The Hollywood Liberal

Kristol Attacks Anonymous McCain Aides Dishing To The Press As ?Paranoid? And ?Disloyal To John McCain?
With the final election results in, the traditional finger-pointing and back-biting of the losing campaign has set in at a furious pace. Last night, CNN’s Dana Bash reported that “three senior McCain advisers” were saying that senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann had been fired from the campaign last week for “trashing” other campaign staffers: One […]

With the final election results in, the traditional finger-pointing and back-biting of the losing campaign has set in at a furious pace. Last night, CNN’s Dana Bash reported that “three senior McCain advisers” were saying that senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann had been fired from the campaign last week for “trashing” other campaign staffers:

One of the aides tells CNN that campaign manager Rick Davis fired Scheunemann after determining that he had been in direct contact with journalists spreading “disinformation” about campaign aides, including Nicolle Wallace and other officials.

Scheunemann, campaign manager Rick Davis and top adviser Mark Salter denied that he had been fired. McCain press aide Michael Goldfarb told Bash this morning that while Scheunemann wasn’t dismissed, he was essentially excommunicated by the McCain staff:

However, Goldfarb did concede that Scheunemann’s campaign e-mail was cut off, and his blackberry was taken away late Friday. Goldfarb admits that senior McCain aides were mad at Scheunemann, and wanted to fire him, but he insists they stopped short of that, and instead simply turned off his campaign communication.

McCain aides claim Scheunemann was providing “a constant stream of poison” to New York Times columnist Bill Kristol, who has also been accused of advising Sarah Palin behind the campaign’s back. On Fox & Friends this morning, Kristol attacked the campaign’s anonymous back-biters as “paranoid” and “disloyal to John McCain.” Watch it:

Though Kristol never mentioned Scheunemann, he appeared to hint at why the aide’s “campaign e-mail was cut off.” Talking about the last days of the campaign, Kristol said that some staff “were going through other campaign workers’ emails…to try to see who was allegedly leaking stuff, negative stuff.”

The Trail
Barack Obama was declared the winner of North Carolina by the Associated Press on Thursday, the first time a Democrat has won the state since 1976. The only state to remain undecided is Missouri, where John McCain holds a slight lead.

The Landslide That Doesn’t Feel All Liberal
The young and minority voters who swept Democrats to triumph call this the start of a new day. The many not-young whites who also backed Barack Obama might frame it a bit differently. To them, it’s a hopeful return to an older day. Do not dismiss these older Caucasians. Without their considerable support in swing states, Obama would not have won. This amazing election is being called a liberal landslide, but it doesn’t feel liberal. It’s at bottom a reaction against the radical philosophy that called itself conservative but ran up deficits, blustered on the world stage, denigrated science, served the rich and ignored the working class.

Stepping Into the Sunshine
WASHINGTON — I almost lost it Tuesday night when television cameras found the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the crowd at Chicago’s Grant Park and I saw the tears streaming down his face. His brio and bluster were gone, replaced by what looked like awestruck humility and unrestrained joy. I remembered how young he was in 1968 when he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., moments before King was assassinated and hours before America’s cities were set on fire. I almost lost it again when I spoke with Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., one of the bravest leaders of the civil rights crusade, and asked whether he had ever dreamed he would live to see this day. As Lewis looked for words beyond “unimaginable,” I thought of the beating he received on the Edmund Pettis Bridge and the scars his body still bears.