…seems to have been reading Power Line. Specifically, this post and this one. Today, in any event, she agreed with us:
Obama has descended to similarly scurrilous tactics on the stump and on the air. On immigration, Obama is running a Spanish-language ad that unfairly lumps McCain together with Rush Limbaugh — and quotes Limbaugh out of context. …
Obama has been furthest out of line, however, on Social Security, stooping to the kind of scare tactics he once derided.
“If my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would have had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week,” Obama said Saturday as he campaigned in that retiree-heavy state. “Millions of families would’ve been scrambling to figure out how to give their mothers and fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers, the secure retirement that every American deserves.”
This is simply false — even leaving aside the incendiary language about “privatizing” Social Security. As the invaluable FactCheck.org noted, the private account plan suggested by President Bush and backed by McCain would not have applied to anyone born before 1950. It would not have changed benefits by a single penny for current retirees like the nice Florida folks that Obama was trying to rile up. …
Obama’s ads on Social Security are equally misleading. “Cutting benefits in half, risking Social Security on the stock market,” it warns. “The Bush-McCain privatization plan. Can you really afford more of the same?”
Cutting benefits in half? As FactCheck notes, “this is a rank misrepresentation.” …
To Democrats who worry about whether their nominee is willing to do whatever it takes to win: You can calm down.
I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to call Ms. Marcus a friend, but based on the time I spent with her when we were on a panel together at the law school we both attended, she is a delightful person. She is a Democrat, of course, but not a crazed one. I’ve no doubt that she is one of the reasons why the Washington Post’s editorial board, in what seems a weird reversal of expectations, is fairer and more objective than its news staff.
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