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.

As the McCain campaign has ramped up its attacks on Barack Obama for his connection with William Ayers, Democrats have debated various ways to fight back.
Here’s a really good approach, written by Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman. The author is not an Obama spokesperson, and even thinks Obama should have condemned Ayers more forcefully than he did. But he very dramatically exposes the shameless hypocrisy and dishonesty behind the McCain attacks. His argument is calm, reasoned and logical enough to convince moderates but is at the same time sharp and powerful enough to use in even the most free-swinging debates with McCain campaign spokespeople.
Here’s how Chapman starts off:

Can a presidential candidate justify a long and friendly relationship with someone who, back in the 1970s, extolled violence and committed crimes in the name of a radical ideology — and who has never shown remorse or admitted error? When the candidate in question is Barack Obama, John McCain says no. But when the candidate in question is John McCain, he’s not so sure.
Obama has been justly criticized for his ties to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, who in 1995 hosted a campaign event for Obama and in 2001 gave him a $200 contribution. The two have also served together on the board of a foundation. When their connection became known, McCain minced no words: “I think not only repudiation but an apology for ever having anything to do with an unrepentant terrorist is due the American people.”
What McCain didn’t mention is that he has his own Bill Ayers — in the form of G. Gordon Liddy. Now a conservative radio talk-show host, Liddy spent more than 4 years in prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary. That was just one element of what Liddy did, and proposed to do, in a secret White House effort to subvert the Constitution. Far from repudiating him, McCain has embraced him.

Was Liddy really a dangerous criminal extremist who advocated violence? Here’s how Media Matters for America summarizes his record:

Liddy has acknowledged preparing to kill someone during the Ellsberg break-in “if necessary”; plotting to murder journalist Jack Anderson; plotting with a “gangland figure” to murder Howard Hunt to stop him from cooperating with investigators; plotting to firebomb the Brookings Institution; and plotting to kidnap “leftist guerillas” at the 1972 Republican National Convention (The murder, firebombing, and kidnapping plots were never carried out; the Watergate break-ins were.)
During the 1990s, Liddy reportedly instructed his radio audience on multiple occasions on how to shoot Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents…On one show he said “Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests. … Kill the sons of bitches.” On another he recommended shooting ATF agents in the groin.

How close are McCain and Liddy? As Chapman says:

At least as close as Obama and Ayers appear to be. In 1998, Liddy’s home was the site of a McCain fundraiser. Over the years, he has made at least four contributions totaling $5,000 to the senator’s campaigns — including $1,000 this year.
Last November, McCain went on his radio show. Liddy greeted him as “an old friend,” and McCain sounded like one. “I’m proud of you, I’m proud of your family,” he gushed. “It’s always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.”

Chapman concludes his column as follows:

Given Liddy’s record, it’s hard to see why McCain would touch him with a 10-foot pole. On the contrary, he should be returning his donations and shunning his show. Yet the senator shows no qualms about associating with Liddy — or celebrating his service to their common cause.
How does McCain explain his howling hypocrisy on the subject? He doesn’t. I made repeated inquiries to his campaign aides, which they refused to acknowledge, much less answer. On this topic, the pilot of the Straight Talk Express would rather stay parked in the garage.
That’s an odd policy for someone who is so forthright about his rival’s responsibility. McCain thinks Obama should apologize for associating with a criminal extremist. To which Obama might reply: After you.

If anything, the truth is that McCain’s connection to Liddy is vastly more direct and troubling than Obama’s serving on a foundation board with Ayers. After all, Obama forcefully repudiated Ayers violence while McCain essentially justifies Liddy. To be sure, there are many other ways to challenge the McCain attacks floating around right now, but this approach has a lot to offer. Dems can post it on web discussions, send it to editors and commentators or use it in face-to-face debates. It offers compelling proof that McCain’s embrace of this line of attack is a cynical desperation move and not a sincere political argument.

The previous staff post discussed one element of Barack Obama’s new-voter strategy, his historic strength among young voters. There’s some fascinating new evidence about the magnitude of his appeal to another element, African-American voters.
Via Jim Galloway of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, we learn that state election officials (from data required by the Voting Right Act) estimate that nearly 40% of early voters in Georgia as of last week were African-Americans. Black voters represent 29% of registered voters in the state, a figure that’s up sharply this year because nearly half of new voter registrations this year have been among African-Americans.
At fivethirtyeight.com, Nate Silver uses these numbers to conduct a very useful demonstration of the potential impact of two interrelated phenomena: potentially historic African-American turnout combined with margins for Barack Obama that are unlike anything seen since Reconstruction. (This second factor, the almost universally ignored phenomenon of African-American swing voters, is something I discussed a while back in the context of Virginia).
Stipulating that Obama will carry 95% of the black vote (which is what most national polls indicate) and 30% of the “nonblack” vote (whites, Hispanics and Asians) in Georgia, Silver shows what various levels of black turnout would do to John McCain’s relatively strong lead in recent polls of the state:

[S]uppose that black and nonblack voters each turn out at the same rates as they did in 2004, but that we account for the increase in black registration. According to our math, John McCain’s 7.0-point lead is now cut to 4.9 points.
But that is probably too conservative an assumption. Newly-registered voters — and nearly half of Georgia’s newly-registered voters are black — turn out at higher rates than previously registered voters. In addition, one would assume that the opportunity to vote for the first African-American nominee might be just a little bit of a motivating factor for black voters. Suppose that African-Americans represent 29.0 percent of Georgia’s turnout, matching their share of active registrations. Using the splits we described above, McCain’s lead is now cut to 2.3 points.
Even this, however, may be too conservative. For one thing, the registration window in Georgia is not yet over … it concludes today. The statistics I cited above only reflected registrations through September 30. There is typically a surge of registrations in the final few days before the deadline. In 2004, Georgia’s active voter rolls increased by about 150,000 persons in the first four days of October, before the registration deadline closed. That was more than they’d increased in the entire month of September.
So suppose that by tonight, black voters have increased to 30 percent of Georgia’s registered voter pool. Plugging that 30 percent number in, McCain’s advantage is a mere 1 point.

Looking at the early voting figures, Silver concludes that “Barack Obama is winning Georgia right now.”
Now I don’t think Nate Silver, or anyone else, is ready to actually predict that result, particularly since the Obama campaign has taken Georgia off its target list of battleground states. But as Silver notes, the evidence from Georgia may be important in terms of what could happen in closer states–VA and NC, certainly, and perhaps FL and even IN–with sizable African-American populations. A significant surge in African-American voting levels, combined with historic margins for Obama, could be decisive on November 4, and also represent bad news for down-ballot Republicans in those states.

My one gripe about our otherwise great Democratic convention is that the soundtrack was a little short on country music for a party that aspires to make some inroads into working-class America. Well, Kathy G over at The G Spot has a post that more than makes up for it — a video/radio clip of Ralph Stanley’s endorsement of Barack Obama. Yes, THE Ralph Stanley, the King of Bluegrass, who practically owns ‘the high lonesome sound’. And just for kicks, Kathy throws in four of Stanley’s best videos. Here’s hoping the Obama campaign shows Stanley’s endorsement all over rural America, not just VA. Way Cool.

Todd Beeton has a MyDD post on Senator McCain’s three plane crashes as emblematic of the GOP nominee’s erratic behavior going back more than four decades. But the best part of Beeton’s post is the quote from Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) on Fox News Sunday. Here’s Beeton’s set-up of Senator McCaskill’s quote:

The media has been clutching its pearls over the Obama campaign’s use of the word “erratic” when describing McCain presumably because of an ageism subtext, but these tales make clear that in the case of John MCCain, erratic behavior is not a function of his advanced years, rather it’s simply a quality of his character. From the young McCain’s cockpit antics to the last 2 weeks of wacky behavior on the campaign trail, as Claire McCaskill eloquently documented on Fox News Sunday yesterday.

And the McCaskill quote:

Now, on the other hand, if you look at what Barack Obama’s ad says, it’s just talking about what John McCain did the last two weeks. He was erratic. One day, no bailout. The next day, a bailout. One day, “I’m suspending my campaign.” The next day, “I’m not.”
One day, “I’m going to debate.” The next day, “I’m not going to debate.” The next day, I go ahead and debate. One day, “I’m not going to leave Washington until we have a deal,” and then he’s on a plane out of Washington after the deal’s kind of blown up. So it really — there has been a lot of erratic behavior.

It appears that the ‘erratic’ meme is sticking to Senator McCain. A mirror image meme seems to be settling on McCain’s opponent. On another Sunday yak show, ABC News This Week, conservative George Will observed almost admiringly that Senator Obama has earned the nickname ‘No Drama Obama,’ which is more suggestive of the solid, steady and prudent leadership needed to end the war and navigate America through the current economic and energy crises.

Yes, everyone know that younger voters are part of Barack Obama’s electoral “base,” but it’s sometimes hard to grasp the sheer magnitude of Obama’s popularity among “millenials.” A new survey by USA Today/MTV and Gallup helps.
Here’s the bottom line, from Susan Page:

A USA TODAY/MTV/Gallup Poll of registered voters 18 to 29 years old shows Democrat Barack Obama leading Republican John McCain by 61%-32%, the most lopsided contest within an age group in any presidential election in modern times.

“Modern times” means since 1976, when publicly released exit polling began. John Kerry won under-30 voters by an 11 point margin. In case you’re bad at arithmetic, Obama’s margin in this new survey is 29%.
Clearly, John McCain’s problems with young voters weren’t helped by his selection of 44-year-old Sarah Palin–the youngest candidate on either ticket–as his running-mate. In the new survey, Palin’s favorable-unfavorable rating is 25/46 (McCain’s is 43/45; Obama’s is 71/23; and Biden’s is 43/35), and 55% of these under-30 voters think Palin’s not qualified to become president.
The size of the under-30 vote will, of course, determine its value to Obama. In the Democratic primaries, the percentage of the overall vote cast by under-30 voters nearly doubled from 2000, the last year with competitive primaries. The new voter registration numbers are certainly impressive: In Virginia, for example, which Bush won by 260,000 votes in 2004, there are more than 300,000 new voters on the rolls, and 41% of them are under 25.

New Democracy Corps surveys of 1,000 LV’s nationally and 1,044 LV’s in the battleground states conducted 9/28-30 bring good news for the Obama campaign — “the first real, sustainable lead of the presidential race.”

Obama has taken a 4-point lead nationally, but more important, he leads by 6 points in the presidential battleground states (50 to 44 percent). This lead represents a 10-point swing in the battleground states that Kerry lost by 4 points in 2004 – a comparable swing to what congressional Democrats achieved in 2006.

In the DCorps survey memo, Stan Greenberg and James Carville explain,

…the race has changed in fundamental ways in the last two weeks – and not necessarily for the most obvious reason, the economy and financial crisis. Obama’s gains as a person and leader as well as gains on national security, contrasted with McCain’s negativity, political maneuvering and failure to take the Republicans with him, have changed the dynamic of the race.

In the pivotal battleground states, McCain leads among white men 51-41 percent, while Obama leads among white women by a margin of 50-44 percent. But Dems have a 51-43 lead in generic House races.

Democrats who were hoping to see Sarah Palin fall flat on her face last Thursday and who were surprised by her performance had failed to note a key line in her resume – that she had worked as a sportscaster on TV.
Had they thought about it a bit they would have realized that the format of the VP debate – quite different from the probing of a one-on-one interview – would powerfully favor any candidate who had been trained in the modern “happy talk” format of local news – a format in which the newscaster, weather reporter and sportscaster are paid to bubble, giggle and chit-chat cheerfully with each other, to mug shamelessly into the camera and to generally project a “gosh we’re just having the best good old time of our lives delivering the local news” kind of attitude. Winks are not mandatory, but – along with cutsy-poo nose crinkles and manic eyebrow raising – they are not all that uncommon either.
If you found yourself wondering “where did Palin learn to do those moves?”, go out and rent “Up Close and Personal” – a 1990’s movie depicting TV veteran Robert Redford teaching rookie weathergirl Michelle Pfeiffer how to project warmth, confidence and animation on the small screen. You will have a painful but salutary “aha” moment when you see the some of the backstage mechanics behind the apparently effortless projection of onscreen energy, vitality and spunky charm.
Here’s one simple example – injecting animation and excitement into the voice. Listen to some of the debate again (if you can stand it) and note the way Palin’s voice rises and falls within every sentence and how she always puts emphasis on at least one word. It’s almost as if every fifth or sixth word is underlined. The effect is to convey both conviction and excitement.
To see how important this is, say the sentence “I really like peas” out loud, first putting strong emphasis on the word “really” and then on the word “like.” Although the underlying words are exactly the same, when spoken aloud the first sentence conveys something like “I’m not kidding here, I genuinely love those darn things” while the second sentence conveys something more like “I know lots of people are indifferent about peas but I personally think they are great” It is these subtle differences in tone and emphasis that create the impression of energy and freshness in spoken communication.
Palin is certainly not the first Republican politician to have been underestimated by Democrats because they do not understand the mechanics of TV. In the 1980 campaign and during his first year in office, Ronald Reagan was widely ridiculed and dismissed by Democrats because he carried around 3 x 5 cards with little sound-bites for the cameras (“Sound-bites” weren’t even called that until Reagan established them and got them recognized as a distinct political art form) and for his penchant for using personal anecdotes and stories rather than facts and data.
Many Democrats saw these things as evidence of his lack of experience and sophistication while Reagan – who had years of experience as a TV announcer and commercial pitchman in the 50’s – ripped through them like a buzz saw out of hell because he knew more about how to effectively engage TV viewers and form a bond with them then all his critics put together.
Reagan also perfected the entirely fictional TV character – “the ordinary, common-sense American goes to Washington to shake things up” that Sarah Palin is now channeling. Before Reagan, politicians always played this role as a demagogue – performed by bitter and nasty men like George Wallace, Richard Nixon Spiro Agnew and Pat Buchannan – men seething with resentment and anger. It was Reagan who created a different image of the conservative outsider – as an optimistic, cheerful and sunny visitor from the wholesome world of the “real” America. This is the role which first George Bush and now Sarah Palin have reprised for a new TV audience (Palin, in fact, was rather blatantly trying to use almost the entire big bag of vintage Reagan chops in last week’s VP debate – right down to his signature phrase “there you go again”. An excellent final essay for Media Studies classes this year would be “name all the classic Ronald Reagan tropes that Sarah Palin used in her VP debate” – anything less than eight items should be a D)
Let’s face it. It’s time Democrats stopped being blindsided by this stuff. There is almost nothing in Sarah Palin’s bag of tricks that Reagan didn’t use to great effect on Carter, Mondale and others 30 years ago (except perhaps for an occasional whiff of Reese Witherspoon in full speed plucky-spunky “if I am elected Miss Alaska” final speech uplift mode). We have to get serious about studying and understanding the media rather than wishing politics was still conducted like the Lincoln-Douglass debates.
Like the old saying goes, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
You betcha, goshdarnit.

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.