Recent public opinion dynamics have favored Democrats, to be sure, leading, in conjunction with the curent economic disaster, to some predictions of a 1932-style Democratic landslide. But as Chris Bowers points out at Open Left today, we’re in an era where the margin of error, and of victory or defeat, is much smaller than in the past.
Here’s Chris’ analysis on the limits of the swing vote and its implications.

8.5% is the maximum victory: First, as I warned on Monday, please keep in mind that an 8,5% national victory is the maximum. In the last sixteen national elections (U.S. House and Presidential), the largest victory was Bill Clinton’s 8.51% victory in 1996. The simple fact is that no one wins by double digits anymore. This goes for the large Republican victories in 1988 (President–7.72%), 1994 (5.9%), and 2002 (4.6%). It also goes for the large Democratic victories of 1992 (President–5.56%), 1996 (President–8.51%) and 2006 (7.9%). “Landslides” are now 5-8% national victories, not anything larger. Given that a very real percentage of Democrats and Independents won’t vote for him because he is black, it was always absurd to think that Obama was going to break this mark. When Obama reached an 8% national lead, the only place for him to go was down.

Chris is right, in terms of recent precedents, and if that bothers Democrats hoping for a gigantic Obama landslide, it should be comforting in case McCain catches a break and moves ahead between now and November 4. The probability of any particular electoral outcome is not that far outside the MoE of most polls. It will likely be a close race, in popular votes at least, no matter what happens. And that’s why all the Obama campaign’s tactical advantages in money and the “ground game” may matter so much. But Democrats should avoid getting too caught up in either the highs or lows of the polls.

Does anyone else out there find it a little odd that Senator McCain is so obsessed with trashing planetariums? I understand that a hefty portion of his base harbors a medieval suspicion of science education in general. But you would think that a Senator, a former pilot at that, who prides himself in being a strong champion of our national security would at least get it that teaching young people about the cosmos is a good way to get them interested in physics, rocket science and the like. Here’s what McCain said at the debate:

He [Obama] voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. My friends, do we need to spend that kind of money?

It wasn’t just the words. it was the contemptuous tone, as well as the monumental hypocrisy behind it. It’s OK to squander $300 U.S. taxpayer dollars per month on each of thousands of Iraqi government employees, with no end in sight. But a couple of million dollars on America’s oldest planetarium? How outrageous. Then there’s the duplicity of calling it an “overhead projector” to make it sound like a grade school slide machine, when he knew better.
it wasn’t the first time McCain trashed planetariums in attacking Senator Obama. Back in September McCain was quoted as saying “And when you look at some of the planetariums and other foolishness that he asked for, he shouldn’t be saying anything about Governor Palin.”
To which theoretical physicist JoAnne Hewett responded:

Quite frankly, I am left speechless at the phrase: ‘planetariums and other foolishness…Sorry, but replacing 40 year old equipment at one of the leading science education facilities in this country (the Adler Planetarium is located in downtown Chicago and is the oldest planetarium in existence today) is one of the best investments in the future that I can think of. I’ve always equated planetariums with science education – an area where the US seems to be lacking.

What is even more worrisome is the subtext behind McCain’s contempt for planetariums. It’s not just a reactionary attitude toward science. He has never placed much value on education in general and sees federal investment in education as a waste. If elected, he and Palin could do serious damage to America’s ability to compete in the years ahead with other nations which are making major investments in upgrading their educational systems. It would be hard to devise a quicker way to turn America into a second-rate power than electing the pair of them. One more reason to write another check for Obama.

There’s a fascinating new study of the most recent presidential campaign advertising expenditures by state, released today by an outfit called the Wisconsin Advertising Project (based at the University of Wisconsin in Madison).
The analysis covers advertising expenditures (not actual airings) during the week of September 28-October 4, and includes RNC buys, a major component of the McCain campaign’s effort. It doesn’t include ad spending by “independent” (i.e., 527) groups, but a separate part of the analysis suggests that such spending is significantly down from 2004, and isn’t a large factor in most battleground states at this point (the only striking 527 spending figure is $914,000 spent by the pro-McCain group Vets for Freedom in California).
Overall expenditures were $17.5 million for Obama and $11 million for McCain. That’s double the level of spending for the first week of September. Nearly all of McCain’s ads were negative, while only about a third of Obama’s ads were negative.
But the more interesting numbers are about where the two campaigns are targeting their paid media resources. In a number of the more obvious battleground states (OH, PA, CO, NM, NV, WI and MI, where McCain did one large ad buy before shifting resources out of the state), Obama’s overall 3-2 spending advantage was roughly reflected in state expenditures. But Obama outspent McCain by more than 2-1 in MO and NH, by more than 3-1 in FL, VA, and IN, and by well over 8-1 in NC. All told, in FL, VA, IN, and NC–all states that went for Bush by comfortable margins in 2004–Obama spent about $6.1 million last week, as compared to about $1.5 million for McCain.
The only two battleground states where McCain outspent Obama were IA (by about a 3-2 margin) and MN (a 5-1 margin), both Kerry states, albeit narrowly, in 2004. Obama’s been steadily in the lead in IA throughout the race, and has led in almost every poll of MN, though sometimes by small margins.
It’s obvious from these numbers that McCain is gambling that an improved national position (without which, of course, he’s going to lose in any event) will pull him across the line in places like VA, IN, NC, and perhaps even FL, without a major expenditure of money, while Obama is using his overall advantage to play aggressively in states won by Bush in 2004. Florida’s a particular dilemma for McCain: almost nobody thinks he can win without that state, but it’s a very expensive place to compete.
None of these figures, of course, include money spent for “ground game” registration and turnout efforts, and in “new media,” both areas where Obama is almost universally thought to have an advantage everywhere.
I realize this analysis is just a one-week snapshot that may not accurately convey the ultimate picture of the “ad wars” in the battleground states. But it does help illustrate the extent to which Obama is not only in the lead, but on the offensive. This matters, since early voting has already begun or is about to begin in many of these states, and undecided voters are beginning to focus and make up their minds.
And from a strategic point of view, it can’t be a good sign for McCain that he seems to be spending more money and time in Iowa, which he’s almost certainly already lost, than in NC, where he absolutely must win.

As Ed noted last night, one of the surprises in the second presidential debate is that McCain did not pursue the “change the subject from the economy” strategy that his campaign had heavily telegraphed, and that his running-mate had already initiated in remarks about William Ayers and Obama’s “radicalism.” The names “Ayers” and “Wright” never came up.
Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith have a pretty thorough discussion of that development at Politico today. Statements by McCain staffers after the debate made it clear this was a strategic decision by the campaign, not some temporary tactic based on the debate format, or a “let Sarah do it” division of labor. They’ve concluded McCain can’t “change the subject” so long as the economic crisis is actually getting worse. Yesterday’s plunge in the Dow was probably the clincher.
We’ll see if the decision sticks should McCain’s poll ratings fare worse than the Dow going forward.

The CBSNews/Knowledge Networks poll of uncommitted voters taken right after the debate gave 40 percent to Obama, with 26 percent for McCain and 34 percent undecided.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll of “debate-watchers” had 54 percent saying that Obama “did the best job” in the debate, with 30 percent for McCain.
In a SurveyUSA poll, California debate-watchers give it to Obama more than 2 to 1 (56 percent Obama, 26 percent McCain, 18 percent ‘no clear winner).
Democracy Corps dial-testing of 50 undecided voters gave Obama 38 percent, with 30 percent for McCain, and 42 percent saying they would vote for Obama if the election were held today, compared with 26 percent for McCain.
A Media Curves poll of 1004 respondents found Obama the winner by a margin of 52-34, with 14 ‘don’t know.’

I and others here at TDS will probably have more to say tomorrow on tonight’s second presidential debate, but for the moment I will just mention some surprises.
Number one was McCain’s decision to spring a new mortgage buyout/renegotiation proposal. I’m sure we’ll find out more details soon, including some that make the proposal less ambitious than it sounds. But it had to create some vast heartburn in ConservativeWorld. Remember that Republicans in Congress and in the administration fought tooth and nail, and successfully, during the bailout negotiations to fight a Democratic proposal to let bankruptcy judges have mortgage rate and principal renegotiation powers. Now McCain’s talking about a wholesale renegotiation system that will go far beyond people in bankruptcy. Go figure.
Number two, of course, was McCain’s failure to follow the strategy that his campaign and his running-mate had signled as its last, best hope to win: attacking Obama’s “radical” views and associations. Over at The Corner tonight, there was considerable apoplexy that the names “Ayers” and “Wright” didn’t come up. Maybe McCain’s decided to let others make that case, while pretending he has nothing to do with it.
Number three, which was probably less a surprise than a disappointment, was how boring the whole thing was, and how poor a job Tom Brokaw did as moderator. Aside from his tiresome hectoring about time constraints, and his arbitrary decisions about who got follow-up questions, Brokaw seemed to have picked the blandest questions imaginable from the many at his disposal. One question that he chose and then amplified was heavily loaded, stipulating a gigantic Social Security crisis that most Democrats deny.
Number four, which was a pleasant surprise, was how Obama managed to get across a couple of important but complex points despite struggling against the many attacks McCain threw into his path. One was about the national marketplace for health insurance that McCain would create, which would have the effect of allowing insurers to evade current state regulations on preexisting conditions and mandated coverage generally. This is a really big deal (He probably shouldn’t, however, have cited the home state of his running-mate, banking paradise Delaware, as an analogy).
Surprise number five is that unless I somehow missed it, McCain did not utter the word “maverick” (or for that matter, refer to his mavericky running-mate). This omission undoubtedly ruined a lot of debate drinking games. On the other hand, those who were playing a drinking game based on the number of times McCain said “My friends” were unconscious by the mid-point.

Something potentially important happened on the campaign trail today. Via Marc Ambinder, this is a snippet from prepared remarks for Sarah Palin today in Florida:

John McCain and I will protect the entitlement programs that Americans depend on – and above all, Social Security. No presidential election cycle is complete without the Democratic candidate coming down here to Florida to try to stir up fear and panic on this issue. And if you expected any better from the guy who promised to get rid of “old-style politics,” you’re in for a disappointment – because Barack Obama has exploited this issue the way he exploits so many others.
So, let there be no misunderstanding: John McCain has always kept his promises to America, and as president, he will keep America’s promise to our senior citizens.

Methinks she protesteth too much. John McCain strongly supported Bush’s wildly unpopular partial-privatization scheme in 2005. He’s been evasive about his Social Security proposals during the current campaign (unlike Barack Obama, BTW), but he did allow as how he thought the fundamental pay-as-you-go financing system for the program was “an absolute disgrace,” and his budget and economic plans make gigantic savings from “entitlement reform” a very big deal.
Moreover, this very week, the McCain-Palin campaign issued a “clarification” on its health care plan suggesting that it would be financed with $1.3 trillion in unspecified savings from Medicare and Medicaid.
So how trustworthy does McCain sound on “protecting entitlements?” That Palin paused from her attacks on Obama’s associations with William Ayers to raise the subject in senior-heavy Florida indicates that Team McCain is very nervous on the subject, and for good reason. But “just trust us” is not the most compelling counter-argument.

There’s quite a public debate going on in conservative circles this week about whether or not John McCain should take the lowest road possible in trying to make the rest of the presidential campaign about Barack Obama’s association with scary-sounding people like William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. What’s most interesting about it is that nobody on either side of the debate seems to have a problem with going that route if it could actually work.
Yesterday, Bill Kristol of the New York Times endorsed robust attacks on Obama about Ayers and especially Wright through the odd lens of “letting Palin be Palin,” on the theory that the spunky hockey mom knew better than campaign operatives how to tear Obama a new one.
Today Rich Lowry of National Review and Ross Douthat of The Atlantic dissented on grounds that “changing the subject” from the economy simply wouldn’t work. And at RealClearPolitics, Jay Cost took a break from numbers-crunching to argue that McCain might as well “change the subject,” since any efforts to convince voters that Republicans could be trusted to fix the economy were simply hopeless.
While as a Democrat I particularly enjoyed the Douthat-Cost debate over which McCain strategy was the more hopeless, it is a bit sobering to realize that these supporters of the Candidate of Honor and Decency and Bipartisan Civility and Country First agreed that there was nothing inherently suspect about trying to make the election turn on “issues” that have nothing to do with anything remotely relevant to the real-life challenges facing the next president. I’ve yet to hear a claim that America faces a dire threat from hippie bomb-throwers or black nationalists. And all that jazz about Ayers and Wright reflecting vital concerns about Obama’s “character” and “judgment” really just represents the self-serving rationalization that anything which could be used to damage him is legit because he’d then be damaged goods.
Interestingly enough, Douthat earlier provided a values-free version of this objection, in a post defending the infamous Willie Horton ad of 1988, and the Jesse Helms “pink slip” ad of 1990, on grounds that the lurid images at least connected with “real” issues (crime and economic insecurity, respectively). Since “unlike Willie Horton, Bill Ayers isn’t tied to any of the issues that are uppermost in voters’ minds,” going after Ayers is a bad idea. But again, according to Douthat, the problem is that such attacks won’t resonate. Otherwise, they would apparently be fine.
Look, I’m not naive. Politics is a blood sport, and I am abundantly aware that winning elections by the most effective means available is the condition precedent to all the policy ideas I care about. But the entire rationale for John McCain’s candidacy, this year as in 2000, was that he was better than this sort of tactic, and wouldn’t try to ask voters to prefer him over a rival based on rattling hobgoblins against ancient culture-war staples like the Scary Black Man with his Scary Friends. Instead, in a grand bit of irony, we have the candidate desperate to separate himself from the unpopular incumbent more and more reminding voters each day of the last Republican nominee who promised to “restore honor and dignity to the White House,” and serve as a “uniter, not a divider,” George W. Bush.

One of the more interesting bits of advice being offered to John McCain about what to do to regain some momentum is this from conservative activist Greg Mueller, as quoted by Politico’s Roger Simon today:

The Supreme Court issue can be extremely powerful for McCain. Obama is basically for using the court for social engineering. This is key for Reagan Democrats in key swing states. Catholics respond very well to the Supreme Court issue. McCain and Palin have got to get on that….
[McCain] has to talk about the Supreme Court. Obama will be the ultimate judicial activist advocate as president, using the courts for social engineering projects. Once the American people focus, McCain can win on this issue. It is an issue that attracts independent voters and Catholic Democrats.

Whether or not McCain takes Mueller’s advice, the issue of Supreme Court appointments could come up in a question in tonight’s debate.
So it’s appropriate to review this argument that Obama is a dangerous radical on constitutional issues who would direct the Court into a new and radical direction.
Here are a few pertinent facts about the recent and current composition of the Court, and how one should look at the idea that godless liberals have seized it or are threatening to seize it.
Seven of the current nine Justices were appointed by Republican presidents.
Going back a while, 12 of the last 14 Supreme Court appointments were made by Republican presidents (two by Bush 43, two by Bush 41, three by Reagan, one by Ford, four by Nixon, as opposed to two by Clinton and zero for poor Jimmy Carter).
When it comes to abortion, five of the seven Justices who concurred in the original Roe v. Wade decision striking down state abortion laws were appointed by Republican presidents. All five of the Justices who voted to reaffirm Roe in the crucial Casey decision of 1992 were appointed by Republican presidents.
In terms of future appointments, it is universally believed that the three Justices most likely to retire during the next four years are Stevens, Ginsburg, and Souter. They are three of the five current Court members who are willing to uphold Roe (including Justice Kennedy, who’s recently exhibited a willingness to support major restrictions on abortion rights), and three of the four Justices generally thought to constitute the Court’s “liberal wing,” though none of them are really “liberal activists” in the tradition of past figures like Douglas, Brennan or Warren.
So: the idea that Barack Obama would be in a position to engage in any “social engineering” via the Supreme Court is, well, preposterous. The real issue here, as every honest conservative will admit, is that a President McCain could finally consolidate a conservative activist revolution on the Court that’s been a work in progress since the 1970s, and that is focused obsessively on the overturning of Roe. And it’s extremely clear that conservatives will demand, and will receive, an appointment from a President McCain that would represent the fifth vote to overturn Roe, in addition to a variety of other big constitutional changes from today’s center-right Court.
The Harriet Miers skirmish that preceded Bush’s appointment of Justice Samuel Alito was the dress rehearsal for what would happen prior to a McCain Court appointment. Conservatives will fight tooth and nail against any Republican Court appointments for nominees who do not basically have a Federalist Society tattoo right there under their robes, and who are not guaranteed to vote for the overturning of Roe.
Yes, the certainty that a first-term President McCain would have to get Court appointments through a Democratic Senate is an important factor, though there’s already talk that he might emulate George H.W. Bush’s successful Clarence Thomas strategem of choosing a hard-core conservative who is female and/or who represents a minority group (most likely a Hispanic, since there’s never been a Hispanic Supreme Court member).
But make no mistake, it ain’t Barack Obama who portends any sort of big change in the role of the Court, or in the rights enjoyed by Americans. As the New York Times recently said in an editorial on the subject:

[I]f Mr. Obama is elected, he might merely keep the court on its current moderately conservative course. Under Mr. McCain, if a liberal justice or two or three steps down, we may see a very different America.

During the Harriet Miers saga, I observed that in demanding an absolute veto over Court appointments, social conservatives were essentially calling in a thirty-year mortgage on the Republican Party. Given recent events, that metaphor is more appropriate than ever.

A month ago, it’s safe to say, a lot of Democrats were in panic mode. John McCain, having apparently won the Battle of the Convention Bounces, was ahead in many national polls, and was looking particularly strong in certain key battleground states like Ohio, Florida, and Colorado. Sarah Palin was being feted as a populist game-changer. Democratic efforts to chain the Republican ticket to the incumbent Republican administration seemed to be succumbing to the McCain-Palin campaign’s mavericky self-description. There was even talk that Republicans could minimize downballot losses, as the Democratic generic congressional ballot advantage shrank and in some polls disappeared.
Well, the worm has definitely turned, and though there are four weeks left until Election Day, the panic has shifted to Republicans. Yesterday Barack Obama enjoyed what Nate Silver called “perhaps his strongest individual polling day of the year,” with leads in states like MO and NC that had been thought to be McCain Country, and big leads in must-win states for McCain like VA and FL. With stocks plunging on the first trading day after Congress passed the financial bailout bill, GOP hopes that the economic crisis could be declared “over,” allowing McCain to refocus the contest on doubts about Obama, faded, probably for good.
And there are signs of considerable stress and dissension within Team McCain, whose focus and discipline in the days before and immediately after the conventions had been so impressive. Palin exceeded most expectations in the Veep debate, but still “lost” according to most polls. She then proceeded to publicly challenge the campaign’s decision to concede Michigan (while making it clear she hadn’t been in the loop when the decision was made), and then contradicted McCain’s long-standing edict against trying to make Jeremiah Wright a campaign issue. Meanwhile, McCain delivered a long negative speech full of anger and mendacity, accusing Obama of anger and mendacity, in what appeared to be a textbook case of what the psychologists call “projection.”
Even on what should be the very settled matter of the candidate’s platform, there are new problems for McCain. After getting hammered for a while about the consequences of his health care plan’s provision fully taxing employer-sponsored health benefits, McCain’s campaign suddenly shifted ground and said the candidate would pay for his plan with more than a trillion dollars of unspecified “savings” (i.e., cuts) in Medicare and Medicaid, an election-year no-no, particularly for a campaign so heavily dependent on the good wishes of seniors.
Tonight’s “town-hall” debate in Nashville is now being hopefully anticipated by Republicans as representing yet another turning point. This is, after all, McCain’s favorite debate format, and one that he’s used to. But it’s not the format most conducive to negative attacks on an opponent, or to any effort to “change the subject,” since candidates have to show deference to the priorities expressed by the “real people” asking the questions. Lecturing questioners that they ought to care more about Barack Obama’s association with William Ayers than their shrinking pensions and their inability to get a loan won’t go over very well. As John Dickerson reminds us today at Slate, the town hall format proved disastrous for an earlier GOP candidate, George H.W. Bush in 1992, who was suspected of being out-of-touch on the economy, and proceeded to prove it.
McCain’s getting all sorts of conflicting advice from Republicans on what to do to change the campaign’s dynamics now that voters are beginning to make up their minds, and in some key states, to actually cast ballots. He might want to start with the modest goal of a single day of positive vibes and positive press.