Who will it be and when will we know?

The media are very impatient to find out who will be on the both tickets. 

Obama is expected to announce this week rather than wait for the Democratic convention which starts on August 25. Waiting could have been an option because there is some anxiety among the Democrats that Hillary Clinton supporters might cause some trouble : her name will be placed into nomination, thus giving a chance to her delegates to support her through a roll-call vote. Some fear that this will cause trouble. This afternoon I was hearing commentators compare the 2008 Convention to that of 1968 that ended in dreadful violence on the streets. Making the announcement during the convention would probably have drawn attention away from the Clinton supporters. 

Who's on the top of the list? 

Joe Biden, despite his clumsy comment on Obama at the beginning of the campaign. 

Katheleen Sibelius, the governor of Kansas (although some I've heard the idea that Obama would not chose a woman other than Clinton, in order not to antagonize her supporters. 

McCain will announce his Vice-Presidential choice on the 29th, just before the start of the Republican Convention on September 1st. 

More about that when we get closer to the date. I'll just say that the idea that John McCain might pick a running mate with a pro-choice record has been bandied around. 

But now the issue of abortion is taking the center of the stage in the campaign and I think that McCain can't compromise his standing with the religious voters. 

mini-summary

Here are just a few words on yesterday's much advertised, awaited and commented event. Actually the candidates only appeared on stage together for 30 seconds. The format was two hour long interviews with Rick Warren. Obama went first and was followed by McCain. 

My impression was that Obama tried to please the evangelicals without completely alienating his more liberal base while McCain was on an all-out seduction campaign. He gave the exact answers that would please the religious voters : "Life starts at conception" for instance but gave no explanation on how this belief might influence his policies. McCain's answers were very direct and straightforward and peppered with personal stories from his time in a Vietcong prison camp (none of which were unknown, it was his usual spiel). 

Obama answered the questions with much ( too much?) subtlety and nuanced his opinions and policy proposals. Will he be able to seduce the young religious voters? 

Got to go, more later...

Tonight's debate

Tonight for the first time, Obama and McCain will be on a stage together answering questions asked by Rev. Rick Warren, a famous evangelical minister and leader. 

I believe this highlights the importance of the evangelical voting block that Obama is wooing and McCain needs to retain if he is to maintain the thirty year old Republican coalition. The simple fact that there is such a debate is a clear proof of the crucial weight that this group of yet undecided voters now wields. 

Many evangelicals, especially among the young are disappointed by the Bush years and are now engaging on issues other than abortion and same-sex unions. They have added global warming, poverty and healthcare on their agenda and may thus consider a wider span of problems. 

Around 65% of evangelicals say they support McCain but they are wary of the candidate who once called them "agents of intolerance". They will certainly not mount get out the vote operations as they did in 2000 and 2004 when they were galvanised by George W. Bush. 

The big story these last four days has been a controversial book on Obama by right-wing activist Jerome Corsi who led and encouraged the "Swiftboat" campaign against John Kerry. His avowed aim is to help defeat the Senator from Illinois as he did the 2004 Democratic candidate. The book and the false claims and exagerations it contains have been constantly discussed on most cable news networks. 

How would the Obama campaign respond to the book? By not taking it seriously they might put Obama's candidacy at risk of being "swifboated" as liberal  journalists now say. 

 You may want to read the first chapter of Obama Nation; leftist politics and the cult of personality and for a summary of the controversy read this.

The book is at the top of the best-sellers list of the N-Y Times, one of the questions this raises is : who is reading it? Undecided voters or activist opponents of Obama? 

what's in the news in America?

The biggest stories are : 

1. Former Democratic candidate John Edward's public admittance and repentance over his affair with a former consultant employed by his campaign. 

2. Some new light is being shed on the poor way in which Hillary Clinton's campaign was managed. 

A few pictures from an Austin neighbourhood where Obama is extremely popular : I saw no less than ten houses with Obama signs on two blocks. 

Austin is a very liberal city, and thus offers a stark contrast with the rest of Texas. On a day trip to the hill country, in a rural area an hour away from Austin, we came across several Ron Paul signs : apparently the libertarian Republican had quite a following there. 

Until yesterday I had not come across a single McCain sign, but in Natchez, Mississippi, at last I caught a glimpse of a McCain T-shirt. 

Do you think yard signs come free? No, the campaigns have been charging around $7 to people who want to advertise their political leanings. 

In Austin and New Orleans, the people I have been speaking to were enthousiastic about the Obama campaign, but in the more rural areas, such as the Cameron parish in Louisianna, I believe people will support the Republican candidate. Louisianna is a traditionally Republican State (remember that Bobby Jindal is the governor and was considered a potential VP for McCain a couple months back, before he got himself in trouble over the pay rise that the legislature had granted itself). McCain's support for the policy of drilling for oil just off shore of the coast will certainly win him votes in this State which relies very heavily on oil. Many people work on off-shore platforms and the money from the oil compagnies certainly benefits everyone.  

The African-American population represents roughly 18% of the total State population and racial issues are still extremely sticky here. 

I'm now in Mississippi and will try and report anything of great interest as I go along. I've noticed that the price of gas is here on average ten cents per gallon more expensive than in Louisianna. 

More reports when I have the time. 

Veep talk

Last week there's been a lot of talk in the media on the possibility that McCain was about to pick a V.P. and would make an announcement on Tuesday (today). There has been no such disclosure yet and actually the expectations had already subsided at the end of last week when it became clear that this was only a ploy to get the media's attention while Barack Obama's European triumph was getting non-stop coverage. 

But the V.P. picking season has come and there is a lot of chatter about it right now. To learn more about some of the strategies you can always go back to my previous posting on the subject. 

To sum up the more recent developments, let's say that Mitt Romney has inched up in the list and now seems to be the favorite, despite the huge tension between him and McCain during the primary campaign. Would this original tension be a boon for Democrat ads? certainly. But would it undermine McCain's presidential bid? probably not. Remember that Romney has a strong appeal for the more traditional conservatives, that are still wary of McCain's maverick reputation, depsite his efforts to convince them that he was a true conservative. Witness his recent courting of the right and his policy shifts or flip-flops on crucial issues such as oil drilling in America ( from no to yes), immigration policy ( from reforming the legalization system to tightening the borders) and the Bush tax cuts ( from "no, they only help the rich" to "yes, they are a good thing and should be made permanent"). 

The N.Y. Times has an excellent video on how the McCain-Romney relationship had evolved from harsh ennimity to jocular friendliness -almost.

On the Democratic side, there seems to be a virtual infinity of possibility. Who do you think Barack Obama should pick?

 

• Hillary Clinton, to reunite the party and give some satisfaction to her supporters? Wouldn't that discourage people who are taken in by the rhetoric of change? 
  
• Bill Richardson, to appeal to the Latino voters and offer reassuring foreign policy and grand scale executive expecience? How would this choice affect the decision of one of the key constituencies that the Democrats must try and win: the working class white male? 
  
• What about other Democratic heavy weights such as Al Gore and Joe Biden, what would they  bring to the ticket? 
  
• Should he choose a woman? Governor Kathleen Sebelius from Kansas or Janet Napolitano the governor of McCain's own State, Arizona ( which might possibly be a battle-ground State). 

If you want to know more about the potential VPs in both camps, I strongly recommend the excellent chart presented by Ken Rudin on NPR's website ( look for a column entitled "Veepstakes"). 

McCain at home, Obama overseas

With Barack Obama travelling the world this week with the three major news anchors in tow, the Democratic candidate is the story and John McCain is fighting hard to be heard and strongly denouncing the enthralled media coverage afforded to his opponent. 

On his website you can watch and vote for two videos which expose the media bias. This is the one which has received most votes :

I think that it is fair to say that the media were/are quite enamored with Obama, but I think we should be careful about the actual date of broadcast of these soundbites : I believe some of them are at least several months old. 

There's now a lot of talk of how in the end Obama is just another politician, how he has changed his mind on important issues (gun rights, surveillance, Irak?). These comments are coming both from the right ( read an article from a conservative webzine American Thinker) and from the left (read Robert Sheer's article on The Nation's website.)

And last I'd like to address the question raised by Laetitia a couple weeks ago now : can Barack Obama win the election. The polls have had him ahead of John McCain for some time now, although his lead is declining, as reported by American Thinker, what I beleive is a right wing media. More significantly the issue is : does a lead in the polls mean anything? It might mean less than what the Democrats hope it means, as explained by NPR's Juan William. 

These are the things we want to keep in mind when trying to ascertain the final November result : 

• Elections are won by the candidate with the most electoral votes not by the winner of the popular vote. Some States are expected to be very close race and some traditional red States might even vote Democratic ( Virginia, Ohio), and all the "swing states" (Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania) will be crucial. The race is thus more local/statewide than it is national. The candidates will pick battle ground States and invest a lot there to turn the vote in their favour. 
• Certain electoral groups are yet undecided and may well support one or the other candidate. Amongst them, one should mention : Hispanics and white working class males. Even the evangelical voting block, as far as it exists, is being hotly contested by the candidates. 

Is this the easy way around your question, Laetitia? It probably is, but I don't feel very comfortable in making predictions and am more interested in the process and understanding how each candidate can create the magic winning coalition of forces.