VP Monday

The New York Times and others are reporting that Obama is close to a decision, while some say he figured it out while he was in Hawaii. We're told not to hold our breaths tonight or tomorrow, but maybe Wednesday. If it is Wednesday, Obama would either be picking Kaine (since he'll be in Virginia that day, which was scheduled while he was in Hawaii ) or he'll not be in Virginia that day. If Wednesday comes and goes and Kaine hasn't been named, seems likely he won't be, ever. One report says Kaine is telling people it ain't gonna be him.

Which leaves Bayh and Biden and maybe Sebelius on the short list everybody seems to have, but nobody is really sure exists. My blahs over Bayh are widely shared, I don't see him for any reason, and Biden, while exciting, is held in some contempt in the progressive blogosphere (Kos has stomped all over him, and Kos admits he's prepared to be disappointed. He's a "change" over "experience" advocate, and he'd be happy with Sebelius, as would I.) At this point, Bill Richardson (still on some lists) is beginning to look better.

There's nothing on Obama's sked for Thursday (Friday is sked for downtime in Chicago, while somebody is saying Friday is a bad day to announce anything--though I believe a few high profile endorsements were announced on a Friday during the primaries, if I remember correctly), Ambinder reports that the Obama advance people have been recalled to Chicago, a sign that a decision is imminent, due to the need for logistical planning for the announcement. He seems to hint that Chris Dodd is still in the running, and out of the blue posts this little tidbit: "Springfield, Illinois wouldn't be a bad place to host a major political announcement."

So to sum it up, if there's no announcement Wednesday, it's probably not going to be Kaine. The announcement may come Thursday or Friday, in Chicago or Springfield (which is where Obama announced his own candidacy.) Or as usual this may all be wrong.

Al G suggests that Obama string this out as long as possible. But the longer it goes on, the more speculation and pressure, the more disappointment by people with a horse in the race, the higher the expectation, and the more media noise about how this is Obama's most important decision. Not to mention my blood pressure.

Someone speculates that the latest boomlets--Bayh, Kaine, Biden--were all trial balloons from the Obama campaign. Other suggest that everything so far has been disinformation, which may mean the choice is going to be a complete surprise. What's interesting about all this, if you can be objective, is that nobody knows enough about the Obama campaign insiders to know what to expect.

Update: The Tues. morning Washington Post says it may not be before Friday, because there is a schedule for Thursday now--a bus tour that begins in Virginia Wednesday and goes into North Carolina Thursday. (Unless of course it's Kaine, and he goes along.) Otherwise, their story rehashes the same names and the conventional opinions.

As for McSame, apparently his campaign has more or less announced that he will announce his choice in Ohio the day after Obama's acceptance speech, which is also McSlur's 72nd birthday.

VP Panic

Yeah, it's getting too close to decision time and I'm in a panic. First about McCain. Tom Ridge is quoted Sunday as saying that even a pro-choice guy (like him) would either become anti-choice like the nominee (McCain) or refuse the VP nomination. That's a bit scary. McCain looked like he went a long way in fixing his Evangelical problem Saturday, and if he thinks he did, he might pick Ridge. And that's probably the most potent pick he could make. It may put PA in play.

I still think he'll try to avoid offending either the GOPer base of anti-choice, pro-war zealots, or Independents who haven't yet figured out that he's no longer their kind of guy (if he ever was) by picking Pawlenty, a guy so unknown that (as someone said somewhere) he sounds mostly like an appetizer at the Olive Garden. And that would be good. He's not likely to pick Romney now, who might help him in a few key states, because Huckabee's vocal disapproval is a signal to the Rabid Right base that they should be upset by that. And McCain cannot afford to alienate Huckabee, who kept getting votes even after McCain was the presumptive.

But it's Obama who is up first, with just ten days before the VP is nominated officially at the convention. A post at Huffington indicates that Kaine is insufficiently pro-choice, which is something I didn't know, and don't even know if it's true, but if Dem women feel that way, he's a bad idea. He might be hard for Hillary to swallow, although if she talks him up, that might help with her voters.

That horseshit article in the NY Times Sunday I quoted is an obvious plant to get Obama to pick an "experience" candidate, and they mention Bayh--which is a sure tipoff that the article is more Clintonite propaganda. So I'm in a panic that he might actually do that. His choice could be announced as soon as tomorrow. I'm actually in fear of my email at the moment. (Although I just checked it.)

Well, I'll get a grip and hope it's Dodd, Biden or a nice surprise.

Two items (at least)of controversy came emerged from the Saddleback night, and both of them are about McCain (and neither of them is his $5 million a year definition of rich.) One is whether he knew the questions in advance, and there is some evidence he wasn't actually in that "cone of silence" at the church until Obama was halfway done. The McCain campaign is getting real indignant on this one, and actually I think the evidence against McCain is weak.

Not so his war story about the guard who made a cross in the dirt to silently signal his Christianity. The story of an imprisoned person being surprised by a guard silently making a cross in the dirt is in Solzhenitsyn's famous 1973 novel, The Gulag Archipelago. There are assertions that McCain is a big Solzhenitsyn fan, and that he did not tell this story until 1999, although he recounted his POW experiences ever since he returned in 1973. It may also be significant that the McCain campaign chose the other charge to get so exercised about.

Update: The cross in the sand story keeps getting more complicated. It may not be in The Gulag Archipelago at all, and one story in there about a guard wearing a cross on a chain while torturing prisoners makes a different point in Solzhenitsyn's book. It may have been attributed to S. by various rightward pols. Anyway, Andrew Sullivan seems about the only one interested in following this, as of Tuesday. He cites this TPM post that seems definitive so far.

CNN on Overseas Troops Donating to Obama by 6-1--and Why

No VP Saturday


All day and not a new VP rumor? What's wrong with you people! Oh, except that Joe Biden is off to Georgia (the one with Russians and no Atlanta), which (to Al G.) means that he's not in the running anymore, and (to TPM) that his chances are enhanced.


There is news however, about money. McCain previously announced his best month in July: $27 million. (Which according to his answer at the Saddleback Church forum Saturday, is the combined annual income of 5 and a half people.) The Obama campaign announced its July take was $51 million, with 65,000 new donors and a total number of contributors that passed the two million mark in August (McCain has about a quarter of that.) But the even bigger news is that for the first time since 2004, the Democratic National Committee raised more in a month than their Repub counterpart: $27.7 mil to $26 mil.

The race remains very competitive financially for at least the next month, as McCain has to spend his cash before the fed money kicks in. So if Obama can maintain a $50 mil a month pace, he'll have more--possibly a lot more--to spend in the critical months.


Obama and McCain were both interviewed by pastor Rick Warren at the Saddleback Church, before an audience presumably of church members. Some felt they did equally well; others thought McCain did better, by playing to the audience and keeping his answers short and on (right wing) message, and by telling POW stories. In political terms, McCain may well have helped himself with the conservative base, but he stated unequivocally that he's anti-choice, and he defined a rich person as somebody making $5 million. (Obama said a person making $150,000 is doing very well.) Obama also helped himself with the Evangelical audience, especially by doing what some in the blogosphere criticized him for doing--he engaged in a conversation with Rick Warren rather than playing to the audience and giving campaign sound bites. By demonstrating humility and thoughtfulness, and especially by not only relating directly and with respect to Warren, but showing that Warren respects and likes him, he came across immediately as not scary, and by showing rapport with the pastor, the congregation is more likely to take another look at him and what he says about the issues that affect their lives.

I'm still a little amazed that people don't get that Obama is a different kind of candidate, and that's why he's been successful. He's organized and run a campaign that's politically astute but ahead of conventional thinking. He's not a conventional candidate. His thoughtful answers weren't a mistake.

Similarly, there is this horseshit in the New York Times. Without naming who most of these Democrats are, or who they supported (hint: Hillary), they quote their opinion that Obama has to be more specific, and stay away from talking about hope. Sure, turn him into Hillary, who lost. And by the way, when he does talk specifics (as he even did in the Berlin speech which they consider rhetoric, mostly because of the huge crowds), everyone ignores him. His energy plan is specific, but the media was too busy with cheap bullshit and these pols were too busy giving interviews about how he should be more specific.

If in the speech that more people are going to see than any other--his nomination acceptance speech in Denver-- Obama gives a Clintonian laundry list of programs, nobody--not the audience, not the voters, not the media or these pols--are going to be happy. We want to hear hope. We want to hear Yes We Can. We want to hear Change We Can Believe In. That's how Obama built his movement, and when it is fully energized, it will sweep him to victory.

So please, Barack, don't listen to these morons. Let Obama be Obama.

VP Friday

Today's mini-boomlet: Tim Kaine, who cancelled a town hall event Sunday night, while the Obama campaign scheduled an event in Richmond, VA for Thursday. Mini-mini for Wesley Clark, who appeared on CNN (but his son suggests he hasn't been vetted.) Armbinder mentions a focus group test in VA that didn't come out too good for Kaine, whatever that's worth.

My favorite is from the Swampland blog of Time, mostly because it contains a name I hadn't heard before, and somebody I know, an old college acquaintance, former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta. Based mostly on announced speaking gigs at the Dem Convention for Biden, Bayh, Sebelius, Janet Napolitano, Claire McCaskill, those remaining in the running are: Kaine, Dodd, Clark, Bloomberg (the Mayor of NYC I presume), Reed (who I thought took himself out of consideration), John Kerry, Sam Nunn, Chet Edwards (Pelosi's fave) and...John Podesta.

The convention speaker list means nothing, of course, and would be a fine way to deflect attention from the actual nominee. The only tea leaves I read in the convention is the roll call vote for Hillary Clinton--that pretty much tells you that she's getting that moment, but not another one, like the v.p. nod.

(Offically, the Obama campaign told the NY Times: “We reserve the right to change the schedule when we want and you shouldn’t make any assumptions,” she said. “Any person speaking on any given night could speak again as vice president.”)

Al G. at the Field discusses all this, and favors Kaine or Dodd. . Al puts more stock in the elimination potential of the speaker list than I do, but I tend to agree with him: out of this group of choices, Dodd or Kaine seem the best. Dodd for the "experience"/foreign policy and for championing civil liberties, and the white hair. Obama-Dodd is a good sounding, good looking ticket. The only thing the GOPers can bring up about Dodd that I know about is this question of an improper loan. Dodd has that New England thing going for him, the Kennedy thing, which can help with older voters.

Kaine is the "change" candidate, Catholic, speaks Spanish, VA Gov with midwestern accent, reinforces the Obama brand. I'm not sure he's an effective speaker, but he's good in interviews. He also can counter the Obama isn't American bullshit in an unusual way: their grandparents come from the same small town in Kansas.

The choice will tell us to some extent how worried the Obama campaign is about the "experience" mantra.

Al notes that two speaking slots haven't been announced: the person who places Obama's name in nomination, and the VP's. I'd expect the VP introducer won't be announced until the VP choice is, but unless Obama wants to go the traditional route and have his fellow Illinois Senator (Dick Durbin) nominate him, a really great choice would be Al Gore.

Barocky II---It's Great!

More VP

More microanalysis of announced speakers at the Dem Convention has put some doubt in the Biden boomlet today. However, a report somewhere suggested the Obama camp is looking favorably on the "experienced" option, so suddenly Tom Daschle is in the running.

On the "change" side, there's this tea-leaf reading saying it's Gov. Kaine.

But here's how the two arguments seem to be breaking down, with an additional wrinkle (according to...well, me.) The "go for experience" camp is providing names with lots of Washington baggage, but also people known mostly for experience in foreign affairs and national security. The "go for change" argument is for someone outside dysfunctional Washington, looking towards the future of the party, proven ability to work with Repubs and Independents and--here's the wrinkle--a governor with accomplishments on economic/energy issues.

That last wrinkle is not to be ignored. Because Obama's campaign has already moved its emphasis from Iraq and foreign affairs to energy/economics (as with the first Olympics ad) and economics/energy as part of that (second ad.) This is where Obama is strongest, and clearly it will be how he wins. He has to pin a bad economy on Bush and McBush, and add healthcare to the argument along with energy. From now to the election.

So what does Obama do--does he pick an "experience" foreign policy/national security old white guy VP to mollify those with doubts, so he is free to make the economics case himself? Or does he pick a "change" young or female governor who can make both the change politics and the economic/energy/health care case?

Obama is likely to announce his choice, they say, on Monday or Tuesday. Then and probably only then will we know. But I think the argument for the "change" VP candidate is strong, and Tim Kaine and Kathleen Sibelius are strong possibilities. Sibelius has the extra advantage of being from the (mid)west, where Dem gains are going to be made this year and for the forseeable future, and she has a compelling record, especially in getting GOPers on her side. Kaine is smart, articulate, much more compelling in action than in still photos, and though he is gov of an eastern/southern state, with a mixed record, it is Virginia, where Obama has a good chance to win (probably even without Kaine on the ticket, though.)

I am sympathetic to the "experience" option, and if there was a candidate identified that was convincing, I'd be happier. My instinct says not to get a Senator, and those are the only names mentioned. Bayh would be the worst choice of those mentioned a lot, and I think it would be a mistake.

Meanwhile, don't miss the Baracky II viral video above.

McCainonomics

VP Buzz

Today's Dem VP buzz is about Joe Biden, a perennial favorite at MSNBC, at least. But the one part of the buzz today that sounded like it could have substance is that Biden isn't saying anything. Biden not saying anything! Something is afoot!

The pluses with Biden are name recognition, an exciting personality, foreign policy experience, white hair. Obama-Biden is a good sounding ticket.

The minuses are potentially significant, though. Depending on the vetting, Biden's past associations with lobbyists, particularly for banks etc. (he's from Delaware, after all, the big bank HQ tax haven) could substantially undercut one of the Obama campaign's best arguments against McCain--Mc's lobbyist connections. Biden is old politics, Washington, and that also undercuts the new politics of Obama.

Another minus: the Senate. Even though Del has a dem gov, so the seat won't be lost in the short term, it's less certain long term. And besides, Biden's seniority and leadership in the Senate would be missed. The Dems are going to lose Obama and Leiberman. Depending on electoral outcomes, that can shave the majority President Obama will need.

Biden is East Coast as well as Washington. My instincts still tell me that Obama is looking to the Midwest or West, and he's better off with a Governor. But I'm of course not privvy to the vetting, or to internal polls which might indicate whether the experience and foreign policy arguments for McCain are significant problems. Even so, how much can a VP help? Cheney probably helped Shrub, but with people who wanted to vote for Shrub and were reassured by what appeared to be a rep of the GOPer foreign policy establishment. Is there a significant bloc of voters with similiar feelings about Obama? Clinton voters perhaps? Again, I can't gauge the reality of that.

Meanwhile, Huffpost has several posts about progressive pushback on the Evan Bayh boomlet, especially on his support for the Iraq War. Again, I say it ain't gonna happen.

President Bush at the Olympics, apparently in
his own mirror universe. Or is that a distress
signal?

Georgia Out of His Mind

The warfare in Georgia is a fast-moving story at the moment, but one part of it struck me immediately: President Bush condemning Russia for invading a sovereign country.

As well he should, but is anyone in Russia doing anything but laugh? Or anywhere else for that matter. Bush invaded a sovereign country, and has occupied it for years, and one of the motives--as apparently in Georgia--was oil. But with him as President, America's outrage is pathetic.

I heard someone on Charlie Rose say that this needs to bring western allies together. But do those allies trust Bush, after all the bullying he did over Iraq? With the support, if I remember correctly, of his pal Putin and Russia?

It may well be a dangerous moment, made more dangerous by this lame duck loser who did his best to screw America's future. We're only beginning to pay.

Celebrity McCain

How Lucky We Are (with updates)

Among the reasons I have increasing confidence in Barack Obama is that he seems to be lucky. FDR was lucky. Until the obvious moment he wasn't, JFK was lucky. Obama is very intelligent, in all kinds of ways: on policy, on vision, on strategy, and he's acute about himself--he's got more of an introspective side than most pols. He's a good manager with a very good eye for talent, and his team continues to perform very well. But he's also been lucky, which may be yet another way of saying, this is our moment, this is our time.

But at least a couple of events during the last few days have shown how lucky the Democrats are that he's their nominee. What if it had been John Edwards, and all this sordid news broke just as the convention was about to start? What if it had been Hillary Clinton, who could not run her own campaign, let alone the country?

That's the conclusion of Joshua Green in his article in the Atlantic about what went wrong with the Clinton campaign: " Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency."

Green's article is informed by hundreds of emails and memos donated by still bitter Clinton staffers. You might notice that other still-bitter Clinton acolytes are still trying to force Obama into ceding his campaign to her, if not abdicating before it's too late. Which suggests that it's not just her non-management style, but her judgment of people she depends on. And sure enough, one of her faves, Howard the Wolf's Son, the wolfman of press relations, put out his spin on the Edwards awfulness, by asserting that if this had been revealed last year, before the Iowa caucus, Hillary would have gotten enough Edwards' votes to win, and hence would have won the nomination. Nobody is actually buying this, because the numbers don't support it, but that's the quality of advice Clinton got. (Even Chuck Schumer gives lousy advice.) And also where the loyalties of these folks still lie (other than to themselves.)

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is following the same kind of strategy that won them the nomination: organizing and targeting messages at the local and state levels, looking to win electoral votes. This piece at Five Thirty Eight is about part of that strategy. Update: And this great idea: give cell phones to the people standing in line for Obama's acceptance speech, with lists of voters they can call! It's brilliant!

As for the broader strokes, maybe all Obama needs is a tie. He's got the more uplifting ad on the Olympics, while McCain's is deadly, mostly because it is one outright lie after another. Even the hot air networks have noted this, but if you're willing to engage in Big Lie politics, you're going to turn some people who aren't paying much attention, and are looking for a reason not to vote for the new/black/young/guy.

But McCain has to win some other blocs of voters besides racists, neocons and the clueless. But he's not doing it. As noted before, he's losing Latinos, Jewish voters, etc. He no longer has a lock on Evangelicals, who are tepid at best about him, and some of whom are voting for Obama--maybe as many as 40%. Update: Obama is actually ahead among Christians by 9 points, according to this poll, and McCain has only a slight lead among Evangelicals.

McCain's not even so popular with military veterans. Meanwhile, he's got to fend off charges about his campaign financing, Big Oil contributions and lobbying.

The next bit of campaign news is likely to be Obama's choice for VP. You may have heard that the Obama campaign is offering to email its supporters immediately once that decision is made. I'll be on that list, so if I'm anywhere near a computer, the news will be here when it breaks.

Fact Check

Get To Work! MoveOn's Latest

Break Time

So basically what happened the past week or so since Obama came back from overseas was this: the Obama campaign began to flesh out domestic policy, first on the economy and then on energy. Obama met with experts on the economy, made speeches, and set out his energy plan. The McCain campaign, seeing the schedule or intuiting it or just getting lucky, went on the attack while Obama was trying to stay positive, so he could answer the question of exactly what his domestic programs are, which the pundits used to say he needed to do, but when he did, they paid absolutely no attention.

So McShame launched one scurrilous and eventually racist attack after another, and that got all the hot air blowing. This week Obama went on the counter- attack, while still talking substance, and hit McCain for his triviality and lies, while the Obama ads hit hard at McCain as McBush. That will probably continue the rest of this week, until Obama goes on vacation Friday for a week. McCain has tried to return to the positive this week, and his pronouncements and appearances suggest that the best thing Obama can do right now is leave the stage to him, because what Obama needs is for people to pay more attention to McCain, and what an utter embarrassment he is.

I'm hoping to take a vacation from the politics, too, although I hope to continue posting at Dreaming Up Daily on the substance of the Obama energy plan, which is a really significant change of direction for this country, and a very necessary one.

But there is this VP thing going on, so who knows. The latest on that: Obama did not announce Bayh as his choice today, so he won't announce anything until after his break, and one story indicated that Hillary was back on the short list. Then Hillary announces that she's trying to figure out how to let her supporters have their say at the convention, like by placing her name in nomination after all. So that's the shortest stay on the short list in history. Obama would no more pick her than Joe Lieberman. Despite the joint statement just issued by Obama and Hillary saying they are working on the convention thing together.

There is this interesting piece about John Kerry as Obama's best surrogate, and Bob Shrum--not everybody's favorite consultant--saying that if Kerry hadn't run for the big chair in 04, he'd be hands down favorite for VP this year. And maybe...

As for McBush, the latest fave has been Pawlenty again, and then today Pawlenty goes and compliments Obama on running a positive campaign, and suggest GOPers do the same. So unless McCain is planning on switching the usual roles--having his VP be positive while he as the prez candidate becomes the attack dog--Pawlenty is a goner as well. Although to be fair at this same appearance, Pawletty showed himself to be just as capable as McCain at irrelevant negativity.

By the way, every major poll shows Obama holding his lead, and the race essentially unchanged since June. That's actually pretty good news for Obama, in that the GOPers haven't stuck on image on him before the convention, as they did on Kerry. People will start to pay more active attention with the VP selections and the conventions. There will be a period in early September that the polls will go nuts a few times, before settling down to say something useful. Then come the debates, and there will be 3 presidential ones, two sit downs and a town hall, with Jim Leher, Bob Sheiffer and Tom Brokaw moderating--a decent chance at substance. If Obama is leading in October, his superior ground game and the enthusiasm of his young supporters should do the rest. Game, set, match. Pass the lemonade.

Maverick Reality Check

The Oil Company Candidate

Who's Presumtuous Now?

First he couldn't win the votes of women. He's winning their votes handily. Then he had a Latino problem. He's winning by growing margins among Latinos in every poll. And a Jewish problem. He's running away with the Jewish vote. So then there was this problem with "hard-working Americans"--white ones anyway.

So today the Washington Post writes about their latest poll, in which Barack Obama leads John McCain among low-wage workers by a 2 to 1 margin. His support among African Americans is overwhelming--but so is his support among Latinos.

And guess what? He leads among white low-wage workers--by ten points.

So it has to be just because he's a Democrat, or because they like his programs and they're willing to overlook his "presumptuousness" and his arugula-eating, way too skinny self.

Because the pundits all tell us that they're suspicious of him, they don't think he is one of us/them. So that's it, right?

The Post:

"The group, which accounts for nearly a quarter of U.S. adults, gives the Democrat the nod both as the more empathetic candidate and as the one who more closely shares their values."

Huh? How can that be? They support him because he's the more empathetic candidate who SHARES THEIR VALUES?

Quick--get Chris Matthews and his August sub some smelling salts. Make sure Dana Milbanks is on his meds. And don't let the McCain smear machine hear about this!

I wouldn't expect much crow consumption, though. More along the lines of this marvellously dry observation in the Post story:

"Obama's standing with the white workers runs counter to an impression, dating from the primary season, that he struggles to attract support from that group. "

YA THINK?

McCain thought he had a real chance with Latinos, but he's been sadly mistaken. And now...McCain advisers have said for months that they think the Republican can win a significant share of those voters because of Obama's performance in the spring. The survey suggests it will be difficult, but not impossible, for McCain to increase his appeal."

Maybe he'd like to try some arugula?

Rumors and Update

The first new name with the smell of credibility surfaces today: McCain is reportedly considering a relatively unknown congressman, Eric Kantor for VP. He is a member of the GOPer House leadership though, plus he's young, conservative, Jewish and from Virginia. At first glance, he looks like the best of the choices McCain's reportedly been considering. His obscurity may even be an asset: McCain needs a fresh face, because his certainly isn't. Lots of pluses, no apparent drawbacks, which is more than can be said for the other names generally believed to be on McSame's list. As a conservative ideologue, he won't have trouble filling the attack dog role in a campaign that seems to be going all negative, all the time.

Update: Here's a more reliable link to the story on this in the LA Times.

Meanwhile, an incomplete schedule which has Obama in South Bend, Indiana for almost 24 hours is suggesting to some folks that he's about to announce Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana as his VP choice. Some have speculated Obama might name his choice before his vacation to Hawaii during the Olympics, others figure he won't. I don't buy Bayh myself, but you knew that.

If McCain does pick Kantor, I think that puts more pressure on Obama to come up with an equally creative choice, and a strong one.