Patty's Blog

WASHINGTON POST = = = = Kennedy Announces Plan to Submit Bill For Universal Care

Patty — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:10:23 EST

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), making his second appearance on Capitol Hill since he began treatment for a malignant brain tumor in June, told reporters yesterday that he would advance a bill early next year calling for universal health care.

Some Democrats, including members of President-elect Barack Obama's circle, have begun to view expanded coverage as a longer-term goal.

The brief appearance by Kennedy, who made a surprise return in July to vote on a Medicare bill, represented an opportunity for him to show colleagues that he remains energetic and engaged, and that he intends to reclaim his committee post in January and take charge of the Obama health-care agenda. Some Democrats had speculated that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) would attempt to assume the chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) rolled out his own health-care bill days after Obama was elected, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also expects to be a leading participant in the effort to establish universal health care.

Kennedy has a head start on them all. Despite his illness, he directed his staff months ago to begin work on legislation that would vastly expand health coverage, a career-long goal of his.

But as the economy has worsened, attention has shifted to measures aimed at creating jobs and stabilizing the housing market. Obama is particularly eager to advance his alternative energy agenda.

Kennedy acknowledged the competition. "There's some major issues, obviously, the economy and also environmental issues," Kennedy said on his way to a staff meeting, where he was greeted with cheers.

"But the president-elect has indicated that this is going to be a priority, and I certainly hope it will."

WASHINGTON POST = = = Hill Heavy Hitters Filling Obama's West Wing Lineup

Patty — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:07:56 EST

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama liked to defend himself against charges of inexperience by calling for fresh perspective in Washington. "The American people . . . understand the real gamble is having the same old folks doing the same old things over and over and over again and somehow expecting a different result," he would say to big applause.

But as the president-elect's White House team takes shape, it is becoming clear that Obama in fact sees value in having plenty of the "same old folks" around to help him. After selecting as his chief of staff Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a House power broker and Clinton White House veteran, Obama over the weekend added several other top advisers with deep seasoning in Washington and on Capitol Hill in particular.

Although Obama has shown a fondness for surrounding himself with big thinkers and visionary experts, his White House hires suggest that his West Wing, at least, will place a premium on skilled legislative practitioners.

Congressional Democrats are taking the hires of Hill veterans as an encouraging sign that Obama -- the first member of Congress to be elected president since John F. Kennedy -- plans to work closely with them, which they regard as a welcome change from Bush's administration, which even many Hill Republicans said left them out of the loop.

The staff choices "represent a new era in cooperative relations between the White House and Congress," said Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.). "It bodes well for an extraordinary period of legislative accomplishment -- for creating an atmosphere in which legislative victories will be maximized."

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said the Hill expertise is particularly needed given the shaky economy. "It sends a very clear message . . . that he is ready to work with us from Day One," she said. "We need to get past the 'getting to know you' phase quickly, and this helps get that done."

But some veterans of Republican White Houses are asking how Obama's promise of a clean break with the past squares with his elevation of so many Washington insiders skilled in partisan warfare.

"This is more 'Groundhog Day' than a fresh start," said Peter Wehner, a former senior adviser to Bush who is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Wehner said he thinks Obama is trying to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton administration, which stumbled early on, but he warned against "overlearning history." "It's reassuring having people who have been around the block -- it means he'll step on fewer banana peels in the early going," he said. But "this just doesn't have the feel of a political transformation," he added.

Other veterans of GOP administrations said Obama could yet prove an agent of change -- on his own.

"The transformative part of his presidency is the president himself," said Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and supported Obama. "The most important voice for change is his. And change is accomplished in our system not by erasing all of the lines on paper but by having people who understand government's structure and so can reinforce lines that have been wrongfully distorted or broken in terms of separation of powers."

Obama adviser Anita Dunn made a similar case. "What you're seeing is the same kind of approach he took to his campaign -- some new people, some old people, like Goldilocks," she said. "What you see is someone who is not going to make some of the mistakes administrations have made in the past of not understanding how to get things done in Washington. People who say 'Where's the change?' need only look at the president of the United States . . . the person at the top who sets the tone and the priorities."

The latest hires include Pete Rouse, an understated but highly regarded Hill veteran who will be a senior adviser in the White House after 30 years on the Hill -- 19 working for Thomas A. Daschle, a former Senate Democratic leader, and four as Obama's chief of staff. Hired as deputy White House chiefs of staff are Mona Sutphen, who worked for a D.C. consulting firm after serving on Clinton's National Security Council, and Jim Messina, who was the Obama campaign's chief of staff after serving in the same capacity for Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is helping lead the way on health-care legislation.

Hired as Obama's top congressional liaison is Phil Schiliro, another highly regarded Hill veteran who in 25 years there served as Daschle's policy director and, most recently, as chief of staff to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Selected as White House counsel is Greg Craig, who served in the State Department under Clinton and acted as his counsel during his impeachment but broke with the Clintons to endorse Obama.

These experienced Washington hands will be joined by Obama's top confidants from Chicago -- David Axelrod, his chief campaign strategist, and Valerie Jarrett, a businesswoman and close family friend who is helping direct the transition alongside former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta. She will serve as Obama's senior adviser and public liaison.

Several White House veterans said the mix represented a healthy combination of new blood and D.C. experience -- not unlike what Ronald Reagan brought in 1980, when he combined Washington hands such as James A. Baker III and Kenneth M. Duberstein with confidantes Edwin Meese III and Michael K. Deaver.

Obama, having collected relatively few loyalists during his rapid rise, has shown an eagerness to hire the best available people regardless of personal connections or ideology, the veterans said. The clearest example was his success persuading Rouse, who was looking for work after Daschle's 2004 defeat, to join the office of a freshman senator.

"Obama understands that in order to be an effective president, you need to win battles on Capitol Hill," said Duberstein, who was Reagan's chief of staff. "What he seems to be putting in place is a mixture of people who know how to get things done in Washington along with people who have known him for many years. That fits with what he has campaigned on . . . which is shrewdly bringing people together. It is all about putting together a pragmatic governing coalition and having the people on hand who know how to get things done."

Duberstein disagreed that Washington veterans undercut the change that the country voted for Nov. 4. "What the American people are saying is: 'Enough of the stalemate and gridlock. Get people in there who know what they are doing,' " he said.

Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush's first chief of staff, praised Obama for filling so many White House jobs so quickly. But he warned that having so much Hill experience on the team could give it too much of a legislative mind-set.

"A member of Congress holds hearings and healthy debates before he makes a decision. A president doesn't have that luxury," he said. "He is required to make snap decisions. Members of Congress can be much more deliberative, where a president has to be decisive. If you're a senator, you're one-hundredth of one-half of a decision. When you're president, you're 100 percent of a decision. You have to be more nimble."

Leon Panetta, who was Clinton's chief of staff, dismissed this concern. "It doesn't take very long before you develop an executive mind-set. On Capitol Hill you usually have 535 different [bosses], and at the White House you only have one boss -- and you learn that real fast," he said. "I just look at it from the point of view of having people who can hit the ground running. With all the problems the country faces, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to have people who understand how Washington works."

WASHINGTON POST = = = = Can Mall Be Filled For an Inauguration? 4 Million May Try It.

Patty — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:04:15 EST

District and federal officials are preparing for as many as 4 million people for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, a crowd that would be three or four times larger than previous big events on the Mall.

Only a fraction of those people will be close enough to get a good look at the action. But officials are planning extra JumboTrons at the Mall and along the inaugural parade route so that spectators can feel a part of the historic day.

"The Mall actually may be the best seat in the house. . . . It'll kind of be like the world's biggest stage and auditorium on January 20th," said Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), adding that the crowd projections have emerged in briefings conducted by federal and local officials.

All plans are pending approval of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, to be set up by Obama, which determines the size and nature of the inaugural festivities, Fenty said. But District officials have met several times with the Secret Service and other agencies.

The Secret Service is taking the lead in overseeing security and other logistics. Even for a city that has hosted vast throngs for marches, protests, celebrations, funerals and inaugurations, this will be an unprecedented test of planning and resources. The question arises: Can the city handle it? Can millions of people fit downtown?

Or, could there be another Meltdown of '76?

That year, a million spectators were expected on the Mall to celebrate the Bicentennial. Transit officials urged people to take public transportation and promised special service. But there was nothing special about the Fourth of July traffic jam, which stranded cars and buses for hours.

District and federal officials blamed a flawed and smaller mass transit system for the 1976 embarrassment. They expressed confidence that they can handle this January's events. At the same time, they know that Inauguration Day 2009 will be one of a kind.

For example, Fenty said, officials expect people to camp overnight, starting Jan. 19, to get as close as possible to the swearing-in viewing area and parade route.

The next several weeks will be spent figuring out how to change the comprehensive playbook that has been used in the past.

"We have a great blueprint from years past, and we will follow that," the mayor said. "But we will start to make exceptions and deviations because, by everyone's estimation, we will have crowds that will be two, three, maybe even four times as large as the largest inaugural. . . . One of the biggest exceptions would be to open up the Mall."

Officials are talking about opening large sections of the Mall east of the Washington Monument, a space normally used for staging the many components of the inaugural parade, Fenty said. That would make the Mall a viewing area that experts said could accommodate several million people -- significantly more than in the past. Officials have not said where the parade groups will gather instead.

The changes would not affect the 240,000 people who will get free tickets in the space closest to the swearing-in ceremony.

The mayor said visitors will have a difficult choice between getting the best possible views of the swearing-in or the parade.

"The parade route will be completely filled way before the inaugural speech even happens," said Fenty, who was a D.C. Council member in 2005, the most recent inauguration. "That's something people will have to think about, whether they want to see the parade firsthand or see the inaugural swearing-in and speech. You can't do both."

Obama is known for choosing venues where he can address huge crowds. In August in Denver, he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination with a speech before 84,000 at Invesco Field. On election night, about 200,000 jammed Chicago's Grant Park for his victory speech.

"The word we're getting from them, nothing formal yet, is that they want to open this up to as many people as possible," Fenty said. "We will follow their lead."

Peter V. Ueberroth, former chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said that fewer -- not more -- leaders should take charge in a crowd of such size. Ueberroth, who helped guide the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, said security and transportation officials must be closely coordinated, sharing a command headquarters. In this case, the Secret Service will coordinate a unified command center.

It does not appear that the 300 acres of the Mall in the two-mile stretch from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial has ever been filled with people, according to Terry Adams, a National Park Service spokesman.

The 1995 Million Man March, which drew about a million people, give or take a few hundred thousand, filled two-thirds of the one-mile section between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, according to photographs taken at the time. Farouk El-Baz, a Boston University expert who analyzed the crowd size, estimated that the entire two-mile stretch is so open that it could hold 3 million people.

"There should be no concern about the number of people. Particularly since this one will be a celebratory gathering. People will be up. They will be pleasant to each other," El-Baz said.

The biggest inaugural crowd appears to be the 1.2 million people who are said to have attended events at the 1965 inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson, according to police and past news accounts. In those days, the swearing-in was held in the more limited area around the east front of the Capitol, where it had taken place since 1829, according to Beth Hahn of the Senate Historical Office.

It was not until the 1981 inauguration of Ronald Reagan that the swearing-in was moved to the Capitol's west front, where larger audiences could spread onto the Mall.

Faulty mass transit, not space, was the downfall of the July 4, 1976, Bicentennial celebration. Metro ran mostly bus service, which fell into chaos in the traffic jam. Metrorail was in its infancy, with only a 4.6-mile stretch of the Red Line functioning.

Today, with a seasoned and robust subway system, officials are again urging people to take public transit. Once downtown, however, people will face much tighter security than in 1976, as well as world-class traffic problems. Many blocks will be off limits Jan. 20.

"If we can get the doors closed, we will move," Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said. Metro's biggest crowd, recorded July 11, was 854,638 passengers.

The fact that Jan. 20, a federal holiday in the Washington area, falls the day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday means that the crowd's arrival might be spread over a four-day weekend. At the same time, the crowd will be packed with out-of-towners and many people attending their first inauguration, creating the potential for confusion.

Those who dare to drive downtown on Inauguration Day will face a monumental parking challenge.

The security zone, which has not been determined, could eat up much of the parking downtown, said Andrew Blair, vice president and secretary of the Washington Parking Association and president of Colonial Parking. The industry is preparing for caravans of buses, he said, adding that the Colonial-run parking lot at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium will have well over 800 buses.

For those who are making their plans ahead of time, there are 95,000 hotel rooms in the metropolitan area, tourism officials say, in addition to the thousands of basements, spare rooms and sublet homes and apartments that will be available for inauguration-goers. The city is accustomed to hosting 15 million visitors annually.

Security, emergency and logistical crews will be bolstered by about 5,000 members of the military and 4,000 additional officers from 93 law enforcement agencies across the country, officials have said.

Presidential inaugurations aren't just logistical challenges. They shape the start of an administration and provide a chance for the District to shine before a worldwide audience. A major mishap could tarnish the image of the city, the mayor and the organizers, and much is riding on success.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime" experience, Fenty said.

WASHINGTON POST = = = Administration Moves to Protect Key Appointees

Patty — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:59:56 EST

Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department's top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies -- including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions -- into senior civil service posts.

The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions, called "burrowing" by career officials, creates security for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs.

Similar efforts are taking place at other agencies. Two political hires at the Labor Department have already secured career posts there, and one at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is trying to make the switch.

Between March 1 and Nov. 3, according to the federal Office of Personnel Management, the Bush administration allowed 20 political appointees to become career civil servants. Six political appointees to the Senior Executive Service, the government's most prestigious and highly paid employees, have received approval to take career jobs at the same level. Fourteen other political, or "Schedule C," appointees have also been approved to take career jobs. One candidate was turned down by OPM and two were withdrawn by the submitting agency.

The personnel moves come as Bush administration officials are scrambling to cement in place policy and regulatory initiatives that touch on issues such as federal drinking-water standards, air quality at national parks, mountaintop mining and fisheries limits.

The practice of placing political appointees into permanent civil service posts before an administration ends is not new. In its last 12 months, the Clinton administration approved 47 such moves, including seven at the senior executive level. Federal employees with civil service status receive job protections that make it very difficult for managers to remove them.

Most of the personnel shifts have been done on a case-by-case basis, but Interior Solicitor David L. Bernhardt moved to place six deputies in senior agency positions with one stroke, including two who have repeatedly attracted controversy. Robert D. Comer, who was Rocky Mountain regional solicitor, was named to the civil service post of associate solicitor for mineral resources. Matthew McKeown, who served as deputy associate solicitor for mineral resources, will take Comer's place in what is also a career post. Both had been converted from political appointees to civil service status.

In a report dated Oct. 13, 2004, Interior's inspector general singled out Comer in criticizing a grazing agreement that the Bureau of Land Management had struck with a Wyoming rancher, saying Comer used "pressure and intimidation" to produce the settlement and pushed it through "with total disregard for the concerns raised by career field personnel." McKeown -- who as Idaho's deputy attorney general had sued to overturn a Clinton administration rule barring road-building in certain national forests -- has been criticized by environmentalists for promoting the cause of private property owners over the public interest on issues such as grazing and logging.

One career Interior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his position, said McKeown will "have a huge impact on a broad swath of the West" in his new position, advising the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service on "all the programs they implement." Comer, the official added, will help shape mining policy in his new assignment.

"It is an attempt by the outgoing administration to limit as much as possible [the incoming administration's] ability to put its policy imprint on the Department of Interior," the official said.

In a Nov. 13 memo obtained by The Washington Post, Bernhardt wrote that he was reorganizing his division because the associate solicitors' original status as political appointees undermined the division's effectiveness.

"This has resulted in frequent turnover in those positions, often with an attendant loss in productivity and management continuity in these Divisions, despite the best efforts of the newly-appointed Associate Solicitors," he wrote.

But environmental advocates, and some rank-and-file Interior officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of hurting their careers, said the reassignments represent the Bush administration's effort to leave a lasting imprint on environmental policy.

"What's clear is they could have done this during the eight years they were in office. Why are they doing it now?" said Robert Irvin, senior vice president for conservation programs at Defenders of Wildlife, an advocacy group. "It's pretty obvious they're trying to leave in place some of their loyal foot soldiers in their efforts to reduce environmental protection."

In an interview yesterday, Bernhardt reiterated that he thinks the move is in the government's long-term interest.

"I believe these management decisions will strengthen the professionalism of the Office of the Solicitor and result in greater service to the Department of the Interior," he said. "However, the next solicitor and the department's management team are free to walk a different path."

One senior Interior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said an incoming interior secretary or solicitor could create new political positions upon taking office and could shift Senior Executive Service officials to comparable jobs within a few months. As a general rule, career SES employees may be reassigned involuntarily within their current commuting area within 15 days, and beyond their commuting area within 60 days, but they retain their lucrative and permanent government posts. When a new agency head is appointed, he or she must wait 120 days before reassigning career SES officials.

Outside groups are trying to monitor these moves but are powerless to reverse them. Alex Bastani, a representative at the Labor Department for the American Federation of Government Employees, said it took months for that agency even to acknowledge that two of its Bush appointees, Carrie Snidar and Brad Mantel, had gotten civil service posts.

"They're trying to burrow into these career jobs, and we're very upset," Bastani said. "Everyone should have an opportunity to apply for these positions. And certainly career people who don't have partisan bent and have 10 or 15 years in their respective fields should have a shot at these positions."

Kerry Weems, acting chief of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said he discourages political staff from moving into career slots. "It typically doesn't work out for either party," he said. Even though Weems is a career staffer, he expects to leave the administration when the Obama team takes over.

Alphonso Jackson, who was HUD secretary under President Bush, warned his political appointees not to try to burrow in when the administration changed. But one of his regional directors objected to that flat-out prohibition, according to union leaders at HUD, and has told his colleagues that he has been promised first crack at a career position.

NY DAILY NEWS = = = Bobby Kennedy's dream of a black president comes true after four decades

Patty — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:11:38 EST

Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, saw what the country saw when it was official that Barack Obama had been elected President, saw the remarkable joyful pictures from Chicago.

It was the city her father never made it to in 1968, the year he began the campaign that finally ended for Obama on the night of Nov 4.

"My father said this would happen," she said. "You can look up the exact quote, but he said that in 40 years an African-American would be President."

The exact quote is from May 27, 1968, a week before Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles after winning the California primary, the night he closed his speech at the Ambassador Hotel by saying, "Now it's on to Chicago [for the Democratic National Convention] and let's win there."

A few days before our Triborough Bridge is renamed in her father's honor, these are the prophetic words to which Kerry Kennedy referred: "Things are moving so fast in race relations. A Negro could be President in 40 years. There is no question about it. In the next 40 years, a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has.

"Prejudice exists and probably will continue to ... but we have tried to make progress and we are making progress. We are not going to accept the status quo."

Robert Kennedy was less willing to accept the status quo on race in America than any political leader of his time, first as Attorney General under his brother John, then under Lyndon Johnson, and finally as the U.S. senator from New York.

The real bridge in his honor is a symbolic one that reaches across four decades, from his run for the presidency in '68 to Obama's in '08. There is no question that without Kennedy's work as U.S. attorney general, there is no 1965 Voting Rights Act and Barack Obama, born in 1961, grows up in a different America.

"There was so much talk of change this year," Kerry Kennedy, a tireless human rights advocate herself, said. "My father believed that the only way for there to be real change in our country was through the right to vote."

She came into this long political season supporting Hillary Clinton. She ended it two weeks ago cheering as she watched Obama take the stage in Grant Park, having spoken as eloquently to the young and to the best of us the way her father once did.

On Wednesday the Triborough will become the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. And, at least for a little while, we will remember how Kennedy gave Obama the model for his campaign, and November of '08 will be the Kennedy spring of '68 again.

It will be the April night in '68 when Kennedy, from a family of great privilege, went into a black neighborhood in Indianapolis against the counsel of his staff and broke the news to a waiting crowd that Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot dead in Memphis.

"For those of you who are black," Kennedy said that night, "and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my own family killed, and he was killed by a white man."

This was the Robert Kennedy who as attorney general brought 57 voting rights suits in the South, 30 in Mississippi alone. This was the Robert Kennedy, who in September 1962 sent U.S. marshals and troops to Oxford, Miss., to enforce a Federal Court order admitting James Meredith as the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi.

"There was no group that my father admired more than the heroes of the Civil Rights movement," Kerry Kennedy said. "I don't think he ever thought of himself as one of those heroes. But he was. Maybe others thought it was some kind of impossible dream to talk about a black American as President. Just not my father."

As attorney general, he was asked once about the biggest problem he would face, whether it would be crime or internal security, and Kennedy said, "civil rights."

Kerry Kennedy said, "This isn't just about renaming a bridge. It's about building bridges, both to the past and to the future. This is for the children of this generation, and the one after it, and the one after that. This is for all the children who will ask who this man Robert Kennedy was, and what he did to have this bridge be named after him."

The RFK Bridge will not just reach from middle-class neighborhoods in Queens across the East River to Harlem. It will reach out from Kennedy's ideals, his vision of America, to Obama's, from 1968 to 2008. Robert Kennedy never made it to Chicago. Obama did.

CNN = = = South Korea would 'welcome' Obama meeting with Kim Jong Il

Patty — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:32:26 EST

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said Sunday he would "welcome" and "support" a meeting between President-elect Barack Obama and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il if Obama were to take such a step after taking office.

In an interview with CNN's Alina Cho at the Group of 20 financial summit in Washington, Lee said that when he spoke with Obama after the U.S. presidential election, Obama promised to consult with South Korea before taking any major action on North Korea.

In response to a question at a presidential debate, Obama said he would meet without preconditions during the first year of his administration with leaders of several nations whose governments have been at odds with the United States, including North Korea.

Laying out his foreign policy on his campaign Web site prior to the election, Obama said he and his running mate would "use tough diplomacy -- backed by real incentives and real pressures -- to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program."

"Barack Obama and Joe Biden will not take any options off the table, but they will emphasize first and foremost the power of American diplomacy and make clear the substantial benefits to Iran and North Korea of abandoning their dangerous nuclear programs while simultaneously conveying the enormous costs to them should they fail to do so," according to the Web site.

Lee told CNN he has high expectations for Obama, calling him "the right leader at the right time." He said any damage done in recent years to U.S. global leadership may be because the country relied too heavily on "hard power," and that he believes Obama will be effective in utilizing "soft power."

A former CEO of Hyundai, Lee criticized the idea of a bailout of the U.S. auto industry, saying it would set a bad precedent.

CNN - - - Commentary: Can McCain be Obama's friend in Congress?

Patty — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:28:31 EST

PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain will meet for the first time on Monday since the election.

The meeting comes at an important time for McCain, who must decide what to do with remainder of his career in the Senate.

With his reputation severely harmed as a result of the campaign -- some Republicans furious at him for having lost the White House with a poor campaign and some Democrats furious with the negative tone that his campaign embraced in September and October -- he will have an interest in building a positive legacy.

McCain's best bet would be to form a bipartisan alliance with Obama on as many issues as possible -- perhaps with an economic stimulus bill, immigration reform, exiting Iraq and new regulations on Wall Street.

Doing so would help the president secure bipartisan support while McCain would go down in the record books for helping the nation, through legislation, in a time of grave crisis.

Bipartisan alliances usually happen when two people of opposing parties need each other for their own self-interest. This is the situation right now. Obama could use McCain to make sure his legislation survives the Senate. McCain needs Obama to help restore his legacy in political history.

There are not many models for McCain to turn to for inspiration, but he might think a bit about the Republican Wendell Willkie, defeated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940.

Though not a legislator, Willkie became a very important ally to FDR after 1940, fighting against isolationism in the GOP and building support for the president's foreign policy. He traveled around the globe to meet with foreign leaders and wrote a book that promoted the internationalist outlook.

In fact, there is a long tradition of this kind of cooperation in congressional history. We have seen how this can work on foreign policy.

Michigan Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, who coined the phrase "politics stops at the water's edge," worked closely with President Harry Truman in 1947 and 1948 to find support in the Republican Congress for the creation of the modern national security state.

In 1953 and 1954, Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas worked with President Dwight Eisenhower on a series of foreign policy issues. The White House was under attack from conservative Republicans led by John Bricker, who sought to curtail executive power on foreign affairs.

Bricker proposed an amendment to limit the ability of the president to enter into international agreements without Senate consent. Many southern Democrats supported the amendment fearing that the U.N. Charter opened the opportunity for the president to expand civil rights.

Eisenhower thought the amendment would be extremely dangerous and handcuff the president when dealing with foreign policy. He turned to Lyndon Johnson, who brought along Senate Democrats to stifle the measure. Johnson hoped to make Senate Republicans seem like the obstructionists in Washington and to boost his own reputation as a leader.

Johnson's adviser, George Reedy, explained that the contrast of Republican intra-party warfare and "a dignified but pointed record on all issues" from the Democratic Party would be "potent campaign ammunition." The strategy worked. Johnson was selected as majority leader in 1954.

These alliances have also furthered the social agenda. As president in 1964, Johnson turned to Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen to help him push the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through the Senate. In the 1960s, Southern Democrats, who chaired the major committees and were masters at using the Senate filibuster to block bills they opposed, were the chief opponents of civil rights.

So when Johnson pushed for the Civil Rights Act in 1964 he needed Republican support to break a filibuster. He found a partner with Dirksen, one of several Republicans who saw how the GOP could benefit from embracing civil rights as Democrats were divided.

"We dare not temporize with the issue which is before us," Dirken said in a speech before the Senate, "it is essentially moral in character. It must be resolved. It will not go away. Its time has come."

Dirksen's role in the passage of civil rights defined his role in the history books.

Bipartisan, inter-branch alliances have also bolstered the reputation of legislators who tackled unpopular fiscal issues such as deficit reduction. The alliances became less common after the 1970s as a result of polarization in Washington that diminished the role of centrists and the opportunity for compromise.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush worked closely with House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski to design a deal that cut spending and increased taxes to reduce the deficit. Republicans were furious with the president for breaking his pledge in 1988 not to raise taxes.

Rostenkowski's career would go down in ignominious fashion as a result of a scandal, but his work on deficit reduction remains a testament to his ability to find bipartisan opportunities in rough, bipartisan waters.

"What's at stake here?" he asked his colleagues about the deal, "Nothing less, in my opinion, than American self-respect."

There are many other examples in American history where legislators enhanced their reputations in the history books by working with presidents, including presidents from other parties. This is McCain's best hope for strengthening his political legacy.

He will likely never be the kind of legislator who becomes a champion of a political ideology -- like Ted Kennedy and liberalism, or Newt Gingrich and conservatism -- nor is he likely to be the kind of forceful party leader like Tom DeLay or Trent Lott.

But what McCain can do, as he has done in the past with campaign finance and ethics reform, is to team up with the opposition and get legislation through Congress. According to Congressional Quarterly, former Bush and McCain adviser Mark McKinnon has predicted that "Senator McCain's interest after this election will be not any political ambition but a genuine desire to make his last chapter in Washington all about bipartisan healing."

Now he has a chance to enhance his mark in the history books, this time with the person who defeated him, and then his legacy would not be the failed political campaign of 2008.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of Julian Zelizer.

CNN - - - - Obama and McCain set to meet in Chicago

Patty — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:26:11 EST

Call it a meeting of the bipartisan minds.

President-elect Barack Obama will meet with former GOP presidential candidate John McCain Monday in Chicago, Illinois.

The meeting will take place at the Obama transition headquarters.

"It's well-known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government, and will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality," Obama transition spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement Sunday.

Obama and McCain will be joined in the meeting by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and Obama's new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

Meanwhile, the man who steered Obama's Senate office will now move over to the White House with the incoming president.

The Obama transition office announced Sunday that Peter Rouse, Obama's chief of staff in his Senate office, will serve as a senior adviser to the president.

Before joining Obama in December 2004, Rouse was chief of staff for 19 years to former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Before that, he was chief of staff to then-Rep. Dick Durbin of Illinois.

Meanwhile, Republicans praised the prospect of Sen. Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state. Sources told CNN on Friday that Obama has spoken about that job with Clinton and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, another former rival for the presidential nomination.

Former Nixon and Ford Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Clinton would be an "outstanding" selection, Bloomberg News reported.

GOP Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona told Fox News: "She's got the experience; she's got the temperament for it." And California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told ABC it would be a "great move."

The Obama transition team also announced that Mona Sutphen will serve as a deputy chief of staff.

Sutphen is a member of the transition team staff and has been managing director of Stonebridge International LLC, an international strategic consulting firm based in Washington.

From 1991 to 2000, she was a U.S. foreign service officer, and among other assignments she served in the White House at the National Security Council from 1998 to 2000, under President Bill Clinton.Jim Messina was also named a deputy chief of staff. Messina is currently the director of personnel for the president-elect's transition team. He served as a national chief of staff for Obama's presidential campaign.

Before that, Messina served as a chief of staff for Sens. Max Baucus (D-Montana) and Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota) and for Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-New York).

Obama, in a statement released by the transition team, said, "These individuals are important additions to a team with the experience and ability to help our nation overcome pressing challenges at home and around the world."

Also, a longtime friend of the Obamas was officially named Saturday as a senior adviser to the incoming president.

Obama, in a statement released Saturday morning by his transition staff, announced that Valerie Jarrett will serve as senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental relations and public liaison. CNN Contributor Roland Martin reported the offer to Jarrett on Friday evening.

Jarrett is currently co-chair of Obama's transition team and was senior adviser for his presidential campaign. She became the president and CEO of The Habitat Company in 2007 and was also the company's vice president. The Habitat Company develops and manages residential apartments and condominiums.

Before joining The Habitat Company, Jarrett served for eight years in government for the city of Chicago, first as deputy corporation counsel for finance and development, then as deputy chief of staff for Mayor Richard M. Daley, and finally as commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development.

Also Saturday, a Democratic source told CNN that prominent Washington lawyer Greg Craig will be named White House counsel for the Obama administration. The source added that it is unclear when the appointment will be made public.

Craig first gained prominence representing President Clinton in his Senate impeachment trial, but he endorsed Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and later played a key role in Obama's vice-presidential vetting process.

CNN reported Friday that three officials close to the presidential transition said Craig was under strong consideration to be named as the incoming president's top lawyer.

One of those officials said Craig was "highly regarded" and trusted for his discretion by Obama.

The transition team also made official Saturday the hiring of Ron Klain as chief of staff to the vice president.

Klain was also chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, but he's no stranger to Vice President-elect Joe Biden, having served as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee when Biden was the committee chairman.

Klain also served as general counsel of Gore's 2000 Florida recount effort and was portrayed by actor Kevin Spacey in an HBO movie about the event.

This year, Klain helped with debate preparation for both Obama and Biden.

"Ron Klain has been a trusted adviser of mine for over 20 years," a statement from Biden said Saturday.

The transition team also announced Saturday that Phil Schiliro will serve as assistant to the president for legislative affairs. Schiliro is director of congressional relations for the Obama transition team. Before that, he was a senior adviser to Obama's presidential campaign.

NY TIMES = = = Say goodbye to BlackBerry? Yes he can, maybe

Patty — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:44:03 EST

WASHINGTON - Sorry, Mr. President. Please surrender your BlackBerry.

Those are seven words President-elect Barack Obama is dreading but expecting to hear, friends and advisers say, when he takes office in 65 days.

For years, like legions of other professionals, Mr. Obama has been all but addicted to his BlackBerry. The device has rarely been far from his side — on most days, it was fastened to his belt — to provide a singular conduit to the outside world as the bubble around him grew tighter and tighter throughout his campaign.

“How about that?” Mr. Obama replied to a friend’s congratulatory e-mail message on the night of his victory.

But before he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.

For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive. Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.

Mr. Obama has not sent a farewell dispatch from the personal e-mail account he uses — he has not changed his address in years — but friends say the frequency of correspondence has diminished. In recent days, though, he has been seen typing his thoughts on transition matters and other items on his BlackBerry, bypassing, at least temporarily, the bureaucracy that is quickly encircling him.

A year ago, when many Democratic contributors and other observers were worried about his prospects against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, they reached out to him directly. Mr. Obama had changed his cellphone number, so e-mail remained the most reliable way of communicating directly with him. “His BlackBerry was constantly crackling with e-mails,” said David Axelrod, the campaign’s chief strategist. “People were generous with their advice — much of it conflicting.”

Mr. Obama is the second president to grapple with the idea of this self-imposed isolation. Three days before his first inauguration, George W. Bush sent a message to 42 friends and relatives that explained his predicament.

“Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace,” Mr. Bush wrote from his old address, G94B@aol.com. “This saddens me. I have enjoyed conversing with each of you.”

But in the interceding eight years, as BlackBerrys have become ubiquitous — and often less intrusive than a telephone, the volume of e-mail has multiplied and the role of technology has matured. Mr. Obama used e-mail to stay in constant touch with friends from the lonely confines of the road, often sending messages like “Sox!” when the Chicago White Sox won a game. He also relied on e-mail to keep abreast of the rapid whirl of events on a given campaign day.

Mr. Obama’s memorandums and briefing books were seldom printed out and delivered to his house or hotel room, aides said. They were simply sent to his BlackBerry for his review. If a document was too long, he would read and respond from his laptop computer, often putting his editing changes in red type.

His messages to advisers and friends, they say, are generally crisp, properly spelled and free of symbols or emoticons. The time stamps provided a window into how much he was sleeping on a given night, with messages often being sent to staff members at 1 a.m. or as late as 3 a.m. if he was working on an important speech.

He received a scaled-down list of news clippings, with his advisers wanting to keep him from reading blogs and news updates all day long, yet aides said he still seemed to hear about nearly everything in real time. A network of friends — some from college, others from Chicago and various chapters in his life — promised to keep him plugged in.

Not having such a ready line to that network, staff members who spent countless hours with him say, is likely to be a challenge.

“Given how important it is for him to get unfiltered information from as many sources as possible, I can imagine he will miss that freedom,” said Linda Douglass, a senior adviser who traveled with the campaign.

Mr. Obama has, for at least brief moments, been forced offline. As he sat down with a small circle of advisers to prepare for debates with Senator John McCain, one rule was quickly established: No BlackBerrys. Mr. Axelrod ordered everyone to put their devices in the center of a table during work sessions. Mr. Obama, who was known to sneak a peek at his, was no exception.

In the closing stages of the campaign, as exhaustion set in and the workload increased, aides said Mr. Obama spent more time reading than responding to messages. As his team prepares a final judgment on whether he can keep using e-mail, perhaps even in a read-only fashion, several authorities in presidential communication said they believed it was highly unlikely that he would be able to do so.

Diana Owen, who leads the American Studies program at Georgetown University, said presidents were not advised to use e-mail because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.

“They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked,” said Ms. Owen, who has studied how presidents communicate in the Internet era. “The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him.”

She added: “It’s a time burner. It might be easier for him to say, ‘I can’t be on e-mail.’ ”

Should Mr. Obama want to break ground and become the first president to fire off e-mail messages from the West Wing and wherever he travels, he could turn to Al Gore as a model. In the later years of his vice presidency, Democrats said, Mr. Gore used a government e-mail address and a campaign address in his race against Mr. Bush.

The president, though, faces far greater public scrutiny. And even if he does not wear a BlackBerry on his belt or carry a cellphone in his pocket, he almost certainly will not lack from a variety of new communication.

On Saturday, as Mr. Obama broadcast the weekly Democratic radio address, it came with a twist. For the first time, it was also videotaped and will be archived on YouTube.

Say Goodbye to BlackBerry? Yes He Can, Maybe

CNN = = = = Bill Clinton to campaign for Martin in Georgia

Patty — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:36:58 EST

Three weeks before Georgia’s December 2 Senate runoff vote, former President Bill Clinton – the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state – will stump for his party’s candidate Jim Martin, locked in a tight race with incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss.

Clinton, who first visited the state for Martin last fall, will become the first high-profile Democrat to visit the state to campaign for the Senate challenger since Election Day.

The former president’s campaign event in Atlanta Wednesday will have an economic focus, according to Martin’s campaign.

Former Republican presidential nominee John McCain visited Georgia last week to campaign for Chambliss.

HUFFINGTON POST - - - Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State?

Patty — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:34:30 EST

Henry Kissinger praised Hillary Clinton as an "outstanding" choice at a summit in India:

At the World Economic Forum's 24th India Economic Summit in New Delhi, India, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said of reports that President-elect Obama is considering Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, as Secretary of State, "I believe it would be an outstanding appointment. If it is true, it shows a number of things, including great courage on the part of the President-Elect. To appoint a very strong personality into a prominent cabinet position requires a great deal of courage."

Kissinger said that "Obama was my second choice in the election. But at the same time, I want to stress that this is the moment for non-partisanship in America. There are a number of challenges that must be dealt with...I believe that the United States faces a moment of enormous complexity, but also a moment of extraordinary opportunity."

According to two senior Democratic officials, Barack Obama offered Hillary Clinton the Secretary of State position when they met in Chicago.

UPDATE: A Democratic official confirms that Clinton and Obama met in Chicago:

A Democratic official confirms to the Huffington Post that Sen. Hillary Clinton met with President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday to discuss her role in the new administration.

Clinton's trip to Chicago, described in press reports as "personal business," came following a request from Obama, the official said.

There were numerous reports last night that Hillary Clinton may be under consideration for Secretary of State in the Obama administration.

From the Washington Post:

There's increasing chatter in political circles that the Obama camp is not overly happy with the usual suspects for secretary of state these days and that the field might be expanding somewhat beyond Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and maybe former Democratic senator Sam Nunn of Georgia.

There's talk, indeed, that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) may now be under consideration for the post. Her office referred any questions to the Obama transition; Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment.
And NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports:
Two Obama advisers have told NBC News that Hillary Clinton is under consideration to be secretary of state. Would she be interested? Those who know Clinton say possibly. But her office says that any decisions about the transition are up to the president-elect and his team.

Clinton was seen taking a flight to Chicago today, but an adviser says it was on personal business. It is unknown whether she had any meeting or conversation with Obama while there.

According to CNN:
One source close to Hillary Clinton tells CNN that as of early yesterday, Senator Clinton had not been contacted by the transition team about a possible cabinet appointment. This same source tells CNN that Senator Clinton would not necessarily dismiss such an offer.

A spokesman for Hillary Clinton, Philippe Reines, tells CNN "Any speculation about cabinet or other administration appointments is really for President-Elect Obama's transition team to address."
On Monday night, while walking into an awards ceremony in New York, Senator Clinton was asked if she would consider taking a post in the Obama administration. She replied, "I am happy being a Senator from New York, I love this state and this city. I am looking at the long list of things I have to catch up on and do. But I want to be a good partner and I want to do everything I can to make sure his agenda is going to be successful."

And sources tell ABC News that discussions about Clinton being asked to accept the post are "very serious."

CNN = = = Obama touts Powell endorsement to military community

Patty — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:24:34 EDT

FAYETTEVILLE, North Carolina (CNN) – Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama could not have come on a more opportune day for the Democratic nominee as he campaigned in eastern North Carolina, an area awash with military members and their families.

“With so many brave men and women from Fayetteville serving in our military, this is a city and a state that knows something about great soldiers,” Obama said to a capacity crowd waving small American flags. “I have been honored to have the benefit of his wisdom and counsel from time to time over the last few years, but today, I am beyond honored and deeply humbled to have the support of General Colin Powell.”

The campaign said Obama and Powell spoke for ten minutes on the phone after the former Secretary of State’s appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Powell, Obama said, reminded voters “we don’t have the luxury of relying on the same political games the same political tactics that are used every election to divide us from one another and make us afraid of one another.”

Obama promised the audience the next 16 days would be full of “more of these robo-calls making outrageous accusations.”

In his video announcing the campaign’s massive September cash haul, campaign manager David Plouffe said supporters needed to keep donating money so they could respond to such calls with their own.

CNN = = = Obama hits back on 'socialist charge'

Patty — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:23:23 EDT

FAYETTEVILLE, North Carolina (CNN) – Barack Obama fired back against charges his tax policy amounts to “socialism,” arguing John McCain simply wants to redistribute wealth to the already wealthy.

“It’s kind of hard to figure how Warren Buffet endorsed me, Colin Powell endorses me, and John McCain thinks I’m practicing socialism,” Obama said. “This is his argument because I want to give a tax cut to the middle class, because I want to give a tax cut to 95 percent of American workers.”

The Democratic nominee also said that while McCain may call giving regular Americans a tax break “socialism,” he calls it an “opportunity.”

“Here’s the truth, North Carolina. This debate – and this election – comes down to what we value. In the America I know, we don’t just value wealth, we value the work and workers who create it,” he said. “He can call me any name he wants but what he’s talking about is not right, it’s not change, that’s why we’re going to beat him in this election on November 4th.”

Before his rally in Fayetteville, Obama dropped by Cape Fear BBQ and Chicken to shake hands with patrons, many of them older white voters. In a sign that perhaps pre-election tempers are getting a little hot, according to the pool report when Obama entered the restaurant a woman screamed “Socialist, socialist, socialist – get out of here!” The woman, 54 year-old Diane Fanning was admonished by other diners and one woman yelled back “at least he’s not a war-monger.”

It is unclear whether Obama heard this exchange as there were many in the restaurant trying to greet him. Later when Obama approached Fanning’s table she refused to shake his hand.

“Some of ‘em are just nicer than I am,” Fanning told the pool reporter when asked why she didn’t shake the senator’s hand but other members of her church group did. “I know how some of ‘em think.” Fanning did however have a brief conversation with Obama about some issues of concern to her.

RCP= = = Parties Prepare For Voting Problems

Patty — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 10:44:30 EDT

Lines out the door. Empty boxes where ballots once sat. Election officials peering through thick glasses at possibly-punched holes. These are the familiar sights of an all too close election, and across the country, elections officials and both parties are ramping up their efforts to limit problems on November 4, or to take fast legal action.

Republicans have been most vocal about their pre-election concerns, worried that the surge of new voter registrations filed across the country could lead to a rash of voter fraud. Democrats are quietly preparing to propel their own massive turnout. And independent groups are gearing up to drop thousands of lawyers in key states on Election Day and, if necessary, beyond.

The new focus comes as elections officials in key battleground states are expecting near-record levels of turnout. "With all of this excitement that we have surrounding this historic election, we still are faced with challenges," said Susan Pollard, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Board of Elections. Pollard said her state, a battleground for the first time in generations, is anticipating that 90% of the nearly five million registered voters there will cast ballots, about twenty points higher than the 71% who turned out in 2004.

In Colorado, another state expecting record turnout, Secretary of State Mike Coffman and county elections officials have been "very aggressive" in promoting permanent absentee ballot sign-ups, said spokesman Richard Coolidge. Coolidge expects nine in ten of the state's 3.15 million registered voters will cast ballots. Elections officials, he said, "are prepared and they're ready to go for this election."

But with such massive turnout expected, "there is certainly a recipe for serious problems," said Jonah Goldman, of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Goldman's group heads a coalition of about 150 groups that is running 866OurVote.org, a voter education and advocate organization that will assist voters in casting ballots.

Goldman cites a funding gap as the source of potentially emerging problems. "There's this incredible excited rush to register, but there doesn't seem to be an ancillary increase in resources elections officials have," Goldman said. "We're still not quite up to snuff when it comes to election administration."

Goldman says voters in traditionally troublesome states like Florida and Ohio could be in store for more difficulties, but that it's new battlegrounds, including Virginia and Colorado, where real problems may surface. "They're frankly not used to the turnout and types of pressure that comes with being a battleground," he said.

The Republican National Committee and John McCain's campaign are worried about the prospect of voter fraud in those new battlegrounds. While hundreds of thousands of new registrants are on the rolls -- 300,000 in Virginia alone, according to Pollard -- at least some shouldn't be there. Making voter lists accurate "is the purview of the state elections officials and elections administrators," said RNC communications director Danny Diaz. "It is their job to clean those and we commend their efforts."

Republicans have been most focused lately on ACORN, an independent left-leaning community group that registers thousands of voters in predominantly minority areas around the country. Recently, the group has come under scrutiny for fraudulent voter registration forms filled out in about a dozen states.

"We've been very concerned about ACORN now for multiple cycles because we've been face to face with their activities," Diaz told Real Clear Politics. Despite court cases in a handful of states over their methods, he said, "their behavior has not changed. They continue to submit thousands of fraudulent registration cards."

Recently, an ACORN employee submitted the names of the Dallas Cowboys lineup as voters who registered in Nevada. "We are trying to raise this as an issue to make sure that state elections officials are paying as close attention to these registration cards as possible," Diaz said.

The Democratic National Committee, along with Barack Obama's campaign, has been most concerned with getting their newly registered voters to the polls while avoiding what they characterize as Republican attempts to kick legitimate voters off the rolls of the eligible.

"I have to hand it to the Obama campaign about how they've approached this campaign. They really have learned from the last presidential election," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant working with the DNC on potential legal troubles that will arise. "They haven't separated voter protection. They've included it from the beginning" in registration efforts.

Democrats, said Backus, are running a "preventative education strategy" in which the party makes voters aware of their rights at the polls. "We've tried to alleviate as much as possible the problems voters will face when they get to the polls," she said. "We've been trying to have an ongoing dialogue with elections officials so they're not surprised with what's going on."

Come Election Day, though, even the most prepared administrators could be stunned by the turnout, and caught flat-footed by unanticipated problems. In that case, lawyers by the thousands will descend upon trouble spots. Goldman said the 866OurVote coalition plans to put 10,000 lawyers, law students and volunteers on the ground in 45 states.

Diaz and Backus wouldn't be specific about the number of lawyers the parties have on call, but neither backed away from a pledge to be ready. "We will be ready and have our options available on Election Day," Diaz said.

"There will be millions of volunteers out on Election Day making sure people can get to the polls and cast their votes," said Backus, who said her party would be ready with an "effective but ferocious legal strategy."

With a massive turnout forecast and both parties prepared to send lawyers to all corners of the country, Election Day trouble should be minimized. But eight years after the nation was introduced to hanging chads, elections keep going awry in states from Florida to Washington. With both sides hoping for the best but preparing for the worst, "a lot of people are going to be holding their breath," Goldman said.

WASHINGTON POST = = = Full Speed Ahead For Obama

Patty — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 10:39:32 EDT

WASHINGTON -- We have completed the "Survivor" phase of the presidential campaign, in which pundits and pollsters waited for one of the candidates to make a gaffe in the debates so they could vote him off the island. Now, with just over two weeks left, maybe we can focus on the issue of leadership for a country in deep, deep trouble.

Despite Barack Obama's big lead in the polls, he hasn't yet made a decisive case for how he would govern in this time of crisis. His demeanor is cool and calm, his intellect razor-sharp, and if smart guys were automatically good leaders, it would be game, set and match for Obama.

But leadership is something more mysterious, and it comes in odd packages -- the brooding, depressive Abraham Lincoln; the patrician Franklin Roosevelt; the genial ex-actor Ronald Reagan; the priapic good ol' old boy Bill Clinton. What is inside the Obama package? We still need to know more.

Over the next two weeks, Obama should help the country visualize what his administration would look like. He should show how he would step up to the economic crisis, an unfolding disaster that we compare so often to the Great Depression that the analogy is losing its horrific impact. What sorts of people would Obama appoint to his Cabinet? How would he deal with two wars, as commander in chief rather than as political campaigner?

The country is looking for two conflicting qualities in the next president -- change and stability. Obama certainly embodies the former. He launched his campaign by styling himself as the change agent who could reach across racial and party divisions. But what kind of change? Oddly, for the great rhetorician, the vision thing has been a bit fuzzy in recent weeks. Obama should reveal what's in his head and heart by expressing more of the big ideas that would animate an Obama presidency.

The stability theme is a harder one for Obama, but it's likely to be crucial in bringing home the victory the pollsters are predicting. The country is frightened, more now than it was a few months ago. People want reassurance that Obama, for all his talk about change, isn't going to overturn the apple cart. A dream television spot in the final week would be a fireside chat between Obama and his sometime economic adviser, Warren Buffett. That would close the deal, I suspect.

Balancing change and stability in foreign policy is Obama's biggest challenge -- and John McCain's greatest opportunity. An "October Surprise" that dramatized the need for experienced leadership would obviously help McCain. But even here, Obama can use the next two weeks to send the message that there will be "a steady hand at the tiller," to use one of McCain's signature lines.

The best way for Obama to signal continuity would be to do publicly what I'm told he has already begun privately -- which is to express confidence in the two key leaders at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus.

Members of Obama's inner circle have discussed the possibility of asking Gates to stay on for a transitional year or so; Obama's key defense adviser, former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, has even floated the idea directly. This transition would make sense for the country, and Gates would probably say yes. As for Petraeus, Obama is said to have signaled that he would listen carefully to military advice about Iraq and Afghanistan rather than make radical changes.

Obama could embrace both continuity and change abroad by endorsing some of Petraeus' new ideas about the way forward in Afghanistan. Far from the "surge to victory" image conveyed by McCain's rhetoric, Petraeus is looking for ways to negotiate with and co-opt the insurgents. He wants to explore truces and alliances with the tribal warlords who make up the insurgent "syndicate" -- so that they are taken off the battlefield without a new war. That's what Petraeus did in Iraq, and it's a strategy Obama could support for Afghanistan.

The temptation for Obama will be to sit on his lead, and avoid taking the risk of defining his leadership in sharper terms. For a man of lesser ambition, that play-it-safe strategy might make sense. But Obama is something different. At his best, he seems to think beyond the political calculus of how to get elected to the deeper problem of how to lead and govern. Over these next two weeks, Obama should step on the accelerator, not the brake.

usa today = = = Obama raises stunning $150 million in September

Patty — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 09:54:17 EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama raised more than $150 million in September, a stunning and unprecedented eruption of political giving that has given him a wide spending advantage over rival John McCain.

The campaign released the figure on Sunday, one day before it must file a detailed report of its monthly finances with the Federal Election Commission.

Obama's money is fueling a vast campaign operation in an expanding field of competitive states. It also has underwritten a wave of both national and targeted video advertising unseen before in a presidential contest.

Campaign manager David Plouffe, in an e-mail to supporters Sunday morning, said the campaign had added 632,000 new donors in September, for a total of 3.1 million contributors to the campaign. He said the average donation was $86.

The Democratic National Committee, moments later, announced that it raised $49.9 million and had $27.5 million in the bank at the start of October. The party has been raising money through joint fundraising events with Obama and can use the money to assist his candidacy.

Obama's numbers are possible because he opted out of the public financing system for the fall campaign. McCain, the Republican nominee, chose to participate in the system, which limits him to $84 million for the September-October stretch before the election.

Obama's monthly figure pushed his total fundraising to $605 million. No presidential candidate has ever run such an expensive campaign. His campaign raised $65 million in August, his previous best.

"The overall numbers obviously are impressive," Plouffe said in a campaign video. "But it's what's beneath the numbers in terms of average Americans who have had enough, who want a change and who are really fueling this campaign."

Obama had initially promised to accept public financing if McCain did, but changed his mind after setting primary fundraising records. His extraordinary fundraising is bound to set a new standard in politics that could doom the taxpayer-paid system. Many Republicans have begun to second-guess McCain's decision to participate in the program.

With his money, and a favorable political wind at his back, Obama has secured his foothold in states that have voted for Democratic presidential candidates in the past. But he has also been able to expand the contest to reliably Republican states, forcing McCain and the Republican Party to spend their money defensively.

Plouffe pointed out that the campaign is now spending resources in West Virginia. Obama running mate Joe Biden was scheduled to campaign in Charleston, W.Va., on Friday and the campaign has secured television advertising in the state for the next two weeks, according to ad data obtained by The Associated Press. Plouffe hinted at further expansion, noting that public opinion polls show the race tightening in Georgia and North Dakota.

As much as Obama raised, he needed a big fundraising month to justify his decision to bypass the public finance system. Financially, he has been competing not only against McCain, but against the GOP, which raised $66 million in September.

The combined Obama and DNC totals for September now give the Democrats a distinct financial advantage going into Election Day, just 16 days away.

CNN = = = Colin Powell endorses Obama

Patty — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 09:46:20 EDT

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Sunday that he will be voting for Sen. Barack Obama, citing the Democrat's "ability to inspire" and the "inclusive nature of his campaign."

"He has both style and substance. I think he is a transformational figure," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"Obama displayed a steadiness. Showed intellectual vigor. He has a definitive way of doing business that will do us well," Powell said.

Powell, a retired U.S. general and a Republican, was once seen as a possible presidential candidate himself.

Powell said he questioned Sen. John McCain's judgment in picking Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate because he doesn't think she is ready to be president.

He also said he was disappointed with some of McCain's campaign tactics, such as bringing up Obama's ties to former 1960s radical Bill Ayers.

Powell served as secretary of state under President Bush from 2001 to 2005.

The notion of a Powell endorsement has been rumored for several months.

On August 13, Powell's office denied a report on Fox by commentator Bill Kristol that Powell had decided to publicly back Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

Several sources said at the time that Powell had not made a decision about a possible endorsement.

"As always, he is holding his cards close and waiting for more information," one adviser told CNN's John King in August.

Powell himself brushed off queries on any potential presidential nod but told ABC News on August 13 that he would not be going to Denver, Colorado, for the convention.

"I do not have time to waste on Bill Kristol's musings," he said. "I am not going to the convention. I have made this clear."

In February, Powell told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he was weighing an endorsement of a Democratic or independent candidate.

"I am keeping my options open at the moment," Powell said.

"I have voted for members of both parties in the course of my adult life. And as I said earlier, I will vote for the candidate I think can do the best job for America, whether that candidate is a Republican, a Democrat or an independent," he added.

Powell has offered praise for Obama, calling him an "exciting person on the political stage."

"He has energized a lot of people in America," said Powell, who briefly weighed his own run for the White House in the mid-1990s. "He has energized a lot of people around the world. And so I think he is worth listening to and seeing what he stands for."

Powell's adviser has said that "he likes and admires John McCain, and that would be a factor in anything he does if he decides to get more involved."

Another source close to Powell said he has known the Republican nominee for more than three decades "and likes him and is looking for a reason to vote for him. He hasn't found it yet."

The former general, who has largely steered clear of politics since leaving the Bush administration, noted that the next president will need to work to restore America's standing in the world.

Powell gave the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in support of George W. Bush in 2000.

"I will ultimately vote for the person I believe brings to the American people the kind of vision the American people want to see for the next four years," he said. "A vision that reaches out to the rest of the world, that starts to restore confidence in America, that starts to restore favorable ratings to America. Frankly, we've lost a lot in recent years."

Powell's adviser also said at the time that the vice presidential picks for both candidates would be a major factor in his decision, both for the quality of each man's running mate and for what sort of "signal that choice sends about the character and judgment of the candidate."

He also said that a Powell decision to back Obama would not be a surprise.

BOSTON GLOBE = = = The force of the Hillary Effect

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:20:11 EDT

THE BRADLEY EFFECT is fading into the Hillary Effect.

The former is the phenomenon that the polls overestimate how much white voters will support a black candidate. The latter was in full force Thursday at Barack Obama's first rally of the homestretch of the presidential campaign. Huge numbers of women from New Hampshire and Massachusetts who breathed fire into Hillary Clinton's campaign after Clinton was stunned in Iowa by Obama cheered jubilantly with the original Obama believers.

Until recently, polls indicated that a quarter of Clinton voters were so steamed over her elimination that they threatened to vote for Republican John McCain. A month ago, McCain had a slight lead in two polls in New Hampshire. Obama now leads by 10 percentage points in Real Clear Politics averaging of the last state polls. From listening to former Clinton voters, you know why.

"It took two to three weeks for it to all settle down," said Sue Martin, 68, social studies textbook editor from Atkinson, N.H. She was a Clinton volunteer in the Salem office. "Back then, I thought he was way too young. But he's grown a lot."

"Up until the last month, I was going to write in Hillary," said Janice Keene, a 58-year-old retired elementary school teacher from Londonderry. "I was quite disappointed. But our country needs change, especially the middle class."

"I still feel Hillary was robbed," said Geraldine Sanders, 68, of Candia, who assists Alzheimer's patients at a residential treatment center. "You might say that, politically, I grew up with Hillary. She is a very strong woman. But my mother was a great Democrat and I can't forget that."

Whatever hope McCain had of peeling off white women voters is evaporating. According to Real Clear Politics averages, Obama is up 14 points in Pennsylvania and 8 points in New Mexico, states Clinton won. Obama is up 10 points in Michigan, where Clinton ran unopposed. Obama has small leads in Ohio, Florida, and Nevada, where Clinton won or ran virtually unopposed. President Bush won Ohio, Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico for the Republicans in 2004.

New Hampshire, while having only four electoral votes, is a final state McCain hopes to keep in play on Election Day. His running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, campaigned here this week. McCain clearly hoped that having a woman on the ticket would sway Clinton voters. But Clinton voters here said Palin is beyond the pale. In many cases her very selection accelerated their support of Obama.

Carol Kunz, a 42-year-old attorney from Manchester, said, "To compare the two women is insulting to women everywhere."

Christine Hines, a 43-year-old homemaker from North Andover, said, "Palin's right-wing politics curl my hair. How could any Hillary voter align herself with Palin?"

Carol Crowell of Haverhill, a 46-year-old executive editor in educational publishing, said, "My husband voted for Hillary too. But the idea that Hillary supporters would support someone the political polar opposite from Hillary on healthcare, education, and ending the war just because they're women is crazy."

The Hillary Effect is so much in play that Karen Fronterotta, a 50-year-old telecom sales representative from Kingston, N.H., is listed on the Obama campaign website as hosting a "Women for Truth and Change" party the Sunday before the election. She wants to get 30 women to pledge to get at least five of their friends to the polls for Obama. Sue Martin has switched from working for Clinton's Salem office to working out of Obama's Salem office.

"For me, it's about changing the Supreme Court," Martin said.

Lise Ragan, 56, joked about herself as "Jill the Publisher," a play on McCain's use of Joe the Plumber in the last debate. Ragan is an educational textbook publisher in Haverhill, Mass. She said the Palin ploy and the plumber play landed with a thud to her political ears. "You're talking to the Hillary demographic here," Ragan said. "I know that there might be tax repercussions in running a small business. But for me and most Hillary voters, the greater issue is the future of the planet."

POLITICO = = = Poll: Obama ahead in critical counties

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:17:03 EDT

Sen. Barack Obama holds leads in four key counties that will go a long way toward determining the eventual winner in four important swing states — Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia — according to a new Politico/Insider Advantage survey.

Obama is poised to expand on recent Democratic gains in three populous suburban counties — Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, Missouri’s St. Louis County and Virginia’s Prince William County. In a fourth, Ohio’s Franklin County, home to Columbus and its suburbs, the survey also found Obama with the lead.

In Bucks County, a politically competitive but historically Republican suburb that shares a border with Philadelphia, Obama is running ahead of McCain, 47-41 percent. In 2004, Democrat John F. Kerry carried the county by a slim 51percent to 48 percent.

Obama bests McCain 50 percent to 42 percent in Prince William County, a Washington, D.C., suburb that voted for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. Between 1976 and 2004, Prince William County supported Republican presidential candidates by an average margin of 18 points.

Obama also has opened up a wide 53 percent to 37 percent advantage over McCain in suburban St. Louis County, which does not include Missouri’s second-largest city, St. Louis. In 2004, Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, carried St. Louis County, the most populous county in the state, 54 percent to 45 percent.

In Ohio’s Franklin County, the state’s second-most populous county after Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, Obama leads by a narrower 45 percent to 40 percent margin. Kerry carried Franklin County 54 percent to 45 percent in 2004.

InsiderAdvantage pollster Matt Towery explained Obama’s success in these areas is a result of his strength among independents and voters between the ages of 30 and 44.

“That is the most angry group of voters that we have this year, with regard to the Republicans,” Towery said. “I see that in almost every poll I look at.”

In Prince William County, Obama leads in this age group, 58 percent to 33 percent, and takes independent voters by an even wider, 55-percent-to-25-percent margin. McCain is scheduled to appear in Prince William Saturday, a nod to his vulnerability there and also to the electoral importance of that traditionally Republican area.

Obama’s advantages in Prince William County hold up in competitive locales across the country, with independents consistently picking him over McCain.

“The big swing, again, is that Obama’s picking up the lion’s share of the independents,” Towery added.

Independents in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County support Obama 46 percent to 32 percent, and 30-to-44-year-olds pick him by a 10-point margin, 49 percent to 37 percent.

In central Ohio’s Franklin County, he takes 30-to-44-year-olds by a smaller, but still decisive 49 percent to 34 percent gap, and wins independents, 43 percent to 19 percent.

Missouri’s St. Louis County, where Obama is safely ahead of McCain, features Obama’s narrowest lead among 30-to-44-year-olds: he’s ahead there by 49 percent to 40 percent. Independents are breaking for Obama by a more convincing, 47-percent-to-31-percent margin.

During the Democratic primary, Obama won just a handful of counties in Missouri, but by running up big margins in the city and county of St. Louis, he was able to pull out a narrow statewide victory over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Kerry’s 9-point margin in St. Louis County and his landslide 80 percent win in the city of St. Louis were not enough to overcome George W. Bush’s lead elsewhere in the state. But if Obama can maintain his commanding advantage there, it could help tip the state into the Democratic electoral column.

Currently, Towery said, McCain is headed for a major defeat in the area.

“In this county, he’s not even doing well with the 65-and-over crowd,” he said. “This is a wipeout.”

Unlike in St. Louis County, Obama did not perform well in Bucks County in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary. Though the Philadelphia suburb was seen as favorable terrain for the Illinois senator, Clinton handily defeated him there, 63 percent to 37 percent.

Obama’s lead in Bucks County is within the poll’s margin of error and he is not performing as well among women as he is in the other counties surveyed. In Bucks, he has just a 4-point edge with female voters, compared with a 16-point spread in the Columbus, Ohio, area.

According to Towery, this can partly be attributed to McCain’s strong performance among middle-aged women.

“You’ve got an unusually high number for McCain in that 45-to-64 age group, and that’s got a lot of women in it,” Towery explained. Among voters in that age interval, McCain leads Obama 53 percent to 37 percent.

That Obama is ahead of McCain in Bucks County, anyway, suggests that he has been more successful than his opponent in reaching out to the suburban swing voters who dominate areas such as these.

A September poll commissioned by Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies showed McCain leading Obama among suburban voters, nationwide, by a 48 percent to 42 percent margin. The poll was conducted Sept. 15-21.

But whatever the national trend among suburbanites, Obama has edged ahead in key areas that are likely to influence the outcome of the election.

Recent public polling has shown Obama winning all four states in which these county-level polls were conducted. The RealClearPolitics polling average has Obama ahead by 14 points in Pennsylvania, Virginia by 8.1 percent, 3.2 percent in Ohio and 1.8 percent in Missouri.

This is the second round of Politico/Insider Advantage polling in critical counties. The first round results, published Tuesday, showed Obama tied or leading McCain in Jefferson County, Colo.; Washoe County, Nev.; Wake County, N.C.; and Hillsborough County, Fla.

The Politico/InsiderAdvantage telephone surveys in St. Louis County and Franklin County were conducted Oct. 13. The St. Louis County survey included 542 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. The Franklin survey included 376 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percent.

The Politico/InsiderAdvantage telephone surveys in Bucks County and Prince William County were conducted Oct. 14. The Bucks survey included 320 likely voters and the Prince William survey included 308 likely voters, both with a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percent.

POLITICO = = = =Cindy McCain lawyer invokes Obama drug use

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:13:05 EDT

John Dowd, Cindy McCain's attorney, complained in a letter to New York Times editor Bill Keller earlier this month that the paper had scrutinized the GOP nominee's wife but not investigated matters surrounding Barack Obama including his youthful drug use.

"You have not tried to find Barack Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father," Dowd wrote in a two-page letter sent to Keller while the paper was reporting a piece about Cindy McCain.

The McCain campaign released the missive late Friday night in response to that story, to be published in the paper's Saturday edition.   It's the first time anybody so closely associated with McCain has raised the issue.

Continuing the campaign's drumbeat of criticism against the Times, Dowd wrote on October 1st that the paper was not covering the two candidates equally.    In addition to the reference to Obama's "drug dealer," Dowd notes that the Times also has not "interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them."

After mentioning the topics, though, Dowd suggests that "none of these subjects on either side are worthy of the energy and resources of The New York Times."

Dowd is a Washington attorney at Akin Gump. He represented John McCain when the senator was investigated for his involvement in the "Keating Five" scandal in the 1980s. Initially a top fundraiser for McCain at the start of this campaign, Dowd defected to Fred Thompson last year when the Arizonan's campaign nearly ran aground. He's since come back into the fold since, deployed to represent Cindy McCain to news organizations running investigative pieces.

The Saturday story, part of the Times's biographical "Long Run" series on the two candidates, offers a mostly negative look at Cindy McCain, reprising anecdotes about her drug abuse, miscarriages and the difficulties in her long-distance marriage to a Senator.

In addition to releasing the Dowd letter, the campaign also issued a lengthy statement denouncing the piece.   A spokesman noted that the paper included little about Cindy McCain's extensive charitable work.

"This campaign made every effort to share personal accounts of Mrs. McCain’s good works with the paper, but apparently they were deemed unfit for publication in the New York Times," said Michael Goldfarb.

The aggressive pushback is just the latest in the campaign's ongoing war with the Times.   Campaign aides have publicly claimed the paper is but an arm of Obama's campaign.

Despite their criticism, McCain officials still cooperate with Times journalists and cite the paper's reporting when it's in their interest.   A front-page story on Obama's ties to Bill Ayers earlier this month, for example, was the peg that Sarah Palin used to insert the 60s-era domestic terrorist into the campaign.

YAHOO - - - Analysis: McCain jumps around in bid to stop Obama

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:10:21 EDT

NEW YORK – The misadventures of Joe the Plumber were just the latest stumble for Republican John McCain as he veers from one idea to another in a thus-far elusive quest to slow Barack Obama's momentum.

Joe Wurzelbacher was supposed to be the Republican presidential candidate's ace in the hole — an average, working-class Joe whose dreams of something better might be thwarted by Obama's plans. The Ohio plumber challenged Obama's tax policies and got the Democratic presidential nominee to say he wanted to "spread the wealth around." McCain told Wurzelbacher's story at the final debate Wednesday in a bid to paint Obama as a tax-raiser out of touch with regular Americans.

But Wurzelbacher's story didn't quite hold up under inspection: He isn't licensed as a plumber in an Ohio county that requires one. He owes $1,200 in unpaid taxes. The dream purchase of the plumbing company where he works is a long way off no matter who wins the election. McCain acknowledged Thursday he hadn't ever spoken to the man he'd suddenly made a central figure in his quest for the presidency; McCain didn't speak with Wurzelbacher until Friday.

"Sorry, Joe," the Republican hopeful said Thursday on "The Late Show" with David Letterman for bringing Wurzelbacher a tornado of public attention he never sought.

The McCain campaign has always felt more improvisational than Obama's well-oiled machine, and the Arizona senator's years as a Navy pilot left him with a taste for daring feats. But recently, with polls showing McCain trailing Obama in several battleground states, his campaign operation has muddied McCain's message and complicated his efforts to gain ground.

Policy proposals have been floated and postponed. Lines of attack have been launched, then abruptly changed. And Joe the Plumber, like Sarah Palin before him, was pushed onto the national stage without a complete examination.

"When you run a campaign without a strategy and everything becomes tactical and your tactics don't work, you respond by finding other tactics," Republican consultant Ed Rollins said. "Unfortunately, that's helped Barack paint the guy who is clearly better prepared to be commander in chief as erratic and not stable."

McCain has always said he prefers to be the underdog, and he rolled out a feisty speech this week vowing a spirited fight to Nov. 4. But he has at times also seemed exasperated with the state of affairs.

In an interview with a North Carolina television station this week, the Arizona senator said he didn't know when he would return to the battleground state. "You know, my schedule lurches from day to day," he said, an edge in his voice.

Republican pollster John McLaughlin said the McCain operation is undergoing an experience very common among campaigns in their closing days.

"It's the thrashing between the events you can't control and what the proper message for the campaign should be," McLaughlin said. "In the past week, we've seen the McCain campaign thrashing."

McCain aides, meanwhile, carry on their duties with an acute sense of grievance against the national media, a group the candidate once jokingly referred to as his base.

On the campaign plane, aides berated a reporter for The New York Times after an editing error wrongly suggested McCain hadn't pushed back against a supporter's claim that Obama was an Arab. And a Reuters photograph released after the debate that captured a calm Obama next to McCain in a goofy, flailing pose reduced one aide to tears.

On a conference call with reporters Friday, campaign manager Rick Davis lamented that "there's not more pressure and more scrutiny from the media" on Obama's ties to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, whose voter registration efforts are being investigated in several states and by the FBI. Obama has said the group isn't involved in his campaign's registration drive.

Indeed, Obama's relationship to ACORN is one of several arguments McCain aides hope will stick against the Illinois senator. But McCain moves from one attack to another without creating a consistent narrative about his rival.

Last week, both McCain and Palin spoke out against Obama's loose association with ex-radical Bill Ayers a quarter-century after Ayers co-founded the violent Weather Underground, which protested the Vietnam war with bombing of government buildings. But the running mates mostly dropped Ayers from their stump speeches this week, though the campaign made automated "robo calls" into some states linking Obama to Ayers.

The financial crisis has also bedeviled McCain as polls show voters believe Obama would do a better job handing the economy. And McCain this week stepped on his own effort to unveil new proposals to help seniors and middle-class homeowners weather the crisis.

Last Sunday, aides hinted McCain would offer new proposals and McCain's close friend South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham told CBS' "Face the Nation" that McCain would likely announce them soon. But on Monday, aides said McCain would have nothing until later in the week while Obama outlined new plans that day to help seniors cope with the market meltdown.

McCain finally released his proposals Tuesday, which made it appear he was playing catch-up to Obama and put his speech in competition with President Bush's announcement the government would spend $250 billion to buy partial ownership of leading banks.

"Everything that can go wrong in the last three weeks usually does, so you need to stay very, very calm and not let the wheels come off." Rollins said. "You've got to pick your strategy and stick with it. Now's the time to be disciplined."

YAHOO - - - Biden says robo calls 'scurrilous,' mocks Palin

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:08:24 EDT

HENDERSON, Nev. – Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden accused Republicans of employing "scurrilous" campaign tactics and urged supporters not to be distracted from the economic issues affecting their lives.

Biden pointed to automated phone calls sent to voters in key swing states by Republican John McCain's campaign. The calls attempt to link Democrat Barack Obama to former '60s radical William Ayers.

The calls assert Obama "worked closely with domestic terrorist" Ayers, though there is no evidence the Illinois senator and Ayers are close.

"The Republican campaign has stepped up its attacks," Biden told a crowd of 3,800 at an evening rally in the Las Vegas suburbs. "You may have heard about the scurrilous phone calls that are coming into homes — in Nevada and in New Mexico, where I was, and in Virginia, where I'm going — that question Barack Obama's character and by implication question his patriotism."

"They don't hurt Barack Obama. They don't hurt me. But they hurt the American people because they're an attempt to distract you from the issues that matter to your daily lives."

The McCain campaign has defended the calls, saying the association between Ayers and Obama raises question about the Democrats' judgment.

At an earlier rally, in Mesilla, N.M., Biden took aim at a comment from rival Sarah Palin, in which she said she loves visiting "pro-America" parts of the country. Biden said he believed the whole country is patriotic.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have never been to a state that hasn't sent its sons and daughters to serve its country," Biden said in Mesilla as the crowd of about 2,000 booed Palin's reported comments. "It doesn't matter where you live, we all love this country. And I hope it gets through that one of the reasons why Barack (Obama) and I are running is that we know how damaging the policy of division ... has been.

"We are one nation, under God, indivisible," Biden shouted to the crowd. "We are all patriotic, we all love this country."

According to published reports, Palin told a North Carolina fundraiser Thursday that the best of America was not in Washington, D.C., but in small towns like the one in Alaska where she served as mayor.

The Delaware senator focused his remarks Friday on the working-class issues that have been the foundation of his appeal.

In Nevada, he spoke in a city park in Henderson, an older first-ring suburb of Las Vegas. The area has been roughed up by the collapse of the housing market. An impassioned and animated Biden, promised to rebuild the middle class, reform health care and put a temporary moratorium on home foreclosures.

His emotional and loud appeal was a stark contrast from his description of this running mate.

"Barack is going to have his hands full. But Barack is put together and, by the way, they are steady hands, you watch him," "You saw how steady he is in those debates. This is man who has equanimity. This is man who not only is really bright, but he has the temperament for the moment."

McCain spokesman Rick Gorka called Biden speech "bombastic and spiteful."

"It's unfortunate that Biden used this unique opportunity to champion the protectionist, higher tax policies of Herbert Hoover instead of offering constructive solutions to help hurting Nevadans," Gorka said.

HUFFINGTON POST = = = John McCain's Flat Tax October Surprise

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:55:37 EDT

John McCain isn't just going to spend the next eighteen days drifting around the swing states like a mall walker. (Didn't David Lynch make a movie about a real old guy riding a tractor across America to get away from Sissy Spacek? I think it's on my "Movies I Never Want to See" list. Where is that list? It's around here somewhere.)

John McCain isn't interested in second place. Can you imagine the living nightmare that would be the rest of his life if he does all the disgraceful things he's done and then loses, too? If you can't imagine it, he can.

There's a John O'Hara story where an old bore, after a long and perfectly nice life, screws it all up by flirting with a teenager and then walking in on her in the shower. She sheiks at him and he retreats to his room. Here's how it ends:

"He knew it would be hours before he would begin to hate himself. For a while he would just sit there and plan his own terror."

That's not going to happen to John McCain.

I think John McCain has one more trick up his sleeve. (One last hand from the grave? Some metaphor about shock and clutching.) I think John McCain is planning our terror. I think John McCain is going to pitch the Flat Tax.

Dangerous? Erratic? Crazy? You mean, as opposed to Vice President Miss Wasilla?

There are two ominous reasons John McCain might go for it.

Joe the Plumber

When it comes right down to it, what Joe the Plumber hates is the very idea of progressive taxation, whether he pays his or not. J the P knows his taxes won't go up under President Obama; it's the principle that rankles.

What if Obama gets elected, repeals the Bush tax cuts, and then Joe wins the lottery? If Joe has to pay 39% off the top of his winnings instead of 36%, why bother buying a ticket?

Why should a millionaire pay more taxes than a hobo? It's just doesn't make sense.

Those poor rich.

The flat tax has a powerful allure for people who think Rush Limbaugh works harder than they do, and a girl deserves a few nice things.

John McCain needs those votes.

Jack the Knucklehead

Last week, Jack Kemp co-authored a piece in the Wall Street Journal. He had a solution to the banking crisis: The Flat Tax. This wasn't surprising. Jack Kemp always thinks the solution is the Flat Tax. That's why no one talks to Jack Kemp.

Because he's a pull-toy, and when you tug his string, this comes out:

"And such a tax reform would be an antidote to the class warfare, neocollectivist tax policies of Barack Obama. If implemented, it would also jump-start the economy. Under this optional tax system, savings would increase and investment would soar as capital around the world is drawn to a suddenly more confident U.S. economy.

This new surge of capital would end the credit crunch, and allow old businesses to expand and new ones to start. Wages would grow, along with the overall economy. And as the world invested in America, the dollar would strengthen, as happened in response to the tax cuts that generated the 1980s Reagan boom. This would ease inflationary fears and pressures on the Fed."

It also regrows hair, makes old vinyl upholstery shine like new and brings dead pets back to life. (Only they're evil.)

Of course, that's all crazy talk. The Flat Tax won't do any of those things, any more than eliminating all taxes on people whose names begin with the letters A through K. (Think about it. They'd have more to spend. And that makes jobs. And then Reagan comes back to life. Only he's evil.)

Still, isn't it pretty to think so?

The Flat Tax, stupid in the best of times, would be really, really, really stupid now.

America has added about a trillion bucks to the national debt in the last three weeks. If we announced that our next step was to slash tax revenues the dollar would collapse and we'd turn into Zimbabwe, only with less interesting large predators.

But what the hell. It wouldn't be John McCain's problem. I'm sure Cindy has gold. And he'd never get it though a Democratic house and senate.

It would be a great election promise, though, don't you think? A game changer? Really shake things up?

Wouldn't it be a maverick thing to do?

John McCain isn't just going to spend the next eighteen days drifting around the swing states like a mall walker. (Didn't David Lynch make a movie about a real old guy riding a tractor across America... John McCain isn't just going to spend the next eighteen days drifting around the swing states like a mall walker. (Didn't David Lynch make a movie about a real old guy riding a tractor across America...

HUFFINGTON POST = = = Why A Powell Endorsement Would Matter

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:52:59 EDT

If reports are true that Colin Powell will endorse Senator Obama this weekend on Meet the Press, it may be a huge moment that gives a further shot of credibility into the arm of the Obama campaign.

I know that many progressives are upset with the role Powell played leading up to the war in Iraq. And, there's no doubt that Powell showed poor judgment in believing the fudged intelligence presented to him, which he then presented to the United Nations. At the same time, however, we do have evidence that Powell tried behind the scenes to change things and even prevent going to war. In this, he can be a powerful advocate for Obama, noting that for all the talk of lack of experience, Barack Obama was right on the Iraq war, and showed better judgment than the entire Bush administration, himself included.

Powell has been open about some of his own culpability, for presenting bad information to the UN, and accepts the fact that it will be a stain on his record, telling a reporter, "Of course it will. It's a blot. I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."

I'm not excusing Colin Powell for doing what he did. But, at the same time, him being one of the few who was in the White House during that time puts him in a unique position -- to say he's been there and seen what happens when intelligence is no good and twisted, when we go into a war for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way, and that he's confident that Barack Obama is the guy to not only fix those mistakes, but to not repeat them.

For example, even if he doesn't bring it up on Meet the Press, we know through Bob Woodward's accounting of the lead-up to the war that Powell tried to dissuade the President from going to war, and battled it out with Donald Rumsfeld about the size of the force we planned to send in once the decision was made; arguing for a larger force that would lead to fewer SNAFUs during the invasion, and a better chance at keeping control of the country, post-invasion.

We know that he warned the president, to no avail, of the Pottery Barn rule -- You Break It, You Own It -- and tried to sound the siren that the occupation would not be easy, and that there was no clear exit plan. We know that Powell duked it out over the use of torture with members of the administration, and knew how it would reduce our standing in the world, and only encourage our enemies to torture those troops of ours that they captured.

In short, while we may criticize Powell for not resigning from the administration if he had strong objections to the war, it's clear that he did fight a lot behind the scenes, and he can imply (if not explicitly say) that he would have rather had Barack Obama as President during those months, so we never would have gone to war with Iraq to begin with.

Further, Powell can add a strong voice to some key points that Obama has been making, moving ahead. First and foremost, Powell was one of five former Secretaries of State who said we should open up lines of communication with our enemies, without preconditions, to step up the diplomatic efforts to settle the ongoing strife in the Middle East.

Second, Powell has made clear that talking to Iran and Syria is an urgent component to ending this war in the right and responsible way. Reported The Times of London, "Powell believes that a reduction in US forces will have to be accompanied by talks with Syria and Iran. "You have to talk to the people you dislike most in this dangerous world."

And, of course, all of this doesn't even account for the fact that this is the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs -- a man who loves America and loves America's military. For all the smears being hurled about "palling around with terrorists" and "white flag of retreat," nothing can counter that like a Republican former 4-star coming out and saying "This guy loves America as much as me."

HUFFINGTON POST = = = Biden Blasts Palin's "Pro-America" Comments: "I'm Tired Of Implications About Patriotism"

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:38:57 EDT

MESILLA, N.M. — Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden mocked rival Sarah Palin's comment in North Carolina that she loves visiting "pro-America" parts of the country, arguing that the entire nation is patriotic.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have never been to a state that hasn't sent its sons and daughters to serve its country," Biden said Friday in New Mexico as the crowd booed Palin's reported comments. "It doesn't matter where you live, we all love this country. And I hope it gets through that one of the reasons why Barack (Obama) and I are running is that we know how damaging the policy of division ... has been.

"We are one nation, under God, indivisible," Biden shouted to the crowd. "We are all patriotic, we all love this country."

"Being here with all of you hardworking, very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans," the Republican vice presidential candidate said.

The Obama campaign issued a news release asking reporters what part of the country isn't pro-America.

While campaigning in New Mexico, Biden said Republican presidential nominee John McCain "has been bequeathed tactics of Karl Rove in the last few weeks" and warned that the final days of the campaign will get ugly.

Addressing a crowd of several hundred in the Old Mesilla plaza, Biden urged supporters to ignore what they hear from McCain and concentrate on the change that the Democratic ticket promises. "You're going to see some really tough stuff," Biden said.

New Mexico has become a critical battleground state where Democrats see a real shot of making up the narrow gap that gave the state to President Bush in 2004.

Biden said fewer than 6,000 votes separated Bush and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in the last election, a gap that could easily be made up with a strong showing in early voting.

"Our job isn't going to be done until you cast your ballot," Biden said. "It's going to take all of us here today."

HUFFINGTON POST = = = McCain Using Same Robocall Firm That Helped Smear Him In 2000

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:36:42 EDT

In his efforts to attack Barack Obama, John McCain appears to have turned to the same political consulting firm that was responsible for spreading vicious smears about the Senator during the 2000 South Carolina GOP primary.

In recent days, the Huffington Post and other outlets have reported on the McCain-funded nationwide robocall campaign charging that Barack Obama "worked closely with" former 60s radical William Ayers. Another RNC/McCain campaign call states that Obama is a "celebrity" politician who was fundraising in Hollywood during the financial crisis.

On Friday, a recipient of one of those calls, Chris Shoff of Minnesota, said that he had tied the origins of the campaign to the St. Paul-based firm FLS-Connect, run by prominent GOP figure Jeff Larson.

This past week, Shoff, a Freeborn, Minnesota Democratic County Commissioner, received the Hollywood call while at work. Because state law dictates that any such calls be made by an actual human, Shoff demanded that he be connected to the supervisor. That official, who worked at the robocall shop King TeleServices in Brooklyn, New York, said that they had been contracted out by FLS-Connect.

Officials with King TeleServices did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Asked about the connection to King TeleServices, a receptionist for FLS relayed a message from her supervisors that implicitly acknowledged that they have been working on behalf of the Arizona Republican: "If it is having to do with the McCain campaign or the RNC, you will have to direct your question to them."

According to campaign finance reports, the RNC has paid the firm more than $8 million this cycle. On Friday, Minnesota Democrats stated in a press release that FLS-Connect "may be behind the [RNC/McCain phone campaign]."

Any tie between the McCain campaign and FLS represents an ironic twist of fate and a reflection of just how far the Arizona Republican has moved politically in the last eight years. During the 2000 election, FLS and Larson helped then-presidential candidate George W. Bush smear McCain during the now-infamous South Carolina primary. As the Washington Post reported in April 30, 2000:

"The advocacy calls for George W. Bush's campaign that became an issue in this year's South Carolina GOP primary were developed by Feather, Hodges, Larson & Synhorst [FLS]. The firm maintains seven phone banks and 500 phones scattered from Phoenix to Minnesota. South Carolina, home of the Bush blitz, is one of the firm's "best" phone centers, said partner Jeff Larson. "Military wives from all over the country make calls for us there." "Phones are great," he said, "because you can change your message right away." With better voter lists and a new trend toward recorded messages, today's political calls are "narrowcast"--antiabortion activists will hear one script, voters in one small area will hear directly from a local pol. "It's a blossoming business."
At the time, McCain railed against the practice of robocalls, calling them "hate calls" and complaining that voters were "inundated" by them.
Larson is a major official within GOP circles. FLS Connect counts as its clients the last five Republican presidential campaigns and many of the major party institutions. The RNC, the National Republican Senate Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee also employ the firm's services. Larson has also been a volatile figure in this year's Minnesota Senate race, having rented a Washington D.C. apartment to incumbent Republican Norm Coleman for a highly discounted rate.
On Friday, even GOP Sen. Susan Collins condemned McCain's robocall campaign. "These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics," her spokesman said. "Sen. Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately."
And as the New York Time's Michael Cooper noted, as recently as nine months ago, McCain and his campaign "were decrying a series of negative robo-calls that were being made to voters before the South Carolina primary accusing him of voting to 'use unborn babies in medical research."
"The tactic - people do phone calls, and they have a political effect when there's unknown quantities about the candidate,'' [senior McCain adviser Steve] Schmidt said back then, as the bus rolled through South Carolina. "So if you look at it eight years ago, John McCain had won the New Hampshire primary, comes down here where he was nowhere nearas widely known as he his today by the people of South Carolina on the issues."

"So it's a conveyance to introduce new information -- and a lot of that information on the phone is slanderous and smearing," he said. "But if not enough about who the person is, or what they're about, is known, is the criteria for it working. When you're a defined entity like he is now, they have a very minimal effect."
Now the McCain campaign is using similar calls as it seeks to discredit Mr. Obama in a series of battleground states. Tucker Bounds, a McCain campaign spokesman, defended the calls, saying, "These calls are based on hard facts."

FOX NEWS = = = Biden: Whatever He Says, McCain Is Just Like Bush

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:31:23 EDT

John McCain may have told his Democratic rival at Wednesday’s debate that he’s no George Bush, but Joe Biden isn’t buying it.

“He doth protest too loudly,” Biden told the crowd in Southern New Mexico — a state Bush won by a mere 6,000 votes in 2004. “If it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, it’s a duck. Ladies and gentlemen, in these last 3 debates, looked like a duck to me, folks.”

“He always turns to Barack and says when have you challenged your party? And Barack has,” Biden said. “I’d turn to John and say John, when have you challenged President Bush on any major economic initiative? Tell me, when?”

Biden also scolded McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, who said at a North Carolina fundraiser on Thursday that she likes visiting the “pro-America areas” of the country. “It’s disappointing, and I hope it’s a slip of the tongue and she doesn’t mean it,” Biden said. “Folks, it doesn’t matter where you live, we all love this country.”

“We know how damaging the politics of division that continues to be practiced by the McCain, how damaging this policy of division has been. It’s time to put this behind us,” he said. “We are one nation, under God, indivisible. We are all patriotic. We all love our country in every part of this country. And I’m tired. I am tired, tired, tired, tired of the implications about patriotism.”

The Delaware Senator acknowledged that things look good for Democrats at the moment - but said now is no time for complacency. “I want to make it clear to you: this election is very very very very far from being over,” Biden said. “This administration is, has bequeathed, I think, the tactics of Karl Rove to the McCain administration, you’re gonna see some pretty, uh, pretty tough stuff, pretty tough stuff in these last two weeks. So we cannot let up.”

But he may have telegraphed a bit of confidence with a slip of the tongue of his own — nearly calling George Bush “George McGovern.” That George lost the 1972 election to Richard Nixon in one of the biggest landslides in presidential history.

USA TODAY = = = 'Post,' 'Chicago Tribune,' 'L.A. Times' endorse Obama

Patty — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:28:25 EDT

The Chicago Tribune is endorsing Barack Obama for president, marking the first time the newspaper has supported a Democrat.

In an editorial posted on its website, the Tribune says the country needs a president who can lead it through a "perilous time" and restore "a common sense of national purpose."

It says Obama's the best candidate to do that.

The newspaper says Obama has what it takes to "make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions."

Chicago's largest daily says it likes Republican John McCain. But it also says the party of limited government has lost its way and Republicans have abandoned their principles.

It criticizes McCain for responding to the economic crisis with an "angry, populist message."

The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and El Diario/La Prensa— the largest Spanish-language daily paper in New York City — also endorsed Obama in their Friday editions. The Post called Obama "the right man for a perilous moment." The Los Angeles Times said he is "educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature. He represents the nation as it is, and as it aspires to be."

Excerpts are included below:

The Washington Post endorsed Democrat Barack Obama on Oct. 17:

The nominating process this year produced two unusually talented and qualified presidential candidates. There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.

The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president. It is made easy in larger part, though, because of our admiration for Mr. Obama and the impressive qualities he has shown during this long race. Yes, we have reservations and concerns, almost inevitably, given Mr. Obama's relatively brief experience in national politics. But we also have enormous hopes.

Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle for very good. ...

Any presidential vote is a gamble, and Mr. Obama's resume is undoubtedly thin. We had hoped, throughout this long campaign, to see more evidence that Mr. Obama might stand up to Democratic orthodoxy and end, as he said in his announcement speech, "our chronic avoidance of tough decisions."

But Mr. Obama's temperament is unlike anything we've seen on the national stage in many years. He is deliberate but not indecisive; eloquent but a master of substance and detail; preternaturally confident but eager to hear opposing points of view. He has inspired millions of voters of diverse ages and races, no small thing in our often divided and cynical country. We think he is the right man for a perilous moment.

The Los Angeles Times endorsed Democrat Barack Obama on Oct. 17:

It is inherent in the American character to aspire to greatness, so it can be disorienting when the nation stumbles or loses confidence in bedrock principles or institutions. That's where the United States is as it prepares to select a new president: We have seen the government take a stake in venerable private financial houses; we have witnessed eight years of executive branch power grabs and erosion of civil liberties; we are still recovering from a murderous attack by terrorists on our own soil and still struggling with how best to prevent a recurrence.

We need a leader who demonstrates thoughtful calm and grace under pressure, one not prone to volatile gesture or capricious pronouncement. We need a leader well-grounded in the intellectual and legal foundations of American freedom. Yet we ask that the same person also possess the spark and passion to inspire the best within us: creativity, generosity and a fierce defense of justice and liberty.

The Times without hesitation endorses Barack Obama for president. ...

We may one day look back on this presidential campaign in wonder. We may marvel that Obama's critics called him an elitist, as if an Ivy League education were a source of embarrassment, and belittled his eloquence, as if a gift with words were suddenly a defect. In fact, Obama is educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature. He represents the nation as it is, and as it aspires to be.

El Diario/La Prensa, the largest Spanish-language daily paper in New York City, endorsed Obama on Oct. 17:

Our next president must have the capacity, judgment and vision to restore confidence, both here and abroad. El Diario/La Prensa endorses Sen. Barack Obama as the leader ready to redirect the United States of America towards its promise.

Sen. Obama wisely opposed Bush's misguided and immoral charge into Iraq. From Corona to Washington Heights, Latinos have suffered the devastating effects of this war. Sen. Obama has pledged to bring the sons and daughters who are serving in Iraq back home by 2010.

Sen. Obama has correctly identified that trickle-down economics are not addressing the inequities Americans face. As our economy continues to unravel, Latinos and African-Americans are disproportionately affected by foreclosures. Sen. Obama has proposed a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures so that some lenders and homeowners can renegotiate terms.

Other problems demand attention. Graduation rates in the United States lag behind that of most other wealthy nations. Sen. Obama has committed to investing in schools and to making higher education more accessible.

The nation also needs a humane and sensible immigration policy. While Sen. John McCain once appeared as a reasonable interlocutor on immigration reform, he gradually pandered to Republican ultra conservatives by promoting a two-step process emphasizing border enforcement. Sen. Obama clearly outlines a far superior plan that will take a smarter approach to immigration, including bringing undocumented immigrants out of the shadows.

HUFFINGTON POST - - - Cesar Chavez at the Root of Obama's Campaign: Grassroots Latino Voter Outreach

Patty — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:04:29 EDT

In the 2008 February primary elections, Latinos made up 30% of all total voters in California. Now, for the first time in U.S. history, Latino voters could play a decisive role in the presidential election.

If they do, we can thank Cesar Chavez and UFW alumni... and the city of Los Angeles.

Forty years ago, Cesar Chavez and the UFW went to Los Angeles to increase Latino voting for Robert Kennedy's California 1968 presidential primary campaign. Their strategy included voter registration drives, intensive door-to-door and street outreach, public visibility events and Election Day GOTV efforts. This strategy bolstered the political voice of Latinos and Democrats in Los Angeles, throughout California and across the nation. Today, these tactics are an integral part of the Obama campaign and could well decide the 2008 election.

Many UFW alums are working to elect Obama. Former UFW Organizing Director Marshall Ganz helped develop the "Camp Obamas" that have recruited and trained Obama campaign organizers, while former UFW Executive Board member Eliseo Medina serves on the Obama National Latino Advisory Council. And UFW alum Sharon Delugach, who left school at age 15 to work as an organizer for the UFW is now organizing for the Obama campaign in Southern Missouri.

The UFW grassroots voter organizing launched in 1968, an era when door knocking and "on the ground" outreach was considered outdated. But, the UFW treated political campaigns like community organizing drives and relied on people going door-to-door. The UFW was right. Talking neighbor to neighbor was successful in the barrios of East Los Angeles where large voting margins for Robert Kennedy helped provide his margin of victory.

After the end of the UFW's heyday, UFW alums implemented and enhanced the union's voter outreach strategies. In Los Angeles, in 1996, after UFW alum Miguel Contreras became head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, he used the UFW-inspired electoral model to greatly increase Latino and union member voting. UFW alums Eliseo Medina and Chava Bustamonte then took the Los Angeles model statewide, dramatically increasing the number of Latino Democrats, doubling the Latino share of the electorate and adding over one million Latino voters to the rolls.

Increased Latino voting, much of it rooted in Los Angeles, brought Democrats commanding majorities in the State Legislature, California's first Latino Assembly Speaker, and, in 2005, helped elect Antonio Villaraigosa as Los Angeles' first Latino mayor of the modern era.

Reaching beyond California in 2006, Medina helped bring the UFW's Los Angeles grassroots electoral model to Colorado and Arizona, leading Democrats to key victories in both states. Presently, the UFW outreach model is operating in eleven states, and helps explain why Obama is well ahead in New Mexico and is positioned to win such "red" states as Nevada, Colorado and Florida.

In light of Los Angeles' landmark role in boosting voting among such historically low-voting communities as immigrants and Latinos, it is fitting that the city is in the midst of launching the nation's largest fast. The "Fast for our future," will begin in La Placita Olvera in the heart of the city on October 15th and continue through the November 4th elections. Like so many of the tactics used in political organizing today, the fast, designed to get one million people to "vote for immigrant rights" harkens back to Cesar Chavez's legendary 25-day fast for nonviolence in 1968 and to Los Angeles, the birthplace and current hub of so much Latino and immigrant grassroots organizing.

The "Fast for our future" is yet another example of how the UFW's "Si se puede" (Yes we can) spirit still drives the struggle for social justice today. Just as the UFW voter outreach model began in Los Angeles and then spread nationally, the upcoming fast is expected to inspire thousands across the country. And, it shows that Los Angeles still remains the epicenter of progressive Latino and immigrant activism.

Los Angeles has been known for its beaches, music, and movie stars, but if Barack Obama's campaign wins on November 4th, the city should also be identified as the birthplace of the grassroots voter outreach strategy that dramatically changed the political course of the United States.

HUFFINGTON POST = = = Obama Widens Lead Due To Economy, Voter Backlash Over Negative Ads

Patty — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:02:25 EDT

With the economy dominating the news, several new polls show Barack Obama widening his lead over John McCain, with voters trusting the Democratic candidate to fix the "serious economic crisis" and firmly rejecting the recent spate of negative personal attacks targeted at Obama.

Most dramatically, Obama has widened his lead to double digits, at 14 points, in a NYT/CBS News poll that shows - for the first time - white voters evenly divided between the candidates.

Two major factors hurting McCain that emerged in the poll: Sarah Palin and the recent spate of negative ads targeting Obama.

Six in 10 of those surveyed said that Mr. McCain had spent more time attacking Mr. Obama than explaining what he would do as president.

And Palin, who has been leading many of the campaign's personal attacks at fiery rallies in the last two weeks, has seen her favorability rating slipping down to 32 percent and her unfavorability rating climbed 11 points to 41 percent.

Mr. Obama's favorability rating, by contrast, is now at 50 percent - the highest recorded for him thus far by The Times and CBS News.

Though Palin won some praise for her performance in the vice-presidential debate, most viewers felt that Biden won and "not one tracking poll has showed movement toward the McCain-Palin ticket in the days following the debate," reports the Hill.

Another finding that bodes poorly for McCain, considering the campaign's consistent attempts to portray Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal, is that more voters think McCain would raise their taxes. Fifty-one percent of voters think McCain would raise their taxes compared to 46 percent who think Obama would do the same.

Other dramatic findings from that poll: Obama is now favored by a majority of men and independents, "two groups that he has been fighting to win over," according to the Times.

The poll presents serious problems for McCain, with only 20 days left in the campaign, since four out of five of each candidate's supporters now say their minds are made up.

Granted, there have been wild swings in the polls throughout the campaign and McCain achieved a Phoenix-like resurrection during the Republican primary when he was considered finished after polling miserably last year.

"We've seen comebacks before and certainly this campaign has been so unpredictable thus far that anything can happen," GOP strategist Doug Heye told the Hill.

The McCain campaign acknowledged that the economic crisis has impacted the candidates' numbers. Bill McInturff, a pollster for McCain, responded to the latest polls, writing The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder:

"The financial tsunami has produced one of the most difficult and volatile times to conduct polling in modern times. During these uniquely volatile last few weeks, I have seen as much day-to-day movement as I have witnessed in my 20 plus year career as a pollster."

Also, a small group of likely voters feel that Obama's past associations with Bill Ayers and Reverend Jeremiah Wright are issues that bother them.

Other polls demonstrated how the global financial meltdown has helped tilt voters to Obama with most voters saying that Obama can fix the "serious economic crisis," according to a Bloomberg/LAT poll. Obama leads McCain by nine points, 51 to 40, in that survey of voters.

Some findings are consistent in the polls, with about half the respondents saying that Palin is unqualified to be president and voters saying Palin makes them less likely to vote for McCain.

CNN = = = Michelle Obama to host Hagel's wife at last debate

Patty — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:57:30 EDT

The Obama campaign announced that Lilibet Hagel, the wife of Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, will accompany Michelle Obama at Wednesday night’s final presidential debate.

“I am honored to join Michelle Obama at the debate tomorrow night and to strongly support Senator Obama as our country’s next president,” Lilibet Hagel said in a statement released by the Obama campaign.

“Elections have consequences, and this election may be the most important of my lifetime. We have a chance to throw out the disastrous policies of the last eight years and elect a leader who is smart, honest, steady and wise. I am convinced Barack Obama is the right leader to get us to a very bright future,” Mrs. Hagel added.

Sen. Hagel was recently critical of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee.

"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently told a Nebraska newspaper. "You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."

Hagel is a longtime friend of Sen. John McCain but traveled with Obama to the Middle East in July. He has said he will not endorse either candidate. Hagel is not seeking re-election in the Senate when he term ends at the end of this year.

CNN = = = African-American enthusiasm could tip scales toward Obama

Patty — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:53:16 EDT

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (CNN) -- Ollie James is 84 years old and a doubter no more.

"I know he is going to win," James said after services at Leonard Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis. "See, God answers prayers, and I am a praying man, and I know he is going to win."

The "he" James is referring to is Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. "From where I came from, with the segregation and all the hatred, I never thought an African-American would get this far in the United States. Really."

But three weeks until Election Day, James and many other African-Americans are now optimistic they will be part of history.

"I am kind of anticipating it will happen," said Raymond Henderson, a soft-spoken African-American man in his 60s. "But no, I did not expect it to happen in my lifetime."

It is the flip side of the "race debate" in Campaign 2008: While the Obama campaign and its Democratic allies are aggressively working to address the concerns of blue-collar and rural whites who are reluctant to support a black candidate for president, there is an enthusiasm in the African-American community that Democrats believe could lead to dramatically increased turnout and perhaps tip the scales in several key battlegrounds, Missouri among them.

African-Americans cast 10 percent of the ballots for president in 2000 and about 12 percent in 2004. Obama aides believe if that percentage increased just modestly in 2008, it could make the difference in at least a half-dozen states: Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Wisconsin and Nevada are additional battlegrounds where Obama organizers are counting on an increase in African-American turnout in their Election Day game plan.

To reach its goal, the campaign is counting on a combination of newly registered African-Americans and aggressive outreach to tens of thousands black voters who are registered to vote but have stayed home in past elections.

At Leonard Missionary Baptist, the Rev. Steven Thompson is careful not to preach from the pulpit: He exhorts his congregants to vote but does not preach in favor of or against any specific candidate.

Still, a visit to his services found an overwhelmingly pro-Obama crowd, and Thompson says the enthusiasm level about this election is unprecedented in his two decades as the inner-city church's pastor.

"The energy comes from the fact that it is historical, and we've got a lot of first-time voters and many like myself who have been through a few, and it still has that pumped up energy in it," Thompson said.

Increased African-American turnout is all the more important because of Obama's tougher challenge in more conservative, rural areas. In the Missouri Ozarks, a roadside billboard shows a cartoon of Obama with a turban, his middle name "Hussein" in bold red letters.

"Hmmmm," Thompson said when shown a photograph of the billboard, keeping his trademark calm.

"If I spent my time getting angry about the things people do, then I can't do what I effectively do here," Thompson said as he gestured toward the pulpit. "Those people who do stuff like that, the only thing I can say is, we pray for them."

Fredrick Lemon II says that for months, he doubted that Obama could win, but now he believes he can. Still, Lemon took time after services to compliment Republican nominee John McCain for trying to calm angry supporters at recent rallies, including a woman last week who incorrectly said she was worried about an Obama presidency because he is Arab.

"It has gotten a little nasty," Lemon said. "But I think that John McCain really showed some integrity and some character when he was at the last town hall meeting and some people said some disparaging remarks and he corrected them. And that just shows that he does have integrity."

WASHINGTON POST = = = Put Country First

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:14:33 EDT

IN ORDINARY times, with just over three weeks before Election Day, no one would expect the presidential candidates to think of anything but maximizing their political advantage. These are not ordinary times.

The financial crisis has entered uncharted and frightening territory. The value of almost everything -- houses, stocks, retirement funds -- seems to have plunged to levels that can't be easily explained, resisting one "fix" after another. More alarming, the credit freeze has resisted all remedies attempted so far. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke have labored stoutly to contain the crisis, prescribing radical prescriptions without regard to past ideology or politics, and President Bush has backed them at every step. But Mr. Bush is so unpopular that his words of reassurance do not soothe, and Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are locked in an increasingly poisonous campaign. The resulting leadership vacuum exacerbates the sense of confusion. This would be a fine time for the candidates to really put country first.

What would that mean in practice? No one expects the candidates to propose 10-point plans guaranteed to fix the problem. Events are moving too swiftly, and neither Mr. McCain nor Mr. Obama can substitute themselves for the officeholders now in charge. But it would be reassuring if they acknowledged through their behavior that they know something fundamental is going on. In the face of crisis, both have hewed largely to their scripts as written, as if nothing has changed and the priorities they formulated a year ago remain viable today. There is something disturbingly disconnected about these responses, which assume, incorrectly, that the next president will not have to make painful trade-offs. Just to toss away those scripts would help confirm their understanding of a new reality.

The economic collapse raises broad questions that the candidates might grapple with. To what extent should the United States continue to depend on foreign credit to prop up the economy, and how do the candidates propose to reduce this reliance or to respond if foreign investors balk? If the era of easy credit is over, how would the candidates find the right balance between over-intrusive regulation that stifles investment and innovation and the anything-goes, market-knows-best mentality the current crisis is blamed on? Like it or not, the U.S. government that one of them will lead will be a principal owner of a sizable share of the U.S. economy. What are the implications of that? What principles will guide them as they buy, manage and sell these assets?

We think that most Americans would not be troubled to hear the candidates admit that they don't have all the answers, if they were doing their best to learn -- to solicit advice and wisdom from the smartest people around, in academia and business, in the United States and beyond. Most Americans also would be relieved if the candidates were not seeking tit-for-tat advantage from the crisis but were cooperating with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke to ease the panic. Such an apolitical stance might even prove politically wise.

RCP = = = At a Time of Crisis, GOP Promotes Fear

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:04:17 EDT

In 1933, at the depth of the Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt reassured a frightened country with these words: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. . . ."

As blind panic grips the markets, which are frozen by fear of another Great Depression, the country desperately needs reassuring leadership in Washington. Islamist terrorists are waiting in Afghanistan and Pakistan to take advantage of capitalism's troubles.

A discredited President Bush is unable to rally the country. So voters are watching the candidates to see which looks more able to steer the country through this nightmare.

Never has there been greater need for a campaign focused on critical issues. Instead, the McCain-Palin ticket is promoting the politics of fear.

The country cannot afford this kind of folly. The world is sliding into recession, international economic institutions that the United States once led now appear helpless, and our intelligence agencies say Afghanistan is heading toward chaos, as is nuclear-armed Pakistan. We still have 150,000 troops tied down in Iraq.

But what is the McCain campaign focused on? Accusing Barack Obama of links to terrorists because he knows someone named Bill Ayers. These irresponsible accusations further split our country at a time when it needs to pull together. As Sarah Palin might say, it's "unpatriotic" to sow such divisions when the country is under threat.

Bill Ayers, in case you've been too focused on your sinking 401(k) to notice, is a 1960s Weather Underground radical who made news when Obama was 8 years old. Now he is a graying University of Illinois professor who worked on an education project that was financed with money from billionaire publisher and Richard Nixon pal Walter Annenberg (hardly a radical funder).

Ayers had some contacts with Obama on the project's board. He also held a meeting in his home years ago for Obama, then a novice politician, to meet the neighbors. According to a New York Times investigation, the two men never were close.

From this thin gruel Sarah Palin revs up angry crowds with assertions that Obama has been "palling around with terrorists." Her main goal seems to be to fuel anti-Obama passions in swing states. In Fort Myers, Fla., she declared: "This [Obama] is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America." Palin supporters then shouted abuse at reporters and racial epithets at an African American soundman. One told him, "Sit down, boy." Get the picture?

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), one of McCain's close confidantes, told Washington Post columnist David Broder that the Republican campaign would "go down in history as stupid if they didn't unleash" Palin. And so they did.

Right-wing bloggers and talk shows weave Palin's words into a bizarre pastiche of untruths aimed at damning Obama's character. Chain e-mails berate the "mainstream media" for "ignoring" Obama's terrorist ties.

McCain is a man who once decried such negative campaigns. He was Swift Boated by Republican operatives in the South Carolina primary in 2000, with despicable stories about his having fathered a black child. That was then; the desire for office seems to have erased those memories.

Apparently the Arizona senator, trailing in the polls, doesn't feel he can win on issues. The centrality of the economic crisis plays to Democratic strengths. So McCain has dropped his opposition to dirty campaigning. Indeed, he is now joining in attacking Obama for his "relationship" to Ayers.

Obama has responded with ads about McCain's ties to the Keating Five savings and loan scandal in the 1980s. They are palid in comparison.

If these were ordinary times, I would not be writing this column; we have gotten sadly used to negative campaigning. But in these abnormal times, such tactics are shameful. The electorate is angry and looking for answers; this is not the time to play to people's fears.

The next president will face terrible challenges from the day he takes office. He will have to pull the country together, both red states and blue states. He will have to ask citizens to make huge sacrifices and be patient in frightening times.

This will be a time of acute reckoning in U.S. foreign policy. The market collapse has undercut a key pillar of U.S. power - our economic clout. It will be far tougher to do what's needed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In my lifetime, we have never so needed a president who could unite the country and the government. A divided country will be unable to meet the awesome challenges that it will face.

At one time, McCain might have been such a leader. "The situation today cries out for bipartisanship," he said in the second presidential debate. He also said, "I have a clear record of bipartisanship," referring to past cooperation across the aisle.

But the poisonous nature of this campaign belies his bipartisan pretensions. After this election, it's hard to imagine a President McCain pulling the country together as FDR did. And given her tactics, a Palin vice presidency would worsen social splits this country can no longer afford.

NY TIMES = = = The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:00:56 EDT

IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.

Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.

“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.

Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.

All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.

What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.

Obama can hardly be held accountable for Ayers’s behavior 40 years ago, but at least McCain and Palin can try to take some responsibility for the behavior of their own supporters in 2008. What’s troubling here is not only the candidates’ loose inflammatory talk but also their refusal to step in promptly and strongly when someone responds to it with bloodthirsty threats in a crowded arena. Joe Biden had it exactly right when he expressed concern last week that “a leading American politician who might be vice president of the United States would not just stop midsentence and turn and condemn that.” To stay silent is to pour gas on the fires.

It wasn’t always thus with McCain. In February he loudly disassociated himself from a speaker who brayed “Barack Hussein Obama” when introducing him at a rally in Ohio. Now McCain either backpedals with tardy, pro forma expressions of respect for his opponent or lets second-tier campaign underlings release boilerplate disavowals after ugly incidents like the chilling Jim Crow-era flashback last week when a Florida sheriff ranted about “Barack Hussein Obama” at a Palin rally while in full uniform.

From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.

McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani’s mocking dismissal of Obama as an “only in America” affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.

No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”

This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.

The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals.

There are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn’t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years. This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average. There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.

Could the old racial politics still be determinative? I’ve long been skeptical of the incessant press prognostications (and liberal panic) that this election will be decided by racist white men in the Rust Belt. Now even the dimmest bloviators have figured out that Americans are riveted by the color green, not black — as in money, not energy. Voters are looking for a leader who might help rescue them, not a reckless gambler whose lurching responses to the economic meltdown (a campaign “suspension,” a mortgage-buyout stunt that changes daily) are as unhinged as his wanderings around the debate stage.

To see how fast the tide is moving, just look at North Carolina. On July 4 this year — the day that the godfather of modern G.O.P. racial politics, Jesse Helms, died — The Charlotte Observer reported that strategists of both parties agreed Obama’s chances to win the state fell “between slim and none.” Today, as Charlotte reels from the implosion of Wachovia, the McCain-Obama race is a dead heat in North Carolina and Helms’s Republican successor in the Senate, Elizabeth Dole, is looking like a goner.

But we’re not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.

RCP = = = Playing the Race Card

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:54:25 EDT

The race card is back.

After Tuesday night's debate, Washington party-crossover dean David Gergen announced it was "too early" to declare victory for Democrat Barack Obama, not because the election is a month away, but because "Obama is black."

After GOP running mate Sarah Palin criticized Obama for seeing America as "imperfect enough that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their country," an Associated Press story suggested that "her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret."

A racially tinged subtext? Palin may have exaggerated about Obama "palling around" with William Ayers, a founder of the Vietnam War-era Weather Underground, which was responsible for a number of bombings across the country including quite possibly a 1970 explosion that left a San Francisco police officer dead. I don't think Obama and Ayers were pals so much as co-believers of a trendy left-leaning and standards-hostile philosophy on education.

And, Ayers is white. So it's hard to figure out how the AP writer construed Palin's remarks as "racially tinged," unless you see race in absolutely everything.

The "subtext" -- to borrow the word -- of the race-baiting charge is that if Obama should lose, then it will be because of racist white voters, who misled polling organizations by not saying that they would not vote for the Democratic nominee simply because he is black.

You could not watch cable news last week without hearing about "the Bradley effect" -- a term spawned after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley lost the California gubernatorial election to state Attorney General George Deukmejian in 1982 by one point, despite pre-election polls that showed Bradley, who was black, had a seven-point lead.

But "the Bradley effect" was not the election-turning factor that some people saw. As Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll explained, a number of factors, including a higher-than-expected turnout of gun owners, led to the discrepancy in that 1982 race. DiCamillo believes that some white voters said they were undecided even though they had decided to vote for Deukmejian, and those undecided white voters were key in the undecided pool because most black voters had made up their minds to vote for Bradley.

Also, the pre-election polls were off because black turnout was lower than expected. If DiCamillo had to put a number on white voters who said they were coy about voting for the white Deukmejian, it would be "two to three points at the most." And that was 26 years ago.

Of course, racism exists in America and there are white voters who will not vote for a black candidate, but there are also many white voters who would love to see an African-American in the White House. Gallup analyst Jeff Jones crunched the numbers and concluded that while 6 percent of voters say they are less likely to vote for Obama because of his race, 9 percent say they are more likely to vote for Obama because of his race. So do you think that if Obama wins with a margin of three points or less that newspapers will run stories that assert that Obama won because he was black? Of course not.

According to a Time poll, 43 percent of white men and 48 percent of white women say they will vote for Obama, while 97 percent of black voters support Obama.

Yes, it is natural for African-Americans, who have had to overcome daunting obstacles to gain equal treatment, to want to see a breakthrough candidate in the Oval Office.

But there is something incongruous in examining the racism in a group that plans on voting more than 40 percent for a candidate of a different color, while ignoring a bloc expected to vote within its color lines almost exclusively.

Maybe Obamaphiles are nervous because, while they see Obama leading in the polls, they also know that over the last few decades, the American voter has demonstrated a conservative streak when it comes to the country's commander in chief. The American electorate has not bestowed more than 50 percent of the popular vote on the Democratic nominee since 1976 when Jimmy Carter won the White House for one term.

Or maybe Obamaphiles do not want to let go of their race-baiting habit, despite Obama's successes. Me? I don't think that it will help Obama with undecided voters if his chorus whispers that racism lurks in the heart of the American electorate. But if they want to give McCain a hand in this contest by spreading those insinuations, well, he could use it now.

POLITICO - - - McCain makes risky play for Pennsylvania

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:29:43 EDT

PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania hasn’t voted Republican for president since 1988. Democrats have increased their registration numbers here by more than a half-million over the past year, and Barack Obama has a double-digit lead in the polls.

Yet John McCain's campaign continues to signal that it intends to contest the state and its 21 electoral votes to the end. It is a high-risk, high-return endeavor: Pennsylvania represents a costly gambit, one that siphons resources from must-win states such as Ohio and Florida, but a win here would enable McCain to lose a few other states that George W. Bush carried and still capture the White House.

So with 23 days until Election Day, the state finds itself at the epicenter of the presidential campaign, with both sides spending precious time and money trying to energize their respective bases and drive up their opponents’ negatives.

For Obama, that means trying to offset white, working-class voters’ uneasiness with him by hammering McCain as out of touch on their economic struggles, and driving a huge turnout here in the state’s most populous city, where he spent Saturday barnstorming four neighborhoods.

For McCain, it means courting the politically competitive but historically Republican suburbs ringing Philadelphia, as well as the industrial and rural parts of the state that carried Hillary Clinton to a 9-point victory over Obama in the Democratic primary in April. The McCain campaign believes it can sway voters in those areas by emphasizing a socially conservative message and branding Obama an elitist liberal with shady past associates.

Thus, McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, spent Saturday morning in Johnstown — an industrial area in southwestern Pennsylvania dominated by the type of older, white, working-class, socially conservative voters who favored Clinton over Obama in the primary — where Palin blasted Obama’s support for abortion rights as “absolutely radical.”

Referencing Obama’s comments that he wouldn’t want one of his daughters to have an unwanted pregnancy and be “punished with a baby,” Palin said “it's about time we called him on it.”

Later in the day, Palin — a self-described hockey mom — dropped the ceremonial first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers home opener.

On Tuesday, Palin will campaign in Scranton, the population hub of northeastern Pennsylvania, where Clinton crushed Obama. The Obama campaign has signaled it will vigorously contest the area despite the Illinois senator’s weak primary performance there, in part by using vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, who has touted his own family roots there.

Biden will stump in Scranton Sunday with Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, a schedule that will bring Biden’s total days campaigning in the state to five — the same as Palin.

Including Saturday’s whirlwind day on the hustings, Obama has spent six days campaigning in Pennsylvania since securing the Democratic nomination in June, compared to 12 in that time for McCain, who plans to hold an event Tuesday in the populous Philadelphia suburbs.

The Obama campaign believes its economic message — and its attacks on McCain’s stances on the issue — will resonate in the economically depressed industrial areas around Scranton and Johnston, and also in the broad swath of the state stretching through its center and along its northern border, known as “the T.”

But it also plans to continue deploying both Biden and Clinton — who will be in the Philly suburbs Monday — as Obama’s ambassadors to Pennsylvania’s working-class whites.

The Obama campaign’s efforts in Pennsylvania and other targeted states are aided by its financial advantage over McCain, which have allowed it to flood the airwaves with ads and the streets with paid and volunteer staffers.

McCain has also poured considerable resources into the state — -in the week after last month’s GOP convention, he outspent Obama on Pennsylvania television ads $1.6 million to $950,000, and he spent the same amount again in the first week of October.

The problem is that Obama dropped $2.2 million in the first week of the month, his third highest total behind Ohio and Florida, and his campaign has 79 offices in the Keystone State — nearly twice McCain’s total, which could give Obama an edge in the get-out-the-vote battle.

Nowhere will that be more important for Obama than in heavily African-American Philadelphia, where Obama on Saturday drew an estimated 60,000 people to four rallies stretched across the northern part of the city.

“I need North Philly. I need all of Philly,” Obama told about 5,000 supporters gathered outside the iconic Mayfair Diner in Northeast Philadelphia, a collection of working-class white ethnic neighborhoods that Clinton carried in the primary.

At one rally, in a North Philadelphia neighborhood near Temple University, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, the popular former Philadelphia mayor who backed Clinton in the primary, warned the crowd of 20,000 that Obama would need a massive turnout in Philadelphia to carry the state.

"In the primary, only 53 percent of registered voters in Philadelphia turned out," Rendell said. "Ladies and gentlemen, 24 days from today, 53 percent will not cut it. It will not cut it. If we want to make sure Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States, we need to turn out at least 75 percent.”

In 2004, Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry crushed President Bush in the city by more than 400,000 votes on his way to winning the state by about 144,000 votes. Since then, Democrats have increased their voter registration edge substantially in the city.

Rendell told reporters after a rally in city’s Germantown section that his goal is for Obama to drive a historic turnout in Philadelphia and then to meet or exceed Kerry’s showing in Pittsburgh and the rest of the state. Rendell predicted the best opportunities for improvement are in south central Pennsylvania, which is becoming less conservative as it absorbs population from Philadelphia, and traditionally Democratic northeastern Pennsylvania.

Still, Rendell said that when a Quinnipiac University poll came out last month showing Obama leading by 15 points, “I shuddered, because I don’t believe for a minute that we’re 15 points up” and “we can’t be overconfident for one second.”

Likewise, Team McCain said it hasn’t been tempted by the recent polls to pull out of Pennsylvania like it recently did from Michigan, where polls had showed Obama leading McCain only by high-single-digit margins.

"We pay attention to our own polls," Mark Salter, a senior McCain aide told reporters Saturday. "Pennsylvania looked much better than Michigan."

LA TIMES = = = Obama rides a wave of bad economic news

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:17:34 EDT

WASHINGTON -- For months, Mark Wagner stuck by John McCain, even as the economy stalled and other Americans came to blame Republican leadership. Then, about three weeks ago, the deepening economic downturn pushed him to reconsider.

Now, the Florida salesman and staunch Republican has abandoned the GOP ticket. Sarah Palin, he thinks, looks under-equipped to be vice president. And McCain, he says, displayed an unsteady response to what may be a global economic depression.

The financial crisis has turned the last three weeks into a crucial and possibly decisive period in the presidential contest -- a time when many Americans have taken a new look at each candidate and then moved toward Democrat Barack Obama.

Like a wave, the crisis has washed over other factors in a contest that had seemed to be a dead heat, moving enough voters to give the senator from Illinois a consistent lead in polls nationwide and in key battleground states, including Florida, Virginia and Ohio, where President Bush secured his reelection four years ago.

Republican officials in several states say they fear voters have judged McCain and Palin harshly in how they reacted to the financial downturn. Obama, meanwhile, now looks like an acceptable alternative to many voters who had been hesitant to pull the lever for him because of concerns about his untraditional background and relatively recent appearance in national affairs.

"If you looked at some of the decisions that Obama's made, and the consistency and levelness that he's had in these trying times over the past few weeks, in my opinion he's blown McCain away," said Wagner, 47, of suburban Tampa.

In addition, Wagner disapproves of Palin's refusal to cooperate with a state legislative investigation that found she had abused her power as Alaska governor, and he calls McCain's recent attacks on Obama's character and past associations "disgusting."

"McCain was supposed to be the steady hand with experience," he said.

Some Republicans report hearing of similar conversions in Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina, and they fear that the change is irreversible. Voters who have been blaming Bush and Republicans in general for the financial crisis now seem to be tying it around McCain's neck as well.

Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican, said he was looking at an "Obama tide" in his district and wondering about his own reelection: "Can I withstand a firestorm?"

"The impression of McCain on the economy is that he wanted more deregulation than Bush" at a time that voters are demanding more help from the government, he said. "I'm not sure right now that McCain can carry seven states," added Souder, whose home state has not picked a Democrat for president since 1964. "In the end I think McCain will carry Indiana. But if you are fighting for Indiana, you are in trouble."

Tom Ellis, GOP chairman in Butler County, Ohio, a key Republican stronghold in 2004, said there had been "some slippage" for McCain in recent weeks. He said Republicans were finding it "hard to penetrate" the torrent of bad economic news and deliver an effective pitch to independents. And the Arizona senator's attacks on Obama's past links to former radical William Ayers, he said, "do not garner him any advantage" with swing voters.

"There's a sense of frustration at this point," Ellis said. "What I hear is people are expecting more of the Republican ticket. They've got to speak directly to the economic issues. People want to hear specific solutions from Sen. McCain."

With 23 days to go in a campaign marked by many surprising twists, there is still time for McCain to make up lost ground. Polls show that many voters still question Obama's experience; and McCain's message, particularly his questioning of Obama's character and judgment, could take hold among the swing voters who will decide the election.

The credit market could stabilize, calming public anxiety and allowing McCain to change the subject to more favorable issues. An outside event, namely one that returns the discussion to national security, might allow McCain to remind voters of his strength in that area.

But polls clearly show that a major shift occurred in mid-September, just as Wall Street financial institutions started to fall and Congress began debating its $700-billion rescue plan. On Sept. 24, McCain took the surprising step of "suspending" his campaign, returning to Washington to participate in the negotiations and attempting to pressure Obama to delay their first debate.

That very week, as Obama aides began to cast McCain's actions as erratic, and as voters recoiled at the huge price of the bailout, Obama moved ahead in some so-called red states that are must-wins for McCain. Obama took a lead in several polls in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, while the race tightened in two other Republican-dominated battlegrounds, Indiana and North Carolina.

Since then, the congressional bailout plan and other rescue measures from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have failed to ease a credit crisis that is threatening many businesses and causing panic among investors. In national opinion surveys, Obama has risen from a statistical tie to a lead, according to an average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.com.

As the financial crisis deepened in recent weeks, Harold P. Pelzel, 62, a utilities consultant and lifelong Republican, was moved to volunteer for Obama's campaign in Cary, N.C., a bastion of moderate conservatives near Raleigh that Obama is targeting for crossover votes.

Pelzel said he decided to support Obama during the Democratic primary due to the souring economy, but now the continued downturn has given him the time and motivation to work the phones for the campaign. He was downgraded from full-time employee to contractor at the consulting firm where he works -- and consulting contracts have dried up recently as companies cut back, giving him time to volunteer.

Now, at the campaign office in downtown Cary, Pelzel said he spoke almost every day with conservative or Republican voters who tell him they are also leaning toward Obama because of the faltering economy.

"They tell me: 'I've been a Republican all my life, but I can't support them any more,' " Pelzel said, adding: "I don't even have to try to convert them. Most of them decide to switch on their own."

In conservative Naples, Fla. -- a heavily white, Republican area -- retirees and other residents have been hard hit by plummeting property values, rising tax bills and skyrocketing insurance premiums -- and McCain advisors, citing internal campaign polling, concede that the GOP nominee is "underperforming" there.

Last week in Naples, 300 donors attended an Obama fundraiser hosted by Republican real estate developer Jack Antaramian. A former Bush donor who had attended the inauguration, Antaramian said the fundraiser drew a number of Republicans who had grown uncertain of McCain's ability to lead on economic issues.

Antaramian said he couldn't support Republicans when family members were losing their homes to foreclosure. And if McCain should die or leave office, he said, "I just can't visualize Sarah Palin having the capability of dealing with the magnitude of events" of the financial crisis.

"I really believe that Obama has a much better grasp of what the middle class is going through right now," Antaramian said.

Polls show that McCain retains solid support among core Republicans, a group that had once viewed him skeptically but has been enthusiastic ever since he named Palin to the ticket. Some local and state-level party officials, however, acknowledge that the financial crisis has moved moderates and independents toward Obama -- and some blame McCain for doing little to stop it.

Moreover, GOP officials said, they had already been seeing large voter registration gains by Democrats and independents in North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Indiana, foreshadowing tighter elections than they were used to.

"The frustration I hear is McCain's message isn't getting out that he was trying to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac years ago," said Linda Smith, Republican chairwoman in Clark County, Ohio. She was referring to the mortgage giants that were recently taken over by the government amid a tide of loans that went bad.

"I have to blame the McCain camp for not pushing it hard enough," added Smith, whose rural county lies between Dayton and Columbus. "It's so ingrained in people's minds that Republicans are good on national security, but Democrats are good on the economy, and it's very hard to counter that."

In rural Holmes County, Ohio, GOP Chairman Rob Hovis said that the dire headlines about the economy had made it harder for McCain to connect on the social issues that are the most important to the area's large Amish community.

"Being pro-life is the overriding issue here," Hovis said. "Because of the economic situation, that isn't getting through. Our chief effort is to help Amish and other conservative voters realize that the candidates are different on the social issues that matter most to them."

Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who emceed a McCain rally last week in Waukesha, said Obama had been "pulling the wool over people's eyes" by casting himself as best-suited to lead on the economy.

But Ryan conceded that he understood why the polls were moving in Obama's favor. "People are nervous," he said. "They're scared and they are fed up. Naturally, they take it out on the incumbent class. [Obama] has appeared reasonable."

HUFFINGTON POST = = = McCain Doing Letterman Again After Mocking

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:26:23 EDT

NEW YORK — David Letterman and Sen. John McCain will get a chance to make up.

The Republican presidential candidate is scheduled to appear on Letterman's "Late Show" on Thursday.

It will be McCain's 13th visit to the CBS program but his first since he angered Letterman by canceling last month.

Letterman was unhappy when McCain sat for an interview with Katie Couric instead of him on Sept. 24.

At the time he said he first felt like a "patriot" to let McCain off his commitment to deal with the economy but "now I'm feeling like an ugly date."

A McCain spokeswoman said at the time that because of the economic crisis, the campaign "felt this wasn't a night for comedy."

WASHINGTON MONTHLY = = = A HISTORIC TICKET

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:21:11 EDT

A HISTORIC TICKET.... Now that Sarah Palin has been found to have abused her powers, violated state ethics, and lied about it, I did a little digging and found an interesting historical footnote.

The McCain/Palin ticket is the first in American history in which both candidates were found to have violated ethics standards before a national election.

McCain, of course, was admonished by Senate Ethics Committee "for exercising 'poor judgment' for intervening" with federal regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, as part of the infamous Keating Five scandal.

And now McCain's running mate has also been found to have violated state ethics laws and abused the powers of her office, as part of the "Troopergate" scandal.

The nation has had 102 major-party tickets covering 51 presidential elections over more than two centuries. And we've never had a ticket in which both candidates on the same ticket were responsible for ethics violations before a national election. McCain/Palin is the first.

It makes the whole "reform" pitch a little more difficult, doesn't it?

FOX NEWS = = = Palin off message on North Korea?

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:02:45 EDT

Is the team of mavericks split on what to do next regarding North Korea?

While Sen. McCain was extremely critical of the Bush decision to take North Korea off of the list of state of sponsors of terror in a statement issued Saturday, his running mate said she had confidence in the administration.

From the McCain statement:

“Reports indicate that the administration may soon remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. I have previously said that I would not support the easing of sanctions North Korea unless the United States is able to fully verify the nuclear declaration Pyongyang submitted on June 26. It is not clear that the latest verification arrangement will enable us to do so,” McCain said in a written statement. “As this process moves forward, I expect the administration to explain exactly how this new verification agreement advances American interests and those of our allies before I will be able to support any decision to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.”

But when Gov. Palin was asked about the decision during a campaign stop in Altoona, PA today, she was more optimistic about the Bush move and said she had “faith” it was the correct decision.

“Having worked on this strategy for quite some time, I have faith…that they’re making this wise decision. And North Korea, of course, better live up to its end of the bargain there, in speaking with the other countries whom they’ve been working with, in promising the verification. That end of the bargain has got to be lived up to,” she told reporters, putting the onus on Pyongyang rather than Washington.

HUFFINGTON POST = = = McCain Chief Uses POW Card To Defend Rally Rhetoric

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 11:54:30 EDT

Defending the aggressive campaign rhetoric at recent McCain-Palin events against criticisms made by Rep. John Lewis, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis raised John McCain's history as a POW on Sunday.

"Look, Chris, I think we have to take this very seriously," Davis told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace. "And the kind of comments made by Congressman Lewis, a big Obama supporter, are reprehensible. The idea that you're going to compare John McCain to the kinds of hate spread in the '60s by somebody like George Wallace is outrageous. Where was John McCain when George Wallace was spreading his hate and segregationist policies at that time? He was in a Vietnam prison camp serving his country with his civil rights also denied."

The use of such a line of defense came one day after Lewis warned that the Arizona Republican - through his recent campaign rhetoric - was "sowing the seeds of hatred and division" in scenes reminiscent of segregationist George Wallace. The McCain campaign was quick to jump on the statement and demand an apology from Obama. The Illinois Democrat's aides said that while the Wallace comparison was over the line, the longtime civil rights figure's underlying message was, in fact, true.

David Axelrod, sitting across from Davis, would echo that stance arguing that McCain's ads were designed to "inflame" but not to be compared to George Wallace.

Later in the Fox appearance, meanwhile, Davis distanced the McCain campaign from some of the more inflammatory crowd rhetoric - including calling Obama a "terrorist" and a "traitor" and yelling "kill him" when his name comes up. But he dismissed the suggestion that McCain or Sarah Palin were in any way responsible for inciting such ire.

That he could weave in McCain's history in Vietnam was not particularly unique or difficult. The reference to the civil rights era did provide an entree into reminding voters of the Arizona Republican's biography.

"Nobody knows sacrifice like John McCain does," said Davis. "And the idea that Barack Obama didn't address this issue directly, had his campaign walk out there with a half-baked statement that didn't even address the comments made by Lewis as related to John McCain. Barack Obama should apologize to John McCain directly for the kinds of comments made by John Lewis yesterday and that should be the end of this sordid affair."

WASHINGTON POST = = = Obama camp relying heavily on ground effort

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:58:05 EDT

In 2004, Democrats watched as any chance of defeating President Bush slipped away in a wave of Republican turnout that exceeded even the goal-beating numbers that their own side had produced.

Four years later, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign intends to avoid a repeat by building an organization modeled in part on what Karl Rove used to engineer Bush's victory: a heavy reliance on local volunteers to pitch to their own neighbors, micro-targeting techniques to identify persuadable independents and Republicans using consumer data, and a focus on exurban and rural areas.

But in scale and ambition, the Obama organization goes beyond even what Rove built. The campaign has used its record-breaking fundraising to open more than 700 offices in more than a dozen battleground states, pay several thousand organizers and manage tens of thousands more volunteers.

In many states, the Democratic candidate is hewing more closely to the Rove organizational model than is rival Sen. John McCain, whose emphasis on ground operations has been less intensive and clinical than that of his Republican predecessor.

"They've invested in a civic infrastructure on a scale that has never happened," said Marshall Ganz, a labor organizer who worked with César Chávez's farmworker movement and has led training sessions for Obama staff members and volunteers. "It's been an investment in the development of thousands of young people equipped with the skills and leadership ability to mobilize people and in the development of leadership at the local level. It's profound."

But sheer size and scope guarantee little, especially for an operation that is untested on this scale, and the next three weeks will determine whether Obama's approach will become a model for future campaigns or yet another example of how not to do it.

Nor shortage of challenges
The campaign faces no shortage of challenges. It must meet its ambitious goals for voter contacts -- with repeat visits to undecided and first-time voters -- while being careful not to turn people off by being overly persistent. Though it relies on homegrown backers, it must still incorporate thousands of out-of-state volunteers. And above all, its foot soldiers must make the case for a candidate who remains an unknown to many would-be supporters.

Jane Goodman, a city council member in South Euclid, Ohio, who is leading the Obama effort in her ward, said she has never seen such a grass-roots push in her Cleveland suburb of Jewish voters, Russian immigrants and African Americans. But she has also never seen such a need for it.

"We haven't had much Democratic outreach here before because it was assumed the Democrats are going to win," she said. "This year, we can't make that assumption."

For all the talk of the Obama campaign's use of the Internet and other technology, the success of its organization over the final weeks will depend in large part on individual efforts on the ground. Unlike past campaigns, those have been structured around "neighborhood team leaders." The leaders control eight to 12 precincts around their own neighborhoods, buttressed by four "coordinators" who help oversee team members, usually numbering in the dozens.

The neighborhood leaders typically have been coaxed into action by paid field organizers, attended at least one training session, and spent the past few months registering voters and recruiting volunteers for this month's turnout push. All know exactly how many votes their territory must produce.

It is a big responsibility to place on volunteers who, in many cases, have not worked on other campaigns. But it is a model that was built through trial and error in the primaries and suits the unique challenges that face the Obama campaign, said Steve Rosenthal, former political director for the AFL-CIO.

Neighbor-to-neighbor outreach
For this election, neighbor-to-neighbor outreach "is more important than in any recent one, because of, without mincing words, the race factor," he said. "Having white validators, people working these neighborhoods who live in those neighborhoods and are of those neighborhoods, who are saying, 'Get out and vote for this guy,' is really important." After several decades in which campaigns spent mostly on television ads and direct mail, recognition in the power of person-to-person contact has increased over the past dozen years. Rove seized on this notion after the 2000 election, when strong Democratic turnout led by organized labor racked up a popular-vote edge for Democrat Al Gore. For Bush's reelection, he oversaw the construction of a network in key states such as Ohio made of evangelical Christians, gun-rights supporters and other activists, with a clear hierarchy and individual goals for recruitment and contacts.

By contrast, Democrats in 2004 relied on a hybrid turnout effort -- volunteers and staff mustered by Sen. John F. Kerry's campaign, plus paid canvassers and union members overseen by an outside group led by Rosenthal that was able to accept larger donations. The group helped Kerry win several key states, but had downsides: Its canvassers could not advocate explicitly for Kerry, and it could not coordinate efforts with the campaign.

There were other lessons from 2004: Kerry won the Iowa caucus after building an organization that was stronger than that of former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who relied on mostly younger supporters from out of state.

"The basic concept is not a new or revolutionary one," said Jon Carson, Obama's national field director. "Campaigns have always wanted to have a grass-roots, volunteer-driven effort. The two pieces that came together for us . . . was the sheer volume of the people who wanted to get involved and the technology making it easier than ever before to find us. It wasn't that Democrats didn't get it" in past campaigns. "It was that . . . they weren't able to make it work on this scale."

Though the Obama campaign is modeled after previous incarnations, it was shaped and reshaped during the long primary season, as the team adopted what worked and shed what didn't. The operation took months building a network of support in Iowa that paid off with a crucial caucus win, and its belief in that sort of organization hardened when it lost a week later in New Hampshire, where it had done less organizing. A breakthrough came with the turn to the neighborhood teams. Ganz had been testing the model for the Sierra Club, and the campaign tried it in South Carolina, to great success, as team members held one another accountable and boosted morale.

The team structure also proved effective in California as a way to absorb the waves of volunteer interest building there. When it came time to organize for the general election, the Obama campaign applied the structure everywhere.

In training sessions for volunteers and organizers, Ganz offered instruction on how to recruit volunteers and persuade voters. The gist was that volunteers needed to motivate others by speaking about their experiences and reasons for supporting Obama -- their "story" -- instead of just parroting the candidate's biography or message.

As Ganz sees it, this is a "values-based" approach like that of the conservative movement, rallying around core beliefs instead of individual issues. "Democrats lost the language of moral commitment and became very wonky and policy-oriented. One of Obama's big breakthroughs was to bring values back into it -- Democratic values," Ganz said. "The Republicans have been eating our lunch on this for a long time."

Volunteers are encouraged to take more initiative than those in Rove's network to come up with their own ways to recruit others and approach voters. But they are hardly freelancers. Field organizers in their areas and those higher up the ranks closely track volunteers' contact with voters, which is entered into a central database, to make sure they are meeting weekly goals. Volunteers receive instructions on which basic message of the month to deliver, beyond the sharing of personal motivations, and on how to respond to questions about some of the false rumors about Obama's religion and patriotism.

"You have to have really good message discipline so that the whole organization down to the local level is echoing the central message, which for us now is all about the economy," said Jeff Blodgett, the Minnesota director. "It's decentralized, but that there's a control point around the message and around data and accountability."

Technology's role
Technology plays a major role. Supporters receive campaign updates via text message and e-mail, and can easily sign up online for Obama groups or any of the dozens of daily volunteer events on each state's campaign Web site. With the organization's "Neighbor to Neighbor" computer program, volunteers can pull up an online list of neighbors to call from home, a particularly useful option for rural supporters. But the campaign's technological prowess has obscured somewhat the old-fashioned element that lies at its heart: the power of volunteers working together. That is one reason the organization invested so heavily in field offices -- spending $4.3 million on rent and utilities through August -- so backers could have a real entry to the campaign. Some volunteers say it's because of the way that television and the Internet have fragmented daily life that they have taken such satisfaction in the campaign, and gotten such good results from their face-to-face outreach.

Candice Reed sees it in her section of Jefferson County, a former GOP stronghold outside Denver. "Just to say, 'I'm your neighbor, and I live down the hill on Bucks Hill Lane,' right away they have to be nicer to you," said Reed, 37, who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primary but decided to volunteer for Obama after a women's event at the party's national convention. "It's easier when you look someone in the eye, when you get in front of people, and they see you're smiling and are super-excited and are spending Sunday afternoon for the campaign with a friend with you."

The McCain campaign said that in many states, it has exceeded the number of calls the Bush campaign made in 2004, and that it saw a surge in volunteers after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin became the Republican vice presidential pick. But with many fewer offices, it has a lower profile, and experienced workers say the activity is more muted than in other campaigns. Mary Buestrin, who was the Bush campaign's statewide volunteer coordinator in Wisconsin in 2004, said the McCain campaign has adopted a less formal volunteer structure.

"We're not really doing all those kind of things this time around," she said. "We're all just . . . chipping in where we can."

Face-to-face talk
Yale political scientist Donald Green, who co-wrote the book "Get Out the Vote," says research has shown that face-to-face talk increases a voter's chances of turning out by 7 to 10 percent. If a campaign talks to a third of its hoped-for voters, it can expect to see a 3 percent boost at the polls, he said.

In many states, a final statewide training session was held last week for Obama field organizers, to be followed by get-out-the-vote training for team leaders. In Missouri, about 400 neighborhood teams are set up around the state, each with a goal of getting about 4,000 votes in their area. The hope, said Missouri director Buffy Wicks, is as get-out-the-vote efforts intensify in the campaign's final weeks, the teams will have established themselves enough to deliver the backing that Obama will need.

"If those relationships are strong and those conversations are strong, then we'll weather any negative campaigning that's happening," she said. "That's why this part of the campaign is our strength."

At a training session in Ohio that Obama attended Friday night, the candidate wondered just how much of a strength all the campaign's efforts would prove to be.

"We've been designing and we've been engineering and we've been at the drawing board and we've been tinkering," he said. "Now it's time to just take it for a drive. Let's see how this baby runs."

WASHINGTON POST = = = Obama camp relying heavily on ground effort

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:58:05 EDT

In 2004, Democrats watched as any chance of defeating President Bush slipped away in a wave of Republican turnout that exceeded even the goal-beating numbers that their own side had produced.

"We haven't had much Democratic outreach here before because it was assumed the Democrats are going to win," she said. "This year, we can't make that assumption."

"We're not really doing all those kind of things this time around," she said. "We're all just . . . chipping in where we can."

"If those relationships are strong and those conversations are strong, then we'll weather any negative campaigning that's happening," she said. "That's why this part of the campaign is our strength."

At a training session in Ohio that Obama attended Friday night, the candidate wondered just how much of a strength all the campaign's efforts would prove to be.

"We've been designing and we've been engineering and we've been at the drawing board and we've been tinkering," he said. "Now it's time to just take it for a drive. Let's see how this baby runs."

USA TODAY - - - Poll: Monthly churchgoers swing toward Obama

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:36:02 EDT

WASHINGTON — Significantly more monthly churchgoers are supporting the Democratic nominee — Sen. Barack Obama — in this year's presidential election than in the 2004 election cycle, according to a new poll.

Voters who attend religious services one to two times a month are supporting the Democratic nominee by 60%, up from 49% who supported Sen. John Kerry in 2004, based on a survey released Oct. 8 by the nonpartisan group Faith in Public Life.

"The fact that he's getting 60% of those voters shows that there has been a movement overall in the last four years in terms of Democratic outreach with religious Americans," said Amy Sullivan, whose book The Party Faithful examines Democrats' outreach to religious voters.

"That might be related more to economic issues than anything else this year, but it does show that religious voters are willing to vote for Democrats."

Exit polls in 2004 showed Bush won 51% of the vote among monthly churchgoers.

Sen. John McCain has 34% of the vote of monthly churchgoers in the survey, but maintains a significant advantage among voters who attend church more frequently. Obama has a similar advantage over McCain among those who attend less often.

"We took a look at one of the historically ... strongest predictors of votes and that's religious attendance," said Robert Jones, president of Public Religion Research and lead researcher and analyst for the poll.

The survey also found evidence of a generational divide between younger and older evangelicals, including support by younger evangelicals for a more active government and less conservative views on same-sex marriage.

"They (evangelicals) are more concerned about peace and prosperity than they are about abortion or same-sex marriage," said Michael Lindsay, associate professor of sociology at Rice University. "This is why things are different in 2008 than they were in 2004."

The survey polled 2,000 adults, and an additional 1,250 adults ages 18 to 34, and was conducted between Aug. 28 and Sept. 19. The margin of error for the overall sample was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points; the margin of error among younger adults was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

BOSTON GLOBE = = = NAACP watching, ready for voter problems

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:41:48 EDT

The NAACP will have lawyers targeting 750 precincts around the nation on Election Day to help address complaints about possible voter disenfranchisement, the organization's new president said Saturday.

Benjamin Jealous, who took the helm of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Sept. 15, said volunteer lawyers have already been addressing complaints about voter registration problems. On Election Day, lawyers will be sent to the 750 precincts where there has been a history of voter discrimination, Jealous said at the state NAACP convention.

Jealous also said he hopes that Democratic nominee Barack Obama's growing popularity will aid the civil rights organization. Obama's background as a community organizer and civil rights attorney could help as the NAACP targets quality education and other equality issues, he said.

But Jealous said Obama's rise has also occasionally led people to question whether the 99-year-old organization is still relevant.

"If Obama is elected, won't colored people have advanced as far as they can advance?" Jealous recalled being asked.

"The condition of the grassroots" will determine whether the NAACP can shut its doors, not the advancement of a single man, said Jealous, the youngest-ever leader of the group at age 35.

The presidential primary campaign highlighted the difference between many Hispanic voters and black voters. Hispanic voters helped give Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton a win in Texas, temporarily stalling the Obama campaign's momentum before he eventually secured the nomination.

Asked whether black and Latino leaders should try to help bridge the gap, Jealous said he's already met with the head of the National Council of La Raza. He added that black and Latino communities, which often face similar civil rights challenges, will have to work together to be effective.

"We need to build multiracial coalitions as if our future depends on it, because it does," Jealous said.

------

BOSTON GLOBE = = In shift, Obama lauds Clinton era

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:37:32 EDT

Barack Obama likes to draw inspiration from Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., but his apparent role model of late is someone a bit more contemporary: Bill Clinton.

With the economy in crisis and Election Day in sight, Obama can't say enough about the Clinton epoch - the job growth, the budget surpluses, the broad prosperity - and often lauds the former president's economic stewardship as a model.

"We need to do what we did in the 1990s and create millions of new jobs and not lose them," he told 6,000 people in Abington, outside Philadelphia, last week. "We need to do what we did in the 1990s and make sure people's incomes are going up and not down. We need to do what a guy named Bill Clinton did in the 1990s and put people first again."

The crowd roared.

Obama's characterization of Clinton's presidency is markedly different than the one he offered during the Democratic primaries, when he was running against Clinton's wife, Senator Hillary Clinton.

Obama argued that, despite the successes, Bill Clinton let some of the country's biggest problems fester while in the White House. The implication - that his two terms had not been indisputably positive for American families - was one the former president deeply resented.

It was always an awkward argument to make, but one Obama felt he had to: After all, Hillary Clinton was running in part to revive her husband's economic legacy, which many Democrats recall fondly. Obama's fully embracing the 1990s would have been tantamount to embracing his opponent.

Now, Obama is offering a Clinton restoration to create a foil for what he calls the failed economic philosophies of President Bush and Obama's presidential rival, John McCain. "America can't take four more years of John McCain's George Bush policies," he said yesterday in Dayton, Ohio.

The more politically problematic parts of Clinton's legacy - the Monica Lewinsky scandal and, relevant to the current economic collapse, his embrace of deregulation - go unmentioned, of course.

The shift in Obama's rhetoric is another chapter in the fraught relationship between the Obamas and the Clintons, who clashed often in the fierce primary race. Some Obama supporters question whether Bill Clinton is wholeheartedly behind his wife's former rival, but the former president offered a well-received endorsement at the Democratic National Convention and last week began stumping for Obama.

The Clintons are scheduled to campaign together on Obama's behalf for the first time on Sunday, joining the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Senator Joe Biden, in Scranton, Pa., a blue-collar stronghold where Biden was born and where the family of Hillary Clinton's father hails from.

During the primaries, Obama at times praised the Clintons for their past work. But in the heat of the battle, hardly a week went by when he did not take swipes at the 1990s - at both the policies and the politics the Clintons promoted.

Obama said they took the wrong approach to universal healthcare. He said they had done little to advance the country's energy policies. His wife, Michelle, broadened the critique to supporters at a California rally before Super Tuesday, saying, "Through Democratic and Republican administrations, it hasn't gotten better for regular folks."

Obama, in a clear knock on the Clintons, frequently attacked "poll-tested" partisan politics and "triangulation," the Clinton strategy of adopting Republican positions for political advantage. "George Bush and Dick Cheney may have turned divisive, special-interest politics into an art form, but they didn't invent it," Obama said in New Hampshire last year. "It was there before they got to Washington."

Hillary Clinton had a ready rejoinder for such criticism.

"You know, sometimes during this campaign, my opponent criticizes the '90s, criticizes what my husband did," she said in Philadelphia in April, according to The Chicago Tribune. "But when I hear him criticizing the 1990s, I'm always wondering which part of it didn't he like - the peace or the prosperity? Because I like both."

That same month, Bill Clinton caused a stir when he asserted that older voters were gravitating to his wife because they were too savvy to buy Obama's rhetoric.

"Once you've reached a certain age, you won't sit there and listen to somebody tell you there's really no difference between what happened in the Bush years and the Clinton years; that there's not much difference in how small-town Pennsylvania fared when I was president, and in this decade," he said, comparing his and President Bush's record on measures such as jobs and family incomes.

Today, those are the very measures Obama cites to attack Bush - and by extension McCain - as villains to the middle class. In recent weeks, Obama has praised Clinton for creating millions more new jobs than Bush, helping boost family incomes, and for running budget surpluses, as opposed to the deficits that have grown under Bush.

"When Bill Clinton was in office, the average family income went up $7,500," Obama said in Green Bay, Wis. last month. "Twenty-two million jobs created. So we just have to be clear about the history." Last week in La Crosse, Wis., Obama said, "It's time to return to the fiscal responsibility and pay-as-you-go budgeting, the kind of budgeting we had in the 1990s. You remember, Bill Clinton left a surplus for George W. Bush?"

Obama and Clinton have even had a few private conversations over the past several weeks about the financial meltdown, and the former president has been "very impressed with the way that Senator Obama has handled the economic crisis," according to a person close to the former president who asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly.

Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist who worked for Bill Clinton's 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, said Clinton's legacy presented an awkward dynamic for both Hillary Clinton and Obama in the primaries, because she did not want to celebrate all aspects of her husband's record, and Obama could not, in good conscience, be a "wholesale critic" of his economic policies.

Today, Carrick said, "Senator Obama probably has a much higher comfort level saying, 'Look, we were going gangbusters in the '90s, and here, what happened?' "

Clinton's record, though, does not always dovetail with Obama's agenda, particularly over the past few weeks as Obama has blamed the financial meltdown largely on deregulation of the financial industry. It was Clinton who, in 1999, signed a major banking deregulation bill into law. (Further complicating matters, two former top Clinton economic advisers, Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, pushed the deregulation effort, and they are now part of Obama's economic team.)

For now, Obama - and Bill Clinton, as he campaigns for the Illinois senator - are content to highlight their rosy recollections.

"Look at the mess that we have in our financial system," Clinton said at a campaign stop in Orlando, Fla., last week. "Compare that to what happened before. It wasn't like this. This is not accidental, folks."

NY POST = = = POLITICS DRIVES WEDGE INTO NFL LOCKER ROOMS

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:32:17 EDT

ASHBURN, Va. -- As the presidential race revs up, political conversations in NFL locker rooms echo those in workplaces nationwide.

Taxes. Economy. McCain. Obama. War. Terrorism. White. Black.

And a dilemma for these high-paid athletes: principles or pocketbook?

For Giants punter Jeff Feagles, it's all about the money.

"[Obama] is going to tax the wealthy, which is what we are," said Feagles. "We are in that category. You look at those kinds of implications, and I hate using that word, it will affect us."

Feagles' teammate, defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka, couldn't disagree more.

"It's insulting to think you would vote based on how it affects you financially," Kiwanuka said. "I had that conversation even before I got my signing bonus. It's a matter of general policy and what you believe in and what that person stands for. ... When you look at it, I spent the majority of my life with an average upbringing to say the least, and that has shaped how I vote a lot more than the last couple of years living this lifestyle."

If the contest between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama has energized the U.S. public as never before, locker rooms across the country are reflecting the trend. Players whose jobs are based on wins and losses identify with the wild swings of the who's-leading-and-by-how-much grind of the campaign.

Torn between the two arguments is Redskins cornerback Fred Smoot. He was one of the few Washington players to publicly support Sen. John Kerry four years ago, but this time he has yet to make up his mind.

"We're coming from Democratic backgrounds, but we got Republican money right now," Smoot said. "That's kind of hard, because you see it from both sides."

The spike in interest isn't limited to the NFL. NBA superstar LeBron James attended an Obama rally last weekend in Cleveland, while Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling appeared with McCain at a NASCAR race in New Hampshire last month.

NASCAR team owner Joe Gibbs addressed this year's Republican National Convention, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has dished out unsolicited advice to both candidates on his popular blog.

Politics can be a touchy subject for athletes. Some find the topic too polarizing to discuss for public consumption. Others have never voted and simply have no interest.

Not everyone feels politics belongs in the locker room. On Wednesday, before Cleveland Browns quarterback Brady Quinn introduced McCain at a rally in Strongsville, Ohio, Browns coach Romeo Crennel told his players in a team-wide address that he didn't want to hear political debates on the job.

"Their politics are their politics as long as they don't interfere with the team," Crennel said. "That's my main concern, that they don't get on a soapbox here in the locker room and get it going back and forth about a particular candidate against another candidate. That's why the ballot is a secret ballot when you go vote.

"(Quinn) took the time to do that, but as long as he keeps it outside the building and outside the team, that's his choice."

Four years ago, it was not uncommon to find Bush-leaning athletes unwilling to speak openly about their preference because they didn't want to be perceived as voting against their ideals just to get a better tax rate. Some who went public for Kerry were chided by teammates because Kerry, like Obama this year, proposed raising taxes on the wealthy.

This year, the dynamic appears to have shifted. Several players said the locker room banter suggests many of their teammates are mirroring Daniels' example and switching from Republican to Democrat. If the Redskins were a state, there was little question that Bush would have won its electoral votes in 2004. Asked what would happen this year, Smoot said: "It's a blue state."

"There might be some years where honestly you're like, 'Hey, what might be best for me fiscally,' and you may feel like a Republican slant may be a little more appropriate," New York Giants defensive tackle Barry Cofield said. "But I think after Bush's reign of terror, you know, and what we are seeing out of Sarah Palin, I think regardless of your financial station, I think it is pretty easy to support Obama."

That's not to say McCain doesn't have a solid core of supporters. After putting his absentee ballot in the locker, Albright emphasized that his preference for the Republican had as much to do with experience as taxes.

"McCain's been in office his whole life," Albright said. "I like somebody who's experienced. He's not going to make a quick, rash decision. If I'm having heart surgery, I want somebody who's done it before."

Kansas City Chiefs center Rudy Niswanger called himself "a McCain man, for all the obvious reasons."

"I appreciate the sacrifice and courage he's shown," Niswanger said, "and I think experience is very important in that job."

The dilemma gives some a reason to opt out of the process entirely.

"I don't think I'm going to vote," said Washington running back Clinton Portis, the Redskins star known for his colorful opinions. "Because I make Republican income, but I need the Democrats in office, so which way do I go?"

That's one electoral decision that doesn't sit well with Torrence, who has worked so hard to get his teammates involved in the process.

"Regardless of what your beliefs are," Torrence said, "I think it's your responsibility to vote."

NY POST = = = WRONG FOR THE RIGHT

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:28:16 EDT

John McCain blew it. Barack Obama will win the election, and there may be nothing that McCain can do to stop it.

This isn't just what liberals are saying. It's what conservatives are thinking, and they're angry. Annoyed that this is exactly what they thought would happen when he squeaked out a win in the primaries. Frustrated that they kept their criticism of his campaign to a minimum for the sake of the party. Livid at what they consider McCain's sluggish efforts.

The feeling was perhaps best summed up by a man who appeared at a McCain-Palin event in Wisconsin: "It's time that you two are representing us, and we are mad."

The Right can only be depressed as they watch Obama buoyed by a world credit crisis and the deep unpopularity of a president who campaigned but never governed like a conservative. It's the perfect combination to make a president out of an inexperienced, far-left politician whose background provides a gold mine for any opposition researcher.

To the degree that they are engaged in this election, conservatives are motivated entirely by fear of Obama and what he will do as president when backed by a solidly liberal Democratic House and Senate. They are not driven by love of the Republican candidate, and it shows in the anger present at McCain campaign rallies. Most conservatives will probably vote for McCain, but they also realize they are far less likely to persuade others, and they feel a disaster coming. The enthusiasm the Right felt during the 2004 election, which had been framed as a true ideological clash between Left and Right, simply does not exist this time around.

McCain's abrupt embrace of a big-government solution to the mortgage crisis during last week's debate places an exclamation point upon his many apostasies from conservative thought. Never a believer in supply-side economics, McCain had denounced the tax cuts of 2001. His push for campaign finance reform, for carbon emission restrictions, for federal regulation of boxing, and his long-standing defense of the Death Tax prior to this election have always made his agreements with conservatives on other issues appear to be accidental overlaps rather than a sign of common philosophical belief.

What would have happened if Republicans had nominated a conservative this time around? Conservatives must consider the possibility that things would look just as bad as they do now. The Bush presidency, by its mere association with conservative ideas, has ruined many of Republicans' best issues, creating an overwhelming headwind for any Republican running this year.

But a true conservative might also have shown voters an alternative rather than someone who incites "I agree with John" in the debates; someone to put Obama's left-wing policies in stark relief.

On top of this, McCain is and has proven to be particularly ill-suited to make the case even for what should currently be Republicans' strongest issues - lower taxes in hard economic times and energy independence.

Polls demonstrate greater trust for Obama even on these questions. And why shouldn't they? In a better world, McCain would excoriate Obama for an environmentalist policy of carbon regulation that is designed to prevent emissions by fixing a much higher price on gasoline - perhaps $6 or $7 a gallon. But how can McCain criticize it when he has been one of that proposal's co-sponsors in the Senate for years? How can he argue effectively against Obama's opposition to offshore drilling, which he shared only recently? How can he denounce Obama's anti-business tax policies when he argued against the needed tax reductions of 2001, stating that "too much of this tax cut still goes to the wealthiest Americans?"

In the current anti-Republican environment, and without a candidate positioned to make a strong conservative case on the issues, the public is as ready as ever to accept big-government solutions to every problem in sight. And Republicans are facing a bloodbath, both up and down the ticket.

With his instinctual moderation preventing a more ideological race, McCain's best weapon is Obama's record. Obama certainly makes for an easy target, but will this be enough to turn around a losing effort in the campaign's final month?

If he is to have any chance at this point, McCain must at least make his attacks on Obama more meaningful and relevant for voters. For example, Obama's collaborations with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers and with convicted felon Tony Rezko both offer proof that he lacks the judgment to handle the economic crisis or the other challenges that presidents face. His shifting explanations of both relationships also evince a lack of integrity. But McCain must also point to Obama's failures of leadership in connection with these associations, for this is far more important than the associations themselves.

As chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an educational reform project that Ayers founded, Obama presided over a waste of $160 million in donors' money. The project, under his leadership, failed to improve student achievement in the 210 Chicago schools where it operated, according to the Annenberg Challenge's final report. And to this day, that project is Obama's only significant executive experience.

Obama's legislative leadership was similar, a case study in wasting other people's money. In Springfield, Obama wrote letters from his public position to get Rezko $14 million for his slum-development enterprise. Obama co-sponsored several pieces of housing legislation favorable to Rezko and other slum-developers, giving them hundreds of millions in subsidies and other tax and regulatory advantages. They in turn funneled money to Obama's campaigns and then let their buildings deteriorate, even turning off the heat on their tenants during the winter. By his own account, Obama never bothered to follow up on how the money was spent, but the record shows that he worked in every legislative session to provide more for his developer friends.

McCain's campaign should also pick up on another story that casts doubt upon Obama's leadership and integrity, carried in late April by the Los Angeles Times on how state Senator Obama and his aide, Dan Shomon, helped steer taxpayers' money to one of Obama's private law clients. The client, Robert Blackwell, had just paid Obama $112,000 in his capacity as a private attorney for one of his corporations. State Senator Obama and Shomon then helped Blackwell obtain $320,000 in state tourism grants to hold ping-pong tournaments. As he writes in "The Audacity of Hope," this work came at a time when Obama was short of cash, and the Times reported that work for Obama at the firm had also been thin. In his state Senate financial-disclosure forms, Obama buried this obvious conflict of interest amid a long list of his firm's clients. From simply looking at Obama's disclosures, one could never guess that Blackwell's company had paid him a majority of his income for 2001.

Could any Republican have risen to the task this year of winning a presidential election? We will never know the answer to that question. But John McCain has less than a month now to prove that he was not the wrong man to beat Barack Obama. As much as conservatives hope he can prove otherwise, they are watching this election now with dread.

NY DAILY NEWS = = = Barack Obama tells Daily News how he'd lead us through the economic meltdown

Patty — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:19:21 EDT

This is a moment of great uncertainty for America. Our escalating financial crisis hasn't just closed banks and businesses. It's threatened your economic security as well.

Our frozen credit markets have sent a ripple effect throughout our economy, making it harder to get a loan for that new car or startup business or college you've dreamed of attending. Three-quarters of a million Americans have lost their jobs this year. Millions more have watched their life savings erode with each plunge of the market.

So these are difficult times. But now is not a time for fear or panic. It is a time for resolve and steady leadership. We can and will meet this moment and restore confidence in the American economy - but it will take a new direction. That's why I'm running for President.

And that's why the decision you make in 23 days is so important.

Even as we face the most serious economic crisis of our time, my opponent's campaign has announced that it plans to "turn the page" on talking about our economy to spend the final weeks of this election attacking me. A top adviser was actually quoted in this newspaper as saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

Well, I can handle three more weeks of attacks. But Americans can't afford four more years that look exactly like the last eight. We've seen where that's led us, and we're not going back. It is time to turn the page - on eight years of economic policies that put Wall Street before Main Street but ended up hurting both. We need action now.

The Treasury Department must implement the rescue plan that passed Congress as quickly as possible. But that's just the beginning of what we'll do to strengthen this economy.

For months, I've been fighting for a rescue plan for the middle class. My proposal would mean $3.2 billion in economic stimulus for New York - a shot in the arm that would provide every family immediate relief to cope with rising food and gas prices, help state and local governments maintain essential services in the face of budget shortfalls, and save 64,000 jobs in New York alone by rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges and schools.

We also need relief for small businesses that can't get loans to pay their workers or finance their inventories. After 9/11, we extended the Small Business Administration's disaster loan program, helping 4,700 small businesses in New York City, and we should once again address this crisis nationwide.

To grow our economy from the bottom up, we need a tax code that doesn't just work for the folks at the top. John McCain wants to give the average Fortune 500 CEO a $700,000 tax cut, and nothing at all to 73% of New Yorkers - more than 6.7 million families.

I want to give a middle class tax cut to 95% of all workers and their families, including 9.7 million in New York. American families making less than $250,000 a year won't see their taxes increase one single dime - because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

John McCain wants to give $200 million in tax cuts to the biggest corporations in America, even if they don't create a single new job here. I'll stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and instead eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses and startups that create jobs in New York's communities.

It's time for a new era of responsibility and accountability on Wall Street and in Washington. As President, I'll go through the entire federal budget and eliminate programs that don't work and aren't needed so that we end runaway spending and record deficits. And we'll enact common-sense regulations that prevent a crisis like this from ever happening again.

I won't pretend this will be easy or come without cost. We will all need to sacrifice and we will all need to pull our weight. Because if we've learned anything from this economic crisis, it's that we are all in this together, and we will rise or fall as one nation.

Together, we can overcome the broken policies and divided politics of the last eight years and renew an economy that rewards work, rebuilds the middle class, and creates millions of new jobs. Together, we cannot fail.

Obama, the junior U.S. senator from Illinois, is the Democratic nominee for President.

NY TIMES = = = Concern in G.O.P. After Rough Week for McCain

Patty — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 22:50:59 EDT

After a turbulent week that included disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin and signs that Senator John McCain was struggling to strike the right tone for his campaign, Republican leaders said Saturday that they were worried Mr. McCain was heading for defeat unless he brought stability to his presidential candidacy and settled on a clear message to counter Senator Barack Obama.

Again and again, party leaders said in interviews that while they still believed that Mr. McCain could win over voters in the next 30 days, they were concerned that he and his advisers seemed to be adrift in dealing with an extraordinarily challenging political battleground and a crisis on Wall Street.

The expressions of concern came after a particularly difficult week for Mr. McCain. On Friday night, new questions arose about his choice of Ms. Palin as his running mate after an investigation by the Alaska Legislature concluded that she had abused her power in trying to orchestrate the firing of her former brother-in-law, a state trooper.

“I think you’re seeing a turning point,” said Saul Anuzis, the Republican chairman in Michigan, where Mr. McCain has decided to stop campaigning. “You’re starting to feel real frustration because we are running out of time. Our message, the campaign’s message, isn’t connecting.”

Tommy Thompson, a Republican who is a former governor of Wisconsin, said it would be difficult for Mr. McCain to win in his state but not impossible, particularly if he campaigned in conservative Democratic parts of the state. Asked if he was happy with Mr. McCain’s campaign, Mr. Thompson replied, “No,” and he added, “I don’t know who is.”

In Pennsylvania, Robert A. Gleason Jr., the state Republican chairman, said he was concerned that Mr. McCain’s increasingly aggressive tone was not working with moderate voters and women in the important southeastern part of a state that is at the top of Mr. McCain’s must-win list.

“They’re not as susceptible to attack ads,” Mr. Gleason said. “I worry about the southeast. Obama is making inroads.”

Several party leaders said Mr. McCain needed to settle on a single message in the final weeks of the campaign and warned that his changing day-to-day dialogue — a welter of evolving economic proposals, mixed with on-again-off-again attacks on Mr. Obama’s character — was not breaking through and was actually helping Mr. Obama in his effort to portray Mr. McCain as erratic.

“The main thing he needs to do,” said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota, “is focus on a single message — a single, concise or clear-cut message, and stick with that over the next 30 days, regardless of what happens.

“He’s had a lot of attack lines. But it’s time to choose.”

John C. Danforth, a retired Republican senator from Missouri, said Mr. McCain should turn his attention mainly to drawing contrasts with Mr. Obama and “essentially go back to the basics.”

“I don’t think it’s enough to talk about earmarks incessantly,” Mr. Danforth said. “He’s made that point. You’ve got to get beyond that and talk about the very dramatic taxes and spending in the Obama program.”

Even that might not be enough, Mr. Danforth said. “This is a year where everything that could go in Obama’s favor is going in Obama’s favor,” he said. “Everything that could go against McCain is against him. It’s absolutely the worst kind of perfect storm.”

Mr. McCain’s advisers said they remained confident of victory.

“My sense of where things are: John McCain beat back what was a political climate that would have snuffed out any other candidate in the Republican Party,” said Nicolle Wallace, a senior adviser. “He’s beat back every hurdle that was ever placed in front of him.”

Mr. McCain acknowledged the challenge Saturday as he campaigned in Iowa, where President Bush won narrowly in 2004 but where polls show Mr. Obama with a healthy lead.

“I’d like to remind you that the political pundits have been wrong several times,” Mr. McCain said, “and they’re wrong because we will win the state of Iowa in November.”

Yet there were continued signs of confusion and turmoil in the McCain campaign, as his aides wrestled with conflicting advice, daunting poll numbers and criticism from state party leaders increasingly distressed with the way the campaign has been run.

Republicans said he had been damaged by several rallies last week in which supporters shouted insults and threats about Mr. Obama, prompting Mr. McCain on Friday night to chide audience members. His aides suggested that they were trying to find a balance between attacking Mr. Obama and painting him as untested and risky without stirring unruly crowd reactions.

Emotions are raw in the campaign, where Mr. McCain’s top advisers have voiced frustration at what they said was an unfair focus by the news media on the rowdy crowds.

“I think there have been quite a few reporters recently,” said Mr. McCain’s closest adviser, Mark Salter, “who have sort of implied, or made more than implications, that somehow we’re responsible for the occasional nut who shows up and yells something about Barack Obama.”

The difficulties of the McCain campaign have led some Republican leaders to express concern that he could end up dragging other of the party’s candidates down to defeat. “If Obama is able to run up big numbers around the country,” said Mr. Anuzis, the Michigan party chairman, “the potential for hurting down-ballot Republicans is very big.”

One sign of that has emerged in Nebraska, where Representative Lee Terry, a Republican, ran a newspaper advertisement featuring words of support for him from a woman identified as an “Obama-Terry voter.”

In this churning environment, Mr. McCain was getting conflicting advice from party leaders about what to do. Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who was a rival of Mr. McCain for the Republican nomination, said Mr. McCain, who has offered scattershot proposals on the economy, should present a broad vision of how he would lead the country through the economic crisis.

“I’m talking about standing above the tactical alternatives that are being considered,” Mr. Romney said, “and establish an economic vision that is able to convince the American people that he really knows how to strengthen the economy.”

But no subject has more divided Republicans than the one that has been a matter of disagreement in the McCain camp: how directly to invoke Mr. Obama’s connection to his controversial former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground who has had a passing association with Mr. Obama over the years.

In Colorado, a traditionally Republican state that Mr. McCain is struggling to keep in his column, the party chairman, Dick Wadhams, urged Mr. McCain to hit the issue hard, arguing that it was fair game and could be highly effective in raising questions about Mr. Obama in the final weeks of the campaign. He said he was surprised Mr. McCain had failed to do so in the debate last week.

“I think those are legitimate insights into who Senator Obama is,” Mr. Wadhams said. “I do not think it is irrelevant to this election.”

But Fergus Cullen, the Republican chairman in New Hampshire, said Saturday that he thought it would be a mistake for Mr. McCain to go down that road, warning that it would turn off moderate voters in his state who have a history of supporting Mr. McCain.

“I don’t think he should be giving into elements of the base who have been asking him to be going after, using Wright, using Ayers,” Mr. Cullen said. “Think about it as an undecided persuadable voter.”

Although Mr. McCain has declared Mr. Wright off limits, the campaign has brought up Mr. Ayers. But the campaign appeared to step back a bit in raising that relationship Saturday. At a rally in Iowa, Mr. McCain stuck to his usual attacks on the Democratic nominee on taxes, the financial crisis and housing.

For her part, Ms. Palin appeared to pull back on the sharp jabs at a fund-raiser in Philadelphia.

“We just want to make sure that in this campaign, that we uphold the standards of tolerance and truth-telling,” she said. “There have been things said, of course, that have allowed those standards to be violated on both sides, on both tickets. We want to uphold those standards, and again it’s not mean-spirited, it’s not negative campaigning, when we call someone out on their record.”

Mr. Cullen said he still thought that Mr. McCain could win his state but acknowledged it would be difficult. “The national news has not been politically favorable for us in the last two or three weeks,” he said. “He either has to come up with a way to make the discussion on the economy reflect better on the Republicans or change the subject to something else.”

Mr. Romney referred to his own defeat at the hands of Mr. McCain in arguing that Mr. Obama should not be packing his bags for the White House quite yet. “Never count John McCain out,” he said. “Who knows? He has ground to make up. But he makes up ground in a big hurry. He did it in the primary.”

HUFFINGTON POST = = = John Lewis Warns McCain: You're "Sowing The Seeds Of Hatred And Division"

Patty — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 22:46:40 EDT

Georgia congressman and Civil Rights leader John Lewis, reacting to the increasingly incendiary atmosphere at McCain-Palin campaign rallies, condemned the GOP for using tactics that are creating a mood not unlike the one created by George Wallace, the former segregationist governor and presidential candidate. Lewis accused the Republicans of "sowing the seeds of hatred and division," and warned the McCain campaign that they are "playing with fire:"

"As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign," Lewis said in a statement. "Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse."

The veteran Democrat even invoked one of the most divisive figures in recent U.S. history. "During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama," said Lewis.
He warned, "As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better."

The McCain campaign reacted quickly to push back against Lewis' statement:

Congressman John Lewis' comments represent a character attack against Governor Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale. The notion that legitimate criticism of Senator Obama's record and positions could be compared to Governor George Wallace, his segregationist policies and the violence he provoked is unacceptable and has no place in this campaign. I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I've always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track.

I call on Senator Obama to immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments that are so clearly designed to shut down debate 24 days before the election. Our country must return to the important debate about the path forward for America.

The Obama campaign declined to compare McCain's campaign with that of Wallace's, but backed Lewis' warning against the "hateful rhetoric" being used at some McCain-Palin campaign rallies:

Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies. 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.' As Barack Obama has said himself, the last thing we need from either party is the kind of angry, divisive rhetoric that tears us apart at a time of crisis when we desperately need to come together. That is the kind of campaign Senator Obama will continue to run in the weeks ahead.

The criticism from Lewis is especially sharp considering McCain has called him one of the "wisest" men he knows, one whose advice he would seek should he win the presidency.

YAHOO NEWS = = = Palin defiant after probe jolts McCain campaign

Patty — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:32:59 EDT

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AFP) - Vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin denied wrongdoing Saturday after a probe found she had abused voters' trust as Alaska governor, in a new blow to John McCain's trailing White House campaign.

Republican McCain was embroiled in turmoil of his own meanwhile, after he was booed late Friday by supporters and appeared to undercut his own campaign strategy by calling time on personal attacks on Barack Obama.

Alaska Governor Palin rejected the findings of a bipartisan legislative probe which found she violated ethics rules by letting husband Todd pressure top officials for the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper.

Asked by a reporter in Pennsylvania if the charges were true, Palin replied: "No, and if you read the report you will see that there was nothing unlawful or unethical about it. You have to read the report."

The report said that Palin had "the authority and power to require Mr Palin to cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act."

But in a phrase seized upon by the McCain camp, the report also said she acted within her "constitutional and statutory authority" in the case.

The probe was the latest blow to Palin, who electrified the Republican Party when she was first picked, but has seen her impact, especially among undecided voters and women diminish amid questions about her qualifications.

The damaging report could make it tougher for the McCain camp to portray Palin as a crusading reformer set to flush out corruption in Washington.

McCain meanwhile took to the campaign trail in Iowa, for the first time after he had to step in at a town hall meeting in Minnesota Friday, when one woman said Obama was an "Arab" and a man said he was "scared" of the Democrat.

Critics say the seething anger seen at McCain rallies, with shouts of "treason" and "kill him" heard from some crowds, has been whipped up by campaign ads which have accused the Democrat of associating with terrorists.

"He's a decent family man (and) citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign's all about," McCain said at the town-hall meeting in Lakeville, Minnesota.

McCain told the man who said he was "scared" to bring his new baby into an America ruled by Obama that the Democrat was a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

McCain's comments drew boos from some of his supporters and appeared to directly undercut the thrust of his aggressive negative ad campaign which has question whether Obama has a character befitting a president.

The campaign has accused Obama of not telling the truth about what he insists is a passing acquaintance with William Ayers, a 1960s radical who is now a college professor.

Palin, who has been cast in the role of attack dog by the campaign, did not repeat her criticisms of Obama over Ayers during an appearance in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Obama meanwhile acknowledged McCain's attempt to cool things down, but charged his rival with running a negative campaign to try to distract voters from the number one issue -- the tumbling US economy.

"Now, I want to acknowledge that Senator McCain tried to tone down the rhetoric yesterday in his town hall meeting and I appreciate his reminder that we can disagree while still being respectful of each other," Obama said.

"I have said it before and I'll say it again -- Senator McCain has served this country with honor and he deserves our thanks for that," Obama said, as McCain's name was greeted with boos at Obama's rallies in Philadelphia.

But McCain's spokesman Tucker Bounds immediately responded: "The tone of this election is not fueling voter outrage, it's that Americans are frustrated" at Obama's "plans to raise taxes during a down economy."

Just 24 days before the election, time appeared to be fast running out for McCain to change the trajectory of a campaign which has seemed to be slipping away ever since the onset of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

Obama led McCain 52 percent to 41 percent among registered voters nationwide, according to a new Newsweek survey, which a month ago had the race locked at 46 percent.

As many as 86 percent of voters said they were dissatisfied with the way things were going in the United States, and only 10 percent said they were satisfied -- a grim omen for Republicans.

YAHOO NEWS = = = Obama calls Ayers charges 'smears'

Patty — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:30:37 EDT

Sen. Barack Obama says in a new ad that he launched his first campaign at the Ramada Inn in Chicago, not the living room of former terrorist William Ayers, as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says.

The new ad takes a faintly mocking and even bemused tone.

McCain told ABC’s Charles Gibson this week: “He launched his political career in his living room, in Mr. Ayers' living room.”

The 30-second Obama ad, called “Lose,” airing in key states, says: “John McCain admits if the election is about the economy, he’s going to lose. Now as Americans lose their jobs and saving, McCain’s resorting to smears and false attacks. Barack Obama launched his first campaign here, not in anyone’s living room. And Bill Daley? He was confirmed as commerce secretary and praised for his great work … by none other than John McCain. It’s clear … with no plan to fix our economy, smears are all McCain has left.”

The “going to lose” quote is from a “top McCain strategist” to Thomas M. DeFrank, Washington bureau chief of the New York Daily News: “If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose.”

A Republican National Committee ad on Friday whacked Obama for associating with “William Daley: Heir to the Chicago machine. A top Obama adviser.”

McCain praised — and twice voted to confirm — Daley as secretary of commerce under President Bill Clinton. Daley, a Chicago businessman and Obama adviser, is brother of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and son of the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. He was chairman of Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000.

The new Obama ad shows a grip-and-grin photo of McCain and Daley together, signed by McCain.

YAHOO NEWS = = = Clintons launch campaign swing for Obama

Patty — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:27:48 EDT

WASHINGTON - When Bill and Hillary Clinton take the stage Sunday at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, it will be the launch of an active campaign for their former nemesis Barack Obama in the home stretch of the 2008 presidential race.

Once the nation's best known and most powerful Democrats, the former first couple is getting used to a new role: cheerleaders for Obama, who vanquished Hillary Clinton last spring in a Democratic primary contest for the ages.

Whatever recriminations the Clintons may still harbor from that long battle seem to have been nudged aside as they campaign in earnest for the Democratic ticket.

The New York senator and the former president will appear with Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, at a rally Sunday in Scranton, a working class town that has assumed something of an outsize role in the presidential race.

Biden was born in Scranton and lived there for several years as a child, while Hillary Clinton's father grew up in the town and is buried there. Both Biden and Clinton have emphasized their Scranton roots to illustrate their connection to blue collar voters.

After the rally, the Clintons will follow separate itineraries through presidential battleground states. They will also campaign on behalf of Democratic House and Senate candidates across the country.

Bill Clinton, who worked tirelessly for his wife during the primaries, seemed to take her loss more personally. Nonetheless, he gave Obama his full-throated endorsement at the Democratic convention in August. But he began stumping for the Illinois senator only recently, appearing at fundraisers and headlining two major events in Florida earlier this month.

After the Scranton rally, the former president was headed to Richmond and Roanoke, Virginia. He also planned events in the next few days in Ohio and Nevada, battleground states he won in 1992 and again in 1996.

Hillary Clinton was scheduled to hold a fundraiser for Obama on Sunday night in Philadelphia and planned a rally for him Monday in Montgomery County, a Philadelphia suburb rich in swing voters.

Clinton trounced Obama by 10 points in last spring's Pennsylvania primary, largely due to her strength among white working class voters. Sensing opportunity, Republican John McCain has campaigned actively in Pennsylvania but recent polls show Obama opening up a comfortable lead.

Hillary Clinton also planned return visits to Ohio and Florida in the next few days and has scheduled trips to Iowa and Minnesota.

She traveled Friday to Arkansas, her husband's home state and where she served 12 years as first lady, in hopes of making it more competitive for the Democratic ticket. A swing through Western battleground states is in the works as well.

Clinton did radio interviews this week in North Carolina, a reliably Republican state that has become a battleground in this presidential election. She also spoke to a Hispanic station in Florida and launched a women's canvass in Wisconsin Saturday by phone.

Aides said Hillary Clinton has been remarkably stoic about taking on the role of an Obama cheerleader following the close and often bitter primary in which she raised questions about his electability and readiness to govern.

Clinton's long and often bumpy career in public life has taught her to compartmentalize her feelings, her aides said, and by nature she does not dwell on the past.

In campaign appearances, she has pressed the need for a Democratic president to take on the nation's sour economy and crippling financial crisis. Polls during the Democratic primaries found voters gave her a clear edge over Obama when asked who would be a better economic steward.

"I think it is safe to say we have not seen more troubles at one time since World War Two," Clinton told a rally in Little Rock, Ark., Friday. "Probably no president will inherit more challenges that President Obama will, since Harry Truman had to take over from Franklin Roosevelt."

Aides said Clinton has headlined more than 50 events for Obama and has raised $10 million for his campaign since suspending her own presidential effort in June.

CNN = = = A Buckley endorses Obama

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:21:18 EDT

No, hell has not frozen over, but a Buckley is backing a Democrat for president.

Christopher Buckley, the son of the late conservative icon William F. Buckley, said Friday he's decided to back Barack Obama's White House bid, the first time in his life he will vote Democrat.

“It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup [sic] are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance," Buckley, a columnist for the conservative National Review, wrote on the Web site The Daily Beast Friday.

Buckley, who praised McCain in a New York Times Op-Ed earlier this year and defended the Arizona senator's conservative credentials against wary talk-radio hosts, said McCain is no longer the “real” and “unconventional” man he once admired.

"This campaign has changed John McCain," Buckley wrote. "It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget 'by the end of my first term.' Who, really, believes that?

"Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis," Buckley added. "His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?"

But Buckley made clear he's not just voting against McCain, praising Obama for his "first-class temperament and first-class intellect.

"Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy 'We are the people we have been waiting for' silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for," Buckley wrote.

CNN===Report: Palin abused power, violated ethics code in trooper case

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:19:30 EDT

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (CNN) — Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin abused her power as Alaska's governor and a violated state ethics law by trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police, a state investigator's report concluded Friday.

"Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda," the report states.

Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan's refusal to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten from the state police force was "likely a contributing factor" to Monegan's July dismissal, but Palin had the authority as governor to sack him, the report by former Anchorage prosecutor Stephen Branchflower states. However, it states that her efforts to get Wooten fired broke a state ethics law that bars public officials from pursuing personal interest through official action.

HUFFINGTON POST = = = McCain Faces Backlash Over Rabid Crowds

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:15:33 EDT

John McCain was booed by his own supporters during a rally on Friday after he described Barack Obama as a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

McCain was responding to a town hall attendee who claimed he was concerned about raising a child under a president who "cohorts with domestic terrorists such as [Bill] Ayers." Despite the fact that McCain and his campaign have repeatedly used Ayers to hammer Obama in recent days, the Arizona Senator tried to calm the man.

"[Senator Obama] is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared about as President of the United States," he said, before adding: "If I didn't think I would be one heck of a better president I wouldn't be running."

The crowd groaned with disapproval.

Later, McCain was again pressed about Obama's "other-ness" and again he refused to play ball. "I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab."

"No, ma'am," McCain said several times, shaking his head in disagreement. "He's a decent, family man, [a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about."

At another point, McCain declared, "If you want a fight, we will fight. But we will be respectful. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments." Supporters booed then also. "I don't mean that has to reduce your ferocity," McCain responded. "I just mean to say you have to be respectful."

The episode reflected the intensity of the anger that many McCain-Palin supporters have for Obama -- anger that was stoked, in large part, by McCain itself. It also underscored just how difficult a situation McCain has walked himself into. Hours before he attempted to calm nerves, the Senator's campaign sent out a statement to reporters defending the remarks of its crowd members.

"Barack Obama's attacks on Americans who support John McCain reveal far more about him than they do about John McCain. It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn't understand regular people and the issues they care about," read a statement from spokesman Brian Rogers. "Even worse, he attacks anyone who dares to question his readiness to serve as their commander in chief in chief. Raising legitimate questions about record, character and judgment are a vital part of the Democratic process, and Barack Obama's effort to silence and shame those who seek answers should make everyone wonder exactly what he is hiding."

One Democratic activist was eager to take advantage of McCain's more conciliatory remarks on Friday, quickly posting a video described as McCain's "new attack ad":

Earlier on Friday, Barack Obama had criticized John McCain recent campaign appearance saying it was "easy to rile up a crowd by stoking anger and division."

"I think that folks are looking for something different," he said. "But that's not what we need right now in the United States. The times are too serious."

In responding to this charge, Rogers attempted to deliberate simplify and obscure some of the rhetoric that has recently come from McCain supporters. Videos taken of people heading into McCain-Palin rallies have shown individuals who label Barack Obama as a terrorist, a communist and a threat to the well-being of the country. At a town hall meeting in Wisconsin on Thursday, several attendees urged the Republican nominee to attack his opponent on the Ayers issue and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who McCain himself has said should be off limits.

The rabid nature of the scene has startled longtime political observers and even former associates of McCain himself.

John Weaver, the Senator's former top strategist, has said McCain is making a tactical mistake by letting abusive hecklers have their voices heard during his forums. David Gergen, a longtime Washington strategist, has warned that the rhetoric from these attendees could "lead to some violence."

Veteran Republican Congressman Ray LaHood criticized Sarah Palin in particular, saying her rhetoric did not "befit the office she's running for."

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney denounced the recent campaign stops as dangerous and expressed alarm that the top of the Republican ticket would not protest the crowd's language.

"Sen. John McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin and the leadership of the Republican party have a fundamental moral responsibility to denounce the violent rhetoric that has pervaded recent McCain and Palin political rallies. When rally attendees shout out such attacks as "terrorist" or "kill him" about Sen. Barack Obama, when they are cheered on by crowds incited by McCain-Palin rhetoric -- it is chilling that McCain and Palin do nothing to object."

Veteran reporter Dan Balz has opined that "McCain's tactics are over the line, with no restraint in sight, and threaten to provoke reactions among partisans on both sides that will continue to escalate."

And Frank Schaeffer penned a solemn and critical column (first published in the Baltimore Sun) personally addressed to McCain himself: "If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence."

McCain, through Rogers' statement, is gambling that the voices of caution don't matter as much as the sentiments of the people. But he is also implicitly arguing that even the vilest rhetoric sent Obama's way is fair game when chalked up to concerns about the Illinois Democrat's past associations and judgments. And he's acknowledging that he won't lift a finger to dissuade the raging tempers.

HUFFINGTON POST = = = Troopergate Report: Palin "Unlawfully Abused Her Authority"

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:11:33 EDT

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain's Republican ticket.

Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report by a bipartisan panel that investigated the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain.

The inquiry looked into her dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, who said he lost his job because he resisted pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.

The report found that Palin let the family grudge influence her decision-making even if it was not the sole reason Monegan was dismissed. "I feel vindicated," Monegan said. "It sounds like they've validated my belief and opinions. And that tells me I'm not totally out in left field."

Branchflower said Palin violated a statute of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

"I disagree," said Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein. "In order to violate the ethics law, there has to be some personal gain, usually financial. Mr. Branchflower has failed to identify any financial gain."

The statute says "any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that (public) trust."

Palin and McCain's supporters had hoped the inquiry's finding would be delayed until after the presidential election to spare her any embarrassment and to put aside an enduring distraction as she campaigns as McCain's running mate in an uphill contest against Democrat Barack Obama.

But the panel of lawmakers voted to release the report, although not without dissension. There was no immediate vote on whether to endorse its findings.

"I think there are some problems in this report," said Republican state Sen. Gary Stevens, a member of the panel. "I would encourage people to be very cautious, to look at this with a jaundiced eye."

The nearly 300-page report does not recommend sanctions or a criminal investigation.

The investigation revealed that Palin's husband, Todd, has extraordinary access to the governor's office and her closest advisers. He used that access to try to get trooper Mike Wooten fired, the report found.

Branchflower faulted Sarah Palin for taking no action to stop that. He also noted there is evidence the governor herself participated in the effort.

Wooten had been in hot water before Palin became governor over allegations that he illegally shot a moose, drank beer in a patrol car and used a Taser on his stepson.

In proceedings revealed by the report, former Alaska State Trooper Col. Julia Grimes told investigators that Sarah Palin called her in late 2005 to discuss why Wooten hadn't been fired, and Grimes told her the inquiry was confidential by law.

"Her questions were how can a trooper who behaves this way still be working," Grimes said. "I asked her to please trust me, that because I can't tell her details I would ask her to please trust me that I would take the appropriate action if and when I knew what the findings were. ... I couldn't have another conversation with her about it because, again, it's protected by law."

Grimes said Todd Palin also contacted her by telephone in late 2005 to discuss the confidential investigation of Wooten.

Wooten's disciplinary case was settled in September 2006 _ months before Palin was elected governor _ and he was allowed to continue working as a trooper.

After Palin's election, her new public safety commissioner, Monegan, said he was summoned to the governor's office to meet Todd Palin, who said Wooten's punishment had been merely a "slap on the wrist." Monegan said he understood the Palins wanted Wooten fired. "I had this kind of ominous feeling that I may not be long for this job if I didn't somehow respond accordingly," Monegan told the investigator.

For months afterward, Todd Palin filed complaints about Wooten, saying he was seen riding a snowmobile after he had filed a worker's compensation claim and was seen dropping off his children at school in his patrol car. Monegan said Wooten's doctor had authorized the snowmobile trip and his supervisor had approved his use of the patrol car. Monegan said Alaska's attorney general later called him to inquire about Wooten, and Monegan told him they shouldn't be discussing the subject.

"This was an issue that apparently wasn't going to go away, that there were certainly frustrations," Monegan said. "To say that (Sarah Palin) was focused on this I think would be accurate."

HUFFINGTON POST = = = GOP Former Gov: "He Is Not The McCain I Endorsed"

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:15:30 EDT

GRAND RAPIDS -- He endorsed John McCain in the presidential primary, but now former Republican Gov. William Milliken is expressing doubts about his party's nominee.

"He is not the McCain I endorsed," said Milliken, reached at his Traverse City home Thursday. "He keeps saying, 'Who is Barack Obama?' I would ask the question, 'Who is John McCain?' because his campaign has become rather disappointing to me.

"I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues."

Milliken, a lifelong Republican, is among some past leaders from the party's moderate wing voicing reservations and, in some cases, opposition to McCain's candidacy.

During a stop in Grand Rapids on Thursday, Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican U.S. senator from Rhode Island, said he's voting for Obama and urging others to do likewise.

McCain campaigned for Chafee's unsuccessful re-election bid in 2006, but Chafee said he is concerned McCain has swung to the right, a divisive strategy that could make it difficult for him to govern.

"That's not my kind of Republicanism," said Chafee, who now calls himself an independent. "I saw what Bush and Cheney did. They came in with a (budget) surplus and a stable world, and look what's happened now. In eight short years they've taken one peaceful and prosperous world, and they've torn it into tatters."

As for McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his running mate, "there's no question she's totally unqualified," Chafee said.

He had similar reservations about Obama's lack of experience, but said the Democrat's handling of the campaign convinced him he's ready to lead.

Chafee said he has spoken with several other moderate Republican leaders, and "there are a whole lot of us deserting."

One of them is Phil Arthurhultz, a former Republican state senator from Whitehall, who was traveling the state with Chafee to drum up support for Obama.

Bob Eleveld is a former Kent County Republican chairman who led McCain's West Michigan campaign in 2000. This year, he has remained mum unless asked.

"I'm not supporting either of them at this point," he said. "Suffice it to say there are a number of people who have been strong Republicans in the past, including party chairs, who feel as I do."

He declined to name them.

In the past, McCain was more of a moderate known for his straight talk, Eleveld said.

"I think the straight talk is gone," he said, describing himself as a member of the party's moderate wing. "I think he's pandering to the Christian right. That's some straight talk from me."

Whether they represent a widespread movement or a few disenchanted members in the Republican Party is unclear.

"I don't think for one minute John McCain has violated the trust we put in him," said Marge Byington Potter, a former chairwoman of the Kent County Commission, who calls herself a moderate Republican. "I think McCain understands people are in a situation that people are hurting terribly."

Milliken stopped short of saying he will vote for Obama, but said he differs with McCain on the Iraq war and his choice of Palin.

"I know John McCain is 72. In my book, that's quite young," said Milliken, 86, Michigan's longest-serving governor. But he added, "What if she were to become president of the United States? The idea, to me, is quite disturbing, if not appalling.

"Increasingly, the party is moving toward rigidity, and I don't like that. I think Gerald Ford would hold generally the same view I'm holding on the direction of the Republican Party."

POLITICO = = = Not mentioning the market

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:11:14 EDT

McCain didn't talk about the stock market yesterday, and didn't put out a statement on it, while Obama did both, and McCain campaign manager Rick Davis was asked about that on a conference call (about Acorn!) this afternoon.

"There’s very little a candidate for president can say and very little the president can say about what’s happening in the stock markets except hope that they correct themselves," Davis said, adding that McCain's mortgage plan could be an "elixir" for the financial crisis.

"I can’t imagine a situation where on a daily basis the campaign would put out a statement about what the market was doing," he said. "It doesn’t meant that we don’t care and aren’t trying to do something about it."

The campaign, he said, shouldn't become a "CNBC news show on the stock market."

HUFFINGTON POST = = = Obama Called "Traitor" Again At McCain Rally

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:03:06 EDT

John McCain's rally on Friday once again inspired furious reactions from his supporters, with one woman screaming "traitor!" as McCain criticized Barack Obama's tax record.

"He promised higher taxes on electricity," McCain charged at the event in La Crosse, Wisconsin. "He voted for the Democratic budget resolution that promised to raise taxes on people making just $42,000 a year." At that point, the woman yelled "traitor," and both McCain and his wife Cindy appeared to look in her direction.

The Arizona Senator continued with his stump speech without referencing her.

As Talking Points Memo's Greg Sargent noted, GOP loathing for Obama seems to also be "spilling into down-ticket races," with one woman yelling "bomb Obama!" during a Thursday debate between Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss and his Democratic challenger.

During a Friday appearance on Fox News, Obama aide Stephanie Cutter said that McCain's crowds have become "mob-like" in their anger and argued that McCain cared "more about the state of his campaign than the economy."

"The thing that is most important right now is that we have got to instill confidence in people in our economy. We have got to calm people down," Cutter said. "We do not need to stoke fears on the campaign trail with these mob-like rallies that we have been seeing. We need to take a step back and provide steady leadership. This is a crisis. This is not what leaders do in crises. Barack Obama invoked FDR, 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' Those are words to live by at this point."

Cutter had been asked to weigh in on McCain's newest proposal for the government to buy home mortgages at face value from the banks and renegotiate them at terms more favorable to the homeowner. Clearly, however, she was hoping to further a meme that the Obama campaign sees as a winner: that McCain is appealing to the worst of people's fears and prejudices in order to advance himself electorally. But in referring to the crowds as "mob-like" Cutter brings the argument further than anyone else from Obama's headquarters.

The Senator himself sounded a similar theme during his speech in Ohio Friday morning.

"It's easy to rile up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States. The times are too serious. The challenges are too great. The American people aren't looking for someone who can divide this country -- they're looking for someone who will lead it. We're in a serious crisis -- now, more than ever, it is time to put country ahead of politics. Now, more than ever, it is time to bring change to Washington so that it works for the people of this country that we love."

McCain hasn't seemed all too eager to tamp down the hate-filled rhetoric emanating from his crowds, beyond merely distancing himself from two introductory speakers that used Obama's middle name as an epithet.

FOX NEWS = = = Obama Says McCain Is 'Stoking Anger and Division'

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:58:46 EDT

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio -- Democrat Barack Obama accused Republican John McCain of trying to divide the country Friday, but he let other Democrats handle harsher attacks while he kept his message mostly upbeat.

Speaking to an outdoor crowd in Chillicothe, Ohio, Obama said, "it's not hard to rile up a crowd by stoking anger and division." He said Americans want "someone who can lead this country" with a steady hand in a time of economic crisis, not divide it.

Echoing McCain's "country first" motto, Obama said: "Now more than ever it is time to put country ahead of politics."

Polls show Obama leading McCain in Ohio and several other battleground states, and he seems eager to keep his campaign on a steady, non-controversial course. As he has done for days, Obama criticized McCain's economic plans and urged Americans to stay calm and confident amid the dramatic drop in the stock market.

He again did not mention McCain's claim that he has associated with a former 1960s radical, William Ayers. When asked on a radio talk show, however, Obama said he thought Ayers, now a college professor and neighbor in Chicago, was rehabilitated.

Two high-profile supporters took sharper jabs at McCain before Obama came on stage on a sunny, cool day in front of the Ross County Courthouse.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland told the crowd, "the McCain-Palin campaign and some of their followers unfortunately want you to be afraid of Barack Obama."

Ohio's gun owners, Strickland said, "have nothing to fear from Barack Obama." Nor do people who revere "family and faith," he said, calling Obama "a strong Christian, family man."
Internet rumors have falsely claimed that Obama is a Muslim.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, also criticized McCain by name, saying the GOP nominee learned his economic lessons from the Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial pages.

Obama planned a rally in Columbus later Friday, his fifth Ohio event in two days.

FOX NEWS - - - FOX News Poll: Obama Maintains Lead Over McCain

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:55:39 EDT

Barack Obama leads John McCain by 46 percent to 39 percent, according to a FOX News national registered voter poll released Friday. Two weeks ago Obama led by 45 percent to 39 percent (Sept. 22-23).

Obama's advantage comes mainly from doing better among women, blacks, young voters, those with a college degree, and unmarried voters. He has increased his edge over McCain among women to 16 percentage points, up from a 4-point edge last month (Sept. 8-9).

Obama has also improved his standing with his party faithful. A month ago, 79 percent of Democrats were backing Obama. Today it is 86 percent. McCain has consistently received the backing of over 80 percent of Republicans and is backed by 83 percent today.

Independents split their vote 34 percent Obama and 32 percent McCain, with 24 percent unsure. That's little changed from two weeks ago when Obama was up by 36 percent to 31 percent and 29 percent undecided.

A 61 percent majority of voters believes Obama is going to win the election - more than three times as many as believe McCain will (18 percent). A month ago it was evenly divided: 41 percent Obama and 40 percent McCain (Sept. 8-9). This summer, voters were more likely to say Obama would win: 51 percent Obama and 27 percent McCain (July 22-23).

All of the interviews for the poll were conducted after the town-hall style presidential debate held on Tuesday, Oct. 7. Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from Oct. 8 to Oct. 9. The poll has a 3-point error margin.

There is no doubt the economy remains the single most important issue to voters this election. It is picked by 49 percent, which is more than all the other issues combined.

By 50 percent to 35 percent, Obama tops McCain as the candidate voters trust to handle the economy. Obama has the edge on all other issues tested save two - on handling the war on terrorism McCain is preferred by 14 points and on Iraq by 5 points.

The Obama-Biden ticket has a clear advantage on "having better judgment" (+ 7 points), "bringing the right change to Washington" (+ 15 points), "better understands American families and their problems" (+ 24 points). By a slim margin the Democratic ticket is also seen as better understanding "America's importance in the world" (+ 3 points).

The McCain-Palin ticket has a significant edge on "having more experience" (+ 28 points).

What about the gut check question? If you had to make the toughest decision of your life, which candidate would you go to for advice? 42 percent say Obama and 41 percent McCain. That's a significant shift from a month ago when 50 percent said they would go to McCain and 34 percent Obama (Sept. 8-9).

Among independent voters: 37 percent say they would go to McCain for advice and 32 percent Obama and 22 percent say neither.

Interest in the Election and Enthusiasm for Voting

Identical majorities - 58 percent - of Democrats and Republicans say they are "extremely" interested in the presidential election. And roughly equal numbers of Obama supporters (86 percent) and McCain supporters (83 percent) say the outcome of the election matters "a great deal" to them.

Almost all of each candidate's backers say they are certain of their support. Fully 89 percent of Obama's supporters say they are certain to vote for him, up from 85 percent in August. There is matching conviction for the Republican candidate: 91 percent of McCain's supporters describe their vote as certain, up from 86 percent in August.

In addition, a higher number of Democrats (62 percent) than Republicans (52 percent) say it is "extremely" important to them that their candidate wins. Similarly, Obama supporters (61 percent) are more likely to say it is "extremely" important to them that their candidate wins than McCain backers (49 percent).

Majorities of Obama supporters and McCain supporters say their vote is more a vote for their candidate than against the other candidate. Seventy-seven percent of Obama backers say they are voting for him rather than against McCain. Among McCain supporters, 65 percent say their vote is more for him than against Obama.

On the flip side, 28 percent of McCain backers describe their vote as being more against Obama. For Obama supporters, 17 percent say their vote is against McCain.

Importance of the Race and Age of the Candidates

Although many voters say race will not play a factor in their presidential vote decision, 45 percent say it will. Some 5 percent say the race of the candidates will be the "single most important factor" in deciding their vote, while 19 percent say it will be "one of several important factors" and another 21 percent say "a minor factor."

A 52 percent majority says the race of the candidates will not be a factor "at all."

Forty-seven percent of Obama supporters and 45 percent of McCain supporters say race will be a factor in their vote.

About 4 in 10 blacks (42 percent) and 4 in 10 whites (46 percent) say race will be a factor in deciding their vote. Among white voters who consider race a factor, 45 percent back McCain and 41 percent Obama. Almost all of the blacks who consider race a factor back Obama.

Six of 10 voters say the age of the candidates will play a factor in their vote. Here's how it breaks down: 5 percent say age will be the "single most important factor," 23 percent say "one of several important factors" and 32 percent say "a minor factor."

Some 39 percent say the age of the candidates will not be a factor in choosing a candidate.

Bush and Congress Approval Hit New Lows

Most Americans give negative ratings to President Bush: 69 percent disapprove - nearly three times as many as the 25 percent who approve of the job he is doing as president. That's the lowest approval rating Bush has received during his presidency.

Similarly, Congress gets its lowest rating ever, with just 13 percent assigning positive job marks, and 77 percent giving negative ratings.

AP = = = Lawmakers meeting secretly on Palin ethics report

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:50:03 EDT

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Alaska lawmakers are meeting behind closed doors to discuss a politically charged ethics report into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her state public safety commissioner.

The Republican vice presidential nominee has been accused of firing the commissioner to settle a family dispute. An investigator's report was expected to be released later Friday.

Palin supporters have called the investigation politically motivated. Protestors wearing clown noses and carrying balloons greeted lawmakers with cheers that the circus was in town.

The investigation focuses on Palin's firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan. Monegan says it was retribution for resisting pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister.

CNN = = = Thousands of voter registration forms faked, officials say

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:47:53 EDT

CROWN POINT, Indiana (CNN) — More than 2,000 voter registration forms filed in northern Indiana's Lake County by a liberal activist group this week have turned out to be bogus, election officials said Thursday.

The group — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN — already faces allegations of filing fraudulent voter registrations in Nevada and faces investigations in other states.

And in Lake County, home to the long-depressed steel town of Gary, the bipartisan Elections Board has stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.

"All the signatures looked exactly the same," Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican on the board. "Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same."

The forms included registrations submitted in the names of the dead — and in one case, the name of a fast-food restaurant, Jimmy Johns. Sally LaSota, a Democrat on the board, called the forms fraudulent and said whoever filed them broke the law.

CNN = = = Biden to Palin: Don't lecture me on patriotism

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:46:09 EDT

JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri (CNN) – Joe Biden Thursday night told Sarah Palin not to lecture him on patriotism, after weeks of attacks mocking him for his statement the wealthy should be patriotic and pay higher taxes because not enough has been asked of them.

"Sarah Palin had great fun saying Joe Biden thinks paying taxes is patriotic. Well, let me tell you what Joe Biden thinks," the Delaware senator said at an outdoor rally. "Joe Biden thinks that anybody who takes millions of dollars offshore to avoid paying their fair share is unpatriotic."

The Obama-Biden campaign has accused John McCain of saying publicly he would close offshore banking loopholes, but saying otherwise in private.

"That is not patriotic and it will stop, it will stop in an Obama-Biden administration! Enough! I've had it up to here! Don't lecture me on patriotism," shouted Biden, getting drowned out by the applause of his supporters. "I'm dead tired of being taken advantage of. I'm getting tired of it."

Biden also said he's had enough of the McCain camp's personal attacks on Obama, slamming the Arizona senator for violating the "ethics" of the old neighborhood for not having the courage to go after Obama's character in their debates the way he has in speeches and in television ads.

"In my neighborhood you want to say something about me, look me in the eye and tell me," said Biden. "Say it to me straight up. Say it to me head on. That's the code, that's the ethics! Say it to me! Ladies and gentlemen, I'm tired of losing, I'm tired of taking this stuff, I've had enough."

There has been a perceptible shift this week in Biden's approach to attacking the opposing ticket. Since Wednesday, he has been increasingly willing to take on Sarah Palin individually, instead of his earlier approach of lumping her in with McCain or ignoring her altogether.

Biden's comments on patriotism were the second time he returned Palin's fire Thursday. Earlier, in Liberty, Missouri, Biden attacked McCain's new mortgage plan, using Palin's quip from last week that she has been listening to Biden's speeches since the second grade, which was intended to paint him as a Washington insider.

"That's true," Biden responded. "But she was in sixth grade the last time John had a new idea."

However, in the second use of that line here in Jefferson City, Biden incorrectly said Palin had made those comments directly to him at their debate in St. Louis last Thursday, rather than at a Columbus, Ohio rally three days prior.

CNN = = = Palin: Obama puts ambition over country

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:43:51 EDT

After a week of hammering Barack Obama over his ties to former radical William Ayers, Sarah Palin opened up a new line of attack Friday by questioning Obama’s patriotism, citing a newspaper report that the Illinois senator negotiated with Iraqi officials this summer to stall a White House agreement on a timeline for troop withdrawals from the country.

“We’ve learned that Barack Obama tried to influence negotiations with Iraqi leaders in a way that would set back America's cause there, while advancing his campaign here,” Palin said at a morning fundraiser in the upscale Cincinnati suburb of Indian Hill.

“We learned this morning that Iraqi officials are saying Senator Obama tried to make a secret deal with the Iraqi government and he apparently wanted this action delayed, some more strategy delayed, that would reduce troop numbers until the next president takes office.”

Palin was referring to a Washington Times report Friday that said Obama privately pushed Iraqi officials in June to delay negotiating a long-term “status of forces agreement” until the new president enters the White House, a move that would appear to step on the Bush administration, which was in the midst of negotiating its own agreement.

According to the article, the Obama campaign insisted the Democratic nominee was negotiating in his capacity as a senator, and that he believes Congress should have input on negotiations over troop reductions.

Palin accused Obama of presumptuously meddling in the affairs of a sitting president, at the expense of U.S. troops.

"Obama apparently tried to undermine our government's official efforts to reduce troops in Iraq,” she said. “If this is a true, again, it is a stunning example of putting ambition above country. To put political ambitions in front of doing what's right for our troops is breathtaking and it is unacceptable."

“I pray to God that people have enough time to let this register with them and start again, connecting the dots and understand the contrast between the tickets,” Palin said.

CNN = = = Strickland accuses McCain-Palin of “untruths,” “fear tactics”

Patty — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:42:45 EDT

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio (CNN) - Governor Ted Strickland told southern Ohio voters here that the McCain-Palin ticket and gone too far with its campaign tactics in an effort to keep the White House in Republican hands.

"I know Barack Obama. I think I know what's in his heart. He is bright he is capable he is mature he is steady we can trust Barack Obama," he said.

A native of the area, Strickland has traveled with Obama on his bus tour here, and offered testimonials in a region that would not automatically be considered friendly to Democrats. At the Friday morning rally on the county court house steps, the Ohio governor told the audience Obama was a "strong Christian family man" and to the gun owners and sportsmen he said they had "nothing to fear" when it came to their Second Amendment rights.

"Why do I share those two things with you this morning? Because the McCain-Palin campaign, and unfortunately some of their followers, would want you to be afraid of Barack Obama," he said. "They want you to believe that he is untested and unknown, and they are doing it my friends for one reason, they want to hold onto the power they have and to the positions that they want. This election is too important for us to be fooled by untruths and half-truths and smear tactics. They don't want us to focus on the fact that they have been in charge of the White House for eight long years."

Later, he added, "We are drawing a line in the sand in Chillicothe and southern Ohio."

Obama echoed Strickland's sentiments, although not as overtly. He continued to argue that the McCain campaign's "barrage of nasty insinuations and attacks" were a result of the Republican nominee's failed economic ideas.

"They can run misleading ads, they can pursue the politics of anything goes. It will not work. Not this time. I think that folks are looking for something different this time. It's easy to rile up a crowd, nothing's easier than riling up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States. The times are too serious," Obama said.

HUFFINGTON POST = = = Todd Palin Had Unusual Access To Wife's Staff, Investigation Shows

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:41:29 EDT

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The state Supreme Court refused Thursday to halt an ethics investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee.

The ruling clears the way for lawmakers on Friday to release a report on their investigation into whether Palin abused her power by firing her public safety commissioner. The report could prove to be an embarrassment for Palin and a distraction for John McCain's presidential campaign.

Lawmakers are investigating whether Palin abused her power to settle a family dispute. Her former public safety commissioner says he was dismissed after resisting pressure to fire a state trooper who had gone through a nasty divorce from Palin's sister.

Republican lawmakers had sued to block the report, saying it had become politicized. Palin didn't join that lawsuit. Her husband, Todd, and some of her top aides are cooperating in the inquiry.

In affidavits submitted Wednesday, Todd Palin and two top aides for his wife's administration portrayed the firing as the result of continued wrangling between the governor and her public safety commissioner over control of the agency. The affidavits also portray Sarah Palin as uninvolved while her husband repeatedly tried to spread the word that their former brother-in-law was unfit to remain a state trooper.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court refused to block the legislative investigation but did not immediately explain why.

For several years, dating before Sarah Palin became governor, Todd Palin was telling state officials and the couple's close circle of advisers emotional stories about Mike Wooten, their former brother-in-law, threatening and emotionally abusing his family.

Todd Palin said he talked to anyone who would listen. He gave them photos and documents, which they forwarded to others in the administration, and he questioned how Wooten kept his job.

Walter Monegan says he was fired from his job as public safety commissioner for not dismissing Wooten, a claim that eventually led to the politically charged investigation just before McCain chose Palin as his running mate in late August.

Palin says she fired Monegan over a budget dispute.

Todd Palin said he never pressured anyone, including his wife. In fact, he says that after repeatedly talking with her about the matter, she finally told him to "drop it."

"Anyone who knows Sarah knows she is the governor and she calls the shots," Todd Palin wrote. "I make no apologies for wanting to protect my family and wanting to publicize the injustice of a violent trooper keeping his badge."

Republican lawmakers argued before the state Supreme Court this week that the legislative inquiry should be shut down and the report not released. The state's personnel board also is looking into the matter, and Palin has said she thinks that inquiry is more appropriate.

HUFFINGTON POST = = = Economic Crisis Beats Racial Divisiveness

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:38:31 EDT

Perhaps the first sign that racism may not play a determining role in the general election was when the McCain campaign gave up on Michigan.

President Bush lost the severely economically distressed state in both 2000 and 2004. But some thought Sen. John McCain had a chance of tying Sen. Barack Obama to the scandal that cut short Kwame Kilpatrick's term as mayor of Detroit. (They're both black, y'know.)

But working-class Michigan apparently isn't as racist as some hoped. The McCain campaign last week abruptly pulled out of Michigan, telling the Washington Post that since Michigan is an "economic basket case," McCain can't possibly win there.

Racism, both subtle and overt, has not been hard to find in this election. But the economic crisis may be challenging racism in an unprecedented way. Instead of fostering scapegoating and deeper division, the urgency of the crisis is prompting a gut check in some -- to look past color and think about what is best for their economic security.

In September, the New Yorker's George Packer traveled economically-depressed Ohio. He found considerable racism holding Obama back, but also reported this eyebrow-raiser:

Dave Herbert was a stocky, talkative building contractor in an Ohio State athletic jersey. At thirty-eight, he considerably lowered the average age in Bonnie's. "I'm self-employed," he said. "I can't afford to be a Democrat." Herbert was a devoted viewer of Fox News and talked in fluent sound bites about McCain's post-Convention "bounce" and Sarah Palin's "executive experience." At one point, he had doubted that Obama stood a chance in Glouster. "From Bob and Pete's generation there are a lot of racists--not out-and-out, but I thought there was so much racism here that Obama'd never win." Then he heard a man who freely used the " 'n' word" declare his support for Obama: "That blew my theory out of the water."

Politico's Ben Smith relayed a similar anecdote:

An Obama supporter, who canvassed for the candidate in the working-class, white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, sends over an account that, in various forms, I've heard a lot in recent weeks.
"What's crazy is this," he writes. "I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are f***ing undecided. They would call him a n----r and mention how they don't know what to do because of the economy."

Recently, Time Magazine's David Von Drehle visited a Missouri exurb and found far less racism, with economic concerns driving support for Obama:

"I really wanted Hillary," said Holly Haggard, a purposeful young woman in tan slacks and running shoes. "Well," her husband Robbie quickly reminded her, "now we got Obama." He said this in a tone of voice that made me think he wasn't too happy about the fact.
If this story had been written a few months ago, that exchange might have been the gist of it -- white working-class voters left cold by Barack Obama. But then Holly came back with exactly the thing Obama might hope she would say: "Yeah, and we got $3.74 gas too." For many Americans, the price of gas remains shorthand for a whole world of economic woes.
Robbie's response this time was almost a sigh of resignation. "Think I don't know that?" he said softly.
I soon gathered that six of the eight adults standing in that driveway planned to vote for Obama in November. Their support ranged from enthusiastic to reluctant. And of course, there's nothing scientific about one driveway. But I heard similar things throughout my trip. Among white voters, Obama appeared to be rising on a pile of empty wallets. Many folks in Lincoln County shared that impression.
"Who do you think will win around here?" I asked.
"Obama," Robbie Haggard answered flatly, and several others agreed.
"But Missouri's always been Republican," [Tammy] Pyle protested.
"I think Missouri's had about enough," Holly Haggard said...
...at this late stage of the campaign, after dozens of interviews across this toss-up state, evidence suggests that the issue that once seemed as if it would dominate this election -- Obama's race -- is not consuming the people who will actually decide.

Beyond the urgent nature of the faltering economy, what else is causing people to reassess race? Not the Obama campaign directly. While Obama delivered one the best speeches on race in American history, he has not been interested in continual direct confrontations about race. During the New Hampshire primary, when asked if he would lead a "national conversation about race," Obama replied, "I'm less interested in a conversation about race in the abstract. All the self-flagellation, it's not useful. African-Americans get all riled up, and whites get defensive."

But some are leading that conversation. Union members.

As the New York Times reported last week, union organizers are making peer-to-peer contact with their memberships, to bring racial issues out in the open and make the case that our economic problems are too dire to let skin color and false smears determine their vote.

Video of AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka speaking about how racism should no longer divide America's workers has made a slow burn throughout the blogosphere, and illuminates how bluntly union leaders are addressing race today

It would appear that the union effort, quietly confronting the issue on a peer-to-peer basis, is making an impact, prompting more and more people to put aside racial bias and put economic concerns first.

Meanwhile, the voices of hate grow louder. For example, see this video of conservatives at a McCain-Palin event, showing people openly calling Obama a "terrorist" because of his "name" and his "bloodlines."

Other media reports at McCain-Palin events find crowd members shouting racist and even murderous comments.

The McCain campaign seems conflicted on to how deal with this dynamic. On one hand, the McCain campaign is continuing to play guilt-by-association games that have an unmistakable racial subtext. On the other, the campaign recognizes it needs a stronger economic message to turn the polls around -- evidenced in this week's debate by McCain's lack of smear-based attacks and unveiling of a new mortgage proposal.

If the crumbling economy is pushing America further past racism, McCain needs to tune out the disturbing hate coming from his unruly crowds and seek to beat Obama on who is best for the economy. To conclude that economically suffering states like Michigan are unwinnable for McCain is to conclude that the election is unwinnable for McCain.

Because none of the above is to say that only the election victory of Obama is proof that America is moving beyond racism. Only that the economic needs of America are proving to be paramount to most voters.

In the Democratic primary, sexism was prevalent. But in the end, Sen. Hillary Clinton was not held back by gender and judged as capable to be president. The glass ceiling was shattered by her candidacy even if she eventually lost.

Similarly, we may be having an election where Obama is at least judged by most to be capable to be president, in particular in regards to the economy, putting the final decision back on issues where they belong. Because so far, Obama has been making his case, even to those uncomfortable with the idea of black president, that he has the superior economic skills.

McCain is a gambler, but it's a bad bet to cede the economic argument to Obama in this environment. Better to recognize that racial attitudes may be in the midst of a major shift, junk the old race card tricks, and make a stand on the economy.

HUFFINGTON POST - - - Alaskan Independence Party: The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel - - - WRITTEN BY ROBERT KENNEDY JR

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:35:11 EDT

In 2004, America's malleable mainstream media allowed itself to be manipulated by artful Republican operatives into devoting weeks of broadcast attention and drums of ink to unfairly desecrating John Kerry's genuine Vietnam heroics while obligingly muzzling serious discussion of George W. Bush's shameful wartime record of evasion and cowardice.

Last week found the American media once again boarding Republican swift boats against this season's Democratic candidate armed with unfair and hypocritical attacks artfully designed by GOP strategists to distract attention from the cataclysmic outcomes of Republican governance. Vice Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin has taken to faulting Senator Barack Obama for his casual acquaintance with a respected Illinois educator Bill Ayers, who forty years ago was a member of the Weathermen, a movement active when Obama was eight and which he has denounced as "detestable." Palin argues that the relationship proves that Obama sees "America as being so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

The Times dedicated a page one article to Obama's relations with Ayers and CNN's Anderson Cooper obliged Palin by rewarding her reckless accusations about Obama's patriotism with a major investigative report. Fox, meanwhile, is still riveting its audience with wall to wall coverage of this pressing irrelevancy.

But if McCarthy-era guilt-by-association is once again a valid political consideration, Palin, it would seem, has more to lose than Obama. Palin, it could be argued, following her own logic, thinks so little of America's perfection that she continues to "pal around" with a man--her husband, actually--who only recently terminated his seven-year membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. Putting plunder above patriotism, the members of this treasonous cabal aim to break our country into pieces and walk away with Alaska's rich federal oil fields and one-fifth of America's land base--an area three-fourths the size of the Civil War Confederacy.

AIP's charter commits the party "to the ultimate independence of Alaska," from the United States which it refers to as "the colonial bureaucracy in Washington." It proclaims Alaska's 1959 induction as a state "as illegal and in violation of the United Nations charter and international law."

AIP's creation was inspired by the rabidly violent anti-Americanism of its founding father Joe Vogler, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American," reads a favorite Vogler quote on AIP's current website, "I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." According to Vogler AIP's central purpose was to drive Alaska's secession from the United States. Alaska, says current Chairwoman Lynette Clark, "should be an independent nation."

Vogler was murdered in 1993 during an illegal sale of plastic explosives that went bad. The prior year, he had renounced his allegiance to the United States explaining that, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government." He cursed the stars and stripes, promising, "I won't be buried under their damned flag...when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home." Palin has never denounced Vogler or his detestable anti-Americanism.

Palin's husband Todd remained an AIP party member from 1995 to 2002. Sarah can be described in McCarthy-era palaver as a "fellow traveler." While retaining her Republican registration, she attended the AIP's 1994 convention where the party called for a draft constitution to secede from the United States and create an independent nation of Alaska. The McCain Campaign has reluctantly acknowledged that she also attended AIP's 2000 Convention. She apparently found the experience so inspiring that she agreed to give a keynote address at the AIP's 2006 convention and she recorded a video greeting for this year's 2008 convention. In other words, this is not something that happened when she was eight!

So when Palin accuses Barack of "not seeing the same America as you and me," maybe she is referring to an America without Alaska. In any case, isn't it time the media start giving equal time to Palin's buddy list of anti-American bombers and other radical associates?

HUFFINGTON POST = = = McCain Co-Chair Calls Obama "A Guy Of The Street," Raises Drug Use

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:32:12 EDT

Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a McCain campaign co-chairman, edged up to an explicitly racial attack on Barack Obama on Thursday, describing the Illinois Senator as a "guy of the street" before raising his youthful drug use.

Appearing on Dennis Miller's radio show, Keating charged that the Democratic nominee was covering up his "very extreme" record, and urged Obama to be more honest with Americans. "He ought to admit," Keating said, "'You know, I've got to be honest with you. I was a guy of the street. I was way to the left. I used cocaine. I voted liberally, but I'm back at the center.'"

Keating began to address Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright -- a topic that John McCain himself has said should be off-limits -- but Miller interrupted him to return to the discussion of cocaine.

Listen to the audio here.

The criticism is the latest in a spate of increasingly aggressive attacks from the McCain-Palin camp.

It's unclear what Keating meant by "a guy of the street," but his assertion that Obama should "admit" his brief drug use in high school makes little sense, since it was Obama himself who did disclose it in his memoir published 12 years ago.

Keating was one of McCain's earlier supporters, endorsing the Arizona Senator even before he officially launched his 2008 presidential bid. Keating is a member of McCain's National Campaign Committee, and serves as co-chair for various campaign groups, such as Catholics for McCain and Sportsmen for McCain.

Here's the transcript from Miller's program today:

MILLER: It's the most liberal, let's just say that. We're talking to Frank Keating, former Oklahoma Governor, John McCain supporter. Frank, let's just say, it's the most liberal. The thing that bothers me the most about all this with Barack Obama is not the -- I know he's the most liberal guy. You know, I know he's gotten this close to the White House and I know most people don't realize he's probably the most liberal senator we have. The thing that bothers me the most is I recognize the obfuscation and the smoke and mirrors as Clinton-esque. When I hear him reduce Ayers to "this is a guy who lives in my neighborhood" or Rev. Wright, "I was there 500 times and never saw him." The acts themselves don't bother me as he's starting to treat me like an idiot too when he's blowing this smoke my way. He ought to just come clean and say, "listen, I came up through Chicago, you make some errors there." I'd almost be able to absolve it more easily then. KEATING: Well, and that's what concerns me, Dennis, because when I was in the State Senate and statehouse of my state, if someone had voted against the entire state budget because it had too much money for corrections, all of us would have, you know, strained our necks to find out who is this because that would have been a very extreme position, basically saying to a law enforcement officer as I was or my son was a state trooper, "you know, you make an arrest, you risk your life, for nothing" because we're going to make sure that person doesn't go to prison even though the laws of the state require it. So, that puzzles me. Just he ought to admit, "you know, I've got to be honest with you. I was a guy of the street. I was way to the left. I used cocaine. I voted liberally, but I'm back at the center." I mean, I understand the big picture of America. But he hasn't done that...
MILLER: He's copped to that...
KEATING: Jeremiah Wright is...
MILLER: Wait, I've got to jump in Frank. He has copped to the blow use, right? I mean, he did so in his own book he said he did blow.
KEATING: Oh yes, he did.
MILLER: Well, I'm just saying that doesn't enter this to me.

NY TIMES = = = McCain Questions Obama-Ayers Relationship

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:22:24 EDT

Senator John McCain joined in the attacks on Thursday on Senator Barack Obama for his ties to the 1960s radical William Ayers as he told an angry, raucous crowd that “we need to know the full extent of the relationship” to judge whether Mr. Obama “is telling the truth to the American people or not.”

Although Mr. McCain did not mention Mr. Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground, by name, his intent was clear in his response to a question from a participant at a town hall-style meeting here. The man told Mr. McCain that “we’re all wondering why Obama is where he’s at’’ and then asked, “Is there not a way to get around this media and line up the people he has hung with?’’

Mr. McCain responded: “Well, sir, with your help and the people in this room, we will find out, just as Senator Clinton said in the primary that we should find out about this association. Look, we don’t care about an old washed-up terrorist and his wife who still, at least on Sept. 11, 2001, said he still wanted to bomb more. You know, but that’s not the point here. The point is, Senator Obama said he was just a guy in the neighborhood. We need to know that’s not true.’’

At this point, the crowd in the Center Court Sports Complex booed furiously.

Although Mr. McCain questioned Mr. Obama’s ties to Mr. Ayers in a televised interview last spring, he has refrained from attacking Mr. Obama for his association with Mr. Ayers in the public arena of the general election campaign. Until now he has left those attacks to his campaign operatives and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin. Ms. Palin appeared with Mr. McCain at the Waukesha event.

Mr. Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a neighbor of Mr. Obama who was named Chicago’s Citizen of the Year in 1997. He gave a house party when Mr. Obama was running for the State Senate and the two have crossed paths on a schools project and a charitable board. A New York Times article reported last week that although records and interviews with a dozen people who know both men suggest that Mr. Obama has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, the two men do not appear to have been close.

Mr. McCain’s reference to Mr. Ayers’ desire to bomb more was from an article that was by chance published on Sept. 11, 2001, when The New York Times wrote about Mr. Ayers and his just-published memoir, ”Fugitive Days.’’ The article opened with a quotation from the author: ”I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Three days later, Mr. Ayers wrote on his Web site that the meaning of his clarified remarks had been distorted.

Most of the bombs the Weathermen were blamed for were meant to do only property damage, but a 1970 pipe bomb in San Francisco attributed to the group killed one police officer and severely hurt another.

CNN = = = Obama targets McCain plan, says he's erratic

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:12:41 EDT

Barack Obama called John McCain’s plan for the government to buy back bad mortgages “risky” because it leaves already burdened taxpayers with the bill.

“We have to act to fix our broken economy and restore the credit markets. But taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to pick up the tab for the very folks who helped to create this crisis,” he told an 8,000 plus crowd in a Dayton minor league baseball stadium. “It’s a plan that would guarantee that American taxpayers lose by handing over $300 billion to underwrite the kind of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street that got us into this mess.”

Obama also got a little personal; seizing on the fact that the McCain campaign originally indicated Tuesday he supported purchasing mortgages of strapped homeowners at a discount. But by Wednesday his proposal had changed and instead called for the government to buy the mortgages at face value even if they were worth more than the home itself.

“This is the kind of erratic behavior we’ve been seeing out of Senator McCain, you remember the first day of this crisis he came out and said the economy was fundamentally sound, then two hours later he said we were in a crisis,” Obama said. “I don’t think we can afford that kind of erratic and uncertain leadership in these uncertain times. We need steady leadership in the White House. We need a President we can trust in times of crisis.”

CNN = = = Alaska Supreme Court won't halt Palin probe

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:11:16 EDT

An investigation into Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner can proceed, Alaska's Supreme Court ruled Thursday, clearing the way for a Friday report to the state Legislature on the issue.

The justices rejected an effort to halt the probe by the Republican vice presidential nominee's allies in the Legislature, who called the investigation an attempt by partisan Democrats to sabotage the GOP ticket.

The justices unanimously upheld an Anchorage judge's ruling last week that dismissed the Republican lawsuit and upheld subpoenas for top Palin allies.

CNN = = = New polls show Obama in control

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:09:50 EDT

Barack Obama continues to hold significant leads over John McCain, a fresh round of state and national polls out Thursday suggest, in what is unwelcome news for the Republican presidential nominee as Election Day inches closer and closer.

The Illinois senator now holds a 6 point lead over McCain nationwide, a new CNN poll of polls consisting of five recently released surveys show, while 8 percent remain undecided.

A string of new state polls also show Obama holding significant leads in several key battleground states, including Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. McCain is holding onto leads in Montana and Missouri.

In Minnesota, CNN's latest poll of polls shows Obama up 11 points, 52-41 percent, while he holds a 9 point lead in CNN's latest New Hampshire poll of polls, 51-42 percent. Obama is also holding onto a 4 point lead in Ohio, 50-46 percent in CNN's latest poll of polls there.

In West Virginia, Obama holds an 8 point lead in a new American Research Group poll, though CNN's Sept. 21-23 poll of West Virginia showed McCain leading there by 4 points. In Wisconsin, a new Research 2000 poll shows Obama with a 10 point lead, 51-41 percent. CNN's Wisconsin poll earlier this month showed Obama with a 5 point lead.

In Missouri, a new CNN poll of polls shows McCain hanging onto a 1 point lead, while the Arizona senator has a 5 point lead in Montana according to a new American Research Group poll.

cnn - - - Obama purchasing 30 minutes of network airtime

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:07:54 EDT

Barack Obama is buying 30 minutes of airtime on the major television networks just days before the presidential election, the Obama campaign confirms.

Sources with the Obama campaign say half hour blocks have been purchased on Wednesday, October 29. The campaign would not disclose which networks the airtime has been purchased on, but a Hollywood reporter story said earlier Thursday the campaign has already reached a deal with CBS and is in talks with NBC and Fox.

SALON NEWS = = = Going for broke in Pennsylvania

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:18:35 EDT

Oct. 9, 2008 PHILADELPHIA — | When John McCain effectively ended campaigning in Michigan last week, he assured nervous Republicans that he was still trying to play offense where he could. Pennsylvania, which John Kerry barely won four years ago, was suddenly one of McCain’s top swing-state targets. If he could grab its 21 electoral votes, McCain might well leave Barack Obama scrambling to find the 270 votes needed to become the next president. After all, Hillary Clinton had stomped Obama in the Democratic primary here; if McCain’s maverick shtick could help him steal away any big industrial state, this might be it. The campaign shuttled Michigan staff to Pennsylvania and began focusing on the white working-class Democrats who flocked to Clinton in April.

But McCain’s choice for a last stand is starting to look as though it might not work out much better than Custer’s. Recent polls show the state slipping away from McCain — even in the “bitter” parts of the state where Clinton racked up her biggest margins six months ago. And Obama is outspending McCain on TV here, having dropped $2.2 million on ads last week, while McCain spent $1.6 million. McCain visited Bethlehem, Pa., Wednesday, with Sarah Palin. But even if he can narrow the gap with Obama, which is widening with the worsening economy, increasingly optimistic Democrats say McCain will run into fatal problems in Philadelphia.

The way Democrats typically win statewide elections in Pennsylvania is pretty simple to describe, even if it’s not always easy to pull off: Rack up a big margin in Philadelphia, a smaller margin in Pittsburgh and the Philly suburbs, win an even smaller margin near Scranton, and hold on for dear life when the votes come in from the rural parts of the state, which James Carville once described as “Alabama in between.” Four years ago, John Kerry was beating George W. Bush by 412,000 votes after ballots were counted in Philadelphia. He went on to win the state by only 144,000, or about 2.5 percent of the 5.8 million votes cast.

This time, Obama is hoping to count on even more votes out of Philadelphia, even if he can’t win over some sections of the city where Democrats usually do well. Thousands of new Democratic registrations poured in to state offices on Monday, the last day to register for the Nov. 4 election. Democrats added 500,000 new voters around the state in the past year, while Republicans saw a net loss of 28,000.

In particular, turnout among black voters (very important in a city that’s 44 percent black) could spike from the low 60 percent range up to around 70 percent. That could mean more than 40,000 new votes for Obama in Philly alone, as black voters support the first major party black presidential candidate. Obama will visit the city Saturday, making stops in black neighborhoods for mini-rallies designed to get the vote out — his first such trip since the primary.

“This is an election of pride for us,” said Maurice Floyd, a political consultant in Philadelphia who has done get-out-the-vote work for city Democrats and for Republican Sen. Arlen Specter over the years, and who served for four years as one of the city’s election administrators. “This might not come along again for a long time.” Other consultants, whether advising Obama or just observing from the sidelines, said voters seem to be more motivated than usual, meaning the hard work of getting supporters to the polls on Election Day could be a little easier. “People vote when they’re scared, people vote when right track/wrong track [polling] is bad, people vote when elections are going to be contested,” said Neil Oxman, a veteran Democratic strategist in Philadelphia who is not working for Obama. “And then on top of that you have a trained field organization and you have an African-American candidate.”

At Club Damani, in the basement of the Harambee Institute Charter School in West Philadelphia (where the bathroom tiles are decorated with drawings of Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles and other black musicians), a few school workers and some friends from the neighborhood got together Tuesday night to watch Obama and McCain debate. The lounge usually hosts large weekly meetings of West Philadelphia for Obama, but it was mostly empty Tuesday night; the meetings are on Thursdays, and only a handful of people responded to fliers that organizers spread in the blocks around the school. Still, the people who did come out — none of whom were officially members of the Obama support group — said their neighbors are tuned in.

People want “something different, other than a white man, an old white man from the South,” said Lee Sullivan, 46, who manages the radiology practice at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, a couple miles to the southeast. “A rich old white man from the South been the president the last how many, 16 years?” Sullivan and his friends said they knew plenty of people who didn’t bother voting last time who are ready to come out this year. “People got soured on voting last time, too, because if you voted in 2000, you didn’t want to vote in 2004,” said Anwar Amin, 32, who teaches sixth grade at Harambee, an Afro-centric charter school.

Philadelphia politics being as complicated as they are, no one is quite sure exactly what the voter turnout will actually look like. In the primary against Hillary Clinton, Obama won Philadelphia easily, but with a lower turnout than he’ll need in November; only about 54 percent of Democrats voted. Turnout in heavily black sections of the city was sometimes higher than the overall average — across the eight wards in West Philadelphia, for instance, turnout was 55 percent. But in North Philadelphia’s 10 wards, it was 47 percent. (Both neighborhoods are more than 75 percent black.) Gov. Ed Rendell, a former mayor who’s still very plugged in to the city’s political infrastructure, and Mayor Michael Nutter, whose organization is less developed than Rendell’s, both supported Clinton — which probably reduced turnout substantially in neighborhoods where Democrats usually work hard to drag out every last available voter.

Partly because the primary was so hard-fought, some Democratic operatives in the city are privately critical of Obama’s campaign, which has set up its organization mostly separate from the established infrastructure. Elections in Philadelphia are often won through the liberal — and, for some reason, legal — distribution of “street money” to paid get-out-the-vote workers, funneled through the city’s 69 ward leaders, many of whom also serve on the City Council or in the state House or Senate. (One consultant reminisced fondly to me about watching aides for an earlier Democratic campaign split up $1 million in small bills into envelopes of $50 or $100 each in preparation for Election Day, while armed guards stood watch outside headquarters. Another told a story about ward leaders pestering then-Vice President Walter Mondale for street money during a 1980 campaign stop on behalf of Jimmy Carter’s losing reelection bid.) It’s a cozy system, and one that quite a few people have some interest in maintaining.

Nutter, a reformer who won a tough five-way primary last year before cruising to a general election victory, wasn’t tied to the established system and barely had an organization in many of the city’s black neighborhoods (though that didn’t stop him from becoming just the city’s third black mayor). But even Nutter, who sometimes feuds with Philly’s entrenched power structure, had to play the street-money game. Once he wrapped up the Democratic nomination last year, essentially clinching his victory, he sent the city’s Democratic City Committee $200,000 the week before his election last fall, enough to help the party pay about $200 per division — smaller areas within the city’s wards, each with about 1,000 residents — to get the vote out.

Obama’s aides won’t say whether their plan for Nov. 4 involves writing a check that local power brokers can turn into petty cash. With 78 field offices around the state and 11 in Philadelphia, the Obama campaign says it’s relying on volunteer organizers. “We have the biggest and baddest volunteer organization that this state has ever seen, and we are going to leverage it for all it’s worth on Election Day,” said Sean Smith, Obama’s Pennsylvania spokesman.

Local ward leaders said they still hope the campaign sends some money to the City Committee. “You still have to remind people to come out and vote, by any means necessary,” said Lester Brown, the Democratic leader in West Philadelphia’s Ward 24. On Election Day, Brown will have people knocking on doors, giving voters rides to the polls, and monitoring polling places. He says he likes to be able to buy them lunch. “You can’t just take people for granted. Elections don’t work that way,” he said. “Although they may be excited, you still have to work on that.”

The McCain campaign, meanwhile, says it’ll pull voters out of the woodwork in Philadelphia and elsewhere. One campaign official predicted — despite all the available evidence — that if voter turnout in Philadelphia increased, it would benefit McCain. (Perhaps recognizing that didn’t make much sense, the official wouldn’t speak on the record.)

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that African-American turnout will be the best it’s been in six, seven, eight, nine, 10 presidential elections,” said Oxman, the Philly Democratic strategist.

Of course, with the economy as bad as it is, Obama ultimately may not need to worry about the margin he racks up in Philadelphia. Every day that bad economic news makes the headlines, the state as a whole seems to slip further away from McCain. Still, a good ground game in 2004 helped Bush keep the state close. Now, Democrats are starting to let themselves hope the same thing will help Obama put the state away.

INDY STAR - - - Obama outspends GOP on Indiana advertising

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:14:56 EDT

WASHINGTON - Democrat Barack Obama spent more than three times as much on advertising in Indiana last week than did the Republican Party, according to the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project.

Obama spent $614,000 on Indiana advertising compared with the Republicans' $179,000 from Sept. 28 through Oct. 4. The Republican National Committee is paying for the Indiana ad buy criticizing Obama.

Obama's Indiana spending was the 10th highest among the 15 states where he ran ads. The GOP's Indiana spending was the 12 highest among the 15 states where McCain and the GOP aired ads last week.

Obama is trying to become the first Democratic presidential candidate in more than four decades to carry Indiana.

Ken Goldstein, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who directs the ad-tracking project, noted that 10 of the 15 states where both sides are advertising were won by President Bush in the 2004 election.

"The campaign is being played on the Republican side of the field this year," Goldstein said.

In a change from early September, the last time the project released state-by-state ad spending figures, the Obama campaign is now out-spending the other side in nearly all of the competitive states except in Iowa and Minnesota.

More than half the money spent by both sides went to seven Midwestern battleground states including Indiana.

Both parties spent the most in Ohio, with Obama spending $2.2 million on ads compared with McCain's $1.7 million.

Nearly all of the ads run by McCain or his party were negative, according to Goldstein, while about one-third of Obama's were.

McCain advertising spending by state 9/28/2008-10/4/2008:

Ohio: $1,727,000
Pennsylvania: $1,645,000
Michigan: $1,250,000
Wisconsin: $896,000
Colorado: $801,000
Florida: $659,000
Minnesota: $608,000
Virginia: $547,000
Nevada: $329,000
Iowa: $227,000
Missouri: $193,000
Indiana: $179,000
New Hampshire: $160,000
North Carolina: $148,000
New Mexico: $144,000

Obama advertising spending by state 9/28/2008-10/4/2008:

Ohio: $2,218,000
Florida: $2,213,000
Pennsylvania: $2,202,000
Virginia: $2,057,000
Michigan: $1,590,000
North Carolina: $1,236,000
Wisconsin: $1,189,000
Colorado: $980,000
Nevada: $616,000
Indiana: $614,000
Missouri: $492,000
New Hampshire: $354,000
New Mexico: $185,000
Iowa: $172,000
Minnesota: $121,000

(Source: University of Wisconsin Advertising Project.

CBS NEWS = = = The Fight For North Carolina

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:09:05 EDT

At first glance North Carolina might seem an unlikely battleground. This is, after all, where George W. Bush won a comfortable 12-point victory in 2004 despite the presence of a North Carolinian on the Democratic ticket; where twice as many voters said they were conservatives as said they were liberals; and where no Democratic Presidential candidate has won in thirty years.

But the past isn’t necessarily prologue in this fast-growing state, with its influx of urban, higher-income professionals of the sort Barack Obama tries to attract, and a recent surge in the voter rolls in Democratic areas. It could end up being one of the more interesting states to watch in 2008, and here are the key things, and areas, to look at:

Part I: The growth

It’s better to think in terms of numbers than percents in this case: George W. Bush won North Carolina by 436,000 votes - a fairly substantial sum. That means a vote swing of around 200,000 to the Democrats would make this a real battleground. So where could the Democrats find - or the Republicans lose - that many votes?

Obama would need to meld a strong African-American vote with upscale suburbanites. That would start with newer voters, and there are plenty of those. There are six million registered voters in North Carolina now, 500,000 more than in 2004 -- enough to make a difference.

The bulk of that change came in the run-up to the Democratic primary contest, since the summer of 2007, when the current Presidential race started heating up.

That advantaged the Democrats. The number of registered Democrats is 250,000 more than today than it was in summer 2007; the number of registered Republicans is only 60,000 higher, which makes for a pro-Democratic difference of 190,000 in that time. That gap, all by itself, is enough to make this state a battleground -- if they all turned out (as always, a big if) and they voted as their registration would indicate.

The geographical distribution of the registration change is as important as the numbers - and points us to important areas to watch. If the Democrats are going to gain votes anywhere, it will be first and foremost in the Raleigh-Durham area, with its relatively higher-income white professionals to whom Obama will try to appeal.

Ways To Win
Calculate your own path to the presidency with our Electoral Vote prediction map.

Wake County, which contains Raleigh, is key. It went marginally for Bush in 2004 but it could swing Democratic now, and would probably need to for Obama to be competitive in North Carolina. It has been trending Democratic: Bush won by 19,000 in 2000 but by just 7,000 in 2004. Today there are more than 560,000 voters in the county, about 100,000 more than in 2004 and an increase of 60,000 from summer ‘07. The change in registration is plus-20,000 Democratic.

Durham County, nearby, is a place where Democrats typically do well; it is home to universities and has a relatively large percent of voters under the age of 40. Here again, Kerry did better than Gore, and Obama would need to build on that. Today Durham has 25,000 more voters than in the run-up to 2004, and the bulk of the registration increase has been Democratic.

Obama beat Hillary Clinton by 2 to 1 in Raleigh-Durham and did well with whites earning over $75,000 per year and with college graduates, who comprise a large share of the vote in the area. He’ll need to succeed with that demographic again.

Also watch the high-growth county of Mecklenburg, around Charlotte to the south. Kerry won here by about 12,000 votes, reversing the Republican win in 2000. Registration totals there are 150,000 higher than four years ago and 60,000 from summer ‘07. Democrats now outnumber Republicans in the county by 85,000, increasing their margin by 30,000 in just the last year.

If the state ends up being competitive, Obama must run up sizeable margins from these more urban, upscale counties if he is to have any chance of offsetting the gains in the more rural areas where McCain is sure to be strong, judging from the 2004 Bush victory.

The foundation of the Bush state-wide win was his overwhelming margin victory in the emerging exurban areas nestled in the counties around Charlotte and bordering South Carolina (watch especially the suburbs and exurbs of Union County and Gaston County).

In Forsyth County, home to Winston-Salem (and 200,000 voters) Bush won with 54% of the vote. Registration here hasn’t expanded as fast as in other counties. Bush eviscerated Kerry in rural and small-town parts of the state, and also garnered a substantial margin in Eastern North Carolina, where most the state's conservative Democrats reside. If Obama does manage to turn out newer voters in Raleigh-Durham, McCain will need at least to hold on to the large Bush margins elsewhere. Some of the more Republican counties just aren’t growing as fast.

One caution when reading the partisan registration numbers: the trends are telling, but the overall registration breakdowns can be misleading. Registration records for many older registered Democrats are actually holdovers from the days when they first registered in the Democratic “solid south,” but many of these “registered Democrats” actually have been voting and thinking of themselves as Republicans now for a generation. Even as George W. Bush was winning the state handily in 2004 and more voters in exit polls said in they were more Republican (40%) than Democratic (39%), registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans in the official figures.

Part II: Race and the race

It would be a mistake to consider North Carolina a potential battleground solely because it has a large African American vote, though that support would be a major part of any Obama coalition.

In 2004 black voters made up 26% of the electorate, and Bush won 14% of their support. Much of this could be attributed to cultural, religious appeals; as it was in Ohio that percent was higher than it was nationally (11%).

If one assumes that McCain’s could only win around 5% of the African-American vote against Obama, 100,000 votes could swing to the Democrats, just based on the size of 2004 electorate.

However, the Democratic primaries helped bring in new African American voters this year. Right now there are about 1.2 million black voters in the state (North Carolina, covered by the Voting Rights Act, keeps such data) an increase of around 200,000 from the summer of 2004 and 160,000 since summer 2007.

The major question is whether Obama could lose as many votes among white voters - and white Democrats - as he’d gain from higher turnout among blacks.

In the primary, Obama lost the white vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly twenty-five points. This could make North Carolina less competitive than its neighbor Virginia, where Obama won the white primary vote.

All that said, whites in the primary who said race was a factor in their vote comprised only 8% of the electorate, and Obama actually carried 36% of them. (By comparison, in West Virginia 20% of whites called race a factor and Obama got just 12% of them.) And Obama - like any national Democratic candidate - doesn’t need to win the white vote in North Carolina; he could make this state competitive by getting somewhere over one-third of it if African American turnout is high.

Some places to watch to see how well Obama is doing in this regard:

Buncombe County, in the western part of the state, with the city of Ashville, a less affluent area: This is a large county that went marginally for Bush, but where Kerry closed the gap from 2000. Democrats rely on white working-class voters to keep things close here.

Cumberland County, near Fayetteville and the smaller Robeson County in the southern part of the state are potentially Democratic, mostly white and blue-collar strongholds.

These areas will be affected by the economy’s troubles at least as much as anywhere else. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports the unemployment rate in North Carolina has surged to a preliminary estimate of 6.9% now, from 5.2% this spring. With heavy loses in manufacturing, these culturally-conservative blue-collar voters could be hit especially hard - setting up another set of battle lines between Obama and McCain.

Part III: Turnout and Early Voting

Finally, because so much hinges on turnout, it is essential to watch the early voting rates in North Carolina. The state provides a window in the weeks before the election for voters to cast ballots as “one-stop” absentees - essentially, getting and casting an absentee ballot all in one visit. It is so convenient that about one-third of the state’s vote is cast this way, and that percent could even be higher this year.

Anything that makes voting easier potentially increases turnout, and both the Obama and McCain camps will be working to get their supporters out to vote early; it helps voters avoid long lines on Election Day. That can be especially important to the newest voters who might otherwise skip the hassle, or to those who haven’t voted in the past because of their schedules.

The Obama campaign should have an effective operation in place from the primaries. Obama received 228,000 votes in the primary from “one-stop” or absentee voting, more than one-quarter his total support. (And the Clinton campaign got around one-fifth of its votes this way - so there are plenty of Democrats who’ve already gone through the process.) Watch the early voting rate come late October. If it’s high, that’s a leading indicator of a competitive race.

So the pivotal question is: Will Obama muster enough suburban backing, and enough African-American turnout, to trump North Carolina’s traditional Republican base?

WSJ - - - News Flash: The Media Back Obama

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:00:35 EDT

Both time and events have dimmed those defining moments that early on revealed the difference between the two presidential aspirants. Not only did the financial crisis arrive but so, in her uproarious way, did Sarah Palin. Tuesday's debate between two candidates paralyzed by caution altered nothing. It was a relief, of course, not to hear about Sen. McCain's record as a "maverick" -- a word that would, in a merciful world, be banned from public discourse for the next decade. It was too much to expect Barack Obama to spare us further recitals of the McCain-Bush connection.

The single constant in the eternal election remains the media, whose activist role no one will seriously dispute. To point out the prevailing (with honorable exceptions) double standard of reporting so favorable to Mr. Obama by now feels superfluous -- much like talking about the weather. The same holds true for all those reports pointing to Mr. Obama's heroic status outside the United States -- not to mention the cascade of press analyses warning that if he fails to win election, the cause will surely be racism.

None of this means that the media's role will go unremembered -- who will forget MSNBC news, voice of the Obama campaign? Never has a presidential election produced more fodder for the making and breaking -- or tainting -- of reputations.

The same is true of news sources making far greater claims to fairness. So it was only slightly startling to read a New York Times forecast (Sept. 22) about the presidential debate to come in which reporter Katharine Q. Seelye declared, " . . . Mr. Obama should expect Mr. McCain to question his credentials for the job at every turn -- and to distort his views, as Mr. Romney insisted he did."

That first debate brought the usual legions of commentators -- among them CNN foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour. John McCain, she pointed out, had stumbled over Ahmadinejad's name, and as he was supposed to be the expert on foreign policy, it made her giggle.

"That's not fair -- people make mistakes all the time," Anderson Cooper shot back. But Ms. Amanpour, whose capacity for sustained levels of bombast is one of the wonders of the world, was having none of it.

She would go on to raise the theme so central to the Obama campaign, and held, as revealed truth, by the politically progressive everywhere -- that the U.S., fallen low in the eyes of the world, is now in dire need of moral salvation. Everywhere she went in America, Ms. Amanpour declared, she found "desperate Americans" -- desperate, that is, about the low esteem in which the country was held, desperate to have a president who would lift America up.

Mr. Obama could not have said it better himself. He is the leading exponent of the idea that our lost nation requires rehabilitation in the eyes of the world -- and it is the most telling difference between him and Mr. McCain. When asked, in one of the earliest debates of the primary, his first priority should he become president, his answer was clear. He would go abroad immediately to make amends, and assure allies and others in the world America had alienated, that we were prepared to do all necessary to gain back their respect.

It is impossible to imagine those words coming from Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama has uttered them repeatedly one way or another and no wonder. They are in his bones, this impossible-to-conceal belief that we've lost face among the nations of the world -- presumably our moral superiors. He is here to reform the fallen America and make us worthy again of respect. It is not in him, this thoughtful, civilized academic, to grasp the identification with country that Mr. McCain has in his bones -- his knowledge that we are far from perfect, but not ready, never ready, to take up the vision of us advanced by our enemies. That identification, the understanding of its importance and of the dangers in its absence -- is the magnet that has above all else drawn voters to Mr. McCain.

Sen. Obama is not responsible for the political culture, but he is in good part its product. Which is perhaps how it happened that in his 20 years in the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- passionate proponent of the view of America as the world's leading agent of evil and injustice -- he found nothing strange or alienating. To the contrary, when Rev. Wright's screeds began rolling out on televisions all over the country, Mr. Obama's first response was to mount a militant defense and charge that Rev. Wright had been taken out of context, "cut into snippets." This he continued to do until it became untenable. Then came the subject-changing speech on race. Such defining moments tell more than all the talk of Sen. Obama's association with the bomb-planting humanist, William Ayers.

These sharp differences between the candidates as to who we are as a nation may not seem, now, as potent an issue for voters as the economy, but they should not be underestimated. This clash -- not the ones on abortion or gay marriage -- is the root of the real culture war to play out in November.

Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

POLITICO = = = Dem strategists see landslide in the making

Patty — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:51:17 EDT

Three weeks of historic economic upheaval have done more than just tilt a handful of once reliably Republican states in Barack Obama’s direction. Democratic strategists are now optimistic that the ongoing crisis could lead to a landslide Obama victory.

Four large states John McCain once seemed well-positioned to win — Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida — have in recent weeks shifted toward Obama. If Obama were to win those four states — a scenario that would represent a remarkable turn of events — he would likely surpass 350 electoral votes.

Under almost any feasible scenario, McCain cannot win the presidency if he loses any of those four states. And if Obama actually captured all four states, it would almost certainly signal a strong electoral tide that would likely sweep the Southwestern swing states — Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada — not to mention battlegrounds from New Hampshire to Iowa to Missouri.

One month ago, Democratic strategist Paul Maslin, who closely tracks the electoral map, thought that perhaps Democrats would win by a couple of percentage points. At best, he thought Obama might earn a slight majority as Democrats earned in 1976, the last time the party’s presidential nominee cracked the 50 percent barrier.

“Now it’s a whole different world,” Maslin said. “The economy is way beyond 1992. In 1980, it was the Iran hostage crisis and the economy. I’ve never seen an issue take this kind of prominence.”