Diageo/Hotline closes up the 2 it opened yesterday, 8 point lead, and they're pretty lazy about giving you any info on weekends
Gallup expanded likely voter poll closes up by a couple, mainly adding support for McCain while not drawing off Obama's, while registered voter poll expands, just showing the higher the turnout, the better for Obama
GWU/Battleground sleeps in on Saturday and Sunday
Rasmussen adds back the Obama point it lost yesterday, in a holding pattern
R2K I've always thought was way too Democrat-weighted, but now closes to a more reasonable 7 point lead; I could never get used to 12
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby narrows a bit but John Zogby is still trying to hit that six-run homer to erase a five run deficit...
Rasmussen on a slow day has a quick poll on the Colin Powell question that's on the lips of everyone in Washington and the press and pretty much nobody else. Anyway, it's a slow news day, the kind of day that Republicans release their tax records (again), so here you go. 42% think Powell is likely to go against his party (which, come to think of it, went against him rather nastily when he was Secretary of State, though he's far too good a soldier and a man for that to matter, I think) and endorse Barack Obama. So that gets the headlines, but 35% say he'll endorse McCain. Powell is still admired by a vast majority of the public, both Republican and Democrat, so I can see how his endorsement could matter at least a little bit. The important figure here is that only 12% say it's likely to influence their vote, so I'll end this point here, except to say that there probably aren't 12% of voters that are undecided, so I'm damned if I know what that could mean.
Is That Frost On Hell's Windshield?
There were two significant newspaper endorsements of Barack Obama yesterday that are worth mentioning, even in a newspaperless age. The Los Angeles Times, which was (though really isn't any more) a staunch Republican paper for decades, made its first endorsement of any presidential candidate since 1972 (with an endorsement of Nixon, which apparently embarrassed them out of endorsing for thirty-six years), and its first endorsement of a Democrat ever, when it picked Obama yesterday. At the same time, the still-staunchly-Republican Chicago Tribune, the newspaper of Lincoln, founded on free trade and abolitionism by one of the founders of the Republican Party itself, also endorsed its first Democratic presidential candidate in its history. The Tribune, which notes that it has "watched him, worked with him and argued with him" as he rose through Chicago politics to the Democratic presidential nomination, and notes an atmosphere of ineptitude and corruption in the GOP today (their words) states (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-chicago-tribune-endorsement,0,1371034.story)
We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.
On the subject of a running mate, the paper says that McCain, turning his own words around, "put his campaign before country." Saying that Obama would likely govern as a "pragmatic centrist," (with which I wholeheartedly agree and applaud, for what it's worth) and noting a economic team of free traders (Chicago School, naturally!), the paper closes by saying that it is "proud to add Barack Obama's name to Lincoln's in the list of people the Tribune has endorsed for president of the United States."
The Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-endorse19-2008oct19%2C0%2C5198206.story also surprises by its endorsement of Obama, which it notes comes despite a McCain economic plan more in line with Times editorial policy. The editorial notes, however, that in its view McCain "has been disturbingly unfocused in his response to the current financial situation, rushing to "suspend" his campaign and take action (although just what action never became clear). Having little to contribute, he instead chose to exploit the crisis". At the same time, it echoes the Tribune's view of Obama as a centrist, saying that although certainly a Democrat and coming more from the left than the right (though one would be hard pressed to call him any sort of leftist without sounding like an arrant moron) he is "a constitutional scholar, he has articulated a respect for the rule of law and the limited power of the executive that make him the best hope of restoring balance and process to the Justice Department." While not "sanguine" about all of Obama's economic policies, the Times has found him to be pragmatic and willing to look to a variety of sources for knowledge and expertise including Wall Street itself. Ultimately, though, the Times says that it is Obama's temperament, his "maturity," that makes him ultimately more presidential than his opponent, who it notes has been from time to time "irresponsible" and ultimately "nearly unrecognizable" as the John McCain who built a reputation in Washington for standing up for what he believes.
The Washington Post (which had in my opinion spent the first part of this campaign with a distinctly pro-McCain slant), El Diario/La Prensa (the largest Spanish-language paper in New York, and one which carries a lot of weight in the Latino community) and the consistently Republican Denver Post also endorsed Obama yesterday. May or may not mean much (and I think El Diario does mean something, even if Obama was already on track to win two-thirds of the Latino vote), but there it is.
I spent an awful lot of time talking about this because the endorsements are an extraordinary sign of Obama's ability to impress those on the other side of the aisle, if they are willing to shut up a moment and look and listen. We can add the Tribune and Times to the list of notable Republican endorsements of Sen. Obama.
We Know, Senator, We Just Weren't Sure You Did
So. More newspapers. You'd think they weren't irrelevant in the 21st century or something, but an interesting thing happened in the St. Petersburg Times today. No, no, wasn't about Peter the Great (and jokes about his being a schoolmate of John McCain's are probably superfluous at this point, unless they're REALLY funny, which they're almost exclusively not). Was about, ummm, uhhh, a running mate, especially as it related to his chances in Florida, where his current running mate has been leading a series of rallies stopping just short of a rousing chorus of the Horst Wessel Song. While McCain claims no regrets about choosing Palin, he also states that he would almost certainly be winning Florida had he chosen Charlie Crist as his VP. "Charlie, because he's so popular, he probably would have made a significant difference,'' McCain said in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times and Bay News 9. dThe rest of the story was about Joe The Plumber, with the Arizona Senator completely destroying the man's life after the revelations that he's 1) not registered to vote, 2) not actually a licensed plumber and 3) lying about the business he claimed to be buying by telling 300 million Americans to send him an email. Better expand your mail capacity, there, Joe. Oh here, you don't want to read it, the rest of it's the usual blather, but I'm a good guy so you can find it at http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/elections/article860402.ece .
The Envelope Please
I'm burying this near the end to see if anyone actually reads this far. So there's this model, developed in the early 1980s by Allan Lichtman of American University and Russian academic Volodia Kellis-Borok, they call the "13 Keys to the White House," which has accurately predicted the popular vote winner of every presidential election from 1860-1980, and then prospectively from 1984-2004. It's a series of 13 true/falst questions (which you can play along with at home); if five or fewer are "false," the incumbent party's candidate wins. There are a few judgment calls, so there's room for a bit of a fudge factor in it, but I think actually this one is clear even if you bend over backwards to answer them as carefully as possible. I'm not going to tell you who wins, but someone does. Here's a piece Lichtman himself wrote in 2004 explaining the test, along with the questions. Let me know how many falses you come up with: http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/Political/commentary-lichtman.html
A Thorazine Martini With A Twist And An Autographed Photo Of Joe The Witch Hunter For The Really Quite Insane Congresswoman Torquemada From Minnesota, Please
OK, there may actually be one major elected official in America even more comically unsuited for public office than Sarah Palin, or you can view it as a chilling foreshadowing. Or both. Minnesota future ex-Rep. Michelle Bachmann (who has already trashed McCain as being the pick of the media, and called global warming "voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax") went off the deepest of ends yesterday saying on a national cable broadcast that Sen. Obama "may have anti-American views" and in fact called for an "exposé" of the views of members of Congress. Yes, you got that right. A member of Congress just called for a Spanish Inquisition, a revived HUAC to purge what she considers anti-American elements in the United States Congress. Starting with the possible future President, apparently, who she says she is "very concerned he may have anti-American views." She also singled out Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid for "far-leftist views." When asked to name another congressman she would call anti-American, she named, well, nobody.
The most curious thing of all, other than the fact that the good Congresswoman forgot her lithium this morning, was that prior to this round of interviews, she was best known for greeting President Bush on the floor of Congress after the 2007 State of the Union Message by putting her hand on his shoulder and not letting go til she got a kiss, has been trying to paint her Democratic opponent as more of a Bushite than she (if she kissed him, what must her opponent have done?), and indeed a week or so ago said, "If the presidency would somehow go to Barack Obama, I would welcome him to the 6th District as well," she said after a debate. "As a matter of fact, I would put my hand on his shoulder and give him a kiss if he wanted to." Sen. Obama could not be reached for comment as he found it necessary to run to the nearest public convenience to vomit after reading the quote.
This came as a tremendous boon for her opponent, the curiously named Elwyn Tinklenberg, who overcame that impediment to generate a huge fundraising day in the aftermath of Rep. Bachmann's unhinged and, dare one say it, seditious accusations. An online petition to censure Bachmann has now received 18,000 signatures (remember, this is Saint Cloud, MN, not New York--18,000 is not insignificant if they're local). Five days ago, Bachmann was ahead by only four in the polls. Over/under, anyone?
OK, I've got better things to do on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, except that I mostly went out and did them on a beautiful Saturday morning. See you tomorrow!
John
Herbert Hoover Quote Of The Day
When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned. (Quoted in New York Times, 1964)
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