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Vetting

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If you’ve swung by Drudge today, you know the latest manufactured outrage is that Gwen Ifill has a book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, coming out on inauguration day.

Oh no!! A mistrial!!!

Now, frankly, I do think it rather inappropriate for Ifill to moderate this debate, what with the built-in financial incentive she’s got to see Obama taking the oath of office on the day her book comes out. 

But, as Judd Legum and Michael Calderone argue, it’s McCain campaign’s own damn fault.  Judd writes:

If that’s true, it just shows the McCain campaign’s incompetence. The debate moderators were agreed to on August 6. Ifill’s book was reported in the Associated Press two weeks earlier:

"We have an awkward history about how to talk about race in the nation and in newsrooms," says Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent for PBS’ "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and author of "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," slated for publication early next year.

But I think Judd is being overly hard on the McCain campaign. Judd must forget that McCain was very very busy in early August, with stuff that was way more important than vetting Ifill. They surely were totally focused on vetting Sarah Palin. Right?

For the record, McCain says Gwen Ifill, who threw mostly softballs for Dick Cheney in 2004, "will do a totally objective job, because she is a highly respected professional," though he seems to be hedging his right to complain after the fact. Which is no surprise, since they’ve been working the ref for several days already.

The Gaffe Governor and the Ground Game

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In comments to Marc Ambinder, the McCain campaign has resoundingly confirmed what Nate and Sean had to say about Sarah Palin’s continuing importance to the ticket. She is critically important to the campaign’s efforts to mount any kind of ground game.

Here’s Sean, who has been road-tripping to gauge field operations of both campaigns.

As most of you know, I’ve been on the road for the past three weeks, so far visiting at least a dozen McCain campaign offices in six battleground states as well as Palin’s first solo rally in Carson City, Nevada. If McCain dumps Palin, it is over.

In the Colorado Springs volunteer office, “you could hear a pin drop” in the days before Palin was picked. In Reno, the volunteering had been anemic; the Saturday morning after the Palin pick, organizers arrived to an early morning volunteer line waiting at the door.

Our direct observation shows McCain is being overwhelmingly outworked on the ground as it is; take Palin away and you can add 2-5% to Obama’s total in every close state due to ground game.

And here’s the McCain campaign.

Palin is directly responsible for doubling the size of the campaign’s field operation, according to a senior campaign official, as she’s been a huge fundraising draw, bringing in, according one reliable estimate, more than $30 million for the RNC and its joint accounts. In the 12 hours after the announcement, she raised $4.4 million for the campaign.

She is directly responsible for luring more than 100,000 people to McCain-Palin events — and that’s on the low end of a guesstimate.

She has helped the campaign recruit thousands of additional volunteers. In the last two weeks, for the first time this year, the campaign has recorded more volunteer door knocks and phone calls than the same weeks 4 years ago.

 "Given that 2004 is the measuring stick, we’re proud of that," a campaign official says. "We were nowhere close to 2004 stats until about 3 weeks ago."

Her choice has gotten some of the louder social conservative voices to shut the heck up and stop complaining about McCain. The money and people that she has brought has been put towards opening at least 100 new field offices over the past two weeks alone.

Had McCain not found a way to gin up enthusiasm for his ticket, his get-out-the-vote machine would likely be half its size. [my emphasis]

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The YouTube Nielsens

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When I discovered that CBS had put out an embeddable clip of the exchange they used for the teaser advertising yesterday’s installment of the Couric-Palin comedy hour (effectively pre-empting their own broadcast), I wrote this in an email:

I actually wonder if they haven’t gotten as much traffic as they expected.

AFAIK, they treated today’s clip differently than they did the last ones–they made the clip available for embed at the same time as they released the teaser of that clip (which is the one I put up on a post).

In other words, I suspect that they didn’t get the traffic they wanted, because people were watching the fun bits on YouTube the next day. So they pre-empted those YouTubes and have the embed up with two ads.

I guess the proper word is "viewership"–meaning I suspected that CBS’s ratings for their Couric-Palin interviews weren’t all that great.

Turns out I was right.

Katie Couric’s newsmaking interviews with the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, last week had only a slight impact on the ratings for her CBS newscast. But if the network could have added up all the other viewers the interviews (and its spoof) racked up, on places like CNN, YouTube and “Saturday Night Live,” Ms. Couric would surely have been more seen and talked about than in any week since she began her tenure as anchor.

Ms. Couric received a rush of attention for the two interviews, in which Ms. Palin, governor of Alaska, spoke haltingly on, among other topics, her state’s “narrow maritime border” with Russia. Clips turned up across the spectrum of television and Web sites.

The first interview last Wednesday, for example, has been viewed more than 1.4 million times on YouTube, while the parody of the interview on “SNL” was streamed more than 4 million times on NBC.com, viewed in full more than 600,000 times on YouTube and in shorter clips many more hundreds of thousands of times.

Still, the “CBS Evening News” gained only about 10 percent in audience from the previous week — and it was actually down from the same week the year before. The newscast averaged just under 6 million viewers for the week, up from 5.44 million the previous week. A year ago Ms. Couric’s program drew about 6.2 million viewers. (CBS was also a distant third last week behind ABC, which won with 8.07 million viewers, and NBC, with 7.98 million.)

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I Guess You Shouldn’t Have Fired Bitney, Huh?

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Here’s the guy I’d like to interview Friday morning: John Bitney.

You’ll recall this WSJ article explaining that the McCain team realized they were using normal methods to prepare seasoned candidates for debate, which wasn’t working for Palin.

More broadly, the McCain campaign aims to halt what it sees as a perceived decline in the crispness and precision of Gov. Palin’s latest remarks as well as a fall in recent polls, according to several advisers and party officials.

McCain officials denied any problems inside the campaign. "The nature of political campaigns, with all their ups and downs, is for insiders and outsiders and no-siders to register complaints, often anonymously," said Tucker Eskew, a counselor for Gov. Palin. "We all in this campaign understand that, and we’re not distracted by it, even as we welcome well-intentioned and good advice."

Some prominent Republicans and senior members of Congress have expressed worries about certain facets of the Palin campaign, particularly that Gov. Palin may be "overprepared" and not encouraged to be herself, an adviser said.

"She hasn’t had the time or inclination to question the judgments of the people telling her to hit her marks," said one Republican strategist. "Gov. Palin is a team player, but the campaign needs to adjust to a game plan that works for her."

[snip]

Meanwhile, the more experienced advisers assigned to her by the McCain campaign are accustomed to working with seasoned candidates, not someone "completely green on the national stage," one strategist said. Several Republican backers have griped that the campaign has put the candidate in difficult situations, from sitting for high-profile television interviews to popping into meetings with foreign leaders, some of whom made sexist remarks, said several officials.

"It’s time to let Palin be Palin — and let it all hang out," said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist. [my emphasis]

 And along with the entire Palin family, they’ve shipped in one of Sarah’s own staffers.

Also, a key Alaska staffer joined the Palin operation Sunday.

It makes sense, right? Faced with the realization that you’ve got to let Sarah be Sarah, that you’ve got to replicate what she did in Alaska rather than prep her like you’d prep a Hillary Clinton or a Susan Collins, you bring in the staffers who prepped her for her very successful gubernatorial debates, right?

No.

Turns out, the guy that prepped her for those debates is one of the guys Todd Palin had fired because of a personal issue Read more →

Has Todd Noticed that McCain’s Still Leering at Sarah?

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Turns out it was the First Dude who decided he and the family would be sitting in on Sarah’s debate prep this week. 

For his part, Mr. Palin has worried about the frequent separation of his wife from her family, friends and Alaska staff, an adviser said. Accordingly, her family will be with her in Sedona during this week. Also, a key Alaska staffer joined the Palin operation Sunday.

In fact, the First Dude just decided that Sarah needed him around–she’s already been traveling with Willow.

You think maybe this or this had to do with Todd’s worries about his wife?

McCain Campaign So Concerned about Palin, They’ve Forgotten about Joe

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The McPalin campaign warns Gwen Ifill they believe it would be unfair of her to hammer foreign policy questions during Thursday’s VP debate.

The moderator will have some questions to answer themselves if they do go so heavily foreign policy.

Not only is this another pathetic example of McPalin trying to play the ref, not only are they forgetting that Palin has been no whiz on domestic policy issues either, but they’re forgetting that Joe Biden is, himself, quite accomplished on domestic policy issues.

Consider the law of which Biden is most proud: the Violence Against Women Act, a law that, among other things, uses federal dollars to coerce states into making localities–like Sarah Palin’s Wasilla–pick up the tab for rape kits. Not to mention made it a lot easier for women to leave abusive relationships and cops to prosecute such abuse.

Or what about the COPS program, which tried to make policing more effective? Given Palin’s current and past problems with law enforcement in her state, Biden’s proactive efforts to improve policing make her look like a thug by comparison.

Or how about Biden’s recent work to make college more affordable–an issue that many of the still-undecided swing voters may value highly? 

Frankly, I’m sort of glad they’ve got Palin sequestered at McCain’s "ranch" cramming about foreign policy. It leaves them unprepared and vulnerable on areas that are just as much Biden’s strength as foreign policy is.

And those areas, particularly this year, are going to sway undecideds more than foreign policy will. 

Update: Meanwhile, the bulldog in lipstick is talking some trash:

“And I do look forward to Thursday night, and debating Senator Joe Biden,’’ said Ms. Palin, whose uneven performance in interviews and unscripted events have sown seeds of doubt in recent days among some conservative commentators who support her.

“I’m looking forward to meeting him, too,’’ she said. “I’ve never met him before, but I’ve been hearing about his Senate speeches since I was in, like, second grade.’’

“I have to admit, though, he’s a great debater, and he looks pretty doggone confident, like he’s sure he’s going to win,’’ Ms. Palin, 44, said of Mr. Biden, 65. “But then again, this is the same Senator Biden who said the other day that University of Delaware would trounce the Ohio State Buckeyes. Wrong!”

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McPalin Campaign on TrooperGate: Shut Up! Shut Up! Shut Up! Shut Up!

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Walt Monegan, the guy Sara Palin inappropriately fired, just revealed he has emails proving the McPalin campaign’s latest lie–that Monegan was insubordinately seeking earmarks in DC–was a lie.

Former Public Safety commissioner Walt Monegan said he’s turned over e-mails not yet released that prove he was responsible with the budget and not insubordinate.

Monegan said his e-mails provide a bigger picture because they include messages between other people, including his legislative liaison.

[snip]

Monegan said he often printed out e-mails to read them when he was in transit to Juneau and that’s why he still has them.

The McPalin campaign, realizing they’ve been caught (again) in a lie, responded in a manner worthy of Bill O’Reilly.

A spokesman for Gov. Sarah Palin said Sunday that Monegan is acting in an inappropriate manner.

"The deal is you serve at the pleasure of the governor, and when the governor is no longer pleased, you leave and you’re supposed to walk away quietly," Bill McAllister said in a phone interview. [my emphasis]

"Why didn’t you just let us fire you as part of a personal vendetta and move on?!?!?!? Why does it seem like we no longer have any power over you?!?!?!? Why oh why oh why oh just shut up!?!?!?!"

Nice to see the McPalin campaign is proceeding just as professionally in Alaska as it is in DC.

Did McCain Blow Off Letterman to Pre-Empt Sarah and Katie?

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Help me with the timing on this.

Sometime–either earlier today or earlier this week–Sarah Palin sat down and taped an interview with Katie Couric. The first part of that interview airs this evening.

Then instead of showing up for a scheduled interview with David Letterman, and at a time when he said he had to run back to DC for emergency work to save the American economy, McCain did an interview with Katie Couric. In other words, after the McPalin campaign assessed how the Palin-Couric interview went, they put together a last minute interview between McCain and Couric.

As of this moment, CBS News has, as its lead story, McCain’s debate cancellation stunt. Not Sarah Palin’s second interview with a straight reporter. McCain has effectively pre-empted the interview with his running-mate. 

I get the feeling that Palin-Couric interview went even worse than the Charlie Gibson one.

And perhaps not coincidentally, McCain is now trying to postpone the VP debate.

Who Told the TrooperGate Witnesses to Ignore the Subpoenas?

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Here’s an interesting question. Who told the Palin-friendly TrooperGate witnesses not to show up? It’s relevant, you see, because two Democrats are thinking of asking the police to investigate whether there was any witness tampering in the case. It seems they’re not focusing on the more incendiary possibility that Murlene Wilkes’ financial incentive persuaded her to lie to Stephen Branchflower about being pressured to deny a Wooten workers comp claim. Rather, these lawmakers are considering whether the mere act of instructing witnesses to ignore a subpoena constitutes witness tampering.

Separately, two Alaska Democrats said they are considering asking state police to investigate why subpoenaed witnesses, including Palin’s husband, did not testify before the legislative committee last week. The lawmakers, Rep. Les Gara and Sen. Bill Wielechowski, said state law bars witness tampering, but that they did not have enough information to file a formal complaint in the case.

In other words, the people who told Todd Palin and about seven state employees to blow off a valid subpoena may be on the dock for witness tampering.

I don’t know whether that argument withstands legal scrutiny (bmaz?). But the McCain team is taking no chances. They say they didn’t tell witnesses not to show.

Griffin said the campaign has not advised any witnesses on how to respond to subpoenas.

Which makes me wonder whether this is one of the reasons why Palin’s lawyer, Tom Van Flein, is lying about having terminated his contract with the state.

Last week, Governor Palin’s lawyer Tom Van Flein was quoted in the Anchorage Daily News as saying that his "firm last Friday terminated its state contract, worth up to $95,000, to represent the governor’s office."

Not true. The contract wasn’t canceled.

Van Flein has a written contract with the State of Alaska. Like all such contracts with the State, it has provisions governing termination. Termination requires notice to the State, typically in writing.

According to my sources, Van Flein did not provide notice of termination to the state, either in writing or orally.

See, back when I was trying to count all the conflicts of interest among Palin’s legal teams in Alaska, I speculated that maybe Van Flein had terminated his contract because it made it possible for him to represent both Sarah and Todd Palin, getting around the fact that 1) the state shouldn’t pay legal fees for a non-state employee, and Read more →

Oh, THAT Kind of Financial Incentive

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I asked a while back what the TrooperGate investigator, Stephen Branchflower, might have meant when he said a key witness–whom he believes lied to him in an interview–had a "financial incentive" to do so.

It appears that Murlene Wilkes, who handles the state’s workers comp claims, was pressured by the governor’s office to deny a claim from Trooper Wooten. Yet, when Branchflower asked whether she had been pressured, she said "no." So Branchflower subpoenaed her (and she gave a deposition, on Friday), to find out whether she continued to say "no" under oath. 

But it wasn’t clear why Branchflower believed that Wilkes had had a financial incentive to lie to him.

Andrew Halcro clears that up for us. Apparently, the state is fighting to keep the workers comp contract in Wilkes’ hands–and they’re willing to pay her $300,000 more than they otherwise would have to do so.

Regarding the Harbor Adjustment issue and "open govt" policy.  The adjusting contract for the State is currently under dispute- the State is trying to renew Harbor Adjustment’s contract for over $300,000 per year (1.5 million dollars) over the life of the contract, more than the next highest bidder.  Harbor bid approx $1.5 million per year for the contract.  the next highest was $1.2 million per year.  Harbor won the bid; why?

Harbor Adjustments is the company at the center of the controversy surrounding former State Trooper Mike Wooten’s injury claim. The company has a contract with the state to process workers compensation claims and has been reported to have been pressured by the governor’s office to deny the claim back in the spring of 2007.

At first, company owner Murlene Wilkes told special investigator Steve Branchflower that no such pressure occured. Shortly thereafter, an employee of Harbor Adjustments called Branchflower and ended up giving a sworn deposition that the governor’s office did pressure the firm to deny the claim.

It appears that the state is trying to stick with Murlene Wilkes’ company–the witness in question–in spite of the fact her bid for that contract came in $300,000 higher than the next highest bidder. 

$300,000. I’d say that’s a financial incentive alright.

photo by crazyneighborlady