This projection outlines how Barack Obama can lose battleground states like Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, and still win the general election. This estimate gives those states to McCain, along with other toss- up states such as Virginia, North Caroina, and all the states of the Deep South. However, focused voter registration in these particular toss-up states could lead to huge gains for Obama. And of course, this is just one projection.
SAFE OBAMA STATES
172 Electoral Votes
California (55) New York (31) Illinois (21) New Jersey (15) Massachusetts (12) Maryland (10) Connecticut (7) Rhode Island (4) Maine (4) Hawaii (4) Delaware (3) District of Columbia (3) Vermont (3)
SAFE MCCAIN STATES
132 Electoral Votes
Texas (34) Indiana (11) Tennessee (11) Arizona (10) Kentucky (8) South Carolina (8) Oklahoma (7) Kansas (6) Arkansas (6) Utah (5) Nebraska (5) West Virginia (5) Idaho (4) Wyoming (3) North Dakota (3) South Dakota (3) Alaska (3)
OBAMA TOSS-UP STATE WINS
99 Electoral Votes
Michigan (17) Washington (11) Missouri (11) Wisconsin (11) Minnesota (10) Colorado (9) Oregon (7) Iowa (7) Montana (6) Nevada (5) New Mexico (5) New Hampshire (4)
MCCAIN TOSS-UP STATE WINS
135 Electoral Votes
Florida (27) Pennsylvania (21) Ohio (20) Georgia (15) North Carolina (15) Virginia (13) Louisiana (9) Alabama (9) Mississippi (6)
OBAMA TOTAL MCCAIN TOTAL
271 Electoral Votes 267 Electoral Votes
On the morning of Super Tuesday, I sent this message to over 200 of my friends and family all across America:
Dear Friends, Super Tuesday is finally here, and I just wanted to send you all one final e-mail before you take to the polls today (or in the days to come.) As you surely know, I will be voting for Senator Barack Obama today. My support of Senator Obama is very personal. It is a decision rooted in a simple belief that we all can do better; that for too long our expectations have been too low. The truth is, I am tired of settling for an America that doesn't look much like America anymore. I'm tired of looking the other way every time another national leader is compromised by scandal and crime. I'm tired of expecting to be spun. I'm tired of biting my lip in every election and choosing the lesser of two evils. I am tired of partisan gridlock and the rise of rhetoric over reason. I think most of all, I am saddened that our own government fails to reflect the decency and the practicality of the American people. We can't continue like this. And in our hearts, we know that. I believe this is a defining moment for our country. This election comes at a point in our history when we face lasting questions over our national character -- about who we fundamentally are as a people and who we want to be in this world. Are we a generous people? Are we a reasonable people? Are we a just people? I choose to support Senator Obama in this moment because he is ready to hold America to higher expectations. He rejects the influence of lobbyists and special interests by rejecting their money. He renews the political process by asking that we each renew our own political commitment in our individual lives. He appeals to the better angels of our nature by not dwelling on the demonizing of one another. He seeks out ideas that work, not merely ideas that win. Senator Obama has built his campaign on what he calls 'the audacity of hope'. Some have dismissed the idea, saying that hope is not enough. They say, hope is not policy or experience. Well, don't misunderstand what hope is. Hope is not wishing. Hope is not blind faith. Hope is not willful naivete or aimless optimism. At its core, hope is about expecting something. And in America, we have always been at our best when we've had the courage to embrace our greatest expectations. This election is about having the audacity to simply expect more -- of our leaders, of each other, and of ourselves. This is an opportunity that will not come again. We must seize this moment. We must vote for Barack Obama. I know not every one of you is a Democrat. I know not every one of you supports Senator Obama. But I know you all love this country, and I know you will receive this message thoughtfully. To my Democratic friends, I encourage you to vote for Senator Obama. To my Republican and Independent friends, I encourage you to learn more about him and to ask your own Democratic friends to support Senator Obama. And finally, to us all, may we take this moment in 2008 to embrace our greatest expectations once more! Thank you. All the best,Keith P.S. This is Senator Obama's victory speech after the January 3rd Iowa caucus:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZaq-YKCnE&NR=1 P.P.S. This is what it looks like when young Americans vote their highest expectations:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_yq-6OZLRQ
Last Thursday’s democratic primary on MSNBC was something of a draw. It was not harmful, nor was it helpful; it was not unproductive per se, but neither was it truly constructive. And while I laughed or nodded at various points throughout the 90-minute Q & A, it was always in a manner that was equally predictable and routine as the questions and answers themselves. I was playing the role of the Viewer while they played their roles as Moderators and Candidates – parts we all seem to know by heart.The truth is I felt throughout that I was not watching a debate; I was watching a pageant. This was not a dynamic contest of argumentation or even a discussion of opposing viewpoints among rivals; it was an elaborate, public presentation of tiresome tradition and stagecraft. In a discussion, there is momentum and emotion, with the constant chance of spontaneity. In a pageant, there is merely prompt and pomp, with the assurance of banality. Last Thursday, we were given a pageant, my friends.Of course, you turn to a debate in the first place seeking definition – of the candidates, of the issues, of the race itself. That is the primary purpose of a debate. Instead, the cramped and stilted format of the televised debate, with its timed responses and controlled settings, only leaves you with more questions than answers and ultimately more reliant on rumor than reality. The format negatively impacts the candidates as well, causing them to seem stilted and their positions to seem cramped. It is simply outside the scope of the televised debate format to be of any real value when it comes to substantially defining anything at all. And that is my only takeaway from last week’s debate: this issue of scope.Barack Obama is running a campaign of far-reaching ambition and enormous potential. The breadth of his intentions and motivations are so vast, so varied, and so complex that they each simply demand a tremendous extent of attention: changing the ways of Washington; renewing a sense of common investment among Americans; effectively resolving the American-made disaster in Iraq; designing universal health care; crafting apt and coherent foreign policies; reclaiming the reputation of America around the globe; leading the world by example in issues of freedom, educational opportunity, diplomacy, and environmental sustainability. These are intricate issues that cannot be justly discussed or even paraphrased in 60-second response times.Obama uniquely sees the interconnectedness of these issues. He sees the potential to achieve positive outcomes in confronting them. He sees new ways to approach these issues and he speaks about them with both the head and heart to cause others to see these new approaches as well. His ability to see America as it is while also setting his sights on America as it could be makes him a candidate unlike any other in the race. Furthermore, his natural ability to inspire others to do likewise makes him a leader unlike any in a generation. This is what makes his ambition far-reaching, his potential enormous.Therefore, Obama’s greatest threat in this race could very well be one of scope: the incommensurate scopes of his candidacy and the contest itself. The debate last Thursday painfully demonstrated this when he devoted significant portions of his limited response time to providing context and setting up his ultimate position. Taking time to think about his words implied hesitation, some said, and bolstered the notion that he is too inexperienced for the presidency. He responded throughout the debate as though he was giving a speech at one of his sold-out rallies, where he has the space for unhampered thought and discussion. The fact is that politics has coevolved with television to provide sound bites and memorable quotes, rather than contextual analysis or novel ideas. There simply is not time to answer questions about foreign policy and climate change with scrutiny. A few broad strokes about your position ought to suffice. In fact, you know what, why don’t you just raise your hand if I mention an issue you care about. That will leave more time for the swimsuit competition anyway.The televised debate last Thursdays simply proved to be too small for the essential bigness of Obama’s candidacy. You see, that bigness is what defines him. He is playing a new game, one we have never seen before in American politics. Unfortunately, he has to do so while playing by old rules. Obama has said, “We’ve seen too many elections where our problems are talked to death. Where ten point plans are crushed under the weight of the same old politics once the election is over… If we do not change our politics, if we do not fundamentally change the way Washington works, then the problems we’ve been talking about for the last generation will be the same ones that haunt us for generations to come.” Such emphasis on change cannot be fully expressed in the traditional arena of televised debate. They simply seek different outcomes. A better pairing is found in the scopes of Obama’s candidacy and what he calls “The American Moment.” “We are not a country that ships prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries,” Obama says. “We are not a country that runs prisons which lock people away without ever telling them why they are there or what they are charged with. We are not a country which preaches compassion and justice to others while we allow bodies to float down the streets of a major American city. That is not who we are… Now it’s our moment to lead – our generation’s time to tell another great American story. So someday we can tell our children that this was the time when we helped forge peace in the Middle East. That this was the time when we confronted climate change and secured the weapons that could destroy the human race. This was the time when we brought opportunity to those forgotten corners of the world. And this was the time when we renewed the America that has led generations of weary travelers from all over the world to find opportunity, and liberty, and hope on our doorstep… The American moment has not passed. The American moment is here. And like generations before us, we will seize that moment, and begin the world anew.” It may not be a sound bite. It may take longer to think about these words than to raise one’s hand. But the fact is that this is where you find the candidate defining himself. This clarifies the candidate, the issues, and the race more than a single moment of Thursday’s debate did. We can only hope that Obama finds a way to ensure that future debates do not hamper his ability to deliver this message to the American people.
*To read ErikaEM’s profound post in full, visit: Link ObamaHQ/CqRN
In my office, we listen to music everyday. It’s just part of our culture. It’s how we get things done. We sit at our computers, talk on our phones, and listen to Neutral Milk Hotel or David Bowie playing in the background. So, this means that if we’re lucky, we might happen to put someone on hold just in time to catch the chorus of “Oh! You Pretty Things.” This is basically like the in-office equivalent of seeing a shooting star. It makes a person feel sort of lucky and gives him a reason to smile for a second or two.
Because I inherited the desk with the detachable speakers, I more-often-than-not get to play DJ, which is a rare privilege and duty. A few weeks ago, I came across on online radio station that only played ‘karaoke hits.’ The website highlighted artists such as Men at Work, Vanilla Ice, and Sonny and Cher. It seemed like the natural option sure to please the disparate tastes in any formal office setting. Soon we were all softly singing along to that rare canon of tunes that you love to hate, hate to love, and think you know all the words to. It turns out, however, that few of us knew all the words to “Tide Is High” by Blondie; even fewer knew the words to Laura Branigan’s 1982 chart-topper “Gloria.” Instead, what we really had taken to heart were not the words of these songs, but the synthesizers and horns that make them recognizable. Sure, occasionally a phrase or two from the chorus would come to mind, but generally, without knowing the words to sing along confidently, the most we could do was hum with enthusiasm and the vaguest sense of familiarity.
Karaoke hits are not the only things like this in our culture; there are a lot of things that we only know fragmentally or incompletely. Take the phrase, “You talkin' to me?” A person does not have to have seen Taxi Driver to know this line. I knew this line long before I had ever even heard of the film. But still, somehow along the way, I acquired this bit of our common lexicon and could roll it out whenever I wanted. Same thing with the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, Psalm 23, and the Preamble to the Constitution. Throughout my life, I’ve had to recite all three for class credit.
I remember memorizing the last of these in the fifth grade. As I recall, I spotlessly recited the whole Preamble, paying close attention to pronunciation and phrasing: “We the people of the United States (breath) in order to form a more perfect union (breath)…” It’s a good thing I nailed the recitation then and there because it’s proven thus far to be a one-time-only engagement. Having not really had a reason to publicly recite it since, I have to confess, I’m a bit rusty. I remember key phrases: ‘insure domestic tranquility’ and ‘do ordain and establish this Constitution’ come to mind right away. But I would be hard-pressed to offer an error-free presentation these days.
And as for the rest of the Constitution, don’t even ask. Like most people I can rattle off what the First and Second Amendments defend, or tell you which Amendment formally abolished slavery. But that’s not particularly impressive. These are like the Greatest Hits of the Constitution and everyone can pretty much sing along; but Article IV, Section 1 – Full Faith and Credit of the States – that’s a real B-Side. You have to be a pretty big Founding Documents Head to know that by heart.
It’s too bad. We’re talking about the bedrock of our nation, the document that has guided us for over two centuries, and I barely can tell you how it is organized, let alone what it actually contains in any real detail. Somehow, given that it lies at the very heart of my liberty, this seems, well, wrong.
Or maybe, to be more precise, insufficient.
I take some comfort in the way in which Barack Obama describes his students at the University of Chicago, where he taught constitutional law for ten years. He has said, “Sometimes I imagined my work to be not so different from the work of the theology professors who taught across campus – for, as I suspect was true of those teaching Scripture, I found that my students often felt they knew the Constitution without having really read it.”
I can identify with that. I love the Constitution. I believe in the Constitution. I trust the Constitution. I just don’t know the Constitution.
And that’s a problem. It’s a problem because as a citizen of the United States, I happen to have a supreme civic duty: to every four years cast my vote for someone who will solemnly swear to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of his or her ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I feel that if I’m going to expect someone else to take on the job of preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution, it only seems appropriate that I take a look at the thing and maybe take down a few notes.
I suspect that I am not alone in my somewhat superficial relationship to the Constitution. Certainly, many and perhaps most Americans know key passages but have not read it from start to finish in quite a while, if ever. Lately, I have had the urge to dig out my pocket-sized copy of the Constitution and spend some time just reacquainting myself with its wisdom; preparing myself to responsibly support a candidate who can preserve, protect, and defend it. As we all know, the 2008 Presidential election is already set to be the longest in our history. Some have bemoaned the inevitably protracted nature of the campaigns, but I think it actually presents all Americans with one very important and appealing opportunity: to not only begin familiarizing ourselves with the candidates, but to also begin reacquainting ourselves with the institutions which these candidates seek to serve.
The Constitution is the framework for our government, our liberties, and our national character. But it is also a direct appeal to us today. For this, we need look no further than the Preamble, where we find a single word that calls out to each of us: posterity. We are the posterity – the future generations our Founders dreamed of. For that reason, we must recognize that while the Constitution was conceived of to defend us as citizens, we as a citizenry were also conceived of to defend the Constitution. We are just as accountable to it, as it is to us.
For those of us who believe Obama is truly best suited to serve as the next President of the United States, we are especially called to understand the importance of the Constitution in this campaign. He has said that its “elaborate machinery – its separation of powers and checks and balances and federalist principles and Bill of Rights – are designed to force us into a conversation, a ‘deliberative democracy’ in which all citizens are required to engage in a process of testing their ideas against an external reality, persuading others of their point of view, and building shifting alliances of consent.” We already know that the election of Obama will require persuading others to our own point of view and building alliances of consent with a vast cross-section of good-willed Americans. But in order to begin mobilizing that ‘deliberative democracy,’ it is incumbent on us to first reacquaint ourselves with the elaborate machinery of the Constitution.
It simply will not suffice to hum with enthusiasm and the vaguest sense of familiarity. No, it is time we take the words to heart more completely so that we may know them with confidence. Only then can we can continue the work of forming a more perfect union.
At this point, 24 years into my life, I’ve made a lot of decisions. And I’m talking about the big ones here, folks. The ones that people in my life could use to describe me to strangers: ‘Keith is a New Yorker, ‘My friend Keith works for a TV show,’ or ‘If you wanna talk about a guy who compulsively buys CDs, you should meet my friend Keith.’ And that’s all true. I live in New York, work in television, and have spent a significant portion of my life waiting to check out at Tower Records. But these are all things I’ve deliberately chosen. This is who I want to be and how I want to live. And if I want to, I can change all of this by making new decisions.
But there are so many other things about me that, well, I never exactly sought out. I never put any effort into being a male, for example. Nor did I choose to be short or speak English. And yet, those happen to be pretty impactful aspects of who I am. Without putting forth any real effort or any intention on my part, I am indeed a short, English-speaking man.
Another of these is the fact that I am American. I have not taken a single step to become an American. I have paid no price. I have risked nothing. I never took a test, and I never paid a nationalization fee. I am an American by birth, and my identity as such is a lifelong guarantee. At its most basic level, it is simply a state of being.
The bold idea at the heart of our nation, however, is that our citizenship is not merely a state of being; our citizenship is a matter of action. It is in the actions we choose individually where our true lives as Americans actually exist, and it is the ultimate combination of our entire actions taken together that defines our national character. The life of an American is to be conducted deliberately and purposefully.
For those of us who have decided at this very early point in the 2008 presidential election to support Barack Obama, I think it is fundamental that we understand our own citizenship as a matter of purposefulness. The decision to support Obama is not simply a single act, taken once. The election of Obama will require many decisions, made again and again: to inform ourselves, to evaluate ourselves, to challenge our own thinking. It also will require multiple decisions about how we engage and mobilize others behind our candidate.
But perhaps most importantly, this election will depend on how we as citizens for Obama decide to treat others, namely those with whom we disagree. Obama himself has said, ‘What’s needed is a broad majority of Americans – Democrats, Republicans, and independents of goodwill – who are reengaged in the project of national renewal, and who see their own self-interest as inextricably linked to the interests of others.’
The candidacy of Barack Obama is a precious opportunity for Americans – all Americans – to demonstrate the integrity of our national character. As supporters of Obama, we are called to build that broad majority he describes. To do so, we must lead the political discourse – to quite literally establish the tone by which we engage this election – with responsibility and understanding of our fellow Americans. We must decide to never treat the election as a cause to dehumanize those who disagree with us. We must seek out our commonalities. We must reject the dichotomous theater of our current politics and never reduce ourselves or others to stereotype.
We must commit to understanding each other. We must choose to invest in one another.
I never had the opportunity to choose being an American. But now, in answering this call to engage in the project of national renewal, and doing so with a commitment to my fellow citizen, I have the chance to participate in the definition of our national character. This is something I choose. This is who I want to be and how I want to live. And I look forward to joining with others in this spirit of goodwill along the way.
