Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: Maverick A Strike - A US Elections Blog, Quick thoughts

Dear God, it’s finally here.

It’s worth recalling just how absurdly action-packed this two-year campaign has been. The First Lady Candidate vs the ambitious young black senator. The earliest-ever primaries. The shock in Iowa, Hillary’s tears. The Michigan-Florida farrago, which saw the term “Democratic Rules Committee” enter water-cooler vocabulary. John McCain’s campaign out of money, written off, and then reborn in New Hampshire. Guliani’s Florida gamble. Rev. Wright and “A More Perfect Union”. Bill Clinton’s “fairytale”. “Clean and articulate”. The pit bull, Katie Couric, Tina Fey and Joe the Plumber (say it ain’t so, Joe!). The dramatic Powell endorsement. Then - just as it all seems to be over - Obama’s grandmother dies the day before the election. You couldn’t make it up.

I’m 28, British, and have only been watching elections closely since the Bush era began. But surely this has been the most dramatic campaign since 1968. I wonder if anything - short of, God forbid, an inaugural assassination - can bring it to a suitably compelling climax.

But the next 24 hours should be pretty damn good.

Essential resources (besides the obvious):

• Twitter’s election portal offers stream-of-conscious commentary from its (Obama-centric) young user base
• Twitter accounts @866OURVOTE and @electionjournal have live reports of voting problems and fraud, while Twitter Vote Report offers voting reports from across the country (on a map!)

I’ll be twittering non-stop once the results start coming in. Happy voting, America!

Permalink | One comment | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: Clippings, Maverick A Strike - A US Elections Blog, Politics

It’s a natural instinct for Obama supporters to leap to his defence in the face of every attack by conservatives. And there is a lot of crap being thrown around. But as polling day looms, it’s worth remembering that there are some real problems with Obama and his candidacy. Whether any of them is a dealbreaker, I’ll leave up to you.

Three attacks on Obama that shouldn’t worry you…

1. He’s friends with some shady types. 

You already know about Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The McCain campaign is now focusing on William Ayers, the former violent 1960’s radical who has served on a charity board with Obama; there’s also been controversy over Obama’s links to Tony Rezko, the property dealer currently charged with corruption, and ACORN, a voter registration group that supported his early campaigns and has been accused of voter fraud. The four cases are very different: Ayers’ sins are most serious, but were longest ago, and there’s no real evidence the two were friends.h They do appear to have retained some charity connections after Obama found out about his past _ I’ll leave it up to you whether it would be more honourable to drop a charitable project because of its founder’s childhood crimes, or to condemn those crimes and persevere. Rev. Wright’s relationship with Obama was the longest, but his crimes were minor - if you consider a little light demagoguery a crime at all - and Obama has denounced them thoroughly and publicly (indeed, Sarah Palin seems to be about the only person left in the McCain campaign who doesn’t understand why he’s no longer an issue). ACORN supported Obama’s early campaigns, but Obama hasn’t been otherwise involved with them since the early 1990s, back in his community-organising days. 

Rezko is probably the most worrisome connection, as the crimes are recent and the two were genuinely close. But Obama is accused of no wrongdoing. In the end, these issues aren’t resonating with voters because there’s no evidence that Obama ever sympathised with or collaborated in any of their wrongdoings (with the possible exception of Wright). Supposed “revelations” by conservatives, usually providing evidence of slightly closer ties than previously thought, have failed to suggest Obama was complicit in anything illegal or reprehensible. Obama’s initial riposte - that he should be judged by his own past, not that of his friends - seems to satisfy most voters. After all, realistically, it seems unlikely anyone can rise in Chicago’s notorious political scene without picking up some questionable associations.

2. He voted “present” 130 times in the Illinois senate. 

File this one under “true but misleading”. In fact, he voted “present” 129 times, but this accounts for only 3% of the over 4,000 votes he participated in. Nor are these the fence-sitting abstentions they seem. Illinois allows senators to vote “present”, and it’s traditionally used as a way of opposing measures with a little less risk than voting “no”. You might think that a little cowardly, but Obama’s use of it is nothing special by Illinois standards.

3. He’s been a do-nothing in the U.S. Senate.

Obama has been accused of missing most Senate votes to focus on his campaigning. As one snarky article put it, “For twenty years, Obama has walked the floors of the most prestigious institutions in the nation, but has left no footprints other than those from his runs for whatever office came next.” And it’s true that, in the last year, Obama’s Senate record has been decimated by his campaigning. He’s missed 47% of votes this year, placing him third in Washington Post’s ranking of vote-missers. But who’s at number one, missing a whopping 64.1% of this years votes? You guessed it: one Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

And one that should

1. Accessibility. The press is right to be angry at its lack of any opportunity to question Sarah Palin, barring one, heavily stage-managed press conference a few weeks ago. But Obama has not gone out of his way to make himself accessible. His early press conferences were marked by his tendency not to directly address difficult questions. His campaign stops have generally eschewed the traditional Q&A with audiences. And his campaign has come down hard on reporters they feel have misrepresented it or the polls. Even his much-vaunted web presence, while utilising thousands of volunteers around America, has been highly centralised when it comes to the media message. None of this is a problem, per se. But it suggests a man who isn’t really comfortable with criticism. And we’ve had someone like that for the last eight years. If Obama wins, his supporters should join in the outrage if he doesn’t improve on  Bush’s terrible record of inaccessibility to the press.

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: Maverick A Strike - A US Elections Blog, Politics, Posts

Perpetually fretting Democrats will not want to accept it. The campaigns themselves can’t afford to believe it. Many journalists know it but can’t say it. And there will certainly be some twists and turns along the way. But take it to a well capitalized bank: Bill Ayers isn’t going to save John McCain.  The race is over.

John McCain’s candidacy is as much a casualty of Wall Street as Lehman or Merrill… Before Wall Street’s collapse Senator McCain was ahead. His approval ratings remained high, his VP pick had generated excitement and interest, and his campaign operatives were capable, on any given day, of winning news cycles and giving their opponents fits. And then the underpinnings of American capitalism begin to sink — and with them sunk McCain.

An election dominated at its inception by the war in Iraq is now overwhelmingly focused on the economy. More than half of voters in polls say that the economy is their top concern and Senator Obama enjoys double digit leads among voters asked who can better fix our economic mess. Put simply, there is no way Senator McCain can win if he continues to trail Senator Obama by double digits on the top concern of more than half of voters.

Howard Wolfson, “It’s Over: Why Bill Ayers Won’t Save John McCain“

What could turn things round? Wolfson points to a domestic terror attack as the only thing that could seriously shake things up now. I think the “Bradley effect” is likely to mean Obama’s vote will be smaller on the day than the polls suggest now, potentially making things very tight. And the danger is that overconfident Obama supporters will stay at home. The democrats have to warn against complacency and focus all their efforts on getting out the vote.

Still, it’s true: a McCain victory now would be a stunning turnaround.

Track the latest odds on the race

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: Clippings, Maverick A Strike - A US Elections Blog, Politics

The lesson? The surge has not, as expected, neutralised Obama’s gains on having opposed the war. He can keep using having opposed the war, in mainstream arenas, and score real points on judgment. This is big news.

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: !Media, Clippings, Culture & Media, Maverick A Strike - A US Elections Blog, Politics

This is the first time I’ve realised just how dangerous going negative could be for Obama. Thanks to - conspiracy alert - McCain-Feingold, this and all other Obama ads have to have his specific approval message on. There’s no way to run a Biden-fronted anti-McCain TV campaign that Obama can distance himself from. So every attack has to be balanced against the risk of losing the sheen of bipartisanship that has made Obama attractive so far - especially risky given that McCain has now set out so hard for that same ground.

Obama has to stick to the same strategy he pursued with his convention speech - stay broadly positive and put some meat on the bones. We need details, and more details. That promise of tax cuts for 95% of Americans needs to be repeated, and trumpeted, and sung from the hills till everyone is sick of it. Those details - those specific promises - are the only thing that can keep this campaign from sliding right into a 2004-style gutter of character assasination. And if it comes down to character, Obama will lose. Sorry, he will. If Americans go into that booth and choose the person who, deep down, they just feel they trust more, like more, or would rather have a beer with - it will be McCain who comes out on top. War hero trumps inspiring black guy. It just does.

It’s ironic, given the characterisation of Obama’s victory over Clinton as being one of style over substance, that policy - and particularly economic policy - is actually Obama’s big advantage. He’s not playing it enough.

UPDATE: Andrea Tantaros agrees with me, sort of

UPDATE 2: Sullivan puts it more succinctly:

Obama must maintain the high road. He must keep insisting that the McCain-Palin camp has no new policies to offer on the most critical issues we face, especially in foreign policy. And he must carefully and relentlessly explain what he intends to do. If he does that and refuses to take the bait, he will win. If he descends into the foul sewer where McCain now resides, he will lose.

Karl McCain knows one thing: how to smear, lie, disorient, distract, and intimidate. You can’t beat these thugs and liars at their own game. Beat them at the task of government. They are unfit for it. Obama is not.

UPDATE 3: Joe Biden kind of gets it (he also follow’s Sullivan’s earlier advice to ignore Palin). But will Obama follow this line?

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: Maverick A Strike - A US Elections Blog, Politics, Posts

In 2005, before Palin ran for office, she and her husband, Todd, claimed the trooper, Mike Wooten, threatened to kill Sarah Palin’s father. Wooten was suspended over the allegations for five days in 2006 but still has his job. The Palin family also accused Wooten of drinking beer in his patrol car, illegally shooting a moose and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson.

Palin’s Lawyer Has Already Questioned Two Witnesses - law.com

What? They accused him of shooting a moose?

The increasingly likely vice-president of the United States appears to have the life of a minor character in a Coen Brothers movie.

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: Clippings, Maverick A Strike - A US Elections Blog, Politics

Why, as a New York-based paper, are we not backing Rudolph Giuliani? Why not choose the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly? What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL?

That man is not running for president. The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

- New York Times

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: Clippings, Maverick A Strike - A US Elections Blog, Politics