The Obama campaign have just released and ad reminding voters of McCain’s close connection with the Keating Savings and Loan financial scandal when savers lost Billions because McCain and 4 other senators had managed to pressurise the regulator into not issuing enforcement proceedings against Keating. The full video is available here
It could be argued that releasing the video now is just a case of the Obama campaign getting even for McCain/Palin raising Obama’s alleged links with William Ayers in an attempt to “turn the page” from the economy and onto Obama’s alleged “character” defects.
However there is also a more serious argument that the Keating 5 episode, and McCain’s central role in it, is a very appropriate issue to raise at this time because it speaks to the effects of banking deregulation and lack of oversight on ordinary savers and investors. We may never know whether the Obama campaign would have released the video in any case, but McCain and Palin trying to resuscitate Obama’s links to Ayers many years ago certainly gave the Obama campaign the opening to do so. Democrats live in terror of being “swift boated” again and are determined not to take Republican attack ads lying down. Obama is often accused to playing defense too much, but with this ad and longer video release they have certainly gone on the attack.
Later today (or early Tomorrow for those of us in Europe) sees the second debate between Obama and McCain in McCain’s favourite “Town Hall” format. It represents McCain’s second last set piece chance to turn his campaign around – because he has been sinking fast. As I predicted in The Blow-out begins? McCain is now over 6% behind in the national averages and many swing states have swung away from his grasp.
Of all the Toss-up states above, Obama needs to win just Colorado (or another large Toss-up state) to reach the magic 269 number. Democrats are even getting excited at the prospect of swinging solid Republican states such as Georgia and even Texas because of the success of Obama’s ground game – with huge voter registration, mobilisation and GOTV efforts being reported in all swing states and even some states which were never on the original target list. McCain has already abandoned Michigan and may well have to focus his campaign on an increasingly narrow band of “winnable states”.
The “blow-out” is by no means a certainty. Similar large swings (in favour of an incumbent) have taken place – if rarely – before, notably when Bush almost overhauled an 8% Gore lead in the polls in 2000 and when Ford narrowly failed to secure re-election against Carter in 1976. Many still expect the race to tighten in the run up to the Election. However if Obama can avoid disasters in the next two debates and the economy remains centre stage there is only one way Obama’s numbers can go.
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John McCain already knew Charles Keating well. His ties to the home builder dated to 1981, when the two men met at a Navy League dinner where McCain spoke.
After the speech, Keating walked up to McCain and told him that he, too, was a Navy flier and that he greatly respected McCain’s war record. He met McCain’s wife and family. The two men became friends.
Charles H Keating Jr. always took care of his friends, especially those in politics. McCain was no exception.
In 1982, during McCain’s first run for the House, Keating held a fund-raiser for him, collecting more than $11,000 from 40 employees of American Continental Corp. McCain would spend more than $550,000 to win the primary and the general election.
In 1983, as McCain contemplated his House re-election, Keating hosted a $1,000-a-plate dinner for him, even though McCain had no serious competition. When McCain pushed for the Senate in 1986, Keating was there with more than $50,000.
By 1987, McCain had received about $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.
McCain also had carried a little water for Keating in Washington. While in the House, McCain, along with a majority of representatives, co-sponsored a resolution to delay new regulations designed to curb risky investments by thrifts such as Lincoln Savings and Loan.
Keating had donated to all the senators’ campaigns, and McCain’s wife, Cindy, whom the Times describes as “the heiress to a beer fortune” in Arizona, had “joined Mr. Keating in investing in an Arizona shopping mall.”
The collapse of the Lincoln S&L cost taxpayers approximately $3.4 billion; the S&L crisis as a whole cost taxpayers more than $124 billion, according to the General Accounting Office.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
On Oct. 15, 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act, otherwise known as “Garn-St Germain,” after the principal Congressional sponsors. As a direct result of this disastrous deregulation legislation, within the span of a decade, a small tightly organized network of financial pirates–many with close ties to the Meyer Lansky National Crime Syndicate–would pull off the biggest heist in American history. By the early 1990s, the U.S. savings and loan industry (S&Ls)–once the backbone of the home mortgage industry and the preferred safe depository of household savings–was wiped out.
A handful of the crooks–including Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and Charles Keating–were imprisoned for their roles in the looting scheme.
The biggest political beneficiary of the public’s amnesia is John McCain. With the exception of Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s (D-Conn.) own ties to hedge fund bandit Michael Steinhardt, no American politician is as beholden to organized crime as the senior Senator from Arizona.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Its not as if the current financial melt-down didn’t have precursors – which provided ample opportunities to legislators to learn from their mistakes. But how could McCain ever have been re-elected Senator, never mind President with such a record? Does the MSM have such powers of mind control that reality never intrudes? Can money always buy votes? It seems we need a paradigm change in the US, not just a change of leader.
I have complained, in previous diaries, that Obama always seems to take the road of least resistance and is therefor not generating a mandate for real and dramatic change in the US. With this video release he seems to be doing more than just playing Presidential politics. He is calling for a dramatic overhaul of how US political culture sees the US and the World.
Go, Barak, Go!
As if further evidence were needed, Pollsters chart for today (which incorporates a further 17 polls from yesterday) shows a further drift to Obama:
Note the number of EV for Obama in Strong and Lean Dem states has gone up from 260 in yesterdays chart (as posted in the diary) to 296 today – well over the 269 threshold needed.
A new poll in Indiana just out should also move Indiana closer to Obama in the statistical trend line.
if this recent colorado poll is accurate, obama’s pushback on the economic issues could pay huge dividends:
add to that the fact that pension plans have lost $2trillion in the past 15 months, and colorado, as well as other states, rural property owners are taking huge losses due to foreclosure actions, which has been massively under-reported. the local and state governments here are hemorrhaging dollars due to the economic situation, and decline in revenues. freezes have been imposed on state construction and hiring, and service cutbacks are in the very near future.
the economy will sink mcstain/palin, if obama can make the message part of the mainstream message machine…a 13 min documentary on the intertoobz isn’t enough.