Heaven help them. One can’t get the office right, the other can’t get his running mate’s name right. The GOP is already having a field day. Even prior to the Springfield, Illinois event, the McCain campaign had set up “Obabiden” gaffe meter. The damage came at 3:31 PM EST and was quickly followed by another. Then again, I don’t expect McCain and the yet unnamed to be much better. To think, we have 72 more days of this to endure, not to mention four years of whoever attempting to govern.

Return to Main

A new and as yet unreleased McCain ad is already causing a stir. The McCain campaign ad is scheduled to be released at 3 AM (I assume EDT) on Sunday morning. They are clever. I’m guessing that I will have it up by dawn. When an ad is making news even before it is aired that’s really something. Talk about buzz.

Here’s the report from the Wall Street Journal:

No sooner had Barack Obama publicly announced his new running mate had John McCain’s campaign produced an attack ad asking: Why not Hillary?

“Passed Over” will hit the airwaves at (you guessed it) 3 a.m. Sunday. The timing is a reference to Hillary Clinton’s national security ad during the Democratic primary and the same time the Obama campaign sent out its text message announcing Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden as the vice-presidential nominee.

“She won millions of votes. But isn’t on his ticket. Why?” an announcer says in the 30-second spot.

The answer? “For speaking the truth.”

The ad, which has not yet been released, then ticks off a litany of criticism Clinton used against Obama in the prolonged primary, according to a transcript sent to reporters.

“You never hear the specifics,” Clinton says.

“On the Rezko scandal,” the voice says.

“We still don’t have a lot of answers about Senator Obama,” Clinton says in footage from the primaries.

“Senator Obama’s campaign has become increasingly negative,” Clinton says in another scene.

The announcer closes by saying “The truth hurt. And Obama didn’t like it.”

(more…)

I reported on the SUSA poll last week and now a Rasmussen Reports polls confirms that earlier poll. McCain is up in the Hoosier state by six points among likely voters. Indiana last voted for a Democrat in the 1964 LBJ landslide. Over the past 100 years, Indiana has only gone Democratic times four times, 1912, 1932, 1936, 1964. George W. Bush carried Indiana by 20 points in 2000 and by 16 points in 2004.

For two months, the US Presidential race in Indiana had been a statistical dead heat with neither candidate leading by more than the margin of error though for most of this period Obama held the slight lead. This now has changed and McCain’s leads seems to be solidifying if anything.

Indiana is one of the most reliably Republican states in the nation, but it also neighbors Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois. Hoosiers still prefer Republican John McCain, but the race could be closer than in recent years.

The first Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state shows McCain attracting 46% of the vote while Obama earns 42%. When “leaners” are included, it’s McCain by six, 49% to 43%. Leaners are survey participants who initially indicate no preference for either major candidate but indicate that they are leaning towards either McCain or Obama.

(more…)

The first poll on the impact of Senator Joseph Biden is out. A Rasmussen Reports poll shows that while men were more approving of Obama’s Vice Presidential choice, women were less than enthusiastic. Overall in the national polls, women have continued to be the mainstay of Obama’s support. In not a single poll to date has Obama’s support among women fallen below the 50% mark so there is a chance that the selection of Senator Biden might cut into Obama’s support among women. Might those be offset by a corresponding gain among men? It’s possible but unlikely.

On the day that Barack Obama announced Joe Biden as his running mate, 39% of voters said he made the right choice. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 25% disagreed and another 35% are not sure.

Women are notably less enthusiastic than men—33% of women say Biden was the right choice while 27% disagreed. Men, by a 46% to 24% margin, said that Obama made the right choice.

Not surprisingly, Democrats were more supportive of Obama’s decision than anybody else—52% of those in his party agreed with his pick while 19% disagreed. However, just 43% of Democratic women said the presumptive nominee made the best pick while 23% disagreed.

(more…)

For months, Senator Obama has talked about winning where Democrats haven’t won consistently since 1964. Part of the allure of Obama for the leadership of the Democratic Party was Obama’s assertion that he could redefine the political landscape of the Electoral College that favours the Republican Party. President Lyndon Baines Johnson knew full well that when he passed the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act that he was ceding the South to the GOP for a generation or more. It’s been more really but the issue no longer has much to do with those aforementioned pieces of legislation but rather the rise of Evangelical politics out of the Roe v Wade decision and Second Amendment issues.

The only Democrats to do well in the region were native sons and even then that formula seems to have run its course. First, the Democratic Party broke the GOP stranglehold on the South with Jimmy Carter in 1976 who won every state in the South but Virginia. It helped that Carter was from Georgia, a fundamentalist Baptist and that President Ford had pardoned Nixon. Of course, in 1980 Carter only carried his native Georgia and West Viriginia. In the next two elections, the South went decisively for the Republicans.

In 1992, another native son for Democrats, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, made some inroads in the region. Clinton would win in a three-way race 52 of the region’s 160 electoral votes. It’s not clear that Clinton would have won the Presidency if Ross Perot not been in the race. In 1996, Clinton fared a little better in the region by winning 64 electoral votes in the South largely by adding Florida’s 25 electoral votes to the Democratic column but on the other hand Georgia which had gone Democratic in 1992 went GOP in 1996.

Then, of course, we come to 2000 and 2004. Vice President Gore failed to carry his home state of Tennessee and of course lost West Virginia. Never mind Florida, had Gore won West Virginia Gore would be in the White House right now. No Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without West Viriginia. That’s why states like West Virginia and Missouri matter more than others. They are excellent barometers of political currents because of their demographic make up. To this Obama says hogwash. I can remake the map.

Not according to this Miami Herald poll which show McCain with a large and growing lead in the South.

Republican Sen. John McCain enjoys a 16-point lead — 51 percent to 35 percent — among Southern voters over rival Democrat Sen. Barack Obama, a new poll by Winthrop University and ETV shows.
And, the further into the South you go, the larger McCain’s lead grows, the poll of likely voters in 11 Southern states shows.

Likely voters in the Deep South — those in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina — preferred McCain by a 25-point margin, 56 percent to 31 percent.

Southern voters said what they want most in a president is honesty, experience and shared values. Southern voters rated McCain ahead of Obama in each of those categories.

McCain’s strongest support comes from white working-class Southerners — who favor him by a 34-point margin — and white evangelicals — who favor the Arizonan by 54 percentage points.

The poll, which was conducted Aug. 1-17, has a margin of error of (plus or minus) 2.97 percentage points.

While political pundits have made much of Obama and Democrats trying to win over a Southern state or two from the Republicans in November, the Winthrop/ETV poll shows that will prove difficult.

(more…)

The next President of the United States? Joe Biden? To which the McCain campaign retorts:

“Barack Obama sounded as though he turned over the top spot on the ticket today to his new mentor, when he introduced Joe Biden as the next president. The reality is that nothing has changed since Joe Biden first made his assessment that Barack Obama is not ready to lead. He wasn’t ready then and he isn’t ready now.”

Poor Obama, he really messed this rollout of his Vice Presidential selection up. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way but the Obama campaign lost control of the tightly-managed process. The 3 AM (EDT) Text was not the original plan. The original plan was for it to go out at 5 AM (EDT) but Fox and CNN broke the news at just before 1 AM (EDT) and within the hour the news had hit the all blogs and newspapers. They were forced to up the time because of their promise of “you’ll be the first to know.” In this sense for the Obama campaign, the process was poorly managed. Many others are asserting that this was slap at Senator Clinton for her 3 AM phone call ad during the primaries. This is not the case whatsoever. The text wasn’t sent at 3 AM on the nose either. More like 3:12 AM.

Some of the Clinton blogs are getting carried away on this one issue. Some are trying to make a tempest in a teapot when in reality the facts are otherwise. The bottom line is that this whole VP rollout was a stunt that does leave the Obama campaign with some egg on their face. For starters, they didn’t even inform Biden until late Thursday when apparently had made the decision on Tuesday. It is was stupid decision not to announce it mid-week. Blame Obama for the mismanaged rollout but don’t go around creating false controversaries. Let’s not look pathetic but rather attack Obama on the issues that matter, not a silly text message that ran him millions of dollars and even irked some of his supporters.

Meanwhile, Christine O’Donnell, Senator Biden’s GOP challenger in the Delaware US Senate race, has called on Senator Biden to withdraw from his re-election campaign now that he is the Vice Presidential nominee. Nice try, but Senator Biden is legally entitled to run for both posts. He will have to resign his Senate seat if he wins the Vice Presidency.

Return to Main

As everyone expected, the McCain campaign was quick to pounce on Senator Biden’s selection as Senator Obama’s running mate and highlight Senator Biden’s own words on Obama and on McCain. Within three hours of the official “3 AM Text,” the McCain campaign released this 30 second spot.

From a clip in 2007 Democratic Presidential debate shows Senator Biden standing next to Senator Obama. George Stephanopoulos of ABC News asked Senator Biden: “You were asked, “Is he ready?” You said, ‘I think he can be ready but right now, I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.’ ”

Senator Biden: “I think that I stand by the statement.”

In addition, the McCain ad uses footage from another TV appearance, where Senator Biden said, “I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off.” I guess, he is getting that wish.

I’ll repeat what I said earlier. My positive views of the oft-garrulous Senator Biden largely center on the fact that he is a realist in international affairs though I also appreciate his working class attributes. Then again, Senator Biden let his Delaware banking ties override his working class sensibilities when it came to the Bush bankruptcy reform.

Senator Biden also makes a good political Rottweiler. He’s aggressive and articulate yet also homespun. These qualities make Senator Biden a compelling choice by Obama, who has seen McCain largely set the agenda the past month and Obama is anything but articulate off his tele-prompter and is the antithesis of homespun.

That said, the choice is not without some risk politically. Senator Biden, as noted in the ad, had been until early this year very critical of Senator Obama’s readiness to be President. He has since altered his view obviously but those clips were destined to be used against him. Still for Obama, it is not what Biden has said in the past that should worry him but what he has yet to say. Senator Biden may be a good attack dog but attack dogs sometimes do foam at the mouth.

Return to Main

Here’s an overview of what other blogs are saying to Obama’s selection of Senator Biden as his running mate.

Jeralyn Merritt of Talk Left
I respect Jeralyn’s opinion tremendously. She’s not a fan of Senator Biden. Talk Left is first and foremost a blog about “the politics of crime” and Jeralyn Merritt is a defense attorney based in Denver.

This sums up her view:

Obama and Biden are going to run a tired, decades-old but tried and true “tough on crime” campaign. I expected it with Obama, as his views on crime were never particularly progressive, but now with Biden, it’s enshrined in cement.

I understand and appreciate that not all voters — and not even all readers of this site — agree with me that America, Prison Nation, is one of the worst failures of our Government and our democracy. It’s regressive and an embarrassment.

Since exposing injustices is the reason this site exists, you can hardly expect me to cheer for this duo. In 2004, I said I wouldn’t vote for Joe Biden as dog-catcher.

I’m weighing my options. Let’s just say that today, I’m underwhelmed and greatly disappointed. Is McCain and whomever he picks as a running mate any better? Of course not. But if you don’t think choosing between two disappointing scenarios is depressing, well, you’re not me.

More at Talk Left.

Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic
Marc Ambinder delves into why Biden.

I gather that what impressed Obama about Biden is that Biden gets things done. He’s a man of action. He’s not a bullshitter. I also get the sense that Biden, 65, is pretty well aware that, at age 73 in eight years, he’s not going to be a viable presidential choice, and thus convinced Obama that because the vice presidency would be his terminal position, the famous Biden ego will take a subordinate role.

That Obama (apparently) picked him demonstrates a recognition that the Democratic ticket ought to be more than just about Obama’s personality… or a statement of bipartisan pragmatism… it’s easy to float on gossamers when the world is safe, but when it’s burning down, a guy like Biden is just the ticket.

More at The Atlantic.

(more…)