Good News and Bad News

[Tarheel]

I follow polling quite a lot and while you can't be certain to use the data as absolutes they do indicate trends.  A very good trend is forming on the RealClearPolitics average poll showing McCain leading or tied in the last 6 polls.  I suppose that this was to be expected following the Republican National Convention last week but it seems to indicate that he and Sarah Palin are getting a bigger bounce than Obama did following the DNC the week before.  Of course, McCain took the wind out of The Obama's sails right at the end of the DNC by announcing Sarah Palin as his running mate the day after the DNC was over (great timing!).

Anyway, after watching Obama leading in 50 of the past 55 previous polls it is good to see McCain ahead.

Here's the polling data source:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html

and the chart (see below).


Now for the bad news.

Karl Rove has released his latest electoral map showing Obama only 10 electoral votes away from the White House with 84 toss-up votes (270 needed to win).  I do not like the looks of this map.  Ohio, Florida, and New Hampshire were expected to be in play but not traditional red states like Virginia and Colorado.  And, knowing what I know about the demographics of North Carolina I'm not sure that it should not be in the toss-up category too.  I suppose the elitist, liberals from California have been migrating into Montana and Nevada putting them into the toss-up column.  Not sure what's going on in North Dakota as it had been in the red state block.

At any rate, even with the latest polling data (some of which ARE from "likely voters" not just registered voters) this map makes me worry.

http://www.rove.com/uploads/0000/0030/McCain-Obama_09_03_08.pdf

[War Eagle!!!]

Yep. It looks liek McCain has to win all the undecideds to have a shot. Or if McCain can swing either PA or MI, it will help. It doesn't look good though...

[kirkAU]

it'll definitely be a tough battle for mccain.  but just as the polls are shifting now that the RNC is over, i think we'll also see more of a trend towards mccain after the debates.  clearly, obama can speak.  but if you've watched any of the obama/o'reilly interview (which is still airing over the next few nights) you'll see obama can't debate.  he turns into stutters mcghee. 

so...i'm staying optimistic

[Tarheel]

it'll definitely be a tough battle for mccain.  but just as the polls are shifting now that the RNC is over, i think we'll also see more of a trend towards mccain after the debates.  clearly, obama can speak.  but if you've watched any of the obama/o'reilly interview (which is still airing over the next few nights) you'll see obama can't debate.  he turns into stutters mcghee. 

so...i'm staying optimistic

I'm in agreeance with you on staying optimistic; there's good reason to be so; especially with Sarah running with McCain now.

[GarMan]

Well, there's more...

http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/mccain.chicago.fundraiser.2.812952.html

McCain Rings Up $5M At Chicago Fundraiser
Amount Averages To $1 Million Per Hour Spent Here

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Republican John McCain raised about $5 million in Chicago Monday night, or about $1 million for each hour he spent in Democrat Barack Obama's home town...

http://www.gallup.com/poll/110137/McCain-Now-Winning-Majority-Independents.aspx

McCain Now Winning Majority of Independents
Majority of independents now prefer him over Obama, 52% to 37%

by Lydia Saad
PRINCETON, NJ -- John McCain's 6 percentage-point bounce in voter support spanning the Republican National Convention is largely explained by political independents shifting to him in fairly big numbers, from 40% pre-convention to 52% post-convention in Gallup Poll Daily tracking...

[Tarheel]

More good reasons to stay optimistic!  Thanks for posting those articles GarMan.

[Tiger Wench]

Don't get too cocky tho... remember:

*  John Kerry lead Bush in all the polls too... including the exit polls.

*  the media control the news and the spin - this could be an efforts to lull the conservatives into a sense of false confidence, and in turn spur the hordes of smelly, hairy armpited pinko commie liberals into action.

[Tarheel]

Don't get too cocky tho... remember:

*  John Kerry lead Bush in all the polls too... including the exit polls.

*  the media control the news and the spin - this could be an efforts to lull the conservatives into a sense of false confidence, and in turn spur the hordes of smelly, hairy armpited pinko commie liberals into action.

Yeah, yeah; I hear ya!  Somebody's always gotto rain on the parade.

[Tiger Wench]

Yeah, yeah; I hear ya!  Somebody's always gotto rain on the parade.

Not trying to be Debbie Downer - I am just EXTREMELY TERRIFIED and worried about this election.

[Tarheel]

Not trying to be Debbie Downer - I am just EXTREMELY TERRIFIED and worried about this election.

Yeah, I know, I'm worried too; we just have to urge our friends in the toss-up states on that Rove chart to vote early and vote often for McCain (Never thought I'd urge folk to vote for McCain but there we are...).  This is going to be another close election but let's hope it's close enough to get McCain elected.

[kirkAU]

another good idea is to urge our conservative friends in these 'battle' ground states is to report any voter fraud. 

for example, here in Alabama, a traditional all black county (i don't mean this racist) was turning in applications for absentee ballots and voter registration forms at a rapid pace.  Our secretary of state looked at this county and saw there were more voter registration forms and absentee ballot applications than the actual population, and by a large margin.  Most were quickly voided or tossed out due to voter fraud. 

the Dems are going to great links to "get out the vote," especially amoung minority voters, who traditionally have a low voter turn out.   If you want a great example, just tune your radio to the hip-hop or R&B station for a day.  you'll hear the DJ's urging their listeners to register to vote and to vote for OBAMA.

but Tarheel is right, conservatives have to be just, if not more, encouraging of their conservative friends to vote.

[GarMan]

More good news...

It looks like The Chosen One is having some financial problems.  I wonder if that ALSO qualifies him to be president...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/us/politics/09donate.html?_r=3&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Straining to Reach Money Goal, Obama Presses Donors
By MICHAEL LUO and JEFF ZELENY
Published: September 8, 2008

After months of record-breaking fund-raising, a new sense of urgency in Senator Barack Obama’s fund-raising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign’s decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon it.

Pushing a fund-raiser later this month, a finance staff member sent a sharply worded note last week to Illinois members of its national finance committee, calling their recent efforts “extremely anemic.”
...

[GarMan]

Not so good news... but there's a little hope here.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

The trick has always been winning the bigger states.  There are a number of scenarios assuming McCain can retain everything that's currently GOP (230), win FL (27) and pick up another 13+ electoral votes from the following likely states... PA (21), CO (9), NV (5), NH (4) and ND (3).  I don't think that WA (11) is really in play as they haven't voted GOP in years. 

There are a couple of options that would only give him another 12 electoral votes, but 269 total votes would not result in a win.  The House would have to select the president in this situation, and with the Democrat majority, we know who they would select. 

http://www.youtube.com/v/qvXz2xaLNMQ&hl=en&fs=1

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,5335087.story

Obama the 'Magic Negro'
The Illinois senator lends himself to white America's idealized, less-than-real black man.

By David Ehrenstein, L.A.-based DAVID EHRENSTEIN writes about Hollywood and politics.
March 19, 2007
AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House.

But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."
...

[JohnDeere]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,5335087.story

A certain Mod on this board edited out the term Magic Negro in a post of mine. WTH? Don't you hicks read the LA Times?

[Kaos]

Not so good news... but there's a little hope here.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

The trick has always been winning the bigger states.  There are a number of scenarios assuming McCain can retain everything that's currently GOP (230), win FL (27) and pick up another 13+ electoral votes from the following likely states... PA (21), CO (9), NV (5), NH (4) and ND (3).  I don't think that WA (11) is really in play as they haven't voted GOP in years. 

There are a couple of options that would only give him another 12 electoral votes, but 269 total votes would not result in a win.  The House would have to select the president in this situation, and with the Democrat majority, we know who they would select. 

http://www.youtube.com/v/qvXz2xaLNMQ&hl=en&fs=1

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,5335087.story

Basically, McPalin needs to hold on to what they have, (closing strong in Ohio, Indiana and Virginia) sell out to secure Florida and then pick up either Michigan or Pennsylvania. 

It's not as bleak as some would make it out to be. 

[GarMan]

A certain Mod on this board edited out the term Magic Negro in a post of mine. WTH? Don't you hicks read the LA Times?

Perhaps, it will be corrected...  

This whole "Magic Negro" thing has been funny as hell.  Everyone started attacking Limbaugh over it saying it was "racist".  Of course, the LA Times was actually the first to present and use the term, but Limbaugh caught all of the heat.  As we all know, the media elite cannot be racist.  They can say and use anything they want.  

[Ogre]

A certain Mod on this board edited out the term Magic Negro in a post of mine. WTH? Don't you hicks read the LA Times?

Yeah, that was me.  It was the first time I had heard the phrase used, and I thought it was borderline with our no racism rule (one of two fucking rules we have on this board).  I edited it and sent JD a PM telling him why.  Then over the next few days I read and heard the phrase in many facets, and realized that I may have been hasty in my initial decision.  I sent JD a PM apologizing for the edit and I think I told him to go back and add it in again if he wanted to. 

Now the fucktard calls me out?  Fuck you. 

[GarMan]

More good news...   

I had to identify the good stuff...   

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13357.html

Autumn Angst: Dems fret about Obama

By DAVID PAUL KUHN & BILL NICHOLS | 9/10/08 7:31 PM EST 

Polls showing John McCain tied or even ahead of Barack Obama are stirring angst and second-guessing among some of the Democratic Party’s most experienced operatives, who worry that Obama squandered opportunities over the summer and may still be underestimating his challenges this fall.

“It’s more than an increased anxiety,” said Doug Schoen, who worked as one of Bill Clinton’s lead pollsters during his 1996 reelection and has worked for both Democrats and independents in recent years. “It’s a palpable frustration. Deep-seated unease in the sense that the message has gotten away from them.”

Joe Trippi, a consultant behind Howard Dean’s flash-in-the-pan presidential campaign in 2004 and John Edwards’ race in 2008, said the Obama campaign was slow to recognize how the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate would change the dynamic of the race.

“They were set up to run ‘experience versus change,’ what they had run [against Hillary] Clinton,” Trippi said. “And I think Palin clearly moved that to be change [and] reform, versus change. They are adjusting to that and that threw them off balance a little bit.”

A major Democratic fundraiser described it a good bit more starkly after digesting the polls of recent days: “I’m so depressed. It’s happening again. It’s a nightmare.”

Adding to Democratic restlessness, McCain has largely neutralized some issue advantages that have long favored Democrats.

This week’s USA Today/Gallup poll reported a split on which candidate “can better handle the economy”; 48 percent chose Obama while 45 percent said McCain. In late August, Obama had a 16-point edge on the issue.

Also this week, an ABC News/Washington Post poll reported that when voters are asked “who can bring about needed change to Washington,” McCain still trails Obama by 12 points. But in June, McCain trailed by 32 points.

That shift in the public’s perception of the issues, in Democratic pollster Celinda Lake’s words, “tremendously concerns me.”

Lake joined other Democratic veterans, some speaking not for attribution, in emphasizing a classic liberal woe: that the Democrat let the Republican define him.

“Obama needed to define himself,” Lake said. “I do think that during the Democratic convention we should have done a better job of defining McCain.”

Steve Rosenthal, a veteran field organizer for Democrats and organized labor, said that some entrenched Democratic vulnerabilities never receded this year. And in his view, Palin has reawakened those liberal weaknesses.

“For some white, working-class voters who don’t want to vote for Barack Obama but weren’t sure about McCain, Palin gave them a good reason to take another look and consider supporting McCain,” Rosenthal said.

“On the one hand, it could be a temporary reshuffling of the deck,” he added. “And on the other hand, it underscores the deep-seated problems we have in this race with race, class and culture.

“In some ways, you play the cards you’re dealt,” Rosenthal continued. “There is a good amount of time left for Obama to make ‘the connect.’”

Asked if partisans in his state are worried, New Jersey Democratic Chairman Joseph Cryan responded: “Absolutely, absolutely. It’s a ‘sit up straight and listen’ kind of thing.’”

While Obama’s campaign is “a little bit off-balance,” Cryan added, “that’s okay. Campaigns ebb and flow."

Like Rosenthal and Cryan, most of the Democrats interviewed for this article, both on and off the record, expressed confidence that the landscape this year tilts in favor of a Democratic victory and that Obama has plenty of time to retake command of the race. Many predicted that any bounce in polls caused by Palin’s selection could be followed by a plunge as her record and qualifications continue to be scrutinized.

Still, a wide range of conversations with Democrats yielded several reasons to doubt that Obama is quite the political natural — or the November shoo-in — that some of his most ardent supporters believed.

Among the problems:

Obama’s Summer Doldrums: After his months of exhausting trench warfare with Clinton ended in June, Obama faced a delicious opportunity — to further define himself to the American public and hone a transcendent message in advance of the August Democratic convention.

Yes, McCain’s campaign had enjoyed months of free kicks at the Democrats after the GOP primary race ended and the Obama-Clinton steel cage match continued. But most of those months were spent with the McCain camp in severe disarray, both on message — Phil Gramm’s “mental recession” comes to mind — and in campaign tactics, such the infamous green backdrop at his June 3 speech in a New Orleans suburb.

Yet the latest polls — and the seeming ability of Palin to instantly transform this race —  would seem to indicate that voters got no overarching message from the Obama campaign other than he is a gifted, even inspirational political performer who aspires to change the country. The economic message Obama is now scrambling to hammer home was either absent or mixed in with a variety of other topics.

The thing voters likely remember most from the period is Obama’s July trip to Europe — a trip that prompted the McCain campaign’s focus on the issue of elitism and celebrity and that some Obama campaign officials now privately acknowledge was a mistake.

Did the Obama team spend this period quietly building up formidable ground operations in all 50 states? Possibly — and no one could question the fundraising prowess that makes this 50-state strategy possible. But as the campaign frantically tries to combat Hurricane Sarah with a meat-and-potatoes economic message and an effort to identify McCain and Palin with an unpopular president, it seems logical to conclude that its chance of success would be greater if that thematic strategy had begun months earlier.

There are also some doubters, by the way, about whether it is wise to be trying to expand the national playing field as broadly as Obama is seeking to — as opposed to putting chips on a select number of undoubted swing states.

“Their 50-state strategy is insanity,” said Schoen. “If they don’t use their financial advantage where they need it most,” he said, citing states from Ohio to Nevada, “and put every thing there and blow it out, they are at deep risk of losing.”

Forgetting the lessons of 1992: One of the certainties of American politics is that it is hard for Democrats to win presidential elections without a deep connection to Main Street values and economics. That would seem doubly true for Obama, given the unstated but undeniable barrier his race presents in certain areas of the country. And few nominees have ever had such an inviting target as the economic record of the Bush administration — from a ballooning federal budget deficit to higher unemployment rates to a mortgage crisis that could be the most menacing fiscal threat in decades.

McCain has shown little interest in economics throughout his career, and Palin’s limited budgetary experience comes in a state that relies heavily on earmarks from Washington and the largesse of Big Oil. The primary economic cure voiced by the GOP tickets is more tax cuts and an unspecific pledge to be tough on congressional earmarks. Perhaps the only economic solution given prominence at the St. Paul convention was a push to allow domestic coastal oil drilling.

Yet still, the Obama campaign seems to be struggling to find a consistent, cohesive economic message. One can understand why aides would not want to muddy his mantra of change and his image as a post-partisan, revolutionary figure. But blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Michigan likely won’t vote for Obama because of some meta-narrative or a series of fabulous speeches.

“The [Obama] campaign is beginning to look like other campaigns,” said a former top strategist for past Democratic presidential campaigns, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Obama is struggling with working-class whites just like John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Michael Dukakis did, and Walter Mondale. He’s struggling with voters in the border-state South. And he’s struggling with an enormous wind at his back, a hatred for George Bush and a mainstream media that is little short of a chorus for his campaign.”

Clinton, of course, was the only one of these Democrats to actually win the struggle. As he could tell Obama, voters want to know how their lives would be bettered by an Obama presidency in very specific terms. This connection (along with independent Ross Perot) is what powered his upset run against George H.W. Bush in 1992.

Clinton probably would have offered Obama that advice personally months ago — but the two men were scheduled to have their first campaign-year meeting on Thursday, just over 50 days from Election Day.

The Expectations Game: Anyone who thinks the presidential election should be a layup for Obama should remember that Democrats have broken the 50 percent barrier in presidential elections only twice since 1944.

Did Obama himself forget?

Even if he didn’t, he let a narrative take hold in the news media and among many of his own supporters that led to expectations that he should be far ahead, leading to disappointment when he isn’t.

“A lot of Democratic elites thought this was a slam-dunk. And I thought, no it’s not,” said Lake, the pollster. “People in this town were already measuring drapes. And I was thinking, have you been in the real world lately?

“If you have been involved in campaigns, you thought it was going to be close for a year,” she added. “And I think a lot of Democratic elites are waking up to that.”

[AUTailgatingRules]

Well it has turned into a race of Jesus vs Pontios Pilot,  I wonder who wins.

The Dems are in meltdown

[JohnDeere]

Yeah, that was me.  It was the first time I had heard the phrase used, and I thought it was borderline with our no racism rule (one of two fucking rules we have on this board).  I edited it and sent JD a PM telling him why.  Then over the next few days I read and heard the phrase in many facets, and realized that I may have been hasty in my initial decision.  I sent JD a PM apologizing for the edit and I think I told him to go back and add it in again if he wanted to. 

Now the fucktard calls me out?  Fuck you. 

I didn't mean to throw sand in your pussy.