Travel Itineraries

The days dwindle down to a precious few for Barack Obama and John McCain. There is no longer time for superfluous campaign stops, for "image" or "spin" trips. Everything on the schedule meets a specific purpose, either a state to gain or a state to keep from losing. It's like a game of stud when you have to turn over your cards. There is no pretense or bluff left. All is revealed.

The two candidates' schedules for the final four days do reveal all about their respective priorities. Obama is completely on offense. McCain is on defense, and his path to victory has been reduced to one chance.

Today, Friday, Obama was in Iowa and Indiana. Saturday he plans to campaign in Nevada, Colorado and Missouri. Sunday he will spend the whole day in Ohio. Monday he will head southeast to finish up in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. The common denominator is that all these were states George W. Bush won in 2004 against John Kerry. Obama's entire agenda consists of taking "red" states away from the GOP. He is not concerned about defending any of the customarily "blue" democratic states. Not Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon or even Pennsylvania, where McCain is concentrating his own offensive effort.

The schedule tells you all you need to know about Obama's confidence and his campaign's assessment of the situation. He's not worried about having to defend anywhere. He is trying to run up the score on the other guy's turf. He is playing as though it's going to be a blowout. As if to emphasize that, Obama television commercials have suddenly begun appearing in three new states: North Dakota, Georgia and, for the first time, in Arizona. Yes, McCain's home state, where four polls out in the past three days give McCain an average lead of only four percent.

Here is McCain's itinerary. He spent all day today in Ohio. Tomorrow, Saturday, he will concentrate on Virginia and Pennsylvania. On Sunday he will be in New Hampshire. Then he wraps up on Monday with a coast-to-coast marathon that may include stops in as many as seven states: Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona. This schedule lays bare McCain's thinking. His first priority is to defend Bush states where he is already behind. That's where he's spending the lion's share of his time. Then he is taking his best shot at the two states he figures he might be able to turn from blue to red, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

The problem for him is that even if he wins both of them, and all seven "tossup" states (Montana, North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida and Georgia), he will still be 18 electoral votes short of victory. He'll have to win Ohio too, or Virginia and Colorado, or all three of Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. In other words, McCain will have to run the table of close states, and then improve on that by taking at least three others where Obama currently has at least a five-point lead, one of which must be Pennsylvania.

McCain's predicament is somewhat like John Kerry's four years ago, where everything rode on his ability to win Ohio. When he did not the election was over. McCain faces the same kind of problem, except much worse. This time McCain has to win Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where FiveThirtyEight.com rates Obama's chances to win each state at 99%. And then Ohio. And also Florida, Indiana, Missouri and all the rest without losing in any of them. To return to our poker example, his only chance lies in drawing to the equivalent of an inside straight, not once, but three times in a row. That is what the candidates' itineraries tell us.

Is the Race Tightening?

On October 25 Barack Obama enjoyed an average 8-point lead over John McCain in the presidential race. As of the 30th that is down to just under 6 points. Is the race tightening? Optimistic Republicans and here-we-go-again Democrats are beginning to speak of the possibility of a tremendous McCain come-from-behind victory. Is such a shift underway? No, the numbers and the atmospherics simply do not seem to support any such conclusion. I'll give you a rundown on national figures, state figures, and the outlines of the ground game.

Nationally, the Obama popular vote lead has been whittled in five days from 8.0 to 5.9. Obama has seen his support dip from 50.4 to 49.7, a drop of 0.7%. McCain over the same period has seen his support grow from 42.4 to 43.8, a gain of 1.4%. What does this portend? Well, if that were to continue for the remaining five days Obama would lose another 2.1% off his lead and wind up with a 3.8% margin on election day. That would be more than sufficient to win the election. Take 2% away from Obama in every state in the nation and he would win 353 to 185 in the electoral college. See the figures here. In fact, take 6% away from Obama in every state in the union and he would still win 291-247. He would still win in the 2004 Bush states of Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia. Take a look for yourself.

An evaluation of recent movement in the battleground states shows plenty of strength for Obama. McCain seems to be making inroads in Indiana and likely taking the lead. Missouri is nip and tuck. McCain may be narrowing the gap in Pennsylvania, but still trails by a lot-9%-too much, in my view, to make up in the time he has left. Obama continues to hold steady leads past the margin of error in Virginia and Ohio. And multiple surveys show him pulling farther ahead in Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, New Hampshire, Nevada and New Mexico. Even normally safe Republican states such as Montana, North Dakota, Georgia and even McCain's home state of Arizona are coming into play, if the state-by-state surveys have any validity to them. In other words, regardless of what the national popular vote numbers look like, and they still look just fine for Obama, the state figures reveal nearly unmitigated gloom for McCain's hopes. When your only good news is a positive trend in a state your party hasn't lost in 44 years (Indiana) there can't be a lot of chuckles in the front section of the campaign plane between stops.

Then finally there are other facets of the contest, and most of these also favor Obama. He has at least a 2-1 financial advantage for the last few days. He is consistently outdrawing McCain by 5-1 and better at his campaign rallies. He outdraws Palin 3-1. Big-draw surrogates such as Hillary Clinton dwarf the crowds and interest McCain's surrogates can generate. Obama has more offices, more paid staff and more volunteers in every battleground state. Usually a lot more. Half of his supporters say they are "excited" about Obama while only a fourth of McCain's feel that way about him. Early voting is trending Democratic in most states where party registration is recorded for it. And the more early voting there is while Obama has the lead the less of that lead he can lose if people later change their minds.

The principal dangers Obama has to worry about are that, first, the young voters who are his most loyal supporters will not bother to vote in the strong numbers they did during the primaries. And second, that the residual strength of the Republican get out the vote effort and historically more loyal voting pattern of Republican voters will reassert themselves. There is also the question of Obama's race, and that is an imponderable that no one will know for sure about until the votes are counted. Still, to this point, surveys and primary results indicate its effects should not be enough to overturn the leads he now holds. See my October 21 post on this.

The numbers, trends and conditions are what they are. An Obama victory is extremely likely, and grows more so with each passing day that goes by without a seismic change event in McCain's favor. I'll keep watching carefully for you over the next few days, but that is certainly how it stands right now.

Obama Strong in Closing Case

Barack Obama's 30-minute presentation this evening was an effort to reassure Americans about him as the potential president. He acted mostly as a narrator through most of the infomercial. He spoke in soft and mildly earnest tones backed up by music that underscored the same mood. The message was 'here is an intelligent, calm, caring man, a problem-solver you can rely on.'

The evident priority was to combat personal attacks coming from his Republican rival that seek to portray Obama as radical and risky, if not downright disloyal to the country. Obama opened by saying, "We've been talking about the same problems for decades. I'm going to offer you my specific solutions." He did this by highlighting four average American families and their struggles, to show he "gets it" and has real policy ideas that can help real people with common challenges.

Obama used the poignant story of his mother's losing battle with cancer and insurance companies to illustrate the need for health care reform. It would have been an awfully tough customer who wasn't affected by that approach to the problem.

Short testimonials from other leaders were woven into the narrative to reinforce Obama's points. The production oozed reassurance of Obama's personality and policy views. The wavering voter was given every permission to go ahead and vote for Obama. There are not too many of them left, perhaps six percent at this point. With the case made, the stage was set for Obama to close the sale.

The last two minutes cut to Obama appearing live at a rally in Florida with running mate Joe Biden. The reassuring tones on the ad seamlessly led into his exhortation to the crowd to take action. "In six days, we can choose to invest in health care for our families and education for our kids and renewable energy for our future. America, the time for change has come. In six days we can choose hope over fear, unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo. In six days, we can come together as one nation, and one people, and once more choose our better history."

It was an appealing message presented in an appealing way. Obama ought to have every expectation this show will give him a bump of a point or two in the next couple of days. After that there will be only three campaign days remaining-not enough for Sen. McCain to erase the deficit he faces.

McCain's Bizarre Strategy

After eight years of painful misgovernance under the hard-right Bush-Cheney administration the American people say by record margins that things are on the wrong track. They say they want change. That's why the Republicans were wise to nominate John McCain for president. He was the one Republican who had demonstrated some independence from party orthodoxy and could credibly make the case that he might actually be for change. That is what makes McCain's general election strategy of running an extreme hard-right campaign so bizarre. Of what could he possibly have been thinking?

To get the Republican nomination all the candidates had to fall into lockstep over the unshakable articles of faith dear to the Republican base: continue the fight in Iraq, make the Bush tax cuts permanent, wall out illegal immigrants and refuse any semblance of accepting those already here into American society, speak glowingly of evangelical religion and speak disapprovingly of abortion and gay rights. McCain had questioned all these tenets except Iraq at times in his past, but to get the nomination he pledged allegiance to the lot.

One might have expected him to gravitate back toward the middle of the road once he had the nomination in hand. After all, that's where most of the voters were: they wanted out of Iraq, had an abysmal opinion of Bush and his policies, realized the futility of hostility to immigrants (not to mention the anger in the Latino community over the issue), were tired of the merging of religion and politics, support abortion rights and were, particularly among the young, growing increasingly tolerant of gay rights.

So what did McCain do? He dug the hardest of hard lines on Iraq. He fully supported the Bush tax cuts and failed to differentiate an inch of daylight between his economic prescriptions and the president's. He dropped his comprehensive immigration proposal and vowed he would no longer vote for it himself. He cozied up to conservative evangelical preachers whenever he could, opposed abortion rights and chose for his running mate a brassy but shallow neophyte as sure to delight the know-nothing hard-right cultural base as she was to dismay everyone else. What was up with all that?

I feel McCain settled on a strategy to try to reconstruct the Bush victory of 2004. He began running at first on his experience and found that was getting nowhere. He determined that in a change election he could not compete with Barack Obama, "Mr. Change" himself. Obama was everything about change, at least on the surface, that McCain was not. He was much younger, a minority, and hip. McCain at first tried to say he was for change, and initially he and Sarah Palin seemed to use the word "maverick" in every other sentence to imply their own openness to change.

What they absolutely failed to do, however, was to devise any actual plans or policy points of change. Change was a slogan, not a program, and the American people caught on. And rather than retool the campaign to go for the center they gravitated to the default campaign mode of the Rovians McCain had put in charge. The idea was and is to recreate the 2004 win over Kerry. First, raise questions about the opponent personally with guilt by association. Next, identify with the symbols the base loves: God, guns and "family values." Finally, divide the nation into us and them by attacking the opponent with the old reliable labels: liberal, socialist, class warfare, unpatriotic, not one of us, un-American parts of the country and so on. The idea is to "energize the base" to a monstrous turnout, rather than to appeal to moderates. It worked for Bush. Why isn't it working now?

The reason is to be found in the news of the day. Americans are deeply worried about the problems now afoot. Job losses, the stock market, the financial and home implosions, energy, health care and the wars are but some of the myriad dangers confronting the nation. People have finally come to the point where they want pragmatic solutions and can no longer brook distracting sloganeering. They have heard it all before.

We will never know what might have happened had the McCain team come up with some innovative ideas for such solutions grounded in the moderate center. What is clear is that they cast their lot with the politics of personal destruction and national division instead. As of now it appears this plan is not working. If there is any justice that will continue to be the case on election day. The American people deserved better. John McCain was capable of delivering better but he chose not to. More's the pity.

World War II

Tomorrow in my U.S. History classes we begin our unit on the Second World War. It seemed a pretty recent happening when I was a child. I remember sitting in a barber shop at the age of six, waiting for my turn in the chair. As my father got his haircut I read a comic book. One of the characters in the comic book, a military officer, was saying, "But the war's been over for fifteen years!"

My father and just about every other kid's had been in the war. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the European Theater, was finishing his second term as president. Most of our mothers had been war brides, worked in industry while the men were away and knew how to make do or do without. Everybody over the age of thirty remembered the Depression. The influences of those two great historical periods weren't found in a book; they were palpably all around us and influenced everybody's world view. I grew up among extraordinary people who had been called upon to accomplish extraordinary things.

It is hard to look back nearly seventy years to the beginning of World War II or the nearly sixty since its end without being rather taken aback by the sheer scope of it all, the brazen ambition and terrible power of the aggressors, the narrow margins by which catastrophe was averted and the immense impact it all still has on the world today. Consider that civilization as we know it might not recognizably exist but for a relative handful of mostly anonymous people: a few hundred Royal Air Force fighter pilots in 1940, a ten-minute dive bombing run on Imperial aircraft carriers west of Midway Island in 1942, stoic self-sacrifice by young Russians in the ruined streets of Stalingrad and by young Americans in the fever-infested jungles of Guadalcanal and the snow drifts of Bastogne.

It is unquestionable that we are the heirs of the world they saved. They are leaving us now, passing from us at the rate of 100,000 a month. In a few short years their generation will fall silent, their story left to others to retell. It certainly behooves us to preserve the legacies they left and to extend the opportunities they made possible. Only in those ways can we pay proper homage to what they did for us so many decades ago, when they were young and everything hung in the balance.

Greenspan Admits Error

A chastened Alan Greenspan admitted to Congress on Thursday that his deregulatory ideology was largely to blame for the current financial crash. Speaking before Rep. Henry A. Waxman's (D-CA) House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the former Fed Chairman said, "Those of us who looked to the self-interest of the lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief."

Waxman presented a lengthy list of Greenspan's pronouncements over the years cautioning against regulating subprime lending and derivatives. He then stated, "You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others." Waxman then pointedly asked, "Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made? Greenspan replied, "Yes, I've found a flaw. I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I've been very distressed by that fact."

Greenspan conceded, "The whole intellectual edifice" of risk management, "collapsed in the summer of last year." He went on to agree that such instruments and markets needed to "be restrained." Returning to Greenspan's earlier pronouncements against the need for regulation, Waxman asked, "Were you wrong?" Greenspan responded by saying, "Partially," and, as Edmund Andrews of the New York Times reports, "before trying to parse his concession as thinly as possible."

It had to be quite a humiliating experience for the man who until recently was regarded with an almost mystical aura of sagacity when he periodically went to Capitol Hill to offer his typically cryptic and veiled comments on the money supply, markets, interest rates and the other arcana of the financial world. Mr. Greenspan deserves some credit for his candor, but going forward the lesson for the rest of us should keep a close watch on what the new congress and administration come up with to prevent recurrence of the irresponsibility that led us to our present difficulties. Allowing the industry to be self-policing should by now be a thoroughly discredited notion.

Day on the Hustings

Today was an interesting day with a couple of satisfying activities. In the morning I met five students from our Democratic Club at my office to take them out for some precinct walking. In the evening I attended a conservative-liberal debate on campus hosted by Valley Public Radio personality Terry Phillips. I'll write about my morning with the students.

The five students showed up at 9 AM and we set out shortly thereafter. Patrick and Philip could only stay for two hours, so Patrick brought his car and followed me. Nathan, Isabel and Tony went with me. We were out to place door hangers for our Faculty Union-endorsed Board of Trustees incumbent Earl Mann and for our Community College Bond issue, Measure I.

Earl's district, Ward 3, is largely rural in a largely rural county. It starts on the northern fringes of Tulare County's main city, Visalia, and proceeds mostly north and northeast from there. He hails from the town of Woodlake, himself. Earl had asked us to go to the areas on the northwest outskirts of Visalia where most of the new housing is. His idea is that new residents are the ones most likely to be unfamiliar with his long record of service in the community.

The students were terrifically diligent workers, efficiently moving up and down both sides of the streets in systematic fashion. They intrepidly climbed up and down one set of stairs after another at apartment buildings. I followed and picked them up at the ends of streets, leapfrogging teams ahead to maintain efficiency. At times I worried about losing track of where people were, but we didn't lose anybody!

We saw a handful of signs stuck in the ground for one of Earl's two opponents, Ruben Macareno, but nothing from Carmita Rodriguez-Pena, his other challenger. This being the Central Valley, we saw a lot more McCain-Palin signs than Obama-Biden ones. Still, that was no problem for our efforts. Earl is a moderate Republican himself, a good friend of education. By the time we called it a day and I took the young people to Burger King they had placed about 750 sets of Earl hangers and Yes On I flyers. We have six students signed up to continue the effort on Sunday. It was a good day, and especially gratifying to be associated with committed young people at work in the best tradition of grassroots democracy.

Overcoming the Spirit of Faction

I had a discussion today with a Political Science colleague about the extremely negative tenor of the Republican campaign currently being run. He was interested in exploring a a few interesting questions. First, does John McCain actually believe his own recent rhetoric about Obama as a socialist or his running mate's characterizations of Obama as a friend of terrorists? Second, is this an intentional effort on the part of his campaign or the GOP to "poison the well" and make it impossible for Obama to govern so that he can be more easily defeated in 2012? And third, if so, what does this say about the state of our ability to grapple with the many serious problems confronting the nation?

Does McCain himself believe the rhetoric?
I have considered this question in the blog before, beginning on July 5 just after McCain hired the Rove team to run his campaign, and as recently as this Monday. No, I do not believe McCain himself actually subscribes to insinuations that Obama is disloyal to the United States of America, is in league with terrorists, wants to expose kindergartners to graphic sex and so on. What I do believe is that McCain wants to win the election. He became convinced or arrived at the conclusion himself that destroying Obama's personal reputation was his best and perhaps only path to victory. He wants to be elected so badly that he is willing to discard his own previous reputation for civility and go back on his promise to conduct a "respectful campaign on the issues." It is a strategy to him, nothing more and nothing less.

Is this an intentional effort on the part of the McCain campaign or the GOP to "poison the well" and make it impossible for Obama to govern so that he can be more easily defeated in 2012?
On McCain's own part? I would say "no." His event horizon is the election. He knows he will never have another chance to be President and I do not believe he is thinking past November 4 or about anyone else's concerns in the matter. Now, in the case of the Republican National Committee, I would say probably yes. If they cannot prevent him from winning they would like to see a wounded Obama limp weakly into the White House and prove unable to get anything done during his tenure. That would start paying off in the midterm Congressional races in 2010 and possibly give them a good chance to get the top spot back again in 2012. Their concern is to win elections, if not this one, then by laying the ground work for winning the next ones. In the case of related groups like 527 committees, I would say definitely yes. They want to heap as much calumny on Obama and stoke as much outrage as they possibly can. That is the surest way for them to increase their membership rolls and donor bases.

What does this say about the state of our ability to grapple with the many serious problems confronting the nation?
This goes back to the spectre that haunted George Washington when he gave his "Farewell Address" to the nation as he left office in 1796. He warned of a selfish "spirit of faction" by which "cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men" would place the good of "party" ahead of the good of the nation and which could "obstruct" and even "destroy" the ability of government to effectively serve the people. There can be little question that when a campaign goes beyond sincere disagreements on policy and political philosophy to the path of attributing to its opponent active treason and moral degeneracy, the object is to rob him of all legitimacy and render him a crippled and ineffective leader. The effects of the politics of character assassination and extreme partisan enmity have been all too obvious for some time in American politics, as attested by the growing backlog of chronic problems unsolved and the worsening level of trust and respect in government at all levels.

Response of the Obama Campaign
Combating this tendency has been one of the primary concerns of the Obama campaign from the start. He was careful not to personally denigrate Hillary Clinton in the primaries, even though things got very heated at times. He has similarly refused to retaliate in kind to the outrageous slurs and fabrications emanating from the Republican camp in the general election. He frequently calls attention to the tactics being used against him and says the American people are "too smart" to be "distracted," that he is confident "it will not work, not this time." Of course, part of this is a plea that the people not succumb to the negative tactics, but part is also preparation for his ability to govern should he win. Obama is trying not to burn bridges but what is more, he is trying to establish a new normative in American political discourse that could make it more possible for both parties to actually work together to get things done without so many shrieking partisans screaming "sellout" every time it is attempted. If the American people are truly ready for this, Obama potentially stands as a transformational president indeed.

Should We Believe the Polls?

As Barack Obama enters the last two weeks with an average lead once again expanding into the neighborhood of 7.2%, more consideration will be given to whether these polls can actually be trusted. The lead seems nearly insurmountable with so little time left and Obama enjoying the money advantage. But is there a lurking "Bradley factor" or a a "Dewey Defeats Truman" reprise in there somewhere?

The short answer is, in all likelihood, no. The polls are probably quite accurate, and are more likely to be underestimating Obama's strength than overestimating it. If we go back to the primary season and examine the results we find that Obama actually outperformed the polls by more than 3% ten times, underperformed the poll's predictions by more than 3% six times, and ten other times met the polls' expectations when the margin between himself and Hillary Clinton fell within 3% of what the polls predicted.

So that's 73% of the time meeting or exceeding what the polls predicted and only failing to do so 27% of the time. And of the six times the polls overestimated Obama's performance, the only two that incorrectly chose him as the winner happened quite early in the primary season. Clinton won in New Hampshire and California, where polls had shown Obama 8% nad 1% ahead respectively. After Super Tuesday, February 5, that never happened again. The pollsters were able to improve their models and devise more accurate turnout projections for various types of voters after that. In general, (14 out of 16 times) when the polls were off by more than 3%, Obama wound up simply winning by more than already predicted or losing bigger in states where he was already predicted to lose.

As far as thinking of a shock such as 1948, Dewey led in the last Gallup poll by 5%, conducted eight days before the election. Truman would up winning by that same margin, 5%. George Gallup's numbers were probably about right on October 25, and his was the only extensive polling being done. Based on his experience in the previous three elections he felt another survey so close to the election would be unnecessary. He therefore missed the late surge to Truman.

But today we see no signs of a McCain surge, though numerous polls are being taken. A tightening of the race, noted here October 19, has apparently been reversed, as Obama's aggregate lead has gone up from 5.3% to 7.2% over the past three days. McCain needs a seismic event to recover the kind of momentum he would need to make up that kind of deficit, for he now needs to pull off a consistent shift of half a percent a day every day until the election.

The short summary is that Obama looks very, very strong at present. An unanticipated Bradley factor shift away from Obama or massive reordering toward McCain is not currently happening. Meanwhile, the days tick off the calendar one by one. Yes, we should believe the polls.

Fear and Loathing on the Campign Trail

With two weeks to go and things not looking so good for him, John McCain is starting to drop all pretense of dignity. He begins to remind me of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. His obsession for the possession his "precious" having completely taken over his very being, the once-attractive hobbit has been reduced to a frantic, grasping, selfish, fiend, consumed by his ambition and willing to do or say anything to get what he wants.

Long gone is the McCain of this summer who called for a respectful campaign on the issues. Just a distant memory is the "straight talker" of 2000, who was broken and destroyed by the Rove slime machine that year. Now the Rove acolytes work for Mr. McCain, and more and more of his message seems to emanate from their minds.

His campaign has degenerated into an exercise in name-calling, labelling, guilt by association, division and coded race-baiting. Obama is called a "terrorist" at Republican rallies. McCain himself now raises the bogeyman of "socialism" when discussing his rival and styles his tax policy as "welfare" and "class warfare." His warmup speakers have taken to emphasizing Obama's Arab-sounding middle name.

Sarah Palin styles heavy concentrations of their supporters the "pro-American" parts of the country and states leaning Obama's way as the "anti-American" parts. In scenes redolent of McCarthyism, their surrogates such as Representative Bachman go on national television to demand Congressional investigations of the loyalty of Democratic politicians. Their spokesmen such as Tom Ridge follow up with network interviews reiterating the "socialist road" mantra while Palin glorifies of "small-town real Americans" while sowing resentment and suspicion of Americans who live in more urban settings, a coded reference to racial division. This is the kind of campaign Colin Powell had in mind when he referred to the McCain-Palin effort as "demagoguery."

Quite apart from the issue differences, which are hardly the focus of this strategy, it would be a very good thing for the country for this campaign to fail. For one, its defeat might make others in the future less likely. Beyond that, its division of the nation into "we and they" feeds the kind of furious partisan division which would make governing extremely difficult for either party. Perhaps most ominous from what we are hearing at Republican rallies, it appears to be stoking the kind of passionate anger likely to lead to violence, either of American against American or against the candidate.

Obama constantly points out the destructive nature of this type of hate and fear mongering to the fabric of the nation. He also frequently asserts, "It will not work, not this time." He is most assuredly right on the first count, and one can only hope on the second as well.

Powell and Polls

Two items need discussing today: the Powell endorsement and the recent tightening in the overall national polling numbers. Is Powell's backing the last straw that breaks the McCain campaign's back and guarantees an Obama victory? Or does the narrowing gap between Obama and McCain the past few days portend a photo finish and possible McCain victory? Let's take a closer look.

Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press today is important symbolically but will have little discernible effect on the national numbers. The general rule of thumb is, the better known the candidates and a race are, the less influential endorsements become.

As such, it came too late to appreciably change the race. Most minds are made up by now. At best, it may act to solidify support a little among those who already back Obama. If Powell had come out this late against Obama it might have hurt him. That this did not happen is certainly a plus for the Obama effort, and the imprimatur of the former Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs Chairman should help Obama govern should he be elected. Bottom line: welcome news for the Democratic camp but not a game clincher.

On October 14 Obama enjoyed his largest spread, 8.2% in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls. By October 19 it had fallen to 5.0%. Does this shift of better than half a point per day presage a major shift to McCain and a gathering come-from-behind surge? So far, no. What it seems to indicate to this point is a major move toward increased support for McCain in red states. His margins in Texas have increased by 5% in recent days, for instance, and two West Virginia surveys show McCain's lead growing from 2% to 8%.

Obama's leads appear to be holding firm and even growing in states already leaning to him, such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado and Florida. What we appear to be seeing is the customary polarization typical of most elections; most of the remaining partisans are returning home. For McCain to win he not only has to hold all the solid Republican states where he currently leads, but must also turn things around in several states where he is behind. In the final analysis, remember, the national popular vote means nothing. Watch this week to see if there is significant movement toward McCain in places such as Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Minnesota. If so, then the last week may be a barn burner. If not, then the rotund diva will be making her entrance.

Responsibility Makes A Comeback

No matter who wins the election this year it appears that good old-fashioned responsibility is making a bit of a comeback.

John McCain's very biography is a study in responsibility, from his often harrowing military service and heroic captivity to taking on a host of difficult issues from often unconventional perspectives over the years. His calls for Americans to serve the nation or to "enlist in a cause greater than themselves" has particular resonance coming from a man of his example.

Barack Obama has used his unique position to call for greater fatherly responsibility in the black community, and for greater parental responsibility in general. "Turn off the TV and the video games and make sure your children get their homework done!" Obama chides his audiences. His plans to pay for college in exchange for national service are in a like vein.

The recent huge financial rescue package was only approved by Congress after both conservatives and liberals insisted on adding language intended to restrict the ability of the managers who caused the crisis to unduly profit from it. This, too is an effort to engender a little responsibility.

And some of the lessons many are drawing from our present difficulties are just as welcome. People shouldn't borrow what they don't have the means to pay back. For that matter, people shouldn't lend to people who don't have the means to repay, either. Some want to argue chicken and egg here, but the truth is both are irresponsible. The same is true, of course, on an issue like energy development. It's irresponsible to keep paying more and more to import it from abroad.

Perhaps, regardless of who wins, we will see a little more facing of facts and a bit more willingness to shoulder some of the effort that will be needed to makes things better--and that would be refreshing.

U.S. Senate Outlook

The status of U.S. Senate races is a topic that's been left on the back burner of late, overshadowed by the debates and all the other minutiae of the presidential contest. That being said, the stakes in the Senate are quite high this year.

The Senate has the constitutional responsibility to vote on foreign treaties, and there could be any number of trade agreements reached. The Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq could possibly be brought before the next Congressional session. The Senate also confirms Presidential appointments, including members of the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. A uniquely imortant role of the Senate is the ability of the minority party to "filibuster," or hold up legislation they don't like, as long as they can muster 40 votes.

Thirty-five of the 100 Senate seats are being contested this year. Twenty-three Republican and twelve Democratic seats are up for grabs. Democrats currently hold a narrow 51-49 edge in the Senate, if you count Independent Joe Lieberman who caucuses with the Democrats. (On issues other than Iraq Lieberman should be counted with the Democrats.)

At present the Democrats appear to be certain to gain a minimum of four seats and lead in four additional races. That could get them to 59. After that, there are four other contests for Republican-held seats where the Democratic challenger is close enough to possibly pull an upset. That gives them an outside chance of reaching the coveted total of 60. No incumbent Democrats appear to be in danger of failing to win re-election. You can see some data at Real Clear Politics or at ElectoralVote.Com.

The sure Democratic takeaways include Colorado with Mark Udall, New Mexico with cousin Tom Udall, Virginia with Mark Warner and New Hampshire with Jean Shaheen. The first three are running for seats where a Republican is retiring. Former Governor Shaheen leads incumbent John Sununu in New Hampshire by seven points.

Three other races where Democratic challengers lead are in states where Barack Obama is running strongly. In Oregon Jeff Merkely has an average 3.3% lead over incumbent Gordon Smith. In North Carolina Kay Hagan leads Elizabeth Dole by 3.4%. In Minnesota, Al Franken has a 2.2% lead over Norm Coleman. The fourth narrow Democratic lead is in Alaska, where Mark Begich leads Ted Stevens by 3.2%. Stevens is on trial for corruption at this writing. If he is acquitted his chances may improve dramatically. No doubt the Sarah Palin nomination has already helped him some.

If all these battles go the Democrats' way they would still need one more win to reach the coveted 60 plateau. The best prospects appear to be in Georgia (down 2.6%), Mississippi (-4.0%), Kentucky (-6.5%) and Texas (-7%). So the best probability is that the Republicans will be able to hold on to the filibuster weapon, one they have wielded with record frequency the past two years. But if the Democrats do get to 59 or 58 all they will need is to entice one or two Republicans to break ranks on controversial issues.

Obama Goes Three for Three

Barack Obama emerged as the clear winner in the presidential debate against John McCain tonight. Obama's third consecutive victory deals a probably lethal blow to McCain's White House hopes.

The last of the three Obama-McCain debates was a spirited interchange between the two rivals. Veteran CBS newsman Bob Schieffer steered the debate into some interesting territory avoided in earlier face-offs, including abortion and dirty campaigning. As expected, McCain took to the offensive and remained on the attack whenever possible. Obama coolly refuted McCain's thrusts and repeatedly counterattacked from defensive position.

An example was a back and forth on Bill Ayers. McCain brought up the former Weather Underground bomber to attack Obama's judgment and associations. Obama opened by remarking, "Bill Ayers has become the centerpiece of Sen. McCain's campaign over the past two or three weeks." Obama then calmly described a tangential relationship with the man, including the names of educational and Republican notables sitting on the same panels. After another dig from McCain about the effectiveness of using the Ayers issue, Obama responded with, "Your campaign says more about you than it does about me."

McCain focused on the kinds of appeals that might have worked well twenty years ago in the 1980s. He was strongly ideological, saying at one point, "The whole premise of Sen. Obama's tax policy is class warfare." He railed against big government, high taxes and "spread the wealth" thinking. He ridiculed the idea that a woman's health might be a consideration in the permissibility of late-term abortions, calling it an "extremist" position, and when confronted with the spectacle of people at his and his running mate's appearances shouting, "terrorist" and "kill him" at the mention of Obama's name, said he was "very proud of" the people who attend his rallies.

Throughout it all, McCain's efforts to rattle and provoke Obama elicited measured responses, while time and again McCain was unable to conceal his own disdain and contempt for Obama. His frequent sarcasm, grimaces and eye rolling compared poorly to Obama's earnest attentiveness when McCain spoke and broad smiles when McCain raised points that Obama considered disingenuous. Once again Obama appeared the more comfortably presidential of the two while McCain often came across as Dennis the Menace's grumpy old neighbor, Mr. Wilson.

In his closing statement, McCain fell back on his resume. He pointed to his lifetime of service, spoke of his integrity and invited the American people to trust him. Obama by contrast, issued a promise of action. He spoke of what he planned to accomplish, a 'Here's what I'm going to do for you' summation of the reasons for his campaign.

The popular verdict was decisive. CNN's survey of a national cross section proclaimed Obama the winner by 58% to 31%. Obama's favorability rating went up from 63% to 66% while McCain's fell from 51% to 49%. Obama was judged better on economic issues 59% to 35% and on health 62% to 31%. He was favored on taxes 56% to 41% and was considered more likable by a whopping 70% to 22%. A CBS poll of undecided voters preferred Obama's performance by an even more decisive margin, 53% to 22%.

Expect McCain to talk a lot about taxes and his history of service in the final two and a half weeks. His smear efforts have fallen flat, his policy plans are not resonating and his personality is irritating the voters and driving them away.

In the summer of '07 McCain's campaign had run off the tracks, his support plummeting like a stone. He dismissed almost his entire staff and started over from square one. After that came the miracle recovery that resulted in his gaining the Republican nomination. To win this election he will need another one.

Republicans Must Seek Answers

A day of reckoning approaches for the Republican Party. In three weeks time it will have to come to grips with what it stands for. If John McCain loses his bid for the presidency, as seems likely, it will involve a great deal of soul-searching. If he wins, introspection will necessarily stay on the back burner while he and a Democratic congress grapple with economic, fiscal and financial crises. But in this case it is likely to be the congressional Republicans who are fractured. What shall they decide they believe in?

It was the gospel of unregulated markets and unregulated transactions that put us in our current predicament. If there had been requirements that borrowers actually prove they had the wherewithal to repay, and if there had been more incentives for collecting the payments than making the original sale we wouldn't be in the mess we are. The principle of non-intervention in the marketplace let this disastrous situation develop. That principle has been a cardinal tenet of Republican orthodoxy for quite some time.

When recession became aparent the Bush White House pushed for a "stimulus package," a classic Keynesian liberal solution, though in the form of a tax rebate. Once the true depth of the banking situation became clear the Treasury under Paulson and the Fed under Bernanke tried piecemeal interventions which did little. They finally turned to a more comprehensive $700 billion federally-based rescue plan. It is easy to see in these approaches a more-than-tacit admission that their ostensible reverence for a self-correcting market evaporates very quickly when the chips are down.

Republicans find themselves stuck in a "Have you stopped beating your wife?" paradox. Do they admit their laissez-faire and even crony outlook caused the problem, or that their laissez-faire doctrines are incapable of solving it?

They will, after November 4, have to re-examine a whole host of assumptions they have taken as gospel ever since the Reagan nomination. These are the kinds of assumptions that facts have proven wrong again and again, yet they have continued to assert them with ever-worsening results. These include such loopy ideas as that reducing taxes increases revenues, that spending does not have to be paid for, that increasing military and reducing social and developmental spending is good for society or the economy, that removing oversight from huge corporations makes them more honest and responsible and that granting massive tax breaks to the wealthiest few somehow helps society as a whole.

These doctrines have been ridiculous from their inception, but it is only now under the pressure of events that this has become apparent to most in American society. There are many in the party who will be unable to separate themselves from these fantasy-based exercises in wish-fulfillment. They will have to consider whether it may have been the sensible level of regulation and tax burden instituted by FDR in the New Deal that served to keep American capitalism on track for so long. How Republicans come to grips with this will determine their viability and even relevance in the future.

Robot World?

Reader Tom R. brought up a most problematic issue recently: what to do about increasing robotization, the next wave of which could well eliminate millions of jobs worldwide. He works in agricultural economics, frequently in the developing world, and wrote of processing plants with hardly any workers and even soon transport systems with virtually no workers, everything being automated.

There are a number of implications to think about. The more things are automated the more jobs will be shed. This will continue the trend toward greater "worker productivity," which actually means more work done per labor hour, in this case because fewer hours will be worked, at least by humans. This process has the obvious benefit of saving on production costs, and so goods might cost less.

But on the other hand it will likely also contribute to a reduction in wages earned. At what point do so many people lose hours or their jobs to robotization that employment figures and disposable income fall in a society as a whole? That could jeopardize an entire economy's standard of living, and I think that is what Tom is referring to.

This trend has been taken into account in Europe, where weekly work hours have been cut to 35 in developed countries and vacation days have multiplied. Germany, France and others made the choice in favor of serving quality of life goals instead of cutting incomes. If the same amount of work can be accomplished with fewer hours, an economy one can either be choose to work fewer hours, pay less per hour or cut jobs in some way. The European solution was to send the efficiency benefit to workers rather than shareholders. In the long run it is probably the best choice for society as a whole too, since broadly falling incomes have to impact the consumer sector sooner or later.

But a further problem will arise when we consider the competitive international effects. It is easy, perhaps, for a group of prosperous European Union member states to decide they will run their industrial sectors at less than full efficiency in the service of labor. The temptation for third world countries to take full advantage of these efficiencies, of course, may prove far harder to resist. With already low wage rates, the establishment of the most modern robotic operations there combined with a similarly automated transportation system to send the goods to first-world customers (ships and or planes without the need of crew, for instance) could completely undercut the European wage and hour regime.

The result could be a wage/hour race to the bottom, with first-world wages being driven down to third world levels or massive unemployment figures appearing in the advanced countries. The inexorable logic of economic competition may indeed harm first-world wages while it raises them in developing countries. Perhaps some agreement on global standards will eventually be reached concerning hours and wages, but I would not expect it any time soon, not while big money stands to be made by producing in low-wage regions.

The first-world's only realistic long range coping strategy is to stay ahead educationally in order to dominate the thinking jobs, yet even that must eventually come to an end. Looking a couple of centuries ahead it is easy to envision a planetary system where essential production requires so little human input that income and hours spent working may become detached terms that have virtually nothing to do with each other for most people.

At that point the service and creative economy will be the real economy and the nuts and bolts of such things as the provision of food, clothing and shelter could well become simply the background scenery of a vastly transformed world civilization.

Markets, Troopers and Death Threats

There's so much to write about today it's a challenge to decide what to focus on. They are all interesting enough I think I'll depart from form and comment briefly on a few in the same post.

There's the financial news, of course. It's been the worst week in NY Stock Exchange history. The world's central banks are coordinating their efforts now and it looks like the U.S. Government will start buying interests in our banks to keep them afloat. That's a wow. What an absolutely damning indictment of the deregulation philosophy. I do wonder what the Republicans would be saying if a Democratic administration were proposing any such thing. This should provide the impetus necessary for the next congress and administration to put the money munchers in a tight harness.

The Alaska legislature has released its report on Gov. Sarah Palin's "troopergate" problem, finding that though firing the public safety commissioner was legal, that she "abused her authority" and "violated the public trust" to "advance a personal agenda." She's already pre-emptively released a report vindicating herself, and the McCain-Palin campaign will attempt to pass this off as partisan games, but the Alaskan investigation was initiated by a unanimous bipartisan vote. It's not the end of the world for Palin, but it will do some more damage to her among independents. A big part of her initial appeal was the outsider, squeaky clean, insurgent against the establishment image. So a finding that she's been engaging in some of the same kind of personal vendetta politics she challenged about the ins before her can only dim her lustre a bit more in the eyes of independents. Surveys already find she is a net drag on the ticket these days. This won't help.

I believe it also has had an effect on Senator McCain's approach. For the past week the Republican duo has been unmercifully negative against Obama. They have been hammering on his sitting on a schools board with 1960s era radical bomber and current professor William Ayers (along with the President of Northwestern University and the head of the Republican Annenberg Foundation.) Palin has used that at rallies to say Obama has been "palling around with terrorists." This has been coupled with increased reference to his full name "Barack Hussein Obama" along with calling him "not like us," "dangerous" and "unamerican."

These have constituted an obvious effort to conflate Obama with terrorism and revive race as a subliminal issue in the campaign. You can see McCain's provocative language and the response it generated in his followers here. It got so rally attenders were openly shouting "terrorist" and "traitor" when Obama's name was mentioned, and even "kill him!" was screamed at a Palin rally. Neither Republican candidate attempted to rein in this ominous and ugly behavior they had inspired until today, when McCain answered a direct question by saying Obama was a decent man and people did not need to "fear" an Obama presidency. Even still, it is significant that McCain's own crowd booed his comments.

It may be that McCain is having second thoughts on this vicious strategy because he can see for himself it is engendering a hate that may put Obama's life at risk. It may also be that he has determined it isn't working since the polls continue to deteriorate for his ticket. Another factor may be Obama's release of a retaliatory 13-minute documentary on McCain's "Keating Five " scandal and/or the release of the "Troopergate" report on Palin. These may have convinced him he has more to lose than gain if the focus turns to scandal.

That brings up one more matter on my mind tonight. When liberals oppose someone they will say they do not agree. They may go a little farther and say the person is "stupid" for not "getting" what seems so clear to them. They may even go so far as to say the person is a tool of the corporations, or perhaps call him or her a racist, sexist, or homophobe for holding certain views. But you never hear them say the person is a "traitor" against the nation itself for holding an opposing view. Never. Yet that seems common among conservative crowds when they get riled up. I wonder why that is. I'll want to think about that one some more.

Hope is the Key

When I stop to think about it sometimes it seems like this country is in the grip of so many serious problems that it has to succumb to them. I mean, think about it. We're running out of our primary energy source and have made scant progress toward replacing it. In the meantime, this dynamic is changing the planet's climate in extremely pernicious ways. A crash program could solve the problem, but do we have the money for that?

That's hard to envision when we are losing our jobs to places with whom we can't begin to compete on wages, when we buy hundreds of billions more from abroad than we sell there, and when we owe so much to other nations and ourselves that it seems a far fetched notion that we will ever be able to pay it all off. Our entire financial structure apparently totters at the edge of the abyss thanks to following the siren songs of crackpot or self-serving theorists, and we're bogged down in two wars we already can't afford while nut jobs are clamoring to get us involved in more.

As the world becomes more technological and education is ever more vital to retain opportunity and prosperity, many among us seem to be gravitating to an incredibly self-destructive anti-intellectualism. The glorification of tough-but-stupid is a sure prescription for becoming a loser, whether individually or for society as a whole. How can you combat an attitude like that?

From crumbling infrastructure to crumbling families, from the rise of health care costs to the rise of addictions, from essential services that all demand but few seem willing to pay for to the burgeoning prisons, there are so many overwhelming issues in front of us. To tackle a couple of them would be a tall order, yet they are all serious and demand attention. Not to solve any one of them seemingly invites calamity.

I suppose that is where you need hope. Without that you cannot even summon the energy to begin. I fear we are near the point where people throw up their hands and retreat into their shells. The moves toward the balkanization of American society are the mileposts on the road to second or third-world status. They are marked by such phenomena as gated communities, the growth of private and home schools, toll roads, the flat tax movement, the anti tax movement, mercenary military forces, survivalists, left-behinders and libertarians. What they all share in common is a loss of faith in the commons itself, the fear that society is beyond redemption and the only response is to build walls and hide behind them.

That is where we stood in the depths of the Great Depression in 1933, of course. Then as now, there was a yearning to hope or believe, but a protective cynicism shielded us from our vulnerability. At that time reassurance was given in the form of a memorable phrase, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The attitude that sentence engendered and the hope it inspired, or maybe the conviction that just maybe here was someone who truly cared and would genuinely try, inspired a recovery that saved first the nation and then the world.

At some level we, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that time, crave that same glimmer, the idea that perhaps if only someone would stand above business as usual in the national interest we might dare to hope once more. And given hope and a way forward, we might be willing to sacrifice a little, we might be willing to act and to do our parts. That is why it is all the more important at this time to avoid the cynicism of division, of drawing lines, of trivial distraction in the service of inflated ambition. Therein lies the way downward and backward into the pit.

The times are demanding but the hunger is great. If we can allow ourselves to hope once more we will again achieve great things. This is our heritage and our record.

Obama Wins Second Debate

Initial reaction to the second presidential debate is in and Barack Obama has won a decisive victory over John McCain. This is according to CNN polling reported on the air. The figures do not appear on their website yet, so I do not have links for you. These numbers were reported by correspondents Soledad O'Brien and Nora O'Donnell; I took notes by hand. Here are some of the most important findings.

Obama had huge advantages overall and on domestic issues. The key questions included: Who did better in the debate? Obama 54, McCain 30. Who would do a better job on the financial crisis? Obama 57, McCain 36. Who would do a better job on the economy? Obama 59, McCain 37.

Obama similarly outscored McCain on personal qualities. The questions were: Who was more likable? Obama 64, McCain 28. Who spent more time attacking? McCain 63, Obama 17.

Respondents were evenly split on foreign and security questions. Who would do a better job handling Iraq? Obama 51, McCain 47. Who would do a better job handling terrorism? McCain 51, Obama 47.

A telling breakdown on "Who won the debate" by party demonstrated Obama's decisive advantage among the crucial bloc of independent voters. Democrats answered Obama 85, McCain 5, a 17-1 ratio. Republicans answered McCain 64, Obama 16, only a 4-1 ratio. Independents answered Obama 54, McCain 28, nearly 2-1 for Obama.

If these results are anywhere close to accurate for the public at large, the outcome for tonight's debate is nothing less than disastrous for the Arizona Senator. With early voting and absentee balloting already underway in many states, McCain needed a clear boost, and he does not appear to have gotten it. If this verdict is confirmed by the national polls coming out over the next three days, it will all but mean the death knell for McCain's chances.

Florida a Microcosm

Florida represents a microcosm of the election race today. On September 16, three weeks ago, it seemed safely in the McCain camp. Now Obama has taken a clear and growing lead, and the Republican campaign there has grown increasingly frantic and negative. McCain simply cannot afford to lose the Sunshine State. What has gone wrong, and what are the McCain-Palin strategists doing about it?

According to the Real Clear Politics averages, McCain enjoyed his biggest lead in Florida on September 16. He had 49.8% to Obama's 43.5% that day, a 6.3% lead. Two weeks later, on the 30th, the two campaigns were in a tie at 47.0% each. Now, after one more week, Obama has the advantage 49.3% to 45.3%, a 4% edge. Perhaps most stunning was the most recent poll, a large survey of 1000 likely voters by GOP-friendly FOX News/Rasmussen published on October 5 that showed Obama up by 7%.

Obama is going up by about three tenths of a point a day while McCain is going down by about two tenths of a point a day. That other tenth, the undecideds, have been reduced from 6.7% to only 5.4%, with virtually all the switch going to Obama. What is going on?

The beginning of the plunge coincides with the bursting of the Wall Street housing bubble and the Bush-Paulson bailout proposal while McCain was saying the "fundamentals of the economy were strong." The continued erosion has encompassed the time frame of McCain's erratic and initially unsuccessful efforts to intervene in the imbroglio, and the presidential and vice presidential debates. During this interlude, McCain first appeared out of touch, then ineffectual, and finally grumpy and angry. Through all of this Obama has exuded purposeful calm. Remarkably, the Capitol Hill veteran insider was the one who came off not seeming presidential throughout. That has been problem one.

Problem two has been the resulting stock market slump. Just today the market lost another aggregate 3.58% of its value. This has an especially powerful impact in Florida, with its extraordinarily high retired population. Florida's over-65 percentage of 16.8% is by far the highest in the nation. See the census figures here. Retirees are seeing their nest eggs evaporate before their eyes and are growing increasingly alarmed.

Finally, the Obama organization's tech-savvy registration efforts are paying off. This year 250,000 new Florida Democrats have been registered compared to 98,000 Republicans. For the first time since figures have been kept, Democrats now outnumber Republicans among Florida's Hispanic population, 35.5% to 35.2%. Since 2006 Hispanic Democrats have grown by 18% and Hispanic Republicans by only 2% in the state.

So Obama is benefiting from economic worries, probably across the board but especially among seniors, and from growing support in the Hispanic community. The McCain response has been, as has been widely predicted and even telegraphed by the Republican campaign, to return to character attacks against Obama. Earlier campaigns based on deriding Obama's "celebrity," creating a stir over "lipstick on a pig" and accusing him of advocating "teaching sex to kindergartners" made initial progress but had limited shelf lives as Obama and his campaign hit back.

Today Gov. Palin brought up the William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright associations and McCain called Obama a liar. A police chief in uniform introducing McCain at a rally referred to Obama's full name, "Barack Hussein Obama" and this time McCain refused to criticize or disavow its intent, as he did earlier when a minister made a similar introduction. Obama dismissed such attacks as distractions from the issues voters care about and his campaign released a documentary they evidently had prepared for just such a case about McCain's problems with the "Keating 5" issue some years back.

We therefore see a consistent pattern. When the McCain campaign begins to falter they return to character attacks to try to level the playing field. They have provided temporary respite from the GOP's eroding fortunes, but seem, like a drug abuser's fixes, to produce less effect the more they are overused. Given the economic and interpersonal dynamics at play, it now seems unlikely these tactics will be able to accomplish the needed turnaround. McCain needs something very, very major to happen to fundamentally alter the conditions of the contest. In the meantime, we are likely to see one increasingly desperate "Hail Mary" pass after another for the next four weeks.

New Yorker Endorsement

The New Yorker has just come out with its endorsement for the presidential election. As one might expect, the magazine recommends a vote for Sen. Barack Obama.

What is exceptional is the complete rationale behind its case. On domestic and foreign policy, economics, social progress, the judicial branch, national renewal and personal qualifications, the editorial lays out the case more compellingly than I have seen elsewhere.

The damage done to this country by the Bush Administration these eight years has been severe indeed. Whether you are partial to Sen. Obama, Sen. McCain or still trying to make up your mind, I'd like to encourage you to consider this piece and add it to your deliberations. You can access it here.

Palin Not Up to the Job

I've been asked what I personally think of Governor Sarah Palin. The short answer is she is dangerously unready to be Vice President. Furthermore, by choosing her John McCain has shown the same thing about himself.

Imagine an applicant for an executive position in your company or organization at their interview. Imagine this person being unfamiliar with the basic facts about your industry and how it works. Imagine them winking and trying to act "cute" while answering interview questions. Imagine them telling the personnel director that they were not going to answer the questions that were asked, but would instead talk about whatever they wanted. Now imagine how quickly your hiring committee would show this buffoon the door.

We are not talking about your assistant director of marketing, but about the Vice Presidency of the United States. This is the official who would be standing next in line to a chief who would be 76 years old during his term, a man who already has a history as a cancer survivor. That is to say, this Vice President would have approximately a one in three chance of being called upon to finish out that term.

To place in this position a person of such demonstrated ignorance, supercilious preening and lack of forthrightness is nothing less than a danger to the republic. This is what John McCain has done.

One can see how he may have been attracted to her challenging the traditional GOP establishment in Alaska. No doubt that took some guts. He must have identified with her struggle, recalling how he opposed the Party in the Senate on such things as tax policy, torture, campaign finance, and immigration before he caved on all these issues and returned to the discipline of the party fold on all of them in order to get the nomination. Perhaps his conscience was bothering him about this.

But moxie alone is not sufficient to name someone Vice President. They have to be ready to serve as President, and they ought to be ready to do so right now. Appointing someone with Sarah Palin's resume Undersecretary of the Interior and keeping an eye on her to see how she does would be a bit of a stretch, but could be justified. Placing her a heartbeat away, and a septuagenarian heart at that, from the presidency makes a mockery of the slogan "country first." It is, to be frank, politics first and country be damned.

It gratifies me to see that the American people do not seem to be falling for the razzmatazz this time. Joe Biden, who actually knows what he is talking about, won the debate with Palin by 25 points Friday night. The number of undecided voters who said the debate made them more likely to support Obama was 80% higher than those who said it made them more likely to support McCain.

Facts, it has been said, are stubborn things. It just may be, that after nearly eight years of experience with what happens when you have a leadership that invents its own reality and holds inconvenient facts in contempt, the American people are ready to demand some substance, honesty and gravitas of those who would conduct their public business. Sarah Palin fails on all three counts, and that is why she is unworthy to occupy the high position to which she has been nominated. Those are my considered judgments of Sarah Palin.

Palin Survives VP Debate

As in last week's presidential debate, both contestants in the Biden-Palin debate this evening gratified their own supporters. Sarah Palin did better than many expected and Joe Biden avoided any fumbles. The good news for the McCain campaign is that no serious damage was done to their cause, and Palin's standing will increase some. The good news for the Obama campaign is that most people thought Biden won the debate and is more ready to be vice president.

The bloc of about 9% of America's voters who are truly undecided is the big prize now. CBS News identified 500 of these voters and did a post-debate survey with them that yielded revealing results. To see the story go here. Biden clearly came out on top. 46% said Biden won the debate, 21% felt Palin did and 33% thought it was a tie.

Before the debate 79% felt Biden was knowledgeable on the issues and 43% thought Palin was. Afterward the figures were 98% for Biden and 66% for Palin. She gained 23% to his 19%, a small edge, but not enough to significantly deplete his advantage. 97% agreed Biden showed he was prepared for the Vice Presidency while 55% said the same of Palin. A similar number said Biden is ready to serve as President if necessary but only 44% felt Palin is.

Another question asked if the debate had changed the viewer's perception of the candidate. For Joe Biden, 53% said their view had become more favorable, 5% less favorable and 42% said their view was unchanged. Palin did a bit worse. Her corresponding numbers were 55%, 14% and 30%. Most who were uncommitted remained so, but 18% of respondents said the debate had made it more likely they would vote for Obama and 10% said they were now more likely to vote for McCain.

The bottom line seems to be that Palin avoided disaster but that Biden did nothing to jeopardize Obama's lead. Palin tried to make as much hay out of the "maverick" and "tax" appellations as possible while avoiding dealing directly with ten questions she did not want to discuss. Her delivery was effectively true to style, but often did not go beyond talking point detail. Biden dutifully commented on each question, usually in superior detail. Probably his strongest moment came when he ran through a list of issues and underscored that Palin had failed to draw a distinction between McCain's position and George W. Bush's on any of them.

This is like a football game entering the fourth quarter. Obama has a 9-point lead. Palin and Biden each took the helm offensively. Neither scored, but after an exchange of punts Biden gained 15 yards of field position. Obama still has that lead and now there are 11 minutes left with two debates to go.

McCain Needs Strong Palin Performance

A panoply of new poll numbers came in today, all pointing in the same direction: the post-debate verdict is in. Between Friday's tussle between Barack Obama and John McCain and this week's continued dire news on the economic front, Obama is now surging far ahead. Thursday's vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin presents a badly needed opportunity for the McCain campaign to regain its footing. But a poor performance by Palin looks like it could, at this point, cripple Republican chances beyond repair.

Numbers from today's plethora of surveys indicate the Democratic ticket is not only building its national lead past five percent, but opening leads in many battleground states. See the data here.

Support for Obama is gelling in the upper Midwest states of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. Out West, Colorado and New Mexico are moving into the safe category for the Democrats, as is Pennsylvania in the East. Even more ominously for McCain, Obama has opened up undeniable leads in Ohio, Virginia and Florida. Nevada and Missouri have drifted in to the undecided camp along with such former Republican strongholds as Indiana and North Carolina. If the election were held today Real Clear Politics projects Obama-Biden would carry 353 electoral votes to McCain-Palin's 185.

The immediate speed bump in all this has to be the vice presidential debate. Sarah Palin must prove herself capable of engaging reasonably convincingly on issues, above the level of memorized talking points. Up to now her credibility has been damaged by her inability to answer basic questions from Charles Gibson and softball serves from Katie Couric. If she cannot do better than this in her debate with Joe Biden she will be relegated to Dan Quayledom. John McCain will suffer just as greatly for having chosen her as his running mate. If she flops the race will be effectively over, barring an earth shaking set of events in the next few weeks.

If she does well then the McCain campaign will remain viable and live to fight another day. It will still face an uphill struggle in an environment strongly favoring the Democrats this year, but at least a chance for victory will remain.

I do not feel the bar for Palin to hurdle is low. A perception of vacuousness has infected her image with undecideds thanks to her uninformed comments whenever she is off script. It will be up to her to reverse that perception. After four weeks on the campaign trail and three solid days of preparation at McCain's Sedona compound, she ought to be able to do that if she has the requisite smarts. And there is always the possibility of the garrulous Biden committing a few of his famous gaffes, too. But if she cannot do better than merely survive a pummeling at the hands of the highly experienced and knowledgeable Delaware Senator it will be lights out for McCain's chances.