the informercial

By now, you'd have to be living as a recluse not to have heard about last night's broadcast of a 30 minute infomercial produced by the Obama campaign. It could be watched on three of the major networks and on many others. To watch it from the begining : click here.

What was the aim of this long ad? Obama wanted/needed to

-  reintroduce himself to the electorate in a more direct and casual fashion and on his own terms

-  reassure the voters that the candidate is not a radical, to  that the Republicans have been striving to define

-  showcase some of his policy proposals by presenting them as answers to the problems faced by ordinary Americans who are clearly given a substantial and yet support role in the grand narrative. 

-  make use of Obama's capacities as a public speaker, and remind voters of how powerful his rhetoric can be was almost forgotten after hours of watching the drawn-out presidential debates. 

-  show that the candidate is "presidential" (notice how the office in which half of the scenes take place has a bit of an oval office feel to it).

What struck me the most is how cleverly Obama is presented as a professor, a father, a son, a preacher, a listener, and probably in a few more roles. The editing is quite smooth although the strings are often quite apparent and the transitions pretty obvious, but this is probably no accident. American history is deftly interwoven in the narrative and provides the Obama story with a broad backdrop, and presents his candidacy as something that is no rupture with the "American soul", despite his emphasis on change. This makes voting for him participating in something historic and deeply rooted in the American dream. 

So despite the poor musical choices, the video works quite well, I thought. 

Why spend more than $5M for this last minute ? 

-  the Obama campaign is probably trying to avoid complacency and encourage people to vote even if the polls are in favour of Obama, though the gap is probably closing and most of the so-called "undecided" will probably go to McCain ( listen to the October 23rd  installment of It's all politics from NPR, available on i-tunes)

-  and why not? they have the cash at hand, so why not launch a final push

For the West Wing fans out there : read this article on the similarities between the fictionnal campaign of the last season of the series, aired in 2006 and the 2008 election. It is striking, and I am currently rewatching that very season with unabated enthousiasm. 

name calling...

With Obama still leading in the polls, the Republicans have been getting itchy and the crowds drawn to Palin or McCain rallies have become quite aggressive, whenever the Democrat's name is mentionned you can hear booing and people shouting "terrorist" or even worse.  Obama has even attracted white supremacist would-be killers. 

The other big word that has been bandied around recently is "socialist". Obama used the expression "spread the wealth around" and as soon as I heard McCain pick it up during the last debate I knew that it would be a major talking point for the Republicans. This notion truly repells many Americans who believe that you get what you deserve and that it shouldn't be for the State to ensure equality. 

This week, my favourite radio show deals with the election in one of the crucial battleground state : Pennsylvania. The electorate is mostly white and blue collar and this is a group of voters that Obama has been struggling to convince ever since the primaries. What's going on on the ground, how is racial prejudice going to affect the election on Tuesday? To discover "Battle  Ground" the latest episode of This American Life, download it on your MP3 player or listen to it on your computer, go on i-tunes and search for This American Life or visit their website. 

A summary of what to expect at the polls ( at the polling station in this context) : long lines, some new voting machines and hopefully enough paper ballots if the machines aren't working properly but this year most Americans will be voting on paper ballots read by electronic scanning machines. This year, supposedly all votes will be counted and no major electoral fraud is expected. 

There have, however,  been rumours to discourage people from voting : phony fliers announcing a change of preccinct, or even saying that Republicans must vote on the 4th of November and that Democrats and Independents must vote the next day !  

How Sarah Palin came to be on the GOP ticket

For those of you wondering how the Governor of Alaska came to be chosen by the McCain campaign, you will find some answers in one of the best pieces of investigative journalism I have read since I've been paying attention to the 2008 election. The story was broken by the New Yorker, a quality magazine with a clear and proclaimed pro-Obama stance. 

Here's a summary of the article : 

Sarah Palin and some of her close advisors knew she had a real national potential and that her life story was compelling. Sarah Palin and her advisers hired public relation experts and advisers in Washington to make her case in Republican circles and to make herself known for what she was doing in Alaska (being a reformer, going after special interests and fighting for a natural gas pipeline etc...). As early as the beginning of 2007, a Republican blogger Adam Brinckley started a draft Sarah Palin on the ticket movement. ( The most famous instance of drafting someone for an elected position occured in the 1950s with Eisenhower.)

Last summer, she invited to the governor's mansion two distinct group of conservative journalists and influential personalities who were on cruises organized by the Weekly Standard and the National Review. She made a strong impression on all of them. That's where the momentum started, in particular with William Kristol's columns in the NYTimes calling for her to be the VP nominee. Then when McCain's choice for VP had been narrowed down to Joe Liebermann ( a Democrat turned independent who would have incensed the GOP base), Sarah Palin names came up again and after only seeing for a couple of hours, the Republican candidate announced his choice. 

I'm ashamed to admit that this did still not hit my radar at that point and I was abashedly surprised by McCain's announcement at the end of August. 

So much for the maverick, hockey mom, I-don't-know-a- thing-about-how-Washington-works posturing....

To stay on the Palin front, I've noticed that for the last week or so, many of the conservatives who have not defected to the Obama camp (Colin Powell, Chris Buckley, the son of the founder of The National Review, Scott McClelan former Bush press secretary and many more) have jumped on the Sarah bandwagon and have been defending her vocally. 

of endorsements, maps and ads

1. The first consequence of Former Secretary of State Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama was an downpour of donations to the latter's campaign. But this endorsement might also sway independent voters. Listen to a discussion about this latest development what is means for Obama but more importantly what it means for Powell and his legacy as a politician. 

2. Remember that Obama declined the public financing scheme (limited to $84M) so that he could raise and spend more money on ads and on local campaign offices. Recently, the Obama camp has opened even more local operations on battleground states which now seem to be within the Senator's grasp : Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Missouri and Nevada. 

For more details on the electoral map, I can not commend enough the NPR map, showing predictions for each state and the projected number of electoral votes for each candidate : John McCain's 163 tailing Obama's 273. Reminder: to win the election, a candidate needs 270 electoral votes and all states are winner take all (even if you win by a very slim margin you take all the electoral votes apportionned to that state) except in Nebraska and Maine where the electoral votes are distributed according to the "Congressional District Method".

3. The NYTimes offers an excellent coverage of the ad blitz that has been going on for a couple months. It will tell you how much each candidate and each support group has spent on ads, where they were aired and what the total cost of each ad was. You will see that Obama has widely outspent McCain ( $145M to $90M) but that the Republican National Committee (RNC) with about $10M is far ahead of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). 

At the top of the page you can select the ads by issuer :  B. Obama, J. McCain, RNC, DNC and many other groups campaigning on the behalf of one or the other candidates, such AFL-CIO, the most important labor union in the country criticizing McCain's commitment to the Iraq war and his health care policies, or that with a very modest budget and in a very localized area the conservative group American Issues Project hammering Obama's terrorist connection with Ayers from the Weather Underground. 

At the bottom of the page you will find links that show the advertisement breakdown by subject : taxes, environment/energy; gas/oil; jobs... By selecting a topic you can measure how important each issue is for each candidate: for instance I was surprised to see that Obama has spent more money running ads on taxes than his opponent, whereas McCain outspends the Democratic candidate on ads concerned with the environment. Basically what this reveals is that the candidates are spending more money on the issues which aren't the strongsuits of their parties. 

The maps are very instructive and some of them help delineate the battle-ground states and the geographical spread of the issues. 

The most interesting feature of this web page is that it provides you with a great amount of information and lets you analyse it.

What else? 

Colin Powell endorses Obama

General Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama was not a major surprise. But the extent to which he condemned the Republican ticket was less expected. He questionned John McCain's judgement in his selection of a VP and in his dealing with the current economic hardships. He then proceeded to lavish praise on Barack Obama

Watch the video:  

How real is Joe the plumber?

How did Joe the Plumber's story start? Like this : 

How was it used in the debate by John McCain? 

Joe the Plumber was exemplified as the hard working entrepreneur which would be hit hard by Obama's tax plan : tax cuts for people earning less than $250, 000 a year,  and a higher level of tax ( 39% from the current 36%) for people making more than this threshold. 

Sen. McCain used this example repeatedly during the debate and thus attracted a lot of attention on Joe Wurzelbacher. The McCain campaign has released a web ad on "Joe the Plumber".

What I found very effective was John McCain's use of Obama's expression " spread the wealth around",  which is certain to make all conservatives cringe and to help paint Obama with a very liberal near socialistic brush.  

In fact, it has emerged that Joe the Plumber is not called Joe but Sam and is not a fully licensed plumber. But perhaps more significantly he is very likely to benefit from Sen. Obama's proposed tax cuts, since he works in a very small business ( he is the only employee and works alongside the owner) and does not make more than $250, 000 yearly. He also owes back  taxes. 

I first heard the news on BBC Radio 4 and checked the story out on the NYTimes. 

You are probably wondering what this means about the McCain campaign's ability to vet and select the examples they showcase. The polical blog Politico offers an interesting analysis of how they are operating. 

Meanwhile the right wing National Review Online is certain that there is a coalition of the Left (Democrats+media+blogs) against Joe the Plumber and that discrediting that man is the work of the Obama "thug-machine".  The NRO beleives that this incident offers insights into the way the Obama campaign operates, by dismissing or smearing their contradictors.  

For a humourous take on the Joe the Plumber story and the debate in general, check out Jon Stewart's Daily Show.

Emotions are riding high, about as high as the stakes for this election. 

last presidential debate

To listen to the debate or a summary analysis : go to NPR's coverage of the debate, where you can download both. 

If you'd rather read the transcript check out the NYTimes page.

The video is here.

But who won the debate? McCain ? or Obama, by a hair?

Make up your own mind and share your perspective with us. 

news from the campaign trail

Tonight the third and last presidential debate will be held in a university in N.Y. State. What to expect? A lot of talk about the economy and probably no major changes in the polls. 

To read more about this and about McCain's recent policy announcements ( the government would take over troubled mortgages, for instance) meant to prove that he is capable of handling the financial crisis, read this story from NPR. 

A quick note now on what's been all over the papers, TV and radio for a couple days. 

1. The polls show a strong Obama lead both at the national level and in several crucial battlestates. However, the Democrats and commentators have been wary of these figures because of what has come to be known as the "Bradley effect", i.e.  voters tell pollsters they will vote for the black candidate but at the polling station on election day, they have a change of heart. This is what happened to Tom Bradley, running for governor in California in 1982. Recently the Bradley effect seems to be much weaker or to have disappeared altogether. Perhaps there might even be an inversed Bradley effect, as was the case in some of the primaries this year, when more people voted for Barack Obama than the polls had predicted.Have a look at NPR's full story on this. 

2. The economic crisis is a boon for the Democrats, since it is obviously difficult for a party to retain power in such circumstances. Moreover Obama has seemed to keep his cool and reason rationally whereas McCain's response has been called "erratic" both by Obama negative ads and by the liberal media. 

3. The campaign has become nasty, with agressive negative advertisements. If one trusts the liberal media, it is the Republican candidate that has been resorting to such tactics the most. One example that has attracted much talk is when Senator McCain used the term "that one" to refer to his opponent during the debate when they were together on stage Not only is it rude not to name your opponent in such circumstances, but as you remember from your English grammar classes, "that" implies agressiveness or negativity, whereas "this" would have been more neutral. Of course, many wondered whether this was racially tainted. I don't believe that it was, I think it reflected the hostility McCain was directing at Obama and his disbelief of the fact that he is losing to such a younger and inexperienced candidate!

Why has McCain changed? 

4. Sarah Palin is still a problem for the one part of the elite of the Republican party ( see David Brook's columns in the NYTimes) but the mainstream Republican media have embraced her for better or for worse and are now aiming all their hatred at Obama: check out the National Review Online. Even Kathryn Jean Lopez has toned down her criticism of Sarah Palin and is no longer asking her to stand down but quite the contrary to step up and start campaigning more efficiently ( at the very end of her article on Team Sarah,  an organisation of women mobilizing for the Republican ticket and creating  supporting videos).

To follow all this effectively I recommend highly the following weekly podcasts (usually no longer than 15 minutes) : 

It's All Politics (NPR)

The Campaign Trail (The New Yorker, this week's edition of the magazine focuses on the campaign and has excellent reporting, fiction and hilarious cartoons)

Political Points (NYTimes)

You can download them from i-tunes or from the media's website. 

Palin's problem : denial?

A report has been issued Saturday on Governor Palin's involvement in the attempt to fire a state trooper, who happened to be her ex-brother-in-law. Listen to a four minute summary presentation of the situation.

When asked about the report which concluded that the governor of Alaska had abused her authority, Sarah Palin insisted that there had been no such thing and even said that she was thankful that the report had shown that there had been no illegal or unethical activity in her choice to replace the commissioner. 

a little bit of fun

There has been a blitz of negative ads recently from both candidates. The most controversial negative ad released by the Obama campaign raises the fact that McCain doesn't know how to send an email. The talk of the grapevine has been that he doesn't type on computers because of the injuries he sustained to his arms when he was prisonner of war (POW) in Vietnam. Another negative ad put forth by the Obama camp relies heavily on a misguided comment made by McCain in September ; he had declared that the "fundamentals of the economy were strong" in at the outset of the massive market failure America is now going through. 

From the Republican side, negative ads have mostly concerned Obama's connection with a William Ayers a member of a terrorist network in the 1960s. This ad was not paid for by the McCain campaign per se. 

A cheeky commentary by Jon Stewart: 

a quick note on the second presidential debate

For the last two weeks, Senator Obama has been ahead in the polls. The challenge for McCain was to turn  the race around. 

Watch the beginning of the debate : 

A quick exerpt from the debate on climate change ( a minor issue in a debate dominated by the economic crisis)

To watch the entire debate, read the transcript check NYTimes website.

Even better, go to NPR's page and download the interesting commentary by journalists (18minutes) or download the entire debate (1H30) and listen to all this while you are on public transportation or on the move. 

More from me later, got to go. 

vice presidential debate 2008

Little gloating but self-satisfaction all round for an average performance by both vice presidential candidates. 

Read the transcript.

A quick review of the papers tells us that the debate was not as exciting as anticipated, with neither candidates making any huge gaffes. For the NYTimes, Sarah Palin's performance was satisfactory albeit not as fantastic as hoped by her supporters. She isn't helping John McCain who is lagging in the polls both nationally and in swing states, but she hasn't hurt his bid for the presidency either, at least not as much as she did when she performed very poorly in an  interview with Katie Couric.

(one of the most mocked points made by Sarah Palin is one on her foreign policy credentials (video) based on the geography of Alaska)

The Economist rates Governor Palin's performance mediocre with Joe Biden giving a "strong and disciplined performance".

 What doesn't go down very well with The Economist is Palin's strategy of ignoring the question she is asked to make another point. When asked about Darfur she offered a rant against Washington insiders and exposed Joe Biden's shifting position on the Irak war; however she did later offer a laconic and non-specific answer on Darfur, but only after having scored a few points.  

Watch the video:

However annoying for pundits and commentators, I think that this tactic is actually quite effective. Why? First it provides the media with good soundbites that will be played over and over again. Second, these quips go down well with voters tired of the Washington politics and Palin started by saying that she would be speaking directly to the American public, and not the journalists attending en masse. In the end, it might not matter whether Palin answers the questions, and she had better say something she knewto be popular than stumble on an issue she hadn't been briefed about.  

Will Palin deliver?

The only vice-presidential debate will be held tonight in St. Louis; and most of the media coverage have  been concentrating on whether Sarah Palin will appear as qualified to be President, should something, God forbid, happen to John McCain. 

Over the last two weeks, Palin has been hammered for being unprepared, and even plain inadequate. She has given several interviews which have attracted lots of negative attention and insolent impersonations of the Alaskan hockey-mom vice presidential nominee.  

Even in conservative circles, the initial enthousiasm has seemed to wane and there has been criticism of John McCain's choice for number two slot, nevertheless Palin's appearances at campaign event still attract huge crowds. 

On the conservative National Review Online, you can read several rather damning articles on her candidacy. The toughest criticism and most radical solution is voiced by Kathleen Parker : she suggests that the VP candidate should step down now and give another chance to McCain to select someone that would be better prepared for the job. The op-ed ends with the line : "Do it for your country"! Whether this would actually help the Republican ticket, regardless of who takes her place, is rather doubtful : how could John McCain recover from an error in judgement so awful that it is Palin herself who admits to it by tending her resignation? Read the "Palin Problem" now.

Other commentators however still harbor high hopes for Sarah Palin and wish she would fight off the liberal media blitzkreig. 

The end result is that the expectations for Sarah Palin's performance have been lowered in such a fashion that to make a favourable impression, she only needs to appear articulate and capable of giving policy points and not going in circles, repeating a hugely simplified talking point. The past campaings has proved that Governor Palin has the ability to hold her own. The fact that she is a woman will force Joe Biden to be more careful so as not to appear to be patronizing, this might make it easier for Sarah Palin to give a good performance. 

So, what to look for tonight? Read The Caucus article from the NYT: 

- how will Sarah Palin attack Obama? probably not on his lack of experience of foreign affairs.

- how will Joe Biden discipline himself so as not to alienate voters and especially women

If you are very passionate about the election, do watch the debate in the middle of the night and up date us on how you think it went...