October 06, 2008
Congressional Quarterly has compiled a set of "top three" likely appointees for cabinet positions, for both a potential McCain and potential Obama presidency. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry -- much rumored for a position -- is conspicuously absent.
Kerry rumors most often center on Secretary of State. CQ names Susan Rice, Richard Holbrooke, and Bill Richardson as the three most likely for the job under Obama.
To lead the Department of Defense, CQ guesses that Obama might keep Robert Gates, or tap either Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed or former Sec'y of the Navy Richard Danzig.
October 03, 2008
Sarah Palin did an interview this morning with FOX News's Carl Cameron, and opportunity which "Campaign Carl" apparently felt was best used discussing one of Palin's earlier interviews on another network.
This gave Palin the opportunity to submit answers to the questions she blanked on before, and to explain why she couldn't answer the first time around. Turns out that Katie Couric is so annoying, you can't think straight when she interviews you.
...in those Katie Couric interviews I did feel that there were a lot of things that she was missing in terms of an opportunity to ask what a vice presidential candidate stands for...
In this case, the opportunity for Cameron to ask what a vice presidential candidate was feeling during a previous interview -- important stuff like that.
Palin promised to try "to not be so annoyed and impatient with mainstream media," on the off-chance, I suppose, that she ever again interacts with one of the MSM's representatives.
But Palin wants something in return for this generous offer. Now, I don't think I can fairly speak as a terms negotiator for the MSM, but I feel confident, without even looking at her demands, in saying that there's no deal. Why? Because the media doesn't give a rat's ass if they annoy Palin. Do you really think Katie Couric feels bad about "annoying" Palin into four days' worth of must-see train-wreck TV? (And here's some free advice to Palin: if you think the on-air TV interviewers are annoying, wait 'til you meet the print journalists. If you ever do.)
Anyway, here is what Palin wants from the media in return for her forbearance, via ABCNews's Jake Tapper:
"But I would ask also then that the media tries a little bit harder also," Palin went on. "And that this is a two-way street that there is fairness, just objectivity and fairness and truth."
"Objectivity?" Cameron asked. "Fairness?"
"As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms including freedom of the press, we've really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press and then the press though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance."
That last bit is a nice shout-out to Cameron's network, but the rest is a little hard to suss out. Somehow I feel like she's saying that asking national political candidates questions about reading habits and Supreme Court decisions somehow puts our soldiers in harm's way.
Maybe Palin's media-crit peers, Adam R. and Dan K., can explain it to me????
October 03, 2008
A whopping 54% of households in the Boston-area TV market watched last night's vice presidential debate -- the third-highest viewership of the 55 top local markets. And we don't even have a local horse in the race. We're not even a swing state (although portions of southern NH are included).
Ranked #2 was the debate's host city of St. Louis. #1 and #4 were the politically overrun DC-area Baltimore and Norfolk markets, respectively.
Neither Biden's or Palin's hometowns are big enough to be on the list. Barack Obama's hometown of Chicago ranked 40th, and John McCain's hometown of Phoenix ranked a lowly 51st. Maybe they were afraid to watch.
October 03, 2008
I guess John McCain can go back to campaigning now....
October 03, 2008
...for the House to vote on whether we plummet into an economic abyss...
--On another C-SPAN channel, US Rep. Bill Delahunt -- longtime Norfolk County DA -- just gave a rather impassioned oratory during a House hearing on the US Attorney firings scandal. The committee is taking testimony from the Inspector General about his latest damning report on the topic. Delahunt had no actual questions for IG Fine, but used his time to show just how genuinely bitter he is over the damage that has been done to the reputations and morale of the attorneys who make careers out of serving the DoJ in what are supposed to be non-political positions.
--Yeah, Moody's downgrading your credit rating, that's not so good, Massachusetts Turnpike Authority people.
--Newly out: a two-year progress report on the state's mandated health care insurance plan. One interesting figure is a roughly 40% decrease in the use of, and safety-net fund payments for, free care for the uninsured. That's key to the system eventually becoming reasonably close to cost-neutral. (Romney claimed on the campaign trail that this savings will make up the entire cost of subsidizing insurance, but at least in this one particular case he might not have been completely honest.) Interesting data also on numbers of people facing penalties for non-compliance, but from my first look nothing specific about the revenue from employers faced with those $295/employee fees for uninsured employees.
--I wrote earlier that "at one point I heard that Obama was working a similar tie-breaker idea in Nebraska, the other state that splits electors, but I don't think they actually diverted funds to that effort." Apparently they just did.
--My personal favorite exchange from last night's debate:
Ifill: What should be the trigger, or should there be a trigger, when nuclear weapons use is ever put into play?
Palin: Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet....
--Gotta go... Pelosi's speaking on the House floor about the debate. Wonder if she'll rile up the Republicans like last time?
October 02, 2008
Sarah Palin did well enough tonight to salvage her chances of emerging from this campaign as a legitimate mainstream national political figure, which I was glad to see. She still has a long way to go, and could easily backslide, but for now she's made clear that she is a serious political talent who, with time, is likely to master national policy matters.
Her political skills will be severely tested in the next couple of years, because her emergence seriously threatens others who are trying to position themselves as the next leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party -- including Mitt Romney, who will certainly seek to undermine and sabotage her career early, before it can take root. She would be wise to be carefully laying the foundation now for transfering the McCain political infrastructure to her own advantage.
This analysis you are reading is of course predicated on the premise that the McCain-Palin ticket will fail on November 4th, which I think is a pretty safe assumption at this hour; Palin's reasonably sure-footed performance certainly did little or nothing other than prevent (or at least delay) a total disintegration of the doomed Republican ticket. Palin may have won fans, or at least made her existing ones less queasy, but the product she's pitching isn't selling. (I didn't watch the CNN dial-response, but one observer noted that Palin periodically got good scores -- that quickly came crashing down as soon as she mentioned McCain.) And the team nursing the lead just made it past one of the few remaining potential obstacles to victory, without tripping on their faces. In fact, I thought Biden did quite well at his job of tying McCain, continually, to the failed policies of the Bush administration.
At this point, the McCain campaign is clearly hoping for miracles; it was reported today that A) they are conceding Michigan, once a central part of their plan; B) they need to win either Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania -- in all of which McCain is trailing badly and looking worse by the day; and C) they intend to pump money into an effort to win Maine.
Since McCain is trailing badly in Maine, I have to assume that the McCain camp is now spending good money -- money it could clearly use in other states -- in hopes of exploiting Maine's split-electoral system to score a triple-bank shot. Maine has four electoral college votes: two go to the state-wide winner, and one each to the winner of each congressional district. That means that maybe, just maybe, McCain can pick off one of those districts and win an elector, which would break the 269-269 tie that would occur if McCain can stop the Obama tide at all the 2004 Dem states, minus NH, and plus IA, NM, and CO, which all look pretty safe for Obama. Of course, that would mean McCain winning New Hampshire -- where a new poll has Obama up by a mile -- as well as a whole slew of other states where he's in trouble. (The latest Politico map has Obama clocking in with a robust 353 electors.) To be fair, at one point I heard that Obama was working a similar tie-breaker idea in Nebraska, the other state that splits electors, but I don't think they actually diverted funds to that effort.
McCain needs game-changers, as the pundits like to say these days, and this wasn't one -- nor was it likely to be, for reasons I've spouted elsewhere.
The only particular moment of the night that I thought could have an impact on the race, came when Ifill asked Palin whether she had any criticism of George Bush's handling of Israel. Palin essentially said no, after which Biden said that the administration made huge mistakes by allowing the elections that put Hamas in power in the West Bank, and by failing to get NATO troops into southern Lebanon, thus leaving a vacuum for Hezbollah to take control there. Palin, rather than respond, made a cute, pre-packaged retort about Obama-Biden always looking backward and playing the blame game, rather than talking about the future -- a neat little piece of rhetoric to counter Bush-McCain attacks, but not at that juncture. For those who make Israel a major piece of their voting decision (and who are much courted by both campaigns), the empowerment of Hamas and Hezbollah is not something to be shrugged off as pointless rehashing of the past. Palin could have argued that neither situation can be blamed on Bush, or she could have agreed with Biden that both situations are unacceptable and talked about what to do about it. Not taking it seriously was a potentially harmful mistake.
October 02, 2008
Some of the state's high-powered women are holding a fundraiser for Sara Orozco tonight at the Omni Parker House (suggested donations start at $100) to power her campaign against state senator Scott Brown. Martha Coakley, Therese Murray, Lida Harkins, Barbara Lee, Cheryl Cronin, Maria Jobin-Leeds, Victoria Steinberg, Andrea Cabral, Sheila Capone-Wulsin, Rebecca Haag, etc. etc. etc.
Earlier today, some of the same women (but fewer of them) held a press conference to discuss their support of Barack Obama.
October 02, 2008
During the day:
--Attend a prayer vigil for Sarah Palin at the debate site in St. Louis, or organize one yourself.
--Keep your Internet tubes clear so you can receive news of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens's hearing on a motion to dismiss his criminal corruption charges.
--Watch the way Joe Biden should really try not to patronize a female VP opponent.
--Prepare your bid on one of John McCain's homes.
--Purchase and read Jim Lehrer's mystery novels, to determine the bias that surely caused him to throw the first debate for Obama, the way Gwen Ifill is expected to throw tonight's debate for Biden. Also read reminiscences from Tom Brokaw and Bob Schieffer for clues to how the final two Presidential debates will be skewed by the elite liberal coastal media.
Just prior to the debate:
--Drink a six-pack, to become mentally sympatico with Palin.
--Review a list of Sarah Palin lies so you recognize them as they go by.
During the debate:
--Mute the audio when Ifill speaks, then see if you can determine the question from Palin's rambling, vague, incoherent answer.
--See if you can spot Palin peeking at color-coded cue cards, things written on her arm, or notes pinned to her sleeve.
--See if Jonah Goldberg calls Biden a fascist.
October 02, 2008
Be sure to check out two articles in the new issue of the Boston Phoenix -- neither by me -- about the treatment of protesters at the Republican National Convention, and the treatment of that treatment by the media.
Also, please read Chris Faraone's report from yesterday's less violent protests here in Boston.
October 02, 2008
It's important to remember that a nationally televised debate is important for its effect on the 20% or so of voters who are persuadable. It doesn't matter that, as one poll recently suggested, 33% of voters say that Palin makes them "less likely" to vote for McCain -- going from "snowball's chance in hell" to "iceberg's chance" is not important to the campaign at this stage.
Palin's main job on the campaign from here on in is energizing conservatives who are unenthused about McCain --and thus improving the turnout among that group on election day. Tonight's debate is not really the forum for that; she'll get it done more effectively through live rallies and interviews on conservative talk shows.
VP selections rarely make anyone vote for a ticket; they occasionally convince people to vote against it -- hence the oft-repeated maxim to "first do no harm" with the VP pick. McCain took a chance that he could confound this rule, and the risk has failed. Some number of those persuadable voters who might otherwise be convinced to vote for McCain are now reluctant to, because A) they genuinely fear a potential Palin Presidency, and/or B) they think that the Palin selection demonstrates an atrocious lack of judgment for McCain.
Thus, Palin's task tonight is two-fold. First, convince that group of people that she's really not so awful. Second, re-focus people on the more important reasons that they should want to vote for McCain over Obama.
The second task is relatively straightforward: she needs to repeatedly tell people that Obama and Biden are typical tax-and-spend liberals, who will inevitably raise your taxes, destroy jobs, and increase the national debt. (The other argument, that Obama is too inexperienced and naive to be trusted with national security, is obviously best left to McCain.)
For the first task, Palin needs to accept and move beyond her obvious lack of knowledge about national and international policy. She can't fake her way through it, and is a disaster when she tries.
Instead, she needs to inform people of how she has stepped into new tasks before, and learned them quickly and adeptly. She can do this without literally saying "I knew nothing about the Alaska Oil & Gas Commission when I was named chair, and I would have sounded like an imbecile if I was interviewed about it before I started." But she can describe how as chair she became so adept at its workings that she was able to identify and expose the former attorney general's conflict of interest in negotiating a coal exporting trade agreement. People will get it. She should be able to tell stories that illustrate her quickly-learned skills as governor, whether working legislation through, or making changes within departments and agencies.
If I was advising her, I would tell her that when she feels stumped on an issue, she should admit it and move on. For example, here's what she could have done with Katie Couric's question about Supreme Court decisions:
You know, I'm not comfortable talking just yet about specifics of federal law and jurisprudence -- obviously I have plenty of opinions, but like most people I don't feel well-versed on the groundings in Constitutional law, to have a public conversation about it. What I can tell you is that as a general philosophy I believe in a fairly strict reading of the powers enumerated in the text, rather than trying to squeeze more and more federal authority into a broad interpretation of the language. I suppose that comes from being a public official in an independent-minded state like Alaska -- we tend to think that we can find solutions that fit our needs, rather than take one-size-fits-all direction from Washington. That's the liberal approach that Barack Obama and Joe Biden tend to take, that we in Washington are going to make the rules for you in Georgia and Minnesota and Alaska. And it's why we keep getting more and more big national programs that require more of our tax dollars, to do things that I believe we can do better and more efficiently at the state and local level.
Sure, the elitists will mock you for wanting to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency without knowing anything about the Constitution. But those persuadables -- particularly the ones likely to lean toward McCain -- will come away thinking about how Obama/Biden plan to keep expanding the size of the federal government, not about Palin admitting her ignorance.
October 01, 2008
Seldom does so much polling data drop in a single day with so much bad news for one candidate. Let us briefly review.
Results from six new national polls were released today; Obama leads in all six, by margins ranging from 4 to 9 points. That's in addition to the various daily tracking polls, which also all show Obama ahead by similar margins.
Now for states won by Kerry in '04 that McCain has hoped to pick up. Three new polls today show Obama ahead in Pennsylvania, by 5, 7, and 15 points. Other new polls released today show Obama ahead by 16 in Iowa; by 9 in Wisconsin; by 9 in New Jersey; and by 11 in Minnesota.
Next, states won by Bush in '04 that Obama has hoped to pick up. Three polls released today all show Obama leading in Florida, by margins of 4, 4, and 8 points. Other new polls show Obama up by 9 in Virginia; by 4 in Nevada; by 8 in Ohio.
Two more polls show a virtual tie in the very red states of Missouri and Indiana.
And another two polls show McCain's lead down to single digits in the ridiculously red states of Texas and Mississippi.
Oh, and CBS News showed perhaps the most humiliating clip yet from the Katie Couric/Sarah Palin interviews. Can't have been a very cheery day with the McCain campaign.
Ah well, tomorrow is another day -- albeit one in which Palin will be answering unscripted questions on live television with tens of millions of people watching....
October 01, 2008
Just before 5:00pm (in time to get clips shown on the evening news), Senator Chris Dodd yielded the floor for 10 minutes to the man who beat the tar out of him in the Presidential race, Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
He's not phoning it in, no sir!
"The fact that we're even here... it's an outrage," Obama said. "Millions of jobs could be lost... This is not just a Wall Street crisis, it's an American crisis."
Obama went over his time, and got unanimous consent to be given a couple extra minutes. (Who does he think he is???) "Now more than ever, we are all in this together... at the end of the day, there is no real separation between Wall Street and Main Street."
October 01, 2008
Susan Collins, endangered Republican of Maine (yes, Tom Allen trails badly in the polls, but the national anti-GOP mood may yet reach that race), just spoke on the bailout bill. She's voting yes, but like most others wanted to be on the record lambasting everybody she could possibly blame for the situation: "greedy Wall Street traders," "unscrupulous mortgage bankers," "naive or deceptive borrowers," etc. etc. etc. Collins mentioned that she was at one time chair of the Maine commission that regulates the banking and securities industry -- doesn't that suggest she should have seen this crisis coming? Perhaps my colleagues at the Portland Phoenix know better than I whether Allen is making any headway against Collins on this issue.
She was followed by Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, who is also technically up for re-election. He's voting for the bill. He did have one interesting thing to say: urging against easing mark-to-market regulations, which is picking up steam as a way to help repair the books of financial institutions. (The SEC partially eased the regulations today, Congress is considering going further.) I don't know if it might be necessary, but Reed is right that we should be extremely wary of going back to mark-to-market accounting -- which Enron executives used to great effect.
Mitch McConnell, suddenly vulnerable Republican of Kentucky, is now explaining his Yes vote......zzzzzz....
October 01, 2008
Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, is now speaking; he has asked for Article I Sec. 8, and the 10th Amendment to the Constitutionto be entered into the record to demonstrate that we got into this whole mess because of unconstitutional Congressional funding. He's particularly angry about Amtrak. Coburn, a practicing physician, also says that we are treating a cancer patient by treating everything -- including "clearing the mucus" -- but not the cancer. Oh, and he's voting yes on the bailout.
October 01, 2008
They won't vote until after sundown (and the end of Rosh Hashana), but the US Senate is now debating the bailout bill. New Hampshire's own Judd Gregg (ranking Republican on the Budget Committee) is speaking right now on behalf of the bill.