Posts Tagged ‘2008 Elections’

The Case for Divided Government

Posted: October 13, 2008 in 2008 Elections
Tags:
0

The McCain campaign has a new argument why you should vote for them:

Implying that the GOP won’t win back either the House or Senate, two McCain backers this morning sounded out a new talking point by raising the specter of Democrats in control of both the Congress and White House.

Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, posed it as a question.

“Do we really believe that the American public is going to feel safe by having both the head of the Congress and the head of the White House from the same party that has had so many challenges with the way they’ve run Washington over the last couple of years?” Davis asked in an appearance opposite Obama adviser David Axelrod in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

In the show’s next segment, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a frequent McCain surrogate and vice presidential runner-up, fleshed out the argument.

“I don’t think the country is going to like the Democratic Party running the table on taxes, on education, on health care and have kind of the liberal, unchecked, imbalanced approach to all of those issues,” Pawlenty said. “It’s going to be bad for the country. I think having John McCain as president to balance that out and be able to work across the aisle as he has throughout his career to get things done would be a good compromise, a good balance.”

Pawlenty added: “People like balance, especially in Minnesota.”

First, although it was a longshot to begin with, this is an explicit concession that the Republicans will not retake Congress this November. This is effectively a finger in the eye of the NRSC and the NRCC, whose jobs are to raise money and get Republicans elected to the Senate and House. Comments like these from McCain’s campaign manager and from a top surrogate are not going to be helpful when it comes to asking GOP donors for more money in the home stretch.

Second, the argument for divided government is valid because it forces compromise, especially if someone like McCain were president. The problem is that the GOP had the trifecta for most of the last 8 years and ran Washington with an iron fist. Remember President Bush’s mandate after being re-elected four years ago? How about Karl Rove’s dream of a permanent Republican majority?

Given the events of the last few years and a fundamental realignment of the American electorate, the Republican brand has become so damaged now, people are not going to be in a very forgiving mood. The divided government argument is going to go over like a lead balloon with voters at large and even more so with the Republican base.

Update: Vaughn Ververs has this note on how the divided government argument is making the rounds among McCain campaign operatives and conservative talking heads. His concluding assessment about its merits as a political tactic is blunt :

Unfortunately for Republicans, it’s not the kind of campaign theme that fits well on a bumper sticker. Stop A Democratic Majority, Vote McCain, isn’t a slogan that’s going to turn around the race. If that becomes the rallying cry, it’s an indication of just how narrow their window of opportunity has become.

The New Other

Posted: October 13, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Barack Obama
Tags: ,
0

My friend and former classmate Hanna Ingber Win has this compelling comment on how Muslims have become the new “other” in political discourse. Read it.

I’d add one observation: Barack Obama is on the verge of breaking the racial glass ceiling to the highest elected office in the country. Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi broke new ground for women in politics during the last two years. What I’m wondering now is when, if ever, we will see a viable Muslim candidate for national office from either political party?

Raising the Bar

Posted: October 13, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Debates, John McCain
Tags: , ,
0

Who needs surrogates and a press operation when you’ve got the other candidate doing their work for them?

(CNN) — John McCain predicted Sunday he would beat Barack Obama at the final presidential debate this week.

“After I whip his you-know-what in this debate, we’re going to be going out 24/7,” the Republican nominee told volunteers at his campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, sparking laughter and applause from the group. McCain immediately added: “I want to emphasize again, I respect Senator Obama. We will conduct a respectful race, and we will make sure that everybody else does, too.”

McCain has effectively raised the bar for himself for the last debate.  The pressure was already on him to begin with after losing the first two debates.  Now, anything less than a thorough drubbing will be painted as a failure. How much do you want to bet we’ll be hearing “John McCain failed to whip Senator Obama’s you-know-what in the debate,” ad nauseam from Obama’s surrogates in the spin room after the debate? If you make a drinking game out of every time that phrase is quoted by Democratic operatives between now and Wednesday night, you won’t have much of a liver or kidneys left by Thursday morning.

The Ghost of George Wallace

Posted: October 12, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, John McCain
Tags: , ,
0

John Lewis went there. From NBC’s First Read:

Georgia congressman John Lewis — a civil rights leader and a man once deemed by John McCain as one of the “wisest” men he knew and one whose advice he would seek as president — today likened the “negative tone” of McCain’s campaign to that of incendiary segregation advocate George Wallace in the 1960s.

“What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history,” Lewis wrote in a statement first posted on Politico’s website. “Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.”

Noting that Alabama governor and presidential candidate George Wallace “never threw a bomb” but “created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights,” Lewis attributed the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church to the racial division sown by Wallace’s political rhetoric.

“As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all,” the statement continues. “They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better.”

The McCain campaign responded with a strongly-worded statement calling Lewis’s remarks “brazen and baseless,” and asking that Obama “personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments.”

Although Lewis and others are well within their rights to attack the McCain campaign for the vitriolic rhetoric they are stoking among their supporters, Lewis went too far here. Yes, Wallace had a long and well-documented history of inflammatory rhetoric (“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” anyone?) but to try to compare or associate McCain/Palin with it is coming dangerously close to calling them racist.

Every campaign or public figure has their fringe supporters, regardless of the issue or where they fall on the political spectrum. While the words and actions of a handful of bigoted individuals has drawn the attention of the national media and the blogosphere, their misguided views should not be attributed to the candidates they support.

At the same time, the McCain campaign need to realize that they have to be careful in what they say by energizing an angry, hyper-partisan element of their base who believe the most outlandish conspiracy theories and Internet rumors about Barack Obama. Use of specific codewords or phrases triggers a response from them similar to Pavlov’s dog experiment. They need to cool down their rhetoric before things get out of control.

Country Road, Take Me Home

Posted: October 11, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, John McCain, Sarah Palin
Tags: , , ,
0

If the candidates’ itineraries are a reflection of their internal polling and the morale at their campaigns, then Sarah Palin’s newly announced bus tour of West Virginia should tell you a lot.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (CNN) — In what may be another signal that the troubled economy is forcing John McCain’s campaign to play electoral map defense, Sarah Palin has scheduled a bus tour for Sunday through West Virginia, a state that’s been leaning red throughout this presidential race.

Palin had already scheduled a bus tour of Pennsylvania on Saturday, but she will now repeat that act on Sunday by making various unannounced stops throughout West Virginia, culminating in a campaign event in southeast Ohio. It’s a swing geographically reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s effort during the Democratic primary to court white working class voters in Appalachia. Clinton won the West Virginia primary over Barack Obama by a whopping 67-26 margin.

Look at the map and you will find that McCain and Palin are playing a lot of defense trying to keep the states Bush won in 2004. They’ve conceded Michigan, and are largely focusing their efforts on the Big Three: Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania to a lesser degree.

Obama was routed by Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries in West Virginia and other neighboring white blue collar states. Polls show the race here is tightening, and a recent ARG poll gives Obama an 8-point lead, although this one is probably an outlier. If he can rally a unified Democratic base along with riding a wave of national disillusionment largely driven by the state of the economy, he may be able to make a last minute run at winning West Virginia.

As we enter the home stretch before the election, the pattern is holding. Barack Obama’s map to 270 is expanding, while McCain’s has remained stagnant and is limited to holding the Bush states from 2000 and 2004.

Update: According to Ben Smith, Palin landed in West Virginia but went campaigning in Ohio. State Democrats held several counter-events over the weekend.

Osama for President?

Posted: October 11, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, Humor
Tags: , ,
0

From the Albany Times Union:

TROY — It could have been Ovama or Ofama. Or even Olama.

But with one “s” the Rensselaer County Board of Elections turned a single wrong letter into a national embarrassment Friday.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s last name is spelled “Osama” on some 300 absentee ballots mailed out this week to voters in Rensselaer County hilltowns.

Is it a Freudian slip, intentional gaffe or a mistake? Voters are sure to have opinions, and one politician pointed out that the letters “s” and “b” are not exactly keyboard neighbors.

“Of all the letters to hit by mistake,” County Democratic Chairman Tom Wade said. “Unfortunately it is a mistake which negatively impacts our Democratic candidate for president.”

The typo was first reported Friday on timesunion.com, and quickly grabbed national attention.

“It was crazy, everybody across the country called,” said Edward McDonough, the county’s Democratic elections commissioner. He said calls came in from The New York Times, the New York Post, Daily News, Wall Street Journal and Court TV.

Friday Night Fallout

Posted: October 11, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain, October Surprise, Sarah Palin
Tags: , , ,
0

Looks like the McCain campaign’s attempt at preemptive spin was justified. The Alaska Legislature’s Troopergate report is out (PDF) and concludes that Sarah Palin abused her powers as governor in the firing of the public safety commissioner. Here’s the write-up by the Associated Press:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain’s Republican ticket.

Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report to a bipartisan panel that looked into the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain.

The inquiry looked into her dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, who said he lost his job because he resisted pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce and custody battle with the governor’s sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.

Monegan’s firing was lawful, the report found, but Palin let the family grudge influence her decision-making — even if it was not the sole reason Monegan was dismissed.

This goes back to McCain campaign’s VP vetting process and ultimate decision in asking Palin to be on the ticket. Why the hell did they think it was a good idea to have a candidate who was under an active investigation whose final report was due weeks before the election? It wasn’t a big secret, a simple Google search would have uncovered it. Even though this is the sort of thing the Right used to scream bloody murder about during the Clinton presidency, the GOP base will still love Palin anyway, come hell or high water, and I don’t think it’s going to change any minds among Democratic voters who weren’t going to vote for her anyway.

The ultimate damage to this may be long term, after this campaign is over. If McCain loses and Palin goes back to being governor of Alaska, the rest of her term will be clouded by this investigation. When she’s up for reelection in 2010, it will come back to haunt her, either in the form of a primary challenge or from her Democratic opponent. If she had been exonerated and if she were a genuine asset to the GOP ticket right now, she would have been the frontrunner for her party’s nomination in 2012. Instead, this will be her first, and likely only, shot at national office.

Correlation

Posted: October 10, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Economy, John McCain, Wall Street Bailout
Tags: , , ,
0

State of the Union came up with this nifty graph showing how eerily similar McCain’s poll numbers coincide with the S&P 500.

Nevada GOP Hitting the Panic Button

Posted: October 10, 2008 in 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, John McCain
Tags: , ,
0

Not a good sign, especially in a critical swing state.

Conservative activists, operatives and officeholders are anxious about John McCain’s Nevada campaign, fearing the Arizona senator lacks the ground operation and commitment to win Nevada.

Concern grew last week after McCain canceled a Nevada visit. A new Reno Gazette-Journal poll showed McCain trailing by 7 percentage points, with Democratic challenger Sen. Barack Obama competing in traditional Republican strongholds here.

“People I talk to wonder where the campaign is,” said Chuck Muth, a conservative activist who regularly speaks to dozens of other conservatives — north and south — through his newsletter.
…
The McCain camp won’t say how many paid staff members are here. Rogich said he did not know the exact size of that staff, but said it is “close to 30.”

The Obama campaign has about 100 paid staff members in the state.

A few Republican operatives, who declined to be named, offered blunt criticism.

The McCain campaign is “a joke,” one said. “There’s not a campaign in Nevada. A couple of guys, running around, being incompetent. Or even worse, arrogantly incompetent.”

The consultant said there was no discernible McCain ground game, which is political jargon for the massive effort needed to find likely supporters and get them to the polls.

He did hedge a bit, saying that if some earth-shattering event were to occur, McCain could still win in Nevada. Otherwise: “There’s not one single positive note for Republicans. I couldn’t be more pessimistic.”

The gloom is not surprising, given national polls showing Obama opening a lead and McCain playing defense in traditionally Republican states, which had included Nevada until Democratic registration drives have given the party an advantage of 80,000 voters.

The numbers and energy of a campaign’s field operation are often more telling than any opinion polls.  Obama has more paid staffers on the ground in Nevada than McCain, and they’re a lot more fired up than their Republican counterparts.  If this becomes a pattern that is being repeated in other swing states, McCain had better start practicing his concession speech.  (Hat tip to Jonathan Martin)

Panic Attacks and Anger

Posted: October 10, 2008 in 2008 Elections, John McCain
Tags: ,
0

Following up on what I wrote earlier about the hostile crowds narrative building in the media, check out these stories in Politico and the Washington Post.

Older Entries
Newer Entries