Prairie Weather

Why are Dems so antsy about November 5th

In part because the McCain campaign is enjoying, according to some (but not all) polls, a "slight drift" in their direction. 

In part because we on the left are still walking wounded thanks to Florida/Supreme Court 2000.

Stan Greenberg, noted Democratic strategist, takes up the subject of  Republican confidence in a win on Tuesday with his old friend, Bill McInturff, Republican pollster.  McInturff has written a scary memo showing how and why the election will be an upset and how McCain has nailed it.  Strategist Greenberg takes on Pollster McInturff point by point and comes to the conclusion that his old Republican pal is off his game.

"Last week, we tested the big, unfolding tax debate - including the 'Joe the Plumber' storyline of wealth redistribution, raising taxes on the wealthy and cutting taxes for the middle class. Obama was winning that argument by 14 points (see Democracy Corps poll of 1,000 likely voters nationwide conducted October 21-23, 2008). In this battleground poll, Obama has taken virtually no water on being 'too liberal' or 'will raise my taxes' - both essentially unchanged over the past month at 51 percent.

"In our regression modeling for the presidential battleground states, the two biggest drivers of the vote are who 'brings the right kind of change' and who is 'on your side.' Obama enjoys double-digit advantages over McCain on both - with about 53 percent of likely voters choosing him, creating an upward pressure on the vote. The structure of this race just has not changed as we have moved to the finish line."

So that takes care of the Republican rationale that McCain will win.  Ed Kilgore, editor of Democratic Strategist says the anxiety we are feeling is due to new factors altogether. 

"I'd argue that aside from congenital and well-earned Democratic pessimism based on past close elections, there may be two factor underlying this anxiety. The first is obvious enough: race. With the McCain campaign heavily relying on submerged and not-so-submerged racial appeals, old fears about the willingness of white Americans to elect an African-American president have bubbled up.

"The second factor is more subtle: personal emotional investment in Obama. Some Democrats have long considered Obama a phenomenal, once-in-a-generation leader who can be 'transformational;' others have reached this conclusion more recently. Still others simply think it's imperative, in an unprecedented way, that the GOP lock on the White House is terminated this year, for reasons ranging from Supreme Court appointments to foreign policy."

I'm not sure about you, but that "second factor" sure describes this voter.  I'm about halfway between a huge victory party and a one-way ticket to New Zealand.

Last minute reprieve for the greedy

While we're all holding our breath, waiting for the election to be over, the Bush administration isn't letting the grass grow beneath its dirty little feet.  Only 10 more weeks and they're out of office.  Maybe they'll spend some time removing the B's and O's from their computer keyboards in the White House.  But we know for certain they're going to leave us with a mess -- deliberately.  It's a mess to be really concerned about, reported in the Washington Post this morning.  Bush plans to deregulate just about everything.

"The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.

"The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms."

Once the regulations are lifted, not only can some serious damage be done to the environment and to all of us but it can take years to restore original standards.

"Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis."

Everything is on the table, from regulations affecting oil spills to family medical leaves, all of which will have to be restored over years and decades.

The judge and his judgment

We knew from the get-go, didn't we!, that Michael Mukasey was sleazeball -- yet another Bush attorney general who would serve the White House and himself, not the people.  Now the judge has shown what kind of judgment he has in his personal and professional life.  He's been cheating with government (taxpayer) money by overusing government services.

"Attorney General Michael Mukasey has taken personal trips on government jets almost every weekend since he took office less than a year ago at a cost to taxpayers of more than $155,800, Justice Department and Federal Aviation Administration travel records show." ... McClatchy ...

High government officials are forced to use government transportation.  They can't fly coach in a commercial plane for security reasons.  But they're expected to reimburse the government at a rate based on the cost of coach fares.  Mukasey did pay back at the usual rate but not entirely.  He used government planes with what is now considered to have been excessive frequency, taking family members along on occasion.

"Mukasey took so many personal trips on FAA, FBI or Drug Enforcement Administration planes that he was out of Washington for almost half or more of February, May, July and September, according to the records, which were released recently in response to open records requests that McClatchy filed nine months ago. From November 2007 to September 2008, he traveled home to New York 45 times."

It's the frequency that does it.  Each reimbursement covers less than 10% of the actual costs of travel on government carriers.  When Mukasey overused the system, we were paying for it.  10%, by the way, is only slightly more than what the average American has lost in disposable income over the past years.

A sign that justice isn't dead

Mike Coffman is the Republican Secretary of State of Colorado who purged tens of thousands of names from Colorado's list of voters and -- this time -- won't get away with it.  A federal judge has ordered that those voters be given provisional ballots.

Provisional ballots are the ballots that don't get counted unless the voter can prove he has a right to vote.  Not anymore.  The best part of this story is that the burden of proof is now upon the state of Colorado, not the voter.  In Colorado your vote counts unless the state can prove you didn't have the right to vote.

"Under the agreement, voters removed from the rolls will be permitted to cast provisional ballots, and those ballots will be counted unless election officials can prove the voters were not eligible. To strike such ballots, county election officials must conduct an extensive records review on each one, a decision that must then be reviewed by Mr. Coffman’s office.

"'This is unprecedented,' said Elizabeth Westfall, a lawyer for the Advancement Project, a civil rights group that helped file the lawsuit. 'We are really thrilled that there will be this degree of unprecedented scrutiny and protection for these purged voters when they cast their provisional ballots.'"

Not entirely unprecedented.  In another triumph for voters, Michigan now offers the same protection.

"In Michigan, a federal appeals panel in Detroit delivered a similar victory on Thursday for about 5,500 voters who had been dropped from the rolls. The 2-to-1 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said state elections officials should not remove registered voters from the rolls, even if their voter ID cards had been returned as undeliverable."

Seen/heard this one?

Bill Maher, at his best.. (H/t those savvy Vermont socialists):

And finally, New Rule: A candidate for president should not be judged by the color of his skin. And to – and to anyone who thinks differently, I say, please do not reject John McCain just because he’s white. I think the recent news from Wall Street has made us all less tolerant, and only reinforced the stereotype that white people are shiftless, thieving welfare queens.

Now, take a look at these pictures. Here are the CEO’s of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and the Lehman Brothers. I know the first thing that jumps out about these faces is they all happen to be white, and they all happen to be responsible for stealing. But, what you have to understand is that these whites are a product of a society that made them that way.

It was the neighborhoods and the schools they went to: Harvard, Yale, the Wharton School of Business.

They never learned the value of doing real, actual work. And the first step to fixing that is better role models so kids growing up white today don’t think the only way out of Westchester is corporate crime.

Or a government handout. Or sailing.

So, I get it. The temptation is to look at McCain and vote against him because you don’t see an individual; you just see another typical welfare "whitey."

And it’s true. He spent his entire life shuffling from one low-paying government job to another. Well, except those years he spent in prison. Typical. And, between you and me, he’s not very articulate.

Oh, he may have some street smarts, but he’s not what you‘d call an "educated" man. He freely admits he’s ignorant about the economy. And apparently the only thing his white running mate knows how to do is crank out one baby after another. And now, of course, her teenage daughter is pregnant out of wedlock, because she learns it at home!

But, that doesn’t mean we should assume all white people are like that just because so many of them are. I believe there is hope. I believe even the stupidest, greediest, laziest whites can break the cycle of dependence, like this November when we finally move George Bush out of public housing.

"The ad"

It's a wrap when a Republican analyst, asked about Obama's 30-minute infomercial, declares he was moved and thinks Obama is an exceptional candidate. 

I didn't get to see the ad, not having TV, but from the descriptions of it, I'd like to.

Update:  It took me some time and some creative searching to find an incident in a bar mentioned by Todd Domke, the Republican political analyst, who found Obama's primetime ad to have been powerful, convincing, and compelling.  It was an account he'd read in a blog somewhere about how the ad was received in one pre-game Philadelphia bar last night.  Here it is -- a Daily Kos journal entry by "kmiddle".

"It's been a while since I diaried here, but I felt compelled to offer the following after watching "the ad" from a Philly bar/restaurant. Now, this wasn't a 'shot and a beer' Philly bar; this was a high-scale, downtown $36 steak-and-Italian place near the convention center. 95% white, upper middle class. 

"My seat was in the back corner of the bar area, perched on a high stool, with a great vantage point not only of the TV, but of the crowd. The place was full of revelers awaiting the World Series game. The TV was on but silent. Then 'the ad' came on.

"A few observations:

1. After a few minutes, someone asked the bartender to turn up the sound, which he did.

2. And then the place got quiet. This is a bar-full of crazy Philly phans, chomping at the bit for the ball game to start. And the place got quiet to listen to 'the ad'. People were actually listening and watching.

3. When it was done, people applauded. Yes. Applauded a political ad.

4. The game coverage came on; and during the first commercial break, a McCain attack ad came on. The reaction was mainly shaking of heads.

"I don't know what to make of all that, but to me it spoke volumes about Senator Obama, about the campaign he's run, and about the real connection he appears to be making with real voters of every stripe."