The Obama campaign released a new ad tonight entitled The Same using their on-going theme that a vote for McCain is more of the same. The ad is a 30 second spot. So far, the ad is running in Missouri, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
This week, the By The Fault Weekend Reader looks at the question of who are we?
From Big Think:
Who Are We?
Niall Ferguson, Professor of History, Harvard University
David Kennedy, Professor of History, Stanford University
Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia
This the trailer for a new film called The Real John McCain. The film is produced by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films. The film is an interview of one man, Dr. Phillip Butler. He is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war.
After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
The film is one man’s opinion based on events while both were POWs. They have not spoken since.
Here’s a comment from BTF reader Propertius that I think is worth highlighting:
There’s a weird pattern at work here.
We Democrats claim to be “the party of the people” - hell, our name even *says* it - but when you get right down to it, we don’t seem to *respect* the people we claim to represent. We talk about healthcare. We talk about a living wage. We talk about jobs. But when it comes time to pick a candidate, what do we do? We set about insulting the very people whose interests we claim to represent. All you have to do is take a good look at the smear campaign against Palin to see how this happens. The mutual masturbation society that is PB 1.0 criticizes her because:
1) of her accent (now there’s a winner)
2) of her hunting (news flash - millions of rural and not-so-rural Americans subsistence hunt in the winter. People who think food is magically created by elves living under the counters at Whole Foods just don’t get that)
3) She can’t be a good mother and VP (congratulations on insulting every working mother in America - most of whom aren’t trying to ascend the career ladder, but are working in offices, supermarkets, and factories just trying to keep food on the table)
4) Her daughter’s pregnant (this one’s been done to death)!
5) She grew up in some small town in the middle of NOWHERE!
6) She went to some freaking COW COLLEGE in IDAHO!
7) She was a SPORTS REPORTER (Olbermann, anyone?)etc, etc, etc, etc.
So, when men and women all over America (who don’t post to DU or KOS) look at Sarah Palin, what do they see?
They see *themselves*. They see a working mom, with a special-needs kid and a minor family crisis, who is still managing to keep it all together. They look at her husband and what do they see? Well, judging from the live blogging on The Confluence, about 52% of them see a “hunk”, but I personally lack the toolkit to appreciate that. Hunkiness aside, they see a hard-working blue-collar guy who loves his family and (gasp!) changes diapers. They see an Alaskan fisherman, and as anybody who has been watching the History Channel or Discovery Channel for the last few years knows, that’s one of the toughest, most dangerous jobs there is. They see an oil field worker (which is a pretty damned tough job, too, especially in Alaska) who gave up a good job when his wife went into state politics, lest *somebody* accuse her of a conflict of interest. They see a union member (remember them?). They see a father standing with his daughter in a difficult situation.
Harriet Christian who catapulted to fame for expressing her anger over the way Senator Clinton was treated at the Rules and By Laws Committee Meeting of the DNC was on Fox News speaking with Neil Cavuto. Harriet is now supporting Senator McCain openly and pointed out that when she and disaffected Clinton supporters met with Senator McCain in Washington back in June Sarah Palin was mentioned as a possible Vice Presidential. That confirms that Governor Palin has been on the short list all along.
Harriet is also a founding member of a new group called The New Agenda. The New Agenda, through its members and partner organizations, seeks to advance women’s rights. The New Agenda will bring about a systemic change in the way women are treated in the media, by the government, at the workplace, and at home. To achieve our goals, we will empower women by working towards parity in the government and in the workplace. The New Agenda will also formulate an agenda based on core women’s issues which we will promote in a non-partisan fashion. The New Agenda will speak out for the millions of women in this great country who often have no voice. Good on you, Harriet!
The McCain campaign has released a new ad. The ad is a 30 second spot running in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado. It is an attack ad that ties Senator Obama to liberal members of Congress and turns the table on Obama’s “more of the same” meme. In this case, “more of the same” are the purportedly failed policies of the Democratic Party. The ad also questions Obama’s readiness to lead and hits Obama again on his celebrity status.
The conservative group Freeedom Defense Fund has released a new ad highlighting Obama’s past support for embattled Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick who this week pleaded guilty to a series of charges and resign his office. The ad is a 30 second spot and running only in Michigan.
Kilpatrick’s tenure as mayor of Detroit nothing short of disasterous. This week he pleaded guilty to two felony counts of obstructing justice by committing perjury and no-contest to one count of felonious assault for shoving a sheriff’s deputy. It could have been far worse but Kilpatrick is not a national figure and tying Obama to Kilpatrick is likely only to impact voters in Michigan and perhaps Ohio.
The Freedom Defense Fund is a 527 group, a type of American tax-exempt organization named after a section of the United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 52 that espouse political causes.
In a landmark piece of political analysis in 2004, Seattle’s The Stranger pointed to a clear divide in American electoral politics in an article entitled The Urban Archipelago, It’s the Cities Stupid. The article saw that red/blue divide was not just across states but also within states.
It’s time to state something that we’ve felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion–New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too–a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida.
It was an astute observation. The inverse, of course, is that the GOP won the 2004 election by winning the small towns spread across rural America and that lesson has not been lost on the McCain campaign. The selection of former small town Mayor Sarah Palin clearly reinforces this tactic. Today in the small town of Cedarburg, Wisconsin the McCain/Palin ticket held their first campaign rally post the convention. The size of the crowd was expected to range between 8,000 and 10,000. The rally ended up attracting between 20,000 and 30,000 according to the Wisconsin state police. Here’s more video from the rally in Cedarburg.
Below is the electoral map from 2004 by county.
Senator Obama’s bittergate comments may yet come back to haunt him. I would expect more of these rallies by the McCain/Palin campaign. It’s the small towns, stupid may yet become a rallying cry and the saving grace for the GOP.
Whatever hopes the Obama campaign had of scoring an upset in Alaska are melting faster than the Artic sea ice. In July, Obama was within three percentage points of McCain. Now McCain has a 19 point lead. McCain/Palin polled 53.5% to Obama/Biden’s 34.9%.
In the US Senate race between incumbent Senator Ted Stevens and his Democratic challenger Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich are now locked in a tight race with the Democrat leading by just three points. Begich had lead by 17 points just three weeks ago. The race right now has Begich at 48.9% and Stevens at 45.6%.
Alaska has three electoral votes. The state has gone Democratic only once in its history, in the LBJ landslide of 1964. The Obama campaign did open an office in the state, the first ever by a Democratic candidate. This poll by the Anchorage Press also shows Governor Sarah Palin with an 81.6% approval rating. 65.2% of Alaskans believe that the selection of Governor Palin will help McCain’s candidacy while 20.2% believe it may hurt his chances.
The full results of the poll are available at the Anchorage Press.
Former Congressman and the Libertarian candidate Bob Barr assesses Senator McCain’s speech last night on CNN’s This Morning programme. Barr is on the ballot in 42 states and expects to be on the ballot in all 50 states. In the last polls that included Barr and Nader they were combined polling around 6% with the impact more on McCain than on Obama. Those polls are now two weeks old so they are likely not terribly accurate, still Barr and Nader may be a factor in a few states.