Why Barack Obama is Winning

It just gets worse for John McCain. In a blog post today, Barry Goldwater's granddaughter  made an endorsement for Barack Obama. After Colin Powell's and Christopher Buckley's endorsement also for Obama, there's not many respected Conservative names left to stand up for McCain.

And the Gop in Arizona is having major problems, from accepting $105,000 in funds from an illegal group set up by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, to the credit card of a Republican operative found under a desk at the Democratic headquarters. Asked for comment at a fundraiser last week, a Republican consultant here simply said that the state GOP is in "desperate straits" ( quote from the linked article).

Besides the squirrely tricks more evocative of Monty Python than Gordon Liddy, Arizona is a good example of the ideological battles currently being fought among GOP party members, and why these battles need to happen in order to rebuild. John McCain will come up for re-election in 2010. Will he seek another term, or will he be voted out of office then?

I saw part of NBC's Brian Williams' interview with John and Sarah. In it Sarah came across as the more poised and charismatic of the two. I kept wishing for some good one-liners from John, but I guess his comic speechwriter has gone elsewhere. Now, comparing Sarah with the other potential Vice-Presidential candidates that were bandied about, she seems a much better choice than a nasty Rudy, slick Mit, or suck up Joe. I think that John's gut instinct choice back-fired on him now that people are paying more attention to her than himself, and it also shows the lack of depth on the Republican bench for the big game.

The best written article of the campaign so far comes from veteran political journalist Joe Klein in Time magazine. It describes Barack's meeting with General Petraeus, and the development of the candidate over the last two years. He would do a similar piece on McCain, but the campaign will not let him on the press plane, nor will they answer questions from him. Even the Clinton people gave him press access after they found out he had written the critical novel Primary Colors.