State of the Election Campaign

Here we are just 1 week before the election. The polls universally point toward a significant win for Obama. However, it isn't over 'till it's over and there is plenty of room for the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and for them to end up having "just missed it by that much" to quote Maxwell Smart. As it is, the polls are showing a slight narrowing in the past 3 days.

Obama's lead in the Real Clear Politics poll of polls average began building on 9/8, the day that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were nationalized. The lead increased even more right after the Sarah Palin interview on CBS by Katie Couric on 9/24. It rose to 8% at the beginning of last week. Since the middle of last week It has fallen now to 7.3%. The Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll has slipped from an 11.9% lead to a 4.8% lead today. In addition, Obama's advantage amongst some critical demographic groups (independents, white males age 24-54) has also slipped after having risen to a surprising lead earlier this past week.

What has caused this slippage and can it continue to eventually cause Obama to lose the election?

It is caused by a combination of things. McCain has launched a triple barreled nasty attack on Obama and the Democrats. First, taking advantage of Joe Biden's foot in mouth comment about the new president being tested by some crisis, McCain, looking to instill fear in the electorate has hammered on Obama's inexperience, claiming that the best way to prevent a crisis is to elect him (McCain).

Second, taking advantage of Obama's comment to Joe The Plumber about "spreading the wealth", McCain is demagoguing the issue claiming that Obama is a "socialist" (read as "communist").

And finally, instilling fear in the electorate that with Obama being the most liberal man ever to run for president, the trio of Obama as president, Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader, and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House is very "dangerous".


There is little if any truth to McCain's claims, totally misstating the context of the Biden comment and Obam's comment to the phony Joe the Plumber. Also, to say that Obama is the most liberal man ever to run for president is quite a stretch. Obama has been running a very centrist campaign and according to his record in the Senate, he is not the most liberal member of the Senate. The most liberal tag has been hung on him by "The National Journal" whose criteria are somewhat questionable. Is Obama more liberal than the Independent (Socialist) Senator Bernie Sanders or Russ Feingold or Teddy Kennedy? In fact, the same journal rated Obama as the 16th most liberal senator in 2005. And quoting from Wikipedia:

"A study of the voting records of all 100 senators, using an average of the ratings of seven liberal interest groups, described Obama as "among the least liberal", scoring an 80%, of the Democrats." this statement is documented with a reference. (SEE: U.S. Senate Career of Barack Obama).

McCain is a dynamic campaigner, especially when he is the underdog. Playing on fear is an effective, even if unscrupulous, campaign technique. After all, Bush won the 2004 presidential election using fear of terrorists as his primary campaign tool.

Still there are some strong positives going for Obama. For example there are the negatives for McCain as the desperate angry man running the most slanderous campaign in recent time. And of course there is his irrational pick of the now discredited Sarah Palin. Now add in the conviction of Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK). Most of all there is the fact that McCain is behind the curve on the major issues.
(SEE: MSNBC Poll). A summary is shown below:

ISSUE	OBAMA	McCAIN
Health Care	59%	20%
Economy	49%	28%
Wall Street Crisis	45%	24%
Taxes	48%	34%
Energy (Cost of Gas)	44%	32%
Hope & Optimism	53%	23%
Leadership Qualities	36%	40%
Improve America's World Standing	51%	31%
Catching Osama bin Laden	19%	39%
War in Iraq	40%	45%

This Wednesday evening at 8:00pm the Obama campaign has purchased half an hour of TV time on NBC, CBS, Fox Broadcast, MSNBC, and maybe some others. It will be his time to make his case. I suspect the he will present a positive vision for the future and emphasize his theme of Hope. There will be no McCain bashing.

ACORN

There have been many stories circulating about a fraudulent voter registration program conducted by an organization called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Inc.). Like all stories there are at least 2 sides. The problem is that the media is reporting the story from those proposing that there has been significant fraud and that the fraud, since the program focuses on getting maximum registration, is somehow associated with and being promoted by the Obama campaign.

The following is a copy of a communication from ACORN to its member list. It tells another side of the story that you wont hear elsewhere. For anyone interested in being well informed about the presidential campaign, it is necessary reading:

ACORN UPDATE:

Dear friends and supporters of ACORN,

As you can imagine, our staff, leaders, and communications consultants have been hard at work all weekend on our “fightback” strategy. McCain, the RNC, Fox, and Lou Dobbs are continuing their attacks, but I think we are turning the corner as far as getting our message out, and getting ahead of the story. That isn’t to say that we won’t see more eruptions over the next couple of weeks: the RNC has been doing as many as three press calls a day trumpeting supposed ACORN “voter fraud”. But more and more observers are coming to the same conclusion that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. did in his Huffington Post piece late last week:

Meanwhile, I say thank you, ACORN. Thank you, Project Vote, for taking our democracy seriously enough to try to include 1.3 million more poor people in a more perfect union.

Or, as Talking Points Memo put it in order to provide some context:

What you're hearing right now from Fox News, the New York Post, John Fund and the rest of the right-wing bamboozlement chorus is a just another effort to exploit, confuse and lie in an effort to put more severe restrictions on legitimate voting and lay the groundwork to steal elections. It's that simple.

And then there was the a piece last week from the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, where the reporter went right to the source:

No problems in Colorado with ACORN

By Lisa Ryckman, Rocky Mountain News
Published October 10, 2008

An advocacy group accused of election fraud elsewhere has maintained a cordial working relationship with Colorado's biggest counties, and that has kept its drive rolling smoothly here, election officials say. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has had some problems in past years. But its efforts haven't been an issue in this election, said Rich Coolidge, spokesman for the Secretary of State's Office.

Here are a few quick quick updates:

1. Our message:

A. As most objective observers have now realized, virtually all of the supposed cases of “voter fraud” are in fact situations where a percentage of the thousands of voter registration assistance workers we hired this year attempted to cheat us. In almost all cases we CAUGHT the suspect cards, and FIRED the offending workers. In most states, we are required to turn in ALL cards to election officials, no matter how problematic, so we segregated, bundled, and marked those cards as “suspicious”, and called them to the attention of election officials. Now, partisan politicians and the right-wing media are searching out those already marked and bundled cards, and claiming that they are evidence of “fraud”.

B. This has nothing to do with “voter fraud.” The fictitious or duplicate people on the forms will never make it onto the voter rolls, and even if they did, there would be no one showing up with the ID now required of all new registrants on election day. Risking jail to cast an extra vote isn’t how people steal elections these days. They do it by keeping people from voting.

C. The real goal of all this noise about the registrations we asked boards of elections to investigate is to serve as a smokescreen for voter intimidation efforts. It’s the same play they tried in 2006, when it turned out they had fired at least three US Attorneys primarily for failing to prosecute bogus charges of “voter fraud.” Already this year, they’ve been hard at work trying to keep people from voting.

2. Getting the word out:

Despite the relentless partisan assault on our program, we are getting out the word. In the last several days ACORN representatives have been on Larry King Live, the Tom Joyner show, CSPAN, MSNBC, CBS National News, and many other outlets — with more to come. And, a long list of columnists, reporters, and bloggers have written excellent pieces debunking the charges against us. I have assembled a few of them as links at the bottom of this email.

3. Going on the offensive:

We have developed an aggressive strategy over the next week to go on the offensive. We are still finalizing the exact schedule, but we will be a) calling on Secretaries of State to make sure that families who have been foreclosed on do not lose their opportunity to vote; b) opening up an “ACORN Voter Registration Library” that allows reporters to examine all our quality control procedures in detail; c) holding local press events with new registrants, to put a human face on those who we helped register to vote; and d) releasing a study which contrasts the steps ACORN took to demand regulation of predatory lending and the financial industry, versus the steps Senator McCain did (or more accurately did not) take.

4. Stephanie Strom:

I’m sure you all saw Stephanie Strom’s most recent article, in yesterday’s New York Times. This was actually a fair-minded piece that did a good job debunking the McCain campaign’s shrill charges about the close connections between ACORN, Project Vote, and Barack Obama.

5. McCain’s anti-ACORN advertisement:

And, of course, many of you may have seen the McCain campaign’s advertisement which attempted to make these links; as of a few minutes ago it was still on the McCain campaign website, at http://www.johnmccain.com/#tab1. We have put out statements repudiating it.

6. The situation in Indiana:

Our program in Gary, which has come under repeated attack on CNN, was by far our worst managed program, and one that we closed down early when we couldn’t correct the problems. However, even in Gary, the roughly 2000 problematic (mostly duplicate)registration applications (out of about 8000) were all cards that WE identified and clearly labeled as problematic when we gave them to election officials. Our quality control program did what it was supposed to do — a fact that CNN has neglected to report on.

7. Our team of consultants:

Thanks in part to suggestions from some of our funders, we have beefed up our communications team to handle the onslaught. We have brought Chris Lehane, a veteran of the Clinton, Gore, and Kerry campaigns, to help plot overall strategy. He is working closely with Scott Levenson, the founder of The Advance Group, which has an active political and communications practice in New York City, and Lewis Goldberg, of KCSA, who has worked with President Clinton and many other elected officials.

8. Fair and accurate reporting:

Finally, here is a sampling of some of the more balanced recent articles and blog posts about ACORN’s work.

http://donnabrazile.com/viewNews.cfm?id=306 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/10/09/2008-10-09_gop_in_push_to_erase_voters_purges_acorn.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-jesse-jackson-jr/attacks-on-acorn-based-no_b_133657.html http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/10/no-problems-in-colorado-with-acorn/ http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/10/75639/882/410/626072 http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/10/acorn-reaction/ http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/601 http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/Two_kinds_of_fraud.html http://publicbroadcasting.net/kwmu/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1385887&sectionID=1 http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/10/1526687.aspx http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/10/voter-fraud-vot.html http://www.rooflines.org/1173/whos_afraid_of_acorn_and_why/ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/223436.php http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/308983 http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=8987 http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/10/10/conservative-fraud/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-hasen/the-purge-surgewhy-the-go_b_133786.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-dantoni/dems-roll-over-mainstream_b_133818.html http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6493 http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/12/83238/044/321/628179 http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9028 http://firedoglake.com/2008/10/12/republican-operative-i-dont-want-everyone-to-vote/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-matzzie/how-mccain-will-steal-the_b_133989.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/53790.html

As always, thanks for your help. Please feel free contact me with questions, suggestions, or advice.
Steve
--------------------------
Steven Kest
Executive Director
ACORN
2-4 Nevins Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718-246-7900 ext 201
917-855-3165 cell
skest@acorn.org www.acorn.org

McCain Not Suitable for Presidency

McCain's selection of Palin as his running mate is the most potent indicator that he is not suitable to be President of the US. No serious person could ever possibly consider Palin as a legitimate candidate for Vice President, especially given (1) the conditions that currently exist (a financial crisis, a faltering economy and two ongoing wars) and (2) the strong possibility that she may ascend to the Presidency considering McCain's age and medical history.

There is another indicator of McCain's unsuitability for the Presidency that closely rivals the choice of Palin as his running mate. That is his despicable and divisive campaign, the thrust of which is his promotion of an unreasonable fear of Obama and the Democrats, portraying them as unamerican, consorting with terrorists, dangerous as leaders, incapable of managing the nation's finances because of their penchants to "tax and spend" and accept support from lobbyists, and lacking understanding of the threats to our nation.

These tactics, utilizing Sarah Palin's folksy lying (and sometimes incomprehensible) diatribes, scandalously negative advertising, lying spin masters, and McCain himself promoting hate and fear, have and are causing an unhealthy rage amongst his supporters against Obama. It doesn't take much to incite violence against a leader who is black amongst the truly bigoted in this country or to incite race riots. McCain is creating the societal atmosphere that supports them.

The result of McCain's campaign tactics have become painfully apparent as supporters at GOP campaign rallies call out, "traitor", "bomb Obama", and "off with his head". At a McCain campaign town hall meeting on Friday two different McCain supporters spoke of their fear of Obama as an Arab and as a potential President and the crowd reaction as McCain tried to tamp down the expressed negativity was difficult for McCain to control.

Somehow McCain appeared to understand the implications of his campaign. Nevertheless, Palin, the Sunday spin masters, conservative talk show hosts, and the TV campaign ads have continued their assaults against Obama emphasizing his Kenyan roots and not a US citizen, using his middle name (Hussein), implying that he is an Arab and not Christian (Muslim).

McCain's supporters ingenuously try to justify what they are doing by saying that it is fair to point out Obama's past associations with William Ayers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Antoin Rezko without commenting on the conclusions that the ads (and Ms. Palin and McCain himself) either state or imply, re: Obama's unamericanism and support of terrorism. They also claim that using his middle name of Hussein is nothing special and also use these techniques to avoid discussion of the important issues of the day; the issues on which Obama is winning the support of the American people.

Here is a link to an article by Christopher Buckley, son of the late William F. Buckley, on why he is supporting Obama.
Sorry Dad, I'm Voting for Obama
Michael

Must See 27 Second Video

Do not skip seeing video at end of this posting!

As the time shortens and the poll results show that Obama is slowly but steadily moving ahead in the polls, John McCain's campaign has become more and more desperate and nastier. The approach has been to use every trick to insinuate that Obama is an unknown quantity, unamerican, possibly connected to terrorists and therefor a dangerous choice for president in a time of crisis, both economically and in national security.

The result has been that McCain/Palin look desperate and erratic and the polls are showing that the message McCain and Palin are delivering is not working as Obama continues to build his lead in both the national polls (See the trend in the table and graph under the table of poll results at Real Clear Politics and state by state (See the Electoral Vote map).

Then today, in response to a question at a campaign rally, McCain retracts the attacks on Obama. Is this a change in his campaign tactics driven by the polls or is this McCain coming to his senses?

Video: McCain Retracts Attacks on Obama

A must see video! Only 27 seconds long.

Michael

DJIA

10/09/08

Dow Jones Industrial Average closes down 679 points to 8579. After reaching an all time high of 14164 one year ago today, the Dow is now at a 5 year low. (May, 2003)

Does this signify the end of free market trickle down deregulated economics?

President Ronald Reagan proposed three major domestic economic policies; (1) less government, (2) free markets, and (3) Lower taxes. These ideas were strongly promoted by a coterie of conservative ideologues who built several conservative think tanks; American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institute, Cato Institute, etc. They also mobilized large groups of college students through the establishment of on campus "College Republicans" and other Republican youth groups through the Young Republican National Federation. These groups popularized and spread the Republican agenda throughout the country.

It was President Ronald Reagan who proclaimed that: "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem", and "The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution." Later, under President George W. Bush, V.P. Cheney stated: "Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter."

"Trickle Down" economics was proposed as the way to invigorate the U.S. economy following the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. Milton Friedman, who advocated a Keynesian policy of taxation as a New Dealer economist under FDR converted to libertarianism was considered one of the founders of the Chicago School of Economics. (For a detailed review of the influence of the Chicago School of Economics, SEE: Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein; 2008, Picador, NYC, NY), He was a major economic adviser to Ronald Reagan.

The primary proponent for lower taxes that matched President Reagan's economic doctrine was Grover Norquist. After leaving Harvard Business School with an MBA, Norquist became executive director of both the National Taxpayers Union and the national College Republicans organization, holding both positions until 1983. In 1994 he worked with Newt Gingrich and the Heritage Foundation to draft the Contract with America. The National Taxpayers Union has been a proponent for a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) to the Constitution. It favors either a Flat Tax or the Fair Tax (a national sales tax with rebate) for the United States, as opposed to the current income tax system now in use. The organization argues in favor of the line-item veto for the president, and generally opposes crop subsidies by the government (such as for sugar and ethanol). The organization's briefs and policy papers decry the "death tax," (a tax on estates) and supports deregulation.

Does this crisis mark the end of the Republican economic agenda? Will the populace now move away from free market deregulated economics? Is run away capitalism finished? Will the middle class stop voting against their own self interests? (SEE: What's the Matter With Kansas; Thomas Frank, 2004, Henry Holt and Co., NYC, NY.)

It's time for a firing squad:
Bush, You're Fired!
Cheney, You're Fired!
Paulson, You're Fired!
Bernanke, You're Fired!
Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, You're Fired!
Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner, You're Fired
and many ineffective Democrats, You're Fired too!
etc. etc. etc.

NOTE: Much of the material in this article was either quoted directly or summarized from content on Wikipedia. The links on this page are to the Wikipedia articles from which the material was extracted.

Michael

27 Days to Go

270 Electoral Votes Needed to Win-27 Days to Go!
Obama is leading by 10% or more (Strong Dem) in states that have 228 Electoral Votes.
Obama is leading by 5% through 9% (Weak Dem) in states that have 49 Electoral Votes.
Thus, Obama is leading by 5% or more in states that have 277 Electoral Votes

In addition, Obama is leading by 4% in states that have 41 Electoral Votes.

From Electoral-Vote.com

	Strong Dem (228)
	Weak Dem (49)
	Barely Dem (72)
	Exactly tied (15)
	Barely GOP (11)
	Weak GOP (63)
	Strong GOP (100)

Assuming that little will change from now until 11/4, the only open question remaining is the extent to which the "Bradley Effect" will alter the results of the election.

From Wikipedia:
The "Bradley Effect" is named for Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race despite being [significantly] ahead in voter polls. [It] refers to a tendency on the part of voters to tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a Black candidate, and yet, on election day, vote for his/her white opponent.

Michael

VP Debate

Just a few short notes about the VP debate last night.

• After debate polls (CNN Survey):

More Likable: Palin 54% Biden 36%
Ability to Express Views: Palin 36% Biden 52%
Agent of Change: Palin 42% Biden 53%
Candidate Qualified for Job Palin 42% Biden 87%
Won the Debate: Palin 35% Biden 54%

• My view of Palin's Performance

Palin actually told the moderator and the audience what her plan was. She said:

"And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also."

She tips off her intent to ignore questions that she is not prepared to answer and that she will stick to her scripted answers. In the few cases where she had to invent a bridge from the question to her prepared spin, she seemed awkward to me.

The result was that Palin was able to do well, avoiding the types of mistakes she made during her interviews with ABC's Charles Gibson and CBS's Katie Couric. Having done so, she may have stopped her slide in the polls but did little to peel back the already lost ground.
Michael

Financialization of the U.S.

I am aghast. There I was listening to Larry King interviewing Republican Rep. Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, speaking about why she voted no on the rejected financial recovery act and I was in agreement with her. Normally when I hear her speak I grimace and tense up because she sounds like an indoctrinated Republican spin master, lying and misinterpreting any position taken by any Democrat. Yet here I was agreeing with her position and reasoning on the bailout plan.

Her point is that it was a mistake of enormous proportions to give Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson so much control over 700 billion dollars to do with whatever he saw fit supposedly to cure the current financial collapse and credit crisis.

Mr. Paulson is a Wall Street insider having spent his entire career immersed in the Wall Street culture. Now he will be given the authority to dispense billions of dollars and favors on his former colleagues, friends and foes alike, and making decisions who and who does not get treated with favor. He has a mindset that has been inculcated within him that Wall Street should be the main concern of the USA and when they do well, then the country does well.

Who remembers Secretary of Defense Charlie Wilson, CEO of General Motors and Secretary of Defense during the Eisenhower administration: "What's good for General Motors is good for the country"? Or perhaps the Al Capp takeoff on that in the song from the Broadway show Li'l Abner , "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA". It illustrated the big business thinking of an individual appointed to a high office in government.

Quoting from Kevin Phillips latest book, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (2008, NYC; Viking Penguin),

"Bingeing on debt is reckless, and financialization has a long record of being an unhealthy late stage in the trajectory of previous leading world economic powers. Moving money around instead of making things is always dicey, and the U.S. transformation has been the most grandiose to date."

Secretary Paulson's plan is another step along the path to such financialization. Any solution to our current crisis must move us away from financialization of our economy, not move us further along the path to eventual collapse.

Michael