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11 Nov 08

Racial Gerrymandering Is Unnecessary - WSJ.com

  • Not so. Mr. Obama's 43% share of the white vote in the general election was actually a tad larger than that of John Kerry in 2004 (41%) or Al Gore in 2000 (42%).
  • Consider Iowa, with only a miniscule African-American population. The 5% of voters who said race was the most important factor in their choice of whom to vote for backed Mr. Obama 54% to 45%. Or consider Minnesota and Wisconsin, also overwhelmingly white, where Mr. Obama's lead was 18% and 21% respectively among the 5% to 7% of voters who made race their highest priority.
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09 Nov 08

FiveThirtyEight.com: The Contact Gap: Proof of the Importance of the Ground Game?

  • The Obama campaign had a superior contact rate in 11 of the 12 battlegrounds; the only exception was West Virginia. Wisconsin was also relatively close, perhaps because Obama redirected its legion number of Illinois-based volunteers from Wisconsin to Indiana a couple of weeks in advance of the election.
13 Oct 08

Mark Green: 7 Days in America: Will McCain Put Reputation First at Wednesday's Debate? w/ Mellman, Huffington, Conason & Green

  • I understand how ambition can warp judgment. But your recent personal attacks on Barack Obama are so beyond the pale for presidential politics that you now face a fateful choice by the Wednesday debate -- will you pull back from the abyss of sleazy slander or risk losing not only the election but also your reputation and honor?
    • First, it's wrong and you shouldn't engage in such self-immolating behavior.
    • Second, it's backfiring -- since polls show the gap widening since voters care a lot more about their jobs and 401(k)'s than Bill Ayres.
    • Third, while a loss is a loss, for down-ticket Republicans, an Obama win by 10 points rather than by 4 points can be the difference between 56 and 60 seats in the Senate, between 245 House seats and 260 House seats.
12 Oct 08

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - McCain calls on Obama to repudiate ’shocking’ Lewis comments « - Blogs from CNN.com

  • John Lewis – called a statement by the Georgia congressman Saturday comparing the outbursts at recent Republican rallies to the rhetoric of segregationist George Wallace “a brazen and baseless attack” that is “shocking and beyond the pale.”
  • “Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for President of the United States ‘pals around with terrorists.’

Marcia G. Yerman: Race, Gender and the Media in the 2008 Elections

  • Several themes coalesced over the two-day period. A prominent one was the oft repeated, "Did race trump gender?" Dr. Cynthia Neal-Spence, Associate Professor of Sociology at Spelman College, spoke about the dilemma of the black female. Asking, "Are we as a group more gender conscious or race conscious?" she then suggested "the media coverage had helped black women to choose sides." Despite Obama offering a post-racial approach, she sensed the same "tensions resurfacing that were in place during the suffragette movement." She also saw the media's analyzation as being "racialized."

  • However, Vojdik said, "Those in the media insisted on gendering her candidacy, taking her from the public sphere to the private construction of her identity as a wife and a mother." This was often accomplished through the use of specific language. She gave as examples the terms, "shrill, emasculating, castrating," with oft used analogies of Hillary as "the hectoring mother,"

    or "the wife as ball-buster." Hillary was not male, but she "had failed as a female."



    On the other hand, Vojdik saw Sarah Palin as seeking to be elected because she was a woman

    in the "good wife and mother" mode. Projecting herself as stereotypically feminine, albeit a

    "pit bull with lipstick," she "appeals to the 80's concept of the superwoman." "But," Vojdik asked, "where are the supports for ordinary women?"

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08 Oct 08

Cenk Uygur: Worse Than "That One"

  • For me, the more worrisome moment of the debate came when McCain told a young, black questioner, "You've probably never heard of Fannie Mae." We were doing play-by-play of the debate on our website and I shouted out, "Why not? Why wouldn't he have heard of Fannie Mae?"

Donklephant » Blog Archive » CBS Snap Debate Poll: Obama 39%, McCain 27%

    • Here are the numbers from a poll of 500 uncommitted voters…

      • How did the debate impact vote preferences?

        15% say they are now committed to Obama

        14% to McCain

        70% are still uncommitted
      • Would make the right decisions about the economy?

        McCain: 41% before the debate, 49% after

        Obama: 54% before the debate, 68% after
      • Understands your needs?

        McCain: 35% before the debate, 46% after

        Obama: 60% before the debate, 80% after
      • Prepared for the job of president?

        McCain: 80% before the debate, 84% after

        Obama: 42% before the debate, 57% after
      • Did candidates answer the questions they were asked?

        57% yes, 42% no — for both candidates

      Obama continues to dominate the “economic” and “understands my needs” categories.

Obama and McCain Clash Over Economy - NYTimes.com

  • “Senator McCain suggests that somehow, you know, I’m green behind the ears and, you know, I’m just spouting off, and he’s somber and responsible,” he said. “Senator McCain, this is the guy who sang, ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,’ who called for the annihilation of North Korea. That I don’t think is an example of ‘speaking softly.’ 
  • Throughout the evening, when Mr. McCain spoke, Mr. Obama stood at the side of the stage, or seated on a chair, arms folded, gazing at his rival. When Mr. Obama spoke, Mr. McCain took notes, often looked the other way, or scribbled on a pad.
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Obama and McCain Clash Over Economy - NYTimes.com

  • But in a moment that caught the attention of people in both parties, he appeared agitated in criticizing Mr. Obama for a Senate vote he cast, referring to his opponent only as “that one.”
  • Mr. McCain sought to break through by highlighting a proposal under which the Treasury Department would buy up mortgages that had gone bad, and in effect refinance them at prices homeowners could afford
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07 Oct 08

Why McCain's Time With Council Of World Freedom Matters

  • McCain's past could draw him into a guilt-by-association game he was bound to regret.



    "John McCain sat on the board of...the U.S. Council for World Freedom," said Begala, "The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League - the parent organization - which ADL said 'has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.'"

  • The USCWF was founded in Phoenix, Arizona in November 1981 as an offshoot of the World Anti-Communist League. The group was, from the onset, saddled with the disreputable reputation of its parent group. The WACL had ties to ultra-right figures and Latin American death squads.
06 Oct 08

Sarah Palin just called herself an anti-Semite

  • Sarah Palin sat in her conservative evangelical church, twice, and said nothing when her visiting pastors and speakers attacked another great nation and another great people - Jews and Israel.
03 Oct 08

The McCain/Palin Debate Spin: We Won Because She Wasn't a Dithering Idiot

  • What Gertrude Stein said about her hometown Oakland could also be said of Sarah Palin. "There is no there, there." Sarah Palin is simply without substance.
  • She even tried to humanize her image, saying that despite her views against same sex marriage she didn't judge people and had a diverse group of friends. However, when moderator Gwen Ifill asked Palin if she was in agreement with Senator Biden, who'd said he was against all forms of discrimination against same sex couples but did not support gay marriage, Palin would only repeat what Biden said about gay marriage. Perhaps because she realized that her key supporters -- the evangelical right wing -- might already be choking on their fried chicken wings because of her attempt to say something pleasant about a group of people they consider an abomination.
02 Oct 08

The Machinery of Hope : Rolling Stone

  • At first,
    Hildebrand and Temo Figueroa, the campaign's field director,
    wrestled with how to harness the nationwide groundswell of support
    without taking their eyes off Iowa, which they considered a
    win-or-go-home state. But then the campaign's first-quarter
    fund-raising numbers rolled in — $25 million. Suddenly,
    Hildebrand and Figueroa could afford to build the kind of fully
    participatory field campaign Obama had envisioned — one that
    set its horizons beyond Iowa and Super Tuesday. According to Hans
    Riemer, the campaign's youth-vote director, "The mantra was, 'If
    the same people show up that always show up — we're gonna
    lose.' We needed to build a new coalition of voters."
  • Obama campaign sent out an e-mail asking its
    supporters to sign up for a day of old-fashioned door-knocking and
    precinct-walking across the entire country. The result: On a
    Saturday in early June — six months before anyone would cast
    a ballot or attend a caucus — more than 10,000 Obama
    supporters hit the pavement in all fifty states to persuade their
    neighbors to back Barack.
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Obama the Delegator Picks When to Take Reins - NYTimes.com

  • He does not stir dissent simply for dissent’s sake, but often employs a Socratic method of discussion, where aides put ideas forward for him to accept or reject. Advisers described his meetings as “un-Clintonesque,” a reference to the often meandering, if engrossing, policy discussions Bill Clinton presided over when he was president.
  • But Mr. Obama’s ease belies a more controlling management style. For all the success his campaign has enjoyed with grass-roots organizing, the operation is highly centralized around Mr. Axelrod; David Plouffe, the campaign manager; Robert Gibbs, the communications director; Pete Rouse, his Senate chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett, a longtime friend from Chicago; and a handful of senior advisers that has barely changed since he opened his campaign in January 2007.
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Barack Obama and Joe Biden: The Change We Need | Health Care

  • The benefit package will be similar to that offered through Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), the plan members of Congress have

Alec Baldwin: John McCain Is Not George Bush, Sarah Palin Is

  • I thought McCain was the next Bush. I said so, like countless others, on this blog. More war. More debt while keeping taxes low and mocking the Democrats who want to pay down that debt. No vision regarding the energy issue. Or education. Or health care. More fear.

Fact Check: Palin and the Bridge to Nowhere - Yahoo! News

  • WASHINGTON - A new ad from John McCain's presidential campaign contends his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere." In fact, Palin was for the infamous bridge before she was against it
  • THE FACTS: Palin did abandon plans to build the nearly $400 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport. But she made her decision after the project had become an embarrassment to the state, after federal dollars for the project were pulled back and diverted to other uses in Alaska, and after she had appeared to support the bridge during her campaign for governor

Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Conservatives Call for Palin to Stand Down is Just Plain Dumb

  • The issue is still public fury over Bush's colossal domestic and foreign policy bumbles topped by the economic pain and misery his sleep at the wheel policies have exacerbated.
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