Adam Serwer

The McCain campaign is inviting more questions about their candidates’ judgment on military affairs with a new ad attacking Barack Obama for a statement about civilian casualties in Afghanistan. A partial transcript: ANNCR: Who is Barack Obama? He says our troops in Afghanistan are BARACK OBAMA: “… just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” ANNCR: How […]

Last week, I spoke at length with Myrna Perez of the Brennan Law Center about voter purging. While Nate Silver discusses the implications of a massive surge of African American voter registration in Georgia, there’s a development in the article he links to that may be even more important for Obama’s chances elsewhere. There’s nothing […]

Last week during the debate, Joe Biden made a reference to “Bosniaks,” something many in the mainstream and conservative media found absolutely hilarious. Here was another example of Biden putting his foot in his mouth, the inept gaffe machine that he is. Mona Charen at National Review described a moment of mirth she shared with […]

Daniel Larison gets to the heart of the identity-politics hustle that is Sarah Palin: Speaking of populism, Palin was peddling the phony variety earlier in the week on Hewitt’s program with her claim to represent Joe Sixpack (which is, of course, a name given to normal people by pundits who do not know them). If […]

Jewish comedian Jackie Mason, on behalf of the Republican Jewish Coalition, is trying to save his career striking back at Sarah Silverman for having made a pro-Obama video that implies older Jews might not vote for Obama for racial reasons. I’ve always thought this problem, if it exists, to be more of an older white […]

I realize that facts are irrelevant to the McCain campaign’s messaging at this point, but Sarah Palin‘s sustained criticisms of Obama as “irresponsible” for his remarks on Afghanistan betray a basic ignorance of how much of a liability civilian casualties are to the the mission there. For the record, Obama said: We’ve got to get […]

I’ve expressed concern in the past that Barack Obama‘s Pakistan policy may be identical to George Bush‘s. While Obama has said he would go after high-level terrorist targets in Pakistan without the Pakistani government’s approval, for the past few weeks instances in which American troops have entered into Pakistan have been a disaster, with Pakistani […]

My computer cut out last night, so I wasn’t able to post any final thoughts on the debate, but two moments for each of the candidates stood out to me as significant. Washington speak: Honestly I think this was Palin‘s best moment, although it was clear that the dig was somewhat shallow. Biden‘s effort to […]

Palin‘s most tone-deaf moment of the debate was when she accused Obama and Biden of “waving a white flag of surrender” for wanting to withdraw from Iraq. The argument is simply nonsensical. The Iraqis, and the Iraqi government, want us to leave. If the surge did indeed succeed the way McCain and Palin contend, then […]