The political ad war between Obama and McCain is well underway, and Shane D’Aprile of Campaigns & Elections emag Politics has a report and preview.
Check out “I’m Voting Republican,” a funny reverse psychology ad now gathering buzz.
Slate‘s David Roth has an interesting video report on the “Spot Runner” political ad phenomenon, which provides decent-looking video for internet ad clips for local candidates — for less than $500.
Another cheap, but clever ad technique — this one in the form of Republican robocalls (via ‘Freedomwatch’) blaming three dozen Dem congressmen for high gas prices (Talk about nerve). Dems should respond with robocalls nailing even more Republicans for opposing tougher CAFE standards.
The Grey Lady and WaPo obits of political ad pioneer Tony Schwartz include insightful nuggets of ad strategy and tips for making compelling TV ads.
You may know a lot of people who put more face time in front of their PC than their TV’s — 42 percent of Americans now say they get political information from the internet. Yet eMarketer reports that this year only 2 percent of political ad expenditures will go online, compared to an estimated 50 to 80 percent for television. This despite 87 million voters using the internet.
Last and best, today the Obama campaign is releasing a 60 second TV ad in 18 ‘battleground’ states, and you get to see it right here and now, courtesy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Political Insider.

Larry Sabato has a new analysis of this year’s U.S. Senate ratings out, and he reinforces the CW that Democrats are certain to make significant pick-ups for the second straight cycle. With 13 races currenly adjudged as competitive:

The Crystal Ball has Democrats in line for pick-ups in Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, and New Mexico. Surprisingly, Alaska is definitely obtainable for the Democrats, and Mississippi is very much on the radar screen, too. If 2008 turns out to be strongly Democratic at the presidential level, Democrats might be able to grab one or more of the seats up in Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Oregon, though currently we have Republicans leading in all four states. (The GOP leads in Minnesota and North Carolina are already shaky.) To balance the likely Democratic gains, Republicans have a single Democratic seat in Louisiana to target–and we rate that race as currently leaning Democratic.

To put it another way, Republicans have to look forward to 2012, when Democrats must defend 24 of the 33 seats at stake, for any realistic chance of regaining control of the U.S. Senate. Not bad, considering that a lot of folks thought after 2002 that the blue state/red state split probably spelled perpetual GOP dominance of the Senate.

In an almost universally anticipated move, Barack Obama today officially announced he would “opt out” of public financing for the general election, despite a statement early in 2007 that he intended to pursue a public financing agreement with the GOP candidate if he ran for president and won the Democratic nomination.
You can expect John McCain to leap on this announcement to suggest that Obama’s flip-flopped on public financing, and is playing the game by the old Washington rules. As evidenced by the nature of his announcement, Obama will likely respond by saying (1) his 2007 statement was general and tentative, and he never once promised McCain he’d accept public financing; (2) public financing is a meaningless reform so long as non-regulated dollars–particularly those spent by 527s–still come from special interests; and (3) Obama’s own internet-based and heavily small-dollar donor base represents a “parallel system” of public financing.
This last argument may actually work better with the public than you might initially think. Taxpayer-funded public financing of political campaigns has never been that popular, even though voters do seem to be worried about the influence of lobbyists. That’s one reason regular folks don’t typically share the aversion of “reformers” to self-funded candidates. So a candidate like Obama who has figured out a way to displace special-interest dollars with tons of small donations from plain citizens may well hit something of a sweet spot in terms of his positioning on campaign finance reform. We’ll know soon enough.

Elizabeth Drew, ace critic for the New York Review of Books, gives Senator Jim Webb’s new book “A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America” a strong thumbs up. Drew is clearly impressed with Webb’s character, as well as his writing skills, and her review may add a little volume to the Webb for Veep buzz. Drew notes Webb’s controversial statements regarding women in the military and his defense of the Vietnam War as “strategically necessary,” two positions that are problematic for some liberal Democrats. (For more on Webbs veep prospects, feminist concerns about Webb and his book, see Ed Kilgore’s TDS post on Webb in the veepstakes here).
Drew nonetheless offers perceptive insights into the strengths Webb would bring to the Democratic ticket and says “…Webb offers a fresh approach to politics and stirs an excitement that would provide the ticket with more pizzazz than would some of the more conventional figures whose names are in play.” And, as Drew points out, the publication of Webb’s political manifesto does seem exceptionally well-timed.

Over at fivethirtyeight.com, Nate Silver points to very favorable trends towards Barack Obama in state- and regional-level general election polling of those Appalachian areas where he did so poorly in the primaries. The most persuasive evidence is in Quinnipiac’s Swing State polling, which shows Obama registering double-digit gains between May and June in SW Ohio, and in SW and central PA. This probably helps explain why Obama has suddenly open up significant leads over McCain in recent polling of both OH and PA.

Sarah Posner of The American Prospect devotes most of her weekly FundamantaList column today to various political developments within or affecting that hardy redoubt of the Christian Right, the Southern Baptist Convention.
Some of you may recall the buzz a couple of years ago when a South Carolina pastor named Frank Page was elected president of the SBC. Because he wasn’t a member in good standing of the insider “conservative resurgance” leadership that took over the SBC nearly three decades ago, some observers (erroneously) thought Page’s election might signal a retreat from the intense politicization of the denomination. Page’s successor, Rev. Johnny Hunt, pastor of a megachurch in Woodstock, Georgia, offers no such false hope of a big change in the SBC’s Christian Right identity. The only unconventional thing about Hunt is that he is a Native American (not completely unusual in northwest Georgia, my own familial stomping grounds, where many folks have Cherokee ancestry).
In truth, outsiders tend to confuse factional maneuvering within the SBC with serious disagreements over the denomination’s radical course in U.S. politics. Best I can tell, the big argument among Southern Baptists right now is over a neo-Calvinist movement rooted in the seminaries that frowns on some of the more exuberant quasi-universalist evangelical utterances of many Baptist preachers.
But Southern Baptist conservative political activism hasn’t abated. Posner notes a recent poll of SBC pastors that shows a preference for John McCain over Barack Obama by the rather comfortable margin of 80% to 1%. The good news is that Baptist conservatives don’t seem that fired up about McCain, as witnessed by this less-than-enthusiastic explanation of support for the GOP candidate by the SBC’s chief political commissar, Richard Land:

“My explanation of that is that I have heard variations of this theme too many times to count and the theme is, ‘I’d rather have a third-rate fireman than a first-class arsonist,'” Land said, echoing what people have told him.

The little-noted irony here is that the “third-rate fireman” John McCain is the first self-identified Southern Baptist presidential nominee of the Republican Party. But given the recent positioning of the denomination, it’s even more ironic that five of the last eight Democratic presidential nominations have gone to a Southern Baptist.
McCain, of course, could double down on his Baptist identity by choosing the Rev. Mike Huckabee as his running-mate. But as Posner explains today as well, Huck’s not terribly popular with the leadership of his SBC brethren. Partly that’s because Huckabee was long identified with the so-called “moderate” wing in the SBC factional wars, but the bigger problem is his highly public coziness with pentecostal Protestants, who represent a dire theological and membership challenge to the Southern Baptists. Doctrine and politics aside, the SBC’s chief problem is declining membership, which ought to give pause to those who assume that theological “liberalism” is the sole source of the membership losses of the non-fundamentaltist Protestant churches.

The headline in yesterday’s Bumiller/Zeleny piece on John McCain in the New York Times had to make the GOP candidate’s handlers feel all warm and cuddly inside: “McCain Seeks to Break With Bush on Environment.” It was, indeed, a rather counterintuitive take on McCain’s speech in Houston to a passle of oil executives, in which he flip-flopped on his longtime support for a moratorium on offshore oil drilling.
Today George W. Bush announced he’s asking Congress to remove the offshore drilling moratorium. Since you have to assume that McCain was informed of this step in advance, what on earth was he thinking in anticipating it by less than twenty-four hours, and in front of an oil-industry audience?
The Bumiller/Zeleny article quotes this reaction from Barack Obama:

“His [McCain’s] decision to completely change his position and tell a group of Houston oil executives exactly what they wanted to hear today was the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.

Now that the Bush-Cheney administration has headed in exactly the same direction, McCain’s in the position of flip-flopping towards the oil company point of view in tandem with the president from whom he is supposedly trying to distance himself.
There may be some logic to this maneuver, but it certainly eludes me.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner has an interesting — and important — study just out entitled “How Choice Helps Obama Win the White House.” Here’s the nitty-gritty from the executive summary:

With a struggling economy and on-going war in Iraq, choice is unlikely to be the defining issue of this year’s election. However, this latest research by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner commissioned by NARAL Pro-Choice America in 12 battleground states suggests that choice could in fact play a role in building a winning coalition for Barack Obama. Issues of choice not only have the ability to motivate Obama’s base, but among key swing groups – chiefly pro-choice Republican and Independent women – it creates sharps contrasts between Obama and Republican candidate, John McCain. These contrasts may tip the scale in what is sure to be a close race in November.

And a couple of the bullet points:

Once balanced information about Obama and McCain’s respective positions on choice is introduced, Obama gains 6 points overall, with his lead in battleground states expanding from a net 2 points (47-45 percent) to a net 13 points (53-40 percent).
The issue of choice moves the swing vote and generates crossover support. Obama gains 13 points among pro-choice Independent women (who make up 9 percent of this electorate) and 9 points among pro-choice Republican women (who account for 5 percent of this electorate). When these groups are combined, this movement equates to a gain of 1.6 points overall in the general election race against McCain.

The GQR study, commssioned by NARAL/Pro-Choice America and conducted 5/29 – 6/8, indicates a potentially decisive edge on the issue for Obama. There’s more, and the pdf and charts also merit a perusal by Dem campaign strategists at all levels of representative government. In presidential election years, there is usually some nervousness about abortion positions and the Catholic vote among Dems. But this survey should give Dem candidates more confidence in defending their pro-choice policies.
I’ve often wondered if the Democratic framing of the abortion debate could be recast more advantageously. (George Lakoff ruminates on the topic in broad context here) I liked the way Michael Dukakis laid it out in his ’88 run, saying in essence that women who have abortions should not have to go to jail, which is where criminalizing abortion leads. I’ve found that this angle works well in arguments with religious and pacifist friends who were a little wobbly on the issue of a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. It is possible, after all, to be morally-opposed to abortion as a personal choice and equally opposed to penalizing women who have abortions at the same time. Asking “If your daughter/sister/friend had an abortion, do you think she should be subjected to criminal penalties?” brings it home nicely. And, in one of the presidential debates, I would like to hear Senator Obama ask Senator McCain “Do you think women who have abortions should go to jail?” It could help clarify the issue for many who haven’t thought it through.
Related abortion rights issues like parental notification, partial-birth abortion and government funding for abortions elicit more complicated responses in opinion polls. But on the core issue of protecting women who have abortions from legal harassment, the GQR study indicates Obama — and likely other pro-choice Dems — have a potent edge, and they should use it.

Robert Creamer has a HuffPo must-read “How Obama Can Win Over Seniors and Turn the November Election Into a Democratic Landslide.” Noting that Obama trails McCain by 22 percent among white Seniors in current polls, Creamer has some creative suggestions to close the gap. Here’s a teaser:

Democrats should not attempt to “soften” their opposition to the Iraq War by trying to sound more like Republicans. We need to be clear that the Bush-McCain policies have failed precisely because they have made America less safe, weakened our military, strengthened our adversaries and isolated America in the world. Seniors fear that Obama might not be “strong” enough personally in dealing with world issues. He – and Democrats generally – need to show them that we are “strong” by standing up forcefully for our own view of the policy that can make us safer – and that we are more patriotic in that regard than reckless right-wingers who have in fact made us less secure.
* The “cost of war” frame is particularly powerful with seniors. They agree strongly that it is outrageous that Bush and McCain have spent hundreds of billions on the War in Iraq, but can’t find the money to pay for health care….Democrats need to repeatedly go right at McCain’s competency and judgment when it comes to Iraq — to remind them that his judgment about going to war in Iraq in the first place was wrong.

It’s a good read for all Dem candidates who want to get a bigger piece of a critical high-turnout constituency. See also J. P. Green’s recent TDS post “Beating McCain — With Seniors” for more on this important topic.

It was just a matter of time before some progressive blogger got alarmed about the possibility of Sam Nunn being Barack Obama’s running-mate. Chris Bowers of OpenLeft filled the vacuum yesterday with a post that calls Nunn a “worse Vice Presidential choice than Joe Lieberman” and half-seriously proposes a “stop Nunn” movement.
I’m a big fan of Chris Bowers, but he goes way over the top with this piece. Yes, Nunn would be an offensive choice to many gay and lesbians, and no, he’s not exactly Mr. Change. But Chris’ suggestion that Nunn has done nothing since leaving the Senate other than serving on corporate boards is a pretty egregious refusal to note the Georgian’s yeoman work towards avoiding the fiery annihilation of the planet. Sam Nunn is to the nuclear proliferation issue what Al Gore is to the global climate change issue, and you could make the argument that these are the two most urgent challenges facing the country and the world. It’s encouraging that both these men have endorsed Obama for president (Nunn back in April, Gore yesterday).
The invidious comparison of Nunn with John McCain’s close friend and supporter Joe Lieberman is more than a bit odd, too, since the Georgian shares none of Joe’s adoration of the Bush-Cheney foreign policy (au contraire), of the Iraq War, or of John McCain’s neo-Cold War posturing towards Russia, China and Iran. Indeed, as a surrogate if nothing else, Nunn could do Barack Obama a lot of good by getting under John McCain’s thin skin on his dangerous approach to national security.
One final thing about Chris’ post: in an effort, I guess, to bring out the Big Berthas on the Nunn Veep idea, he says that “the DLC was originally founded in order to elect Sam Nunn President. I’m not kidding.” Chris’ authority for this assertion is a disputed, agit-proppy Wikipedia entry on the DLC which says the group’s “original focus was to secure the 1988 presidential nomination of a southern conservative Democrat such as Nunn or [Chuck] Robb.”
You know, I somehow don’t think that founding DLC chairman Dick Gephardt (who ran for president in 1988), or founding members Al Gore (ditto) and Bill Clinton (who nearly ran that year) were “focused” on elevating Sam Nunn to the presidency in 1988. But this and other bad and good arguments for and against Nunn will be heard a lot if his apparent short-listing for the vice presidency continues.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist