Archive for the ‘John McCain’ Category

The Most Patriotic and God-Loving Part of America

Posted: October 22, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain
Tags: ,
0

Following up on his brother and his advisor dissing Northern Virginia, McCain may well have walked into a similar trap in Pennsylvania. Marc Ambinder:

Referring to Rep. Jack Murtha’s remarks on the region’s alleged racism, McCain said: “I think you may have noticed that Sen. Obama’s supporters are saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately.”

McCain: “And you know, I couldn’t agree with them more.”

“I couldn’t disagree with you.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most God-loving, most patriotic part of America… this is a great part of the country.”

Forget about McCain blowing the line…

MOST patriotic?

MOST God-loving?

He may as well write off Pittsburgh and Philadelphia at this point and hope he can make up the difference in the rest of the state, although polls show him trailing Obama. Not a smart thing for a candidate to say in any state, but especially so in the one on which your entire election strategy is dependent on.

Update: Forgot to note that Sarah Palin ran into some trouble with her “Pro-America” comment at a recent event. She apologized for it during a recent interview with CNN.

The First Timers

Posted: October 22, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, John McCain
Tags: , ,
0

George Stephanopoulos points out this interesting finding from the latest ABC/Washington Post poll:

But four years ago, first time voters backed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., over President George W. Bush 53 to 46 percent — a 7 points advantage for the Democratic nominee. In 2008 first time voters favor Obama over McCain 73 – 26 — a  whopping 47 percentage point lead.

This will be a key demographic to watch out for on Election Night as the polls come in, especially if it comes down to the wire at the end in a few key swing states like Colorado or Missouri.

McCain Bets It All On Pennsylvania

Posted: October 21, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain
Tags: ,
1

CNN’s John King (via kos):

Most people top in the McCain campaign now believe New Mexico and Iowa are gone, that Barack Obama will win New Mexico and Iowa. They are now off the dream list of the McCain campaign. More interestingly, most top people inside the McCain campaign think Colorado is gone.

So they are now finishing with a very risky strategy. Win Florida. Win Nevada … And here is the biggest risk of all — yes they have to win North Carolina, yes they have to win Ohio, yes they have to win Virginia, trailing or dead-even in all those states right now. But they are betting Wolf on coming back and taking the state of Pennsylvania. It has become the critical state now in the McCain electoral scenario. And they are down 10, 12, and even 14 points in some polls there. But they say as Colorado, Iowa and other states drift away, they think they have to take a big state. 21 electoral votes in Pennsylvania, Wolf, watch that state over the next few weeks.

Look at where the candidates are spending their time, money, and resources at this point two weeks out from the election. McCain is betting it all on Pennsylvania at this point. It is the lynchpin of his electoral strategy and the only blue state he is seriously contesting at this point, while still pursuing traditional swing states like Ohio, Florida and Missouri and playing defense in Virginia and North Carolina. Obama is spending the rest of the campaign in red states that either went for Bush the last two elections or have become newly competitive swing states in this cycle. He also must be feeling pretty good about his chances in Wisconsin, because he cancelled a campaign event there to focus on more competitive states.

Can Obama get to the White House without Pennsylvania? Yes, but he will have to either win Florida or a combination of smaller states (Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, and/or Colorado) to make up the difference. But McCain’s firewall is stretched thin as it is, and if he fails to take Pennsylvania and Obama wins any of those red states, it’s game over.

Update: According to the Washington Post, Obama canceled campaign events in Wisconsin and Iowa to go to Hawaii to be with his ailing grandmother.

Update II: You can read John King’s full wire note here.

Update III: The McCain camp is pushing back on this report, according to Jonathan Martin. But it’s interesting to note the similarity with the story reported by Marc Ambinder a few days ago that the NRSC was pulling out of Colorado, only to have that report challenged as well. Are there mixed messages going on between the campaign management and the people on the ground, or are they trying to save face 2 weeks before the election so the base doesn’t get discouraged?

Going Off the Rails On the Ayers Train

Posted: October 20, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain, Sarah Palin
Tags: , ,
0

William Ayers and Sarah Palin have become polling liabilities for John McCain, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll. Further proof that what’s good for the Republican base isn’t always necessarily best for the electorate at large.

Update: According to the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said during an interview with Hugh Hewitt he is considering bringing back the ghost of Jeremiah Wright to hit Obama during the final weeks of the campaign.

Why he wants to spend any of the limited time and money he has left trying to beat this dead horse is beyond me. It’s his campaign to run, but if I were advising him, I’d remind him of Rita Mae Brown’s famous quote about insanity.

Beat the Press

Posted: October 20, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain, Media
Tags: , ,
0

McCain adviser Mark Salter unloads on the media’s coverage of the race and its pro-Obama bias during an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. The whole thing is worth reading, and as Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post points out, is probably an interesting preview of the kind of things that are going to come out from the McCain campaign insider tell-all books after the election.

The Last Gasps of Campaign Public Financing

Posted: October 20, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, John McCain
Tags: , , ,
0

Patrick Ruffini:

First, public finance in the general election is dead, dead, dead. Any nominee from now on can safely opt out because the Internet makes it for the public to massively participate. If we had not had a nominee with such misguided instincts on campaign finance reform, Republicans probably would have figured this out this time. McCain raised $47 million in August, or 71% of Obama’s total, and he raised $10 million in 2 days because of Sarah Palin. Had this trend continued into September, McCain would have raised over $100 million for the month. By the time the McCain campaign figured out it was possible to excite the base, it was too late.

This is true, because Obama has unleashed the full potential of a small Internet-based donor operation that (ironically) was first pioneered by John McCain back in 2000 and later on in a much more dramatic way by Howard Dean in 2004. This essentially narrows the playing field for presidential candidates. You either have to be able to connect with voters in a way that they will give money and time an deffort, come hell or high water (i.e. Dean and Obama), or you have to be ridiculously wealthy enough that you can substantially finance your own campaign (i.e. Mitt Romney and Ross Perot).

And Ruffini smartly asks the next question. How do you spend $150 million?

Second, what does Obama do with the extra money? A three-to-one ad ratio in a given state is worth about a point in the polls. But that’s in states with at least a decent baseline of Republican advertising. What’s it worth in states where McCain can’t advertise at all, like North Dakota or Georgia? 3 or 4 points? Does Obama move into states at the fringes of the target map to 1) heighten the sense of panic in the GOP? and 2) go for 400 EVs? Can he legally bail out the committees to go for 270 in the House and 60 in the Senate?

Either way, this is going to be the political equivalent of Sherman’s March.

Powell Endorses Obama

Posted: October 20, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, Beltway Drama, John McCain, Media, October Surprise, Talking Heads
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

ABC’s Jake Tapper has a good recap of the highlights of Powell’s interview on Meet the Press.

As I said before – this will dominate the news cycle for one or two days. Pundits in the blogosphere and the major media will be aflutter talking about this. Obama clearly controlled the narrative yesterday with the carefully timed announcement of his $150 million fundraising figure and the nod from Powell.

McCain’s problem is that he is running out of time. He has about two weeks to go and not many ways to change or control the media narrative before Election Day. Barring a drastic change in the underlying fundamental dynamic of this election (which happened when the financial crisis hit on September 15), the political environment will continue to favor Obama.

Update: Former McCain adviser Mike Murphy weighs in at TIME’s Swampland Blog. His analysis: “Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama today is a real sledgehammer blow to the already staggering McCain campaign.” The rest of it is not pretty.

Quote of the Day

Posted: October 20, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain, Quotes
Tags: , ,
0

“The most poorly run presidential campaign of the last 25 years. It’s truly Dukakis-like.”
– An unidentified Republican strategist advising the McCain campaign.

Powell Watch

Posted: October 18, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, John McCain, National Security
Tags: , , , ,
0

All eyes in Washington and the political world will be on Meet the Press this Sunday morning, more so than usual.

Colin Powell, former secretary of state, and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, will be a guest on Meet The Press this Sunday, fueling increased speculation that he will finally make an endorsement in the 2008 race, with only a couple weeks until the election.

Powell, despite being a Republican, has been neutral so far this cycle, fomenting rumors in certain political circles that he may endorse Sen. Barack Obama.

” It’s going to make a lot of news, and certainly be personally embarrassing for McCain,” a McCain official said to Politico’s Mike Allen, on a possible Powell endorsement of Obama. “It comes at a time when we need momentum, and it would create momentum against us.”

Tom DeFrank and Howard Fineman talked to several anonymous Powell sources. DeFrank’s sources were much more assertive in their thinking that Powell would get behind Obama, but Fineman got the same impression from his contacts as well. For all anyone knows, they could be talking to the same people.

If Powell does get behind Obama, it will dominate media cycles for at least two or three days, and will be a stunning symbolic rebuke of the Republican party and its presidential candidate, a man Powell considers a friend to whom he gave $2,300 in August of 2007 when many thought his campaign was finished.

I Am Joe

Posted: October 18, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain, Media
Tags: , ,
0

Republicans have organized an online petition and movement to defend Joe the Plumber. They argue that Joe has been treated unfairly by the Democrats and, by extension, the media who put his life under the microscope.

Let me make one thing clear – the Joe the Plumber story would have been a one-day story if McCain had not pounced on him and made nearly two dozen references to him during the last presidential debate. But according to this account in the Politico, the McCain people simply didn’t do their homework on Joe before they embraced him.

NEW YORK – John McCain hung his final presidential debate performance on an Ohio plumber who campaign aides never vetted.

A day after making Joseph Wurzelbacher famous, referencing him in the debate almost two dozen times as someone who would pay higher taxes under Barack Obama, McCain learned the fine print Thursday on the plumber’s not-so-tidy personal story: He owes back taxes. He is not a licensed plumber. And it turns out that Wurzelbacher makes less than $250,000 a year, which means he would receive a tax cut if Obama were elected president.

McCain likes to say that he isn’t George W. Bush – and in this case of bungled public relations, it is clear he is not. The famously disciplined Bush campaign operation would likely have found the perfect anonymous citizen to illustrate a policy proposal, rather than spontaneously wrap itself around an unknown entity with so many asterisks.

While the arc of Wurzelbacher’s breakneck trip through the news cycle – from private citizen to insta-celebrity to political target – offers a curious insight into the political media culture, it also appears to offer a glimpse into the McCain campaign’s on-the-fly decision-making style.

A McCain source said Thursday that the campaign read about Wurzelbacher on the Drudge Report, while another campaign aide confirmed that he was not vetted. Senior McCain adviser Matt McDonald told Politico after the debate that Wurzelbacher was not aware that he would become central to the candidates’ third and final showdown, although Wurzelbacher told reporters Thursday that the McCain campaign contacted him earlier in the week to ask him to appear with the candidate at a Toledo rally scheduled for Sunday. (He may not make it, now that he’s scheduled to be in New York for TV interviews.)

By doing so, they brought the intense interest and scrutiny of the press and Democratic opposition researchers on Joe, who clearly had no idea what was about to hit him. They found out that he wasn’t a licensed plumber and that he hadn’t paid more than $1,000 in taxes, all from public records.

Was Joe asking Obama a legitimate question? Yes. Has the media coverage of him been obsessive to the point of ridicule? Yes. But the sad reality is that by drawing attention to him, the McCain campaign put him in this situation. If the situation were reversed and it were the Obama campaign embracing Joe, it would be Republican operatives and the media who would be vetting him after the fact.

Older Entries
Newer Entries