The second the “Troopergate” report is released, we’ll post the deets.
The McCain-Palin camp preempts that report with one of their own, and it – thank goodness – clears Palin of any wrongdoing. What a relief. On November 5, when I compile my Top Ten List of the McCain campaign’s insults on the intelligence of Americans, this certainly will vie for top bidding.
McCain is really scraping the bottom of the tactical barrel right now. Per Ben’s report:
“McCain's campaign has stopped putting out statements and ads connected to the economy, and seems focused entirely on Ayers. As one GOP strategest said to me, "He's speaking angry Greek, when he needs to be speaking economic English."
Andrew says the whole election, from McCain’s perspective, is now about fear.
Marc reminds us that you can’t spell bad assets without “Bad Ass.” Honestly, that statement has shockingly little to do with the article, but I said it at dinner last night and wanted to repeat it.
He also has Obama on the air in
As good an explanation of the ACORN mess that I’ve read.
Matt talks us off the ledge, by saying, “Look at the numbers!!!” Obama is ahead of where even Bush was in 2004 at this time. Message: Barack Obama is NOT John Kerry.
Matt thinks more immigration could help us in a housing slump.
TPM starts an “n word” countdown for McCain surrogates.
Nate thinks the debate helped Obama and looks at the favorables to determine if the Ayers stuff is working. So far, not so much.
Also, don’t fuck with
Must read Ta-Nehisi piece on the racist conjuring going on in the McCain-Palin camp. It is something to be scared of, don’t kid yourself.
On the other side of the coin, Rednecks for Obama!! This is almost as good as my Bubby convincing her entire bridge group to vote Obama (true story). Old Jewish Ladies for Obama!!
Nate has his update of today’s polls, and the shocking one is that, according to American Research Group, Obama is up 8 points in … wait for it …
“there might be some merit in Obama paying a visit to West Virginia -- not because it's quite moved to the point where it's a swing state but because I think the symbolism of all of it would get him a lot of earned media.”
Worst … book … idea … EVER.
Ezra looks at the possibility of a filibuster-proof majority for Dems in the senate and Matt says “it’s not that easy.”
Obama to McCain: “Why don’t you say that to my face, bitch?”
Matt looks at the financial crisis’s impact on soda volume discounts in the Center for American Progress break room.
He also thinks McCain could do himself a favor by looking to rap music for his campaign theme. “Mo Money, Mo Problems,” perhaps?
I can’t understand what McCain thinks he’s doing with this insane mortgage package. You call attention to it during a debate, ensuring that it’s a story. Then you unceremoniously make it incredibly unpopular by changing its provisions to reward the institutions who made the bad loans.
Nate thinks Rove is wrong about swing voters.
Comics rip Palin at a fundraiser for ALS. Crippling diseases and Sarah Palin … perfect together.
Military families supporting Obama more than we might think.
Independents don’t like Palin that much. Anecdotally, the independent I had lunch with today doesn’t like Palin and she’s the only real reason this individual is voting for Obama.
Douthat: The Last of the Reasonable Conservatives.
Mark Blumenthal’s National Journal column is a good overview of the potential poll spoilers in this election. In summary, the following things could cause things to go awry in polling: 1) underrepresentation of cell-phone only households in polling; 2) confounds in “likely voter” models due to unprecedented turnout; and 3) respondents failing to tell the truth in surveys due to social discomfort over not supporting a black candidate.
Items #1 and #2 seem to favor Obama. He’s crushing the younger demographic, and according to Marc:
“Since 2004, the cell-phone-only population as a percentage of all adults has more than tripled and now includes nearly a third of adults between 18 and 24.”
That’s a huge number, and it’s been way underrepresented in some polls. Same for the turnout … higher turnout favors democrats, especially this cycle, due to the unusually drawn-out primary campaign. Obama registered tons of folks in late-voting primary states that otherwise might have been somewhat ignored.
Item #3 certainly cuts the opposite way, but Marc points this out:
“Over the last 10 years, according to a paper [PDF] by Harvard post-doctoral fellow Daniel Hopkins that studied 133 statewide races between 1989 and 2006, the apparent polling bias in such races largely disappeared.”
Remember, this doesn’t mean that racial bias in elections has disappeared. It just means that people are less likely to lie about it. The so-called “Bradley Effect” doesn’t mean that folks won’t vote for a black dude … it means they’ll tell a pollster that they will, then do the opposite in the voting booth. Most of the folks who won’t vote for Obama in November because of his race are saying, “McCain” when someone asks them who they’re voting for.
-Education Dude
Nate’s models now have Obama winning the election over 90% of the time. The average EV count is 345. The only close battleground state is
Nate also has some sobering thoughts on Obama’s ceiling. In other words, don’t expect him to keep rising in the polls, because that’s nearly impossible at this point. Consequently, statistics basically guarantees that McCain might gain a little back, so don’t fret on that!
Matt has a great explanation of why renegotiating bad mortgages is better than letting the “market” take care of the glut of these things and discusses why deficit spending during financial crisis can head off a worse recession. Matt is really smart.
From Ezra: “A steady hand on the tiller is the sort of thing that would have made more sense a couple generations ago. Sort of like John McCain's candidacy.” Oh, smack! He just said, "You’re old," John McCain.
Ben has a run down of advertising expenditures.
Hacking into Sarah Palin's e-mail was easy, apparently.
Andrew starts thinking landslide and has David Brooks calling Palin a "cancer" to the republican party.
Nevertheless, its comforting to think that a "President" Biden would sit down with foreign leaders and talk--leaders that have publicly stated their ill-will towards American ideals--because its definitely clear throughout American history that doctrine(s) of prevention and cooperation have worked well in our past.With respect, I don't think history supports this criticism. Throughout the Cold War, we engaged in direct diplomacy with enemies espousing the destruction of America and the nuclear weapons to back up the threat. See Kennedy-Khrushchev and Nixon-Mao. For Nixon, this meeting was probably his greatest foreign policy achievement.
Debate reax from all over … nothing shocking, just the fact that this was another opportunity for McCain to fundamentally change the game, and nothing substantial happened.
Dana Milbank on Palin’s activities … this is sort of terrifying.
Andrew thinks temperament matters. All of this “radical” nonsense sticks better to McCain.
Everybody is pretty pissed about the racist stuff going on. And by the way, I’m not saying that this is all coming from the McCain campaign, but he must condemn it. He must.
Matt thinks we have an unpopular congress with popular members and candidates from the leading party. Good luck, McCain.
Ummm, guilt by association …
The map over at Pollster today has Obama with 320 EVs. That’s the most I’ve seen, by a lot. Even more than Rove!
The moving of independents is what’s driving this race in the D direction right now … the handling of the economy seems to be what’s doing it.
Nate says it’s third and long for McCain. On FiveThirtyEight Obama is approaching 90% likelihood of winning the election.
Andrew is right, this press-free atmosphere around the R ticket is insane.
In response, Fallows writes a proposed 28th Amendment.
Matt reminds us that Powell and Hagel have not endorsed and TPM covers Mrs. Hagel’s endorsement of Obama.
Ezra shows us more about Palin, metacandidate.
The moderator’s job is to control their debate. If they have decided, as Joe Biden decided that he was going to debate John McCain, and she decided she was going to give a stump speech to the American people, there’s very little a moderator can do other than say, “No, no, no, listen, I asked a question. Please, please answer.”It's a pretty fascinating look at how the VP debate moderator viewed the event and worth watching the full exchange:
Not to beat a dead horse, but the notion that people only vote for the top of a ticket is wrong, at least when it comes to this election. Given the debacles of her previous interviews, it's unlikely that Palin will take unscripted questions from anyone who doesn't work for Fox News any time soon. By allowing her to evade Ifill's questions during the VP debate last Thursday, the American were deprived of their best opportunity to learn what a President Palin would really look like.
-Law Dude
Ben has a fascinating account from a canvasser and predicts backlash if Wright comes up more often.
Matt finds it strange that McCain would change his tune now on the Keating Five, though admires his “all-in” approach.
TPM has new polls that stun me. Double digit leads in VA … for Obama!!
The Google reveals the strength of Obama’s pre-emption strategy.
Marc reports on young voter preferences, via a new MTV/Gallup/USA Today poll and has David Brooks calling the election for Obama.
Ezra thinks the new Keating documentary is damning for McCain. Also, mega props to the Obama camp’s discipline around this. They clearly didn’t throw this together overnight.
Ezra also thinks that Palin displays an unreasonable amount of hubris for being overly ambitious without knowing her shit.
“The problem with elections is that few candidates can accept that there are years in which they should lose. Not because they are possessed of insufficient virtue, or because they would be poor leaders, but because their party has failed, and the economy is poor, and the Iraq War was a mistake. Because they were unlucky, and it is simply not their year, and their depressing job is simply to sustain the continuity of the two-party system.”
Candidates run into trouble when they fight this basic reality. And the problem is, sometimes that fight works, and it does nothing to help
-Education Dude
Obama pushes for registration on morning radio shows.
Ben and Marc report that Obama is giving the go-ahead to surrogates to mention the Keating Five scandal.
Fun with Google from 10 years ago: Your search - "sarah palin" - did not match any documents.
Andrew wants a president with anticipatory powers … like Obama!
Marc has the McCain campaign’s game plan for the rest of the election. It’s not pretty, and let’s hope it’s not effective either. He also has Rove’s map, which now puts Obama over the top. For the record, I really didn’t want to link to Rove’s site, so I’m glad Marc bit the bullet.
Matt looks at guilt by guilt vs. guilt by association. Does McCain really want to play either game?
This TPM lead hurts. And they report on Palin’s newest speech.
FiveThirtyEight has Obama still rising. And
