November 3rd, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
This is not the kind of story the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain wants to be circulating on the final full day of campaigning — a story that details him drawing a shockingly small crowd:
Barack Obama may lead John McCain by just 2 points in the latest CNN Florida poll of polls, but the enthusiasm gap appears a bit wider.
John McCain’s first rally of the day, in Tampa outside Raymond James Stadium, only drew about 1,100 people. Local reporters noting that at almost the same spot just before the 2004 election, President Bush drew about 15,000 people. Two weeks ago, Obama drew an estimated 8,000.
Republican Gov. Crist, who had previously agreed to do interviews with CNN and various local affiliates, bolted right after the rally with no explanation.
There are two ways of looking at this story.
ONE is that it’s an example of the news media generalizing something that could have an innocent explanation — suggesting that because this crowd was paltry, it means voters aren’t excited about the McCain-Palin ticket. Reporters are human and they can generalize and “typecast.”
THE OTHER is that it is indicative of a problem McCain faces in the enthusiasm gap, which would explain why his campaign in recent seems to have been trying to make voters afraid of Obama versus touting his own affirmative policy plans and his own attributes.
The second seems most logical for several reasons: 1) the crowd comparisons with Obama’s and Bush and — most damning — 2) the image of Florida’s governor scurrying away from the rally DESPITE having agreed to do interviews….LITERALLY putting as much distance between himself and McCain as possible.
Cartoon by Petar Pismestrovic, Kleine Zeitung, Austria
Last night, after the 30 minute Obama infomercial, President Bill Clinton joined Senator Barack Obama on the campaign trail in Florida. As I watched Clinton’s remarks, there were two thoughts that dominated my thoughts: where has Bill been and it would be a great race if those two were able to run against each other?
Where Clinton has been is anyone’s guess and I’m sure some pundits have already spun the lack of a prior endorsement from Bill Clinton as a negative for Obama. However, in his usual style, Bill Clinton laid out the case for Barack Obama better than any other politician in American politics today.
Clinton’s four reasons why people should vote for Obama includes:
Philosophy, Policies, Ability to Make a Decision, and Ability to Execute the Decision.
Briefly, Clinton stated that Obama’s philosophy was “built from the ground up, rather than the top down.” Obama’s campaign promises indicated a “better to-do list” of policies. For the last two reasons, Clinton said that Obama is the better choice for the role of “Decider-In-Chief because American deserves a President who wants to understand and can understand” difficult situations and will ask for help before acting.
In his remarks, Clinton emphasized the difference in judgment between Obama and Senator John McCain in their two major decisions of the campaign: the choice for V.P. and their responses to the financial crisis.
Bill Clinton has a knack for taking difficult decisions and breaking them down into their component parts and stating the case for the American people. Too bad, there are only 5 days left in the campaign…but at least Bill Clinton finally showed up.
For Democrats there is a particular passion for winning Florida, given its role in the past two Presidential elections. And the poll suggest these numbers are outside of the margin of error:
Barack Obama is leading Republican presidential rival John McCain in two battleground states, Florida and Ohio, where voters have more confidence in his ability to handle the troubled economy, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.
In Ohio, a state that has been battered for years by unemployment and plant closings, Obama is leading McCain by 49% to 40% among people likely to vote.
In Florida, a state that was considered a likely win for Republicans not long ago, McCain is trailing, 50% to 43%.
This poll further underscores a seeming disconnect between political segments in American society.
Pro-Democratic blogs, independent websites and analysts and the media point to this and other polls as mounting signs that Obama appears on track for a win. But nearly 3 hours of listening to conservative talk radio shows today (including one by a host who says he is an independent) revealed a strong growing counter belief — that a variety of polls now show the race is seriously tightening and that McCain’s insinuation that Obama is a Socialist in all but name is catching on. (This claim was choed by Joe The Plumber, who now has formally endorsed McCain and who also has now proclaimed Obama a danger to Israel…)
The latest Gallup Daily tracking poll does show the race slightly tightening:
October 25th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Three state polls find Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama increasing his margins in swing states — the important states of Ohio, Colorado and Florida. And the economy and independent voters moving towards Obama have a lot to do with it.
In Colorado, which once seemed as if it would be a big battleground state, if the current poll holds up, Obama will win by a whopping margin:
Sen. Barack Obama has surged to a commanding, double-digit lead in Colorado amid soaring anxiety about the country’s direction and a massive shift of independent voters into the Democratic column, a new poll finds.
After weeks of devastating economic news, Obama now leads by 12 percentage points - 52 percent to 40 percent - in the latest Rocky Mountain News/CBS4 News poll.
“Clearly, the beginning of October is not a happy time in American history, and voters are sort of internalizing the financial crisis,” said pollster Lori Weigel.
Since early August, when Colorado independents were almost evenly split between the two presidential candidates, Obama has opened up a more than 2-to-1 advantage in that pivotal voting group, the poll found.
Ohio voters, wrong only twice when picking the president in the last 108 years, remain nearly split over their choice for the White House, according to a new Ohio Newspaper Poll.
But while the race remains a statistical dead heat, more voters are siding with Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who has erased Republican Sen. John McCain’s previous lead in the Buckeye State and now holds a 3-point advantage, 49 percent to 46 percent.
The poll, when compared with the two previous Ohio Newspaper Polls, suggests the Illinois senator has momentum on his side.
In 2006 one of the Democratic golden boys was Tim Mahoney, who took over the normally-Republican House seat of disgraced Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL). Foley had been forced to resign from Congress over a sex scandal involving House pages.
At the time, Mahoney ran ads talking about his own personal morals and his commitment to ‘family values’.
Well it turns out that Mahoney was, at the time of the 2006 race, having his own indiscretions in the form of an affair with a woman he met on the campaign trail. He has since admitted to not only this incident but what he calls ‘multiple affairs’.
Recent polls by his own campaign show him going from a 7 point lead to a 26 point deficit, so it seems this will be one of the few GOP bright spots.
Though one wonders what it is with that particular House district to produce 2 sex scandals in a row…
And then there are the ongoing snafus like the 3,500 missing ballots in Palm Beach County last month which reversed a judicial election and led citizens to call for the removal of the county elections supervisor.
RELATED: Feds question new voter checks in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio.
Several of the more experienced talking heads remarked earlier this week that state polls tend to lag a fair bit behind the national polling. This makes sense, as the major polling outfits are hitting the national numbers on daily and weekly roundups, but state specific polls take longer and are not done as frequently. Over the last week we’ve seen the Palin Bounce apparently turn into the Palin Blurp nationally, (likely owed in large part to mounting concerns over the economy) but now the swing state numbers seem to be lining up in the same general direction.
October 1, 2008 - Obama Over 50 Percent In Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll Finds; Debate, Palin’s Fade, Economy Put Democrat On Top
* Florida: Obama up 49 - 43 percent pre-debate and 51 - 43 percent post-debate;
* Ohio: Obama up 49 - 42 percent pre-debate and 50 - 42 percent post-debate;
* Pennsylvania: Obama ahead 49 - 43 percent pre-debate and 54 - 39 percent post-debate. Pre-debate surveys ended at 8 p.m. Friday with post-debate surveys Saturday-Monday.
Seeing Obama’s national numbers pop over 50% for a few straight days was probably disquieting to supporters of John McCain, but these swing state numbers may start pushing people toward their panic rooms. If a candidate can take - and more importantly, hold- numbers on the North side of 50 for a sustained period in these areas, the picture grows grim for their opponent. While nothing is technically impossible, it’s difficult to imagine any scenario where either candidate can lose Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio and still make it to 270. Of course, before anyone gets too excitied, we’ll want to see results from other polling organizations and another week or two of tracking before we begin to think these will hold until November.
It seems that Europeans are starting to get the jitters over the likelihood that their preferred American presidential candidate could once again be defeated.
“In France, the matter is settled: Barack Obama, our idol, the candidate of us all, in the strange political unanimity that we secretly adhere to when we look beyond our borders, will win triumphantly in November. In fact, we show almost no interest at all in John McCain, that old white-haired reactionary.”
“Remember the 2004 election and … what was his name? Ah, yes, John Kerry! He made headlines in Courrier International, Télérama and Nouvel Observateur. He was supposed to make us love a new America. He spoke French, too. We even went as far as reviving, politically and in the media, his cousin Brice Lalonde, to get him to tell us about his teenage vacations with him in Brittany. A whack in the face! George W. Bush was triumphantly re-elected. No need to recount the votes from Florida this time, the Republicans had thrashed the Democratic Party. Few people in France ever wondered why our desires and predictions were such a long way from American political reality.”
“Let’s hope that in future, we will look a little more lucidly at these realities. We shouldn’t be disappointed if a President Obama isn’t thinking about us while shaving in the White House, let alone have a falling out with John McCain, who may very well prevail.”
According to a rather amusing analysis from the Sun Sentinel the hot seller in Florida right now is the Democratic Party, who are “outselling” the Republicans in terms of new voter registrations by more than a two to one margin.
An escalating number of voters registering as Democrats is providing evidence that the 2008 election could produce a wave of support for Barack Obama — and trigger a decades-long shift of party allegiance that could affect elections for a generation.
The numbers are ominous for Republicans: Through May, Democratic voter registration in Broward County was up 6.7 percent. Republican registrations grew just 3 percent while independents rose 2.8 percent.
People have been hinting about the Sunshine State skewing more and more toward the Democrats since the 2000 cycle. Could this be the year when the predictions actually come true? I think it might be a bit of a stretch to call this the start of a “generational shift” which will influence elections in the direction of the donkey for decades to come. But you never know.
Frankly, I still think energy policy will be issue number one by the time November rolls around, and if Floridians wind up embracing offshore drilling, McCain can still find some leverage there. Either way, Florida will once again be the focus of much attention this fall. The Obama team seems to feel they can stitch together a winning electoral map without Florida, but most of the analysis I’ve seen thus far have it as a must win state for John McCain if he wants to carry the election.
So are we now close to the endgame in the seemingly-endless Democratic primaries? Or will it go all the way to the Denver convention in August, with supporters on each side of the nearly evenly divided Democratic Party continuing to be increasingly irritated and frustrated with the other side as Republicans watch the spectacle with bigger and bigger smiles?
Yesterday’s decision at the DNC, which gave the Clinton campaign some of what it wanted in terms of Michigan and Florida delegates but not its actual demands, ended up being the decision that many on the DNC reportedly actually wanted.
And now the predictions and questions have started. Will Clinton start to ease her campaign to a close or suspend it this week? Will she withdraw? Will she fight on in Denver? Will Obama make a big victory speech this week if, as expected, he’s within a hair of the nomination or over the top by the end of the week in pledged delegates and more superdelegates come out for him? Or will he make a more modest pitch?
The Telegraph reports that there’s an Obama effort behind the scenes to offer Clinton a “graceful” exit — one that notably avoids asking her to run as Obama’s Veep:
Hillary Clinton will be offered a dignified exit from the presidential race and the prospect of a place in Barack Obama’s cabinet under plans for a “negotiated surrender” of her White House ambitions being drawn up by Senator Obama’s aides.
The former First Lady would get the chance to pilot Mr Obama’s reforms of the American healthcare system if she agrees to clear the path to his nomination as Democratic presidential candidate.
Senior figures in the Obama camp have told Democrat colleagues that the offer to Mrs Clinton of a cabinet post as health secretary or to steer new legislation through the Senate will be a central element of their peace overtures to the New York senator.
Not inviting her to be his running mate is not an oversight:
Make no mistake about it. The decision rendered today by the Democratic National Committee’s rules panel showed that Barack Obama has displaced Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as boss of the party.
…..Losing what they needed today proves that for the first time in 16 years the Clintons are no longer in charge of the Democratic Party. There is a new boss in town.
The Drudge Report has just put up a link to a You Tube of an audio of a fundraiser last month where ex-President Bill Clinton said in private on April 29, 2008 at the Westglow Spa in Blowing Rock, NC that solution is to seat half a delegate for each delegate in the disputed primary states. VIDEO IS BELOW.
Also listen to what Clinton said about Democratic party rules. Apparently the participants had a tape recorder and this was not supposed to be an official public pronouncement.
FOOTNOTE: Nothing official has been announced yet, but The Huffington Post political reporter Sam Stein reports that two sources have told him that a compromise has been reached over Florida that will entail the awarding of half-delegates to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — but Michigan remains possibly unsolvable and could go all the way to the convention.
