Who Knew Ken Duberstein Was Black?

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You remember Ken Duberstein? He’s the member of the Off the Record Club who set up a meeting between Richard Armitage and Bob Novak so Novak could coax the Valerie Plame leak out of the loose-lipped Armitage. He’s your classical Washington Republican insider.

Back in the day, Duberstein was a political advisor to John McCain (more so in 2000 than this year). I last mentioned Duberstein when I outtamyarse speculated he might be one of the two sources–presumably Charlie Black was the other–using more leaks to Bob Novak to push McCain to name a VP back in July.

It didn’t happen.

Well, now Duberstein is joining the growing stampede away from John McCain–arguing that the selection of Sarah Palin proves that McCain has crappy judgment. I suspect with Duberstein–who cited Powell’s endorsement as one factor that influenced him–this stampede is going to get a lot bigger between now and Tuesday.

Get Them Elected!

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Well. Okay. As Rachel Maddow would say, Marcy has "talked me down". I am resigned to the fact that senator Obama will not be coming to Arizona.

Plouffe didn’t commit to going to Arizona (sorry bmaz)–when referring to Saturday’s trip out west, he said only that they were going "back out west" with no details about locations (though the campaign has already released the schedule showing a Henderson, NV event followed by a Pueblo, CO event). He also said that, with the big map Obama has, it’s really tough getting every place they need to go. If they had "a few more days," he suggested, he might have made a visit to Arizona.

Now, all you "let’s be gracious to McCain" folks out there can rejoice and breathe easy. Advisable not to do that around fellow progressives that actually live in Arizona though; because you have no idea how badly John Sidney McCain III has used and abused our fair state. That is what infuriates us; the "comity" being affirmatively shown to McCain. He doesn’t deserve it after how he has run his campaign; and why should this state be punished yet again as a result of him? We have suffered enough from that jerk over the years, thank you very much. Having it be about graciousness to the weasel McCain, as opposed to just time constraints, is too much to bear. So it was a time issue is why Obama is not coming. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Now, what I can do, and what you all can do as well, is work hard, donate, call, talk to neighbors – anything, everything, between now and the close of the polls on Tuesday to keep the progressive and Obama wave alive and rolling. That is what we can all do in Arizona, and across the nation. The finish line is in sight; no time for coasting – peddle to the metal baby!

Now, for a little housekeeping and advisory here. Tonight, we have a special interactive little Halloween naming game for any that will be around and on the toobz. That will go up around 7-7:30 pm Eastern. And we will also be getting trash talk up earlier and better than last week; either late tonight, or early tomorrow morning.

The video is from a guy who is actually a neighbor of Read more →

It Must Be Something in the (Melting) Icebergs

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Sarah Palin:

… the report that came out also was very clear in that there was no unethical or unlawful behavior on my part.

[snip]

No abuse of power there at all.

Sarah Palin’s mentor, Ted Stevens:

With just four days before the election and Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens insisting he’s not a felon, the U.S. Senate race is white hot. 

"I’ve not been convicted yet," Stevens said Thursday in a meeting with the editorial board of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

Obama Campaign’s Take: We’re Doing What We Need To

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I’m listening to an Obama campaign conference call on the state of the race. Some of the eye-popping details:

Sporadic and First-Time Voters Are Voting Early

I’ve been focusing on the early voting numbers, though the McCain team has questioned whether or not the high Democratic turnout really just amounts to voters who would have voted anyway coming out early.

No.

The Obama campaign is quite confident that at least one fifth of these early voters are either first-time or sporadic Democratic voters–basically, the kind of voters that push outcomes into Gallup’s more Obama-friendly turnout model.

That optimism was particularly true of Florida, where David Plouffe thinks that a quarter of sporadic Democratic voters–people who didn’t vote in 2004–have already voted. He also noted that Florida has one of the largest pools of sporadic voters.

Hmm, I guess that’s another reason to bring Clinton and Gore to the sunshine state.

Arizona

Not surprisingly, there were a number of questions about Arizona.

Plouffe didn’t commit to going to Arizona (sorry bmaz)–when referring to Saturday’s trip out west, he said only that they were going "back out west" with no details about locations (though the campaign has already released the schedule showing a Henderson, NV event followed by a Pueblo, CO event). He also said that, with the big map Obama has, it’s really tough getting every place they need to go. If they had "a few more days," he suggested, he might have made a visit to Arizona. 

He attributed the closing race in Arizona–indeed, Obama’s strength in the west more generally–to two things: western Latinos supporting Obama in large numbers, and suburban independents leaning towards Obama. (Note, he said of CO’s almost equally split early voting margins that he thought many of the Independents had voted Obama.) He also said, specifically, that a lot of sporadic voters in Maricopa (Phoenix metro area) are voting Obama. 

He emphasized the closing polls are real and that they might be able to pull this off.

Finally, Plouffe was very careful to note that the campaign’s new advertising in Arizona is all positive; I guess he’s heard McCain yell "get off my lawn" enough time he doesn’t want to infuriate him. 

Georgia and North Dakota

It was pretty funny. Plouffe also got asked about Georgia a lot. Every time he answered about these late-breaking states, Plouffe was careful to mention North Dakota, in addition to Arizona and Georgia (no one mentioned Louisiana, which had a poll yesterday showing a close race as well). Read more →

Advertisements Can’t Hold Hands

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This is the story I’ve been anticipating since August, in which McCain cannibalizes his GOTV resources to buy more ads.

Sen. John McCain and the Republican National Committee will unleash a barrage of spending on television advertising that will allow him to keep pace with Sen. Barack Obama’s ad blitz during the campaign’s final days, but the expenditures will impact McCain’s get-out-the-vote efforts, according to Republican strategists.

McCain has faced a severe spending imbalance during most of the fall, but the Republican nominee squirreled away enough funds to pay for a raft of television ads in critical battleground states over the next four days, said Evan Tracey, a political analyst who monitors television spending.

The decision to finance a final advertising push is forcing McCain to curtail spending on Election Day ground forces to help usher his supporters to the polls, according to Republican consultants familiar with McCain’s strategy.

The vaunted, 72-hour plan that President Bush used to mobilize voters in 2000 and 2004 has been scaled back for McCain. He has spent half as much as Obama on staffing and has opened far fewer field offices. This week, a number of veteran GOP operatives who orchestrate door-to-door efforts to get voters to the polls were told they should not expect to receive plane tickets, rental cars or hotel rooms from the campaign. 

Because GOP enthusiasm was so low this year (especially GOP enthusiasm for McCain personally), McCain got a very late start on ground game–it didn’t really get started until he put Palin on the ticket. That means that the McCain campaign was recruiting volunteers when they should have been IDing voters, and IDing voters when they should have been persuading undecided voters and now–having realized that they not only have to deliver on McCain’s pollster’s promise that all undecided voters at this point will break for McCain, but they also have steal away some of those voters presently committed to Obama–they’re eating their seed corn to try to win this election. 

Aside from the problem I’ve pointed out before–that it’s probably not the best tactic to surge your ad spending after up to half the voters in a particular state gave voted–there’s one more huge problem with this tactic. McCain might persuade these undecideds, at least some of them. But he’s also got to make sure they go to the polls. Read more →

It’s Called Justice

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Not only did Michael Mukasey, in his most reasonable act as AG, refuse to act on Bush’s request that he help Ohio Republicans prevent 200,000 voters from voting.

But now, the military judge in charge of Hamdan’s Show Trial has refused the Bush Administration’s request that the jury re-sentence Hamdan so he won’t be released on Bush’s watch. 

A military judge rejected a Bush administration move to that could have kept Osama bin Laden’s former driver locked up for an additional five years.

[snip]

In a two-paragraph order, [Judge Keith Allred] said he had read the filings and legal citations, as well as reviewing the sentencing hearing transcript.

"The prosecution motion to reconsider, reassemble, reinstruct and re-announce a sentence is denied," he wrote.

I guess Poppy and Dick never told you this whole all-powerful bullshit would end as soon as you became a lame duck, huh, Bush?

McCain’s Foxy Insta-Republicans

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I just voted.

Yeah!

After I voted, I came home and looked at who else has voted nationally–14% of the electorate so far, and that’s not including my vote (which technically doesn’t get "counted" until election night). 

And looking at those numbers, I gotta believe the folks at Fox–who just switched their likely voter model to jimmy up a poll that showed McCain closing–are smoking crack.

Fox would have you believe that the electorate will be made up of 41% Democrats and 39% Republicans. What’s even more crack-worthy is that they suggest the make-up of the election has changed in the last week; last week, they said the electorate would be made up of 43% Democrats and 37% Republicans.

So here’s what has been happening in the interim time frame (most numbers are rounded except for Colorado):

Colorado: 52.3% of voters (based on 2004 numbers) have voted. Of the early voters 38.6% are Democrats; 37.9% are Republicans.

Florida: 33% of voters (based on 2004 numbers) have voted. Of the early voters 45% are Democrats; 39% are Republicans.

Iowa: 26% of voters (based on 2004 numbers) have voted. Of the early voters 48% are Democrats; 29% are Republicans.

Louisiana: 14% of voters (based on 2004 numbers) have voted. Of the early voters 58% are Democrats; 28% are Republicans.

Maine: 17% of voters (based on 2004 numbers) have voted. Of the early voters 44% are Democrats; 28.5% are Republicans.

Nevada’s Washoe County (Reno–a swing county): 43% of voters (based on 2004 numbers) have voted. Of the early voters 50% are Democrats; 34% are Republicans.

North Carolina: 52% of voters (based on 2004 numbers) have voted. Of the early voters 53% are Democrats; 29% are Republicans. (In 2004, early voting split 47% Democrats; 37% Republicans.)

West Virginia: 12.5% of voters (based on 2004 numbers) have voted. Of the early voters 59% are Democrats; 31.5% are Republicans.

Of all these swingy and right-leaning states, only Colorado shows Republican and Democratic turnout to be close. Only Florida shows Republicans performing as well as Fox says they will, across the whole election. And some of these numbers–particularly North Carolina and Iowa–show breath-taking leads right now for Democrats. 

I realize that it’s still possible that Republicans will flock to the polls in droves on Tuesday and these numbers will even out. But these numbers do provide proof that Democrats are voting. Republicans? Not so much. 

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Clinton-Gore ’08

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bill_clinton_al_gore.jpgI saw someone on TV (sorry–I have no idea who it was or even what channel it was on) who argued that the Obama-Clinton appearance yesterday was more important for Bill than for Obama. Sure, the appearance was about reassuring everyone that there are no more (stated) hard feelings about the primary. But it also gave Bill an opportunity to bask in the glow of Obama’s goodwill, perhaps to exorcise some of the bad feelings from South Carolina.

I would add to this insight that the timing is key. Obama didn’t campaign with Bill until polls show him with a big lead, particularly in Electoral College Votes. That is, Obama invited Bill to campaign with him after it became highly probable that he will win; though Bill has campaigned for the campaign already (with Biden in PA, in VA, and in AR), if Obama wins it will be his win, on his own merits. Which is, I guess, where the room for this gesture comes from.

Don’t get me wrong–Bill no doubt will help Obama build a bigger lead in FL, which is currently the closest of the big swing states (even OH shows a bigger Obama lead!). But as for the election–rather than the state–Bill has been helpful, but by no means instrumental to Obama’s success thus far. (I’m particularly reminded of all the complaints that Gore didn’t invite Clinton to campaign with him in 2000.) At that level, then, it seems as much symbolic as anything else.

And now we have news that Gore himself (with Tipper) will campaign for Obama in FL.

Gore will appear at "Vote for Change" rallies in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, according to a release just issued by the Obama campaign.

Gore returns (on Halloween, no less) to the land of butterfly ballots, hanging chads and a 36-day national recount drama that determined Gore lost and George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election.

Talk about symbolism! Gore, like Clinton, has campaigned for Obama before (for example, at Gore’s endorsement of Obama in Detroit earlier this year, which I screwed up royally by missing). But at a time when the outcome of the race–but not Florida–seems more and more favorable to Obama, Obama has invited Gore to the scene of the 2000 crime. West Palm Beach and Broward County, no less!

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Don’t You Hate When Your Plumber Is a No-Show on Your Appointment?

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Only, when you get blown off by repairmen, there aren’t 6,000 people and the national press watching. 

Fukuyama Endorses Obama; Slams McPrickly, Dick & Bush

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McPrickly/Cheney by twolf

McPrickly/Cheney by twolf

Even the neocon nuts are fleeing John McCain and his campaign of shame. The latest surfer from the right to catch the Obama wave to the White House is Francis Fukuyama. That’s right, the guy who literally wrote The End Of History has figured out that Barack Obama is history in the making and John McCain is simply ancient and erratic history. And Fukuyama nukes McCain, Bush and Cheney in the process. It is a brutally scathing takedown.

I’m voting for Barack Obama this November for a very simple reason. It is hard to imagine a more disastrous presidency than that of George W. Bush….. While John McCain is trying desperately to pretend that he never had anything to do with the Republican Party, I think it would a travesty to reward the Republicans for failure on such a grand scale.

Ouch! Chris Buckley got terminated from the conservative magazine his own father created for less than that. Maybe if that is all Fukuyama said, none of the right wing freak show will notice….

Ooops, Francis did it again; he had more to say:

At a time when the U.S. government has just nationalized a good part of the banking sector, we need to rethink a lot of the Reaganite verities of the past generation regarding taxes and regulation. Important as they were back in the 1980s and ’90s, they just won’t cut it for the period we are now entering. Obama is much better positioned to reinvent the American model and will certainly present a very different and more positive face of America to the rest of the world.

Yowser! First Bush and McCain, now Fukuyama has gone and thrown Saint Ronnie of Raygun under the bus. That’s gonna leave a mark. Here, however, is the most beautiful part:

McCain’s appeal was always that he could think for himself, but as the campaign has progressed, he has seemed simply erratic and hotheaded. His choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate was highly irresponsible; we have suffered under the current president who entered office without much knowledge of the world and was easily captured by the wrong advisers. McCain’s lurching from Reaganite free- marketer to populist tribune makes one wonder whether he has any underlying principles at all.

Yep, Francis is right; America was trashed and burned by a bunch of pricks with more balls Read more →