There are a hell of a lot of animal-lovers in America, and no doubt they are well represented among swing voters. If only there was some way to show them all this powerful Defenders of Wildlife video ad embedded in Todd Beeton’s excellent MyDD article, “The Humane Society Cites Sarah Palin as Reason For Endorsing Obama/Biden.” (Scroll down Beeton’s article to see ad)

Former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Dr. Gary Hart (now chairman of the Council for a Livable World) shows why he is regarded as one of the more insightful strategists in Democratic politics in this amusing and interesting dialogue with BloggingheadsTV sounding board Robert Wright. Wright asks him if nowadays “the object of the game in presidential elections is to convince the electorate that your opponent is the type of person they hated in high school?” Hart responds that no, nor is it “who do you want to have a beer with or who reminds you of your first husband.” Hart dismisses the Palin factor as a “distraction and temporary sideshow” and argues that it’s more about helping voters get a “sense” that your candidate can manage the needed transformation better than the adversary. The central question is “who do you down deep think can fundamentally alter the direction of the nation.” Says Hart, “I just wish I could convince Barack Obama to say that.”

Thomas Frank has a WSJ article , “Get Your Class War On” urging Dems to recognize the GOP’s culture war offensive as a “debased form of class war.” Frank urges Dems to stop already with “the same feeble counterattacks that failed them last time, prudishly correcting misleading GOP advertisements and crying for the recess monitor when the other side plays dirty.” He calls on Dems to reveal McCain-Palin and the GOP as toadies for the fat cats who are responsible for the current meltdown.
Michael Kinsley has a right-on-time Slate.com article documenting the Democrats’ superior record on managing the economy.
Jonathan Haidt attempts to answer a complex question at Alternet.com, “What Makes People Vote Republican?“, and he ignites a heated discussion.
The Campaign for America’s Future launches a project to mobilize public support for making the upcoming presidential debates substantive. In this audio clip of the press briefing, Robert Borosage, Katrina vanden Heuval, James Rucker and Paul Waldman explain The Campaign’s ad series calling for “a debate worthy of a great nation in crisis.”
Waldman’s article “How to Win a Presidential Debate” in The American Prospect ruminates on what endures in the minds of voters after it’s all been said. Hint: It has to do with expectations, zingers and gaffes.
Pollster.com‘s Mark Blumenthal reports on some nasty message testing and push polls that may provide a glimpse into GOP strategy for the next few weeks.
Open Left has a worrisome post “Why We Have Two Weeks To Win Or Lose This Election: Early Voting ” by ‘avenged savant,’ a former administrator of Arizona’s pioneering early voting program, pointing out that voting actually starts on October 1 and John McCain knows how to play the early voting game better than anyone. Hopefully the Obama campaign is on the case. But it may be that voters who make up their mind even before the debates were not persuadable anyway.
Hard to see how David Brooks can credibly endorse McCain after his op-ed yesterday.
Marie Horrigan of CQPolitics reports that recent polls indicate that Sen. Kay Hagan now has an even chance to take Elizabeth Dole’s Senate seat. Horrigan points out that Dole is ranked by the nonpartisan website Congress.org “as the 93rd most effective of the current senators.” The Swing State Project agrees that Dems have a good shot at a pick-up in NC.
Journalists alert: If you’re having trouble crafting some substantive questions for Sarah Palin, The Nation‘s Katha Pollit has some help right here.
With Michigan shaping up as a major battleground state, Carrie Dann at MSNBC’s First Read reports on a Democratic lawsuit against the MI GOP and allegations of an effort to disenfranchise voters whose homes have been foreclosed.
Ruth Marcus’s “True Whoppers” in today’s WaPo raises questions about McCain’s basic integrity and makes an interesting comment on the “lure of false symmetry” for journalists in criticizing campaigns and candidates.

A SurveyUSA poll of 900 adults (including 817 RV’s, 732LV’s) taken today in VA (before the Lehman Bros. meltdown) suggests the McCain-Palin bump may be flattening out. Here’s an excerpt from the wrap up:

…Democrat Barack Obama defeats Republican John McCain 50% to 46%, according to this latest SurveyUSA poll…Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll released one week ago, immediately following the Republican National Convention, Obama is up 3 points; McCain is down 3. The movement solidifies Virginia place as America’s 2008 battleground.
One week ago, McCain led among men by 11 points. Today, McCain and Obama tie. One week ago, McCain led among voters age 50+ by 14 points. Today, McCain leads by 1. One week ago, Obama led among lower income voters by 6 points. Today, Obama leads by 20. One week ago, McCain led among Independents by 21 points. Today, McCain leads by 4. 17% of Republicans today crossover to vote Democrat, up from 11% last week and 7% last month. 12% of Democrats cross over to vote Republican, compared with 10% in the two previous polls. Strikingly: week-on-week movement in the DC suburbs was to McCain; movement in the Shenandoah and Central VA was to Obama.
In Virginia, there is still no evidence that Sarah Palin is attracting women to the GOP ticket. McCain polled at 44% before he picked Palin, and at 43% in each of the two polls conducted after Palin was announced.

The poll also lends some cred to Vega’s argument in his Saturday post that “thoughtful middle of the road voters” may hold the key going forward, with Obama leading McCain among VA’s moderate LV’s 58 to 38 percent.

A quick addendum to our two earlier posts today: Hotline‘s got the Obama campaign’s 30-second ad rebutting the McCain-Palin “Original Mavericks” ad.

In modern politics it has become increasingly important to be able to present the Democratic perspective in either very brief, one or two sentence sound-bites or short, one paragraph summaries of major issues and perspectives.
The format of many political discussions on television and radio allows each participant to speak only a few words at a time before being interrupted. Many “roundtables” and other print discussions give each individual commentator space for only one or two paragraphs.
In this kind of communication environment, having a set of sharply worded, succinct statements of the Democratic position on major issues becomes critical.
The speakers at the recent Democratic Convention produced dozens of first-rate sound-bites and short, one-paragraph summaries of this kind. TDS has brought together a large group of these quotes in a convenient format for use by Democratic spokespeople, citizen advocates and grass-roots supporters.
We believe you will find this collection quite useful during the coming weeks.
Read more……

Read more…

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner has a new study, “Assessing the Impact of Sarah Palin on the Women’s Vote,” the best data-driven analysis of the ‘Palin effect’ on women voters thus far. The study, conducted 9/2-3 for the Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund, surveyed 1356 women, inlcuding 1295 lv’s. Here’s the nut graph from the executive summary:

After viewing the acceptance speech of the first female vice presidential candidate for the Republican party, there was no positive electoral movement toward the Republican ticket among either married or unmarried women in these groups. Some unmarried women moved toward the Republican ticket, but an equal number moved against McCain and Palin.

The study also found that “unmarried women are much more skeptical” about Palin than married women and “significantly less likely…to believe that she is an asset to the Republican ticket.” Obama’s margin with unmarried women increased from 28 to 36 percent after the Palin nomination, though “largely because of a drop for McCain.” In addition the GQR memo on the survey noted,

Married women are divided (39 percent much or somewhat more likely, 36 percent much or somewhat less likely), while unmarried women are clearly turned off by the Republican Convention (27 percent much or somewhat more, 45 percent much or somewhat less).

The survey found that Obama has a 15 point lead among women lv’s overall, driven by his edge with unmarried women and younger unmarried women in particular. Interestingly, McCain’s slight lead with married women remains “unchanged since July.” Obama now holds a 55 to 32 percent lead with white, unmarried women, while he lags by 15 points among white married women (39 to 55 percent).
Meanwhile a new ABC News poll (505 adults, 4.5 moe), conducted 9/4 found,

Men are slightly more apt than women to say Palin’s experienced enough for the presidency, 46 percent to 39 percent, with more women unsure about it. Seventy-four percent of Republicans say she’s sufficiently experienced; 44 percent of independents and 21 percent of Democrats agree.

Clearly, polls indicate that the Palin nomination has not helped sway many voters toward the GOP thus far. For the Republicans, it’s all about cranking up registration and turnout among conservatives.

The Palin speech was predictable enough, as were Giuliani’s and Romney’s liberal and government-bashing. What is a little surprising is that the GOP convention actuallly got whiter. From P.J. Huffstutter’s L.A. Times article, “A shrinking black presence at GOP convention“:

Out of 2,380 Republican delegates in St. Paul, only 36 were black, or 1.5%….That’s a jarring decline from four years ago, when the GOP, eager to chip away at the Democratic Party’s black voter base in the South and big cities, seeded the presidential convention with minorities, including 167 black delegates, according to a report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington.

Quite a significant decline from even the embarrasssing ’04 figures for minority participation, and quite a striking contrast with the figures for the Democratic Convention, as Eli Saslow and Robert Barnes note in their WaPo article, “In a More Diverse America, A Mostly White Convention“:

By comparison, 24.5% of the delegates — or 1,087 — who attended last week’s Democratic National Convention were black, according to officials with the Democratic National Committee.

The figures for Hispanics are not much better. As Barnes and Saslow note:

According to a CBS-New York Times poll released Sunday, 5 percent of delegates are Hispanic, the lowest percentage at a Republican convention since 1996.

The GOP Convention has featured only one African American speaker, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. After these two articles, they will probably try to squeeze in a couple more. You would think the GOP would try to do a little better. But don’t bet on it.

As Dems grapple with defining an effective strategy for addressing the Palin veep nomination, the dossier is filling up fast. In addition to James Vega’s TDS article on messaging The Palin appointment and Ed Kilgore’s analysis yesterday, some of the better recent articles include:
Jason Leopold of Consortiumnews.com has a good update on “troopergate.” See also Robert Parry’s Alternet post “Sarah Palin’s Trouble With the Police.” And Jim Carlton reports in the Wall St. Journal that “Democratic Sen. Hollis French, who is overseeing the legislative probe expected to end by Halloween, said he is concerned the governor may try to delay his inquiry past the November election by trying to move the jurisdiction to the personnel board.”
William Yardley’s disturbing portrait of Palin as book-banning ideologue during her stint as a small town mayor, leads on the front page in today’s New York Times.
Also in the Grey Lady, Kate Zernike and Kim Severson have an article about Palin’s hubby, Todd Palin, a.k.a. “The First Dude,” which discusses his role in ‘troopergate’ and describes his ‘pet cause’ as “vocational education and encouraging young Alaskans to get stable jobs in the oil and gas industry.” The authors also note that he was employee of BP during Gov. Palin’s advocacy of the pipeline.
NYT‘s The Caucus also reports that Palin, though not a “member” of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, “attended the party’s 1994 and 2006 conventions and provided a video-taped address as governor to the 2008 convention.” TPMMuckraker‘s Kate Klonick reports that “the director of Division of Elections in Alaska, Gail Fenumiai, told TPMmuckraker that Todd Palin registered in October 1995 to the Alaska Independence Party, a radical group that advocates for Alaskan secession from the United States.”
John Dolan’s Alternet post, “Sarah Palin’s Big, Sleazy Safari” documents the GOP veep nominee’s assault on the environment for the benefit of favored industries.
Dogemperor at Daily Kos takes an in-depth look at Palin’s theocratic influences as a ‘stealth dominionist.’
Alternet‘s Isaac Fitzgerald and Tana Ganeva report on Palin’s line-item veto of “a transitional home for teen moms in Alaska.”
In his HuffPo Post, “Country First? Nevermind,” Robert Borosage explains how McCain’s Palin appointment reveals his politically-driven abandonment of the first duty of a President — to select an experienced and capable Vice President. And former Bush speechwriter David Frum questions McCain’s judgement, saying “the destiny of the free world would be placed in the hands of a woman who until recently was a small-town mayor.”
Reporting on the new Rasmussen poll on Palin, Slate‘s Jim Ledbetter says “Still, I find it staggering that two out of three women say Palin is unqualified to be president, and that more women say the choice of Palin makes them LESS likely to vote for McCain, while more men say it makes them MORE likely..”