As you probably know by now, the House passed the revised financial bailout–excuse me! rescue–bill today by a surprisingly large 263-171 margin. Dems voted for it 172-63, while Republicans still rejected it, though by a smaller margin than before, 91-108. That means 32 Democrats and 26 Republicans flipped.
Looking at the results, which showed a very diverse and sufficient number of Democrats getting behind the bailout, you do have to wonder if a Dems-only strategy might have worked, at least in the House. A clear majority of House flippers were from the Progressive Caucus and (especially) the Congressional Black Caucus ranks, and those Blue Dogs (four by a quick count) who flipped despite the budget-busting Senate tax sweeteners, and perhaps a few others, might well have gone for a fiscally sound progressive alternative. Maybe such an alternative would have never gotten through the Senate, but you do have to consider the road not taken.

Governor Sarah Palin did better in the veep debate than many expected, but all the polls and serious commentators agree that Biden won it by any reasonable set of measures. Now it seems fair to ask, is Sarah Palin going to do Meet the Press and other more in-depth interview shows, as has Biden and every other veep candidate since the early days of television? Or are the pundits just going to shrugg it off? Biden, one of the most frequent MTP guests in the progam’s history, raised the issue when he last appeared on the program, explains HuffPo‘s Sam Stein:

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Biden told Tom Brokaw, “Eventually, she’s going to have to sit in front of you like I’m doing and have done. Eventually, she’s going to have to answer questions and not be sequestered. Eventually, she’s going to have to answer on the record.” Later, Brokaw told viewers he had reached out to the Delaware Democrat’s Republican counterpart to no avail.l

We’re still waiting. A couple of interviews with anchors doesn’t get it. The debate was good, as far as it went. But the format didn’t allow much time for for tough follow-up questions. Are the better news interview shows (Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation etc.) now going to roll over and give her a free pass? The pundits — not just two network anchors — should have a chance to interview her in depth, if the McCain-Palin campaign is serious about her capabilities and if they care about serving the public interest.

Even as most political observers were focused on events in Congress or on the vice presidential debate, a small but important piece of hard campaign news came out yesterday: the McCain campaign has given up on the battleground state of Michigan.
According to Mike Allen of Politico, McCain’s strategists now say they must win in one of three battleground states won by both Gore and Kerry: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. RealClearPolitics’ polling averages currently show Obama up by eight percentage points in PA, and by five points in WI and MN.
While polls can change, the decision to pull ads and other resources out of a key state like Michigan is a real event with serious consequences. Some of you may remember Al Gore’s fateful decision late in the 2000 campaign to give up on Ohio, and significantly reduce resources in Gore’s home state of Tennessee, in order to go for broke in Florida. That move had consequences, all right.
The underyling reality is that McCain’s options are rapidly shrinking. Taking the 2004 map as a baseline (and assuming, of course, a close race), he’s already all but lost one state carried by Bush, Iowa, where his decision to skip the Caucuses in both 2000 and 2008 probably doomed him from the get-go. He’s in varying degrees of trouble in four others: CO, NM, VA, and FL. And NC and IN are shaky as well. At the moment, NH is the only state won by Kerry where McCain’s in good shape. And now MI is off the board. So far as I know, the only previously targeted states that the Obama campaign has conceded are GA and ND, where Gore and Kerry were routed. And virtually everyone in politics agrees that Obama has a significant advantage in ground resources in all the battleground states, with the possible exception of FL.
At the moment, the McCain campaign’s overriding mission is to regain some national momentum by trying, through sheer nastiness, to shift attention from fears about the economy to doubts about Barack Obama, reinforced, they hope, by the other two debates. But the electoral vote map is not friendly to their candidate, which means he’s not likely to get any breaks in the close race the GOP is trying to engineer.

For the second time in a week, we had a candidate debate where most of the professional handicappers saw it one way, but voters seem to have seen it another way. And in both cases, that’s good news for the Obama-Biden ticket.
The consensus pundi-reaction to last Friday’s Obama-McCain debate was that the GOPer “won on points,” but the polls judged it an Obama win. And the exceptionally low expectations for Sarah Palin made her fluid performance last night a win or a draw, according to most accounts. But as this morning’s staff post indicated, both undecided voters and the general public thought Joe Biden did better.
What seems to be happening is that voters are beginning to interpret events like debates through the filter of increasingly settled preferences. A lot of them shake their heads just like I do the thirtieth time John McCain or Sarah Palin uses the word “maverick.” The Republican candidates did most definitely avoid any sort of disastrous mistakes in this round of debates, but that’s about all you can say for them.
There is, of course, a full month left in this very long campaign, and it’s clear the McCain campaign is about to launch the Mother of All Negative Campaigns as soon as the immediate financial crisis abates, if it ever does. But with early voting already under way in a number of key states, opinions are beginning to settle, with Obama in the lead.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

In the Couric interview, Palin mangled her talking points so badly that all anybody noticed noticed was the mangling itself; the points themselves receded into the background. Her much-improved performance last night, though, had the paradoxical effect of throwing the weakness of the GOP message in this election cycle into sharper relief.

The bottom line in both our takes is that voters are beginning to react to what the candidates are saying, in a critical way, instead of focusing, as the handicappers always do, on how they say it. The steak really does ultimately matter more than the sizzle.

A CBS News/Knowledge Networks poll taken immediately following the debate shows uncommitted voters who watched the veep debate believed Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden did the best job by a margin of more than 2 to 1. The poll (PDF here) also found,

Forty-six percent of these uncommitted viewers said Biden won the debate Thursday night, while 21 percent said Palin won. Thirty-three percent thought it was a tie…Palin’s debate performance improved uncommitted voters’ perceptions of her overall, and on a number of specific measures. But uncommitted voters still have doubts about her ability to assume the presidency if necessary and she lags behind Biden on her knowledge and preparedness for the job….Although Palin made some gains on perceptions that she could serve as president if needed, she rose just nine points on that measure after the debate, to 44 percent. In contrast, almost all uncommitted voters think Biden would be an effective president.

While 71 percent of the CBS respondents remained uncommitted after the debate, 18 percent said they would now vote for Obama, while 10 percent said they would vote for McCain.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll of ‘people who watched the vice presidential debate’ indicates that 51 percent of those polled thought Biden did the best job, while 36 percent thought Palin did better. The poll also found,

On the question of the candidates’ qualifications to assume the presidency, 87 percent of those polled said Biden is qualified and 42 percent said Palin is qualified…The candidates sparred over which team would be the better agent of change, and Biden came out on top of that debate, with 53 percent of those polled giving the nod to the Delaware senator while 42 percent said Palin was more likely to bring change.

The CNN poll also indicates Palin made some gains:

…Respondents said the folksy Palin was more likable, scoring 54 percent to Biden’s 36 percent…84 percent of the people polled said Palin did a better job than they expected, while 64 percent said Biden also exceeded expectations.

Both polls show it was a very good night for the Democratic ticket. While both candidates increased their stature with voters and there were no major blunders or gaffes, most respondents clearly saw Biden as the best prepared.

Last night I turned on the Tube, and was about to switch channels away from one of those ubiquitous Entertainment Celebrity “News” shows, when I saw a teaser about the vice presidential debate. Curious, I left it on, and after several features about actors and people Famous For Being Famous whose names I but dimly recognized, there was a lengthy segment about Sarah Palin’s debate prep, including clips from the Couric interviews, and the usual maddening sexist crap from “experts” about how she should dress and style her hair. There may have been one reference to Joe Biden as her debate opponent, but Joe certainly didn’t get any sartorial or grooming tips.
The experience brought home to me the simple fact that Sarah Palin is not a politician, or a potential Vice President of the United States, but a Pop Culture Celebrity (ironic, to be sure, given the McCain campaign’s mockery of Barack Obama as a celebrity). And this creates problems for both tickets. John McCain is now something of a prisoner of his running-mate, with considerable evidence suggesting that Palin’s high visibility is affecting the whole ticket far more than Veep candidates typically do. Meanwhile, Joe Biden, who has been heavily advised to make the focus of the debate McCain rather than Palin, is struggling against the reality that a lot of people tuning in want to see him take on St. Joan of the Tundra.
And there will apparently be a whole lot of viewers, as predicted by (to reinforce my earlier point) the Hollywood Reporter:

Talk about must-see TV. Maybe the first McCain-Obama go-round wasn’t as widely watched as expected, but Thursday night’s vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden looks to be everything that their running mates’ was not.
After a series of interviews with “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric that raised eyebrows and blood pressures from all sides of the political spectrum as well as Tina Fey’s caricature on “Saturday Night Live,” there is growing evidence that Palin will be a big draw when she and Biden meet for the only time beginning at 9 p.m. ET at Washington University in St. Louis. The fact that it’s being held on a Thursday, one of the most popular nights for TV, almost certainly will help in the way that a low-rated Friday night didn’t for John McCain vs. Barack Obama.
“A lot of people are anticipating this to be almost a ‘Saturday Night Live’ live,” said Tammy Vigil, an assistant professor of communications at Boston University and a co-author of the upcoming book, “The Third Agenda in U.S. Presidential Debates.” “The entertainment value on this debate is going to be huge.”

Great. Just what this country needs right now.

A new WaPo-ABC poll of 1,070 adults conducted 9/ 27-29 indicates that six in 10 voters believe Governor Sarah Palin “lacks the experience to be an effective president, and a third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her…Fewer than half of voters think she understands “complex issues.” The poll also found,

About half of all voters said they were uncomfortable with the idea of McCain taking office at age 72, and 85 percent of those voters said Palin does not have the requisite experience to be president….A third of independent voters now indicate they are less likely to support McCain because of Palin, compared with 20 percent who said so in an ABC poll a month ago. Palin now repels more independents than she attracts to McCain.

Yet, 51 percent of voters overall view Palin favorably; compared to 57 for Senator Biden. And, “about three-quarters of those surveyed said he understands complex issues, compared with 46 percent who said so of her.”
A new poll from the Pew Research Center, conducted 9/27-29 found that 51% now say Governor Palin is not qualified to become president, with 37 percent saying she is qualified — a reversal of opinion since early September. The poll indicated that 63 percent believe Senator Biden is qualified to serve as president.
A CBS News Poll. conducted Sept. 27-30, 2008 found 32 percent had a favorable opinion of Palin, with 33 percent unfavorable and 25 percent undecided. Last week, Palin had a net positive rating of 8 percent. The poll also indicated that Democratic veep nominee Joe Biden’s had a 34 percent favorable rating, with 19 percent unfavorable.

Last night I did a post expressing astonishment at Sarah Palin’s handling of questions about constitutional law as it relates to abortion in a just-released segment of the Katie Couric interviews. I figured her answers, which among other things, accepted a constitutional right to privacy (the foundation of Roe v. Wade), wouldn’t go over well among her culturally conservative base.
At National Review’s The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru, a conservative whose intelligence and integrity I respect, offered this reaction, which not only defended Palin but went after Joe Biden (who was also interviewed by Couric on the same issues):

Those excerpts from Couric’s interviews give me more concerns about Biden than Palin. He seems to be under the impression that there’s a “liberty clause” in the Fourteenth Amendment (he has talked about it in Supreme Court confirmation hearings too). He misdescribes what Roe held. He seems to believe that Roe has been good for social peace and that this alleged fact justifies it as constitutional law.
Palin, meanwhile, is asked a somewhat oddly phrased question by Couric, and says, reasonably enough, that the Constitution protects a right to privacy. Now it is certainly and obviously true that the Constitution protects privacy: What else do the Third and Fourth Amendments protect, for example? There is nothing incompatible with either a pro-life point of view or originalism with saying that the Constitution protects privacy.

Nice try, Ramesh, but I don’t think either prong of your argument holds much water.
With respect to the Couric-Palin interplay, Palin was not asked if the Constitution protects any privacy rights. She was asked, in the context of her position that Roe should be overturned, if there was an “inherent right to privacy” in the Constitution, which is about as clear a reference to the Griswold holding as any network interviewer could be expected to make. And Couric made that even clearer by referring to the “right to privacy” as the foundation of Roe. While it is theoretically possible to believe that Griswold was a correct decision while Roe was not, I’ve never heard anyone embracing “the pro-life point of view or originalism” take that position, and I’m quite sure Ponnuru doesn’t, either. And he doesn’t address Palin’s weird and immediate descent into Federalist arguments about how to apply that “inherent right to privacy,” which suggests an unfamiliarity with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that prohibits state abrogation of constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Speaking of the Due Process Clause, which prohibits “any state [from depriving] any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” this is the “liberty clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment that Joe Biden’s talking about. The Court in Roe (following the concurring opinions of Justices Harlan and White in Griswold) made the protection of “liberty” by the Due Process Clause the basis for its decision, launching a debate over “substantive due process” that continues today. While Biden’s use of the term “liberty clause” may be a bit imprecise, there’s nothing remarkable about what he’s actually saying.
As for Biden’s remarks on the reasonableness of Roe, he does not, in fact, claim it has brought the country “social peace” on the abortion issue; he says “it’s as close to a consensus that can exist in a society as heterogeneous as ours.” And I think that’s right, for the simple reason that Roe reflected the popular view (though not the views of activists on both sides of the issue) that the timing of abortions is critically important. And though they all hate to admit it (for perfectly logical reasons), that’s why anti-abortion activists focus so much on late-term abortions, while pro-choice activists focus on early-term abortions, and even the “morning-after pill,” although their underlying positions deny there’s much of a difference in terminating a pregnancy early or late. This is what my former boss Sen. Sam Nunn meant when he used to say that Roe v. Wade “may have been bad constitutional law, but it’s good policy.”
To sum it all up, contra Ramesh Ponnuru, it’s clear to me that Biden made a concise and reasonable argument for a pro-choice position that recognizes possible exceptions, while Palin tried to square circles, presumably in order to appeal to pro-choice voters who wouldn’t like her position if they understood it. That’s made much clearer by the other segment of the Couric interview in which Palin consistently describes her pro-life perspective as all about “making choices,” even though she has in the past supported, and is running on a Republican platform that insists upon, a national prohibition of all abortions, at any stage after conception, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

As you undoubtedly know, the financial bailout bill passed the Senate last night by a big margin–74-25, to be exact. And few of the dynamics evident in the House vote appeared there.
For one thing, the partisan splits were a lot closer, with Democrats favoring the bill 39-10, and Republicans by 34-15 (as a matter of principle, Joe Lieberman is not being counted as a Democrat here). For another, election-year pressures weren’t a big factor: Senators up for re-election split 24-9 in favor of the legislation, perhaps in part reflecting the fact that public opinion has shifted noticeably, if not definitively, since the House vote.
The House is due to vote on the revised bill Friday, with the current odds favoring passage thanks to the tax sweeteners added by the Senate, not to mention the buyer’s remorse among Members who voted against the original bill assuming it would pass anyway.

Beliefnet has just done an update of its “Twelve Tribes” survey, a methodology (done through polling by the University of Akron) that slices and dices the electorate along religious (or irreligious) lines. The first Twelves Tribes survey was done at about this same time four years ago, so it provides some pretty interesting comparative data.
There’s a lot of stuff to look at and think about, but the thing that jumps off the page is a big shift in the direction of Democrats among what has long been the Great Brown Hope of the GOP: Latino Protestants.
Here’s a quick summary of this finding by Beliefnet editor Steve Waldman:

In 2004, Bush won 45% of Latinos. According to the new Twelve Tribes analysis, Obama is beating McCain by more than two-to-one — and Latino voters are becoming more numerous.
Significantly, the big shift came not from Latino Catholics but Latino Protestants many of whom are evangelical or Pentecostal and had liked Bush’s faith emphasis. But right now 33% of Latino Protestants are for McCain, 48% for Obama and 18% are undecided. By comparison, at this point in 2004 Bush had 50%, Kerry had 26% and 24% were undecided. And on election day it was 63% Bush, 37% Kerry, according to the Twelve Tribes analysis, which is based on new polling done by the University of Akron’s John Green.

Waldman goes on to say that the main factor in the shift of Latinos generally (he apparently doesn’t have issue breakouts for Protestant and Catholic Latinos) isn’t so much about immigration policy, where John McCain was obviously the best available Republican candidate, but instead because:

[T]hey’ve shifted sharply to the left on economics and foreign policy. Only 37% now say the war was justified (the national average now is 45%). Though the survey doesn’t probe this deeply, it’s notable that many Hispanics have been among the ranks of the American soldiers who have died in Iraq.
On the environment, in 2004, only 46% said they wanted stricter environmental regulation; 65% do now. They’re less likely to want religious involvement in politics (64% say religious institutions should stay out compared to 40% in 2004). In all, 62% identify as Democrats; 54% did in 2004.

In terms of the broader survey, the finding that will probably get the most attention is that the percentage of voters citing “moral issues” as their top concern is half what it was four years ago.