'm not.

One of these days Andrew Sullivan will examine his own error in making the case for Saddam's possession of, and desire to use, WMD's; of the various claims that the Iraq War would be just as easy as the Gulf War (or Afghanistan); of the belief that he great majority of Iraqis would not only welcome a regime change (even a violent one) but would gladly take up arms side by side with our troops in order to accomplish it.

But until he says three simple words -- "I was wrong" -- I think it's entirely appropriate to dismiss him as a partisan hack on this issue, no more serious about analyzing what went wrong in the war than Howard Dean.

Or, for that matter, John Kerry.

Posted by: Ace at 05:24 AM | Comments (12)
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...and I don't know if I like being called a Mean Girl, but, hey, at least they gave me a cute picture.

Beautifual Atrocities speculates on some bloggers as Mean Girls, of the early high-school variety.

Posted by: Ace at 04:43 AM | Comments (11)
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