U.S Senator Ken Salazar has an interesting op-ed in today’s L.A. Times, “How Democrats can mine the West.” The Colorado senator explains how the priorities of voters in the mountain west favor Dems in this cycle:

The demographic trends are factors, but to find the real story of Western Democrats’ success, you have to get beyond Denver, Albuquerque and Las Vegas to the farms, fields and rural communities that have been ignored by the White House for the last seven years. These Democrats have found their voice in these areas, developing common-sense solutions to bridge the gap dividing the parties….people are eager for someone who will support family farms, lead a renewable-energy renaissance in rural areas, fight for the middle class and deliver on healthcare reform. They want energetic, responsive, pragmatic leadership…Westerners are turning to Democrats to stand up for their land, water and way of life.
…Our tradition of independence leads us to choose our leaders based on the person rather than the party. We admire independent thinkers, not go-it-alone mavericks. We prefer consensus and compromise to posturing and partisanship. We like outsiders, newcomers and bold thinkers who are able to adjust to the pace of our time and the complexity of its challenges.

Salazar’s words provide a pretty good psychological template for Dem ads in the region. And as Salazar describes the hopes of mountain west voters, it looks like a very tough sell for McCain.

Since I seem to be writing about the history and contemporary nature of national party conventions today, I wanted to point you to two separate pieces over at the New Republic site.
The first, by Eric Zimmerman (who earlier wrote a very useful analysis of the behind-the-scenes struggle over the Democratic platform’s abortion plank), provides an affirmative answer to my own question as to whether the platform drafters had indeed pulled off an amazing feat of wordsmithing on abortion.
According to Zimmerman, both pro-choice activists and “abortion reduction” advocates signed off on the language understanding completely the tradeoffs involved (staff from the centrist group Third Way, he reports, provided some key intermediary services). Sure, Democrats wanting “room” for anti-abortion advocates didn’t get the “conscience clause” they wanted, respecting dissenters from the party’s fundamental pro-choice commitment. But perhaps the agreement to give notable pro-life Democrat Bob Casey, Jr., a convention speaking slot will take care of that particular concern.
Speaking of platforms, Seyward Darby has a brief, amusing piece describing platforms as an anachronistic “corncob pipe” at conventions, and reviewing some famous platform fights of the past.
As it happens, he didn’t mention my all-time favorite platform fight: the struggle at the 1924 Democratic convention over a plank specifically condemning the Ku Klux Klan (“three little words,” as Willliam Jennings Bryan dismissed them in opposing the plank as divisive), which failed by one-half-of-one-vote after a delegate from my home state of Georgia was physically intimidating into changing her vote by Klansmen in her delegation. This fight epitomized the party divisions that led to the longest convention deadlock of all time (taking 103 ballots to nominate John W. Davis) and a disastrous general election. [Note: I am very happy to report that used copies of Robert K. Murray’s brilliant but out-of-print book on this convention, The 103d Ballot, can now be bought for peanuts via Amazon].
While some political people complain about the lack of drama at modern party conventions, there are worse things than unity and quiet.

As a student of, and frequent worker-bee at, national party conventions, I’m a bit amused by the small controversy aroused by Mark Warner’s selection as “keynote speaker” for the upcoming Democratic gathering in Denver. In part, I suppose, because of the deserved fame of Barack Obama’s “keynote address” in 2004, Warner’s selection to deliver a featured Tuesday night speech is being kicked around as a sign of Warner’s presidential future, or as a good or a bad thing depending on your opinion of the Virginian’s oratorical skills and messaging.
That’s all well and good, but does the “keynote” designation really mean as much as it used to?
Traditionally, when conventions were actually deliberative in nature, the “keynote” address, invariably held on the first night of the event, was a brief, guaranteed moment of rousing party unity before delegates moved on to more potentially divisive discussions revolving around rules, platform planks, and candidates. It was the one time you could be sure that the convention was focused outward, towards the hated partisan enemy, rather than inward, toward the party’s own issues.
Nowadays, there can be multiple keynote addresses (there were officially three at the 1992 Democratic convention) or none at all (as in the 2000 GOP convention). They can occur at almost any juncture, and the tone of the keynote isn’t necessarily different from that of any other convention speech. Obama’s 2004 effort, for example, certainly wasn’t the slash-and-burn partisan diatribe of keynotes past.
“Keynote addresses” aren’t the only anachronistic features of contemporary party conventions, of course. The central moment in every convention, the presidential “acceptance speech,” was once (prior to 1932, when FDR became the first major-party nominee to actually appear at the convention) delivered offsite, weeks and even months after the formal nomination was made. Going back even further, the “acceptance” was traditionally a published letter rather than a speech, which sometimes made “acceptance” conditional on rejection of certain planks in the party platform (most famously George B. McClellan’s rejection of the Civil War “peace plank” in the 1864 Democratic platform).
None of this history matters a great deal, other than to remind us that the structure and terminology of national party conventions remain haunted by the ghosts of conventions long past. That’s even true of the central organizing principle of conventions: the idea that they should primarily consist of speeches–increasingly redundant in this era of message discipline and centralized vetting–by hundreds of politicians.
I’ll have more to say about that in an upcoming New Republic piece on the future of conventions. But no no one should hyperventilate over the selection of a particular speaker to deliver a particular “address.”

At Politico today, Jonathan Martin has a good roundup of the very unhappy reactions of cultural conservatives in key battleground states to John McCain’s suggestion earlier this week that he might choose a pro-choice running-mate (see J.P. Green’s analysis from yesterday).
McCain was specifically speaking of former PA Gov. Tom Ridge as a man who was still on his short-list, but the comment was interpreted as possibly referring as well to Sen. Joe Lieberman, who has a consistent pro-choice voting record that includes opposition to the so-called partial-birth-abortion ban.
Here’s a sample of the reaction:

“It absolutely floored me,” said Phil Burress, head of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values. “It would doom him in Ohio.”
Burress emailed about a dozen “pro-family leaders” he knows outside Ohio and forwarded it to three McCain aides tasked with Christian conservative outreach.
“That choice will end his bid for the presidency and spell defeat for other Republican candidates,” Burress wrote in the message.
He and other Ohio conservatives met privately with McCain in June, and while the nominee didn’t promise them an anti-abortion rights running mate, his staff said they could “almost guarantee” that would be the case, Burress recalled.
Now, Burress said, “he’s not even sure [Christian conservatives] would vote for him let alone work for him if he picked a pro-abortion running mate.”

Meanwhile, over at National Review, Kathryn Jean Lopez refers to a potential Ridge pick as “bad news,” but to the choice of Lieberman as “a disaster” that might even spark a floor revolt at the Republican National Convention. And also at NR, Rich Lowry has a column referring to the choice of Lieberman as a “desperate move” that could touch off a “Republican civil war.” His suggestion to McCain? If he’s going to choose Lieberman, both candidates should take a one-term pledge, taking Lieberman off the table for the 2012 presidential nomination.
Now that would be an inspiring message: a ticket offered to the public with an early expiration date.

ABC News Senior Correspondent Jake Tapper has some interesting revelations about swift-boater Jerome Corsi, author of the latest conservative “it” book, “The Obama Nation.” Tapper quotes from Corsi’s blog, where he dispenses bigoted diatribes bashing Catholics and Arabs, as well as gays. Says Tapper:

Writing as “jrlc,” Corsi wrote that maybe the Pope “can tell the UN what he’s going to do about the sexual crimes committed by ‘priests’ in his ‘Church’ during his tenure. Or, maybe that’s the connection — boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press.”
He also wrote that “this is what the last days of the Catholic Church are going to look like. Buggering boys undermines the moral base and the lawyers rip the gold off the Vatican altars. We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that’s probably about it.”
He wrote of the Democratic Party that it’s “the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA” and of Arabs he wrote “RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters — it all goes together.” At another time he wrote “why it isn’t the case that Islam is a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion? Where’s the proof to the contrary?”

Asked to account for his bigoted drivel, Corsi explained lamely to Politico:

“I wrote those to be provocative and I said I would not use that kind of politically incorrect language again, and I don’t believe I have.”

Tapper notes that Corsi also lends cred to one of the loonier 9-11 conspiracy theories, that the twin towers were leveled by explosives placed inside the building. (Who you gonna believe, bile-crazed reactionaries, or your lying eyes?).
No doubt Republican strategists are counting on Corsi’s book to win them some votes. Ed Kilgore’s TDS post yesterday, however, explained why Corsi’s book is not likely to have as much impact as his previous swift boat screed. Indeed, it may have the opposite of the intended effect with informed Catholic and Arab-American voters.

In his new perch at ThinkProgress, Matt Yglesias is back to his prodigious blogging, and today offers a good reminder (in the contest of a new AFL-CIO direct mail piece) that Social Security could be a big problem for John McCain in the stretch-drive of the campaign.
I can’t recall a competitive major-party presidential candidate who was as dependent on the votes of older voters as John McCain is today. His past and prospective support for Social Security privatization (in the context of an overall fiscal plan that guarantees perpetual raids on Social Security revenues), and his recent attacks on the basic pay-go structure of the program as “disgraceful,” expose him to some very real problems with seniors.
But the time bombs ticking away in the substructure of McCain’s campaign go far beyond Social Security, and extend to issues that currently may be working in his favor. Sure, the present Russia-Georgia conflict may be giving him a good opportunity to talk tough. But it also will increasingly draw attention to his overall foreign policy posture of wanting to fight in Iraq until “victory,” while increasing troop levels in Afghanistan and rattling sabers against Iran, and now Russia. The unsettling reality about John McCain is that his foreign policy thinking combines the pre-9/11 conservative obsession with a new cold war against superpower rivals (then China, now Russia and China) with the post-9/11 neocon obsession to fight a new world war against “Islamofascism.” How many wars, cold or hot, regional or global, are Americans really ready to undertake?
Similarly, McCain is getting some traction from his flip-flop favoring offshore oil drilling. But that’s about all he has to say about the economy, other than the same cut-taxes-and-deregulate-and-promote-free-trade message Republicans have offered for eons. At some point, the fact that his health care plan is even worse than the status quo will get noticed, along with regressive and pro-corporation tax policies that blow up his credibility as a fiscal hawk, and an unconditional pro-trade-liberalization commitment that should represent a deep political problem for him in battleground states like Ohio and Michigan.
And for those of you who may believe policy really doesn’t matter to voters because it’s all about “character” and “trust” and “likeability” and so forth, McCain’s vulnerabilities go beyond wonky subjects like the fate of the country domestically and internationally. His much-vaunted “maverick” persona continues to be threatened by a vast track record of solidarity with George W. Bush and the GOP, and his reputation for a positive, transpartisan approach to politics may not survive his campaign’s steady descent into negative attacks on Barack Obama. And if his past behavior is any indication, there’s also a good chance that McCain will do or say something on the campaign trail, or in the debates, that makes him a lot less “likable.”
It’s always possible that McCain will successfully navigate all these potentially lethal problems, or that Obama and Democrats will fail to fully exploit his many vulnerabilities. But he’s got a tougher path to victory than a lot of nervous Democrats seem to realize.

With the publication (and quick rise to the top of the bestseller lists) of The Obama Nation, a nasty anti-Obama screed penned by Jerome R. Corsi, the same bird who co-authored the 2004 anti-Kerry book, Unfit to Command, Democrats are quite naturally worried that the “swift-boating” of John Kerry is about to be replicated. Kerry himself seems to share this concern; his PAC has just launched an anti-smear website devoted to defending Obama and other Democrats from “swift-boating,” citing his own experience as a cautionary tale.
This is all perfectly understandable, and obviously, no one should have any illusions about the willingness and ability of GOP-allied operatives to pull off Big Smears. Corsi’s 2004 book was indeed the immediate precursor to the Swift Boat ads, and featured some of the same Kerry-hating personalities. And both phenomena fed directly into the frenzy of attacks on Kerry’s credibility and defense views at the Republican National Convention.
But there are reasons to think that the past won’t be repeated.
As Byron York of National Review pointed out today, Corsi’s 2004 book got attention in no small part because his co-author, John O’Neill, and most of the people “speaking” in the book via interviews, had actually served on Swift Boats in Vietnam. Corsi’s anti-Obama book has none of that ostensible credibility or news value; it’s just a collection of attacks on Obama by a thuggish right-wing hack, no different from what you’d hear on a right-wing talk show.
Secondly, and more importantly, the Swift Boat smears were perfectly aimed at the soft strategic underbelly of the Kerry campaign. They occurred immediately after a Democratic Convention that placed enormous emphasis on Kerry’s Vietnam War record as his preeminent credential for the presidency, without, unfortunately, presenting his record of Vietnam War protest (a big part of the Swift Boat attacks) in the right context as the other side of the same patriotic coin that led him to volunteer to fight in the war in the first place. The “revelations” in the Swift Boat assault were effective not just because Kerry didn’t challenge them aggressively enough, but because his campaign didn’t prepare for them in advance in how the candidate was presented to the public.
For all the talk about Obama’s “charisma” and “story,” he actually may be less vulnerable than Kerry was to attacks on his “personal narrative.” As a new Pew survey today illustrates, Obama’s credibility as a candidate is heavily based on the popularity of his policy positions. McCain is the candidate who is dangerously dependent on “character” and “biography” as a credential.
Finally, of course, there is zero chance that anti-Obama smears will go unchallenged. The Obama campaign decided a long time ago to abandon the once-prevelant belief that responding to smears gives them too much attention. And the fact that most attacks on Obama’s “story” inevitably go over the line into thinly disguised racism is a problem for the smear artists as well, as is evidenced by all the disengenuous whining from the McCain camp about Obama’s willingness to play “the race card.” Racist appeals are far more effective when they are subtle and implicit, not over-the-top. The fact that the whole political world is aware that race is a factor in this election means it won’t be as easy to deploy racial weapons under the radar screen.
So: I just don’t think this sort of crap is going to work for Republicans this time around. It doesn’t mean they won’t try it, but Democrats should skillfully fight back instead of panicking.

In his column at WaPo‘s ‘The Fix,’ Chris Cillizza discusses Senator McCain’s latest veepstake trial ballon. Cillizza quotes McCain:

I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party…And I also feel that — and I’m not trying to equivocate here — that Americans want us to work together. You know, [former Pennsylvania Governor] Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don’t think that that would necessarily rule Tom Ridge out…I think it’s a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a — albeit strong — but just it’s a disagreement. And I think Ridge is a great example of that.

Cillizza sees it as a genuine veepstakers trial baloon. My guess is that what McCain is really up to here is trying to cool out pro-choice GOP women and PA Republicans, since he still harbors hope that he can be competitive in that state. Ridge will almost certainly get a big cabinet job if McCain wins. But putting a pro-choice veep on the ticket could open up a big can of ugly at the GOP convention, with angry ‘pro-lifers’ giving bitter interviews to anyone who will listen.
Also, Seema Mehta and Maeve Reston caught a revealing comment by McCain in their L.A. Times post, “Sounds like Tom Ridge is out of the VP picture” :

…Conservatives scoffed at the notion that McCain, already viewed with suspicion in some conservative circles, would choose a running mate who supports abortion rights. And McCain hinted Monday, perhaps unintentionally, that Ridge might not be on his short list.
During a visit to a General Electric plant in Erie, Pa., with Ridge in earshot, McCain was asked what he would do in his first 90 days in office. He replied, “Call Tom Ridge to Washington from whatever vacation he’s taking and get him to work.”

McCain is clearly worried about losing the votes of pro-choice women in the general election, even though he has cast his lot with a strong anti-choice position. He doesn’t want to discuss his position regarding criminalizing abortion in any detail because it could be a huge loser, with the rapidly-growing single women demographic and what polls show about their views on abortion-related issues.
Dems have much to gain by making sure the public, especially women swing voters, understand that he favors a constitutional amendment banning abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade and more Supreme Court justices who support criminalizing abortion. At some point during the campaign, he should be asked straight out “Do you favor criminal penalties for women who have abortions?” Letting him get to November 4 without answering this question on camera would be the real crime.

Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner have just released the results of their fourth “Youth for the Win” survey of young voters, and the conclusion is good news for Senator Obama and Democrats — with a couple of caveats. Among the findings in the analysis:

The last six weeks saw the inauguration of a serious, McCain-sponsored offensive against Barack Obama, as well as an effort in the Obama campaign to “moderate” their candidate. And, at least among youth, the impact of these events has been notably modest. While we see some movement in Obama’s support among young people of color growing even stronger and softening a bit among white youth, overall this has been a period of remarkable political stability. Obama consolidated some of the gains we saw in the June survey and still posts a convincing 27-point margin (60 – 33 percent) over McCain…Historically, this lead exceeds Kerry’s margin among youth (54 – 45 percent) and reflects the Democratic Congressional margin in 2006.

However, the analysis also notes,

John McCain recovers somewhat from his post-primary nadir among youth, arguably highlighting a political price for the progressive failure so far to really define this candidate, but in their enthusiasm for Obama and their commitment to vote, young people have not changed. Most indicators still suggest both a record turn out and margin in November.

But it’s critical that Dems understand the economic struggles young people are facing:

As a more economically vulnerable demographic group—often competing for entry-level jobs with limited benefits, most surviving on a single income—young people then represented a “canary in a coal mine” of sorts for the rest of the electorate, previewing a broader concern over the economy….Nearly half are a missed pay-check away from having to borrow money. Three-quarters owe some manner of debt, including a third who owe student loans. And one in five has had a utility cut off for failure to pay a bill.

And, one of the key challenges for Dems:

Gas prices are, of course, a major concern among young people. In a recent survey of youth that GQR conducted for Qvisory, young people identified gas prices as their leading financial concern. This is also an issue where McCain and Republicans have, at least, an argument. Young people in this survey divide evenly on whether drilling for coastal oil is a good idea (44 percent say this drilling will hurt the environment and not help with gas prices; 44 percent say it is a good idea and will decrease gas prices). Even among liberal Democrats, only 51 percent support the environmental position here. Among young people facing a heavy financial burden—an overwhelmingly Democratic group (58 percent Democratic, just 16 percent Republican)—nearly 48 percent believe drilling in coastal regions is a good idea.

Tha analysis concludes:

Maintaining or even expanding the youth vote means speaking to their biggest issue—their real financial challenges. Arguably, neither Obama nor McCain has directly addressed their economic concerns in a fashion that meets young people where they are in their lives. It is about holding McCain accountable for the current economy (see last Youth For The Win report) and providing an alternative that can have a direct impact on their lives and economic standing….

DCorps’ next youth survey will address “what young people believe is at stake in this election and what they hope to change in this country.” No doubt it will find attentive readers among candidates and campaigns who are in it to win on November 4.

In what could be good news for Barack Obama’s campaign, Ohio election officials have announced plans to establish a one-week window from September 30 until October 6 when eligible voters can simultaneously register to vote and then cast early ballots. The window seems tailor-made to facilitate a strong turnout among first-time voters, particularly college students, of whom there are an estimated 470,000 in the Buckeye State. In national polls, Obama has been beating McCain by better than a two-to-one margin among younger voters (66-30 among voters 18-29 years old in the latest Washington Post/ABC poll).
There’s another small but potentially significant Ohio opportunity for Obama that I’ve been meaning to write about. One of the odd data points contributing to George W. Bush narrow win in 2004 in Ohio was his relatively strong performance among African-Americans: 16%, as compared to 11% nationally. (A gay marriage ballot initiative is generally thought to have been a factor in skewing the black vote in a conservative direction). Black turnout wasn’t particularly impressive, either (African-Americans accounted for 10% of the statewide vote, as compared to 12% in the Ohio Senate race two years later). There’s every reason to think that Barack Obama will improve on Kerry’s 84% support-level among African-Americans, perhaps by a significant margin, with much higher turnout. For all his appeal to certain categories of Democratic and independent voters, John McCain probably has less of a natural connection with black voters than Bush, if only because of the latter’s famous religiosity. If McCain’s campaign and/or supporters are perceived as engaging in race-baiting (a pretty good bet, as Peter Beinart argues today in the Washington Post), , then Obama’s advantage among African-Americans could become a real factor in a close statewide contest.
All in all, this supports Tom Schaller’s contention that a major investment in minority voter registration and turnout in Ohio by Democrats would be a very good idea.