The Key Grip will be incommunicado all day, volunteering for the Obama campaign (specifically, driving a van back and forth from the University of Florida to the early voting station downtown). So in lieu of a column this morning, how about we all take a (second?) gander at Barack Obama's thirty minute television program from Wednesday night? It was extremely effective-- probably enough so to give a last late bounce to Obama's numbers.
Meanwhile a new CBS News / New York Times poll says that Sarah Palin is now an unqualified drag on McCain's chances of becoming President (even before releasing those medical records, which still hasn't happened), and state-level polling shows Obama with double-digit leads in Colorado and New Mexico. Lest we forget in all the excitement about places like Missouri, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana, Barack Obama doesn't need any of the latter group to become President: John Kerry's total from 2004, plus Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado, adds up to 273 electoral votes.
Don't forget to vote!
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida
Click Here to Read More...
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
On Palin's Records, Contact All Media Outlets
There will be a longer, more comprehensive column later today covering a variety of subjects--not least among them the amazing thirty-minute program for Barack Obama that aired on seven networks yesterday evening, and its likely effects on the race. But this morning I'd like to talk to you about something a little more urgent.
Governor Palin promised last weekend to release her medical records this past Monday. It is now Thursday, and inescapably obvious that she is desperately hoping to stonewall the question until after it would matter to anybody. I am therefore calling on all loyal readers to use the links below to contact the major news-gathering institutions, asking that the McCain campaign be continually asked about this contradiction until we obtain access to the records.
New York Times (this one is an e-mail link)
CNN
CBS News (scroll down to the bottom and click "contact us")
ABC News
Los Angeles Times (middle of the page, "e-mail specific news departments")
Time Magazine (another e-mail link, address to "Mark Halperin")
NBC / MSNBC (both are e-mail links)
Anchorage Daily News (e-mails to Erika Bolstad - Washington Bureau)
Chicago Tribune (couldn't get the text verification to work)
Associated Press
Since most of these "contact us" fields are undoubtedly inundated every day with self-marginalizing content, it's essential that we keep the message crisp, polite, and obvious in its intent from the first word, and that as many people as possible join the effort, sending the same message repeatedly, all day long, until the records are released. If telephone calls are within your "bravery level," most of these contact pages also have telephone numbers, too, and this could prove even more effective.
Five days to go!
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida Click Here to Read More...
Governor Palin promised last weekend to release her medical records this past Monday. It is now Thursday, and inescapably obvious that she is desperately hoping to stonewall the question until after it would matter to anybody. I am therefore calling on all loyal readers to use the links below to contact the major news-gathering institutions, asking that the McCain campaign be continually asked about this contradiction until we obtain access to the records.
New York Times (this one is an e-mail link)
CNN
CBS News (scroll down to the bottom and click "contact us")
ABC News
Los Angeles Times (middle of the page, "e-mail specific news departments")
Time Magazine (another e-mail link, address to "Mark Halperin")
NBC / MSNBC (both are e-mail links)
Anchorage Daily News (e-mails to Erika Bolstad - Washington Bureau)
Chicago Tribune (couldn't get the text verification to work)
Associated Press
Since most of these "contact us" fields are undoubtedly inundated every day with self-marginalizing content, it's essential that we keep the message crisp, polite, and obvious in its intent from the first word, and that as many people as possible join the effort, sending the same message repeatedly, all day long, until the records are released. If telephone calls are within your "bravery level," most of these contact pages also have telephone numbers, too, and this could prove even more effective.
Five days to go!
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida Click Here to Read More...
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The Dance of the Seven Death Rattles
It's easy for us to forget that most Presidential elections aren't particularly competitive. Typically by this point in a campaign one candidate is pretty-well dependent on the fickle finger of current events to change his fortunes, and typically they don't. And when these things become apparent, even to opinion leaders within that candidate's party, even within the campaign itself, there follows a sort of dance of the seven death rattles in which a clear philosophical trend emerges, away from securing victory and toward explaining away defeat.
It begins with the "hail Mary" death rattle. The trailing candidate holds a secret pow-wow with his inner circle and the group of them decide on a bold move to "shake up the dynamic" of the election. These bold moves rarely work under the best of circumstances, especially if timed too far down the calendar to be accepted on good faith by the persuadable middle--but in election 2008 the supposedly "steady hand at the tiller" has undertaken not one but several such extreme, inaptly timed gambles, most of them coming across to an increasingly distrustful press pool as rash, impulsive, and fraught with contingent down-side. Chief among this host of questionable calls were the two biggest decisions by the Republican operation this season--McCain's two "three-A.M. moments," as it were--the choice of Sarah Palin and the decision to "suspend the campaign," both of which are now all but universally derided as excessively long risks.
There follows the "tough choices" death rattle, in which the struggling campaign announces its reluctant decision to pull out of some high-profile battleground (like Michigan), to concentrate on a smaller electoral map. There's never a good time to make such an announcement, of course, since a not inconsiderable swathe of persuadables will shift into the other camp out of simple fear that they might be seen backing a loser--but the story of election-2008 will almost certainly contain at least a passing mention to McCain's inexplicable timing for their team's call to abandon such a big and relatively competitive electoral prize. And in case you've forgotten, they made this announcement about three hours before Sarah Palin was to appear on a national debate platform opposite Joe Biden.
Next we have the "biased access" death rattle. The trailing campaign, having found itself in a self-amplifying cycle of lower fundraising totals, followed by sinking polls, followed by lower fundraising totals, endeavors to paint the other side as an advertising bully who won't let the scrappy underdogs be heard on the television airwaves. "Senator Obama signed a piece of paper saying he'd accept public financing if I did," McCain has said on numerous occasions--despite the fact that no such piece of paper was ever signed by Mr. Obama, and he knows it, "and now that he's broken that promise, he's out-advertising us four-to-one." Setting aside the fact that the RNC was still free to raise as much money as it wished, and could have spent all of that helping McCain become President, consider instead how this statement sounds to a fence-riding observer. I don't know about you, but if I were still trying to pick a candidate, this comment would not inspire me to shift my allegiances squarely in the direction of the man doing the complaining.
It should also be noted that this year the Republicans have introduced a chilling twist to this "we lost because we couldn't get a word in" pre-explanation: the idea that their loss is the direct result of ballot-stuffing by ACORN. There is simply no evidence, not a scintilla, that ACORN's system of paying volunteers for collecting registrations could ever have resulted in a single fraudulent vote being cast, but this hasn't stopped the extremist right-wing opinion leaders from their coordinated campaign to de-legitimize an Obama Presidency before it even begins.
Somewhere along the line the trailing campaign gives-in to the "biased media coverage" death rattle, of course. This is an increasingly time-honored tactic with Republican campaigns, who seem to get more traction with their own base than Democrats do, when claiming that the press is some monolithic body that has one impenetrable agenda for tilting the story of the election. The problems inherent in this move are two-fold: First, it only sways people engaged enough in the election to corroborate the claim against their own perceptions, which automatically rules-out any of the people the trailing candidate would have to win over. Nobody who's still undecided about who to vote for in this election has formed an independent conclusion that Mr. McCain is being treated unfairly by the press. But the bigger risk is that this complaint is dangerously self-fulfilling: the more acrimonious a candidate's relationship with his own traveling press corps, the less likely that press corps is to "give him a pass" when the time comes.
A word or two also seems in order on the subject of whether the claim is particularly justified or not in this election. Several reports have been recently publicized, chronicling a higher percentage of unfavorable news stories being reported about the McCain campaign than about the Obama campaign, and this has prompted even some neutral to left-leaning columnists to speculate on the question of whether Mr. McCain is being treated unfairly in the media. He isn't. When one of two campaigns is behaving in a way that is structurally and consistently more odious than the other, and less competently to boot, impartiality in the reporting of the campaign demands a proportionate allocation of unfavorable stories about that campaign. If by contrast Senator Obama was getting just as much bad press about his commercials as McCain got for the one claiming Obama wanted to teach sex education to kindergarteners, the press would actually be biasing the coverage in favor of Senator McCain, by suggesting that the two teams have behaved in a way that is equally dishonorable--which flatly isn't true.
As the matter becomes more and more entrenched (and time grows shorter), the death rattles become that much more difficult to spin. The inflection point, I would argue, is the "we'll win anyway" death rattle. The polls aren't acurately reflecting the state of the race, we are led to believe, since the candidate's internal numbers show a race that is much closer. Segments of certain states (the "real" places in those states, apparently) are being under-polled, there is hidden resentment for the leading candidate among undecided voters, and in the end the turnout war will favor the trailing candidate and the media will be left on election night with the monumental task of peeling a thousand-pound omelet from its collective face, for having called the matter too early for the front-runner.
For this tradition we may thank the anonymous copywriter who penned "Dewey Defeats Truman," but if 1948 seems increasingly like a long time ago, there's a good reason for that: The front-runner in this election is the one likely to benefit from all factors that would otherwise suggest hidden support. Exclusive cell-phone usage is disproportionately young and Democratic, and even pollsters who claim to be reaching these individuals are probably getting screened by most of the people who would say that they were voting for Obama. As has been widely publicized, the Democrat has committed huge resources into his field operations, and is already out-performing his own polling numbers in early voting--something Democrats have never done before in the short history of voting before election day.
Once the die has truly been cast in this fashion, the collapse begins to take on its own momentum, notably in the sixth of the seven acts, the "down-ticket treason" death rattle. I can still remember being nervous about the outcome of the 1992 Presidential election in its final days, until I saw a story about the decision that had been made by the Senatorial campaign of Alfonse D'Amoto to print up buttons saying, "I'm voting for Clinton and D'Amato!" and after that moment I knew without any further doubt that Bill Clinton would be our next President. The same thing apparently happened, in reverse, in a significant number of down-ticket races in 1980--even before Mr. Reagan trounced Jimmy Carter in their one and only debate. This year's installment? Appointed Senator Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, running so scared for his own reelection that he has produced a series of commercials in which African-Americans extole the virtue of casting a ballot for Obama and Wicker--in some sort of alternate universe where African-Americans would be caught dead voting for Roger Wicker, even on a bet.
The last of the death rattles is of course the biggest and (this year, at least) the most sinfully pleasing one to watch: the "blame game death rattle." As the outcome becomes obvious to even the most seasoned veterans of campaign comebacks, the first true calling of every politician--that of advancing his or her own fortunes--begins bubbling up to the surface, and in short order the highest-placed operatives and surrogates are sending unattributed or semi-attributed signals that the impending doom is not their fault. "In the movies, when there's a crisis, everyone is shown running around, giving orders, shouting into telephones," Henry Kissinger once said, when commenting on the fall of Saigon. "In a real crisis, what actually happens is that everyone is in his foxhole, and occasionally tosses up a message that he wasn't responsible."
In McCain/Palin land there have been several high-level and high-profile incidents over the past, most crucial week, of people taking time off from rallying the campaign to stab each other in the back--most notably with respect to Sarah Palin and the decision to add her to the ticket. The most damning of these (so far) may be the unattributed quote provided to Politico by a "senior McCain adviser," describing Sarah Palin as a "whack job"--a term that doesn't afford much hope for Administrative cohesion if Mr. McCain should indeed pull a rabbit out of a hat next Tuesday. Indeed the dissension would seem to have spilled over to the candidates themselves, at least according to political columnist Robert Draper, who claims that McCain and Palin sat a few feet away from each other on a long bus-ride between campaign appearances in Florida, without McCain speaking a single word to Palin or even acknowledging her physical reality there. "It was embarrassing for those sitting nearby," remarked one staffer who was present aboard the bus, in words that amount to an early candidate for understatement of the century.
Meanwhile, of course, the polls continue to recede from McCain with the very swiftness with which they would have needed to close, for him to have a chance. In the most recent batch of battleground polling, McCain trails by seven in Ohio and Virginia, nine in Colorado, and an eye-bulging twelve points, not just in Pennsylvania, but also in Nevada, which Battleground had been rating as a toss-up as recently as two weeks ago. Governor Palin still hasn't released her medical records, despite having promised to do so this past Monday, and Mr. Obama's thirty-minute program to seal the deal has not yet aired (it's scheduled for Wednesday). And so as we pause to savor the seven death rattles of the McCain/Palin candidacy, it's worth remembering that best death rattle of all, the eighth one, is the one we get to watch together on the evening of November 4th: The McCain/Palin concession speeches.
The only question now is, will they deliver them together?
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida Click Here to Read More...
It begins with the "hail Mary" death rattle. The trailing candidate holds a secret pow-wow with his inner circle and the group of them decide on a bold move to "shake up the dynamic" of the election. These bold moves rarely work under the best of circumstances, especially if timed too far down the calendar to be accepted on good faith by the persuadable middle--but in election 2008 the supposedly "steady hand at the tiller" has undertaken not one but several such extreme, inaptly timed gambles, most of them coming across to an increasingly distrustful press pool as rash, impulsive, and fraught with contingent down-side. Chief among this host of questionable calls were the two biggest decisions by the Republican operation this season--McCain's two "three-A.M. moments," as it were--the choice of Sarah Palin and the decision to "suspend the campaign," both of which are now all but universally derided as excessively long risks.
There follows the "tough choices" death rattle, in which the struggling campaign announces its reluctant decision to pull out of some high-profile battleground (like Michigan), to concentrate on a smaller electoral map. There's never a good time to make such an announcement, of course, since a not inconsiderable swathe of persuadables will shift into the other camp out of simple fear that they might be seen backing a loser--but the story of election-2008 will almost certainly contain at least a passing mention to McCain's inexplicable timing for their team's call to abandon such a big and relatively competitive electoral prize. And in case you've forgotten, they made this announcement about three hours before Sarah Palin was to appear on a national debate platform opposite Joe Biden.
Next we have the "biased access" death rattle. The trailing campaign, having found itself in a self-amplifying cycle of lower fundraising totals, followed by sinking polls, followed by lower fundraising totals, endeavors to paint the other side as an advertising bully who won't let the scrappy underdogs be heard on the television airwaves. "Senator Obama signed a piece of paper saying he'd accept public financing if I did," McCain has said on numerous occasions--despite the fact that no such piece of paper was ever signed by Mr. Obama, and he knows it, "and now that he's broken that promise, he's out-advertising us four-to-one." Setting aside the fact that the RNC was still free to raise as much money as it wished, and could have spent all of that helping McCain become President, consider instead how this statement sounds to a fence-riding observer. I don't know about you, but if I were still trying to pick a candidate, this comment would not inspire me to shift my allegiances squarely in the direction of the man doing the complaining.
It should also be noted that this year the Republicans have introduced a chilling twist to this "we lost because we couldn't get a word in" pre-explanation: the idea that their loss is the direct result of ballot-stuffing by ACORN. There is simply no evidence, not a scintilla, that ACORN's system of paying volunteers for collecting registrations could ever have resulted in a single fraudulent vote being cast, but this hasn't stopped the extremist right-wing opinion leaders from their coordinated campaign to de-legitimize an Obama Presidency before it even begins.
Somewhere along the line the trailing campaign gives-in to the "biased media coverage" death rattle, of course. This is an increasingly time-honored tactic with Republican campaigns, who seem to get more traction with their own base than Democrats do, when claiming that the press is some monolithic body that has one impenetrable agenda for tilting the story of the election. The problems inherent in this move are two-fold: First, it only sways people engaged enough in the election to corroborate the claim against their own perceptions, which automatically rules-out any of the people the trailing candidate would have to win over. Nobody who's still undecided about who to vote for in this election has formed an independent conclusion that Mr. McCain is being treated unfairly by the press. But the bigger risk is that this complaint is dangerously self-fulfilling: the more acrimonious a candidate's relationship with his own traveling press corps, the less likely that press corps is to "give him a pass" when the time comes.
A word or two also seems in order on the subject of whether the claim is particularly justified or not in this election. Several reports have been recently publicized, chronicling a higher percentage of unfavorable news stories being reported about the McCain campaign than about the Obama campaign, and this has prompted even some neutral to left-leaning columnists to speculate on the question of whether Mr. McCain is being treated unfairly in the media. He isn't. When one of two campaigns is behaving in a way that is structurally and consistently more odious than the other, and less competently to boot, impartiality in the reporting of the campaign demands a proportionate allocation of unfavorable stories about that campaign. If by contrast Senator Obama was getting just as much bad press about his commercials as McCain got for the one claiming Obama wanted to teach sex education to kindergarteners, the press would actually be biasing the coverage in favor of Senator McCain, by suggesting that the two teams have behaved in a way that is equally dishonorable--which flatly isn't true.
As the matter becomes more and more entrenched (and time grows shorter), the death rattles become that much more difficult to spin. The inflection point, I would argue, is the "we'll win anyway" death rattle. The polls aren't acurately reflecting the state of the race, we are led to believe, since the candidate's internal numbers show a race that is much closer. Segments of certain states (the "real" places in those states, apparently) are being under-polled, there is hidden resentment for the leading candidate among undecided voters, and in the end the turnout war will favor the trailing candidate and the media will be left on election night with the monumental task of peeling a thousand-pound omelet from its collective face, for having called the matter too early for the front-runner.
For this tradition we may thank the anonymous copywriter who penned "Dewey Defeats Truman," but if 1948 seems increasingly like a long time ago, there's a good reason for that: The front-runner in this election is the one likely to benefit from all factors that would otherwise suggest hidden support. Exclusive cell-phone usage is disproportionately young and Democratic, and even pollsters who claim to be reaching these individuals are probably getting screened by most of the people who would say that they were voting for Obama. As has been widely publicized, the Democrat has committed huge resources into his field operations, and is already out-performing his own polling numbers in early voting--something Democrats have never done before in the short history of voting before election day.
Once the die has truly been cast in this fashion, the collapse begins to take on its own momentum, notably in the sixth of the seven acts, the "down-ticket treason" death rattle. I can still remember being nervous about the outcome of the 1992 Presidential election in its final days, until I saw a story about the decision that had been made by the Senatorial campaign of Alfonse D'Amoto to print up buttons saying, "I'm voting for Clinton and D'Amato!" and after that moment I knew without any further doubt that Bill Clinton would be our next President. The same thing apparently happened, in reverse, in a significant number of down-ticket races in 1980--even before Mr. Reagan trounced Jimmy Carter in their one and only debate. This year's installment? Appointed Senator Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, running so scared for his own reelection that he has produced a series of commercials in which African-Americans extole the virtue of casting a ballot for Obama and Wicker--in some sort of alternate universe where African-Americans would be caught dead voting for Roger Wicker, even on a bet.
The last of the death rattles is of course the biggest and (this year, at least) the most sinfully pleasing one to watch: the "blame game death rattle." As the outcome becomes obvious to even the most seasoned veterans of campaign comebacks, the first true calling of every politician--that of advancing his or her own fortunes--begins bubbling up to the surface, and in short order the highest-placed operatives and surrogates are sending unattributed or semi-attributed signals that the impending doom is not their fault. "In the movies, when there's a crisis, everyone is shown running around, giving orders, shouting into telephones," Henry Kissinger once said, when commenting on the fall of Saigon. "In a real crisis, what actually happens is that everyone is in his foxhole, and occasionally tosses up a message that he wasn't responsible."
In McCain/Palin land there have been several high-level and high-profile incidents over the past, most crucial week, of people taking time off from rallying the campaign to stab each other in the back--most notably with respect to Sarah Palin and the decision to add her to the ticket. The most damning of these (so far) may be the unattributed quote provided to Politico by a "senior McCain adviser," describing Sarah Palin as a "whack job"--a term that doesn't afford much hope for Administrative cohesion if Mr. McCain should indeed pull a rabbit out of a hat next Tuesday. Indeed the dissension would seem to have spilled over to the candidates themselves, at least according to political columnist Robert Draper, who claims that McCain and Palin sat a few feet away from each other on a long bus-ride between campaign appearances in Florida, without McCain speaking a single word to Palin or even acknowledging her physical reality there. "It was embarrassing for those sitting nearby," remarked one staffer who was present aboard the bus, in words that amount to an early candidate for understatement of the century.
Meanwhile, of course, the polls continue to recede from McCain with the very swiftness with which they would have needed to close, for him to have a chance. In the most recent batch of battleground polling, McCain trails by seven in Ohio and Virginia, nine in Colorado, and an eye-bulging twelve points, not just in Pennsylvania, but also in Nevada, which Battleground had been rating as a toss-up as recently as two weeks ago. Governor Palin still hasn't released her medical records, despite having promised to do so this past Monday, and Mr. Obama's thirty-minute program to seal the deal has not yet aired (it's scheduled for Wednesday). And so as we pause to savor the seven death rattles of the McCain/Palin candidacy, it's worth remembering that best death rattle of all, the eighth one, is the one we get to watch together on the evening of November 4th: The McCain/Palin concession speeches.
The only question now is, will they deliver them together?
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida Click Here to Read More...
Monday, October 27, 2008
A picture is worth a lot of column space
You may or may not be familiar with the website electoral-vote.com, which is one of several that take a daily whip count of the electoral votes that each candidate would secure if the election were today. (Incidentally, fivethirtyeight is a superior site, if in this respect only, in that it's the only one that I am aware of that uses econometric inference to regress this data and project a winner on November 4th.)
One of the things that electoral-vote has added to its site since its inception during the 2004 contest, is a line graph showing both candidates' support in the electoral college--both with- and without the "leaners." The implicit argument goes, if either candidate shows a clear trend in electoral vote support, minus the closely-polling states, then that will tell a great deal about the underlying structure of the race without all the day-to-day noise.
So here then is the line graph of electoral college support for Barack Obama and John McCain, without leaners, from mid-March to the present day:
You will perhaps have noticed a few things: First, except for McCain's convention bounce, the clear trend-line for Obama has been inexorably upward. Not even the Paris Hilton ad, and the ten-day vacation that Obama took in Hawaii while it was running, made more than an insignificant dent in his consolidated electoral tally. In non-leaner states, he's been trending up all year. Second, while Obama has apparently been pulling leaner-states into non-leaner status (leading to yet more invocations of the exhausting "close the deal" expression), McCain has been losing his solid-vote count, particularly since the Lehman collapse and his "fundamentals are strong" gaffe--which may well be the only thing anyone ever remembers about this race, in another few years. Third, and entirely by the way, Obama's support without leaners adds up to significantly more than 270 electoral votes.
While the McCain team is arguing about when and whether to release Sarah Palin's medical records (latest word is that they'll be issued later today--Monday, October 27--though such promises have been made and broken before), while they're discussing how to reply to the devastating Sunday New York Times article, while they're finger-pointing over the issue of who leaked the fact that they were finger-pointing, Barack Obama continues to strengthen his grip on this contest in a manner that has impressed even many Republicans. At the moment Mr. McCain isn't even leading outside the margin-of-error in his home state of Arizona, and with the dubious assumptions being brought to the polling of this contest, particularly with respect to who is- and is not a "likely voter," the eventual margin could well be significantly larger.
As reported yesterday, Mr. Obama's crowds continue to dwarf those of McCain/Palin rallies (he had another eye-popper yesterday in Denver), and in a mainstream press that has spent much of the past three months trying to hold the matter artificially close, the topic has shifted to just how badly the down-ticket Republicans will be clobbered by the final act of McCain's ritual sepukku in the Capitol Hill parking lot. Stu Rothenberg has continually revised downward his House GOP head-count, and across the Capitol there is grave talk that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell himself may go down to defeat in Kentucky, if Obama's wave extends far enough into southern Appalachia to swing working-class independents in the Bluegrass State.
And so, as we await those Palin medical records, as early voting continues to show massive advantages for Team Blue from coast to coast, and as Senator Obama prepares to make his "closing argument" in a speech to be delivered later today in Ohio, the rest of us are left casting about for something poignant to say about the matter that won't sound tautological or redundant or both. So how's this for poignant: Sunday, the day that Senator McCain was failing to name the fifth Secretary of State who support his candidacy on Meet the Press, was the forty-first anniversary of the day McCain was shot down the first time--over Vietnam.
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida Click Here to Read More...
One of the things that electoral-vote has added to its site since its inception during the 2004 contest, is a line graph showing both candidates' support in the electoral college--both with- and without the "leaners." The implicit argument goes, if either candidate shows a clear trend in electoral vote support, minus the closely-polling states, then that will tell a great deal about the underlying structure of the race without all the day-to-day noise.
So here then is the line graph of electoral college support for Barack Obama and John McCain, without leaners, from mid-March to the present day:
You will perhaps have noticed a few things: First, except for McCain's convention bounce, the clear trend-line for Obama has been inexorably upward. Not even the Paris Hilton ad, and the ten-day vacation that Obama took in Hawaii while it was running, made more than an insignificant dent in his consolidated electoral tally. In non-leaner states, he's been trending up all year. Second, while Obama has apparently been pulling leaner-states into non-leaner status (leading to yet more invocations of the exhausting "close the deal" expression), McCain has been losing his solid-vote count, particularly since the Lehman collapse and his "fundamentals are strong" gaffe--which may well be the only thing anyone ever remembers about this race, in another few years. Third, and entirely by the way, Obama's support without leaners adds up to significantly more than 270 electoral votes.
While the McCain team is arguing about when and whether to release Sarah Palin's medical records (latest word is that they'll be issued later today--Monday, October 27--though such promises have been made and broken before), while they're discussing how to reply to the devastating Sunday New York Times article, while they're finger-pointing over the issue of who leaked the fact that they were finger-pointing, Barack Obama continues to strengthen his grip on this contest in a manner that has impressed even many Republicans. At the moment Mr. McCain isn't even leading outside the margin-of-error in his home state of Arizona, and with the dubious assumptions being brought to the polling of this contest, particularly with respect to who is- and is not a "likely voter," the eventual margin could well be significantly larger.
As reported yesterday, Mr. Obama's crowds continue to dwarf those of McCain/Palin rallies (he had another eye-popper yesterday in Denver), and in a mainstream press that has spent much of the past three months trying to hold the matter artificially close, the topic has shifted to just how badly the down-ticket Republicans will be clobbered by the final act of McCain's ritual sepukku in the Capitol Hill parking lot. Stu Rothenberg has continually revised downward his House GOP head-count, and across the Capitol there is grave talk that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell himself may go down to defeat in Kentucky, if Obama's wave extends far enough into southern Appalachia to swing working-class independents in the Bluegrass State.
And so, as we await those Palin medical records, as early voting continues to show massive advantages for Team Blue from coast to coast, and as Senator Obama prepares to make his "closing argument" in a speech to be delivered later today in Ohio, the rest of us are left casting about for something poignant to say about the matter that won't sound tautological or redundant or both. So how's this for poignant: Sunday, the day that Senator McCain was failing to name the fifth Secretary of State who support his candidacy on Meet the Press, was the forty-first anniversary of the day McCain was shot down the first time--over Vietnam.
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida Click Here to Read More...
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Who's That Fifth Secretary of State, Again?
With nine days to go--hurrah!--the last thing Mr. McCain needed for his Sunday talk show agenda-setting was a potpourri of further embarrassments. (And is it just a failure of imagination on the part of your intrepid columnist, or is this stuff getting harder and harder to write about without sounding repetitive?)
The big news of the cycle was of course the widely publicized report that Governor Sarah Palin has decided to deal with her frustrations and her impending status as scapegoat for McCain's eventual defeat by "going rogue"--though regular readers of this or any other political column might be inclined to wonder just what is meant by the word "going," in this context. The story, juicy in its detail and so sinful for Democrats to read that, let's face it, it just has to be fattening, is that Steve Schmidt and his ilk are believed by Palin's own circle (she has a circle?) to have hung their fair-haired gal out to dry: They botched her roll-out, so goes the argument, they put too many of her press-contact eggs in baskets belonging to old media friends who couldn't be trusted, they deliberately leaked the clothing story to embarrass her, and they haven't let her say what she wants to from the stump.
...And never mind that, when she does say what she wants, it's that she still doesn't understand the role of the Vice President in "overseeing" the Senate, she quasi-intentionally refers to the ticket as "I and John McCain," and, perhaps most interestingly, she admits that the energy pipeline deal for which she's supposed to be getting all of this executive-leadership credit was actually a no-bid contract.
Of course Mr. McCain has been doing himself no great favors, of late. Saturday also saw a story, under-reported only because there was so much else to write about, describing John McCain's c.2000 defense of progressive income taxes against the charge of socialism. McCain, always the unflappable, steady hand at the tiller, chose to follow the release of this story with a Sunday-morning performance on Meet the Press, during which he found himself unable to name all five of the Secretaries of State who have endorsed his candidacy--despite having brought the subject up, himself.
The sum-and-substance of this bizarrely swift, all but pathetic unraveling of fortunes for Senator McCain has been three-fold: First, it has become what civil engineers call a "self-amplifying vibration," wherein the more behind the campaign appears to be, the more shrill its rhetoric and, by that measure, the more likely it is to alienate a couple of undecided voters in New Mexico.
Second, it's beginning to lead to some unlikely choices of subject among Republican talking-heads, viz. Rudy Guliani suggesting that the journalistic impulse leading to Joe the Plumber's tax lien ought to be investigated as a criminal conspiracy, or Campbell Brown of CNN suggesting that anyone in the universe other than she should care right now about the New York Governor's Chief of Staff being late on his income taxes. Of course, the only subject any of the rest of us are talking about just gets less and less comfortable for the Rudy Guliani's and the Campbell Browns of the world: the RNC's latest anti-Obama ad, for instance, is quite possibly the least effectual and most self-evidently desperate campaign commercial this author can remember since at least the days of Fritz Mondale showing stock footage of ICBM's being launched.
But by far the largest single impact of such a precipitous and trans-national collapse of Republican fortunes is to leave the nation's pollsters in something of a lurch--particularly with respect to just how big Mr. Obama's eventual victory may end up being. There is hard evidence to suggest, for example, that Obama is trouncing Mr. McCain in early voting in Nevada, where the trend in Washoe and Clark Counties (the only ones where anybody actually lives) is so decisive as to raise serious doubts about the assorted "likely voter" screens that have been used by pollsters to reflect only semi-immoderate leads for Team Blue in an assortment of other places.
Suffice it to say, if early Nevada voters are a legitimate indication of just how over this election already is, then it has been over for some time now and will only become more so, to the potential embarrassment of soberly industrious, for-profit businesses out there whose job it is to predict the closeness of the race. Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com reports that Mr. Obama has already banked "several hundred thousand" more early votes than Mr. McCain--in North Carolina, which, depending on how one defines the word "several," could constitute a larger advantage than that by which Mr. Bush carried the entire state in 2004. Florida, as previously reported in these columns, is currently breaking for Obama by a margin of 2-to-1 in early voting. Ohio is running at a slightly less eye-popping pace, but still comfortably in favor of Team Good-Guys.
Indeed nobody's even showing up at McCain/Palin rallies anymore. Within twenty-four hours of Senator Obama having drawn 50,000 supporters to an event in Albuquerque, a McCain rally in the same city was estimated by the campaign itself to have attracted 1,400--while the journalists in the audience pegged the audience at fewer than 1,000, many of whom were high school students.
Worst of all for the Republicans is the fore-ordained advantage that Mr. Obama will have in the coming days' news coverage, beginning with the ever-more-anticipated and repeatedly stonewalled release of Governor Palin's medical records. All unsavory speculations aside (and as loyal readers know I'm particularly fond of a doozie, in this department), it seems safe to presume that Ms. Palin would not have reversed herself several times on the subject of making these records public if she hadn't been privately hoping against hope that the issue would go away. Within a day either side of this foolishly built-up event will come Barack Obama's half-hour television buy, deemed by the whizzes at Saturday Night Live as the "Obama variety show," but which will surely dominate coverage for at least one more of the precious few remaining days' coverage of the election, if not slam the door the rest of the way in McCain's face. ...And all the while, those merciless polls just keep slipping farther and farther out of reach. Obama is up by nine in Virginia (even with a suspect "likely voter" screen), by twelve in Colorado, and there are even signs that McCain could lose in his home state of Arizona, where he currently leads by only five.
ABC News / Time Magazine Mark Halperin said, in the waning days of the 2004 Presidential election, "When you're behind, you have to win every day." And if that seems like a daunting task for a campaign about to lose one day's news on Palin's records and another to Obama's thirty minutes of television, consider the fact that, for well over two weeks now, McCain/Palin haven't actually won any.
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida Click Here to Read More...
The big news of the cycle was of course the widely publicized report that Governor Sarah Palin has decided to deal with her frustrations and her impending status as scapegoat for McCain's eventual defeat by "going rogue"--though regular readers of this or any other political column might be inclined to wonder just what is meant by the word "going," in this context. The story, juicy in its detail and so sinful for Democrats to read that, let's face it, it just has to be fattening, is that Steve Schmidt and his ilk are believed by Palin's own circle (she has a circle?) to have hung their fair-haired gal out to dry: They botched her roll-out, so goes the argument, they put too many of her press-contact eggs in baskets belonging to old media friends who couldn't be trusted, they deliberately leaked the clothing story to embarrass her, and they haven't let her say what she wants to from the stump.
...And never mind that, when she does say what she wants, it's that she still doesn't understand the role of the Vice President in "overseeing" the Senate, she quasi-intentionally refers to the ticket as "I and John McCain," and, perhaps most interestingly, she admits that the energy pipeline deal for which she's supposed to be getting all of this executive-leadership credit was actually a no-bid contract.
Of course Mr. McCain has been doing himself no great favors, of late. Saturday also saw a story, under-reported only because there was so much else to write about, describing John McCain's c.2000 defense of progressive income taxes against the charge of socialism. McCain, always the unflappable, steady hand at the tiller, chose to follow the release of this story with a Sunday-morning performance on Meet the Press, during which he found himself unable to name all five of the Secretaries of State who have endorsed his candidacy--despite having brought the subject up, himself.
BROKAW: Were you surprised by Secretary of State Colin Powell's endorsement of Senator Obama?
McCAIN: "I'm disappointed in General Powell, but I'm very, very happy to know that FIVE former secretaries of states who I admire enormously -- Henry Kissinger, Jim Baker, Larry Eagleburger, Al Haig, uh, uh, uh, ah -- Jim Baker, Henry Kissinger, Al Haig, Larry Eagleburger, uh, [sighs] and one other, and over 200 retired flag ... generals and admirals are supporting my candidacy. I'm VERY proud of their support."
BROKAW: "Senator, we opened today with how you're doing in Iowa. The Des Moines Register has endorsed [Obama] ..."
McCAIN: "George Shultz! George Shultz is the other one. George, [laughing] I'm sorry I left you out to start with. George Shultz is a great, one of the great secretaries of state in history. Anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry."
The sum-and-substance of this bizarrely swift, all but pathetic unraveling of fortunes for Senator McCain has been three-fold: First, it has become what civil engineers call a "self-amplifying vibration," wherein the more behind the campaign appears to be, the more shrill its rhetoric and, by that measure, the more likely it is to alienate a couple of undecided voters in New Mexico.
Second, it's beginning to lead to some unlikely choices of subject among Republican talking-heads, viz. Rudy Guliani suggesting that the journalistic impulse leading to Joe the Plumber's tax lien ought to be investigated as a criminal conspiracy, or Campbell Brown of CNN suggesting that anyone in the universe other than she should care right now about the New York Governor's Chief of Staff being late on his income taxes. Of course, the only subject any of the rest of us are talking about just gets less and less comfortable for the Rudy Guliani's and the Campbell Browns of the world: the RNC's latest anti-Obama ad, for instance, is quite possibly the least effectual and most self-evidently desperate campaign commercial this author can remember since at least the days of Fritz Mondale showing stock footage of ICBM's being launched.
But by far the largest single impact of such a precipitous and trans-national collapse of Republican fortunes is to leave the nation's pollsters in something of a lurch--particularly with respect to just how big Mr. Obama's eventual victory may end up being. There is hard evidence to suggest, for example, that Obama is trouncing Mr. McCain in early voting in Nevada, where the trend in Washoe and Clark Counties (the only ones where anybody actually lives) is so decisive as to raise serious doubts about the assorted "likely voter" screens that have been used by pollsters to reflect only semi-immoderate leads for Team Blue in an assortment of other places.
Suffice it to say, if early Nevada voters are a legitimate indication of just how over this election already is, then it has been over for some time now and will only become more so, to the potential embarrassment of soberly industrious, for-profit businesses out there whose job it is to predict the closeness of the race. Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com reports that Mr. Obama has already banked "several hundred thousand" more early votes than Mr. McCain--in North Carolina, which, depending on how one defines the word "several," could constitute a larger advantage than that by which Mr. Bush carried the entire state in 2004. Florida, as previously reported in these columns, is currently breaking for Obama by a margin of 2-to-1 in early voting. Ohio is running at a slightly less eye-popping pace, but still comfortably in favor of Team Good-Guys.
Indeed nobody's even showing up at McCain/Palin rallies anymore. Within twenty-four hours of Senator Obama having drawn 50,000 supporters to an event in Albuquerque, a McCain rally in the same city was estimated by the campaign itself to have attracted 1,400--while the journalists in the audience pegged the audience at fewer than 1,000, many of whom were high school students.
Worst of all for the Republicans is the fore-ordained advantage that Mr. Obama will have in the coming days' news coverage, beginning with the ever-more-anticipated and repeatedly stonewalled release of Governor Palin's medical records. All unsavory speculations aside (and as loyal readers know I'm particularly fond of a doozie, in this department), it seems safe to presume that Ms. Palin would not have reversed herself several times on the subject of making these records public if she hadn't been privately hoping against hope that the issue would go away. Within a day either side of this foolishly built-up event will come Barack Obama's half-hour television buy, deemed by the whizzes at Saturday Night Live as the "Obama variety show," but which will surely dominate coverage for at least one more of the precious few remaining days' coverage of the election, if not slam the door the rest of the way in McCain's face. ...And all the while, those merciless polls just keep slipping farther and farther out of reach. Obama is up by nine in Virginia (even with a suspect "likely voter" screen), by twelve in Colorado, and there are even signs that McCain could lose in his home state of Arizona, where he currently leads by only five.
ABC News / Time Magazine Mark Halperin said, in the waning days of the 2004 Presidential election, "When you're behind, you have to win every day." And if that seems like a daunting task for a campaign about to lose one day's news on Palin's records and another to Obama's thirty minutes of television, consider the fact that, for well over two weeks now, McCain/Palin haven't actually won any.
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida Click Here to Read More...
Saturday, October 25, 2008
On Election 2008's Remaining Undecided Voters
"A flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. 'Can I interest you in the chicken?' she asks. 'Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?'
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."
-David Sedaris
The New Yorker, October 27th ed. Click Here to Read More...
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."
-David Sedaris
The New Yorker, October 27th ed. Click Here to Read More...
Friday, October 24, 2008
Weld on Obama, Lieberman on Palin, and thou
Another should-have-been-slow Friday turned out to be anything but, and once again McCain might just as well have preferred it a little slower. To begin with there was the sordid (and quite probably sad) story of McCain Campaign volunteer in Pittsburgh, Ashley Todd from Texas, who was supposedly attacked by an Obama supporter, who allegedly carved a backwards "B" into her cheek--a story so gripping for its potential pathos that the young woman in question received personal telephone calls from both Governor Palin (first, interestingly), and later by John McCain. All fine, made-for-TV drama that could easily have raised new questions about Mr. Obama's impact on race relations... until, that is, Ms. Todd turned out on Friday morning to be an attention-hungry liar.
Within hours the news that she had recanted the entire incident was splashed all over the Mainstream Media like cheap after-shave, and right-leaning pundits like John Moody, Executive Vice President for News at Fox News, were having to explain away some pretty awkward quotes they'd made on the subject. "If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee," Mr. Moody had scribed on his network website blog the previous evening. "But if the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."
Moody, incidentally, has brushed aside the suggestion that he should now formally declare McCain's quest for the presidency to be over, saying, "Thank goodness the reporting of the story on Fox News was more accurate than my own blog." Late-breaking word in this matter is that Ms. Todd will be criminally charged, which can't possibly be a happy ending for anybody, least of all the guy running for President who showed the poor judgment to call her on the telephone before she'd been vetted.
There was also a second day of incoming from the Palin/Wardrobe scandal, with Friday's wrinkle being that Palin's stylist was paid more--significantly more, if it comes to that--than her senior policy adviser. If there was any good news for McCain in this particular story's two-day legs, it might be that hairstylist-gate had the unanticipated effect leaving no room on the stage for the news that Palin and her husband gave Friday depositions in the Troopergate matter, or for the story that Palin, as Governor, has appointed campaign benefactors to key positions in State Government. More than 100 such appointments to state posts -- nearly 1 in 4 of the total -- have thus far been awarded to campaign contributors or their relatives during Palin's tenure, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications.
Curiously, it seemed Friday was the day for other members of the McCain/Palin entourage to finally grow so envious of Palin's gaffe-sprinkled stage presence that they had to join in embarrassing the ticket: It was reported that, in a fit of pique that can only lead to further questions about the candidate's own temperament, John McCain's brother Joe had recently become so frustrated with a northern Virginia traffic jam that he twice called the 9-1-1 emergency switchboard to complain.
Just what Mr. McCain expected the 9-1-1 operators to do about the traffic jam is anyone's guess, but it is the second call that merits the bulk of the sober reflection, since it came after a 9-1-1 supervisor had dialed-back McCain's cell phone to warn him about abusing the emergency lines. That's right, folks: Joe McCain dialed 9-1-1 to complain about traffic, was warned that doing so constituted a crime, and then called 9-1-1 again to complain about having been warned.
Then there was the story that Joe the Plumber is contemplating a run for Congress in 2010--which embarrasses McCain only to the extent that (a) his hypothetical candidacy was running at about a 10% approval rating in the insta-poll on CNN's main page Friday afternoon and (b) it would seem that Joe is interested enough in politics to run for office, but not, somehow, interested enough to appear on a campaign stage with his principal benefactor, who spent all day Friday barnstorming Florida without him.
Perhaps a different "Joe" would embarrass his fair-haired candidate a little less? Surely that's what the campaign High Command must have thought when they dispatched Joe Lieberman to an interview with the Stamford Advocate. And what, exactly did Joe the Senator deliver? How about saying, on the record, "Thank God that Sarah Palin won't have to be President from Day One."
Under the increasingly weighty file of Republican crossover endorsements, the Friday news cycle began under the spell of Scott McClellan's unexpected coming-out for Senator Obama, and, at the opposite end of the day, found time in its busy schedule of body-blows to McCain to make room for a second-such endorsement by Republican and former Governor of Massachusetts, William Weld. And if Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis were planning to counter with an unexpected endorsement for their candidate too, then presumably they hadn't anticipated that the endorsement would be coming from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, both of whom, it was confirmed at the Friday White House press conference, voted by absentee ballot for McCain.
On the election-deathwatch front, a poll conducted by the St. Petersburg Times showed seven points' cushion for Obama in Florida, while an ABC News report indicates that early votes cast in the Sunshine State have thusfar broken for Obama by a staggering 2:1 margin. Obama is also clobbering McCain in early voting in West Virginia, a state whose polling numbers have been erratic but which was supposed to be a bastion of (soft?) support for Team Red. A new Public Policy Poll in Ohio shows Obama seven points up there, as well--which is a bit lower than Battleground's eye-popper from Thursday, but still an awfully steep hill for McCain to climb in a little over a week.
As we await the Sunday New York Times piece that is expected to portray a McCain inner circle in near-total disarray, many of the most likely indicators one might expect in such circumstances are already self-evident and affirmative. The blame game has begun in earnest, to a degree that has led one senior Republican to describe what will happen next as a circular firing-squad. As-yet unattributed quotes from deep inside Team Crankypants have ranged from "it's not a happy place right now," at one extreme, to "the cake is baked," at--well, at the same extreme, really. In Mississippi, embattled Republican Senatorial candidate Roger Wicker is running ads in which African-Americans espouse their support for Wicker and Obama, a tell-tale signal left over from Democratic candidates tying their names to Reagan in 1980, with equally ominous overtones for the fortunes of the incumbent-party candidate. Even the McCain himself recently announced that he will not be appearing inside the tent at his own election night party, but will instead speak to a handful of reporters from someplace outside the tent, his remarks to be callously and anonymously relayed to a group of tireless and mostly un-thanked volunteers via closed circuit.
Truly, our long and arduous self-inflicted torture is at last coming to an end. Neither election fraud of the sort that has been so thoroughly documented from 2000 and 2004, nor the sudden traction of a single economic message about smaller government and lower tax burdens, will seem anything but far too little, far too late, by the time this race is formally written into the history books next Tuesday. The black-box shenanigans of Republican vote-stealers will overcome a 1%- or 2% margin, but no more than that--and surely not in states whose Governors' Mansions are occupied by Democrats. The smaller government message, meanwhile, has already rung cruelly hollow with an electorate hungry for increased fiduciary oversight and a renewed commitment to economic justice. If these two gambits are all that are left for us to talk about, it's only because they are all Mr. McCain has left, period. The two most reputable of the rightward-leaning polling firms--Gallup and Rassmussen--both have McCain down by seven points as of Friday night, a deficit from which no candidate for President has ever come back, in history.
Indeed, if one requires just that little bit of extra proof as to just how far out of reach this race has gotten for John McCain, consider that Politico's "who won the day" contest was called for Barack Obama on Friday--a day in which the candidate wasn't even on the stump.
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida Click Here to Read More...
Within hours the news that she had recanted the entire incident was splashed all over the Mainstream Media like cheap after-shave, and right-leaning pundits like John Moody, Executive Vice President for News at Fox News, were having to explain away some pretty awkward quotes they'd made on the subject. "If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee," Mr. Moody had scribed on his network website blog the previous evening. "But if the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."
Moody, incidentally, has brushed aside the suggestion that he should now formally declare McCain's quest for the presidency to be over, saying, "Thank goodness the reporting of the story on Fox News was more accurate than my own blog." Late-breaking word in this matter is that Ms. Todd will be criminally charged, which can't possibly be a happy ending for anybody, least of all the guy running for President who showed the poor judgment to call her on the telephone before she'd been vetted.
There was also a second day of incoming from the Palin/Wardrobe scandal, with Friday's wrinkle being that Palin's stylist was paid more--significantly more, if it comes to that--than her senior policy adviser. If there was any good news for McCain in this particular story's two-day legs, it might be that hairstylist-gate had the unanticipated effect leaving no room on the stage for the news that Palin and her husband gave Friday depositions in the Troopergate matter, or for the story that Palin, as Governor, has appointed campaign benefactors to key positions in State Government. More than 100 such appointments to state posts -- nearly 1 in 4 of the total -- have thus far been awarded to campaign contributors or their relatives during Palin's tenure, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications.
Curiously, it seemed Friday was the day for other members of the McCain/Palin entourage to finally grow so envious of Palin's gaffe-sprinkled stage presence that they had to join in embarrassing the ticket: It was reported that, in a fit of pique that can only lead to further questions about the candidate's own temperament, John McCain's brother Joe had recently become so frustrated with a northern Virginia traffic jam that he twice called the 9-1-1 emergency switchboard to complain.
Just what Mr. McCain expected the 9-1-1 operators to do about the traffic jam is anyone's guess, but it is the second call that merits the bulk of the sober reflection, since it came after a 9-1-1 supervisor had dialed-back McCain's cell phone to warn him about abusing the emergency lines. That's right, folks: Joe McCain dialed 9-1-1 to complain about traffic, was warned that doing so constituted a crime, and then called 9-1-1 again to complain about having been warned.
Then there was the story that Joe the Plumber is contemplating a run for Congress in 2010--which embarrasses McCain only to the extent that (a) his hypothetical candidacy was running at about a 10% approval rating in the insta-poll on CNN's main page Friday afternoon and (b) it would seem that Joe is interested enough in politics to run for office, but not, somehow, interested enough to appear on a campaign stage with his principal benefactor, who spent all day Friday barnstorming Florida without him.
Perhaps a different "Joe" would embarrass his fair-haired candidate a little less? Surely that's what the campaign High Command must have thought when they dispatched Joe Lieberman to an interview with the Stamford Advocate. And what, exactly did Joe the Senator deliver? How about saying, on the record, "Thank God that Sarah Palin won't have to be President from Day One."
Under the increasingly weighty file of Republican crossover endorsements, the Friday news cycle began under the spell of Scott McClellan's unexpected coming-out for Senator Obama, and, at the opposite end of the day, found time in its busy schedule of body-blows to McCain to make room for a second-such endorsement by Republican and former Governor of Massachusetts, William Weld. And if Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis were planning to counter with an unexpected endorsement for their candidate too, then presumably they hadn't anticipated that the endorsement would be coming from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, both of whom, it was confirmed at the Friday White House press conference, voted by absentee ballot for McCain.
On the election-deathwatch front, a poll conducted by the St. Petersburg Times showed seven points' cushion for Obama in Florida, while an ABC News report indicates that early votes cast in the Sunshine State have thusfar broken for Obama by a staggering 2:1 margin. Obama is also clobbering McCain in early voting in West Virginia, a state whose polling numbers have been erratic but which was supposed to be a bastion of (soft?) support for Team Red. A new Public Policy Poll in Ohio shows Obama seven points up there, as well--which is a bit lower than Battleground's eye-popper from Thursday, but still an awfully steep hill for McCain to climb in a little over a week.
As we await the Sunday New York Times piece that is expected to portray a McCain inner circle in near-total disarray, many of the most likely indicators one might expect in such circumstances are already self-evident and affirmative. The blame game has begun in earnest, to a degree that has led one senior Republican to describe what will happen next as a circular firing-squad. As-yet unattributed quotes from deep inside Team Crankypants have ranged from "it's not a happy place right now," at one extreme, to "the cake is baked," at--well, at the same extreme, really. In Mississippi, embattled Republican Senatorial candidate Roger Wicker is running ads in which African-Americans espouse their support for Wicker and Obama, a tell-tale signal left over from Democratic candidates tying their names to Reagan in 1980, with equally ominous overtones for the fortunes of the incumbent-party candidate. Even the McCain himself recently announced that he will not be appearing inside the tent at his own election night party, but will instead speak to a handful of reporters from someplace outside the tent, his remarks to be callously and anonymously relayed to a group of tireless and mostly un-thanked volunteers via closed circuit.
Truly, our long and arduous self-inflicted torture is at last coming to an end. Neither election fraud of the sort that has been so thoroughly documented from 2000 and 2004, nor the sudden traction of a single economic message about smaller government and lower tax burdens, will seem anything but far too little, far too late, by the time this race is formally written into the history books next Tuesday. The black-box shenanigans of Republican vote-stealers will overcome a 1%- or 2% margin, but no more than that--and surely not in states whose Governors' Mansions are occupied by Democrats. The smaller government message, meanwhile, has already rung cruelly hollow with an electorate hungry for increased fiduciary oversight and a renewed commitment to economic justice. If these two gambits are all that are left for us to talk about, it's only because they are all Mr. McCain has left, period. The two most reputable of the rightward-leaning polling firms--Gallup and Rassmussen--both have McCain down by seven points as of Friday night, a deficit from which no candidate for President has ever come back, in history.
Indeed, if one requires just that little bit of extra proof as to just how far out of reach this race has gotten for John McCain, consider that Politico's "who won the day" contest was called for Barack Obama on Friday--a day in which the candidate wasn't even on the stump.
Dave O'Gorman
("The Key Grip")
Gainesville, Florida Click Here to Read More...
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