Today Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics conducts another of his impressive county-level analyses of a swing state, in this case Pennsylvania.
His bottom line is that the Keystone State has maintained a very consistent Democratic advantage (compared to the national vote) of about 4 percentage points over the last four decades, despite internal shifts. Basically, growth of the Democratic vote percentage in Philadelphia and its closer suburbs has been offset by a Republican trend in western PA, and the Philly exurbs. Cost identifies northeast PA (where Obama did very poorly in the primary) as an opportunity area for McCain, and the Philly exurbs as one for Obama.
Cost does not get into another X-factor: the astonishing pro-Democratic trend in voter registration in PA since 2004, a net shift of 486,000 votes, according to a recent study by Rhodes Cook. Ds now enjoy a party-registration plurality in the state of more than a million votes.
All in all, it’s hard to imagine Obama losing PA if he’s running even nationally.

As the McCain campaign has rolled out its new, “Karl Rove style” personal attack on Barack Obama, Democrats have begun to feel a very familiar sense of frustration.
On the one hand, for many Democrats the “high road” taken by the Barack Obama campaign in replying to the attacks until several days ago did not seem adequately aggressive. At the same time, the DNC and other third party Democratic attacks on McCain’s close financial ties to oil companies and other lobbyists and his subservience to the policies of the Bush administration seem somehow to be glancing blows that do less damage to his personal image than do his attacks on Obama.
There is a reason for this. One fundamental element of the Karl Rove approach is to focus the most visceral and aggressive attacks on the opposing candidate’s character and personality rather than his policies. The recent Democratic attacks on McCain criticize, sometimes very bitterly, his positions and actions, but the Republican attacks on Obama are directly aimed at impugning his character.
In the past, Democrats often felt that focusing one’s attacks on an opposing candidates’ character was inappropriate – that politics should be about issues and policies, not personalities. But repeated muggings by the Rove Republicans have made many, if not most, Democrats now quite willing to respond to personal attacks in whatever way seems required.
The more difficult problem is that McCain is not, at first glance, an easy target for attacks on his character. His youthful military experience as a pilot and POW and his well-cultivated media reputation as an occasional “maverick” in the 80’s and 90’s present no obvious vulnerabilities. Current characterizations of him as old, ill-tempered, easily flustered and prone to blundering, while certainly true, are also essentially trivial. Comparing McCain to “The Simpsons’” Mr. Burns or to a clichéd grouchy grandpa simply has no meaningful political effect.
But, in fact, McCain is actually profoundly vulnerable to a powerful, aggressive and damaging attack on his character. McCain’s actions in recent weeks have provided compelling evidence for three genuinely disturbing propositions about his character, core values and integrity.

1. That John McCain has become desperate to win this election and is willing to sacrifice his deepest principles and his personal honor in order to do it
2. That the John McCain we see today is only a pale, diminished shadow of the man he once was in his early years.
3. That John McCain is allowing men he once despised and held in complete contempt to manipulate him and tell him what to do – to literally put words in his mouth and tell him what to say.

At first glance these statements are so strong that they sound almost defamatory. But each is supported by McCain’s recent actions (as described below) and they fit together into a single coherent narrative of ambition overcoming integrity and moral character.
Here is how this narrative can be presented in the format of a typical 45-60 second TV spot

Read more…

David Brooks’ New York Times column yesterday riffed extensively on a familiar theme in anti-Obama polemics: his status as a “soujourner” who’s wandered through an extraordinary life without putting down the sort of roots in any community or point of view that voters can recognize or identify with.
Salon’s Joan Walsh published a sound rebuttal of Brooks’ suggestion that successful American politicians are those who are unambiguously rooted in a clearly defined geographical, cultural, or temperamental mileiu. She cites John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and most of all, the synthetic cowboy George W. Bush, as presidents with complex and often self-contradictory backgrounds that rival anything “rootless” or confounding about Barack Obama.
Walsh could have gone further, insofar as complicated people have been the rule more than the exception among residents of the White House.
There was Richard Nixon, whose entire career (as best documented by Rick Perlstein’s brilliant book Nixonland ) involved an endless ambivalence towards the elite circles he despised and longed to join. There was LBJ, who aside from the ambiguities involving his views on race and economics, was a pathologically domineering personality whose political ascent was based on playing the submissive son to a series of powerful father figures (FDR, Rayburn and Russell most notably). Even an ostensibly “simple” figure like Eisenhower was actually a master Machiavellian who deliberately cultivated the false image of a genial and apolitical national father-figure.
Herbert Hoover? This paragon of sturdy heartland conservative values spent much of his adult life roaming the globe as a do-gooding cosmopolitan. FDR? The very symbol of progressive principle was generally considered a supreme opportunist, and a bit of a conservative, well into his presidency. TR? Hard to imagine a more complicated figure shaped by vastly conflicting personal and ideological impulses. Wilson? A born-and-bred fanatic who ultimately became identified as the epitome of global liberalism.
And you can go all the way back to the Founding Fathers, typified by the slave-holding egalitarian Jefferson.
In the last century, Coolidge, Truman and Ford are about the only presidents who stand out as what-you-see-is-what-you-get figures completely rooted in a particular and familiar time, place and culture.
All in all, Barack Obama’s in fine company as an unusual man seeking the unusual power of the presidency in this unusual country. Tomorrow James Vega is planning to post a follow-up to today’s piece on defining John McCain, with suggestions on how Obama can best define himself. It’s in the context of our long history of exceptional political personalities–of sojourners in a sojourner nation–that these suggestions should be understood.

Eric Kleefield of TPM Election Central has the new Obama ad — now playing on gas pump video screens.
Target shoppers much prefer Obama, while McCain wins the Wal-mart crowd, according to John Zogby’s HuffPo post comparing various department store shopper’s political preferences — a survey which might actually prove useful for voter registration campaigns.
Speaking of Wal-Mart, in his AFL-CIO Now Blog, James Parks puts their voter intimidation/campaign to stop the Employeee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in perspective.
MoJo/CQ Politics scribe David Corn features an 8-point plan for an Obama victory — and it comes from a former editor of The National Review, no less.
Southern Political Report‘s ace Tom Baxter has an inside look at Jim Martin’s big win in the GA Democratic senatorial primary, and he explains why it boosts Obama’s hopes of winning GA’s 15 electoral votes.
Maureen Dowd has a good NYT column today, offering some perceptive insights about McCain’s Obama-envy and hypocricy.
Politico‘s Ben Smith reports on the 50-state Obama Voter Protection Program.
Paul Waldman makes the case at The American Prospect that Obama should name his cabinet now, as a way of cooling out those who will be unhappy about his vp choice and strengthening Democratic solidarity by showing diverse Dem factions will be well-represented in his administration.
Michael Connery has a revealing post at The Nation explaining the barriers that diminish youth voter turnout and some possible solutions.
Dem candidates and campaigns will find some good talking points about the ‘War on Terror’ in this Consortiumnews.com post by Ivan Eland, director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Eland discusses the new Rand Corporation report on U.S. anti-terrorism strategy.

It’s increasingly obvious that desperate Republicans are well on the way to convincing themselves that offshore oil drilling is some sort of heaven-sent electoral silver bullet. Check out this statement at RealClearPolitics by supply-side economic warhorse Lawrence Kudlow:

As Sen. John McCain and the GOP leadership nationalize the drill, drill, drill message, the Republican party might conceivably be riding a summer political rally. The question of offshore drilling, along with expanded domestic energy production, has suddenly become the biggest political and economic wedge issue of this election. Is there a Republican tsunami in the making?

You might dismiss this as a disposable comment from the peanut gallery, if it were not for the fact that conservative House Republicans are currently threatening to shut down the federal government (a tactic that didn’t work out too well for the GOP back in 1995) if Congress’ Democratic management doesn’t instantly facilitate a vote to lift the long-standing offshore drilling ban.
This conservatives’ excitement over the alleged power of the offshore drilling issue emanates from two public opinion data points that they assume are connected: polls showing significant majorities of the public favoring more offshore drilling, and John McCain’s rise to parity with Barack Obama in some national polls.
On the second point, there’s no concrete evidence I’ve seen indicating that McCain’s recent slow drift upward in tracking polls is primarily or even significantly attributable to the Drill Now! Drill Here! message.
And on the first point, polls have long shown that given a straight-up yes-or-no choice, Americans favor just about anything that will increase energy stocks, though promoting alternative energy sources typically rank first. A CNN poll last week showing big majorities for offshore drilling is often touted by Republicans as documenting the power of this issue. But that poll actually showed (as pointed out by TNR’s Eve Fairbanks) slight drops in support for offshore drilling during the course of the current GOP campaign. And getting to the substratum of the issue, the poll also indicated the public is split down the middle on the proposition that offshore drilling could have an immediate effect on gas prices.
The longstanding support of most Americans for a comprehensive energy strategy that includes all options helps explain why Barack Obama is making it clear he’s not an absolutist on domestic oil and gas exploration. But unlike some progressives, I don’t necessarily view that as a flip-flop or “surrender.” It’s long been a basic talking point among pro-environment Democrats that expanded domestic production of fossil fuels, where consistent with environmental needs, should be a part, albeit a small part, of any overall energy strategy.
The key point about the positioning of the two presidential candidates and the two parties on this issue is that Obama and Democrats consistently favor a balanced, alternatives-and-conservation-heavy approach, while McCain and Republicans are now going out of their way to signal that domestic oil and gas drilling are their overriding priorities. And that exposes them to a potentially lethal counter-attack.
The same CNN poll that conservatives are crowing about shows that 94% of Americans think that U.S. oil companies are a major (68%) or minor (26%) cause of rising gas prices. The Bush Administration is viewed as a major (54%) or minor (35%) cause of the problem by 89% of Americans. (“Democrats in Congress” are viewed as a major cause by 31%, and a minor cause by 45%).
It is very important that the Obama campaign and Democrats generally make the following points:
(1) McCain’s sudden championship of virtually unlimited offshore drilling represents a recent (June 2008) flip-flop conducted in close conjunction with an identical flip-flop by George W. Bush.
(2) This flip-flop was towards the maximum position of U.S. oil companies, now enjoying record profits, who immediately showered some of those profits into the campaign accounts of John McCain.
(3) There’s zero evidence that reversing bans on oil drilling offshore or in national wildlife reserves will have any immediate effect on gas prices, and 100% evidence that a oil-o-centric energy policy will perpetuate dependence on foreign-controlled oil markets and U.S. oil companies.
(4) McCain, Bush and the GOP continue to pursue not only bad and oil-company-driven energy policies, but bad and special-interest-driven policies on health care, housing, globalization, pensions, economic insecurity, public and private debt, and income inequality. And that’s just the domestic side of the ledger.
If Democrats relentlessly pursue this message, then it’s all to the good that Republicans have deluded themselves into thinking that oil drilling is the only domestic talking point they need. Let them continue to back themselves into this corner. Let the Kudlows of the world continue to make their Rube Goldberg arguments that oil market speculators (yet another target of public ire) will reward pro-drilling, pro-oil-company-profits policies with lower oil prices. Let conservatives continue to argue that perpetual semi-occupation of Iraq is necessary to protect the access of multinational oil companies to that country’s production. Let the GOP make itself the symbol of Congress’ futility by threatening to shut down the entire federal government until oil drilling is extended into sensitive areas affecting actual voters in specific parts of the country.
Give ’em enough rope, and Republicans will soon regret making Drill! Drill! Drill! their primary economic talking point in 2008.

As you probably know, demands by the United States that its forces and personnel be entirely exempt from Iraqi law has been a sticking-point in negotiations with Baghdad over a Status of Forces agreement to govern the U.S. presence in Iraq. But as the Progressive Policy Institute’s Jim Arkedis points out in a post at his fine new national security blog, allourmight.com, the problem also extends to private security contractors (PSCs), such as the famous private army run by the North Carolina-based company Blackwater Worldwide.
Arkedis unravels a new GAO report that seems to offer reassurance that PSCs are operating under the rule of law. But in the fine print, he discovers that PSCs continue to enjoy immunity from Iraqi law under an obscure order from the long-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. Thus:

In laymen’s terms, nothing has changed – security contractors remain immune because the CPA order is considered Iraq law, and the CPA gave contractors a get-out-of-jail-free card in 2004.
Almost more disturbing is that the GAO leaves the distinct impression in the “highlights” that the situation is vastly improved. Most Congressional staffs only have time to read the executive summaries, and may never dig down to find the devil in the details.

When it comes to the challenge of restoring full Iraqi sovereignty, this is a devil indeed.

(Note: this is a portion of an item cross-posted from Beliefnet.com)
I’m less certain than Mara Vanderslice that John McCain’s recent pattern of decrying Barack Obama’s “messianism” is a deliberate effort to label him as the Antichrist. It’s not that I consider Team McCain incapable of “dog whistle” appeals to the Christian Right; their candidate has certainly mastered those dark arts in a variety of abstract references to his hatred of “judicial activism,” which to that audience means legalized abortion, gay partnership rights, and church-state separation. But unless John Hagee spent some time whispering in McCain’s ear during their brief public partnership, I wouldn’t guess he or his campaign advisors possess the kind of theological dexterity necessary to paint the 666 on Obama’s forehead. But maybe Mara’s right. We’ll see if McCain’s campaign continues using religiously-charged terms like “the anointed one” in references to their opponent.
The more obvious problem with McCain’s attacks on Obama’s charisma is simple hypocrisy. No recent presidential candidate in either party has done more to build a cult of personality around himself and his biography, from the arrogant assertion that he is uniquely a “straight-talker,” to the massive investment his campaigns past and present have made in the proposition that his courage and suffering as a POW should fully qualify him for the presidency and rebut any criticism. (Yes, I know he has a long record in Congress, but even many Republicans admit that record is something of an incoherent mess, particularly given his vast flip-flopping during the current campaign cycle).
McCain has also been an eager participant in the self-parodying WWRD (What Would Reagan Do?) idolatry so common among conservatives. And let’s don’t forget (which is easy to do given subsequent events) that during the brief moment of triumphalism before, during and after the invasion of Iraq, many conservatives engaged in an orgy of messianism about George W. Bush as a towering world-historical figure who was decisively and single-handedly smiting the forces of Islamofascism by deposing Saddam Hussein (another candidate for the Antichrist job in some Christian Right precincts) and creating a pro-American revolution throughout the Middle East and beyond.
One party’s “messianism” is clearly another’s “charisma.”

Over the weekend, Barack Obama’s campaign notified the Credentials Committee that he wanted Michigan and Florida to have full voting rights at the Democratic National Convention later this month.
This was a totally predictable move, based on a desire to heal wounds in those two states now that their voting status at the Convention has no bearing on the nominating contest.
But it’s still amazing to realize that it was just two months ago when this issue was making front page headlines and roiling the party with passionate arguments about fairness, representative government, and even equal voting rights. It seems like eons ago, doesn’t it?
By comparison, there’s nearly three months left before election day, with a host of important intervening events, most notably the conventions, the presidential debates, a vast array of paid media, and perhaps (at least on the Democratic side) the most impressive get-out-the-vote operation in electoral history. Those Democrats who are currently panicking over the close polls should calm down for a while. At least there’s no longer much risk of over-confidence for Obama, eh?
Getting back to the FL/MI issue, some party stalwarts are worried about the residual effect of the latest decision, according to the New York Times‘ Katherine Seelye:

Mr. Obama’s “request” to restore full voting strength to Florida and Michigan is likely to cause heartburn for party officials, who have struggled to maintain some authority over the primary calendar.
By granting Mr. Obama’s request, the party will essentially be giving a green light to other states to ignore the calendar next time because there will be no consequences.

Well, yeah, but remember this important fact about the calendar: If Obama wins in November, and escapes a major primary challenge in 2012, then he will be in a position to do whatever he wants to do to the prmary/caucus timetable, with “no consequences.” Indeed, it would represent one of those rare moments when major changes in the entire system for nominating Democratic presidential candidates could become entirely possible.
But if eons have passed since June, and we’re light years from November, then 2012 can be barely imagined.

In case anyone doubts Senator John McCain’s proclivity for callous narcissism and his campaign’s inclination toward vicious hackery, I refer you to the statement, via HuffPo, of Kathy Hilton, mother of the McCain-dissed Paris Hilton.

I’ve been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses. It is a complete waste of the money John McCain’s contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country’s time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States.

And in case you wisely tuned out the buzz surrounding the McCain ad that prompted the response, McCain said he was ‘proud’ of the ad, which trashed two fellow Republicans in a silly, ineffectual attempt to diminish the gravitas of Senator Obama by unconvincingly associating him with two ‘Hollywood train wrecks.’ “All I can say is we’re proud of that commercial,” the GOP nominee-apparent told a town hall meeting.
Yes, the ad insults two Republicans. Ms. Hilton’s parents reportedly contributed $4,600 to the McCain campaign, no less. Ms. Spears has been captured on videotape touting her support for President Bush. Such is the gratitude and loyalty they get from the leader of their party.
The mean-spirited ad reveals McCain’s callousness in 3-D. Yes, many feel that Spears and Hilton have often behaved like superficial, immature air-heads. But would it be too much to ask that an aspiring leader of the free world show a little more dignity and compassion toward them and others who may have psychological problems or substance-abuse issues?
It may be that McCain and his team didn’t know they were trashing fellow Republicans. If so, that would be very sloppy research and compelling further proof that McCain is sorely lacking in management skills and as a judge of character and abilities of those who he would select to run the government. In any event, McCain’s misguided hubris about the celebrity ad provides yet another indication of his lousy judgment.
It’s McCain’s campaign that is the real train wreck, and the most charitable explanation is that the engineer is asleep at the switch.

Sooner or later, all presidential campaigns go negative, the good guys, as well as the bad guys. The “we’re better than that” conceit is a self-delusion shared by losing campaigns everywhere.
Of course there are two basic ways to go negative — with lies and sleaze, or with integrity and class. Dems should always chose the latter option, and usually do.
The key decision associated with going negative is timing. The McCain campaign has made their decision. As Michael Kranish observes in the lede of his article “McCain ads go negative early on Obama” in the Thursday edition of The Boston Globe:

By launching a series of TV ads that ridicule Senator Barack Obama and question his readiness to be president, Senator John McCain has made a strategic decision to go directly negative much earlier than usual in the presidential race.

Actually, it’s been going on a little longer, as Kranish notes,

The Wisconsin Advertising Project, which monitors campaign ad spending nationwide, reported yesterday that of the $48 million worth of ads the two campaigns have aired since Obama clinched the nomination in early June, 90 percent of Obama’s ads have been positive and mostly about himself, while about one-third of McCain’s commercials referred to Obama negatively.

Obama has to go negative and he will. The only question is will it be too late to help him win? Who Obama should not be on the morning after election day is the loser who sniffs before TV reporters “At least we kept on the high road. I’m proud of my campaign.”
The high road strategy makes sense for the candidate who is protecting a lead in the primary season, because party unity among contenders’ supporters is paramount. But it makes little sense in the general election campaign when surrounded by snarling jackals. If anyone in Obama’s campaign has doubts that McCain’s strategists will go as low as is neccessary to win, Daily Kos writer Dengre has a sobering reality check.
No, I don’t think Obama should personally get into it with McCain’s mud-slingers. But he would do well to heed Ed Kilgore’s advice, in his Friday post,

…Obama really does need to spend less time on broad-based indictments of “Washington” or “lobbyists” or “politics as usual,” and spend a lot more time talking about his actual opponent, the actual opposing party, and the actual incumbent that links them.

McCain and his strategists understand that, to work, a negative meme has to be launched early and hammered throughout the campaign. Then, in the closing days of the general election, McCain can affect a ‘high road’ persona, the dirty work having been done.
So far Obama’s attacks against McCain have been a little too tame. The Obama campaign needs to define the precise meme they want to hang on McCain and implement a strategy to make it stick. Easier said than done, but a challenge that has to be made — and soon — for Democrats to take the white house.