David Paul Kuhn of The Politico has an interesting article out today about three women who could theoretically help John McCain cut into Barack Obama’s big lead among female voters by joining the GOP ticket.
It’s not a very extensive or impressive list.
Kuhn begins by dismissing the early talk about Condi Rice as a potential running-mate, citing her apparent lack of interest in the gig, and her total identification with the Bush administration. In fact, her reported pro-choice views probably disqualify her from the get-go.
Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has the paper credentials you’d want from a Veep, but has a stormy history with the cultural conservatives who likely have a veto over the selection, and is also widely considered Big Oil’s closest ally in the Senate.
There’s been some buzz about former HP exec Carly Fiorina, who’s been campaigning with McCain for a while. But as Kuhn points out, this may not be the right year to pick a former corporate CEO who presided over massive layoffs before getting fired and then accepting a $21 million golden parachute.
Then there’s Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, has a lot of movement conservatives fired up about her future if not her present. Palin, a former high school basketball star and beauty queen, got elected in 2006 after beating scandal-plauged Gov. Frank Murkowski in a primary, and is aligned against endangered porkmeister Don Young in this year’s GOP House primary. So she’s highly compatible with McCain’s alleged “reform” persona. But the reason conservatives outside Alaska love her is all about her rigid anti-abortion views, manifested in her personal life when she chose to continue a pregnancy, in her forties, despite knowing the child would have Down’s Syndrome. Still, she’s barely into her first term in office, has zero foreign policy experience, and is from a bright-red state that’s politically and culturally remote from the rest of the country. Maybe she and Jindal could create a formidable hard-right ticket in about 2020.
When it comes to McCain’s female running-mate options, as Porky Pig would say, “That’s all, folks!”

An article in last Friday’s NYT – “Big Gains for Iraq Security, but Questions Linger” – is more than a standard wartime dispatch. With two principal authors and ten local Iraqi correspondents credited as contributors, it is a significant attempt to explain key aspects of the current military situation for American readers.
For Democrats, the article makes two points of particular importance.
First, the article very strongly corroborates an argument that was made in a TDS post last week. The post warned about a sudden burst of conservative commentary that was distorting the military situation in Iraq to make the case for McCain and achieving “victory.” By the artful use of words like “routed”, “forced to submit”, “surrendered” and “scattered,” these commentaries made it appear that the withdrawal of Sunni and Sadrist militias from Basra, Sadr City and Mosul represented the near-collapse of the insurgency. From this it followed that it is only if the weak-kneed Democrats start withdrawing troops that the insurgents can possibly win.
The TDS post argued that a careful reading of the dispatches from these cities indicated that the withdrawals were more accurately described as mutually negotiated cease-fires rather than battlefield combat victories and therefore did not signal the collapse of the insurgent forces.
The Times article very emphatically confirms this view, repeating the conclusion at two different places.
First,
“The government victories in Basra, Sadr City and Amara were essentially negotiated, so the militias are lying low but undefeated and seething with resentment”
And then again,
“…the government’s successes in Basra and Sadr City were not so much victories as heavy fighting followed by truces that allowed the militias to melt away with their weapons.”
This is an important point. It provides Democrats with an authoritative source to use to challenge the misleading suggestions that the insurgents are actually on their “last legs” and “about to collapse” if Americans just “stay strong a tiny bit longer” or “support John McCain”. It will not stop conservative spokesmen from making such claims when talking to ordinary voters (where they think they can get away with it) but will reduce their tendency to assert this notion in serious debate or the op-ed pages of the Washington Post or New York Times where such rhetoric will be viewed as evidence of either extreme gullibility or embarrassing ignorance.
Beyond this, the article also presents other information about the military situation that Democrats need to understand in order to plan their own political strategy.

Read more…

As the general election contest begins to take shape, a lot of the early talk from the Obama campaign about “changing the map” has been symbolized by its much-broadcast interest in going after my home state of Georgia. It’s an audiacious move, or perhaps even a feint, on the surface. Yes, Georgia went comfortably for native son Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, and narrowly for Bill Clinton in 1992. But beginnng in 1996, Georgia trended heavily Republican (mainly because of the population explosion in the Atlanta suburbs), with Bush winning the state by 12% in 2000 and 18% in 2004.
The Obama campaign’s been listing Georgia as a potential target for a while, on the theory that a massive increase in African-American turnout (and in the Democratic margin there) could significantly narrow the gap. And indeed, the last big Democratic year in Georgia was in 1998, when black tunout (motivated in part by an overtly racial GOP statewide campaign) exceeded white turnout for the first time ever, and leapt from about 19% of the statewide vote to 29%.
But there’s another factor in play, which the first recent general election poll for Georgia has illustrated: Bob Barr. The former Republican Congressman for Georgia, and now the Libertarian candidate for president, gets 6% in an Insider Advantage poll of the Peach State, clearly cutting into John McCain’s vote, who leads Obama 44%-43%. (There’s actually another Georgian running for president, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, but under current conditions she’s unlikely to dent Obama’s African-American support).
This data led Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com and TNR, who earlier mocked the idea of targeting Georgia, to recant a bit. But it’s all very, very early. Every presidential campaign talks about expanding the battleground at this stage, before focusing its resources down the home stretch to the states that are clearly winnable. But having money to burn, the Obama campaign has every reason to throw a scare into the relatively cash-strapped McCain campaign in places like Georgia. If McCain fails to rise to the bait, and banks Georgia as a sure thing, he could get a nasty surprise if Georgia looks dead-even in late October. If against the odds, Obama’s running-mate is Sam Nunn (who’s still well-known in his native state if not elsewhere), Obama could actually be the favorite in GA, which would indeed scramble the map.

In a gloss on some Gallup numbers on preferences for Obama and McCain among different age categories, Matt Yglesias makes a point that can’t be repeated too often:

[T]he accompanying analysis says “Barack Obama’s appeal to younger voters and John McCain’s support among older voters may have created a situation where the outcome will turn on the preferences of middle-aged voters — particularly those in their 40s.” You see analysis of this sort all the time, but it’s all based on a mistake — there’s not a demographic electoral college where “winning” particular sub-samples of the population is the key to victory and therefore it’s important to focus attention on the most evenly divided demographic groups. If John McCain persuades an Obama-supporting 25 year-old to switch to his camp, that has just as big an impact as one 45 year-old one 65 year-old or one 85 year-old.

Now, as Matt notes, there are voting categories that merit targeting more than others, because they have more persuadable voters than others. And due to the vagaries of geography, some voting categories are very important in determining who wins key states in the actual Electoral College. Finally, a vote that will otherwise certainly be cast for your major-party opponent is more valuable to capture than one which may otherwise not be cast at all, or will be cast for a minor-party candidate.
But the general rule is: a vote’s a vote.

The political ad war between Obama and McCain is well underway, and Shane D’Aprile of Campaigns & Elections emag Politics has a report and preview.
Check out “I’m Voting Republican,” a funny reverse psychology ad now gathering buzz.
Slate‘s David Roth has an interesting video report on the “Spot Runner” political ad phenomenon, which provides decent-looking video for internet ad clips for local candidates — for less than $500.
Another cheap, but clever ad technique — this one in the form of Republican robocalls (via ‘Freedomwatch’) blaming three dozen Dem congressmen for high gas prices (Talk about nerve). Dems should respond with robocalls nailing even more Republicans for opposing tougher CAFE standards.
The Grey Lady and WaPo obits of political ad pioneer Tony Schwartz include insightful nuggets of ad strategy and tips for making compelling TV ads.
You may know a lot of people who put more face time in front of their PC than their TV’s — 42 percent of Americans now say they get political information from the internet. Yet eMarketer reports that this year only 2 percent of political ad expenditures will go online, compared to an estimated 50 to 80 percent for television. This despite 87 million voters using the internet.
Last and best, today the Obama campaign is releasing a 60 second TV ad in 18 ‘battleground’ states, and you get to see it right here and now, courtesy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Political Insider.

Larry Sabato has a new analysis of this year’s U.S. Senate ratings out, and he reinforces the CW that Democrats are certain to make significant pick-ups for the second straight cycle. With 13 races currenly adjudged as competitive:

The Crystal Ball has Democrats in line for pick-ups in Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, and New Mexico. Surprisingly, Alaska is definitely obtainable for the Democrats, and Mississippi is very much on the radar screen, too. If 2008 turns out to be strongly Democratic at the presidential level, Democrats might be able to grab one or more of the seats up in Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Oregon, though currently we have Republicans leading in all four states. (The GOP leads in Minnesota and North Carolina are already shaky.) To balance the likely Democratic gains, Republicans have a single Democratic seat in Louisiana to target–and we rate that race as currently leaning Democratic.

To put it another way, Republicans have to look forward to 2012, when Democrats must defend 24 of the 33 seats at stake, for any realistic chance of regaining control of the U.S. Senate. Not bad, considering that a lot of folks thought after 2002 that the blue state/red state split probably spelled perpetual GOP dominance of the Senate.

In an almost universally anticipated move, Barack Obama today officially announced he would “opt out” of public financing for the general election, despite a statement early in 2007 that he intended to pursue a public financing agreement with the GOP candidate if he ran for president and won the Democratic nomination.
You can expect John McCain to leap on this announcement to suggest that Obama’s flip-flopped on public financing, and is playing the game by the old Washington rules. As evidenced by the nature of his announcement, Obama will likely respond by saying (1) his 2007 statement was general and tentative, and he never once promised McCain he’d accept public financing; (2) public financing is a meaningless reform so long as non-regulated dollars–particularly those spent by 527s–still come from special interests; and (3) Obama’s own internet-based and heavily small-dollar donor base represents a “parallel system” of public financing.
This last argument may actually work better with the public than you might initially think. Taxpayer-funded public financing of political campaigns has never been that popular, even though voters do seem to be worried about the influence of lobbyists. That’s one reason regular folks don’t typically share the aversion of “reformers” to self-funded candidates. So a candidate like Obama who has figured out a way to displace special-interest dollars with tons of small donations from plain citizens may well hit something of a sweet spot in terms of his positioning on campaign finance reform. We’ll know soon enough.

Elizabeth Drew, ace critic for the New York Review of Books, gives Senator Jim Webb’s new book “A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America” a strong thumbs up. Drew is clearly impressed with Webb’s character, as well as his writing skills, and her review may add a little volume to the Webb for Veep buzz. Drew notes Webb’s controversial statements regarding women in the military and his defense of the Vietnam War as “strategically necessary,” two positions that are problematic for some liberal Democrats. (For more on Webbs veep prospects, feminist concerns about Webb and his book, see Ed Kilgore’s TDS post on Webb in the veepstakes here).
Drew nonetheless offers perceptive insights into the strengths Webb would bring to the Democratic ticket and says “…Webb offers a fresh approach to politics and stirs an excitement that would provide the ticket with more pizzazz than would some of the more conventional figures whose names are in play.” And, as Drew points out, the publication of Webb’s political manifesto does seem exceptionally well-timed.

Over at fivethirtyeight.com, Nate Silver points to very favorable trends towards Barack Obama in state- and regional-level general election polling of those Appalachian areas where he did so poorly in the primaries. The most persuasive evidence is in Quinnipiac’s Swing State polling, which shows Obama registering double-digit gains between May and June in SW Ohio, and in SW and central PA. This probably helps explain why Obama has suddenly open up significant leads over McCain in recent polling of both OH and PA.

Sarah Posner of The American Prospect devotes most of her weekly FundamantaList column today to various political developments within or affecting that hardy redoubt of the Christian Right, the Southern Baptist Convention.
Some of you may recall the buzz a couple of years ago when a South Carolina pastor named Frank Page was elected president of the SBC. Because he wasn’t a member in good standing of the insider “conservative resurgance” leadership that took over the SBC nearly three decades ago, some observers (erroneously) thought Page’s election might signal a retreat from the intense politicization of the denomination. Page’s successor, Rev. Johnny Hunt, pastor of a megachurch in Woodstock, Georgia, offers no such false hope of a big change in the SBC’s Christian Right identity. The only unconventional thing about Hunt is that he is a Native American (not completely unusual in northwest Georgia, my own familial stomping grounds, where many folks have Cherokee ancestry).
In truth, outsiders tend to confuse factional maneuvering within the SBC with serious disagreements over the denomination’s radical course in U.S. politics. Best I can tell, the big argument among Southern Baptists right now is over a neo-Calvinist movement rooted in the seminaries that frowns on some of the more exuberant quasi-universalist evangelical utterances of many Baptist preachers.
But Southern Baptist conservative political activism hasn’t abated. Posner notes a recent poll of SBC pastors that shows a preference for John McCain over Barack Obama by the rather comfortable margin of 80% to 1%. The good news is that Baptist conservatives don’t seem that fired up about McCain, as witnessed by this less-than-enthusiastic explanation of support for the GOP candidate by the SBC’s chief political commissar, Richard Land:

“My explanation of that is that I have heard variations of this theme too many times to count and the theme is, ‘I’d rather have a third-rate fireman than a first-class arsonist,'” Land said, echoing what people have told him.

The little-noted irony here is that the “third-rate fireman” John McCain is the first self-identified Southern Baptist presidential nominee of the Republican Party. But given the recent positioning of the denomination, it’s even more ironic that five of the last eight Democratic presidential nominations have gone to a Southern Baptist.
McCain, of course, could double down on his Baptist identity by choosing the Rev. Mike Huckabee as his running-mate. But as Posner explains today as well, Huck’s not terribly popular with the leadership of his SBC brethren. Partly that’s because Huckabee was long identified with the so-called “moderate” wing in the SBC factional wars, but the bigger problem is his highly public coziness with pentecostal Protestants, who represent a dire theological and membership challenge to the Southern Baptists. Doctrine and politics aside, the SBC’s chief problem is declining membership, which ought to give pause to those who assume that theological “liberalism” is the sole source of the membership losses of the non-fundamentaltist Protestant churches.