New Maps

The McCain campaign's latest pronouncements and a NY Times story together focus Sunday morning attention on the electoral map, as well as closing weeks strategies.

The Times story begins: The turmoil on Wall Street and the weakening economy are changing the contours of the presidential campaign map, giving new force to Senator Barack Obama’s ambitious strategy to make incursions into Republican territory, while leading Senator John McCain to scale back his efforts to capture Democratic states."

Update: The Washington Post chimes in with the same analysis. Its story begins: "The faltering economy has left Sen. John McCain on the political defensive, altering the landscape in many of the most important battleground states and providing a series of avenues for Sen. Barack Obama to claim the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House in November, according to political strategists in both parties."

On the Obama side, the Times notes he's going to be doing debate prep for Tuesday in North Carolina, which hasn't gone blue in a blue moon. The story indicates that Team Obama also sees Virginia, Florida and Nevada in play, as well as Colorado and New Mexico, and are looking to pick off a district in Nebraska (where electoral votes are by district.) Not mentioned but otherwise in play: Indiana and Ohio.

McCainites pulled out of Michigan, and now say they will focus on Colorado, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Nevada and Minnesota. (What happened to Ohio and Florida? I assume they're still contesting those!) But at least one poll gives Obama a lead--sometimes a big lead--in all these states. Though one poll last week showed McCain slightly ahead in Minnesota, the Minneapolis Star Tribune poll gives Obama a 55% to 37% lead there.

Another local newspaper poll--this one a tracking poll--from the Morning Call/Muhlenberg College--in Pennsylvania gives Obama a 51% to 39% lead. This confirms a pretty substantial Obama lead in PA seen in other recent polls, with the economic troubles of the past few weeks as the catalyst again. The United Steelworkers president suggests that McCain may have to abandon PA as well (which seems real unlikely, but unless he's blowing smoke, it's an interesting POV.)

Later Sunday update: Another newspaper poll--the Columbus Dispatch--has Obama up by 7 points in Ohio.

Friday saw good numbers for Obama in Nevada and very good in New Hampshire, which was his only New England question mark. So at the moment, Obama is well ahead in blue states and in the battleground states McCainites are targeting, plus pretty close in Indiana, Ohio and a few other red states.

So what does McCain do? He changes the subject, as his campaign unwisely announced, away from the economy to Obama as scary outsider, pal of terrorists, etc. Unwisely, because the Obama campaign is pre-empting him not only by attacking McCain on economic issues but on his judgment. An ad set to air starting Monday will call McCain's leadership "erratic."

I know I shouldn't be thinking about election night yet, but I can't help it. When the eastern seaboard states report, the dominoes could start to fall. New England and New York should tumble first for Obama. If Obama wins Virginia and North Carolina, make sure the champagne is cold, cause we're probably looking at a landslide. And even if he doesn't, if he wins Florida, pop it open. PA, start pouring it all over yourselves. McCain cannot win if he loses Florida and PA.

Messages from Gov. Palin (via Dave Letterman)

Palin Fails, McCain Still Sinking

I've only seen one tracking poll today, but it's impressive: Obama 52%, McCain 40%. (Research 2000.) Obama is up a point, on the first day that the VP debate figures significantly in the poll. Update: Obama is at 51-45 in Rasmussen, 50-42 Gallup and 48-41 Hotline. Writes Nate Silver: With the first set of tracking polls out to incorporate at least one full day of post-debate interviewing, there is no indication that John McCain and Sarah Palin have made progress in closing their gap with Barack Obama. In fact, Obama ticked upward in three of the four national tracking polls that published today, although he lost a point in Rasmussen. In addition, Ipsos/McClatchy has come out with a poll showing that the debate moved undecideds slightly toward the Obama ticket, confirming the results of most of the snap polling conducted on Thursday evening.

But the polls are in on the debate itself, and it's not even close. Not when the biggest spread is from Fox: Biden 61% Palin 39%. For Independents only, MediaCurves shows 67% for Biden.

Though the TV response was somewhat favorable to Palin, a good deal of the newspaper response now coming in is not.

Several media reports yesterday said that almost every cent the McCain campaign is spending on media is on negative ads. Several reports today said that the McCain-Palin campaign is gearing up to go even more negative, presumably into Rev. Wright territory. VP candidate Palin is already doing her pit bull stuff, calling Obama a friend of terrorists. It's worth noting that when she accused Obama-Biden of waving the white flag of surrender in Iraq, focus group response nosedived. When Biden said they would end the war, response soared.

In his analysis of why McCain dissed Michigan, Nate Silver points out that "McCain's problems ultimately stem back to the early summer, when his campaign decided to throw a ton of money into negative advertising rather than to build a robust field operation." They were able to cut into Obama's lead then, but it has more than rebounded since. And now the McCain campaign has less money (though with the RNC, it's still a pile) and little ground organization.

Where the race is probably close, as in Ohio (according to Al G's analysis), it's the ground game that can make the difference (and since Ohio is early-voting now, may be making that difference right now.) Where it is not so close, even a barrage of vicious ads probably can't shave enough off Obama's lead, especially if they are simply repeating and amplifying old charges.

Besides which, the Obama campaign is beginning its own barrage of provocative ads, very negative but on issues and policy positions, especially health care. It's the final fight to focus the rest of the campaign. Obama is just so well positioned right now. All the preparations when people were wringing their hands in previous weeks are starting to pay off. Hundreds of thousands of new and re-registered voters. Energized volunteers, with well-organized field offices. And money to stay flexible on response ads as well as to stay on the attack. Plus outside organizations like moveon.org willing and able to go where the official campaign can't.

Plus the next two debates, which means that until two weeks before the final voting, McCain will have to face Obama as Obama refutes charges and makes his own on the issues that voters are clearly focused on: the economy, health care and ending the war in Iraq.

And don't miss the Letterman excerpts above.

Why Don't McCain and Palin Respect the Law?


Jonathan Turley makes an excellent point. VP candidate Palin is the first candidate for national office ever to be campaigning while refusing to honor a lawful subpoena. Moreover, her husband--not even a state official of any kind--is also refusing a lawful subpoena. Yet the McCain campaign has nothing to say about this, and what's worse, neither does the media. Why isn't she asked about this? Why isn't this a major issue?

Palin Unchained

With a huge audience and (despite the first polls) a pundit consensus that she rehabilitated herself in the debate, Sarah Palin is losing no time in trying to advance her career.

She's on Fox (and will be on nowhere else this weekend, apparently) saying how she was "annoyed" by Katie Couric, and how she disagrees with the McCain campaign decision to leave Michigan.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is busily trying to correct some of her errors on McCain's actual positions, such as on bankruptcy. And analysts are trying to figure out what she meant (if anything) about expanding powers of the vice-presidency.

Journalists digging into her statements have already found that she lied about her support as Governor of Alaska for divesting investments in the Sudan over Darfur--her administration killed that measure in Alaska.

Meanwhile, with the classic Friday afternoon document dump, her tax records were released and reporters are going over them. But perhaps the biggest event happened just before the debate, when a judge in Alaska refused the petition by Republicans to stop the investigation into Troopergate, which I hope they start calling Palingate.

Palin is acting as though she won the debate last night, but most tellingly, she is acting as she has at times in the past like the presidential candidate, the head of the ticket. This is classic overreach, political hubris, and it's going to be her downfall.

Even after the debate, majorities in the polls believe she is not qualified for even the VP. She's a George Bush persona with Dick Cheney ambitions. Barring the Alaska Supreme Court overturning the lower court decision, the next time she makes news may well be when the Palingate report comes out, no later than Oct. 16. And unfortunately for her and her boosters, the only person debating two more times for her side is John McCain.

And by the way, the idea that Palin quashed further TV satire is already history: a debate sketch is planned for Saturday Night Live this weekend.

What's Next: The Health Care Debate


I've said weeks ago that the Obama campaign would focus on health care issues for the final weeks before the election, and that appears to be happening now. This ad from the debate last night is out today. In places like Ohio, people losing health care is often the first effect families feel of this economy in trouble.

Meanwhile, Obama expanded his lead in two tracking polls, and maintained it in two others. In Gallup he is up one point and McCain down one point; in Hotline he is up one. He is at 51% in two of the polls, with an 11 point lead in Research 2000 for the second straight day.

The Beginning of the Endgames

With the VP debate done and if the House passes the financial rescue package today, the way is clear for the home stretch of this campaign. And if McCain doesn't rebound very soon, it could be a victory lap for Obama.

The VP debate is over with; I said what I had to say over at Dreaming Up Daily. The instant polls, the CNN focus group and most of the pundits, including some Republicans, said that Biden won the debate. I'll emphasize one point: the CNN instant poll in particular showed Biden winning over Palin by almost the same percentage that some polls show Obama over McCain. I wonder if that's a coincidence, or is this election essentially set in cement, and voters have chosen Obama.

Well, maybe a little more about the debate. I said here in my last post that the 90 minute format was going to work against Palin, and I was right. She got weaker as the debate went on, and she inserted her same talking points no matter what relevance they might have, and her syntax and sense began to collapse. Some commentators kept saying that Palin at least stopped the late night mockery. I wouldn't be so sure. She made some very strange statements in that debate.

And in that CNN poll, Palin changed few minds on whether she was qualified. Before it started, 54% thought she wasn't. When it was over, it was 53%.

Today, Friday, the VP debate will already be fading as the House takes up the rescue passage. If they actually pass it early in the day--some say the vote could be taken as early as noon--then maybe the VP debate talk last a little longer. But most of the talk moves on to the economy, and then the next presidential debate on Tuesday.

So here's my sense of things: if the poll numbers don't improve for McCain, even a little, through the weekend, then this race could be over. If they improve a little, we may be seeing some Republicans returning to the fold. But virtually no one among the pundits thought that Palin swayed many Independents or undecideds. That's borne out in both the CNN and CBS instant polls. Chuck Todd said this morning that the campaign is reaching a tipping point, and tonight he thought that Palin's performance didn't really change anything.

But if McCain does move up in the polls a few points, then with the VP debate and the financial rescue package out of the way, he has a final opportunity to get voter attention. If he doesn't, this thing could well be over before the third debate on Oct. 15.

The big political news of Thursday was McCain abandoning Michigan. If he concedes that state, then he has to win both Ohio and Florida, and keep the rest of the Bush states, including Virginia, Indiana and Missouri, and he has to pick off Wisconsin, Minnesota or the big prize, Pennsylvania. According to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, Obama is at least 5 points ahead in enough states to be one electoral vote short of victory. So he has many more paths to victory than McCain does.

What we've been seeing on the campaign trail is both Obama and McCain spending time in states that McCain would be expected to win. In other words, Obama is playing offense, McCain defense. Obama is not neglected the blue battlegrounds, either: he was in Michigan Thursday (and apparently won't have to go back) and in PA Friday. But he's going into some red battlegrounds pretty late in the campaign.

McCain has to change the conversation somehow. His increasingly erratic behavior frankly doesn't inspire much confidence either in him, or in his ability to change the game. It may be too late anyway. We'll probably have a much better sense of that next week at this time.

Surprises and Debates

The polls today are surprising--not because they've reversed, but because McCain's slide continues. He lost a point in the Kos poll--down 51%-40%--and about the same in the other tracking polls.

But the bigger surprise is that the McCain campaign has pulled out of Michigan--no ads, no campaigning, nothing. It wasn't so long ago that Michigan looked like it might be the key to the election. Now McCain is forced to defend usually GOPer states like Virginia (where the McCain operation has beefed up) and Indiana. The big battleground now appears to be Pennsylvania, although some polls show Obama ahead there now about as much as in Michigan.

Today everyone is talking about the VP debate which begins in a few hours. The set-up I expected is in evidence here and there, as in Chuck Todd saying the campaign is at a tipping point, and this debate is the McCainers chance. With Palin's expectations so low, a declared win is likely.

But there are some counter-themes. One is that Palin has been pretty successful as a campaign debater, so expectations are a little higher. Another is that she's lost the confidence of so many voters---60% in one poll say she is unqualified--that glib attacks tonight may not help that much.

And yet another is that with the combination of history (VP debates haven't had much impact on presidential elections) and the news cycle (the drama of the House vote on the economic rescue plan tomorrow will wipe out the debate chatter) this debate doesn't matter all that much. For instance, this piece by Walter Shapiro in Salon.

But now that the debate is here, and it is likely to have a huge audience, let's look at the format. It is basically the same as the first debate, but with shorter periods of time for answers and responses. Yet it is plenty of time for Palin to get as utterly lost as she did in some of those interview answers. Here's my feeling about this: she will depend on zingers and attacks. But people are looking at her differently now. She's a VP candidate in a scary time. This isn't a debate for mayor of a town the size of a gym, or a state with the population of a medium sized city. This is the big stage. And as stupid as national politics often are, I don't think she's going to get away with being glib and clueless. Just the fact that she cannot construct an ad lib sentence is, over 90 minutes, going to sink her.

She may win the battle of the sound bites. She is not going to win the debate.

Wednesday's Polls

are sugar and spice. Obama holds his lead in the daily tracking polls, including that sweet 51-41 Research 2000/Daily Kos number. Time has him up 7 nationally, with 50%. Pew also has Obama up 7.

But it's the battleground state polls that are riveting. CNN's numbers are amazing: Obama 54% to 43% in Minnesota! Obama 53% McCain 44% in VIRGINIA! 51% to 47% in Florida! The same in Nevada!

It's not just the lead, not just the spread, it's being over 50% in all those states, plus at 49% in Missouri (just a 1 pt. lead there.) Anytime a candidate is over 50% this late is very, very good news.

Even better news: this is confirmed by Quinnipiac in their battleground polls released earlier in the day, showing Obama over 50% and up by 8 in Florida and Ohio, and 54% to 39% in PA. These numbers are so big and show such a swing that this poll looked like an outlyer. But CNN essentially confirms them, and now virtually all the new polls show Obama leading in Florida.

It's all good, though TPM quotes a major labor leader saying don't start celebrating yet--his polling shows these gains are still soft. Low info voters are still not sold on the new guy. First Read looks at some polling that shows new voters favor Obama by 2 to 1. The question as always is whether they will vote this time (the category includes lapsed as well as first time eligible voters). Early voting is probably going to help with this group. There are reports of Ohio State students marching to the polls in groups. It's a party!

Yeah, I'm ready to party. Why isn't the election today?

Update: While a TIME blogger warns that "polling five weeks out is never a sure predictor of final results," he also quotes Peter Brown of Quinnipiac: "Sen. John McCain has his work cut out for him if he is to win the presidency. There does not appear to be a role model for such a comeback in the last half century."

And there are two more national polls: AP Obama 48-41, CBS Obama 50-41.

McCainiac Palinology

Monday's polls continued to show Obama gains, including three of the four tracking polls, with a lovely 51%-41% in the DKos poll. State polls also good again, with Obama in the lead in Florida for the first time in awhile. Though the Washington Post poll has settled down from the 9 point lead last week to 4 this week, Obama still is at 50%. (The Post poll apparently has sampled more GOPers and more whites this time.) This poll and the latest CNN suggest Obama's surge had less to do with the debate than the economy.

As wonderful as it would be to see this all continue, it's not a sure thing. McCain and Palin were hammered again today in the media, to the point that it's not worth repeating any of it. It's so consistent now that it's begging to hit bottom, and a new narrative to begin. That's how the media works. That's how the media thinks.

So despite all the Failin Palin news, we are absolutely primed for a turnaround Thursday. If Palin is perceived to do well--even with the expectations absurdly low--that may be enough to swing the narrative to an energized McCain-Palin resurgence, especially if they get an uptick in the polls. I'm not saying it will happen. But there's more than an even chance that, if Palin just has a few good zingers for the replays, it could. I don't think she will appear remotely qualified, and I do expect voters will reject her because of that, but the combination of what for her would be seen as a good debate performance with the media's need to change the story, could do it.

On the other hand, they are running out of opportunities. McCain had what is likely to be his best opportunity in the debate last Friday: the foreign policy/national security topic was his strength, and it was possibly his best debate performance. But he didn't walk away with it, and at least initially, Obama was seen as the winner. (If Obama wins it all, it will still be seen as a JFK-type turning point.)

The VP debate is probably the GOPer ticket's best opportunity if it can change the conversation for a week or so. If it doesn't result in some momentum for them, there are still two presidential debates left, but it will become increasingly difficult for McCain to pull away. He has to defeat Obama on Obama's turf--definitely in the third debate, but also in the second, because most of the questions at the "town hall" are likely to be about the economy. But McCain has his friendliest format, and friendliest debate moderator in Tom Brokaw. And Friday's debate didn't get as big an audience as predicted, apparently because it was on a Friday. The other debates won't be.

McCain also has to hope that once the "rescue" or "bailout" plan passes, he and Palin can change the emphasis from the economy to issues raising doubts about Obama. That's going to be difficult, not only because the economy is still going to be a hot topic, but because there are two debates in which Obama can impress, and parry attacks.

Still this isn't over, at least in terms of polls and campaign theatre--and who knows how many votes that's actually going to change. Right now you have to like Obama's chances, especially since he's surging just as early voting is beginning. It started in Ohio Monday. With the current momentum, the Obama ground game has the advantage: enthusiasm breeds synergy. There's a month left in the campaign, but really McCain/Palin have only about two weeks to change the dynamic. And their best shot to begin this is Thursday's VP debate. But if M-P can't stop Obama's momentum, they're looking at an electoral landslide loss.

Barney Frank on the Bailing Out Republicans

The Politics of Apocalypse

The numbers are preposterous: a $700 billion bail-out (a figure picked out of thin air, a Treasury official conceded, just because they wanted a really big number) is rejected by 2/3 of the House members of the President's own party, and the stock market tanks for the largest one day drop in history--over 777 points--losing $1.2 trillion in value.

The predictions are all over the place: Great Depression II by today (said McCain, who also took credit for victory before the bill was defeated), apocalypse by next week, a long recession just ahead, a long recession ahead anyway, no matter what they do, etc.

The politics of it all are almost as chaotic, but a little more in focus. As Richard Wolfe said on Keith, McCain hurt himself at least four ways by his own actions in just a few days. Or as Steven Hurst wrote for the AP, "Republican John McCain has maneuvered himself into a political dead end and has five weeks to find his way out." But as others said, this is disaster for McCain no matter how you look at it.

There was also talk about this as the death rattle of the Republicans, at least in 2008. Nate Silver was a bit more analytical--of the Republicans he wrote (the elipses are his, not mine):

Their worst-case scenario for them might have been ... what just happened this afternoon. Opposing the bailout had been a political freeroll before because it wasn't manifest to the public what the risks of a nay vote would be. But with the Dow having dropped 780 points today, the risks are now painfully obvious. What had looked to be a politically prudent position 24 hours ago now looks cavalier and reckless. And yet, the Republicans will still by and large will get blamed for putting us in this predicament in the first place. Plus, the failure of the bill is an embarrassment to John McCain..."

While some faulted Obama as well, Joe Klein was among those making these points:

I do blame McCain for his puerile histrionics and for dragging this issue--which should have been above partisanship--into presidential politics. Let's make no mistake about it: his various gimmicks had absolutely nothing to do with the substance of the issue. He doesn't know all that much about the substance of the issue. The gimmicks were a failed attempt to make it seem as if he had powers, and knowledge, he didn't have.

As for Barack Obama, his visceral aversion to showboating did him a service. He laid out four requirements for his support of the bill--requests he had, clearly, coordinated with the Democratic Leadership (and which McCain supported). He made the necessary calls to keep up with the negotiations (as McCain did). He made it clear, without ostentation or fuss, that he supported the compromise. Even today, after the bill failed, Obama warned against panic and advised the Congress to get back to work and, "Get it done."

This was, I believe, eminently rational behavior in a moment of crisis. Obama didn't pretend that he could, or should, do something that he couldn't do. He didn't lead, but then, he wasn't in a position to lead. (McCain's games were the opposite of leadership--they were an unnecessary distraction.) There may be times in the future--in the next few weeks, in fact--when events will call for Obama to be a far more forceful presence. We'll see whether he has it in him. But this wasn't the time for that. It was the time for a cool head, something McCain has yet to demonstrate."

Paul Krugman was among those who thought Obama should have done more, but he also had this to say: So what do we know about the readiness of the two men most likely to end up taking that call? Well, Barack Obama seems well informed and sensible about matters economic and financial. John McCain, on the other hand, scares me....The real revelation of the last few weeks, however, has been just how erratic Mr. McCain’s views on economics are. At any given moment, he seems to have very strong opinions — but a few days later, he goes off in a completely different direction.... The modern economy, it turns out, is a dangerous place — and it’s not the kind of danger you can deal with by talking tough and denouncing evildoers. Does Mr. McCain have the judgment and temperament to deal with that part of the job he seeks? "

And while the longer these economic fears are front and center, the better it is for Obama, that could turn unpredictably. My guess is that the Democrats and Obama are going to seize the initiative on a rescue plan. They'll still have the issue of the economy and how Bush ruined it.

Politically, Obama's surge in the polls continues, up to 51% in the Daily Kos poll, with a 9 point lead over McCain. State polls continue to show Obama gains, with at last some breathing room in PA. Tomorrow will be the first tracking polls with all data after the debate.

Apart from the titanic bail-out failure, the talk today was about Sarah Palin, as CBS continues to dribble out more video, and everyone was showing the part of the devastating Saturday Night Live sketch in which Tina Fey repeats one of Palin's responses word for word, getting lots of laughs. The assault on Palin's fitness for the VP continues, and there are stories about changes in her debate prep, including, apparently, less of it, since she's being trotted back out on the campaign trial.

But what is likely for the VP debate and for the McCain-Palin campaign in general is relentless attacking of Barack Obama. Palin will try to turn every question into an attack, quoting Joe Biden whenever possible. If she's effective, the pundits may not even notice she isn't answering any questions. This will cheer the rabid right base, and then she'll be sent out in attack dog mode. The hockey mom stuff is done and gone. We won't hear her talk about herself, or a substantive issue or a constructive idea for the rest of the campaign.

And there won't be much substance from McCain either, just attack. Their ads will try to amp up the negativity, if that's possible. As ugly as it was before, it's going to get uglier now. It's McCain-Palin's only chance. But people are listening to the Obama-Biden economic message. Excessive negativity in debates turns Independents and undecideds off. Plus this economic mess is unlikely to be under control by Thursday's debate, and Palin's qualifications will be seen in the light of the need for serious people to solve very serious problems.

As for other news of the day, there was some mention of the prosecutor appointed to deal with the Justice Department firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons, but shockingly nothing about the NY Times story pinning what amounts to a McCain version of an organized crime syndicate feeding off the gambling industry. How could this story not be important? Even on the latest (but perhaps not last) Black Monday.

Obama in Virginia





"Change is what's in your heart and in your gut, and who you're fighting for." Talking heads like Chris Matthews should invest 26 minutes and hear what Barack Obama is saying in his campaign, and how people are responding. This fiery speech was held in the rain in Virginia a few days ago to a crowd approaching 30,000--a good part of it (as you'll see) in the rain.

Barack Hits 50%, McCain Mutiny II

In three of the four daily tracking polls that came out today--the first day that debate reaction is figured it (at a third), Obama is at 50%: an 8 point lead in Gallup, 7 in Research 2000, 6 in Rasmussen. He has a 5 point lead in the Hotline poll.

A couple of newer polls confirm that Obama won the debate. This one from the LA Times has this great internal: The difference is even more pronounced among debate watchers who were not firmly committed to a candidate: 44% said they believed Obama looked more presidential, whereas 16% gave McCain the advantage.

McCain Mutiny continued: Newsweek adding even more: The McCain campaign told reporters the fees were irrelevant because Davis "separated from his consulting firm … in 2006," according to the campaign's Web site, and he stopped drawing a salary from it. In fact, however, when Davis joined the campaign in January 2007, he asked that his $20,000-a-month salary be paid directly to Davis Manafort, two sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal campaign business told NEWSWEEK. Federal campaign records show the McCain campaign paid Davis Manafort $90,000 through July 2007, when a cash crunch prompted Davis and other top campaign officials to forgo their salaries and work as volunteers. Separately, another entity created and partly owned by Davis—an Internet firm called 3eDC, whose address was the same office building as Davis Manafort's—received payments from the McCain campaign for Web services, collecting $971,860 through March 2008.

One senior McCain adviser said the entire flap could have been avoided if the campaign had resisted attacking Barack Obama for his ties to two former Fannie Mae executives, which prompted the media to take a second look at Davis. "It was stupid," the adviser said. "A serious miscalculation and an amateurish move.

The AP does Palin: Though Sarah Palin depicts herself as a pit bull fighting good-old-boy politics, in her years as mayor she and her friends received special benefits more typical of small-town politics as usual, an Associated Press investigation shows."

Meanwhile, John McCain was supposed to do ABC's "This Week" this morning as a town hall meeting in Ohio with independent voters. But he cancelled the town hall--although without notifying a lot of the attendees, who showed up, went through security, only to be then told it was cancelled. McCain did an interview instead, which Obama partisans at least thought did not go well (this link has video.)

So to review, Frank Rich sums up the McCain-Palin week of disaster.

The McCain Mutiny

The McCain campaign got on the phone to say that the New York Times no longer does journalism. That was supposed to make them shrivel up and die. Since then, they've added to the significant story of how McCain's campaign manager has never stopped getting paid for influence peddling if not lobbying, with Newsweek nailing down even more damning details. Several Times columnists have called VP candidate Palin unqualified and said in no uncertain terms how this reflects badly on the guy who picked her.

Now in Sunday's Times a lengthy story about McCain himself and his long-time involvement with the gambling industry, not to mention with gambling itself. The story shows how, in true organized crime fashion, he and his lobbyist associates (including Rick Davis, his campaign manager) systematically took apart the gaming influence empire of Jack Abramoff, and picked up the pieces for themselves:

"But interviews and records show that lobbyists and political operatives in Mr. McCain’s inner circle played a behind-the-scenes role in bringing Mr. Abramoff’s misdeeds to Mr. McCain’s attention — and then cashed in on the resulting investigation. The senator’s longtime chief political strategist, for example, was paid $100,000 over four months as a consultant to one tribe caught up in the inquiry, records show. "

The overall conclusion: "Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors."

"For much of his adult life, Mr. McCain has gambled as often as once a month, friends and associates said, traveling to Las Vegas for weekend betting marathons. Former senior campaign officials said they worried about Mr. McCain’s patronage of casinos, given the power he wields over the industry."

This story comes as the bank crisis suggests the relevance of McCain's history as a close associate of Charles Keating, who went to jail for his involvement in the Savings and Loan scandals, and as a member of the so-called Keating Five. The media has actually stayed away from this story (Rachel Maddow did a segment on it, as did CNN, though it may yet emerge, especially after this gambling story. Here's Jed Reports 90 second video about it.

Meanwhile, as one scandal for VP candidate Palin seems to recede, another emerges. The Washington Post reports on a possible violation of Alaska state law by Palin, shortly before McCain chose her for his VP candidate, involving her opposition to a state referendum also opposed by the mining industry but supported by environmentalists and fishermen. The referendum was then defeated, making it easier for mining development. The story says: "Mining interests have courted Palin since her inauguration. Northern Dynasty contributed to her inaugural fund, and other mining companies have offered gifts and paid travel expenses for Palin's husband to go on fact-finding trips."

How is the McCain Mutiny faring with the electorate? How convincing has the Obama campaign become?

The day after the debate, where did Obama go? To North Carolina, a state he is not supposed to win and has no business campaigning in to start the final month. Yet North Carolina is still in play, he got a big crowd and he's in playoff form. McCain has been forced to spend money in Indiana and Virginia. Obama is in Colorado again on Monday. These are not states that were in play in 2004. Democratic registration is way up all over the place. Obama continues to climb in the polls--and Sunday will be the first day that polling after the debate will figure into the tracking polls (it will be 1/3.) It will be very interesting to see where Obama campaigns from now on.

Palin's Got Next...Maybe

But there's trouble beyond the usual lower the expectations game. Her interview with Katie Couric, which finished last night but which was excerpted for days, has apparently inspired a new round of derision.

Yesterday I referenced the stunning dismissal by a conservative woman columnist. Also yesterday, withering evaluations from CNN's Jack Cafferty, who said that if Palin being a heartbeat from the presidency "doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should." Today, Palin's candidacy is dissed twice more.

In the New York Times. The "Domestic Disturbances" columnist Judith Warner, concludes: "Frankly, I’ve come to think, post-Kissinger, post-Katie-Couric, that Palin’s nomination isn’t just an insult to the women (and men) of America. It’s an act of cruelty toward her as well."

In Newsweek, world affairs columnist Fareed Zakaria begins: "Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"? He concludes: "Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president...In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true."

Others set the pattern a bit earlier: On Thursday Carl Bernstein wrote in Huffpost:it is time to confront an awkward but profound question: whether in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has committed -- by his own professed standards of duty and honor -- a singularly unpatriotic act.

On Friday, another columnist in the NY Times, Bob Herbert wrote: "But Ms. Palin has given no indication yet that she is capable of handling the monumental responsibilities of the presidency if she were called upon to do so.
In fact, the opposite is the case.... The press has an obligation to hammer away at Ms. Palin’s qualifications. If it turns out that she has just had a few bad interviews because she was nervous or whatever, additional scrutiny will serve her well. If, on the other hand, it becomes clear that her performance, so far, is an accurate reflection of her qualifications, it would behoove John McCain and the Republican Party to put the country first — as Mr. McCain loves to say — and find a replacement for Ms. Palin on the ticket."

There's another tidbit making the rounds today, from TV talk show host Ed Shultz: Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as “disastrous.” One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, “What are we going to do?” The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is “clueless.”

Whether or not this is true (and the Obama campaign seems serious about taking Palin's debating skills seriously), Palin was conspicuous by her absense from the post-debate spin last night, whereas Joe Biden was everywhere. Palin reportedly watched the debate in a Philadelphia bar--with 300 chanting Obama supporters gathered outside.

Here's my current take: I don't think McCain will dump Palin before the debate, although with McCain you never know. He surely knows he needs something dramatic to change the momentum because Obama very likely got a big boost of it last night, and the daily tracking polls were already trending his way. He might make the big gamble with his base and dump her for Joe Leiberman. But I doubt it.

The more likely (if not most likely) scenario is that the McCain campaign will simply cancel the v.p. debate, saying that the media is so mean that Palin won't get a fair hearing.

Assuming the debate does happen however, I've changed my mind about something else. I was of the school that said the expectations for Palin are so low, she almost certainly will come out of her debate looking okay, if not declared the winner. I don't think that anymore. If Joe Biden simply talks the Obama-Biden line about the future, if he refers to her seldom but only as Governor Palin, and simply links her "views" to continuation of Bush policies, he'll be the clear winner.

The people say Obama won. Why?
This brilliant Al Rodgers image sums up the
general reaction to last night's debate. While
pundits scored it close and some said McCain
won, the overwhelming evidence based on polls
and focus groups is that Obama pulled a JFK.
For example, this.

Barack Friday for McCain-Palin

Once again, the day did not start well for McCain-Palin. Not when the quote of the day was this:

"If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."

And it was written by a conservative Republican woman columnist, who called Palin so obviously unqualified that she should step down for the good of the country.

Not when McCain's rush to Washington to fix the economic crisis resulted in stories like this one about Thursday from the AP: By midnight, it was hard to tell who had suffered a worse evening, Bush or McCain. McCain, eager to shore up his image as a leader who rises above partisanship, was undercut by a fierce political squabble within his own party's ranks.

Friday, with the process to find a solution struggling to get back on track but with no deal yet, McCain reversed himself on not participating in the first debate until there was one, and suddenly flew down to Ole Miss, accompanied by what a pool reporter called "general confusion," seeming to confirm the view of an ex-advisor to McCain: "It just proves his campaign is governed by tactics and not ideology," said Republican consultant Craig Shirley, who advised McCain earlier in this cycle. "In the end, he blinked and Obama did not. The 'steady hand in a storm' argument looks now to more favor Obama, not McCain." Shirley added, "My guess is that plasma units are rushing to the McCain campaign as we speak to replace the blood flowing there from the fights among the staff." A further confirmation of staff chaos was the appearance of a web ad declaring McCain the clear winner of the debate--hours before the debate started.

Then the debate. While the debate itself got good reviews, the consensus from pundits and especially from the first polls and focus groups was that Obama won it. Particularly interesting, the undecideds in a CBS poll (40% said Obama won, 22% McCain, 38% a draw) were remarkably in tune with a focus group of undecideds in St. Louis, run by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg ( 38% Obama, 27% McCain, 36% a draw.)

But this focus group also measured favorability before and after the debate. McCain's went up by 9 points, but Obama's went up by 39 points, to give him a 69%-62 total edge. This suggests that Obama may have gotten the "Reagan Effect" (I just made that up) that's part of the mythology of the 1980 election: Carter was slightly ahead until the debate and Reagan won by a landslide. The myth is that people were ready for change but unsure about Reagan, and the debate gave them enough confidence in him that they voted for change.

In another focus group (Media Curves), the Dems and GOPers went overwhelmingly for their candidate but the Independents gave the debate to Obama by 61-39, and they also gave him the win on every individual segment of the debate. So while Tweety and Pat Buchanan bloviated on their boxing metaphors, it seems that for the indies, Obama won every round.

Another important data point: in the CNN poll, Obama won among voters 50 and older. This is not only very important (because this is supposedly McCain country) but because this is a generational change, which is how the NYTimes is characterizing the difference in this debate. Put these two constituencies together--older voters and Independents-- and you have the makings of a sharp ascent to a landslide.

(The MSNBC web poll shows predictable results--Obama by like 80%-- but the comments are entertaining.) But the internals of the CNN poll are enough to make me weep with joy: Obama won on intelligence, likeability, sincerity, expressing himself more clearly, all by double digits. Obama won on being a strong leader by 4 points--and on being more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you--by 30 points! McCain won on spending more time attacking his opponent. McCain also won on terrorism by just 4 points, but Obama won on Iraq, the economy, the current financial crisis.

Nate Silver at FiveThirty-Eight.com has an interesting perspective on why these first polls show Obama winning, when some pundits and other observers thought it was more of a toss-up. He adds a note about the internals of the CBS poll, which showed that on their "your needs and problems" Obama went from a plus 18 before the debate to a plus 56 after, and on "prepared to be president" he went from -9 to plus 21. So did Obama just seal the deal? Stay tuned.


There was much talk about McCain's demeanor, which was not as surly, sullen, disengaged and strange as he is capable of. But a lot of talk about his defensive posture, and particularly his refusal to look Barack Obama in the eye, or even look at him at all, which was especially glaring in the parts of the debate when they were supposed to engage each other.

A lot of reasons were suggested. I've got two more I haven't heard anyone say. The first is a little technical--McCain can get this weird, animal caught in a trap look in his eyes when he's confronted (he did it on The View, for example), and he may have been told to avoid that at all costs, by not looking at Obama at all.

But the primary one which is implied in some of the comments people made but not yet said--yet I'm guessing it is the paramount one among African American viewers--is that McCain is not comfortable with people of color. He has shown on every occasion he is on stage even briefly with Obama that he does not want Obama--a guy who likes to touch people, long handshakes, pat on the back, a brief hug--to touch him or to even look at him.

So my conclusion: for me, Obama showed what I know him to be: intelligent, knowledgeable, compassionate, presidential. Within the debate's time constraints, he defended himself very well, and drew distinctions with McCain very well. I could have said as much about John Kerry four years ago, and probably did. Kerry demolished the sitting president, GW Bush in their first debate. He won all three debates. But he either lost the election, or didn't win it by the kind of margin that it couldn't be stolen.

But this time, if the Reagan Effect is in play, this could be different. Friday also saw polls showing Obama going ahead in Virginia and New Hampshire, widening his lead in Michigan and maintaining it in PA, while surging in at least one of the daily tracking polls. This debate is not going to slow that momentum. The question is, by the time polls are taken that account for debate reaction, whether that momentum increases. A lot.

Tonight

Update: Okay so this didn't happen. But if anyone from Hollywood is reading, I'm available to write this up as a screenplay, maybe Wag the Dog II.

We're all conspiracy theorists now. And here's mine: House Republicans continue to gum up the works tomorrow, but John McCain meets with them behind closed doors. Meanwhile the markets are going crazy. Business channels are predicting apocalypse if a deal isn't struck today.

The meetings drag on into the evening. The networks cover the closed doors, panels back in the studio analyze what they don't know. Then finally the door opens. McCain steps out.

He says negotiations are at a critical juncture, he has to stay and continue trying to solve this crisis, so he won't be flying down to Mississippi for the debate. Even if it means he loses the election, it's country first.

Obama finds himself alone on stage at the debate, except for Jim Lerher, who improvises a kind of moderated town hall meeting.

But just five minutes into it, the networks break in: there's word that McCain is about to come out of the meeting and announce something. For awhile it's split screen: Obama talking, the closed door in Washington, but the voice of an excited reporter.

Then the door opens, John McCain emerges with the news that he has convinced the House Republicans to support a more modest version of the plan created by the Democratic and Republican negotiators based on the Paulsen initiative. He believes a bill will result that everyone can support. The crisis is over.

Now back to Ole Miss, where Jim Lerher asks Barack Obama for his reaction to the news.

That's my conspiracy theory, and like all conspiracy theory, it has facts to back it up. The chief one is this: before the meeting McCain attended at the White House Thursday--the one that was supposed to finalize the deal that most parties had agreed to, but was sent into chaos by House Republicans who proposed a radiclaly different plan which had already been discredited, and McCain said nothing about it for the entire meeting--before that, McCain had met with House Republicans.

Later McCain announced that he was confident he could bring House Republicans around to supporting a deal. I'm sure he is confident. The fix is in. All they'll be doing behind closed doors tomorrow is playing blackjack.

It's a perfect set-up. Nobody knows why McCain suspended his campaign and wanted to cancel the debate to come to Washington, and then he was silent at the big meeting, and nobody knows where he stands. The House GOPers and their intransigence will almost certainly send the stock market tumbling dramatically on Friday. The stakes get raised.

The media was set up by talk that House GOPers hate McCain. The Obama campaign was set up by McCain saying he wouldn't go to the debate. If Obama agreed to cancel it, it would have looked like he was taking McCain's lead. When he refused to cancel it, this scenario became possible.

Of course I'm hoping this is overly imaginative, a cautionary tale. I mostly hope that somebody in the Obama campaign also has an overactive imagination, and they are prepared for this. It's the worst outcome I can think of, short of the beginning of Great Depression II.

Twister

Talk about twists and turns. John McCain announced he was suspending his campaign on Thursday, and asked that Friday's debate be postponed, while he went to Washington to work on the bail-out bill. As Barney Frank says, this is the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of football, or Marys.

I've gone through the day and the prospects for the bail-out bill at Dreaming Up Daily. Here I'll stick mostly to the politics. Several progressive bloggers at first thought McCain's move was pretty shrewd--it seized the story, deflected from the coverage of bad poll numbers and his campaign manager's ties to Freddie Mac, and made him look like a bipartisan leader on the economic crisis. It was also a gamble to get Obama to follow him to DC and cancel the debate.

By day's end, none of it seemed to work. Neither Obama nor the debate commission agreed to cancel the debate. (Obama got in a good dig about presidents needing to be able to deal with more than one thing at a time.) Although Bush provided cover for McCain by giving him something to do in Washington (since he's not on the relevant committees, he had no real meetings to go to), he also mitigated any problem for Obama by inviting him as well, so by the time this news catches up to people, Obama will also be in the photo op in Washington.

A Survey USA flash poll strongly suggests McCain's gambit didn't work with the public--only 10% agreed that the debate should be cancelled. And at least one of those bloggers recanted. Now McCain really has a problem. If the deal isn't done by Friday, what does he do? Does he become the first candidate in history to duck a debate? Or does he murmur something about satisfactory progress and go? Incidentally, unprepared.

Also, many respondents in that poll thought the debate and the rest of the campaign should be focused on the economy. And indeed the Obama campaign said that the debate commission told them that there will be questions on the economic crisis at the debate--and they told them this several days ago.

Meanwhile, the poll numbers continue to look good for Obama, although the national ones are all over the place. Post/ABC has Obama up 10 points among registered, NBC up just 2 points, and Fox up 6 points. But there is a pattern, and it is being reflected in the state polls. As Mike Allen in Politico writes, "This is the first time that one of the candidates has dominated state polls in the most closely contested battlegrounds."

Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric also seemed to be a failure, with at least one major gaffe, but even this is not quite drowning out the continuing bad news for her from Alaska.

But the McCain campaign keeps trying to shake things up, so there's no telling what Thursday and Friday are going to be like. There are some signs that this erratic behavior is itself hurting McCain-Palin, as well it should.

What continues to amaze me is how thoroughly they are alienating the media--no longer just the eastern print media they like to run against, but everybody. When McCain threatened to kill the debate, that's a big revenue loss for television as well as a blow to democracy. McCain even alienated David Letterman, by cancelling his appearance at the last minute to go back to Washington--and then he was not only still in New York, but he was recording an interview with Katie Couric at the same time Letterman was taping his show: which wasn't lost on Letterman, who castigated him on the air.

Thunder

That clap of thunder you just heard is the new Washington Post/ABC poll that shows Barack Obama leading John McCain 52% to 43% among likely voters. That's nine points. And Obama is above 50%, which this late in the race is magic. Among registered voters in the poll, Obama leads by 10 points, 52-42%.

The last Post/ABC poll was Sept. 9, when Obama was ahead 47-46%.

There is nothing but good news in this poll. Though it measures who "leans" one way or another, the percentage of people who are sure who they are voting for has increased to 83% from 79% last time. On the internals, Ambinder isolates these: Voters, by 14 points more than McCain, trust Obama to handle the economy; his messaging that McCain is "out of touch" is bearing results, as 57% of Americans think that Obama better understands the complexities of the system. And when asked an open ended question about who'd best handle a crisis of any sort, half pick Obama, up significantly.

More good news for Obama: he's gaining back white women who defected to the McCain ticket; the Democrats have a 25 point enthusiasm advantage over Republicans, and concerns about McCain's age are rising. And here's an interesting nugget: Sarah Palin's biggest favorability rating drop has taken place among white Catholics."

This poll was taken Sept. 19-22, which means it began before the Monday Meltdown but includes that day. It has a margin of error of 3 points.

This caps a day in which state polls show Obama with slim to pretty good leads in battleground states, with one poll showing him slightly ahead in Florida and another tied in Ohio.

Also a new Pew poll confirms one element of the Post poll: more voters trust Obama to handle the financial crisis (47-35), and interestingly, independents alone favor Obama 44-30%. This is even more significant because this poll found a high percentage following these events. (This poll was also conducted Sept. 19-22.) Yet another poll agrees, from LA Times/Bloomberg, in which voters picked Obama to handle the financial crisis, 48% to 35%.

Apart from suggesting a trend, this poll has actual importance right now, because this is when people can start to vote. Early voting began Monday in the critical states of PA, Michigan, Virginia and North Carolina, as well as 7 other states. By October 5, that rises to 23 states allowing some form of early voting.
Obama is already likely to be getting a head start, because of the GOTV effort and the enthusiasm level, but these poll numbers could mean additional votes, even before November.

McCain is off balance, and efforts to regain it may be hampered by continuing bad news, both for him and for his VP candidate Palin. The New York Times earlier this week reported on his campaign manager's lobbying ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--hefty monthly payments simply for access to McCain--which ended in 2005. But now both the Times and Newsweek are reporting that this guy, Rick Davis, went back to Freddie Mac and asked to continue the relationship, and his firm has been collecting $15,000 a month (though nobody there did any work for it), right up until last month. Here's how the Times story starts:

One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The disclosure undercuts a statement by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years."

This is not going to help McCain shake off the impression that he's the candidate most tied to the status quo in Washington, especially since this story involves an issue that is bound to be in the news for at least the rest of this week and probably much longer.

There's even a further downside to this crisis for McCain. Bush administration figures keep getting trotted out, including the 19% president and the vice-president who is so reviled that he was rejected by his own party's congressional delegation today. McCain, whose convention hid from the Republican party brand, is now going to be associated with the party and administration that voters would like to believe is already gone. This visibility reminds them it isn't, quite yet.

But for all this good news, there's opportunity for more twists and turns before this is over... And there's the fighting in the trenches. Some of it is pretty disturbing, as in Robert Kennedy's contention that hundreds of thousands of voters--mostly Democrats--are being disenfranchised. There are also the scurrilous ads, push polls and direct marketing pieces that are locally targeted.

But the Obama team is also in the trenches, looking for those seemingly small advantages, like the ad in Michigan that targets McCain for owning 3 foreign made vehicles (among his 13.) TIME's Amy Sullivan explains why this is potentially potent.

Then there are the rarely mentioned constituencies, like American Indians (the tribal endorsements in New Mexico could make the difference for Obama), or animal lovers. We hear a lot about hunters, but the Humane Society is backed by some 10 million members. And that organization has endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in its history: Barack Obama.

As the TPM story suggests, this is not nothing: for many people, animals are a very emotional issue, and apart from Obama's good record, the reputation of moose-hunting, wolf-shooting and polar bear endangering VP candidate Palin may be very motivating.

Powell: Just Short of an Endorsement?


This is video of the moment I described in the post
below, in which Powell criticizes McCain's rash
statements on Georgia (without mentioning McCain
by name.)

McCain Unfit?

After a week of McCain the liar--which in a way continued today--we have evaluations of McCain, coming apart under pressure and even unfit for the presidency, from (among others) ABC, Bloomberg and most surprising perhaps, George Will in the Washington Post.

Sometimes these hot air purveyors say things on TV that they later soften or even contradict, but in this column Will actually amplified his remarks from ABC yesterday (in the video below.) Will is from the William F. Buckley school of conservatism, and already offended by McCain's infliction of Sarah Palin on the GOPer ticket. Now he's being just about definitive.

Under the headline, McCain Loses His Head, he begins: "Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama." He concludes: "It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?"

This impression makes Friday's debate absolutely crucial for McCain. If he can't stop this then, he's finished. The debate was being discussed a lot today, and it will be for the rest of the week. While some debates have been important, they usually don't move poll numbers much. And let's recall that John Kerry destroyed GW in the first debate last time, and won all three, although the third was a fairly tired effort. Still...Obama believes the debates will seal the deal.

Although foreign policy is the announced topic, commentators today didn't believe that the economic crisis would go unmentioned past the first minute or so. If the moderator doesn't bring it up, one of the candidates will. Now that McCain has the rep of being erratic, any tendency that way will be amplified. Conversely, if he just appears calm and reasonable, he could change the talk that's building.

Obama has gotten sharper on the stump last week, and if he can stay sharp--concise, direct, relating policy to people, and linking McCain with Bush policies--then he could seal the deal. The best essay I've seen on what he should do in the debate is this one.

Now another topic, synthesizing two items concerning Colin Powell today. Tweety was talking about the role of race, and one of his (black) companions mentioned that the most admired black politician among whites who have a hard time voting for an African American is Colin Powell. Presumably as a military leader he transcends the genre of black politicians, like athletes. They'd vote for Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, too. I also read the salon story about Pennsylvania that indicates undecided "hard working" whites there who do have this problem are being pulled towards Obama anyway because of the economy. So...

Colin Powell has said that he may endorse someone for president. He's expressed admiration for Obama and wonder at the possibility of a black man winning the presidency. But he's a GOPer and friends with McCain. On the other hand, I can see him being thrilled with Sarah Palin. Now there's this little bit of new evidence on a foreign policy matter: in a CNN forum with a number of ex-secretaries of state etc., Powell spoke out pretty firmly against McCain's position on Georgia and Russia, without mentioning his name, indicating that his view was too simplistic, perhaps dangerously so. (There's a clip somewhere, but I've lost it.)

So I'm waiting for the moment--and it could be an important one--when Colin Powell stands with Barack Obama to announce his endorsement.

McCain Isn't Ready


The panel on ABC's This Week

Stride

Obama goes into Debate Camp on Tuesday, which is a shame in a way because he's hitting his stride on the stump. He has responded to the ongoing economic crisis--and apparently the reflexive use of that word "crisis" is now way too tame by several orders of magnitude--by showing the country exactly the kind of leader he can be: cool-heated, but passionate; thinking it through, demanding that the plan makes sense; understanding the urgency, but deliberate about coming to a plan that could make things worse if it isn't done right.

On the stump his themes are coalescing: now he's uniting his "change Washington" and "working across party lines to get things done", and "change from the bottom up" new politics, with throwing out the Republicans and their destructive policies and philosophies. And while the economic crisis provides him the case in point, he's demonstrating that this is what he meant--that all these themes and all his arguments apply.

And if the enthusiasm ever left, it is certainly back on the campaign trail: Obama is getting huge, enthusiastic crowds, beyond what local planners were prepared for: in Jacksonville, FLA for example, and today in Charlotte, NC. And think for a moment about those two places: these crowds have to worry the McCain campaign, and they speak to either the confidence or the folly of the Obama campaign. Some observers say NC is out of reach for Obama, and Florida was trending that way. Now at the very least the Obama campaign is forcing McCain to devote resources to defending them, and it seems to me they believe they have a real shot at winning them. Especially Florida.

This is not a conservative game plan. With things as tight as they seem to be in some polls in Michigan, PA and Wisconsin, prudence might suggest spending all your time there. But what may be happening is an effort to reinforce the ground game, the ongoing registration drives. Once registration is closed in all these states, maybe they focus for awhile on must-win states. (Obama goes to Green Bay tomorrow anyway.) I'm surprised however that they aren't in Virginia today, where voting has begun. But I expect they know what they're doing.

Meanwhile McCain got raked over the coals on ABC's This Week, with super-conservative George Will concluding, "John McCain showed his personality this week, and made some of us fearful."

I've been posting on the economic crisis itself over at Dreaming Up Daily. But there does seem to be a lot of push-back on the Paulson plan today. Some of it is coming from people who notice who is getting bailed out and who isn't, like this from comments at HuffPost: Dear Mr. Paulson:I know you are busy bailing out financial institutions but if you have a minute I was wondering if you could loan me $3000.00 I haven't been able to afford health insurance for years and would love to get a mammogram. Best regards.

Maybe we'll avoid another big step towards oligarchical dictatorship via the Shock Doctrine this time, but it's going to happen pretty fast. Meanwhile, anything to keep my mind off that dismal Steelers game.

Saturday Off

Have you noticed that with these wonderful 24-hour cable news channels, we get less news? CNN used to have something called Headline News that actually did the news every 30 minutes. Currently it's the Caylee station. (If you don't know, don't bother asking, you're better off.) And they all take Saturday and Sunday off, for reruns (your favorite prison shows on MSNBC). So in the midst of an economic crisis that threatens to begin Great Depression II, and when every minute counts in the attempt to craft a solution that doesn't give in to the Shock Doctrine machinations of the Bushites, and incidentally, the presidential election campaign entering its final decisive weeks--everybody, including reporters online, take the weekend off.

So just about all of Saturday's news was the tracking polls, ticking up for Obama, with two hitting the magic 50%. He hit McCain on all the economic issues, including social security today in Florida, with a crowd of 20,000 in Jacksonville, apparently some sort of record. He's going to stay in FLA all next week, preparing for Friday's debate from Tuesday on. The weird thing is that this debate is supposed to be about foreign policy, but it would be extraordinary if newsman Jim Lehrer doesn't bring up the bail out that by then may have passed Congress. There's going to be a lot of news made this week on that subject, although we may not get much of it.

The Seattle Times, which endorsed Bush in 2000, has come out with an early endorsement of Barack Obama:

Obama should be the next president of the United States because he is the most qualified change agent. Obama is a little young, but also brilliant. If he sometimes seems brainy and professorial, that's OK. We need the leader of the free world to think things through, carefully. We have seen the sorry results of shooting from the hip.

Our country is on the wrong track. Average, middle-class citizens have lost confidence that if they work hard, they can improve their lives, afford to send their kids to college and not be tossed out of their homes.

American optimism has been wracked by President George Bush and a previous Republican Congress. If you want change, you do not keep what is essentially the same team in power. You try something different. You vote for the stronger matchup, Obama and Sen. Joseph Biden, a smart and steady hand on foreign policy and other matters."

The editorial compares Obama and McCain on the economy, energy, education and Iraq, and finds Obama with the better positions and solutions. It ends: "On numerous other issues, from media consolidation to health care, Obama has the stronger take. He makes up for a thin résumé with integrity, judgment and fresh ideas. Obama can get America moving forward again."

McBush

The McCain Panic

Will the Surge Work?

Obama is surging in the polls. The folks at 538 figures it's a plus four swing in the past week, with good numbers coming out of state polls, many with data before the Monday financial crisis. They conclude that Obama is in a stronger position now that he was before the conventions. They say he has a structural advantage in the electoral college, but also point to this: as the election gets closer, movement in poll numbers become more important.

They were analyzing numbers announced by 9/19. Chuck Todd said a week or so ago that whoever is leading on Oct. 15 is very likely to win the election. Part of that has to do with early voting--in Virginia (which begins now!) and Ohio, for instance. And that assumes that the polls--or an average of the polls-- are accurate. And we've seen several times this year, and in recent presidential elections, that when the race is so close, it can swing on what voters decide the day before or the day of voting.

So the real point here is that time is running out, and if you're going to establish momentum, this is a real good time to start. McCain's last chance to significantly swing momentum may be the debate on Friday.

Apart from another weird personal attack that sticks, the wild card is the government bailout plan to avoid Great Depression II. Will Barack's bi-partisan leadership Friday appeal to independents, or will McCain's blustery new-found populism strike a chord with voters who are angry at government bailing out the big boys? It may depend on how much of a megaphone the media provides McCain, because Obama is on top of the argument--he's saying that the middle class should not be paying for this. It also depends on whether McCain as well as Palin are scaring more people than they are riling up.

As for the polls this week, the Marist has Obama up 9 in Michigan--we'll see if other polls mirror that. Another poll has Obama up in Iowa by double digits, so it probably joins Oregon as pretty safe. Indiana has tightened in most polls, good for Obama. The polls continue to show a closer race in PA than I'd like to see, but even a small lead may turn into a big one with the enormous number of new Democratic registrations.

Numbers continue to show that VP candidate Palin is not helping generally and is hurting McCain with particular groups and in particular places, like Florida. Further, the chief investigator in the abuse of power investigation in Alaska says that despite the McCain campaign attempt to derail it, he is confident that he will issue a report with a conclusion in early October. Information like this, showing that Palin lied about the reason she fired the public safety chief, indicates that there is enough on the public record and in previously obtained testimony (some in a separate investigation) to reach a conclusion.

Now I'm going to post a minute or so from Obama's campaign speech in Coral Gables, in which he suggests that McCain is showing panic. Panic is a very important word in an economic crisis. In fact, that's what an economic/financial crisis like this one used to be called: "panics." Herbert Hoover tried to get away from the sound of that, so he began calling that little downturn that began in 1929 just a "depression."

I'll also post excerpts from Obama's earlier statement on the economy after his meeting with econ experts (in which he also says that this is not the time for panic), over at Dreaming Up Daily.

The Roll

The first debate will be one week from today. I'm writing in the wee hours before Friday's polls, but I'm willing to bet that Obama will improve on his 6 point lead in the Dkos tracking poll. He's ahead or even in all the tracking polls now, and in the new Pew survey. Update: Yes--Obama is up 7 in Dkos, but because McCain-Palin is down 1 point.

The state polls: good news in Oregon--a ten point Obama lead threatens to put the state out of reach for McCain. Another set of midwestern polls show virtual ties in ten states, including Ohio, although Obama is leading marginally in 8 of them. With the Obama ground game hopefully overwhelming GOPer cheating, a tie is a likely win.

On the stump, Obama looks like he's on a roll, taking advantage of opportunity. He's pretty much mocking McCain. I can't help thinking that Obama probably hoped to conduct this campaign on the issues, and on letting voters get to know him. But McCain's people went after him with personal attacks and lies that Obama had to fight back and try to destroy McCain's credibility.

That credibility may or may not be shredded with voters just yet, but it clearly is gone from the media. The latest big name to recant is Elizabeth Drew, who wrote a book praising McCain in 2002, but who now writes:

When Bush, issued a “signing statement” in 2006 on McCain’s hard-fought legislation placing prohibitions on torture, saying he would interpret the measure as he chose, McCain barely uttered a peep. And then, in 2006, in one of his most disheartening acts, McCain supported a “compromise” with the administration on trials of Guantanamo detainees, yielding too much of what the administration wanted, and accepted provisions he had originally opposed on principle. Among other things, the bill sharply limited the rights of detainees in military trials, stripped habeas corpus rights from a broad swath of people “suspected” of cooperating with terrorists, and loosened restrictions on the administration’s use of torture. (The Supreme Court later ruled portions of this measure unconstitutional.)

McCain’s caving in to this “compromise” did it for me. This was further evidence that the former free-spirited, supposedly principled, maverick was morphing into just another panderer – to Bush and the Republican Party’s conservative base.

Drew also writes: Other aspects of McCain, including his temperament, began to trouble me. He seemed disturbingly bellicose...McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man. In fact, it’s not clear who he is."

I've been reading Elizabeth Drew since her excellent reporting on Watergate. She remains one of the best political journalists around. What is probably unprecedented about her current view is that her 2002 book, Citizen McCain, is now being issued as a paperback. I assume this comes from the new introduction.

Barack Does Vegas


Jed Report's compilation of local Vegas TV coverage and
a few choice words from Barack: 2 min. 20 sec.

Line of the Day (and Maybe the Campaign)

The Turning?

CNN is just now announcing its results of battleground states polling: Obama gaining. Obama ahead in Ohio, tied in Florida in head to head, but when third party candidates are figured in, he's 4 points ahead of McCain.

Later--the CNN poll link is here. The CBS/New York Times poll is even better--a five point lead--and the internals are encouraging: McCain's bid to be the change candidate is failing, most voters associate him with Bush, almost nobody believes he picked Palin because she was the most qualified, Palin's popularity outside the GOPer base is non-existent, Obama leads on the economy, etc.

And although the CNN poll has Obama down 6 in Indiana, a new poll by the Indianapolis Star has Obama up by 3 points. I thought Indiana would be close, and Obama has a good chance of winning it.

I guess the impression is that at worst the race is now back to where it was before the conventions, but that polls in coming days and next week could show even greater Obama gains as the economic crisis sinks in. I have to say I was also bouyed by the campaign's video on their strategy. First, the registration numbers are amazing, and all those resources going to ground game--this was emphasized in the pitch--could really pay off. Second, there's been talk in recent days that Florida might be getting out of reach, that Obama might stop spending so much money there. But the campaign video emphasized the attention they're paying to Florida, and the major resources they're committing. And then, an hour after I saw this, the CNN poll came out--with Obama ahead by 4 points when the third party candidates are figured in.

Speaking of that, the Libertarian Bob Barr is now on the ballot in PA. I'm wondering who benefits?

Collapse?

A really bad day for McCain-Palin. Besides a re-energized Obama and a fiery Biden taking control of the economic meltdown issues, McCain appeared tired and testy on Today and Morning Joe, his CEO surrogate admitted that Sarah Palin wasn't qualified to run a company, and one of his advisors boasted that McCain had helped create the tech revolution symbolized by the Blackberry.

And McCain's losses among the media continued, in a fairly big way with this column by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. Cohen had the rep of a McCain guy, always willing to give the maverick the benefit of the doubt. But no more, not with words like this: "... the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised." "McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most."

But here's the most devastating part of Cohen's column: "I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty." The reason was: "It had to do with integrity. McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not."

"...McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both."

Consider all the lies that candidates tell--mostly Republicans, like both Bushes--and the media ignores or "balances" with denials from the other side without mentioning that factually they are lies. I can't recall so major news media people and even news institutions coming out and branding a presidential candidate as a liar.

And apparently once it starts, it becomes relentless. The New York Times even editorially analyzed a McCain commercial that appeared only in Spanish, and exposed McCain's "fraudulent" assertions about Obama's record on immigration under the title "What's Spanish for Lies?"

Meanwhile, Palin's popularity continues to plummet in tracking polls, some high level national press is camped out in Alaska to cover the McCain machinations attempting to forestall the legislative investigation into her potential abuse of power, and a David Brooks column gives voice to national security conservatives who are saying that she's simply not qualified to be VP.

What effect this is having on voters is not yet known, as polls coming out now are still within the shadow of the Palin convention bounce (the Dkos daily tracking poll had Obama up another 1 point on Tuesday, for a total lead of 4 pts.) But with the first debate less than two weeks away, an interesting dynamic is at work. There is polling evidence that the Palin bubble is gone, and so the two presidential candidates go into the debate either even or with Obama ahead. If the economic news continues to be bad--and it certainly won't be good, it just might fade--then McCain is going to find himself at the debate with the primary issue being exactly the one he is weakest on: the economy, and specifically the area of regulating financial institutions.

Not only is his campaign run by lobbyists for some of the most troubled Wall Street firms and banks, and not only is much of the current crisis traced back to the deregulation pushed through by his economics mentor, Phil "mental recession" Gramm, but McCain's own record on deregulation is very suspect, including his involvement in trying to limit government's ability to regulate the Savings and Loan scandal, as a member of the Keating Five. He has to be very worried that this topic will be resurrected.

McCain is already acting paranoid in media interviews (even though he hasn't had an actual press conference in over a month.) He doesn't respond well under pressure--the question is will people really notice it this time?

The McCain campaign looked to be on the verge of collapse before the GOPer convention, and he pulled a Palin out of the hat to live on for awhile. The question now is whether the final collapse is underway.