Compare the story of the rather sad McCain GOTV and volunteer efforts with this video from the obama cmapaign,
If there is one thing that people should take away from the obama campaign is that the media people in it were incredible. I cant actually recall a visual or media screw up like say, mccain's green screen.
so can you get 9 votes?
Obama has his owm Robo Calls out there to fight those of John McCain.
Here's a script:
Hi, this is Jeri Watermolen, calling for the Campaign for Change. I live in Green Bay and, like you, I've been getting sleazy phone calls and mail from John McCain and his supporters viciously -- and falsely -- attacking Barack Obama. I used to support John McCain because he honorably served our country -- but this year he's running a dishonorable campaign. We know McCain will continue many of Bush's policies, and now he's using George Bush's divisive tactics. In fact, he hired the Bush strategists whose attacks even McCain once called hateful.
Barack Obama will turn the page on these negative politics and stand up for the middle class. That's the change we need, and it's why I have changed my mind about John McCain. Join me in voting for Barack Obama. Paid for the Campaign for Change, a project of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, 608-255-5172, and authorized by Obama for America.
McCain lost and he lost big. i did not need to see the snap polls to bolster my claim but they do back me up. McCain did not do terribly but he it made for a couple of strange moments when he called obama "that one". It was just kinda weird. I did not see it as the end all and be all of the debate but the media needs a narrative and that fits best with the result of the first debate where mccain failed to look at obama. "Now he wont even address him etc..." McCain loses any policy discussion because he is ont he wrong side of the public on his policy. He cant win on the merits. So he lost the debate itself but he also lost the larger fight over regaining some positive aspects of his campaign. He needed a big headline out of this and he did not come close.
The format sucked. The entire idea behind a town hall is that the people actually ask and the candidates answer questions off the cuff. There should be follow ups and it is supposed to be unscripted. Last night was anything but. i mean brokaw had a script he could not read when he candidate stepped in front of it at the end of the night. How lame.
I thought this provided a big opportunity for mccain when both candidates were visibly chaffing at the restrictions to just blow up the format and ask obama to shift to a real town hall style. Talk about a crazy made for tv moment that could introduce major uncertainty into the campaign. McCain cannot win as long as the campaign stays sedate and boring. He is behind and behind by a lot. If he is willing to take the ayers track of throwing away his honor he should have been willing to throw away the debate format. The media and the people would have loved it. Maybe he would not have done as well on the answering but really it would have provided the chance to dominate the debate in a way the actual format never gave him.
Note that McCain failed to bring ayers into the debate. He was not man enough to do it to obama's face. He was not able to stand on stage and call obama a terrorist. maybe the campaign would not have been negative if they had done the town halls because mccain could never attack obama like that to his face. even palin was willing to go after biden with the white flag of surrender. baring a nuclear moment i dont see mccain turning this around. Obam by 4.5 points in popular vote and he wins 376 electoral votes.
February 7 1962, President Kennedy orders his Press Secretary and close friend Pierre Salinger to go out and to purchase him Cuban Petit Upmann cigars. Salinger managed to acquire 1200 of the cigars. The next day Kennedy signed into law a ban on all trade with Cuba, except for non-subsidized sale of foods and medicines. This story is both legendary and true. People like to credit Kennedy with initiating the ban but his was only an expansion of earlier legislation from the Eisenhower administration. Regardless of who exactly started it the isolation of Cuba has been one of the biggest and most glaring policy failures in US history.
Numerous polls have been conducted on the questions of ending the ban and reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Typically 60%+ would support reestablishing diplomatic ties. The public splits 40-40 on whether the embargo should end or continue. However people think American should be allowed to travel to Cuba based on responses to questions involving interest.
The point in bringing up Cuba is that it could be a potent electoral topic. It is a prime example of the failure of isolation and so has relevance to the current US foriegn policy debate.
Last night in the debate there was a section on the idea of preconditions. Obama came out in favor of meetings without preconditions and McCain continues to demand that we make people give up something before we condescend to talk to them. Here is the video its about 5 minutes long.
Obama focuses mostly on N Korea and on Iran. The debate deals with primarily with the possible meeting with mahmoud ahmadinejad. What is missing here is the use of Cuba as an example of what happens under McCain's foreign policy. Cuba has sat there and its people have suffered for 46 years now as we have isolated it. What has avoiding talks with Cuba produced? Nothing.
I use Cuba as an illustrative point because a change in policy is widely supported at least to the extent of reestablishing diplomatic relations. i suspect not to many people would be upset if we ended the embargo. The polls do not include a very important question that lets us understand how strongly people hold their views, "how upset would you feel if the opposite of your views happened? Very, some what or not at all upset".
People view Kennedy as the father of the embargo but fail to realize that it was actually Reagan who should be credited with the embargo in its current form. After being elected Reagan reestablished the travel ban -- it had been removed under Carter -- and prohibited U.S. citizens from spending money in Cuba, and allowed the 1977 fishing accord to lapse. He made sure to ban travel to the U.S. by Cuban government or Communist Party officials or their representatives and most students, scholars, and artists.
Many people believe that discussing this would be impossible because of the electoral implications in Florida. However the landscape has changed their as well. The changes were evident in the ex-pat communities response to the Elian Gonzalez incident of 2001.
In its aftermath, the Cuban American rightwing splintered. Its more hard-line members formed what is known as the Cuba Liberty Council (CLC) who are behind the Bush administration policy on Cuba - while the CANF has now become an advocate of a somewhat softer line. This split in the leadership of the Cuban American Florida community reflects the demographic change that is now directly affecting the presidential race...
...More significantly, within the Miami Dade Cuban community, the figures show a majority now supporting a re-establishment of diplomatic relations. A Florida International University poll of Miami Dade County residents conducted in February 2007 found that 57.2 per cent supported a restoration of diplomatic relations. 65 per cent of respondents said they would support a dialogue with Cuban government, (this compared with 55.6% in a similar poll in 2004). Although a majority of 57.5 per cent said they still support the embargo this figure had dropped from 66 per cent in 2004. Most importantly however, 64 per cent said they support a return to the policies governing travel and remittances that pertained in 2003 before the Bush administration tightened them.
With a majority in Miami Dade wanting a return to the travel policies of 2003, this has become a key element in the current election race because the Democrats have chosen to fight the current Congressional election on this issue (see, for example, Southern Political Report, 'Florida's Three Cuban Representatives Face Challenges' February 25, 2008). Two prominent Cuban Americans, the former head of the Cuban National Foundation and former head of the local Democratic Party, Joe García and the former Mayor of Hialeah, Raúl Martínez, are running against rightwing Cuban-American Republicans Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart respectively. A Colombian American Democrat, Annette Taddeo, is opposing Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Speaking on BBC News 24 on February 19th about Fidel Castro's retirement, García said it was time for "a more pragmatic policy towards Cuba." This contest has now spilled over into the presidential race, making this the first election since the Cold War that the candidates will have contested over Cuba policy.
"There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans. That's why I will immediately allow unlimited family travel and remittances to the island. It's time to let Cuban Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers. It's time to let Cuban American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime."
Occasionally i like to do posts that deal with the Obama campaigns over all strategy for this election. Usually this focuses on the targeted ground game. This is an exceptionally important aspect of the election come voting time but until then the effects of this are speculative. The Obama campaign is on record as not caring about the national tracking polls or even about the media cycles. Back on August 28, the entire election strategy was laid out by David Plouffe.
Plouffe spent about the first 15 minutes talking about his field operation, and returned to the subject several times over the remaining 45 or so minutes. He said the campaign is focused on 18 states. They're especially concentrating on people he called "true undecideds" – people who aren't leaning one way or the other. The demographics of the true undecideds are favourable, he says: "We like where they are and who they are."
...He framed the contest as being about field operation vs. news cycle. "Their campaign," he said, referring to McCain's, "is all about winning the news cycle." He said his campaign's constant research shows that voters listen more to people in their communities they know and trust than they listen to attack ads or blowhards on television.
Let's not equivocate too much here. Over the course of the past several days, there has been a rather dramatic shift in this election toward Barack Obama. Our trendline estimate, which is engineered to be fairly conservative, registers the swing as equaling roughly 4 points over the course of the past week.
Changes of this velocity are unusual outside of the convention periods and the debates, especially in close elections. It took John McCain about 60 days and tens of millions of advertising dollars to whittle Obama's lead down from roughly 5 points at its peak in early June, to the 1-point lead that Obama held heading into the conventions. Obama has swing the numbers that much in barely a week.
Of course, we never really were entirely outside of gravitational field of the conventions, and probably at least half of this bounceback for Obama is merely the more-or-less inevitable consequence of McCain's convention bounce ending. But the fact is that Obama is in a stronger position now than he was immediately before the conventions. We now have him winning the election 71.5 percent of the time, which is about as high as that number has been all year.
Gov. Sarah Palin’s favorable/unfavorable ratings have suffered a stunning 21 point collapse in just one week, according to Research 2000 polling. Last week, 52% approved and 35% disapproved of the GOP vice presidential nominee (+17 net). This week, 42% approved and 46% disapprove (-4 net).
Obama is not so far from the DLC in a number of ways. He has gone out of his way to convince people of his hawkish credibility. This includes his desire for escalation in Afghanistan and in his desire to move toward the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine into Nato. The desire to include those two countries into Nato has the real Potential to get us into a shooting war with a nuclear power. Personally that is one of his positions that makes me very unhappy. The other big one was his FISA vote. He has also caved on off-shore drilling.
The importance of these things is that it prevents him from articulating a clear and definite choice without looking hypocritical. He can't attack Palin on her position regarding georgia and ukraine vis a vis Nato because they have the same position. One that could lead us into war. Obama has followed the DLC strategy of Republican light foriegn policy. He has tactical and not strategic differences with them. It is a real problem with some liberals. I suspect that this cautious centrist strategy is related to his over all electoral strategy that relies on base turnout. He knows he has a base that loathes the GOP and even if he disappoints them he can count on their votes.
The entire idea behind the DLC is that the Dems could steal certain issues from the GOP and effectively neutralize them. This was a failed plan because given the choice between real republicans and republican light people chose real republican. It is true that Obama has real differences with McCain on the economy and a number of Domestic issues. That is where the election is being fought now. However i would have liked to see him articulating clear and bold new idea on the foriegn policy front. The GOP has clearly screwed up our policy and Obama seems to only want to tinker around the edges.
What is lacking from Obama is a liberal foreign policy view clearly defined and enunciated that gives the voters a real choice and a real understanding of Obama's world view. Liberals and Dems are going to continue to lose on foreign policy as long as they seem timid and deferential to republican hawkishness.
The Obama campaigns strategy and tactics are again at the center of attention for Dems. As McCain has pulled ahead of Obama in electoral projections cries of doom and dissatisfaction abound. I understand why they might start to feel nervous, i really do. The stakes are so high that most people cannot fathom the horror of another loss to a deceitful, manipulative, unethical Republican. This has caused real freak outs over the Obama ad and media strategy. So to combat this i think it is a good time to remind everyone of the general Obama strategy.
The Obama campaign is a very sophisticated organization. In accordance with this they are taking an electoral tactic that is very different from a traditional 20th century campaign. Those campaigns were built and driven by media cycles. We see this in the Atwater-Rove-Schmidt campaign run by McCain. For him the entire election is predicated on winning the news cycle every day. The Palin pick and its timing was a big example of this. Everytime Obama starts to get some positive coverage the McCain capaign does something to try and undercut this. Typically this includes the video press releases that the TV people seem to think are ads. They dont run often or for very long. They are just designed to grab media coverage.
McCain thinks that winning the cycle everyday will give him a victory in November. This is standard classic, traditional campaign thinking originally developed in 92 by Bill Clinton and his famous war room. Obama has always been against pursuing this type of strategy. Yes it drives every one crazy but that is how he operates. His campaign operates on a different wavelength than traditional campaigns. There is good reason for him to disdain this type of national level media war. It has not proven to be effective in winning votes in November. In fact most of the day to day movement is likely to be driven more by the vagaries of polling and noise than actual daily events. Let me take you back all the way to august 28. On that day the entire election was laid out by David Plouffe.
Plouffe spent about the first 15 minutes talking about his field operation, and returned to the subject several times over the remaining 45 or so minutes. He said the campaign is focused on 18 states. They're especially concentrating on people he called "true undecideds" – people who aren't leaning one way or the other. The demographics of the true undecideds are favourable, he says: "We like where they are and who they are."
...He framed the contest as being about field operation vs. news cycle. "Their campaign," he said, referring to McCain's, "is all about winning the news cycle." He said his campaign's constant research shows that voters listen more to people in their communities they know and trust than they listen to attack ads or blowhards on television.
Just who exactly these voters are varies from state to state, he added, but the Obama campaign's research shows that they tend to be unhappy about the economy, are two-thirds more likely to oppose the Iraq War than support it, and are largely women. In other words, he suggested, they are far more likely to end up in Obama's column in the fall.
For the next month, the Obama campaign's ground focus is on finishing up the stunning gains in voter registration that it and the Democratic Party have made. Since January alone more than 3.5 million new voters have been registered in 17 of the 23 states tracked closely by the Obama campaign where information is available. Three states — Florida, Michigan and North Carolina — have seen increases of more than 400,000 new voters, and 10 more states have recorded new registrations of more than 100,000. Though these numbers include registrants to all parties, in 14 of the states at least half of the new voters are under 35, a key demographic for Obama.
"We're on pace to hit goal," says Jason Green, a 27-year-old Gaithersburg, Md., native who is Obama's national voter registration director. "I would love to exceed goal." Green, not surprisingly, isn't in the mood to get specific about what that goal is, though he does say that it is "in the millions," and that the bulk of the voters will be in the 18 battleground states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado and New Mexico (though drives have been mounted in all 50 states). Green is also happy to share the news that they registered more than 100,000 people over Labor Day weekend, capitalizing on the wave of excitement coming out of the convention in Denver.
The two sides' different approaches toward the ground war were evident during a recent late summer weekend in Virginia. On a balmy Saturday morning over Starbucks coffee and Krispy Kreme doughnuts, about two dozen Republican canvassers met to go door-knocking. The Grand Old Party tradition has become a familiar ritual for this Old Dominion group, some of whom have been volunteering since before the Starbucks took up residence in the upscale Fairfax, Va., strip mall, not 10 miles from Washington. They spent the morning retracing familiar paths, calling on homes they most likely have visited before and, as always, completing SAT-style fill-in-the-bubble spreadsheets that are fed to the GOP's massive voter files.
"I sure have knocked on these doors, countless times," former state senator Jay O'Brien says of the approximately once-a-month gathering. "I've been out here since 1991." (O'Brien knows the importance of new voters firsthand: he lost his state senate seat last year, when a surge of new voters came out of nowhere in his Fairfax district. "Frankly, I got as many votes as I used to get, but there was a bigger turnout by new voters who wanted to make a statement about other things, and they were more energized by a Democrat," O'Brien says.)
About 30 miles south in Woodbridge, Va., Angel Thomas was canvassing for Obama. Thomas, 26, who has never before volunteered for a campaign, spent the past month downloading lists of her neighbors from mybarackobama.com. In her free time, she knocks on as many doors as she can. She asks her neighbors whom they support, tries to educate and convince those who are on the fence and logs all the information into Obama's website before downloading another list. While the GOP is still meeting in groups once a month, Thomas and her 8 million allies are canvassing 24/7.
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