Above: an ad from the Republican National Committee attempting to tie Barack Obama to the Rod Blagojevich scandal.

Newt Gingrich was not pleased. Read his rip-roaring response, in full, after the jump.

“I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.

The recent web advertisement, “Questions Remain,” is a destructive distraction. Clearly, we should insist that all taped communications regarding the Senate seat should be made public. However, that should be a matter of public policy, not an excuse for political attack.

In a time when America is facing real challenges, Republicans should be working to help the incoming President succeed in meeting them, regardless of his Party.

From now until the inaugural, Republicans should be offering to help the President-elect prepare to take office.

Furthermore, once President Obama takes office, Republicans should be eager to work with him when he is right, and, when he is wrong, offer a better solution, instead of just opposing him.

This is the only way the Republican Party will become known as the “better solutions” party, not just an opposition party. And this is the only way Republicans will ever regain the trust of the voters to return to the majority.

This ad is a terrible signal to be sending about both the goals of the Republican Party in the midst of the nation’s troubled economic times and about whether we have actually learned anything from the defeats of 2006 and 2008.

The RNC should pull the ad down immediately.”

Gingrich is right.

& not because the relationship between Obama’s transition team & its ties to Blagojevich shouldn’t be investigated; far from it. & I’ve not seen a) any indication that the Obama team is stonewalling the release of any/all information or b) any kind of evidence of any wrongdoing regarding the open Illinois Senate seat. You can count on me to squawk if I do.

I suppose this becomes the knee-jerk reaction for the GOP; the ghost of Lee Atwater is alive & well. But it’s also, at the moment, quite tone-deaf. It may be necessary for a further, more blatant & damaging misstep for those in the GOP who are chomping at the bit to bring Obama down for them to get the message that most of the country doesn’t want to hear the same ol’ same ol’ attacks right now.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Above: watch the ABC story on the ad the McCain campaign ultimately decided not to run (it appears 76 seconds into this clip).

Would it have made a difference?

I think perhaps mildly, but not enough to change the outcome.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

The latest poll, from Rasmussen, has Chambliss leading 50-46, with 4% undecided.

Obama “robocalls” on behalf of Jim Martin; listen to the audio here.

“Mr. Obama has shied away from inserting himself in the still-to-be resolved Senate contests in Georgia and Minnesota. While he recorded a radio advertisement for the Democratic candidate in Georgia, advisers said he would not visit there, to avoid appearing to be too political as he works to deliver on his campaign pledge to bridge the partisan divide in Washington.” - the New York Times

Over the weekend “Freedom Watch,” a pro-Chambliss independent group, released this ad:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s Martin’s response:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Last week, Chambliss was giving a campaign speech on unemployment, & therefore missed a vote in the Senate on extending unemployment benefits.

Al Gore stumped for Martin over the weekend.

Mitt Romney did the same for Chambliss late last week.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

The President-elect hasn’t committed to stumping in the Peach State for Jim Martin yet, but he’s just recorded a radio ad for the Senate hopeful.

Listen to it here.

What do you think? Will Obama visit Georgia? I’d say the odds are even either way.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Above: A radio spot by the victorious Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, which aired in Memphis, & was voiced-over by a prominent retired African-American judge.

He didn’t have to do it. He had a commanding lead all year long, & could have coasted with just the party faithful.

But to his credit, Alexander’s strategy helped him carry a sizable segment of the black vote on November 4th:

“While colleagues like Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina were coming out on the losing end in part because of a strong African-American vote for their opponents, Mr. Alexander, who had a record of appointing blacks to government and education positions, was able to win about 26 percent of the black vote.”

Kleinheider:

“It’s something deserving of at least grudging political respect, if not outright kudos.”

You’d think this is a strategy that would at least cross the mind of a Senator who’s in the fight for his life one state to the south.

But instead… this is what we’re hearing:

“We didn’t get our folks to come out & vote..”

This isn’t an isolated incident, either.

Scroll up & watch that Lamar radio ad again.

I believe both members of Tennessee’s Senate delegation are worthy of praise for recognizing the future.

I also believe Senator Chambliss embarassingly represents a part of the GOP’s past that it should (& eventually will) forget, for its own good.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Democrats hoping to get Jim Martin elected Georgia’s new senator are using this ad as a way to drum up votes for the December 2nd runoff.

Watching the ad again, I find its content tame by the standards of today - in which a politician can claim, with a straight face, that their opponent “pals around with terrorists.”

No, what was wrong with the ad (which aired ad infinitum on NewsChannel9) was what it represented at the time.

It was November 2002. Just over a year since 9/11. The country had dusted itself off, yet was still shell-shocked by the event. A soothing balm, though, was a sense that no matter our differences, we’re all in this together.

The ad above, which attacked a man who threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies in Vietnam, & who lost three limbs in doing so, & who happened to be a member of the ‘wrong’ party (not to mention coming from a man who got several draft deferments during the Vietnam era), signaled an end to that.

It signaled that the party in power (the GOP) was going to capitalize on the fears of Americans to try to get “their guys” into the Senate.

It signaled a beginning of a cesspool of bitter partisanship we’ve been trying to climb our way out of for years.

After this ad, it became okay to paint the other party as being concerned only with America’s defeat.

After this ad, it became more possible to sell a war of choice with a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 to the American people.

So again, it’s not the actual content of the ad - it’s what the ad represents.

& if you think I’m just writing this to bash a Senator just because he’s a Republican, click here. Yes, this Senator also came to power with an infamous ad, but he’s certainly not drunk the Bush version of the GOP’s Kool-Aid since he’s been in office.

& if Obama & his friends in the Congress try impugning the patriotic motives of any Republican congressional challenger in the 2010 midterm elections, you had better believe I will squawk just as loudly at them.

If you are tired of partisanship running the show in Washington, & you are a voter in Georgia, I want to suggest that sending Saxby Chambliss packing would send a message that the era described above is over.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Saxby Chambliss Ad

Jim Martin Ad

That reminds me: John McCain stumps for Saxby tomorrow.

If you want to go, details about the where & when are here.

& if you go, please check back here & let me know what you experienced!

Politico has much more on the infamous 2002 Chambliss ad mentioned above here.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

What’s going on?

In this post, which will remain up until Tuesday night, I’m pulling back the curtain & showing you exactly what news about campaign 2008 I am checking throughout the day.

The most recent entry will be at the top; to start from the beginning, scroll to the bottom.

& I want to hear what you think! Click here to post a comment.

Calvin Can’t Stop Talking about McCain’s Tennessee Stop

Amazing on a day when his beloved Tennessee Vols are in the news.. Calvin says he’s got a better idea for McCain’s strategy in winning NC & VA than stopping in Blountville:

A campaign stop in the Tri-Cities was bad strategy for McCain, trying to woo SW Virginia and Western NC voters.. True, two of the three TV stations with strong VHF signals (WCYB-TV, Channel 5 and WJHL-TV, Channel 11), do indeed blanket all of SW Virginia and part of Western North Carolina.

But SW Virginia voters work and shop in Tri-Cities, Tennessee. As a result, they are usually politically aligned with their neighbors in Upper East Tennessee.. SW Virginia voters are mostly Republican, voting the same way upper East Tennessee has voted for generations, and this includes absentee voting, early voting, and Election Day-of voting.

A Republican visit by a presidential candidate and covered heavily on Tri-Cities TV, only reinforces the way SW Virginia voters are going to vote anyway.

AND, Tri-Cities stations only get marginally viewership from Western North Carolina counties, and even then, mostly along the TN-NC border, because the mountains cut the signals off.

A much better media consideration for McCain would have been, a stop in Asheville, North Carolina, and then one in Roanoke, Virginia.. The 3 main reasons being:

1) Only two years ago, Western North Carolina elected Democrat Heath Shuler to Congress, and Tri-Cities station signals simply don’t reach that far down into that state. 2) The Roanoke TV market. A McCain visit in Roanoke would have had more of an impact on Central Virginia voters that all watch WSLS-TV, WDBJ-TV and WSET-TV from Roanoke-Lynchburg, and would have given McCain double-coverage, because Tri-Cities TV stations, mindful of their SW Virginia audience, would cover it extensively for their SW Virginia viewers anyway.

3) WLOS-TV, Asheville. With a transmitter signal coming from atop one of the highest points in the Eastern United States, and blanketing ALL of Western North Carolina, a McCain visit would have saturated the western third of the state, including that Democratic pocket that elected Heath Shuler, and also have been covered extensively by the rest of the North Carolina media.

Thanks, Calvin! .

Election Day Times

Mon/2:07pm

Click here for a full rundown of election times in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama & North Carolina.

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Mor McCane Mispellingz

Mon/1:49pm

Think Progress has discovered three instances of misspelled words in McCain’s ads that have aired in the last month.

Come on, guys! Do you really have to get them out that fast?

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The Dog That Didn’t Bark

Mon/1:23pm

The Politico’s Jonathan Martin speculates what the 2008 campaign would look like if McCain & surrogates used Rev. Wright as an issue more:

“Conversations with a number of veteran GOP consultants indicate that using Wright may have helped McCain with one set of voters — but would have hurt with others and not ultimately proved decisive in a contest subsumed by larger external forces such as the economic crisis and the unpopularity of President Bush and the Republican Party.”

McCain deserves credit for not ‘going there.’

As Liddy Dole is about to find out, attacking someone’s faith only ends up hurting the attacker in the end.

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Why’s He in Tennessee Today?

Mon/1:18pm

He’s stopping in Blountville - you can be assured I’ll be looking for clips to post later today.

But why Blountville? He’s got the Volunteer State wrapped up.

Marc Ambinder says:

So why is Sen. McCain campaigning in Blountville, TN?

It has nothing to do with Blountville.

It has everything to do with the parts of rural North Carolina and rural Virginia that share its media market.

NewsChannel9 anchor & expert in all things ‘upper-east Tennessee’ Calvin Sneed says:

“I already knew that.. One-third of the audience that WCYB-TV and WJHL-TV reach are in Southwest Virginia up to Roanoake, and Western North Carolina, within a 70 mile circumference of Asheville. Too bad Kentucky is not a swing state. Those two stations also blanket Eastern-Southeastern Kentucky. I also knew two weeks ago, he’d be coming to Tri-Cities before the end of the campaign.”

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Good Gravy!

Mon/1:12PM

As if Georgia’s not enough (scroll down), check out North Carolina’s polls, which have tightened as of today.

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Mapping a McCain Win

Mon/11:48am

Nate Silver looks at several computer models. His top projection is above.

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If You’re Reading This, You’re Part of the Revolution

Mon/10:47am

Look at these numbers from Pew, which shows internet usage has TRIPLED this year, while TV & newspaper usage remains static.

Truly amazing.

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“My Wife Made Me Canvass for Obama”

Mon/10:40am

Read what a former Bush voter in North Carolina found out about voters while canvassing with his wife.

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The Five States to Watch on Election Night

Mon/10:34am

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com (one of the true internet stars of Campaign 2008) says the states to keep an eye on will be:

1. Virginia

2. Colorado

3. Pennsylvania

4. Ohio

5. Nevada

Read why here.

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Does Obama Realistically Have a Shot at Arizona?

Mon/10:30 am

Marc Ambinder speculates & has some things to watch in the Grand Canyon State tomorrow night.

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Not All TN Polling Times Are the Same

Mon/10:16am

The election director in Polk County, TN just e-mailed NewsChannel9:

Please have Channel 9 broadcast Polk, Meigs, and McMinn County Polling Hours on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, to BEGIN AT 9:00 A.M. AND CLOSE AT 8:00 P.M. Your viewers hear Hamilton County hours and assume ours is the same. Your help will be greatly appreciated.

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“Phone Gap” in the Polls?

Mon/10:12am

“The cellphone polls have Obama ahead by an average of 9.4 points; the landline-only polls, 5.1 points.”

- Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight.com

. Click here to view the embedded video.

Obama in Cincinnati

Mon/10:03am

Above: Obama in Cincinnati yesterday.

I’m keeping an eye out for clips of the candidates today, so check back later.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

McCain in Florida

Mon/10:01am

Above: a midnight rally in Miami, last night.

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Where the Race Stands

Mon/9:54am

Above: NBC’s Chuck Todd maps out McCain’s path to victory.

From Chuck & others at MSNBC’s First Read blog:

*** Obama has a clear lead: With just a day left until Election Day, Obama holds an eight-point lead over McCain among likely voters, 51%-43%, according to the final national NBC/WSJ poll before the election. That’s down slightly from Obama’s 53%-to-42% advantage from almost two weeks ago. Still, to put his current lead into perspective, the last NBC/WSJ survey before the 2004 presidential election showed Bush with a slim one-point edge over Kerry, 48%-47%. Bush went on to win that election, 51%-48%. Looking inside the crosstabs, Obama’s advantage is largely based on his overwhelming success with African Americans (winning them 90%-3%), Latinos (68%-27%), and 18 to 34 year olds (59%-38%). It’s about as solid of a three-legged support stool as any candidate could ask for. Obama also wins independents (48%-38%), blue-collar voters (51%-44%), suburban voters (49%-44%), and Catholics (49%-46%). McCain, meanwhile, has the advantage among evangelicals (78%-19%), those 65 and older (53%-40%), white men (54%-42%), and white women (48%-47%). One more thing: 30% say they’ve already voted, and those voters break by an identical 51%-43% margin. One thing that might keep the McCain folks somewhat hopeful about our numbers: We have Democrats with a +10 advantage on party ID; McCain’s team believes the electorate won’t produce that margin tomorrow.

*** Liking McCain but loving Obama: The poll also shows that McCain and Obama are pretty well liked by voters. McCain has a 47%-39% fav/unfav rating, while Obama’s is larger at 56%-35%. But what’s striking is the intensity gap — almost twice as many respondents (44%) rate Obama “very positive” than they do for McCain (24%). In short, McCain’s supporters like him, but Obama’s LOVE him. Think about that 44% number for a minute: Obama’s overall ballot number is 51%, meaning that 86% of Obama’s supporters have a VERY positive view of him. Not since Reagan in 1980 has a base of supporters loved its nominee so much. Also, for the second-straight NBC/WSJ poll, Palin has a net-negative fav/unfav (39%-48%), while Biden has a net-positive one (50%-30%). In fact, if you add up Obama’s and Biden’s favorable scores, you get 106; for McCain-Palin, it’s 86.

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Good Grief!

Mon/9:45am

Georgia has become THE state to watch.

Just look at those polls!

It’s quite possible (& I chose it as such in the pool) that it could be the state with the closest margin of victory for either candidate.

The Senate race, I believe, is still Saxby Chambliss’ to lose.. but that prediction gets upended, I think, with an Obama upset.

What do you think?

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Where They’re Headed in the Final Stretch

Mon/9:39am

From the AP: “UNDATED (AP) - As if today’s fever-pitch campaigning weren’t enough, the presidential candidates will break tradition and stump on Election Day. John McCain goes to Colorado and New Mexico. Barack Obama swings through Indiana before returning to Chicago. McCain rallied Latino voters just after midnight in Miami. Later this morning, he takes his message to Tampa, then to Tennessee, where he’ll be able to hit the Virginia media market. Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona also will see McCain. Running mate Sarah Palin is trying to woo conservatives in Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. Obama’s route is geographically less demanding. He rallies this morning in Jacksonville, Fla., and later goes to Virginia and North Carolina. His running mate, Joe Biden, is going to Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Polls show the six closest states are Florida, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada and Ohio. The campaigns also are running aggressive ground games elsewhere, including Iowa, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Colorado and Virginia.”

Tennessee? Yes, McCain will be in Blountville. Read more here.

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What’s Gonna Happen?

Mon/9:32am

Click here for a post I added featuring questions for an election night pool that I’m taking part in.

Feel free to register your predictions in the comments section!

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When Polls Close Tomorrow

Mon/8:43am

Courtesy of the Huffington Post

This all gets tossed out the window if lines are long.. which may be why we may not know results of the states on that map until well after the polls are supposed to close..

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Joe the Plumber Questions Obama’s Patriotism

Mon/8:42am

Above: Joe the Plumber on the Fox News Channel over the weekend.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Palin “Punk’d”

Mon/8:38am

Above: two Canadian comedians fool Palin into thinking she’s talking to the President of France.

. Click here to view the embedded video.

That’s a New One

Mon/8:35am

Above: South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, saying the polls demonstrate Barack Obama is “the virtual incumbent,” & thus can’t win in this environment that’s hungry for change.

. Click here to view the embedded video.

New Anti-Biden Ad: “Lies & Sighs”

Mon/8:28am

This ad is effective, but made slightly less so by the misspelling on the screen, 0:56 seconds in:

. Click here to view the embedded video.

Pennsylvania Republicans Bring Up Wright in New Ad

Mon/8:20am

(Warning: blasphemous language)

Why is Pennsylvania such a battleground? Voters don’t vote early there.

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Obamacan Update

Mon/8:13am

Roger Cohen:

“Lifelong Republicans turning to Obama has been one of the themes I’ve picked up in this campaign, ever since, back in January, I ran into Bryant Jones, an Idaho-raised Republican who’d volunteered for Obama in South Carolina.For Jones, it was disenchantment with “my-way-or-the-highway politics and the same old faces.””

“My-way-or-the-highway” politics. That’s a major reason President Bush was such a failure (read more of my thoughts on that here, in yesterday’s post). & I hope that both Democrats and Republicans heed the lesson in this: no matter who is president - but particularly if a President Obama finds himself with a Democratic majority in Congress - we can’t afford to discount a person’s idea because they aren’t a member of the right party. Obama will fall, & fall hard if he tries this. This is the singular reason President Bush did such a bad job - all recent presidents from all recent parties recognized they’d never succeed by paying attention to the needs of just one constituency. UPDATE: Mon/10:23am: More Obamacans explain themselves here & here. .

Why a McCain Win Would Be a Good Thing for Liberals

Mon/8:09am

The conservative New York Times columnist (who bears quite a bit of responsibility for bringing Sarah Palin to the world, not to mention the Iraq war) writes liberals should think the world has ended if John McCain wins, for reasons including:

“It would be a victory for an underdog. Liberals are supposed to like underdogs. McCain is a lonely guy standing up against an unprecedentedly well-financed, superorganized, ExxonMobil-like Obama juggernaut. A McCain upset victory would be a classic liberal happy ending.”

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Why She’s Failed to Catch Fire

Mon/8:02am

Of course she’s caught fire among members of the Republican base. But she’s certainly not winning over independents or moderate Republicans (scroll down for a new poll for more on that).

Peter Beinart suggests it may be that her appearance came at the end of the ‘Culture War:”

“Why has America turned on Sarah Palin? Obviously, her wobbly television interviews haven’t helped. Nor have the drip, drip of scandals from Alaska, which have tarnished her reformist image. But Palin’s problems run deeper, and they say something fundamental about the political age being born. Palin’s brand is culture war, and in America today culture war no longer sells. The struggle that began in the 1960s — which put questions of racial, sexual and religious identity at the forefront of American politics — may be ending. Palin is the end of the line.” .

Strategic Strengths & Weaknesses

Mon/7:57am

Great summary of what went right for Obama & wrong for McCain from E.J. Dionne:

ON McCAIN:

“In state after state during the primaries, McCain drew heavily on the votes of independents, moderates and Republicans who were unhappy with Bush. But instead of carrying on as the un-Bush who defied conservative orthodoxy, McCain embraced the right for fear of losing it. He chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, which finally earned him cries of approval from the GOP base but sent moderate voters scurrying Obama’s way.”"

ON OBAMA:

“He saw an opening for a young African American senator with brief Washington experience, realizing that the very unlikeliness of his candidacy would enhance its attractiveness.

He did more than give Americans a chance to ease the burdens of race. He invited them to embrace his very newness and thereby move past the 1960s, the ’80s, the ’90s and the Bush era all at once. “It’s time to turn the page,” Obama would say, and there were many pages Americans wanted to turn.

His post-everything candidacy, wrapped in a powerful rhetoric of hope, was immensely attractive to the young. They became the happy warriors of campaign manager David Plouffe’s meticulously organized national machine. It worked its magic in neighborhoods never before blessed with even a precinct captain.”

Pretty much the race, in a nutshell.

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ABC Poll: He’s a Net Positive, She’s a Net Negative

Mon/7:53am

From the Washington Post:

Respondents’ reactions to Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee, are also closely linked to how much they factor age into their preferences: Sixty percent of those who said age is an important consideration said Palin lowers the odds that they will vote for the GOP ticket. Overall, nearly half of all respondents said they are less likely to vote for McCain because she is on the ticket, a sharp increase from previous polls.

By contrast, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. is a net positive for Obama, even as nearly six in 10 respondents said the senator from Delaware does not influence their views one way or the other.

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ABC Poll: McCain’s ‘Socialist’ Attacks Aren’t Sticking

Mon/7:50am

From the Washington Post:

The new Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll puts Obama well out in front over Republican John McCain and finds that Obama has firmly reestablished his advantage on handling the economy, beaten back a challenge on taxes and has an edge in terms of perceptions about which candidate would better deal with an unexpected major crisis.

The McCain campaign, meanwhile, has countered with improved outreach into the tossup states, neutralizing what had been a big advantage for the Democrat 10 days ago. More than a third of all voters in the six states The Post calls “up for grabs” — Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Montana, Missouri and Indiana — said they have heard from the McCain campaign in the past week. That is up sharply from the third week of October and on par with the number who have been contacted by Obama’s campaign.

Obama and McCain roughly split the vote in the six states combined — 51 percent back Obama, and 47 percent support McCain. Overall in the tracking poll, Obama holds an 11-point advantage, at the top end of the seven-to-11-point range he has held since the final presidential debate in mid-October.”

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Live from New York

Mon/7:39am:

Watch McCain’s funny Saturday Night Live appearance here. Check this Vote08 post to see a clip of an earlier SNL McCain appearance (he sings Streisand!).

UPDATE/Mon-10:09am

James Fallows says this SNL appearance shows that McCain has accepted defeat.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

(left: image by Matt Brunson. Click on the picture to read our post explaining how they’re the Fantastic Four)

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***REMINDER: Today is the last day to vote early in Georgia***

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“Yes We Carve“

By the way, there’s a whole website dedicated to Obama-themed Pumpkins. Click here.

How to carve a McCain pumpkin: click here.

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Hamilton County Donor Update

NewsChannel9’s Kim Fields found this info online:

McCain:

# of Contributors: 493
Amount Donated: $265,972.00

Average contribution: $539.50

Obama:

# of Contributors: 1189
Amounted Donated: $233,556.00

Average contribution: $196.43
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McCain’s Closing Ad: ‘Freedom’

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Obama in Iowa

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“Or???“

Above: McCain with GMA’s Robin Roberts. What do you think he means?

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Gore Stumps in His ‘Waterloo’ State

Above: Al Gore in West Palm Beach, Florida today.

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An Unforced Error

From the LA Times:

“On Thursday at a rally in Erie, Pa., Sarah Palin touted the victors in the World Series to thousands of supporters. “I am thrilled to be here in the home state of the world-champion Philadelphia Phillies,” Palin said.

The crowd booed.

Philadelphia is a seven-hour drive from Erie, which is in the state’s far west. Erie’s baseball devotions are split between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cleveland Indians. (Pittsburgh and Cleveland are about two hours away.)”

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Hunkering Down

E-mail from a relative who’s an ardent Rush Limbaugh lover, Obama-fearer, & McCain-Palin voter (in that order)***:

“This weekend you should stock up on batteries, canned goods, matches, fill your car with gas, dried beans, corn, etc, jerky, and fill up available containers with potable water. If you have water purification equipment keep it handy. If you have white gas lanterns, stoves, etc, make sure they are in good operation and that you have plenty of fuel by this Tuesday. Having lived through the MLK and the Bobby K. killings, I know it pays to be prepared.”

***CLARIFICATION: said relative says “You got the order wrong. It’s #1) Palin, #2) Limbaugh, #3,497) (tie) McCain and O’Bama-both liberals (but McCain is a couple of points ahead because he would not appoint Hillary to the Supreme Court.)”

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Dole Doubles Down

The North Carolina incumbent senator airs yet another ad attacking her rival, Kay Hagan.

Thanks to NewsChannel9’s Kim Fields for the tip.

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(Not) Covering the Biggest Rumors of Campaign 2008

Politico pulls back the curtain to reveal the biggest rumor tips from viewers that they chose not to cover. Personally, at NewsChannel9 the most common one -by far- we got from callers/e-mailers/Vote08 commenters was the ‘Obama citizenship’ story, about which Politico says:

“So why isn’t this getting wide coverage? Well, first, there’s lots of evidence that Obama was born in the United States, and none that he wasn’t. The campaign handed over an official copy of his short-form birth certificate — the standard document produced by the Hawaii Department of Health — to Factcheck.org. And Poliltico has confirmed the authenticity of a contemporaneous announcement of his birth in the Honolulu Advertiser.”

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Two New Obama Ads

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Palin on Good Morning America

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Why Black People Shouldn’t Vote for Obama

An independent ad above says Because Martin Luther King said so.

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Obama: “Game Back On” in GA

ATLANTA (AP) - Democrat Barack Obama is putting television ads back up on the air in Georgia.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Friday “early vote is going extremely well in Georgia.”
In September, the Obama camp took down its ads and moved some paid staff out of Georgia suggesting it was retreating from its pledge to compete in the reliably Republican state.
But new polls have suggested Obama is close to GOP candidate John McCain in the state. And blacks have turned out in disproportionately high numbers for early voting.
Plouffe said the state is winnable, although any victory would be a narrow one.

Check the latest Georgia poll average here.

I’d have to say out of all the states, that one is by far the most interesting.

Obama’s also now buying ad time in North Dakota (!) & Arizona (!!). Read more here.

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New Endorsement for McCain: From Obama

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NC Senate Race: Hagan Responds to Dole’s ‘Godless’ Ad

Watch the Dole ad in this Vote08 post.

North Carolina newspapers weigh in:

“..worse than dishonest.” - the Greensboro News Record

“..one of the more egregious examples of negative campaigning.” - the Asheville Citizen-Times

“It has no place in N.C. politics.” - the Charlotte Observer

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The Center-Right Candidate for a Center-Right Country

Despite McCain’s admission he “doesn’t know much about economics,” Charles Krauthammer argues (somewhat bitterly, it seems) that McCain’s economic plans would be more appropriate given the overall politics of the nation.

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Still Undecided?

An AP Poll finds 1 in 7 - 14% - of voters remain undecided, with just 4 days to go:

“Who are they? They look a lot like the voters who’ve already locked onto a candidate, though they’re more likely to be white and less likely to be liberal. And they disproportionately backed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s failed run for the Democratic nomination.”

Kathleen Parker has an exercise designed to help you make your choice.

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Yesterday’s ‘Last Day’ to Early Vote in TN

Above: watch our report at 5:30 on what’s on voters’ minds.

Final tally: 67,515 people in Hamilton County voted early. By my calculation (PDF file), that’s 49% of ALL voters for president from Hamilton County in 2004.

Also, early voting in Hamilton County increased by 154% from 2004.

That. Is. Amazing.

Hamilton County Clerk Bill Knowles faxed NewsChannel 9 on Friday to say that he’s placing a police officer on site at the election commission next Tuesday to “safeguard the equipment & ballots.”

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She’s Here to Stay

I agree with Eugene Robinson today, who acknowledges Sarah Palin will be a national figure even if her ticket (sorry, make that McCain’s ticket) doesn’t win next Tuesday. Her star is nothing but rising. Those who discount her as a “lightweight” or “bubble-headed” do so at their own peril.

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Happy Halloween from Vote08!

[& for those of you who don't honor the holiday - Happy Reformation Day!]

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Just 5 Days to Go!

.

***Reminder: TODAY’s your LAST DAY to vote early in Tennessee & FRIDAY is your LAST DAY to vote early in Georgia!***

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Straddling the Eras of Slavery & Black Presidential Candidates

Above: 109 year old Texas resident Amanda Jones, daughter of a slave, who just cast her vote for Barack Obama for President.

Regardless of whom you hope will win the White House, this truly is an amazing achievement for our country.

Obama in the Sunshine State

[scroll down to see Biden, McCain & Palin]

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Are Late-Undecided Voters McCain’s ‘Lifeboat?’

Dick Morris thinks the answer is yes.

Nate Silver thinks the answer is no.

This article takes a look at last-week undecided trends from past elections.

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Palin Stumps in Rush’s Hometown

..that would be Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Scroll down to see McCain in Ohio.

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Biden, Like Palin, in the Show-Me State

[Scroll down to see Sarah Palin & John McCain.]

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Can He Keep His Mouth Shut Until Tuesday?

The Politico weighs the pros & cons of Biden’s contributions to the campaign trail.

Also: the Obama campaign tries to clarify Biden’s “mark my words” comment in a new ad:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Racism Knows No Party

Read examples of racism from the left this election season here.

But whatever you do, don’t pigeonhole rednecks:

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TR’s a Socialist!!!

Read a letter to the New York Times from 1908 that brands McCain’s favorite president with his current favorite perjorative for his opponent.

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Pro-McCain Robocalls Now Hitting Homes in…Arizona

Read more about it here.

Is McCain really in that much trouble in his home state? Check the average of polls here. The Obama camp claims their internal polls are tightening.

Personally, I don’t think he’s going to lose his home state. But it may be the ultimate margin of victory that McCain’s trying to manipulate.

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McCain Ad: He’s Not Ready…Yet

What’s with the “yet” in this ad? Bob Cesca has a theory.

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Is Palin Looking Down the Road to 2012?

It would appear so, based on the clip above. A loss will have the conventional wisdom coronating her as the 2012 front-runner. However, there may be a few in the GOP who have been holding their tongues until after the ballots have been cast.

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Pizza Politics

From Domino’s Pizza, via Marc Ambinder. I sent this out to the newsroom & got a funny response from operations engineer John Creel, whose text below is in red:

Republicans

— Spend more per order than other consumers.

(*WITH THE OIL MONEY PROFITS WE CAN SPEND MORE.)

— They rely on credit cards to pay more than other consumers.

(*DOESN’T EVERYBODY’S HAVE A AMERICAN EXPRESS GOLD CARD.)

– They tend to order two large pizzas at a time, and they’re usually
specialty pizzas.

(*EVERYTHING WORTH HAVING COMES IN 2′S. WE ALL GOTTA PAIR DON’T WE.)
– They are more likely to order online, and more likely to pick up their
orders.

(*LIMOS ARE GREAT FOR PICKING UP PIZZAS, ESPECIALLY WHEN LOBBYIST ARE
BUYING.)

Democrats

— Rely on delivery more than Republicans.

(*DELIVERY BOY IS A JUST A GUY TRYING TO MAKE A BUCK. WE’RE SPREADING THE WEALTH WITH HIM.)

– Pay cash more than other consumers.

(*CREDIT CARDS LEAVE A PAPER TRAIL TO FOLLOW. WE DON’T LIKE ANYTHING TRACEABLE BACK TO US.)

– Like more variety with their orders, opting for side items, chicken and
beverages more than Republicans.

(*WE LIKE OUR PIZZA LIKE OUR POLITICS … LOTS OF VARIETY.)

(*REPUBLICANS CALL THE SIDE ITEMS PORK, BUT WE PUT THEM ON OUR
CONGRESSIONAL BILLS AND VOTERS LOVE THEM.)

Funny stuff, John! Thanks!

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‘Joe’ a No-Show

Oops. Maybe he was recording his album?

More from McCain’ speech in Defiance, Ohio:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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North Carolina Senate Race Gets Ugly

The ad above may be remembered as one of the worst in the country for the year 2008. It’s also a sign of how much trouble Elizabeth Dole finds herself in. The worst part about the ad is the woman saying “there is no God” at the end which is NOT Kay Hagan, Dole’s opponent. No politician who has integrity - on either side of the aisle - would do something like that.

…but how much of the ad is true? Click here for a fact-check.

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Georgia Senate Race Called a ”Tossup”

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com speculates on the spellbinding Georgia Senate race:

“Very quick observation about Georgia’s senate race, which along with California’s Proposition 8, may be the thing to watch on Election Night in the event of an Obama blowout. The polls, from what I can tell, are showing a fairly high undecided vote among the African-American population. Rasmussen’s most recent poll, which had Saxby Chambliss up by two, shows that 12 percent of black voters are undecided in the senate race. Were those voters to split 4:1 to Jim Martin, that would be worth a net of around 2 points to him, making the race a tie. SurveyUSA, likewise, shows a higher rate of undecideds among black voters (7%) than among whites (3%).

Related thought: it’s very difficult to imagine what a Chambliss-Obama voter looks like. It’s pretty easy to imagine what a McCain-Martin voter looks like. So if the Georgia polls have Obama down by 4 or 5 points, but Martin down by 2 or 3 points (as they do), something doesn’t quite seem right; I’d think the gap should be a bit wider.

Basically, I think this race is a true toss-up rather than a Lean R. African-American voters might be unfamiliar with Jim Martin, who didn’t become the nominee until August, but the ‘D’ beside his name is worth a lot..”
.

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Local Early Voting Report

Above: at long last, the folks at Freedom Blogging have finally enabled me to post videos from NewsChannel9.com here. Above: NewsChannel9’s Erica Green has an early voting report.

The Hamilton County Election Commission says as of Wednesday, 61576 people have voted early.

Reminder: TODAY’s your LAST DAY to vote early in Tennessee & FRIDAY is your LAST DAY to vote early in Georgia!

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McCain Matching Obama in Battleground State Ad Buys

From the Boston Globe:

“Ad spending and ad placement data obtained from Democratic and Republican operatives show that in the closing days of the campaign the Republican voice has grown louder in states such as Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

For instance, Obama had been scheduled to buy about $2.5 million in Florida ads for the last week of the campaign. McCain is now set to spend about $1.6 million and the Republican National Committee added $1.5 million to their buy in the state this week. Obama appears to have added more weight to his ads since.”

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New Battleground State Polls

From Time magazine:

Pennsylvania: Obama 55, McCain 43
North Carolina: Obama 52, McCain 46
Nevada: Obama 52, McCain 45
Ohio: Obama 51, McCain 47
Arizona: McCain 53, Obama 46

Find out more info, including male/female & making over $50K/under $50K preferences here.

How about those Arizona numbers? Here’s another one, from NBC, that’s no doubt making McCain nervous. [Remember, Al Gore infamously lost his home state in 2000.]

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What Obama’s ‘Infomercial‘ Reminded Me Of Most

Think about it: what ad since 1984 can that infomercial compare to, besides this one?

Nate Silver adds:

“Discuss: all else being equal, the most optimistic candidate wins the election. And that’s definitely the mood that Obama is going for with this thing.”

I also would point out that not mentioning John McCain or President Bush was stroke of genius. It makes it harder for the right to criticize the ad because of this.

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Whoops:

Above: a screen grab from Fox News yesterday.

This is not the first time Fox’s graphics department has gotten it wrong.

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Campaign Quiz Time

Test your 2008 campaign knowledge here, & answer questions that include

2. Which one of these statements did Barack Obama make while campaigning?

A) “I’ve now been in 57 states. I think one left to go.”

B) “Most of all, I believe in you, Nebraska. Or South Dakota. Or wherever I am.”

C) “We’ve come so far since we began this campaign 21 years ago.”

Here’s a trivia question I’d add: which two presidential candidates stopped in Chattanooga during the primary season? (answer here)

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[below: the latest writings about the state of the conservative movement, as expressed by conservatives]

George Will:

From the invasion of Iraq to the selection of Sarah Palin, carelessness has characterized recent episodes of faux conservatism. Tuesday’s probable repudiation of the Republican Party will punish characteristics displayed in the campaign’s closing days.

Some polls show that Palin has become an even heavier weight in John McCain’s saddle than his association with George W. Bush. Did McCain, who seems to think that Palin’s never having attended a “Georgetown cocktail party” is sufficient qualification for the vice presidency, lift an eyebrow when she said that vice presidents “are in charge of the United States Senate”?

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Bill & Barack

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: Bill Clinton & Barack Obama, together on stage for the first time, last night after the ‘infomercial‘ aired.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

JUST 6 MORE DAYS

The Infomercial

I thought it was well-done. It certainly beats Ross Perot’s informercial from 1992.

He kept it positive - didn’t mention the word “Bush” once.

Watch & tell me what you think.

Read McCain’s ‘prebuttal’ to the infomercial here.

A lot of you have voted already. As of Monday, more than 50,000 people have voted in Hamilton County.

Which way are early voters leaning? Marc Ambinder:

Obama leads by 16 points among likely voters, by 17 points among independents, by 13 points among men, by 20 points among women, is tied among whites, and is up eight among white Catholics. Of the 15 percent of the sample who’ve already voted, Obama leads by 19 points (although this subsample has a fairly large MoE). 74% of Obama’s backers say they support him “strongly,” which is 20 points higher than the percentage who say the same about their support for McCain.

Click here for the full Pew results, as of Tuesday.

Here’s a site where you can see the early voting numbers already in from around the country. Very useful.

From that site I glean:

The number of early voters so far in Tennessee is 45% of the total number of votes in 2004. (wow.)

&, 36.4% of the ENTIRE number of votes cast in Georgia in 2004 have been cast already this year. (again, wow.)

The Peach state is turning into one of THE states to watch this year - & I had written that state off months ago, back when Bob Barr’s Georgia support started dropping off.

But now - look at this chart over at Pollster.com. We have ourselves a real nail-biter, folks.

& not just the presidential race. The battle for Saxby Chambliss’ Senate seat remains intense.

The two latest polls come from polling firms that lean either way.

The left-leaning InsiderAdvantage poll has Saxby Chambliss & Jim Martin at 46-44%, That same poll also shows McCain leading by just 1 point).

The right-leaning Strategic Vision poll has Chambliss up by 2, & McCain up by 6.

& it’s possible that Georgia may be the last Senate race called - as in called several weeks after election night. MSNBC’s First Read blog explains:

“If Martin wins, he’ll have Obama to thank because the surge in African-American turnout is clearly benefiting the Democrat. By the way, Georgia could be the state that is the final race called in the country. Why? The state has that quirky runoff law, and a third-party candidate in the race might hold one of the major party candidates under 50%. The last time Georgia hosted a Senate runoff was the last time the country elected a new Democratic president: 1992, when the election of Clinton ended up helping the Republicans pull the Senate upset (Paul Coverdell defeated Wyche Fowler). This time, however, Republicans fear that an Obama victory will only energize African Americans in the runoff and make Chambliss’ path to victory even more difficult.”

Speaking of African-American turnout, it’s huge in Georgia - check it out. Georgia’s Secretary of State reports that 35% of early voters are African-American - more than double the percentage of the state’s population.

& there seems to be a correlation between a state’s African-American voting population & percentage of early voter turnout. FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver has the details here. In short, the higher the percentage of blacks in a state, the higher early voter turnout is. The states with the highest turnout are Georgia, North Carolina & Louisiana.

Can McCain count on voters who make up their minds in this final week? The trends (from Pollster.com) from past Presidential elections, in terms of their numbers, don’t look promising:

Click this link (again, to Pollster.com) to find out which way those last-minute voters swing.

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But still, interestingly, yet probably unsurprisingly, Obama still faces a major disadvantage with voters down here in that long-GOP stronghold, the South, per ABC News:

Obama is outperforming any Democrat back to Jimmy Carter among white voters, getting 45 percent to McCain’s 52 percent. But in the South, it is a very different story. Obama fares worse among Southern whites than any Democrat since George McGovern in 1972.

Whites in the East and West tilt narrowly toward Obama (he’s up 8 and 7 points, respectively), and the two run about evenly among those in the Midwest. By contrast, Southern whites break more than 2 to 1 for McCain, 65 percent to 32 percent.

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SIX DAYS.

Barack Obama

His informercial appears on most of network TV tonight… except for ABC (read why here). Needless to say, I’m ashamed of my parent network about this. It’s airing “Pushing Daisies” instead, & running some frankly offensive promos about it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: wet, wet wet conditions in Chester, Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Doesn’t look fun at all.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: Obama making calls to undecided voters in Colorado.

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Has Obama fudged his “no tax increases for those making under $250,000″ promise this week? Marc Ambinder does some fact-checking.

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Michelle Obama appeared on Jay Leno Monday. Click here to watch.

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Why the Right’s ‘Kitchen Sink’ Philosophy is Failing

From the Toot:

“…once you’ve made a narrative choice, you do have to stick with it - you can’t just keep bouncing around, or people become confused. If you are telling the story of a scary vampire, you can’t decide in chapter 2 that he’s also 500 feet tall and radioactive and bent on destroying Tokyo, in chapter 3 that he is actually a giant man-eating shark, and in chapter 4 that he is all this and a super-terrorist trying to plant a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. All of these things are, indeed, scary, but taken together they add up to a muddle.

This is the problem. It’s not just the McCain campaign’s problem - although their inability to pick a narrative and stick to it is a special kind of inexcusable - it’s a problem for the entire wingnut noise machine. Obama is a Marxist Muslim Arab Jesus Black White Terrorist Technocrat Racist Do-Gooder Liberal FDR Stalin Hilter Commie Fascist Gay Womanizing Naive Cynical Insider Noob Boring Radical Unaccomplished Elite Slick Gaffe-Prone Pedophile Pedophile-Seducing Liberation Theology Atheist Etc. & Anti-Etc. with a bunch of scary friends from - wait for it! - the Nineteen Hundred And Sixties. It makes no sense. It’s a jumble sale of fears and scary associations from 50 years of wingnut witch hunts and smear campaigns, a flea market of pre-owned and antique resentments, and if one does detect a semi-consistent 1960’s motif running through it all, that’s because that’s when most of these ideas were coined.”

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John McCain

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: at a joint rally with Sarah Palin in Hershey Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

He also appeared in North Carolina..

…but, interestingly, without incumbent GOP Senator Elizabeth Dole. (this may be why)

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Speaking of absences, someone’s face appears to be conspicuously absent from his own party’s website.

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Is the ‘Divided Government’ Argument Going to Work?

It’s the major card McCain has left to play. But Newsweek’s Andrew Romano is pessimistic. Former Bush staffer Peter Wehner hsays the party needs to return to its reformist roots [which, I'd add, is what John McCain should have pushed harder for - challenging his party to return to its fundamental principles - instead of blatantly pandering to its base, which has spent the past year essentially rooting for the status quo, or at least is blind to why the status quo is in such a sorry state].

Here’s a ‘Silver Lining’ for Republicans, though:

Single-party government rarely works for very long. It tends to overreach when there are no limits to those in power (see Congress/President Bush, 2002-2006). If this plays out, that will bode well for the beginning of a comeback for the now-battered GOP. [though I will say that if you sat on your hands & approved of how things were run under Republican leadership, you have a smaller rhetorical leg to stand on.]

& here’s a reason Democrats might prefer divided government:

['divided' here being less than a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate]

If this crazy year ends the way the trends are looking - that Obama will be elected - Obama’s historical standing would improve if he brought about change with the help & support of the minority party.

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The Keystone State Conundrum

Why is McCain behind Obama in the Pennsylvania polls? Michael Barone hazards a guess:

“My hypothesis is that that is because places like the Philly suburbs are places where the recent decline in household wealth has been most conspicuous. Housing prices mean a lot more to you when your house started off at $400,000 and declined to $290,000 than they did when you started off (as may be typical of Scranton or a blue-collar town in metro Pittsburgh) at $140,000 and declined to $110,000. Newspaper coverage of our current economic distress focuses on the very poor (like a recent Washington Post story on North Carolina, which focused on an ex-convict in a cheap motel in Charlotte), but the people who are getting hurt most visibly in their lifelong project of accumulating wealth are the more affluent. They’re the ones whose house values have most visibly and spectacularly declined, and whose 401(k) accounts and stock portfolios have tanked in the last few months as well. Folks in Scranton or in the cheap motel in Charlotte didn’t expect to live comfortably ever after off their increased house values, 401(k)’s, and Merrill Lynch accounts; a $700 monthly check from Social Security is about what they have long expected and that’s not in danger (yet). Folks in the Philly suburbs did expect to live comfortably off such assets.”

& he concludes

“The irony here is that voters motivated by anger at the decline in their wealth seem about to elect a president who has promised to embark on wealth-destroying policies.”

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What Hath Karl Rove Wrought?

The exodus of a chunk of voters - Libertarians - who traditionally vote Republican, that’s what.

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Joe Biden

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a view-from-the-crowd at a Joe rally in New Port Richey, Florida on Monday. He remained in Florida on Tuesday.

Sarah Palin

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, appearing with McCain.

.

Sadly, there appears to be quite a few reports of ‘ugly Americanism‘ at her rallies, & that’s a shame for Palin & her supporters, who in my opinion should quickly & forcefully speak out about those who would tarnish her image, especially if you are hoping she becomes the Republican party’s standard-bearer after the election.

That’s it for now! I know it’s a lot to digest, but please feel free to comment on anything mentioned above. ALL views are welcome here.

& check back later in the day, as I’ll provide more info in this post. Let me know what you think of the ‘one-post’ format. I think I’ll stick to doing it this way through the home stretch.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Click here to view the embedded video.

Above: “I Am Joe,” a new supporter-submitted video campaign that you can see at the John McCain website blog. Click here for more, & watch a clip from Nashville after the jump.

Also: A Palin lookalike standing behind McCain pretends she’s Palin…Bill Kristol says it’s time for McCain to make his case…what would Teddy Roosevelt say about McCain?

Here’s a homemade clip from Nashville:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Funny, above: watch the woman on the right. Does she think she’s Sarah Palin? Looks like it.

Charge!

Bill Kristol:

“Situation not-so-excellent. Time for McCain to attack — or, rather, finally to make his case.

…

McCain could point out that hope is nice and prayer is good. But, he could ask: With respect to our national security, do we really want to elect a president on a hope and a prayer?

That has to be the substantive core of his closing argument. But style and tone matter, too. Last week’s New York Times/CBS News poll showed 64 percent of voters saying McCain is spending more time attacking the other candidate than explaining what he would do as president. Just 22 percent say the same of Obama.

When you’re in a hole, stop digging. McCain could order his campaign to pull all negative ads, mailers and robocalls.

For that matter, he might as well muzzle the campaign.”

What’s TR’s Take?

What John McCain & I have in common: We both consider Theodore Roosevelt one of the nation’s best-ever presidents.

The New York Times takes some editorial liberties with actual recorded statements of the 26th President to offer commentary about the current race (click here for TR’s ‘take’ on Obama):

“Q. I hope that doesn’t include the pair running for the presidency! What do you think of Senator John McCain? He often cites you as a role model.

A. He is evidently a man who takes color from his surroundings.

Q. Weren’t you just as unpredictable in your time?

A. (laughing) They say that nothing is as independent as a hog on ice. If he doesn’t want to stand up, he can lie down.

Q. Mr. McCain has always prided himself on his independence. At least, until he began to take direction from chief executives and retired generals —

A. But the signs now are that these advisers have themselves awakened to the fact that they have almost ruined him.

…

Q. Talking of foreign policy, what do you think of Mr. McCain’s choice of a female running mate?

A. Times have changed (sigh). It is entirely inexcusable, however, to try to combine the unready hand with the unbridled tongue.

Q. How will you feel if Sarah Palin is elected?

A. I shall feel exactly the way a very small frog looks when it swallows a beetle the size of itself, with extremely stiff legs.

…

Q. One last question, Colonel. If you were campaigning now, would you still call yourself a Republican?

A. (after a long pause) No.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Above: in Reno, Nevada, today.

RENO, Nev. (AP) - Democratic candidate Barack Obama is mocking his Republican rival, John McCain, for trying to distance himself from President Bush.
Speaking Saturday at a baseball stadium in the toss-up state of Nevada, Obama said it is too late for McCain to say that Bush let the economy get out of whack.
Obama puts it this way: “John McCain attacking George Bush for his out-of-hand economic policy is like Dick Cheney attacking George Bush for his go-it-alone foreign policy.”
Obama says that Bush must not be offended by McCain’s tactics because the president has already cast his vote - an early vote for McCain.
For his part, McCain is telling voters in New Mexico that Obama is just another tax-and-spend liberal.

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After the jump: New developments in the Obama citizenship lawsuit…a power outage stops Obama from speaking…a new RNC ad says Obama’s unready for a coming storm..a new 2-minute Obama ad…a “home-made” ad for Obama in Tennessee

Judge Dismisses Obama Citizenship Lawsuit

I hate to say I told you so…

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A federal judge in Philadelphia is dismissing a lawsuit challenging Barack Obama’s legal qualifications to be president.
He rejected the suit brought by attorney Philip Berg, who alleges that Obama is not a U.S. citizen and therefore is ineligible for the presidency.
Berg claims that Obama is either a citizen of his father’s native Kenya or became a citizen of Indonesia after he moved there as a boy.
Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother and a Kenyan father. His parents divorced and his mother married an Indonesian man.
Internet-fueled conspiracy theories question whether Obama is a “natural-born citizen” as required by the Constitution for a presidential candidate and whether he lost his citizenship while living abroad.
The judge has ruled that Berg lacks standing to bring the case.

The Sound of Silence

From the New York Times:

Mr. Obama was precisely 9 minutes and 40 seconds into his speech, beginning a sentence, “We need policies that grow our economy…” when suddenly silence fell over Peccole Park, a baseball stadium on the Reno campus of the University of Nevada.

The power had gone out. So for several blissfully quiet minutes, Mr. Obama waded into the crowd to shake hands as aides frantically sought to repair the problem.

“I told you, folks are having a tough time making their electricity bills,” Mr. Obama said with a laugh, once his microphone finally came back to life. “Either that or somebody from the McCain campaign kicked our plug out of the socket.”

Stormy Weather

Very arty waves, there. In fact, it made me think of a common painting motif from Japan:

Obama Out with New 2-Minute Ad

“Go Colorblind & Lead”

Above: Home-made ad for Obama from a Tennessee supporter. Nicely done. Even if you don’t plan on voting for Obama, I hope you can appreciate the man’s sentiment.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

(also after the jump: “Battle of the Robocalls”)

AP: Obama 44, McCain 43. Read more here.

Fox/Opinion Dynamics: Obama 49, McCain 40. Read more here.

More numbers - LOTS more numbers - from Pew, here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Battle of the Robocalls

From Talking Points Memo:

The Obama campaign plans to unleash a robocall in Wisconsin tomorrow that hits back hard against John McCain’s robocalls in the state — it features a small business owner from Green Bay, Wisconsin, that says she’s been turned against McCain by his “sleazy” roboslime campaign against Obama.

Listen to the call here.

ABC has a slew of transcripts of McCain’s “robocalls” here.

Do they work? The Toronto Star tries to answer that question.

I know these types of calls are offensive to most people - much like a telemarketer’s offensive, but I have to admit, political junkie that I am, that I’d love to get one. Careful what you ask for, right?

Tonight on NewsChannel 9 at 5:30 we’ll meet a man who quit his job as a “robocall” voice, & find out why he did.

Hamilton County Early Voting So Far

27,054, as of yesterday. Click here for daily totals.

Nice going, folks! Let’s keep it up! You have no excuse, if you’re registered. Early voting continues through October 30th, & you can do so at the Hamilton County Election Commission, Northgate Mall, or the Brainerd Rec Center.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Endorsed by the Reform Party & NASCAR legend Richard Petty.

Click here to view the embedded video.

McCain returned to the David Letterman show last night. This after he cancelled an appearance last month. McCain encountered air traffic gridlock in Philly yesterday & rented a helicopter to make sure he reached the Letterman show on time.

Like Obama, McCain cracked wise at the Al Smith Memorial Dinner last night:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Joe the Plumber in New McCain Ad

Latest GA Poll Has McCain Up By 6

Read about it here.

The same poll has Saxby Chambliss leading by 2.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Endorsed by the Washington Post & the New Yorker.

He appeared (like McCain) last night at the Al Smith Memorial Dinner in Manhattan to crack wise:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

New Ad: “It Gets Worse”

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Post-Debate Ad Links McCain & Bush

Take note of this ad’s devastating use of McCain’s body language last night, as I talked about here.

On NewsChannel9.com’s main page: a new web poll that asks “who would make a better president?”

Go vote!

Heading into Red-State Territory

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) - Bolstered by surging poll numbers and after standing his ground in last night’s final debate, Barack Obama is boldly going where Democratic presidential candidates have not done so well in recent elections.
Two Democrats with knowledge of the strategy say he’s launching TV ads in West Virginia, which hadn’t been on the list of target states until recently.
Obama lost West Virginia in the Democratic primary to Hillary Rodham Clinton as he struggled to win over working-class whites. But Democrats say the economic turmoil in the hard-hit state and TV ads Obama has been running in neighboring states have made West Virginia competitive.
And they say Obama’s campaign also is considering pouring money into reliably Republican Kentucky, and may yet return to the airwaves in North Dakota and Georgia. Those are two states Obama had tried to put in play over the summer. He pulled out when they appeared out of reach.
Despite his rising fortunes, Obama offered a word of caution at a fundraiser this morning in New York. He said, for anyone getting cocky or giddy, “two words for you: New Hampshire.” That’s where he got smacked by voters right after he won the Iowa caucuses.
John McCain, meanwhile, is being forced to campaign in what had been solidly GOP territory.

Look at how Obama & McCain are currently doing in West Virginia here. Now that’s a battleground.

Rove: He Hasn’t Closed the Sale

“This week also brought a reminder that Sen. Obama hasn’t closed the sale. The Washington Post/ABC poll found 45% of voters still don’t think he’s qualified to be president, about the same number who doubted his qualifications in March.

This is seven points more than George W. Bush’s highest reading in 2000 and the worst since Michael Dukakis’s 56% unqualified rating in 1988.”

World Series Game 6 Pushed Back to Make Room for Obama Commercial

NEW YORK (AP) - Major League Baseball has agreed to push back the start time of a potential World Series Game 6 by eight minutes to allow Democrat Barack Obama to purchase a half-hour of air time on the Fox network.
Baseball spokesman Pat Courtney said Thursday that the game time would now be set for 8:35 p.m.
The Obama presidential campaign said Oct. 9 that it had bought the 8-8:30 p.m slot on CBS and NBC.
“Fox will accommodate Senator Obama’s desire to communicate with voters in this long-form format,” network spokesman Lou D’Ermilio said in a statement.
The World Series has not gone to a sixth game since 2003.
The decision was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

How Much Would Your Obama Tax Cut Be?

The campaign provides a calculator on its website.

Here Obama is in New Hampshire today:

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Post-Debate Ad Rips the Incumbent

On NewsChannel9.com’s main page: a new web poll that asks “who would make a better president?”

Go vote!

His Best Debate Moment

Joan Venocchi:

“McCain had at least one good line last night: “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush you should’ve run four years ago.” But one good line isn’t a lifeline.

BUT

The Arizona senator finally mentioned Bill Ayers and ACORN to his opponent’s face. But he can’t link Obama to Ayers and domestic terrorism, or to the controversial community group called Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, as tightly as Obama can link McCain to Bush. And that remains one of Obama’s biggest advantages in this race.”

What the Right Thought

John Podhoretz:

“The general feeling on the right side of the blogosphere is that this was McCain’s best debate and he did himself a lot of good. I think people on the Right were so relieved that the debate finally turned to matters of ideological and partisan moment — abortion, ACORN, Ayers, trade, spending — that, perhaps for the first time in his political career, they graded him on a curve. The problem, in my view, is that the shorthand in which McCain spoke about these matters made them comprehensible only to those of us who are already schooled in them. In almost every case, Obama answered McCain’s shorthand with longhand — with detailed, even long-winded answers that gave the distinct impression he was more in command of the details of these charges than the man who was trying to go after him on them.

We’re not the audience for these debates. Undecided voters are, and undecided voters are, or so studies tell us, often astonishingly ill-informed. You can only bring up new issues if you’re able pithily to explain the context and meaning of them. It is not a rap on McCain to say he’s not good at it; he doesn’t want to bother with the introduction. But in a setting like that, the introduction is what matters, far more than the attack.”

As a person whose “day job” consists of constantly attempting to make complex stories “clear & easy to understand,” I completely agree with this assessment.

Daniel Larison at the American Conservative (essential read):

“There is a basic rule in any competition, and elections are no different. If you assume that all you really need do is show up and wait for the other side to fail, you will lose and probably quite embarrassingly at that. McCain never made the case for himself, because he assumed that he would be the default winner once the public decided Obama was unprepared. Whether or not Obama is unprepared by some standards is not the point. Relative to McCain, he has shown himself to be fairly masterful while his opponent blunders and lurches. Despite having every advantage in the political conditions this year, Obama has not taken those advantages for granted nearly as much as he could have done. The post-nomination pandering and position-switching, all of which now seems to have been quite unnecessary, were part of a steady, cautious effort to appear cautious and steady, which gave calls for undefined change a reassuring rather than an unsettling quality and negated McCain’s efforts to portray him as reckless and unready.”

&

“Perhaps most remarkable about the attempt to potray Obama as a lightweight celebrity is how true of McCain that description now seems to be.”

Above: McCain speaks on Fox News today.

RNC Ad Says Obama’s Not Ready

But: isn’t this also an argument against Sarah Palin?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

The Tennessee Senator & [former Chattanooga mayor] was at the NewsChannel9 studios Tuesday morning for a satellite interview with the Fox Business Channel; we interviewed him briefly after that, & though I was not the “main interviewer,” I did manage to get some questions in.

In your conversation with Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne back in May, you warned your party against making personal attacks against the Democratic presidential nominee, saying it actually hurt your 2006 Senate campaign. Do you still stand by that warning?

SENATOR CORKER: What I was warning against is these third-party groups that get involved, & they think they’re assisting you, OK? In our case it was the Republican National Committee that ran ads at the end of our race, uh, quote “trying to help us.” & instead over a 6-day period, they knocked us down by 10 points. & what I was saying is, that, you know, that in these campaigns you need to ask your friends not to run any kind of negative ads about your opponent, because they have unintended consequences. If the campaign itself wants to draw distinctions, I think that’s something the campaign should do, but again, these 3rd-party groups can do things that just totally adversely affect your campaign. It’s one of the results of McCain-Feingold. & I think it’s just totally out of control. I think certainly Tennessee’s not a battleground state, OK? & we’re not seeing a lot of ads here - it’d be a total waste of money in the state. But I’m sure that in the other states like Ohio & places that are battleground states, they’re having all kinds of 3rd-party ads run in those states, that have by the way all kinds of unintended consequences. & so, what I talked about to E.J. Dionne, & what I’ve talked about to others is the fact that these 3rd-party ads can be very detrimental.

Is free-market fundamentalism dead?

SENATOR CORKER: No, not at all. Look, you know, if you think about what happens every day in our banking system, the Federal Reserve opens the window if you will, & banks in essence put up collateral, & receive monies from the Fed, & so, every day there’s intervention, if you will, there’s a coordinated effort from central banks to keep our financial systems operating. This is a very exacerbated situation where excesses occurred, I don’t think people understood that there was potentially $55 trillion dollars of these derivatives that were getting ready to bring the system down. What we need to do is implement what happened properly & then come back in January & put in place reforms. I think most people understand there needs to be appropriate regulation. There was not appropriate regulation as it relates to these derivatives. I think we’ll get that straightened out over the course of this next year. I do not think that ‘free-market fundamentalism’ if you will is gone at all, I think we’ve always had it, whether it’s the airline industry, the fact that we have the F-A-A that coordinates people landing, there’s always a certain amount of government involvement. Hopefully it stays limited & as an advocate of limited government I certainly want to see that be the case. But today we had a very exacerbated problem that to me needed to be solved, our whole way of doing business was gonna come down. As you know I’ve supported that & have been very involved in negotiating taxpayer protections & oversight if you will that have come into play in this case & then I hope we can move very quickly away from this active involvement towards a regulatory regime that keeps this from happening again. But great question. Thank you.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

[Wait, what are "527s?" An explanation here.]

Long story short: they’re the groups that can put out ads attacking the other candidate that don’t require the candidate the ads favor to say “I”m (x) & I approve this message.”

Here’s what’s airing “from McCain’s side” against Obama from the “Our Country Deserves Better” PAC. Put on your helmet, & watch out for that kitchen sink:

& now here a pair of ads airing in Ohio “from Obama’s side” against McCain, from a group called “Bring Ohio Back.” The approach here is, “hey, you drink beer - I drink beer. Here’s why McCain’s wrong, etc.”

What do you think?

Are the ads fair?

Post a comment!

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Fighting the Mob Mentality

Quote of the day. I hope it’s not too late to heed this advice [Update: Never mind]:

“John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist, said top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior.

“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Sen. McCain,” Weaver said. “And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”

“Sen. Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold.””

Joe Klein:

“…we are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower. But McCain hasn’t done the right thing all year. His campaign is appalling, as the New York Times editorial board said today–and more, it is a national disgrace.”

FURTHER READING: “the Unthinkable,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates

After the jump: McCain’s plan for 401(K)s… an interview with Charles Gibson of ABC…a new Ayers ad…a McCain aide brings up Obama’s drug use…McCain loses ground with working class voters…a new web ad tying Obama & ACORN.

McCain Proposes Suspending Mandatory Stock Sales

LA CROSSE, Wis. (AP) - John McCain is proposing a plan that would suspend mandatory sale of stocks in retirement funds.
McCain said Friday that his economic plan would spare investors who have to start selling off their retirement accounts at age 70 and a half. As the economy struggles and Wall Street plunges, the value of these accounts have tanked.
McCain says investors shouldn’t have to sell their accounts as the economy is at the lowest point in years. He says the investment rules should be suspended until the stock market recovers.

Read a speech he gave in Wisconsin today here.

Above: an interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson.\

Below: A new McCain ad featuring that oldie-but-goodie, William Ayers.. again.

Ross Douthat:

“Imagine you’re an undecided voter, turning on the news tonight. You hear about the enormous plunge Wall Street took today. You hear about the U.S. government taking ownership stakes in American banks. You hear about a global economic crisis. You hear about the Great Depression.

Then the subject turns to the Presidential race - and if the news channel behaves the way the McCain campaign clearly hopes it will, the first thing you’ll see is a short feature on how John McCain has cut a new anti-Obama ad featuring Ayers, Ayers and more Ayers. It’s possible that this inspires you to think: Man, that terrorist-sympathizing Obama can’t be trusted in an economic crisis. In that case, Steve Schmidt…& sundry others are political masterminds, and I am a plain fool.

But I don’t think I’m a fool. I think McCain looks, to our hypothetical undecided, utterly disconnected from what’s happening in the world, and the details of the Ayers connection, however troubling they might be in another context, blur away into a broader impression of a flailing, desperate, out-of-touch candidate. At this point, the McCain camp seems to be taking its cues more from the liberal caricature of past conservative campaigns - that they’ve all been fundamentally unserious exercises in culture-war button-pushing - than from the campaigns themselves.”

McCain Aide Blows Hard about Obama’s Youthful Drug Use

NEW YORK (AP) - One of John McCain’s campaign co-chairs is calling Barack Obama “a guy of the street” — while raising the issue of Obama’s teenage drug use.
Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating made the remarks on comedian Dennis Miller’s radio show yesterday while talking about Obama’s record. He calls that record “very extreme” and says Obama ought to be more forthcoming about his past. Keating says Obama should admit he was “way to the left,” “used cocaine” and “voted liberally,” before moving to the political center.
In his memoir “Dreams From My Father,” Obama describes experimenting with marijuana, cocaine and alcohol as a teenager, saying he’d been headed toward becoming a “junkie” before straightening himself out.
McCain aides say Keating had not been asked to bring up Obama’s past drug use and hadn’t cleared his comments with the campaign.

Which Republican, by my reckoning, will not be eager to make this kind of argument?

Zach Wamp. Read why here.

Losing Ground with the Working Class

KITTANNING, Pa. (AP) - John McCain appears to be losing ground with white-working class voters.
Polls show people are moving away from McCain over fears their personal finances could farther deteriorate with him as president. Many are belatedly coming around to Barack Obama who is seen as a leader who cares more about the working class.
In early September, McCain had a 26-point advantage among white voters without a college degree who were likely to vote. By late September, the advantage had dropped to 7 points.
In Pennsylvania, a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Obama with a double-digit lead over McCain, compared with a close race after the political conventions.
One 64-year-old, lifelong Pennsylvania Republican says it’s not a fondness for Obama, but a dislike of McCain and the way the country is. Ruth Ann Michel says “Republicans need to change.”

New McCain Web Ad: ACORN

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Obama Breaks Recent Silence on Ayers

“Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated,” he told radio host Michael Smerconish. “This guy is not part of my inner circle, he doesn’t advise my campaign, he’s not going to advise me as president,” Obama added, and criticized McCain for focusing on Ayers when the economy is in turmoil, calling the issue a “red herring.” “The fact that Senator McCain wants to make this the centerpiece of his campaign is pretty remarkable. We are going through an enormous challenge right now.”

Charles Krauthammer:

“…associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.”

After the jump: A new Obama ad airing in North Carolina…Obama’s plan for small businesses…how Obama predicted this week’s GOP attacks four months ago..fact-checking a new “527″ ad that links Obama to the early release of sex abusers.

New Ad Airing in North Carolina

Obama Pledges Credit Help to Small Businesses

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio (AP) - Barack Obama says if he’s elected president, small businesses will get some help to make it through the current financial crisis.
At a campaign appearance in Ohio, the Democratic presidential candidate noted that with credit markets frozen, small business often struggle to get the short-term loans they need to make their payrolls and other payments. He says an Obama administration would provide “affordable, fixed-rate loans to small businesses,” much as the government did shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
He says his plan would temporarily waive fees for borrowers and lenders. That, he says, would “unlock the credit that small firms need to move forward, pay their workers, and grow their business.”

Read more of remarks he made today here.

Below: Obama predicted these past two weeks back on June 30th:

Here Come the 527 Ads:

More on the above ad from Politico:

An ad running in Pittsburgh by a third party group claims Barack Obama voted as a state senator to give early release to sexual abusers.

The spot is being paid for by a newly-incorporated outfit, The Committee for Truth in Politics. The group was registered by a William Peaslee, a former top aide at the North Carolina GOP and currently a Raleigh-area attorney. Peaslee’s group has also been in on the air in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina going after Obama on abortion.

Asked about the accusation, Obama’s campaign said the Democrat had simply registered his vote incorrectly and corrected the record that same day.

The state Senate floor transcript from the day, March 11th, 1999, includes this from Obama: “For purpose of correction. I pressed the wrong button on that. I wanted to vote Yes.”

The mishap was brought up in Obama’s 2004 Senate run, and, as he later recounted in his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” his adviser David Axelrod presciently predicted it would arise again in the form of an ad:

“As is standard practice these days, the National Republican Senatorial Committee had prepared a fat binder of opposition research on me before I was even nominated, and my own research team spent many hours combing through my record in an effort to anticipate what negative ads the Republicans might have up their sleeves. They didn’t find a lot, but they found enough to do the trick— a dozen or so votes that, if described without context, could be made to sound pretty scary…Running down the list, I came across a claim that while in the state legislature I had voted against a bill to “protect our children from sex offenders.” “Wait a minute,” I said, snatching the sheet from David’s hands. “I accidentally pressed the wrong button on that bill. I meant to vote aye, and had it immediately corrected in the official record.” David smiled. “Somehow I don’t think that portion of the official record will make it into a Republican ad.” He gently retrieved the poll from my hands. “Anyway, cheer up,” he added, clapping me on the back. “I’m sure this will help you with the sex offender vote.”

What do you think? Post a comment!

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08