Harold Meyerson reports on North Carolina's surprisingly close races for Senate and Governor, and what they mean for politics in the South:
Barack Obama is running no worse than even with John McCain in North Carolina, while state senator Kay Hagan -- an obscure public figure in state as well as out -- has opened a small but persistent lead over incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole. In the race to succeed outgoing Democratic Governor Mike Easley, Democratic Lt. Governor Bev Perdue, weighed down by her links to an increasingly unpopular Easley, has been trailing Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, a moderate Republican, though in recent polls she seems to have closed that gap. As well, veteran GOP Congressman Robin Hayes, heir to the Cannon Mills fortune, has fallen behind textile worker-turned-schoolteacher Larry Kissell in a hotly contested House race.
Gershom Gorenberg writes that a President Obama might be better for Israel's security than a President McCain:
As a result of the first Gulf War in the 1990s, "Iraq wasn't a serious threat to Israel," explains researcher Shlomo Brom of Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, formerly head of strategic planning in the Israeli Army's general staff. On the other hand, Brom says, the second Gulf War has deeply damaged America's stature in the Middle East, and "Israel, which is seen as being under American protection, is weakened as a result." Moreover, by eliminating Iraq as a counterbalance, the war freed Iran from containment. From Israel's perspective, the regional balance of forces has become much worse. Was this predictable? Yes, actually. Before the invasion in 2003, Israeli officials and experts warned Iran was a more significant threat than Iraq.
And in an article from our last print issue, Matthew Yglesias reviews Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew:
To Frank, however, Washington is the yin to Kansas' yang, and if heartland voters ignore their interests in favor of voting on "values," conservatives inside the Beltway have no commitment to values except greed. Nonetheless, his book's most entertaining and insightful passages -- extended explorations of the conservative mainstream's lurid fascination with some of the most violent and depraved elements of the international scene -- seem to undercut this thesis. Frank tells the tale of the International Freedom Foundation at some length. This now-obscure outfit was an Abramoff-founded front for apartheid South Africa that boosted free-market principles at home and around the world and touted support for the white supremacist regime as integral to this mission.
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—The Editors
