48% to 40% with 117 days to go

Barack Obama maintains a very strong lead in the US Presidential race as we close in on the final stretch after what seems like an eternity of campaigning. In fact I think "campaign fatigue" is working in Obama's favor both because he's the guy going into the final few months with the big mo as well as the guy with stamina that will certainly last through the end of this election. Although yesterday's Iran comments by both candidates were weak, McCain stumbled so badly one almost had to wonder if he was suffering from some sort of mental lapse during the interview.

The latest polls appear to show the huge McCain Obama gap closing, but it's not clear to me how significant this is, or even how significant the polls are at this stage. Look for undecided voters in the tossup states to be the critical factor in this election. Obama cannot lose California or New York, and McCain cannot lose several states in the South. It is the voters in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and other close states that will push somebody over the top, and it will not necessarily be the candidate with the most votes. In fact I'd argue Obama is very likely to win the national popular vote by at least a million, but this will not necessarily translate into the electoral votes needed to win. In fact the electoral college was in part designed to equalize smaller states and larger ones and the smaller states are more conservative, so McCain will likely benefit from more folly in what has become the questionable legacy of our seriously flawed electoral college system.

Cindy McCain and International Aid

Kudos to Cindy McCain for her excellent relief work over many decades. McCain will travel soon to Rwanda to help bring assistance to a country ravaged by civil war, genocide, and poverty.

Cindy McCain has a long and distinguished history of bringing her influence and money to trouble spots around the globe, and even the most partisan among us owes this kind of effort some admiration and thanks.

CNN Sure Likes Obama

In the midst of the powerful conservative bias of FOX News CNN generally stands out as a much more reasoned point of view, but I'd have to say their profiles of the Obamas and the McCains sure seemed to favor Obama. Although it is reasonable to suggest both Cindy and John McCain's past is more controversial in many respects than Barack or Michelle Obama's past, the profile highlights seemed to focus almost exclusively on the McCain's defects and the Obama's virtues.

One can't help but suspect that the hip CNN crowd strongly favors a presidential win by Obama, who even detractors would agree is a lot cooler than McCain. The fact that this opinion seeped so powerfully into the profiles is cause for concern, though CNN would have to do a lot more than this to even hint at the kind of bias we see daily on FOX news, which is so heavily spun to the right it's often hard to extract the real news from the spin.

The Crackpot Vote - how big?

A critical question in elections is not so much how confirmed party members with long voting histories will behave, rather it is how those who don't think much about issues or implications will vote after they have seen the barrage of advertisements, appearances, and media coverage of the candidates.

The coming election will see a lot of effort attempting to influence that "crackpot voters", those who have little care for real issues and instead are concerned with bizarre or stupid interpretations of the candidates views, histories, and other aspects of the campaign.

I'm going to remain optimistic that this won't play a large role, given that the crackpot vote probably balances out fairly well between the candidates. Also, if the latest silly claims of "swiftboating" are any indication of the worse the campaigns have to offer each other we can remain hopeful that the election really will focus on issues rather than personal quirks, and voters will make their decisions wisely. Hmmm - that sounds way too optimistic.

McCain with Palin as VP?

Still something of a long shot for VP, I would suggest that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would be an interesting choice for McCain because she'd pull some of the soft Obama support from former Clinton folks. Having a woman on his ticket, especially if Obama does *not* have one on his, would help equalize the advantage the democrats currently enjoy for promoting a form of "affirmative action" lacking in American presidential politics for the past 240 years.

Obama's choice? I'd say he's still getting lobbied by Hillary and the gang for her, but that is only about 20% likely. Biden? Maybe, but he's not the military strategist that, say, Wesley Clark or Colin Powell would be which is why I think they are probably on Obama's "A list" for Veeps.

Wesley Clark's Comment in the Swiftboat Context

Ironically there has been almost no activity so far one could call "Swiftboating", yet the big media is so hungry to make that case they are pulling even soft comments like Wesley Clark's snippy response to a question as evidence of attack politics.

Clark was being political of course, but said nothing unreasonable when he suggested that McCain's service alone does not necessarily qualify him to be commander in Chief. He did not even say McCain is *not* qualified to be President!

Here is the issue we should be discussing:

The World is a complex, potentially dangerous place. Candidates must understand a lot about current military issues to be a good commander in chief. A great one would cut the military budget significantly while increasing security using advanced technology and targeted spending and military activity. However almost nobody is willing to consider that because most Americans are effectively brainwashed by their own stupidity into thinking Government effectively spends half the global military budget - some 550 billion each year. We don't spend it effectively, and it's an outrageous drain on our economic security, and neither candidate will deal effectively with this.

Whether McCain or Obama has more strategic military inspiration is almost a trivial issue. Asymetric warfare and the global economics of the military have changed the game so significantly that it's not clear what skills are needed.

Obama leading McCain by about 15%

Two national polls - Gallup and Newsweek - nearly agree that Obama now leads John McCain in national polling by about 15%. This substantial lead seems consistent with what many see as Obama's huge popularity in the face of McCain challenges with image and with associations with the unpopular Bush presidency.

Adding to McCain's concerns is the fact that Obama appears to be on the verge of amassing the greatest war chest in presidential history, where even a modest level of contributions from existing supporters will give Obama over $200,000,000 to fight McCain who is unlikely to see much more than half that amount in my view. Soft money may prove to be more important in this election however, and in that department the Republicans can draw on the larger average incomes and give amounts far exceeding the 2300 maximum for personal contributions.

Obama to forego $84,000,000 federal campaign financing

Barack Obama today announced that he would not take federal financing, opting instead to finance his own campaign. McCain has suggested this means Obama has backed away from a written pledge to do otherwise.

As Kenneth Gross noted tonight on PBS news, this is clearly a money play. Obama has raised a spectacular sum so far in the primaries - over two hundred million dollars, and should have no problems raising far more than that for the general election. With a donor average which I think is still in the neighborhood of 100-200 and a maximum of 2300 per donor, look for Obama to fill his campaign warchest with at least another 400,000,000 before the November votes are tallied.

McCain's ability to raise the huge funding needed to compete is much less certain. Republicans sensing a likely loss in 2008 may choose not to send as much to McCain as if he was more competitive. So far McCain has only been raising about 21 million per month on average. Unless he sees a huge and dramatic surge in funding McCain will be at a huge financial disadvantage barring some huge help from the Republican National Committee and the 527 groups that have far less stringent financial requirements and therefore can take large donations from wealthy Republicans.

McCain will likely be much more comfortable now with the 527 group "swiftboating" ads which may offer his only hope at competing with Obama.

Swiftboating backlash?

Although historically negative advertising has been very effective in many elections, I think the upcoming Obama and McCain campaigns have the potential to change the way elections are run. Not so much because they are virtuous - though I think both candidates are good guys - but because voters may actually have become sophisticated enough to reward a higher road.

This may be too optimistic but clearly Obama's campaign against Clinton appeared to benefit from taking a higher road. When Clinton attacked in debates and in advertising, Obama usually paried rather than fought back. I think many Americans found this very appealing. Clinton supporters feel that she was treated unfairly by press and by the Obama campaign but I think on balance both the Democratic and Republican primaries were dignified and without nearly the amount of negative campaigning there could have been given the years of political and personal baggage from most of the candidates involved in the races.

In terms of Obama vs McCain I think Obama has a huge edge in the sense he can easily lable McCain a Washington insider as he talks about Obama vs McCain's "change" themes. On the other hand McCain cannot label the young and politically inexperienced Obama much except as being young and inexperienced - arguably very desirable traits to many Americans in the current election as long as the candidate is smart and appealing as Obama certainly appears to be to most.

Electoral Showdown: Obama Leads Strongly

Barack Obama is squarely leading John McCain in both national polls of the popular vote and also the far more important electoral vote count, though McCain strategists will find some comfort in the fact that the "solid" electoral base for McCain appears stronger than the solid base votes for Obama.

However if we split the tossup states listed here at RealClearPolitics
Obama wins the Presidency handily.

Show Obama the Money

Barack Obama has raised tens of millons more than John McCain, but McCain is the one with huge personal wealth. USA Today reports

Where the Obama's appear to have a net worth of about a million, John McCain is awash in money with net worth in the range of about 27+ million and a wife who is worth well over 100 million thanks to her inheritance of a beer distribution business that she now runs.

Unfortunately for the McCains personal wealth does not translate into political success. John Edwards and Hillary Clinton both had more than Obama but still lost elections and billionaire Ross Perot managed a distant third place in the general election despite his immense personal wealth, which many believe he would have used if his prospects were greater to win.

McCain's Daughter: Blogger

Kudos to John McCain's daughter who is blogging her experiences along the campaign trail and elsewhere. I was surprised that Mitt Romney's sons did not get more attention for their efforts blogging, but I think many bloggers think this are publicity stunts more than sincere expressions from key insiders in these campaigns. There is a bit of the former I am sure, but fakes are easy to spot and I haven't seen any indications that these candidate kids are not writing most if not all of their own stuff.

Obama is up, McCain is down

The early polls pitting John McCain against Barack Obama suggest that Obama is in the lead in electoral votes, and that clearly Obama is the man to beat as states line up for the voting in November.

Before the big campaigns start in earnest it is impossible to predict how things will shake out, though the basic early conditions clearly favor Obama, and strongly. His remarkable political machine has created a huge groundswell of support that appears likely to increase as the Clinton factions come over to Obama. McCain remains challenged in terms of funding and hard support from the traditional key Republican sectors who historically have not favored McCain's traditional maverick stances.

Swift Boats .... Launching

Now that it is Obama vs McCain in the general election look for a fairly dignified level of direct exchange between these two senators along with a *hurricane* of personal destruction stories from advocates for each side.

A friend mentioned a story to me about John McCain verbally abusing his wife in public. I'm still not convinced the upcoming book is a reliable source, but you can bet the claim will make it into the pro-Obama blogOsphere very quickly:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_temper_boiled_over_in_92_0407.html

If true this is a very alarming anecdote but does this rise to the level of showing McCain is an abusive bad character? Will this be countered with Obama drug use stories from the McCain Swiftboating teams?

Are blogs reporting, and you deciding, or is all this out of hand?

Dem leaders: It's over. Hillary: Its not over until I get to sing

The Democratic Primary has dragged on for over a year, tiring even the most fervent political junkies. Several strategic gaffs by party leaders and state foolishness have led to contention and disenfranchisement of two major states, but Obama maintains a narrow lead over Hillary Clinton even if you allocate Florida and Michigan delegates very disporportionately to Clinton.

With party leaders lining up (indirectly) with Obama in this fashion it's probably only a matter of a few weeks before we'll see a large enough block of superdelegates move to Obama to put him over the top. This ability to manipulate the results "after the voting" is partly why the Democrats have superdelegates in the first place, though I have seen no good explanation for what is obviously a system that horribly mangles the "one person one vote" philosophy that is supposed to lie at the heart of democracy. The electoral college system is bad enough, yet at least it is an attempt to balance state's rights with national rule rather than disenfranchise voters. The Democrats have managed to add in a power elite component to boot - superdelegate votes have thousands of times the impact of a normal party member vote.

Predictions? Very tough in this case. The Clintons are *very pissed off* and it is not clear they will put what leaders think are the party's best interests ahead of their own concerns. Complicating matters is that it's not clear party leaders have a good sense of what is in the best interests of the party. Contention keeps you in the news and my view is still that the Clinton Obama battles are not going to hurt Obama's chances in the regular election. As a candidate of "change" it is to his advantage to appear early and often on TV screens across America while McCain sits almost unnoticed in the corner.

Obama Wins Oregon

Obama has handily won the Oregon Democratic Primary by a large margin - some 58% to 42% Clinton in the still unofficial vote tally.

Speaking in Iowa it's now clear Obama will not only play the frontrunner, he's strategy is to play the elected candidate, talk much more about McCain than Clinton, and challenge the Clinton campaign to make their case against his candidacy which they are not inclined to want to do. This appears to be a plan that will seek to immunize him against a last minute superdelegate coup by Clinton - an act that even the media would be likely to challenge so severely that it's become a non-strategy for the Clintons who are down to their last few cards. As we showed earlier this week even an allocation of most of the Florida and Michigan delegates to Clinton is unlikely to affect the delegate outcome and although she can make a claim to the popular vote that is somewhat unfair since Obama did not campaign much in Michigan and Florida and popular vote appears to have gone out of style in the 2000 election, though this electoral and delegate craziness remains one of America's great shames.

McCain vs Obama's Iran Smackdown

The McCain and Obama campaigns are obviously out testing strategies for their general election matchup. Obama is speaking much more aggressively, calling McCain for example a "creature" of Washington and lambasting his stance on the Iraq War. McCain is getting tag team help from no less than the President of the USA himself, GW Bush, who is calling Obama's approach to foreign affairs the "appeasement" that Bush says has historically failed in dealing with other countries.

As usual this election will probably be won or lost with the indecided voters who have yet to make a firm decision. A key indication of the outcome will be how the Hillary Clinton voters react to her likely demise. If, for example, West Virginia and other conservative southern states go towards McCain the Obama campaign will be pressured to "conservatize" Obama in ways that won't make his key support base happy.

Bob Barr = 2008's Ralph Nader?

Well, not exactly politically, but Barr could certainly become a spoiler for McCain in a very close election if he pulled away a few percent of the conservative voters.

Bob Barr is running as a Libertarian, though he'd likely appeal to very conservative voters and would be running as something of an alternative to John McCain - a more appealing choice for some conservatives who like Bob's no holds Barr'd very conservative agenda and can overlook the tarnish he took on his reputation when Larry Flynt revealed some of Barr's earlier indiscretions during his first of three marriages.

Ironically though Barr is now working for the ACLU, a group hardly noted for their pro-conservative stances.

McCain's Temper, Obama's Associates, and Hilary's Cookie Baking. OMG, what scandal!

I'm so sick of TV media's pitiful coverage of the issues in election 2008. I used to blame .... us ... because clearly people are more interested in nonsense than important stuff, but I now think that the media is as guilty as our own prurient interests in creating the superficial nonsense that passes as presidential analysis.

So, I encourage you to shut off your TV and simply visit the candidate websites. They aren't completely forthcoming but at least they address real issues there:
Hillary Clinton John McCain Barack Obama

Obama Campaign's Samantha Power resigns

Foreign Policy advisor to Obama, Samatha Power, resigned after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster" in an interview where Power appeared to think she was off the record because the tape recorder was off.

Power, who authored a recent work on the Rwandan genocide and the failures of the US response under Bill Clinton's presidency, is a brilliant analyst with a powerful (in fact arguably she'd have a very, very "left wing") vision of how the US should change our role in the world.

Is Obama taking "too high" a road in his campaign? Admirably both he and John McCain are trying hard to steer the ship of American politics in the direction of positive debate and recognizing that we are all diminished by the negative nonsense that has been a pervasive part of politics ever since...the first elections.

However negatives are what people respond to most, especially the folks who are undecided about who they'll vote for. Taking negatives off the table may have unintended consequences and we'll see how long this approach lasts. I predict we'll see a lot of negativity coming *indirectly* from supporters who have no official relationship to these campaigns.

Man the Swiftboats! Full negative speed ahead?