She’s media-savvy. But she’s an idiot. And this proves it. She can’t recall the simplest points of her entire platform, so she resorts to writing them on her hand.

Contrast with Obama, who went to the GOP to duke it out, and was able to bring his principles with him without crib-sheet help, while also able to engage them on several issues with deep policy details at the ready. No teleprompter, no crib-sheets, just knowledge and intelligence befitting a national leader.

Just watched the entire unedited interview from earlier this week when John Stewart went on O’Reilly’s show. John has an amazing amount of patience with a lot of childish passive aggressiveness from Bill. He makes good points, and doesn’t get drawn deeply into debates that are designed for him to lose. It was really great to watch him: knows what O’Reilly is all about, obviously, and refuses to take the clumsy bait that O’Reilly puts out there.

Bill spends the time taunting him, hoping to make him mad, so that Bill can yell indignantly at him. He patronizes him, as if Stewart isn’t his intellectual superior. He throws up strawman after strawman, trying to mischaracterize Stewart’s opinions, and each time, Stewart judo-deflected the main force of the idiocy, and went on to characterize his own opinion himself.

It’s crazy. O’Reilly would make me look like a nut, because I’d get way too exasperated with him, and say something overtly rude, after the billionth snotty, faux-civil comment from him, and then he’d get to pretend that I started the fight. It’s clearly what he’s after. Even knowing he’s after that reaction, it’s easy to see how hard it is to not give it.

What’s not so easy to see is how people who watch him can’t see how clumsy and childish he is. He takes everything personally, and turns right around and calls folks who disagree with him thin-skinned. He swaggeringly talks about the macho America he’s part of as he discusses something that he’s afraid of, something that you should be terrified of, too. I don’t get how the people that watch him hold all of those things in their heads: I’m a studly American who bows to no man, but Iran getting a bomb is so terrifying that we should throw our constitution away in dealing with Arabs. I don’t get it.

Obama needs to get out more. The Friday session at the GOP retreat was an amazing bit of head to head politics. Obama was both friendly and devastating. It clearly wasn’t personal with him, it was business, and in a businesslike manner, he demonstrated that the public agenda of the Republicans is beneath anyone with any sort of sense. He convincingly tore them apart, without getting vicious or otherwise ruffled about anything going on. Definite jedi master among jawas.

Then today’s (well, yesterday’s, actually) session with the Democrats was also excellent. Again effectively ripped Republicans, and ripped the troublesome Democrats for not getting together and getting shit done. Really entertaining political theater.

Why have things unravelled since the election? With this guy at the helm, I have to think that its his support folks. Some folks are slamming Rahm as the source of the out-of-control Democratic congress, that he’s not doing a good job getting folks in line. Who knows if that’s true… And the public perception of Geithner couldn’t be worse, and that’s the fault of someone. Maybe Geithner, even. The most effective, tightly-controlled election team suddenly either transformed into, or handed the reins to, a terrible administration media team.

The Dems need to get a narrative out there, and they need to start with the Republicans who are filibustering nominations for dog catcher at this point. They’re clearly obstructive in the worst, most banal and crazy way, and they’re getting away with it. That needs to stop.

So we lost the Chicken Run DVD a couple of years ago, left a whole pack of DVDs on an airplane. Yatsze must have seen it in the bargain bin or something, because she picked it up again today, and the kids were watching it when I got home. Sadie was sitting on the couch, sucking her thumb, eyes wide in Total Absorption Mode. Two year olds are cute when they’re like that.

She looks at me and says, “Puppets!”

I point to the screen and say, “Chickens!”

She says, “Puppets!”

Refusing to admit I’m wrong, I propose, “Chicken puppets.”

She looks at the screen, and smiles, and says, “Chicken puppets,” and goes back to sucking her thumb.

Not going to change anything. Glad he harped on the Dems to frakking stand up for themselves and get something done. Glad he called out the Republicans, but he did so sort of wimpily.

He’s got to lay some smack down.

I love my iPhone, because it does almost everything I want to do: fun games, good productivity, good connectivity. Its flaw is the tiny screen: bad for typing, not great for web browsing. The iPad looks to fix that. Better screen, better data entry, same goodness as the iPhone. Want.

Because the Scott Brown victory is going to consume the meagre news media I do pay attention to. The story is going to be “body blow to Obama”, all of Obama’s opponents are going to give him fake advice to move to the right, and the shame the Democrats are feeling is going to be very public and very annoying to watch, as the finger-pointing goes around and around.

It’s never fun to watch a political party eat itself, under the glare of the media spotlight. It was not fun watching the Republicans do it after 2008, and wasn’t worth gloating over: why? Because what goes around comes around.

I don’t look forward to the Dems actually taking the right lesson from this. It was Dems that stayed home yesterday. I was almost one of them (yeah, I voted, cursing Coakley as I filled in the circle next to her name).

Choakley, as she will forever be known, will now live with the equivalent of Bill Buckner’s baseball legacy. Let’s hope the Dems learn a few lessons: do what you said you were going to do. Damn the nicey-nice and get it done, whatever the media price you’re going to pay, because you’re going to pay that price anyway. And most importantly, being right doesn’t mean you get elected. You have to work for it.

Coakley, all I can say is, “I knew it.” She ran a more Hillary Clinton campaign than Hillary herself: Clinton at least made the rounds while magisterially pretending she had already sewn the primary up. Coakley didn’t really campaign, did terrible in the debates, made a ton of verbal gaffes, and allowed Scott Brown to make this a personality campaign, and Coakley appears to not have one.

But Dems? Seriously? Can’t cope with a 59-40-1 majority? This is why much of the country finds the Democratic Party contemptible. When given the power, Dems can do nothing. When given lesser majorities, the Republicans did anything they wanted. And now, the pundits will be going wild, the Dems will probably track to the center in a panicky response, thereby becoming contemptible not only to the folks they weren’t going to attract anyway, but also to their own base. Again.

What would I do, were my last name Reid instead of Teasley? The senate would move to a reconciliation-only process, to put the Blue Dogs in a vice, and I’d lock out the Republicans. You’ve been very accommodating to the idea of bipartisanship so far, and it won you nothing but accusations that you’re governing from the extreme left. Screw them, and begin to own shit.

And never goddamned call me again. Damned billion phone calls at home over this stupid election.

W00t. Jack Z is turning Seattle around, and locking Felix up for 5/78 is nothing short of astounding. He is building a winner, and is absolutely humiliating Bill Bavasi with the quality of his moves since taking over. Humiliating. Mercilessly, ruthlessly humiliating. Bavasi should never work in baseball again.

Mr Zduriencik, you have made so many fans so amazingly happy. Congrats to you.

Home with the family today, and there have been three human volunteers and one computer call for Martha Coakley so far. So I just called her campaign office, (617) 241-0200, to ask how to stop the calls.

“Hello, I’d like the phone calls to stop. How do I get the phone calls to stop?”

“You wait a day until after the election.”

I see what you did there. Let’s see how that strategy works out for you tomorrow.