11 Oct 2008
8 Oct 2008
6 Oct 2008
- 6.10.08
- Evarist Chahali
- BARACK OBAMA, MCCAIN, US ELECTION 2008, WSJ
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Here's a summary of the smartest new political analysis on the Web: by Gerald F. Seib and Sara Murray
It's been a bad stretch for Sen. John McCain, but few have been willing to go this far: Former Hillary Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, now writing for The New Republic, declares flatly "The race is over." Sen. Barack Obama will win, he says."John McCain's candidacy is as much a casualty of Wall Street as Lehman or Merrill. Like those once vibrant institutions, McCain's collapse was stunning and quick. One minute you are a well-respected brand. The next you are yelling at the messengers of your demise as all around you the numbers start blinking red and stop adding up." Before the Wall Street collapse, Wolfson writes, "Senator McCain was ahead." But today, "an election dominated at its inception by the war in Iraq is now overwhelmingly focused on the economy. More than half of voters in polls say that the economy is their top concern and Senator Obama enjoys double digit leads among voters asked who can better fix our economic mess. Put simply, there is no way Senator McCain can win if he continues to trail Senator Obama by double digits on the top concern of more than half of voters."
But the Obama campaign isn't taking any chances. Politico's Mike Allen reports that his campaign "on Monday is launching a multimedia campaign to draw attention to the involvement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the ‘Keating Five' savings-and-loan scandal of 1989-91, which blemished McCain's public image and set him on his course as a self-styled reformer." The move is a reaction to the McCain camp's new efforts to tie Sen. Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers and scandal-plagued Chicago businessman Tony Rezko. Overnight, Allen says, the Obama campaign "began e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday. The e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends. The Obama campaign, including its surrogates appearing on radio and television, will argue that the deregulatory fervor that caused massive, cascading savings-and-loan collapses in the late ‘80s was pursued by McCain throughout his career, and helped cause the current credit crisis."
The Huffington Post's Thomas B. Edsall writes that "At a time of extreme economic crisis at home and two wars abroad, John McCain is gambling that an attack mounted by Sarah Palin on Barack Obama's tangential ties to 1970s radical bomber Bill Ayers will reverse the Arizona Senator's steadily diminishing prospect of victory on November 4. This strategy carries high risks. First and foremost, a number of experts in the field doubt that when the economy has been on the brink of collapse, when the situation in Afghanistan is worsening, and the debate over the US war in Iraq has intensified, negative campaigning is an effective political tool."
It's also naive to expect that Obama won't fight back. Plus, negative campaigning tends to damage both candidates. Edsall quotes polling expert Nate Silver as saying "It may be quite difficult for McCain to attack Obama in this fashion without significantly damaging his own brand. What's interesting is that, with the exception of the past couple of weeks, McCain's and Obama's ratings have been fairly strongly correlated, tending to rise and fall together. This is not to say that negative campaigning doesn't work - it sometimes does - but it works at diminished efficiency, because you may be giving back 50 cents on the dollar by harming your own approval scores."
Now onto battleground states. Washingtonpost.com's Chris Cillizza has updated his electoral map, which puts Obama above the 300 mark. "The movement is most noticeable in states - particularly in the Industrial Midwest - where the economy has been a front-burner issue for years...With that in mind, we have moved Ohio from McCain's column to Obama's - amid polling including a new Columbus Dispatch survey that shows the Illinois senator with an edge. The other major change in this week's Fix map is Virginia, which we are moving from McCain to Obama. Electoral history in the state is daunting for Obama - the last Democrat to carry the state at the presidential level was Lyndon Johnson way back in 1964 - but the Democratic candidate is lavishing time and money on the Commonwealth. And, even top Virginia Republicans are starting to express their concern publicly about McCain's dimming prospects there
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
With 30 days until Nov. 4, Karl Rove projects that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) would get at least 273 electoral votes – three more than are needed to win – if the presidential election were held today.
But Rove warns that this race is “susceptible to rapid changes,” so no definite prediction is possible.
The remarkable forecast from the architect of the last two nationwide political victories underscores the straits that have rapidly enveloped Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as the banking and credit crisis spread.
Rove writes on Rove.com: “39 new state polls released in the first three days of October have given Barack Obama his first lead over the magic number of 270 since mid-July. Minnesota (10 EV) and New Hampshire (4 EV) both moved from toss-up to Obama, giving him 273 electoral votes to McCain’s 163, with 102 votes remaining as a toss-up.
“If the election were held today, Obama would win every state John Kerry won in 2004, while adding New Mexico (5 EV), Iowa (7 EV), and Colorado (9 EV) to his coalition. Remember, though, that these state polls are a lagging indicator and most do not include any surveying done after the vice-presidential debate on Thursday night.”
Rove cautioned on “Fox News Sunday”: “Remember, the campaign ebbs and flows. What we're seeing here is a result of the focus of the American people, voters, on the economic problems that have dominated the news the last several weeks. What's happened then is a shift to Obama.
“Just remember, 17 days ago in the electoral college, McCain led 227 to 216. Fifteen days ago, on the eve of the news on the bailout, he led 216-215.This race is susceptible to rapid changes and we're likely to see, in the remaining four weeks, more changes.”
On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd said Obama is still one state away from solidifying the 270 electoral votes he needs to win the White House. Colorado, Virginia or Florida would put it away for Obama if the election were held today, Todd said.
“Even if it’s Nevada [making the total] 269, it sends it to the House, where Democrats have an advantage,” Todd said. “As it stands today, John McCain would have to run the table. Now, good news for him: They’re all states that voted Republican four years ago.
“However, he’s behind right now a little bit in Ohio. There’s a dispute of who’s ahead or who’s behind in Florida but it feel as if Obama’s a little bit ahead in Florida. Obama’s a little bit ahead in Colorado. And it’s a dead even race in Virginia. Dead even in Nevada. And even Missouri, which we almost put in tossup this week, is getting very close, where McCain just has a very narrow lead.”
Todd said a landslide could be 364 electoral votes – “the high-water mark.” In 1980, Ronald Reagan got 489. In 1988, George H.W. Bush got 426. “The McCain folks now have to hold everything … to keep this thing competitive,” Todd said.
Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who was the architect of McCain’s 2000 campaign said on “Meet the Press”: “It’s McCain’s barn that’s on fire. … Thirty days out, I think McCain can win. But the fact is, [if the] election were held today, he’d lose. And I think he’s on a losing path.
“I think the McCain campaign has to look in the mirror now and decide, do we need to change up the strategy? They’ve been running the grinding campaign on Obama. There’s a lot of good things to attack Obama about – people have a lot of doubts about Obama. But they’ve got to fix McCain. McCain has to connect with voters on the economy. He’s got to get ticket-splitters. Get out of base Republican issues and get people who are worried about the economy and health care over. Or in this anti-Republican environment, this trend line is very, very bad.”
Appearing with Murphy, Democratic consultant Paul Begala, who helped mastermind Bill Clinton’s 1992 win, said he had talked to the Obama high command. “They’re flooding the zone,” Begala said. “They’re going into places where Democrats used to never dare go. Indiana! I cannot believe we’re sitting here 30 days before an election, talking about Indiana, a potential tossup state. Or North Carolina and Virginia.
“Barack Obama would be the first non-Southerner from my party to carry a Southern state since JFK – before I was born, before Barack was born. This is an incredible map.
Source: POLITICO
3 Oct 2008
Kwa upande mwingine,Palin ameonekana kama amethibitisha kwamba McCain hakufanya kosa kumchagua yeye kuwa running mate wake lakini ameshindwa kum-portray McCain kama mtu anayefaa zaidi kuwa rais kuliko Barack Obama.Lakini Biden,pengine kwa kuhofia kuonekana kuwa ni sexist dhidi ya Palin,ametumia muda mwingi kuonyesha kwanini Obama anafaa zaidi kuwa rais kuliko McCain na wakati huohuo kuonyesha kuwa tiketi ya McCain-Palin ni mwendelezo mwingine wa miaka minane ya George W Bush.
Kiujumla,na kama ilivyotarajiwa na wengi,Biden ameonekana kuwa msindi katika mdahalo huo japo hilo haliwezi kukubalika among the Republicans.Pia matokeo ya awali ya kura kadhaa za maoni baada ya mjadala huo zinaonyesha ushindi mzuri kwa Biden hasa miongoni mwa undecided voters.
1 Oct 2008
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15 Sept 2008
Came accross this interesting examination of Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin may not have known what the Bush Doctrine was, but we're getting a pretty good idea of what the Palin Doctrine is. Or will be -- because it's still currently under construction. And what is it going to look like? Let's just say, it's going to seem familiar.
According to London's Daily Telegraph, the architects of the Palin Doctrine are a group of people who have been singularly wrong about virtually everything in the last decade -- the neocons, who have been briefing Palin for weeks.
As predicted, the fact that she didn't know anything wasn't a bug, it was a feature. She's perfect for the neocons: likeable on the outside, a blank slate on the inside. To borrow from an old cliché, if Sarah Palin didn't exist, the neocons would have had to invent her.
In fact, this is how one former White House aide describes her: "She's bright and she's a blank page. She's going places and it's worth going there with her."
Of course, the place her neocon mentors hope she's going is the White House. Given their dismal track record, they're smart enough to figure that the American public wouldn't be too keen on letting them in the front door again, so they are trying to sneak in hidden behind Palin's skirt. The Trojan Moose approaches.
The Daily Telegraph details how the neocon talent scouts spotted their political Eliza Doolittle back in the summer of '07. The love connection began, appropriately enough, on a love boat:
"Sources in the McCain camp, the Republican Party and Washington think tanks say Mrs. Palin was identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause in June 2007. That was when the annual summer cruise organised by the right-of-centre Weekly Standardmagazine docked in Juneau, the Alaskan state capital, and the pundits on board took tea with Governor Palin."
So nice to meet you, Governor. And don't forget, cucumber sandwiches and preemptive invasions on the Lido Deck at four!
Not surprisingly, Palin's biggest fan is Bill Kristol, who describes her as the "specter of a young, attractive, unapologetic conservatism" that "is haunting the liberal elites."
Among her other Henry Higginses is neo-neocon Joe Lieberman, who is reportedly helping prep Palin for the big ball -- her debate with Joe Biden.
She's already passed her first test with flying colors: being willing to link 9/11 with Iraq, something not even the president is still willing to do. Last week, she told a group of Iraq-bound soldiers that they were going to "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."
By George (Bush), I think she's got it! Congratulations, Professor Kristol, your student is coming along just fine.
Of course, the neocons know they already have an ally at the top of the GOP ticket. McCain may have been a reformer on campaign finance, but when it comes to foreign policy, he has always been solidly in the neocon club. He loves to burnish his foreign policy bona fides by talking about how he wanted to fire Donald Rumsfeld months before Bush did. But he doesn't talk a lot about how, in the days immediately after 9/11, he was part of the neocon crowd itching to get into Iraq.
Just a few days after the attack, McCain was already talking about "some other countries" that helped Bin Laden. Countries like Syria, Iran, and...Iraq. And a few weeks later, during an October 18, 2001 appearance on David Letterman, McCain answered a question about how the war in Afghanistan was going by announcing that the invasion of Iraq would be "the second phase" of the war on terror (how prescient of him to know that Saddam wouldn't give up those nonexistent WMD). What's more, he tried to buttress the case for attacking Iraq by claiming that the recent spate of anthrax attacks "may have come from Iraq." Or Fort Detrick.
Six years later, demonstrating how little he's learned from the debacle in Iraq, McCain hired Randy Scheunemann, a neocon darling who helped form The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in 2002, as his campaign's chief foreign policy advisor.
As TPMMuckraker noted in July, "Of all the hawkish Washington foreign-policy types pushing both before and after 9/11 for war with Iraq -- a war that an overwhelming majority of Americans now considers a mistake -- Scheunemann, though not a marquee name, was among the most energetic and influential. And in the invasion's aftermath, he consistently opposed steps that might have helped stabilize the country."
And now, according to the Daily Telegraph, Scheunemann is briefing Sarah Palin.
McCain's selection of Palin may have been reckless, but it was anything but random. The neocons' view of the world may be disastrous, dangerous, discredited, and deadly -- but it's far from dead. Their patron saint, Dick Cheney, the scowling embodiment of the Neocon Doctrine, had way too much baggage -- and way too low approval ratings -- to mount a run for the White House.
That's why the Palin pick was so brilliant. On the outside, she's exponentially more likable and talented at connecting with people than Cheney ever was. But on the inside, once she graduates from the neocon finishing school, she'll be a complete and total Dick. Cheney. With lipstick.