I haven't seen a diary referring back to this, but remember back on July 30th when Senator Obama said:
So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Mr. Obama said Wednesday in Springfield, Mo., in remarks that he echoed throughout the day. "You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He's risky. That's essentially the argument they're making."
A firestorm in a furnace followed the next day with Slick Rick Davis:
"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck," Rick Davis, Mr. McCain's campaign manager, said in a statement. "It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."
Well here we are about 9 weeks later and Obama was precisely correct. It's no surprise to most of us as we saw what Obama saw coming, but the pundits are acting like they didn't see this racist, Manchurian candidate smear campaign coming at all, and they are "dismayed and shocked" that Palin/McCain are doing exactly what Obama predicted.
Yet when he predicted it, he was out of line and it was acceptable to say that he was "playing the race card."
Nonsense. Obama saw back then that the only cards McCain had left to play were the hatred card and the smear card.
And now that Obama's prediction is playing itself out and failing miserably (other than dangerously fomenting violent hatred amongst some sectors of the GOP base), we can add Obama's prescient and strategic July comments to the good judgement and smart campaign tally.
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- For the first time since 1932 a presidential election is taking place in the midst of a genuine financial crisis. The reaction of the candidates was revealing.
John McCain, railing against the ``greed and corruption'' of Wall Street, won the first round of the sound-bite war. He came out with a television commercial on the ``crisis'' early on Monday of last week, and over the next three days gave more than a dozen broadcast interviews. He and running mate Sarah Palin would reform Wall Street and regulate the nefarious fat cats that caused this fiasco.
It was a great start. It then went downhill as he stumbled over his record of championing deregulation, claimed the economy was fundamentally strong, and flip-flopped over the government takeover of American International Group Inc.
For his part, Barack Obama didn't come across as passionately outraged and wasn't as omnipresent or as specific.
More revealing, though, was to whom both candidates turned on that panic-ridden morning of Sept. 15, and how the messages evolved before and after that day.
McCain called Martin Feldstein, the well-known Republican economist and Reagan administration adviser, John Taylor of Stanford University, who served in President George W. Bush's Treasury and Carly Fiorina, once the chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co.
Obama called former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.
It was a mismatch.
Towering Volcker
Feldstein, for all his intellect, was ineffective in the Reagan administration; then-White House deputy chief of staffDick Darman cut him out of important action. Volcker, first at the Treasury and then as chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a towering figure in every way.
Taylor is a well-regarded academic. In four years as undersecretary of the Treasury, he left few footprints. Summers, as both deputy secretary and secretary, left a lot.
Fiorina is smart and quick; to put it charitably, Rubin will forget more about financial markets than she'll ever know.
When it comes to governance, and either Democrat Obama or Republican McCain will inherit this miserable financial mess, the best guide is who they talked to, what they said, where they've been, and how knowledgeable they are.
Obama's record and earlier speeches belie some of his more populist rhetoric. Yet they also suggest, as do his advisers, a much more activist government role than is likely under a McCain-Palin administration.
Comfortable With Subject
Obama called for the overhaul of the financial-regulatory system and tougher enforcement well before this past week's traumas.
Detached observers who watched him last week, especially in a Bloomberg Television interview, were taken by how conversant and comfortable he was on the subject, despite his thin record. Few detached observers came away with that impression watching the Arizona senator.
Much of the re-regulatory fever focuses on the Federal Reserve and any new agencies created to clean up the fiasco. Central, however, will be a more vigorous Securities and Exchange Commission, or whatever holds that investor-protection function.
McCain displayed a sudden interest in the SEC last week when he demanded that Chairman Chris Cox be fired. When his campaign was asked if the senator had ever criticized the current commission's performance before, they failed to respond.
All For Obama
Tellingly, three former SEC chairmen, a Democrat, Arthur Levitt, and two Republicans, David Ruder and Bill Donaldson, have endorsed Obama. Levitt is a board member of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
Donaldson, who was tapped by Bush to head the SEC, says Obama called him last year about the financial-regulatory problems. He has never heard from McCain.
``Obama has been talking about the need for better financial regulation well before this crisis hit and has done some real thinking about it,'' says Donaldson, a lifelong Republican. ``McCain comes across as someone who suddenly realized changes have to be made.''
There is a case for McCain: it's if you believe in less regulation, that the government should get out of the way and let the markets work their will.
No `Real Understanding'
``I don't think anyone who wants to increase the burden of government regulation and high taxes has any real understanding of economics,'' McCain said this spring at an Inez, Kentucky, town hall meeting, where he also declared ``the fundamentals of our economy are good.''
Until recently, he repeatedly invoked Ronald Reagan's calls for less regulation. He voted for the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley corporate-governance regulations -- then last year said he regretted that vote.
McCain isn't averse to some regulations. He has strongly championed a greater federal role in campaign finance, tobacco and boxing. In each case, he saw a clear villain -- special- interest money, a tobacco product that puts profits ahead of lives, and unscrupulous boxing promoters.
There has been little evidence that prior to last week he ever put financial firms in this category. Although he assailed excessive corporate compensation last week, McCain has opposed a tepid House-passed bill that would give corporate shareholders the right to cast a non-binding vote on compensation of top executives.
Turning to Gramm
The person he has turned to most for counsel on such matters is his ex-Senate colleague Phil Gramm. Gramm is a political Gordon Gekko, a brainy economist with a Darwinian view of markets and public policy.
It's not easy to remember what the financial world looked like 10 days ago much less 10 months ago. Decisions that will be reached after this election will be the most important since the 1930s.
Obama, as more than a few Democrats are complaining, hasn't been as quick, sharp -- or demagogic -- as they would like. McCain has been beset by deeper difficulties: an inchoate and inconsistent message that seems to reflect political exigencies more than principled convictions.
On the financial crisis, last week belonged to Obama.
She has been cunningly impersonated on Saturday Night Live by her look-alike Tina Fey, grilled by ABC's sober anchor Charlie Gibson, and investigated by teams of reporters who by now have hunted down every person in Alaska with a grudge or criticism.
We discovered that her teenage daughter is pregnant and watched as the hockey-playing lad who knocked her up was rapidly betrothed, cleaned up and hauled wide-eyed into the national spotlight with his soon-to-be in-laws - a bracingly modern variation of the old shotgun wedding. We have learned that Palin, like just about every other politician in human history, tends to hire her friends and fire her enemies.
We will learn more, but none of the above has done much to alter her image as a refreshingly independent, aggressive, smart, down-to-earth, and surprisingly effective public official. And we all know she can give a good speech.
But it was in that much-heralded speech at the Republican convention that Palin tossed off a line I found more disturbing than anything unearthed about her since. It got a predictably enthusiastic response from the keyed-up partisan crowd.
"Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America," said Palin, and then, referring to Barack Obama, quipped: "He's worried that someone won't read them their rights."
Quite apart from the cheap distortion of Obama's position, typical of most campaign rhetoric, this is a classic lynch-mob line. It is the taunt of the drunken lout in the cowboy movie who confronts a sheriff barring the prison door - He wants to give 'im a trial? It is the precise sentiment that Atticus Finch so memorably sets himself against in Harper Lee's masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird, when he agrees to defend a supposedly indefensible black man charged with rape (falsely, as it turns out).
I wonder if Palin really believes her own position on this. I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was just a speechwriter's idea of a great applause line, perhaps she hasn't fully thought it through. The sentiment is on the wrong side of a deep principle, one that we have long honored in this country, that has to do with basic fairness, the rule of law, and ultimately with standing up intelligently to terrorism.
Palin's comments referred to McCain's condemnation of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling this summer that upheld detainees' rights to the most basic of legal protections against arrest and imprisonment, a habeas corpus petition. The court ruled that our government cannot just call someone a terrorist, arrest him, and hold him indefinitely without showing some reasonable cause. McCain has called this "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." Obama has praised it.
The court's decision is just the latest word in an evolving national discussion of what to do with captured "terrorists." Congress and the White House have been wrestling with this since Sept. 11, 2001, and will continue to do so. Even those who applauded the court's defense of habeas corpus are not so sure that federal courts are the right place for "enemy combatants" to appeal their detention. And among those who side with the court, few would argue that enemy combatants are owed the full legal protections enjoyed by citizens. But certainly anyone arrested and locked away deserves the chance to challenge their arrest.
Mind you, we are not talking about a trial here, just a hearing to establish that there is enough evidence to lock the suspect away.
Palin's applause line applied the lynch-mob standard: Because a man has been arrested, he is guilty. End of story.
In 2003, when the first group of prisoners was released from Guantanamo, I traveled to Pakistan to find two of them, Shah Muhammad and Sahibzada Osman Ali. Both hailed from tiny villages in the mountainous region of Pakistan where al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been hiding. As an American, I was nervous traveling in that region, and honestly didn't know what to expect when I found them.
I was greeted with warmth and elaborate courtesy. Both were men in their early 20s, uneducated, unworldly, and dirt poor. They had been rounded up by entrepreneurial Afghani warlords who were being paid $4,000 a head to capture jihadis for the Americans. Four thousand dollars is a huge payday in Afghanistan, and the warlords were not discriminating. Both apparently hapless young Pakistanis were among the original herds of elaborately restrained detainees in orange jumpsuits delivered to Camp X-Ray, the ones who were all treated like mass murderers. Some of them were. Many, it turns out, were not.
Shah Muhammad and Sahibzada Osman Ali were held for almost two years before the authorities figured out that they did not pose a threat to Western civilization.
Maybe the authorities and I both have it wrong. Perhaps these two are huddling right now with Osama bin Laden himself, but they have stood in my mind ever since as examples of why detainees deserve a hearing of some kind, whether in federal court or before some panel that is seen to be fair and reasonably concerned about basic justice.
We are at war against forces who seek a permanent state of fear, for whom violence is an end in itself. Our side of the fight defends government by consent, and the rule of law. It is why we fight, and what makes our use of violence against our enemies morally defensible. This is why it is critical that we respect individual rights and act lawfully.
That does not mean reading Miranda warnings to enemy combatants, as Palin glibly suggested, or affording them the full battery of rights given criminal defendants in this country. It does mean that even those accused of the most vile crimes have some.
Our Founding Fathers called them "unalienable."
Why do most of us send our credit-card bills to South Dakota or Delaware? The answer to that seemingly arcane question illustrates the dangers of replacing state regulation with no regulation at all. It also offers a cautionary tale about a little-understood provision at the center of John McCain's health care plan. So bear with me for a little history.
Until the late 1970s, South Dakota and Delaware didn't have an outsized share of the credit-card business. Banks had to obey the interest caps of the states where borrowers lived. So, for example, loans to New York residents were always subject to New York's limits on interest rates. At 12 percent back then, and with high inflation, these laws sharply limited profits on credit cards.
Then in 1978, the Supreme Court said banks should follow the rate cap in their home states. This meant that as long as a credit-card company relocated to a state with a higher interest-rate limit, the company could lend to borrowers anywhere under that higher limit. Following the court's ruling, Citibank chairman Walter Wriston offered Gov. Bill Janklow a deal: If South Dakota lifted its rate cap altogether and formally invited Citibank to the state (as federal law required), the banking giant would move its credit-card operations to South Dakota—along with 400 good jobs.
The bill was introduced and passed in the space of a day. Soon after, Delaware lifted its cap, too. Voilà, South Dakota and Delaware became the hosts of most credit-card companies. And with the help of another 1996 Supreme Court decision, credit-card companies could charge what they wanted.
The centerpiece of McCain's plan, as reporting in the New York Times has noted, would eliminate the special tax treatment of employer-provided health care and instead offer tax credits to everybody who pays premiums. In a less-noticed move, McCain also proposes to change the market for health insurance that people buy on an individual basis—he says that "families should be able to purchase health insurance nationwide, across state lines." That would be a big change. Today, insurance companies need to follow the laws of the states where they sell individual insurance plans, just as credit-card companies did before 1978. If an insurer wants to sell policies in New York, the insurer has to obey New York's laws. Many states pretty much let companies sell the policies they wish, but others set a floor of protections. New York laws, for example, require that companies issue coverage to all new customers and not set higher rates for people who are already sick. As Stephanie Lewis points out in a forthcoming paper for the Center for American Progress, 17 other states impose at least some similar regulations. These rules may increase premiums for healthy folks, but they also give people with pre-existing conditions a decent chance to afford health insurance in the market for individually purchased policies.
McCain argues that different states' regulations "prevent the best companies, with the best plans and lowest prices, from making their product available to any American who wants it." Although he hasn't given details, his supporters say that he favors an approach, endorsed by President Bush and championed by McCain's Arizona colleague John Shadegg, that would allow insurers to choose the state laws under which they are regulated. (I e-mailed the campaign about the specifics of McCain's approach and didn't hear back.) An insurance company that chose to be regulated under Arizona law could sell policies in New York without following New York rules. Arizona, like most states, lets companies charge what they want to people who are sick—or simply deny them coverage altogether. Under Shadegg's bill, insurers wouldn't even need to pick up and move their operations; it would be enough to file some paperwork with a state insurance commissioner and pay that state's relevant taxes.
Getting to know Her
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y_ReNS7hMU
This chart is an updated version of the poll tracking chart that I've been posting from time to time over the past couple of weeks. It shows the rolling 2-week average of polls, by day. For perspective, it also shows the Bush-Kerry race in light red (Bush) and light blue (Kerry).
Data: pollster.com. Chart: jedreport.com.
As you can see, since the primary ended, Barack Obama has enjoyed a durable -- though somewhat shrinking -- lead over John McCain. In short, the sky is not falling.
While it's true that John Kerry was polling slightly better than Obama at this point in 2004, remember that he'd already had his convention. And also note that McCain is behind where Bush was.
For all the talk of what a great month John McCain had, this chart shows that though he strengthened his position with his own base, he hasn't really hurt Barack Obama.
As with 2004, most undecided voters won't decide until after the conventions. I think that explains why the Obama campaign hasn't aired harsher ads on a national basis. Instead, they've focused on strengthening Obama's core image, and more importantly, building the ground game, as dday outlines in his outstanding diary over at Daily Kos.
John McCain earlier today, agreeing with a woman who says that to catch bin Laden, we must reenact the draft (via Joe Sudbay):
AUDIENCE MEMBER: If we don't reenact the draft I don't think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell. JOHN MCCAIN: Ma'am let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: If we don't reenact the draft I don't think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.
JOHN MCCAIN: Ma'am let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said.
Sure, it's possible that John McCain couldn't hear the woman, or wasn't aware of what she had said. And if that's true, maybe he wouldn't have agreed with her statement had he known what she said. But if he can't correctly process something as simple as this, isn't that an even bigger problem?
Hey, did you know John McCain was a POW? You probably didn't, because he's so famously private about it. As he said in July, "I am always reluctant to talk about these things."
Yes, shy, reluctant John. But, shockingly, he seems to be coming out of his shell lately. After answering every question at the Rick Warren forum with a story about being a POW, the next day his spokeswoman issued a statement about whether McCain had heard the questions beforehand: "The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous." Yeah, doesn't everybody know by now? Being a prisoner of war means the only thing you cheat on is your first wife.
We suspect this won't be the last time McCain plays the POW card. As we're finding out, the POW card is amazingly versatile -- it can be used in almost any situation. If you, or someone you love, is similarly "reluctant" to talk about their POW experience (and they haven't cheated on you and left you yet), you'll want to check out our 23/6 Guide to Playing the POW Card.
Editor's Note: Jack Cafferty is the author of the best-seller "It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars, and Losers Who Are Hurting America." He provides commentary on CNN's "The Situation Room" daily from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. You can also visit Jack's Cafferty File blog.
Jack Cafferty says John McCain shows virtually no intellectual curiosity, emulating President Bush
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Russia invades Georgia and President Bush goes on vacation. Our president has spent one-third of his entire two terms in office either at Camp David, Maryland, or at Crawford, Texas, on vacation.
His time away from the Oval Office included the month leading up to 9/11, when there were signs Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America, and the time Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city of New Orleans.
Sen. John McCain takes weekends off and limits his campaign events to one a day. He made an exception for the religious forum on Saturday at Saddleback Church in Southern California.
I think he made a big mistake. When he was invited last spring to attend a discussion of the role of faith in his life with Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, McCain didn't bother to show up. Now I know why.
It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current president. When asked what his Christian faith means to him, his answer was a one-liner. "It means I'm saved and forgiven." Great scholars have wrestled with the meaning of faith for centuries. McCain then retold a story we've all heard a hundred times about a guard in Vietnam drawing a cross in the sand.
Asked about his greatest moral failure, he cited his first marriage, which ended in divorce. While saying it was his greatest moral failing, he offered nothing in the way of explanation. Why not?
Throughout the evening, McCain chose to recite portions of his stump speech as answers to the questions he was being asked. Why? He has lived 71 years. Surely he has some thoughts on what it all means that go beyond canned answers culled from the same speech he delivers every day.
He was asked "if evil exists." His response was to repeat for the umpteenth time that Osama bin Laden is a bad man and he will pursue him to "the gates of hell." That was it.
He was asked to define rich. After trying to dodge the question -- his wife is worth a reported $100 million -- he finally said he thought an income of $5 million was rich.
One after another, McCain's answers were shallow, simplistic, and trite. He showed the same intellectual curiosity that George Bush has -- virtually none.
Where are John McCain's writings exploring the vexing moral issues of our time? Where are his position papers setting forth his careful consideration of foreign policy, the welfare state, education, America's moral responsibility in the world, etc., etc., etc.?
John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet.
He no longer allows reporters unfettered access to him aboard the "Straight Talk Express" for a reason. He simply makes too many mistakes. Unless he's reciting talking points or reading from notes or a TelePrompTer, John McCain is lost. He can drop bon mots at a bowling alley or diner -- short glib responses that get a chuckle, but beyond that McCain gets in over his head very quickly.
I am sick and tired of the president of the United States embarrassing me. The world we live in is too complex to entrust it to someone else whose idea of intellectual curiosity and grasp of foreign policy issues is to tell us he can look into Vladimir Putin's eyes and see into his soul.
George Bush's record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself.
He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens' faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.
I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.
Update: Sullivan dissects the new pushback from McCain, including the claim that he told the story to one of his fellow POWs:
Here is how Swindle describes it to Byron York:"I vaguely recall that story being told, among other stories."Convinced?
Here is how Swindle describes it to Byron York:
"I vaguely recall that story being told, among other stories."
Convinced?
Original post: Another excellent post from Andrew Sullivan:
Here are the perfectly legitimate questions reporters should now, in my opinion, ask McCain:
why did you not mention this transcendent story in 1973? Why, in discussing three Christmases in captivity in Vietnam, was this story - far more powerful than any of the other anecdotes - omitted? How was it possible for the gun guard of May 1969 to be present at Christmas that year when McCain had been transferred to another camp? Is it possible that McCain's memory has faded with time and that he has simply fused his own memories with other stories - as Clinton did with Bosnia sniper fire and as Kerry did in remembering another Christmas he could not have actually witnessed where he said he did? And why are we not allowed to ask these questions, when they relate to one of the most important questions anyone can ask about a president: the question of integrity? If McCain has fabricated a religious epiphany for political purposes, it is about as deep a betrayal of core integrity as one can imagine, and the latest example of how pernicious the religious domination of political life in America has become.
why did you not mention this transcendent story in 1973? Why, in discussing three Christmases in captivity in Vietnam, was this story - far more powerful than any of the other anecdotes - omitted? How was it possible for the gun guard of May 1969 to be present at Christmas that year when McCain had been transferred to another camp? Is it possible that McCain's memory has faded with time and that he has simply fused his own memories with other stories - as Clinton did with Bosnia sniper fire and as Kerry did in remembering another Christmas he could not have actually witnessed where he said he did?
And why are we not allowed to ask these questions, when they relate to one of the most important questions anyone can ask about a president: the question of integrity? If McCain has fabricated a religious epiphany for political purposes, it is about as deep a betrayal of core integrity as one can imagine, and the latest example of how pernicious the religious domination of political life in America has become.
Andrew Sullivan's been on top of this story in a big way today. Here's a brief guide to his posts on the topic:
Aside from the fact that McCain is favorably disposed towards embellishing his record, here's what I think are the most compelling pieces of evidence that his story is a fabrication:
John McCain talks with top foreign policy aide Randy Scheunemann.
USA Today finally got John McCain on the record about Randy Scheunemann's lobbying on behalf of Georgia. "I'm proud to have supported them [the Georgians]", McCain says. "And I'm so proud that so many of my friends have done so."
As you recall, Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser, has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby for Georgia. Scheunemann even took McCain jet skiing with the Georgian President.
McCain is trying to position Scheunemann's paid lobbying as something noble, but the fact remains that Scheunemann was just an employee doing his job. Whether or not his position was "right" is not the issue: the issue is that he presented and presents a conflict of interest for McCain.
It's mind-boggling that John McCain doesn't recognize that Scheunemann's lobbying career undermines his capacity to be an honest broker as president.
The New York Times today reports on a group of sniveling little idiots who call themselves allies of Barack Obama, but are actually working to undermine him by reinforcing right-wing narratives about our party's presidential nominee.
They are acting like useless hacks. Instead of telling the press that Barack Obama should be spending more time at Walmart, if they really want to help win this election, they ought to be focusing on the questions raised by Frank Rich in his column today.
Rich's column is an outstanding summary of the media's near-complete abdication of its responsibility to examine McCain, and I'm not just saying that because he links to one of my posts in the web version of the article.
I'm saying that because he raises the single most ignored question of this campaign: just who on earth is John McCain?
The 8/1 edition of this feature is here, when the tally was Obama 336, McCain 202. Remember, I award states to whoever leads in the Pollster.com polling aggregates.
For this edition, Obama has actually slipped a bit and now wins Obama 312, McCain 226.
Compared to two weeks ago, Obama has lost his razor thin lead in Florida, though McCain's 1.6-point lead isn't exactly commanding. The state is effectively deadlocked. In Obama's favor, Alaska is now a narrow Obama lead. Like Montana, it's hard to believe that Alaska would sport even a temporary Obama lead, but it's that kind of year. Obama truly is outperforming past tickets in the West. It's east of the Mississippi were things tighten up most.
Now let's look at the map with competitive states yellowed out:
I consider a state "competitive" if it's within single digits in the polling, and thus far, about half the states remain competitive. But if you tally up the EVs, you see that Obama is sitting in much more solid ground.
Two weeks ago, Obama had 210 electoral votes in his safe column, essentially his base states, compared to 72 EVs for McCain. . This week, it's Obama 200, McCain 82. Oregon, which has been giving Obama a roughly 10-point lead, has tightened up slightly, given him a 7-point lead. And Delaware should've been in yellow all along, since an old SUSA poll in February gave Obama a 9-point lead. It's not really a competitive state, but by the rules of this exercise, I must include it.
Bottom line, Obama has 200 solid EVs out of the 270 electoral votes he needs, while McCain needs 188 of the remaining 253 EVs, or a whopping 74 percent of them, to win the election.
Why oh why isn't Obama doing better! This is all great news for McCain.
One more exercise -- I tightened the "swing state" screen to states where the margins are closer than five points:
This map gives us Obama 264, McCain 154. That leaves 120 EVs up for grabs, of which McCain must win 97 percent to win the election. Al Obama has to do is pick up six more EVs from those yellow states. Nevada has five, Alaska, Montana, and North Dakota each have three, the rest of those yellow states would single-handedly push Obama over the top.
I don't know how the news for Obama can get any worse than this...
