Month: October 2008
The Early Line 10/17
Obama/Biden 50%
McCain/Palin 40%
Undec 7%
– Obama’s 10% lead in today’s Diageo/Hotline release equals his largest advantage ever in the tracking poll. The Dem nominee also led 50-40% in the poll completed 10/10.
– Obama now leads 50-37% on who would do the best job handling the economy, the fifth consecutive day he has led the issue by double digits. 66% of LVs and 67% of Indies believe the economy is the most important issue facing the U.S.
– The candidates meanwhile remain basically deadlocked on energy issues. 43% think Obama would do the best job managing U.S. energy policies, while 42% say McCain. Neither candidate has had a statistically significant lead on energy since the survey completed 10/10.
Today’s Diageo/Hotline tracking poll, conducted 10/14-16 by FD, surveyed 804 LVs and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5%. Party ID Breakdown for the sample is 41%D, 36%R, 18%I.
Ask Dr. Democrat: Assessing the McCain Campaign
Dear Dr. Democrat:
I’m scared. Is John McCain going to win the election?
Worried in Walla-Walla
Dear Worried:
If John McCain loses, in his post-campaign career he could be the next George Burns. Like Burns, he’ll probably live forever and could be wheeled out to do his schtick on important occasions.
What’s going here, of course, is two things and both are a bit remarkable because, for the first time since Karl Rove’s boy Steve Schmidt signed on, the campaign is pursuing strategies rather than short-lived tactics designed to win news cycles.
First, McCain is laying the groundwork for losing. If there is a landslide and if he does not rehabilitate his image before Nov. 4, his entire career before this campaign will be trashed by the choice of Sarah Palin and the ugliness that she has unleashed. By showing his inner George Burns at the Al Smith dinner and on Letterman last night, he’s reminding his friends in the media of his old self with the hope they’ll help him regain some of his dignity. (It’s a cinch that they will.)
I expect we’ll see very little of the snarling Grampy character and much more of amiable Mr. Moderate
The other, much more difficult strategy at play is to an attempt to reverse the polls and win the election. This strategy has two opposing parts: First, regain the high ground in his public performances and, second, simultaneously pursue nasty tactics under the radar, like the robocalls going on in Virginia and elsewhere that claim Obama had “close ties” to Ayers.
I expect we’ll see very little of the snarling Grampy character Schmidt and others created and much more of amiable Mr. Moderate, whom he reintroduced in New York last night.
To make this work, they will have to muzzle Palin — their only big draw — by making it increasingly difficult for the press to cover her. Expect to hear her stump speeches softened to pablum and to see her sent to increasingly remote venues. There were reports yesterday that campaign operatives are preventing reporters from interviewing ruffians in her audiences, which is an alarming development, and that they are even using the Secret Service to keep reporters at bay.
It’s hard to say what’s worse here — the fact that the campaign is restricting reporters’ access to crowds or that the reporters are such cattle that they allow themselves to be restrained
The problem with bringing back Mr. Moderate now is that it is probably too late. McCain’s campaign has had the extreme right-wing base sewn up since Palin made her Gidget-at-the-Reichstag speech in St. Paul. Just about every tactic they’ve deployed since then has alienated moderates and driven them to Obama — where, frankly, most of them don’t want to go. There are still plenty of undecideds and squishy lean-Obamas in Florida and Ohio who could change this thing at the last minute. All McCain has to do is give them a rationale to come back to him.
So what we should expect for the next 14 days or so is much more of Mr. Moderate (and less and less of Reichstag Barbie) on the stump, and a simultaneous surge in nastiness underground like the robocalls in red states where Obama is doing well. We probably won’t know the full extent of the dirty tricks until after the election.
It may well work. But if McCain is elected, he’s going to have a problem few presidents other than Bush in his second term have had: He will enter office with the absolute loathing of at least half the citizenry. Worse for him than Bush is the fact that he’ll face a solidly Democratic Congress (although if he wins, there won’t be super-majorities in either house).
There will be no honeymoon for President McCain.
Poll: McCain Pulls within 2 Points of Obama in Gallup Daily Tracking
Obama is right — don’t get complacent:
A new Gallup Poll of likely voters has Democrat Barack Obama with a 49 percent to 47 percent lead over Arizona Sen. John McCain.
That puts McCain closer in the presidential race than other polls, which have Obama with leads of between 3 and 14 percentage points, according to Real Clear Politics.
McCain has sought in recent days to sharpen his economic message and questioning Obama’s ties to 1960s radical Bill Ayers. The Gallup poll was conducted among 2,100 likely voters.
California GOP Group Publishes Racist Depiction of Obama
Racism is alive and well in California’s heavily Republican southeastern Inland Empire region. The Riverside Press-Enterprise reports that the latest edition of the Trumpeter, the newsletter of Chaffey Community Republican Women Federated, includes a crudely produced depiction of a $10 food stamp titled “Obama Bucks.”
The artwork includes cartoon images and photos of Barack Obama’s head on a donkey’s body, a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a slice of watermelon, a rack of ribs and the Kool-Aid guy.
The offensive artwork went out to about 200 members of the Chaffey Republican women’s group, according to the Press-Enterprise:
The group’s president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club’s meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.
“It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don’t want to go into it any further,” Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn’t my attempt.”
…She said she doesn’t think in racist terms, pointing out she once supported Republican Alan Keyes, an African-American who previously ran for president.
“I didn’t see it the way that it’s being taken. I never connected,” she said. “It was just food to me. It didn’t mean anything else.”
She said she also wasn’t trying to make a statement linking Obama and food stamps, although her introductory text to the illustration connects the two: “Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on????? Food Stamps, what else!”
An African American member of the group told the newspaper that she cried when she saw the artwork:
“This is what keeps African-Americans from joining the Republican Party,” [Sheila Raines] said. “I’m really hurt. I cried for 45 minutes.”
Another African American member, Acquanetta Warren, who also serves on the Fontana City Council, has demanded an apology:
“When I opened that up and saw it, I said, ‘Why did they do this? It doesn’t even reflect our principles and values,’ ” said Warren, who served as a Republican delegate to the national convention in September and is a regional vice chairwoman for the California Republican Party. “I know a lot of the ladies in that club and they’re fantastic. They’re volunteers. They really care — some of them go to my church.”
Mark Kirk, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County GOP chairman, described the publication of the artwork as “very damaging.”
Poll: The Early Line 10/16
Obama/Biden 49%
McCain/Palin 41%
Undec 7%
– Obama now holds a commanding advantage in battleground states. The Dem nominee leads 55-33% among LVs in CO, FL, MI, NH, NM, NV, OH, PA, VA and WI. A week ago, in the survey completed 10/8, he led these voters 50-42%.
– For the second consecutive day, the candidates are tied among white women. One week ago, McCain led white women by 6%.
– Obama meanwhile leads white moderates by 25% and white Indies by 11%. He also draws 21% of all conservatives, while McCain carries just 9% of liberals.
Today’s Diageo/Hotline tracking poll, conducted 10/13-15 by FD, surveyed 817 LVs and has a margin of error of +/- 3.4%. Party ID Breakdown for the sample is 41%D, 37%R, 18%I.
The Dad Factor: Why We Prefer Obama
I was pulling my car into the driveway last night just as John McCain mentioned autism and said it was something about which Sarah Palin would have special knowledge. As I turned off the motor, I thought, “Surely this idiot isn’t confusing autism and Down syndrome. I mean, he wouldn’t, right?
Yes. He did.
In case John McCain reads Pensito Review, I thought I could be helpful to him by visiting the Mayo Clinic web site and pulling definitions of autism and Down syndrome.
Autism is one of a group of serious developmental problems called autism spectrum disorders (ASD) that appear in early childhood — usually before age 3. Though symptoms and severity vary, all autism disorders affect a child’s ability to communicate and interact with others.
Down syndrome is a genetic disorder that causes mental retardation and other problems. The condition varies in severity, so developmental problems may range from mild to serious. Down syndrome is the most common genetic cause of severe learning disabilities in children, occurring in one in every 700 infants.
The fact that only thing we can picture McCain doing with kids is ordering them off his grass says a lot about the kind of leader he would be
Let’s review. Autism — communication and interaction. Down syndrome — Mental retardation and severe learning disabilities.
As I’ve watched the three debates, it’s repeatedly flashed through my mind that one of the differences between Obama and McCain is that Obama is such a dad and McCain is such an authoritarian jerk. You can easily picture Obama cavorting with a group of kids, or listening solemnly to their concerns, or helping his preschooler pick what she thinks is the right t-shirt to go with her pants, as he describes in his second book.
McCain, on the other hand, strikes me as practicing fatherhood from afar, turning all childcare over to someone else. In his first wife’s case, to her, and in his second, to whatever nannies or private boarding schools they employed. The difference is not trivial. The fact that only thing we can picture McCain doing with kids is ordering them off his grass says a lot about the kind of leader he would be. A man who doesn’t bother to understand the difference between a child with one type of special need and another seems to me a pretty cold fish.
Florida GOP Fundraiser Sends Email Joke about Killing Barack and Michelle Obama
This is bad on so many levels — and it certainly should neutralize John McCain’s fake outrage of being compared to George Wallace by Civil Rights hero, Rep. John Lewis:
Al Austin, a longtime, high-level Republican fundraiser from Tampa, today sent to his list of political contacts an e-mail containing a joke that refers to the assassination of Barack Obama…
The joke concerns a group of schoolchildren discussing the definition of “tragedy” as opposed to “great loss” or “accident.” The punch line comes when one child says that if an airplane carrying Obama and his wife, Michelle, “was struck by a ‘friendly fire’ missile and blown to smithereens,” the event might be a tragedy “because it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss, and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either.”
Austin acknowledged sending the e-mail to his list of political contacts but said he forwarded it without fully reading it and didn’t know what it said. That list included at least two reporters.
Austin, a prominent real estate developer long known as one of the state’s leading Republican campaign fundraisers, has served in recent years as finance chairman for both the national and state Republican parties.
On top of everything else, the joke is not funny. More evidence, if any were needed, that conservatives are born without the sense of humor gene.
