The June fundraising figures for the Obama campaign finally came out yesterday, showing a $52 million haul for the month, and rebutting rumors that the Obama Money Machine had ground to a virtual halt.
John McCain’s campaign raised $22 million in June, about the same amount received by Obama in May. Last week the Wall Street Journal predicted that Obama’s June totals would be around $30 million, an estimate that was only off by about 70%. More generally, and vaguely, there was considerable behind-the-scenes speculation in political circles that Obama’s alleged “move to the middle” might be discouraging his small-donor base. That doesn’t appear to have been the case in June.
Just as importantly, as of June Obama was still tapping donors who hadn’t “maxed out” in terms of the $2,300 contributions limit for the pre-general-election period. As Jim Kuhnhenn of HuffPo explains, only $2 million of Obama’s $52 million for June was “general election” money. Overall, Obama has raised about $340 million, with $12 million being designated for the general election. He can roll over any unused “primary” money to the general election if he wishes, but the key thing to remember is that his campaign hasn’t even begun to go back to its one-and-a-half-million primary donors for general election contributions.
Meanwhile, the DNC had its first good fundraising month in a long while, raising $22 million (as compared to less than $5 million in May). In terms of cash-on-hand, combining personal and party funds, Obama and McCain are roughly even right now. McCain, of course, will receive $84 million in public financing after the convention, but Obama does seem to be back on track towards his goal of raising about $300 million for the general election.

This morning’s most important read, by John Judis at The New Republic, is about the kind of foreign policy John McCain would likely operate as president of the United States. It’s not a very reassuring picture. McCain’s neoconservative advisors are one problem, and his League of Democracies fixation is another:

[T]he greatest problem with McCain’s division of the world is that it threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. McCain isn’t advocating a new cold war, but, if he initiated a global struggle against autocracy by founding a League of Democracies, the resulting split would roughly reproduce the cold war confrontation between West and East. By building a new organization that excludes Russia and China, the United States would create gratuitous tensions with these countries. Even without such provocation, U.S. and European relations with Russia have been growing more fractious since 2002, and McCain’s approach threatens to exacerbate them in particular.

But perhaps the biggest problem, says Judis, is that McCain’s highly temperamental personality tends to disproportionately affect his foreign policy thinking, leading him to “personalize foreign policy conflicts.” His powerful hatred of Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for example, could have a big impact on a McCain presidency’s behavior.
Please read the whole thing, particularly if you are one of those folks who flirts with the idea of voting for McCain because of his experience in foreign policy.

At National Journal today, the estimable Charlie Cook offers some thoughts on the chattering-class obsession with handicapping the vice presidential options of Barack Obama and John McCain. He notes that Washington “insiders” don’t have a great record of getting this stuff right in the past, unless the choice was fairly obvious:

Ronald Reagan’s 1980 selection of George H. W. Bush was not a shocker, nor was Michael Dukakis’ 1988 selection of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, nor the 2004 selection of Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. But none were foregone conclusions, either.
But the 1988 selection of Sen. Dan Quayle, R-Ind., was a total surprise, as was the 2000 selection of Dick Cheney.
Bill Clinton’s 1992 pick of Tennessee Sen. Al Gore was a bit unusual — similar age, adjacent states, similar ideology, no prior personal relationship — and not many thought that Gore would choose Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., either.
For that matter, Rep. Geraldine Ferraro’s selection by Walter Mondale in 1984 was a big surprise, too.
In short, the political community has a sorry track record of picking running mates.

Not being completely inured to the temptations of veep-speculation, Cook goes on to suggest what ought to be the main criteria for both candidates:

For what it’s worth, my view this year is that a choice that looks overtly political, a crude attempt to curry favor with the voters of one state or demographic group would be seen as just that, political, and that is not good in this environment.
This is a time when picking someone enormously qualified for the job is the primary factor. Picking someone who might be of some help in securing 270 electoral votes is secondary, but still of significant concern. That is, in fact, the right politics.

We’ll soon know if Charlie has any better idea than the rest of us about the choice to be made by Obama and McCain.

The steady growth of publicly-available political polling in recent years has in part been due to the developing of automatic calling technologies–often known as “robocalls”–that make surveying less expensive and complicated than in the past. But this technological development has collided with another: the significant number of people, particularly younger folk, who don’t own a land-line phone.
As pollsters Paul Maslin and Jonathan Brown explain at Salon.com, many of their brethren are simply missing cell-phone-only voters, who, since they also tend to be concentrated in a particularly pro-Obama demographic, may represent a hidden margin for Obama amounting to perhaps 2 percent of the electorate.

By law, cellphone users cannot be called by an automatic dialing system (to prevent obnoxious telemarketing), and cellphone numbers are not part of the normal random-digit-dialing residential-exchange universe. Survey companies prefer to conduct polls using automatic dialing, but to find cellphone-only voters, they must employ the less-efficient hand-dialing method. Cellphone users must be sampled separately and at greater cost in time and money. This means that polls utilizing the cheaper and more efficient means of making survey calls do not include cellphone interviews.
And as survey respondents, these voters are less cooperative anyway. Even if they are contacted, they are less likely to take a call, or to arrange a call-back, than land-line households — further increasing the cost of reaching them.

Maslin and Brown dismiss substitutes for surveying of completely “wireless” voters as inadequate, and offer some evidence that this omission matters in polling results: “Gallup Poll results from earlier this year (prior to Obama’s designation as the presumptive Democratic nominee) had a 4-point swing in favor of Obama once cellphone-only respondents were folded into the overall sample.”
Most intriguingly, Maslin and Brown suggest that a similar failure to fully account for new technologies may have been an important factor in the most famous failure of the polling industry: the 1948 presidential election won by Truman against the predictions of virtually every polling operation. “Pollsters may have missed some Democratic voters in 1948 because they were technologically behind Republican voters. They were less likely than Republicans to have land lines.”
Tuck this insight away in the back of your mind for the next time you read a poll based on robocalls.

Worried about the precedent being set by federal bail-outs of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and before that, Bear Stearns?
At Huffpo today, progressive economist Jared Bernstein suggests this isn’t the best time to be worrying about the “moral hazard” of efforts to prevent a financial meltdown:

[Y]es, moral hazard is a big problem that contributes to the underpricing of risk (which, at some level, is the main factor behind all the bad stuff that’s happening now). But the time to worry about moral hazard is not the weekend when the big bank is failing. It’s years before, when you’re setting up the regulations under which the financial system can flourish without going off the rails.
These are tough challenges, and deep-pocketed, powerful forces will fight reform every step of the way. It’s going to take equally tough, persistent focus by the next administration and Congress to craft the regulations that truly promote greater stability in the financial system. Enough already with the shampoo approach to economic growth: bubble, bust, repeat.

In other words, the key thing to focus on right now is preventing the situations that lead to the choice of moral hazard or real-world calamity. And as Bernstein concludes: “Maybe it’s me, but I don’t think the McCain/Gramm team is up to the challenge.”

In a rare occasion, John McCain and Barack Obama both appeared today before the United League of Latin American Citizens’ convention in Washington. Here’s Dana Goldstein’s take on their speeches over at TAP:

John McCain enjoyed a friendly reception here at the Washington Hilton, but the crowd went absolutely wild for Obama, who greeted them with an enthusiastic “Si se puede!” and shouted out his “homies” from LULAC’s Illinois chapter. And unlike McCain, who gave a tired speech on conservative tax policy, Obama focused on civil rights, frequently leaning into the microphone and shouting with passion. This was one of the best deliveries I’ve seen from Obama since early in the primaries. Toward the end of the speech, he even did a bit of call and response with the audience of states where Latino votes can make a difference in November.

Sounds like McCain and Obama were equally befriended by the audience, but Obama wound up a lot more equal.

Today Virginia Sen. Jim Webb joined Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland as much-discussed running-mate possibilities for Barack Obama who have formally taken themselves out of consideration.
This may have come as something of a relief to Team Obama. Webb was second only to Hillary Clinton as a galvanizing veep prospect, considered the obvious choice by a lot of people and “unacceptable” by others. But even some of his fans (viz. Ezra Klein) thought he was ill-suited for the vice presidency.
So Barack Obama’s “short list” for a running-mate just got a bit shorter. And Webb will stay, for the present, in the Senate, where (as the above Klein article reports) he’s making quite an impression.

Traditionally, it was thought that presidential general elections didn’t really start until Labor Day, or perhaps the two national political conventions. This year the September holiday is in very close proximity to the Democratic and Republican conventions. And the Republican campaign, at least, still seems to be going through all sorts of preparatory shake-down cruises.
But some aspects of the general election landscape become more or less established long before the official opening gun sounds. And according to Roll Call‘s electoral handicapper Stu Rothenberg, the fundamental lay of the land isn’t likely to change between now and November:

With just about four months to go until Election Day, the national political landscape continues to favor Democrats strongly. Indeed, almost every bit of national- level data reflects problems for the Republicans….
For months, even for years, the national news has been bad, so it’s not surprising that voters want change. All of the numbers strongly suggest that Americans see the Democratic Party as the better vehicle for bringing about change than the Republican Party.
In spite of some better news from Iraq, most Americans think the war was a mistake and the administration’s performance inept. Perhaps it’s a sign of Republicans’ problems that most GOP officeholders and strategists would rather talk about the war than about domestic issues.
The economy has sputtered along for a while, but the most recent news has been much worse. Increased unemployment, continuing problems in the nation’s financial sector and much higher fuel costs and commodity prices (and therefore inflationary pressures) have further eroded consumer confidence and pulled the rug out from under stocks.
There is simply no reason to believe that the news will improve measurably between now and late October, which means that there is no reason to believe that the American public’s underlying mood will turn up dramatically.

Horse-race coverage of the presidential contest tends to obscure the underlying partisan dynamics. But as Rothenberg–in no way a Democratic partisan–concludes, the horse bearing the unfortunate colors of the GOP has an exceptionally rough track ahead.

Editor’s Note: We are very pleased to publish this Strategy Memo by Bruce W. Jentleson, Professor of Public Policy Studies and Political Science at Duke University. Dr. Jentleson is probably best known as the author of American Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st Century.
Print Version
His opposition to the Iraq war helped Barack Obama win the Democratic presidential nomination. Will it help him win the presidency?
It could and should, but isn’t necessarily helping him yet. Polls show Americans very strongly opposed to the Iraq war but not sure whether the anti-war Obama or pro-war John McCain will handle the issue better going forward. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer even issued a “bring it on” dare to “make the election about Iraq.”
Why this seeming paradox? And how can Obama translate opposition to the Iraq war to support for him?
Iraq needs to be addressed as a three-dimensional issue: (1) the war itself and the need to shift emphasis from what Obama is against to what he is for, and not just the calendar for getting out but the alternative strategy for doing so; (2) Iraq as a measure of Obama’s overall foreign policy capability, particularly passing the commander-in-chief test without getting trapped into the “I’ll bomb, too” Democratic wannabe role; and (3) Iraq as a temperature-taker as to whether this is another anti-military Democrat or someone who genuinely respects the institution, its people and its culture.
Initial General Election Poll Data
Four main points should be made about Iraq and public opinion:
First, Iraq remains a crucial issue. The economy is now issue #1, with 33% saying in the June ABC-Washington Post poll that it would be the most important issue in their vote for president. But Iraq is issue #2 at 19%, with the next nearest issue being health care at 8%. While it’s true that Iraq was the top issue a year ago, the fact that it is still as high as it is amidst the worst economic problems in at least a quarter century and despite the surge having reduced the sense of immediate crisis shows real political staying power.
Second, the public remains very opposed to the war. On whether going to war was the right or wrong decision, the numbers are 38% vs. 54%; phrased as “whether it was worth fighting,” 34% yes – 63% no. Some credit is being given to the surge with the percentage saying we are winning up from 29% in January 2007 to 38% in June 2008 (ABC-Washington Post). But the same poll showed only 41% in support of keeping military forces in “until civil order is restored” and 55% opposing. The Newsweek June 18-19 poll giving options for keeping “large numbers of U.S. military personnel in Iraq” had 45% saying bring them home now or in less than one year, 20% saying within 1-2 years, 4% 3-5 years and 26% as long as it takes to achieve U.S. goals.
Third, Democrats are faring well on party preference questions for both Iraq and foreign policy generally. When asked which party would handle Iraq better, Democrats have been pretty consistently getting a 10+ margin, e.g., 50% to 34% in an April CBS-New York Times poll. On who would do a better job generally on foreign policy, the gap in recent polls varies but favors Democrats, 51-31 the largest margin, 45-40 the narrowest. Even the narrowest contrasts quite favorably with the strongly pro-Republican pattern that largely held for many years, including 47-28 in the early Reagan years; 60-26 in October 1991 after the first Gulf War; 51-33 in March 1994 amidst the early Clinton administration failures in Somalia and elsewhere; and 53-36 at the beginning of George W. Bush’s second term. Terrorism is the one issue on which Republicans still hold an advantage. Here the recent range goes from 47-40 to 31-30, although juxtaposed with disapproval of the Bush terrorism policy (57-38).
Fourth, though, is that when personalized to the presidential candidates, the assessments are more mixed. McCain was ahead 50-41 in an April poll on who would do a better job handling the Iraq war. This was down to 46-43 in a May poll, and 47-46 in a June poll (ABC-Washington Post). Obama does better on the differently phrased question on confidence to “make the right decisions about the war in Iraq”. When asked in February their overall confidence levels were comparable (58% McCain, 57% Obama) but within that those very confident in McCain were 27% while only 20% were very confident in Obama. The following month the candidates remained even at 56% in the overall numbers but McCain’s very confident number had fallen to 19% with Obama at 17%. Still, these are quite different from issue-based preferences on which the anti-Iraq margin is much more robust.
In sum, while Iraq is not McCain’s issue, it is much less Obama’s than it could be given the issue preferences.

Read more…

You probably heard the furor over the recent remark in an interview with Fortune by McCain’s chief strategist Charlie Black–the uber-lobbyist who began his political career as an operative for Jesse Helms–that a fresh terrorist attack on the country this year would boost his candidate’s electoral prospect. At The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg retorts that Black was just repeating the conventional wisdom, but then offers this twist on the subject:

Therefore, a terrorist outrage shortly before the election—or, more cost-effectively, a terrorist video attacking McCain and/or praising Obama—would be powerful evidence that Al Qaeda wants McCain to win, in hopes that he would continue such policies as bleeding American military strength into the Iraqi desert, facilitating the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, promoting Islamist extremism by vowing to occupy Iraq permanently, and confirming “blood for oil” suspicions by arranging no-bid petroleum contracts for American energy corporations. In 2004, remember, an Al Qaeda video of this type put Bush over the top.
Obviously, this is not something that Obama or his people can say. But commentators can say it, and I hereby do so.

Hertzberg goes on to suggest that the argument doesn’t cut both ways:

Could one also argue the converse—i.e., that the absence of a terrorist act or video in the closing weeks of the campaign would prove that Al Qaeda is rooting for Obama? Perhaps, but far less plausibly. In any case, it would be an awkward argument for anyone to make who also argues that the absence of such attacks proves that the “war on terror” has been a success.