Opinion Focus

Washington Post opinion columnist Eugene Robinson was online Tuesday, Oct. 28 at 1 p.m. ET to discuss his recent columns and the latest news.

Discussion Group: Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood

The transcript follows.

Archive: Eugene Robinson discussion transcripts

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Eugene Robinson: Final lap. Home stretch. Eleventh hour. Ninth inning. Fourth quarter. Pick your cliché, that's where we are. I would say that it seems like only yesterday that we were handicapping the Iowa caucuses, but actually it seems like years ago. You all can read the polls as well as I can. Are they right? Will there be a Bradley effect? Will Obama's legions of new voters swamp the polling places? At this point, we're down to what Donald Rumsfeld would call "known unknowns" -- with perhaps a few "unknown unknowns" lurking. As movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn once said, "nobody knows anything." Just go out and vote.

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Richmond, Va.: I can't wait until you liberal-PC-special-preference types overreach with all your upcoming power, and then come crashing down when the rest of the country realizes you are not like them.

Eugene Robinson: Where is the "rest of the country" located? Are all the people there alike? How are they unlike me? I've recently been in Alabama, California and Indiana, and in all those places I ran into some people who agreed with me on some things and people who disagreed with me on other things. Are any of those states the "rest of the country?" Nobody asked me to show a passport or anything.

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Charlotte, N.C.: Hello Gene -- love the column. Here is my question: It has been discussed recently that if Barack Obama wins the presidency and the Democrats gain anywhere between 58 to 60 seats in the Senate that they could jeopardize their gains of 2006 and 2008 with a legislative agenda that favors the positions of the far left of the Democratic Party.

The Republicans are trying to stem congressional losses by running their Senate and House campaigns as a way block domination by Obama, Reid and Pelosi, and complete Democratic control over the legislative agenda. Would Barack Obama be best served advocating for new congressional leadership and replacing Reid and Pelosi with a majority leader and a speaker who are more moderate? Would this reduce the risk of Democrats giving back the gains made in recent years and prevent a Republican resurgence like the one that occurred in 1994? Thanks.

Eugene Robinson: If Obama were to win, he'd be president, not emperor. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid aren't going anywhere. If the Democrats were to achieve a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate -- still unlikely, but not impossible -- they would indeed have the power to move an agenda. But I'd wait to see what that agenda looked like before fretting about a backlash. Remember, these days it's the Republicans who spend like drunken sailors and run up huge deficits, not the Democrats.

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Ellensburg, Wash.: As for Obama winning some of these red states -- I'm not going to believe it until I see it. What do you think?

Eugene Robinson: In this election, anybody who believes anything without seeing it is crazy. That said, the polls have been pretty consistent.

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Brooklyn, N.Y.: Hi Eugene. You made some great points in your column. I always have believed that the fundamental premise of most political campaigns is the belief that most voters are too stupid to realize when they are being lied to. McCain's campaign has been a perfect illustration of that point. He proposes turning the government into the largest real estate holder in the world (through his plan to buy home mortgages at face value, rescuing banks from their bad loans, and renegotiating the mortgages with delinquent "owners"), he supported the plan to transfer $750 billion in taxpayer wealth to the banks and financial institutions holding "toxic securities," and his running mate slaps a windfall profits tax on oil companies and uses the proceeds to write a check to every Alaskan (regardless of whether they ever have worked or paid taxes in their life). But Barack Obama is the socialist? You only can make those kinds of arguments if you think that most people are too stupid to see the hypocrisy.

washingtonpost.com: Campaign on Empty (Post, Oct. 28)

Eugene Robinson: Thanks. I really think the McCain-Palin campaign has been one of the oddest I've ever seen. Is socialism really the issue? If so, wouldn't George Bush, Hank Paulson and, yes, McCain and Palin be card-carrying socialists at this point?

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Pittsburgh: Amid the stories seeping out lately about rifts depicting Sarah Palin as a "rogue" candidate, I was wondering which presidential/vice-presidential tickets (whether elected or not) historically have been the most harmonious. Or is such an appearance a mere chimera for public consumption?

Eugene Robinson: Remember that these are always marriages of convenience. Even when they begin in sweet harmony -- Clinton and Gore, for example -- event and political shifting fortunes can produce capital-D discord.

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Austin, Texas: Regardless of who wins, do you think the country will come back together without too many problems? People are very, very passionate on both sides -- more than usual, I think. And race is a factor, either way. And economic times are tough, which tends to make people bitter. I'm a bit concerned.

Eugene Robinson: Regardless of who wins, things are not going to be easy. The next president will be expected to perform miracles. The economic crisis will limit the president's options in terms of new spending, but might present a political opportunity for either Obama or McCain -- enlist people in shared sacrifice, launch an infrastructure program and an energy plan not just as needed projects but also as economic stimulus...

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New York: We are all motivated on some level by fear of rejection. For McCain fear of rejection by the republican base pushed him toward Palin. Do you think he would have been able to build a winning coalition without the far right? Would they (the right-of-right flank) have come around if he had picked someone else?

Eugene Robinson: "Fear of rejection" sounds as if McCain were trying to avoid some kind of psychological damage. His fear was of genuine, concrete damage -- he was suspect in the minds of many in the party's conservative base, and he feared a disastrous, divided convention if he had nominated someone like Joe Lieberman (a lifelong Democrat) or Tom Ridge (pro-choice). That said, polls indicate that Palin is a drag on the ticket and that she turns off the independent voters McCain desperately needs to reach. The whole general-election campaign began to look like an exercise in firing up the base rather than shifting toward the center, which is the traditional move.

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Re: Emperor Obama: A lot of the new Democrats will be moderate-to-conservative, right? The Democrats won't be able to go completely nuts with a far-left agenda.

Eugene Robinson: If the Democrats were to reach the magic number of 60 seats in the Senate, that filibuster-proof majority would include several senators who are clearly to the right of most of the party -- plus Joe Lieberman.

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Losing Vice Presidents?: In the post-War era, only two failed vice-presidential nominees (Mondale, who was an incumbent vice president, and Dole) thus far have succeeded in even getting their party's presidential nomination later. Wouldn't it therefore seem realistic to assume that if McCain loses next week, Sarah Palin's political future will be limited to either Juneau or, at most, the U.S. Senate? In other words, don't political parties turn on their losers?

Eugene Robinson: I wouldn't count Sarah Palin out. She has had a terrible introduction to the country, but I think she'll survive it. (If McCain should win, obviously she survives it. Duh.) Assuming that her ticket loses, she'll have to do some rebranding of herself but she will have gained a national constituency and she'll have something to build on.

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Chicago: Okay, if nobody is interested in finding out about the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate, then maybe someone can at least provide his baptismal certificate. Is Obama a Christian or a Muslim? And yes, it does make a difference! We need the proof now!

Eugene Robinson: Let me get this straight. People who were outraged -- outraged! -- that Obama faithfully attended a certain unambiguously Christian church for 20 years ("How could he have sat there all that time while such things were being said!") are now claiming to be uncertain that he's a Christian? Be serious.

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Anonymous: What can we do now to protect our votes? I saw Robert Kennedy, Jr., on the Rachel Maddow show talking about the way vote can be rejected, about the purging process, and now we have the voting machines that give your vote to McCain when you have voted for Obama. This would explain how Gore lost the election. Our government is so distrustful it is a shame. How can we get the word out to protect the vote? How can we fix the problem so it will not happen again? Is it too late? If McCain gets this election we never will recover.

Eugene Robinson: If McCain wins, we'll recover. I'm not a believer in steal-the-election conspiracies. It's true, though, that Republicans see it in their interest to people who are poor, transient or otherwise down-and-out off the voter rolls, because they are unlikely to vote Republican. And in the case of a super-close election, like Florida 2000, those in charge of counting the vote will try to make sure that their party's votes are counted and that the other side's aren't. It's an outrage that in the United States of America we can't have more uniform registration/voting standards and procedures that make this stuff impossible.

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Santa Cruz, Calif.: Hi. The one person I don't hear much about as a Republican leader if McCain loses is Mike Huckabee -- it's always Palin or Romney or the like. But Huckabee has an easy manner that seems to connect with voters who disagree with him (like me), and I was reminded of this seeing him hosting his show on Fox. Do you think he could be a power in the future (like in 2012)?

Eugene Robinson: Thanks, governor. Love your show.

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Baltimore: "The Daily Show" had a really good report last night comparing and contrasting McCain and Obama supporters at recent rallies. When interviewing the McCain supporters, they invariably responded with things such as "Obama is a bad man," and when "The Daily Show" interviewed Obama supporters, they responded with such things as "McCain is a bad man." Is this the level that we've sunk to? Can't we all just get along?

Eugene Robinson: Demonization of the opponent is not a new phenomenon in American politics, unfortunately.

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Anonymous: I like Sarah Palin. I mean to say that I totally disagree with her on just about every issue and level, but you know what? I still like her. She has a likability factor that Hillary only can envy, and that will play well for her in 2012.

Eugene Robinson: A lot of people will agree with you, I think -- or would agree, if they hadn't first met her in the context of this campaign. Palin hasn't governed like a right-wing kook in Alaska, but she has campaigned like one in this election, and that will hurt her bid for continued and greater prominence. But there are indeed second acts in American lives. Sometimes there are third acts, too.

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Boston: What do you think of this continuing idea of blaming a mysterious minority man for crimes? We're stealing kids and driving them into the lake, we're kidnapping brides and taking them to Albuquerque, now we are doing politically motivated ATM robberies and carving backwards B's into people's faces. I take it as a good sign people weren't taking this latest incident seriously -- maybe in Obama World this sort of thing will be viewed as sad and pitiful, as it should be.

Eugene Robinson: Don't get me started. Why wasn't I surprised that it was supposedly a tall, menacing black man who supposedly carved -- or daintily etched -- that backwards B in the McCain campaign worker's face? If people are going to invent such stories, can't they make somebody else the villain once in a while?

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Jackson, Miss.: I started reading your opinion page early in the presidential campaign after I saw you on "Morning Joe." I don't see you on there much anymore -- is that because you had a disagreement with Joe Scarborough? I enjoy all of your comments and find no bias in any of them. Keep up the good work!

Eugene Robinson: I have no quarrel at all with Joe Scarborough. To the contrary -- we disagree on a lot of things politically, but I always find it fun to be on his show. The only issue is that I'm more of an Evening Gene than a Morning Gene. Getting up that early and making sense, or even appearing to make sense, is a struggle. I find that most newspaper people aren't natural morning people. I don't think that correlation is accidental.

Thanks, everyone, for a lively hour. Talk to you on Election Day.

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