Ballot Box

A guide to the best political buzz from around the web

It's the last weekend before the election, and the Maverick is looking for a miracle. Most political observers have dismissed his ability to do it one more time -- with both conservative and liberals looking ahead or ruminating on how and when independents began trending away from the Republican. Today's buzz: 

  • The Economist endorsed Obama and wrote that the McCain of the past six months is unrecognizable from the McCain of yore. Take-away: "The Economist does not have a vote, but if  it did, it would cast it for Mr. Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America's self-confidence."
  • The National Review endorsed McCain and its editors wrote that Americans are choosing between checked liberalism and liberalism that is not -- with Obama running on a "troubling" platform. Take-away: "We have our differences with McCain, as do most conservatives, on such issues ans immigration and stem cells. On each of these issues, however, Obama is at least as mistaken."
  • Although it may be a slight oversimplification, it was the debates that won this for Obama, wrote Robert Kaiser in WaPo. Take-away: "There is now a lot of evidence from polls and focus groups suggesting that Sen. Obama has significantly improved his standing with a great many Americans since the first debate on Sept. 26."
  • Peggy Noonan makes a case for Obama in the WSJ and concedes that something new is happening in America. Take-away: "It is the imminent arrival of a new liberal movement. History happens, it makes its turns, you hold on for dear life."
  • The Washington Post editorialized that McCain's attempt to link Obama to Middle East scholar Rashid Khalidi is condemnable. Take-away: "Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position."
  • McCain was once a moderate conservative media darling but his foreign-policy prowess and political chops cannot save him now, wrote Charles Krauthammer in WaPo. Take-away: "But now that he is standing in the way of an audacity-of-hope Democratic restoration, erstwhile friends recoil from McCain on the pretense that he has suddenly become right wing."
  • Obama has refused to release his database of contributers who have donated less than $200 to his campaign because he said it was too difficult. Slate's John Dickerson and Chris Wilson were able to do it in a couple of hours.
  • This isn't the last we've heard of Sarah Palin, wrote Eugene Robinson in WaPo. Take-away: "It's tempting to think of Palin as a kind of pop star, the latest flash in the pan who rockets to the top of the charts and then fades to obscurity - Alec Baldwin referred to her as 'Bible Spice' the other day. But that smug assessment ignores the evidence that she has the chops to be much more than a one-hit wonder." 
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