Barack Obama, during an unplanned stop, works the phones

Barack Obama had reason to be proud and pleased Saturday with the work of his on-the-ground campaign in Missouri. A rally in St. Louis drew an estimated 100,000 people; a similar event later in the day across the state in Kansas City attracted about 75,000 (more details available here).

So it made sense that between the two events, he would drop by one of his campaign offices (at right).

Carrie Budoff Brown of Politico.com was the media "pool" reporter for the excursion, and she relates that Obama "thanked volunteers and spoke with about two dozen voters on the phone. He also ate a slice of sweet potato pie –- yes, pie."

Brown filed more, and since it speaks for itself, we pass it along as she wrote it:

“We only got two more weeks,” Obama told the volunteers. “So we got to work tirelessly. We can’t let up at all. Just run right through the tape.”

“It would be fun to win Missouri, wouldn’t it?” he added.

He arrived at the office shortly after 4 p.m. local time, and greeted more than a dozen volunteers who were assembled around several tables, hunched over lists of voter names with phones pressed to their ears. The volunteers rose to their feet and applauded.

“I am so proud of what you guys are doing. This is the lifeblood of this campaign,” Obama said. “It is what makes all the difference in the world. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

He then asked the volunteers to get a few undecided voters on the phone. Many of the calls went down like this one: When Karen Puhr, 58, a Democrat and volunteer since June, got a voter on the line, she told the voter that Obama was in the office and wanted to chat.

“Yes he is here, and he wants to talk to someone,” Puhr said to the voter. “I am not kidding you, I am serious. Here he is.”

Obama, who was standing close by, took the phone ...

In Ohio, battle of the plumbers (actual and otherwise) breaks out

As if further evidence was needed of the phenomenon that is "Joe the Plumber" (however brief it may be), there comes this e-mail advisory:

Real Toledo Area Plumbers to Hold Press Conference to Express Their Grave Concerns with Senator McCain’s Economic Policies

The message goes on to advise that in Northwood, Ohio, today "members of Local 50 Plumbers, Steamfitters and Service Mechanics" will not only take questions but "share their concerns with several of Sen. McCain's proposals, including his plan to tax employer-based healthcare insurance, his tax proposal which favors the wealthy over working Ohioans and other issues that will impact working families."

The gathering takes place shortly before a scheduled McCain appearance in Westerville, Ohio.

Joe the Plumber -- aka Samuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher -- lives in Holland, Ohio, and was invited to McCain's rally. No word on whether the fellow the the Republican presidential candidate thrust into the spotlight as an iconic working stiff (but who, as it turns out, is not an officially licensed plumber) will make it.

(UPDATE:  The Huffington Post reports that in Colorado, Democrats have unleashed electronic messages that feature a plumber identified as Joe Martinez. In the robo calls, Martinez touts Barack Obama's tax plan.)

-- Don Frederick

Humongous crowd greets Barack Obama in St. Louis; that might worry his campaign

The advance crew for a Barack Obama rally in St. Louis on Saturday certainly performed above and beyond -- a throng estimated at 100,000, a figure a police official signed off on, jammed into the area around the city's Gateway Arch to hear the candidate hold forth. (See the video by clicking on the Read more line below.)  

A large gathering also was massing in the evening for an Obama appearance across the state in Kansas City.

But rather than get a raise, might those hard-working Obama staffers in Missouri need to fear for their jobs?

We ask, mainly in jest, to offer a reminder that big crowds have not necessarily been a boon for the Democratic presidential candidate. Consider:

** The weekend before the New Hampshire primary in early January, much of the buzz concerned the packed houses awaiting Obama as he traversed the state. On primary day, he suffered a stunning upset loss to Hillary Clinton.

** A few days before Pennsylvania's April primary, Obama attracted an overflow crowd -- widely estimated at 35,000 -- to downtown Philadelphia. On primary day, Clinton easily bested him.

** His largest audience to date -- roughly 200,000 -- was recorded overseas, for his much-touted speech in Berlin in late July. John McCain's brain trust effectively used that against Obama as part of its late-summer ad campaign.

** That Obama attracted 80,000 people to Invesco Field in Denver for his speech wrapping up the Democratic National Convention was quickly forgotten when, the next morning, McCain unveiled Sarah Palin as his running mate.

More to the point -- and as Obama's top operatives well know -- large, raucous....

As Joe Biden raises money in California, will he be on tape-recorder alert?

Joe Biden embarked today on a treacherous mission, one fraught with the potential to knock the Democratic presidential ticket from its seemingly lofty perch -- behind closed doors, he was raising money in California's Bay Area.

True enough, he could hardly imagine a friendly audience at the three events that will fill his day -- a luncheon, an afternoon reception and a dinner, all at private homes. But that's just why danger lurks. With his guard down, might the voluble Biden make the same foot-in-mouth mistake that Barack Obama made in the same region a little more than six months ago?

It was at a fundraiser in San Francisco, of course, that Obama -- unaware that a Huffington Post "citizen-journalist" was in the audience with a tape recorder -- uttered his now-infamous "bitter" comments about Americans living in small towns.

Obama's rarely been allowed to forget those words since (hammering him over them was an early staple of Sarah Palin's stump speech). And in a recent interview with the New York Times Magazine, he characterized the remarks as his "biggest boneheaded move" in his run for the presidency.

Biden presumably has been prepped. And rather than go off on a philosophical tangent, he likely will regale well-heeled Californians with more than they ever wanted to know about a medium-sized town: Scranton, Pa.

-- Don Frederick

Photo credit: Associated Press

Ticket Notice: Sunday shows -- John McCain, Colin Powell, Tim Kaine

ABC "This Week": Roundtable with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, David Gergen of Harvard University, ABC News political consultant Donna Brazile and ABC News’ George Will. 

CBS "Face the Nation": Gov. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Gov. Matt Blunt (R-Mo.) and former Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

CNN "Late Edition": Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.); former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.); Ed Lazear, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors; GOP strategists Leslie Sanchez and Alex Castellanos and Huffingtonpost.com editor-at-large Hilary Rosen; CNN's  Gloria Borger, Campbell Brown, Bill Schneider and Joe Johns.

"Fox News Sunday": Republican presidential candidate John McCain; roundtable with Brit Hume (Fox News), Mara Liasson (NPR), Bill Kristol (Weekly Standard) and Juan Williams (NPR).

NBC "Meet the Press": Colin L. Powell, retired Army general, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secretary of State.

-- Leslie Hoffecker

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Photo: NBC News

Bias in the media over McCain and Obama? Surely, there's no such thing!

OK, we've been talking here all week. It's Saturday. Your turn.

So watch this video for a couple of minutes. It's from MSNBC. It's about media bias and how come Barack Obama runs hundreds of negative ads, according to one study, and the media ends up talking about John McCain's eight?

It's not so much that the media tells you what to think. It's that the media tells you what to think about.

What's your take? Tell us down below.

--Andrew Malcolm

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Dear (insert editor's name here), I support Bob Barr

We hate to spoil surprises here on The Ticket. But any newspaper editors out there, be on the alert for a slew of similar-sounding letters suddenly supporting Bob Barr.

He's the not-so famous former Republican representative from Georgia who's now the presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party. Kind of like a Ron Paul with an old-fashioned mustache. Not that there's anything wrong with such handsome facial hair.

Anyway, Stephen Gordon is the eCampaign Manager for Barr, and if you're not printing your own money by the millions like Barack Obama's crowd in Chicago, then you need to do a lot of really cheap -- even free -- things to attract attention to your campaign and try to break out of the 1% cellar.

Bob caught a break. He'll be interviewed Monday on PBS's national "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," where serious voters study.

Meanwhile, Stephen wrote an e-mail to Barr supporters, linking them to a web page where he has quite thoughtfully stored a whole batch of sample letters about Barr's policies. Coincidentally, they all involve an avowal of a vote for Bob Barr on Nov. 4 and a request for others to consider the same thing.

Stephen suggests, if you're perhaps maybe probably too busy to write your own letter, you might want to copy down one or three of these and fire them off to your local newspaper or website.

Since Bob's been barred, so to speak, from all the presidential debates, Stephen's also collected Barr ads and videos on their website, which people can watch at no cost to Bob. Or Stephen.

Many newspaper letters editors these days will Google common phrases from letters and find them showing up all over the web, and maybe they won't publish that letter or maybe they'll publish just one version.

But maybe someone will see the letter somewhere and decide to vote for Bob Barr. And that's the kind of thing your shoestring campaign has to do to compete if you're not That One.

--Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: BobBarr2008.com

Sarah Palin says Barack Obama loves America, but Republican Michele Bachmann isn't so sure

Sarah Palin cut Barack Obama some slack today.

"I know Obama loves America," she said during a brief give-and-take with reporters aboard her campaign plane. She continued, "I'm sure that is why he's running for president. It's because he wants to do what he believes is in the best interest of this great nation. ... I don't question at all Barack Obama's love for this great country."

Our colleague Mark Silva at the Swamp has more on what Palin had to say. But whereas the Republican vice presidential candidate attested to Obama's patriotism, a GOP surrogate -- in a television appearance this evening bound to make the rounds on the Internet -- wasn't willing to concede that point.

Indeed, before Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was done, she raised the specter of the days of Joe McCarthy, suggesting an investigation of whether some of her Capitol Hill colleagues are "pro-America or anti-America."

Emulating Palin, we'll cut Bachmann some slack. She was parrying questions from Chris Matthews on his MSNBC "Hardball" show, which is not for the faint of heart. Still, she did not necessarily have to keep stepping deeper and deeper into the hole he kept digging for her.

Initially, they were discussing Obama, with Matthews quizzing her about the Republican-backed "robo calls -- viewed by many as over the top -- that play the Bill Ayers/terrorist card against the Democrat.

Bachmann says of Obama: "I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views."

Then she says: "I think the people that Barack Obama has been associating with are anti-American, by and large."

Matthews wonders if that includes Democratic leaders, such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "I'm not going to say if they're anti-American or pro-American," Bachmann says.

Pressed by Matthews about members of Congress in general and whether, in essence, their patriotism should be called into question, Bachmann takes the bait. She calls on the media to launch a "penetrating expose and take a look ... at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-American or anti-American."

She adds: "I think people would love to see an expose like that."

We wonder if Bachmann truly comprehends what she endorsed at that moment. At any rate, here's the interview in full:

-- Don Frederick

Ever gotten a robocall? Here's one for McCain right now

Hello.

We're calling on behalf of The Ticket.

Have you ever received an automated phone call from a credit card company, Blue Cross or the like?

Impersonal. You're responding to a distant machine that decides to invade your privacy and summon you to listen. Kind of annoying, isn't it? (Unless it's from your child's principal about the school bomb threat.)

Anyway, it really doesn't matter whether you like robocalls or not. You're gonna get 'em. From politicians too. All campaigns do it in one form or another.

Imagine the efficiencies of time and costs reaching thousands of people one after the other with the very same message following the time zones for decent calling hours across the country. No office space. No wages. No tardy, whiny volunteers who need bathroom breaks.

Just thousands of calls going out with the exact same message hour after hour. Sure, some people hang up in protest. Even anger. So what? The machine doesn't care. A lot listen. Mission accomplished.

That's why every campaign does them, some more openly, some more negatively.

Ever heard one? Here's one going on right now as you read this for John McCain and the Republican National Committee. (It may take a minute to load.)

This call wants you to think less of Barack Obama because of his past association with '60s Weather Underground radical William Ayers. You may not like it. Or believe it. But the message has already been tested. It works. 

This item was written for The Ticket, which approved it.

--Andrew Malcolm

Click.

LA Times Editorial Board endorses someone for president. Go figure.

To the surprise of 13 non-subscribers in Burundi, the Editorial Board of The Times newspaper today endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president.

"It is Obama's character and temperament that come to the fore. It is his steadiness. His maturity. These are qualities American leadership has sorely lacked for close to a decade," the editorial said.

The editorial also criticized Sen. John McCain, whom it endorsed for the Republican nomination before the California primary, as becoming "nearly unrecognizable" in his position switches since last winter.

And it roundly pounded his selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as running mate as "the most unqualified vice presidential nominee of a major party in living memory."

The editorial by the editorial board praised Obama for his vice presidential choice of Sen. Joe Biden as demonstrating "more competence than drama." You can read the whole endorsement thingy for yourself here.

To the ongoing disbelief of media conspiracists, the editorial board is a separate entity from The Times newsroom or LATimes.com, the online home of The Ticket. To be absolutely honest, other than....