Last moves and stories

1. Where are the candidates right now? 

These last campaign stops clearly indicate what the key states are and which might make the election. For instance McCain has been travelling in Virginia, a State that has not voted for a Democratic President for 44 years, but that might go either way this year and that the Republicans are wary of loosing. The state of Pennsylvania is also attracting a lot of visits from the Republican team, since, as I have mentionned in an earlier post, it is a critical battleground state. 

No Republican President won the election without taking Ohio; and both campaigns are now canvassing the state in an effort to get the vote out and convince the undecided.

The Republicans are concentrating their attention on states with a strong working class population and where Obama didn't fare very well in the primaries, hoping to pick up disgruntled Clinton supporters.

The Guardian offered two maps showing the past week's campaign stops of both candidates : 

A. Both campaigns visited : Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina and of course Florida, a key state for the Republicans if their is one. 

B. In addition Obama or Biden also visited Nevada, Colorado and Iowa. 

Excepting Pennsylvania these states were all won by George W Bush in 2004. Obama is trying to ratchet up support in traditionnally "red" states while the McCain campaign is mostly playing defense. 

2. Obama's aunt living illegally in Boston has not become a big story, although all the networks are covering it as a "non-story"!?!

3. Before the campaign is over, time for a laugh.  Watch this video of John McCain and Tina Fay playing Sarah Palin pretending to try and raise money. This is from Saturday Night Live, a comedy show that you have probably heard of : 

-  reference to campaign costs (the $150,000 spent on Palin's attire)

-  reference to Palin "going rogue" : I recommend watching Jon Stewart's explanation for this one, a good summary of the mainstream media's hysteria over Palin's unplanned/unscripted comments on various issues: 

For more hilarious videos : Palin playing herself and confusing people at the studio of Saturday Night Live; McCain presenting his new strategies...

Jon Stewart's take on Obama's infomercial is quite good too: watch.

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.