The opening acts of last week's Democratic National Convention were met with middling reviews, with even some party loyalists (such as James Carville) complaining of an unfocused message that, to their dismay, mostly passed on targeting John McCain.
Barack Obama took care of that complaint in his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nod, offering a full frontal assault on his Republican foe. And today, campaigning in Ohio, he offered his thoughts on the GOP confab in St. Paul, Minn.
Not surprisingly, his critique was thumbs down.
Tuesday night's program -- the first full one, due to the disruption caused by Hurricane Gustav -- was dominated by stirring testimonials to McCain's courage and character and included a biting attack on Obama by Fred Thompson.
Here's what caught Obama's attention, though (as well as that of others): “You did not hear a single word about the economy,” he told a small gathering of supporters at a college campus in New Philadelphia, Ohio.
The Times' Noam Levey was with Obama, and he relates that the Democrat continued:
Not once did people mention the hardships that folks are going through. Not once did they mention what are we going to do about keeping jobs here in Ohio. Not once did they mention what are we going to do about all these retirees that are losing their pensions. Not once did they mention how are we going to make sure Social Security is there for the next generation.
The other party and John McCain don’t get it. They don’t get it.
Obama also zinged McCain campaign manager Rick Davis for asserting, in a videotaped interview with the Washington Post Tuesday, that November's election would be more about personalities than issues.
“I guess I don’t blame them," Obama said, recycling a line he's been using often to characterize the Republican campaign. "Because if you don’t have any issues to run on, I guess you want it to be about personality."
You know how everyone's been talking about how Republican presidential nominee-to-be Sen. John McCain was gonna name his vice presidential running mate at a big rally in Dayton, Ohio on Aug. 29, the day after Barack Obama's acceptance speech to 70,000 of his closest friends in that Denver stadium?
That still seems likely. But now comes word that McCain advance people have approached a minor league baseball stadium in southwestern Pennsylvania about hosting a rally for the Arizona senator the day after the Ohio rally.
That would be the Saturday of Labor Day weekend before the GOP convention opens in St. Paul. So it looks like after the announcement in Ohio, McCain will go on a quick Midwestern tour with his new partner.
The question is, who will that partner be?
Republicans don't win the White House without Ohio. And the newly-uncovered Pennsylvania plans also make political sense. It's a crucial state for Republican hopes and has rich pockets of one-time Reagan Democrats who went for Hillary Clinton in this year's Democratic primary.
But does it mean that its former governor, Tom Ridge, another Vietnam vet and close friend of McCain's, is among the finalists to join him on the ticket?
With this tour McCain's campaign hopes to squash some of the so-called bounce that Obama might enjoy coming out of the highly-publicized Democratic convention.
Details of the new event at the 7,000-seat Consol Energy Park in Washington County -- home of the Washington Wild Things -- are still being finalized, according to sources. But rumors that McCain would roll-out his choice for running mate in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan before he heads to St. Paul, contributed to a swirl of speculation this week over his pick.
The conservative weekly National Review reported that McCain's campaign has been sounding out key state GOP officials around the country "about the consequences" of picking a pro-choice running mate, such as Ridge.
Other names in the mix include former U.S. Rep. Rob Portman of Ohio, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Michigan native, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and even another intimate McCain pal, one-time Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.
The reported responses from many conservatives and the warnings from conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh toward a McCain-Ridge ticket warn of a revolt in the GOP base should McCain select the former secretary of Homeland Security. And if McCain ends up picking someone more conservative like Romney, he'll reap free plaudits for acceding to the conservative base.
Of course, such a moderate choice could gain McCain support among additional moderates and independents. And the Arizonan didn't get his reputation as a maverick by accident.
Now we realize where the donations come from does NOT mean that the votes will follow. But it's still interesting to take the measure of it. Below is The Times' interactive map of states, with the battleground states defined as those in which the margin of 2004 victory was less than 8 percentage points.
Now we go over to Open Secrets and look at its tables of states and political contributions. For the purposes of these tables, we're leaving out the withdrawn candidates. And the totals include primaries, which skews the results a bit for Obama since the Democratic fight was more protracted than the Republican fight. But it's still interesting to mull.
The Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, which is focusing on several of the states that presumably will tell the tale of this year's presidential race, is out with results from three of those locales that can be spun positively by either campaign -- though John McCain's camp can make a better case than Barack Obama's.
Surveys of voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida show Obama ahead in each -- though by margins so negligible in the latter two that the contests there, as gauged by the Quinnipiac polls, are essentially tossups.
And in all three states, the trend -- compared to polls by the group a month ago -- favored McCain.
Here are the new results, compared to the previous ones:
The movement toward McCain is in line with recent polling by Quinnipiac in four other key states: Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin (as The Ticket reported last week).
The solace for Obama in today's polls (elaborated on by assistant survey director in this Quinnipiac release) is that his lead in Pennsylvania -- a must-win for him -- remains outside the margin of error.
Also, if Obama can snatch either Ohio or Florida from the Republican column -- and that's obviously doable, based on the news polls -- it's hard to see how McCain can amass the 270 electoral votes needed for the White House.
A new report by the folks at the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project says the campaigns and the RNC aired more than 100,000 ads from June 3 to July 26, far outpacing the 77,000 ads John Kerry and George Bush put up over a similar period four years ago. The report says McCain's ads have been a bit nastier than Obama's, and that the Democratic National Committee -- which hasn't had nearly the fundraising success as the RNC -- so far has sat this one out.
And the significant nugget is where the ads have been airing. Here's the top 10 list, as tallied by TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, and analyzed by the Wisconsin Advertising Project:
Note how heavily weighted the list is to the Midwest. In its analysis, the report says Democrats have the advantage this year, given how low Bush's approval ratings have sunk (think whale dung, and keep dropping). But to make it work, Obama has to impress upon voters that he is a credible candidate. McCain, conversely, has to persuade voters that Obama is not -- which helps explain the negative tilt in the tone of McCain's ads.
Interestingly, at this point, the report says, Obama is on the air alone in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana, Montana and Arkansas -- all red states. And with Florida fourth on the total spending list -- all of it in Obama dollars -- he's making his biggest push there. But he's alone in many local markets, too. "To date, Senator Obama is airing ads in 37 markets where McCain has not aired a single ad, while McCain is advertising in only two markets where Obama is not."
And another bit of good news for Democrats with whom the 2004 loss still echoes -- Obama ain't no Kerry (flashback offered at the end of the post).
"Barack Obama has exhibited much greater overall message discipline in his campaign than John Kerry did in 2004. One of the biggest critiques of the way John Kerry ran his campaign was that he dealt with too many different issues in his television ads. Barack Obama, by contrast, is dealing with fewer issues in each ad, presenting a clearer, more consistent message to the voting public. In 2004, Kerry talked about 25 different issues between June 3rd and July 26th, while during a comparable period Obama has only mentioned 14 issues."
Now, before the Democrats begin counting their chickens, they need to think back to what the presumptive lay of the land was three months before the start of the primary and caucus season. Remember Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani?
If the views expressed by one woman attending tonight's town hall forum on cancer that Lance Armstrong and John McCain headlined in Columbus, Ohio, are at all typical, it may explain the noticable lack so far of any uptick in national polls for Barack Obama as he heads into the final leg of his much-ballyhooed overseas trip.
The Times' Maeve Reston, covering the event, talked with Ann Marie Jones, a stay-at-home mom whose young son was diagnosed with leukemia in September. Jones, 40, said she had been leaning toward Obama “until he didn’t show up tonight.”
She added: “I feel like I understand what he’s doing over there, but I think he needed to be here tonight for this.”
Jones said she has become bothered by the length and scale of Obama’s travels.
“I think we have a lot of things going on with our children — many different things going on here in the United States that need our attention,” prime among them healthcare, she said.
Obama has not irrevocably lost Jones' vote. The Republican -- from Texas, no less -- said she remains undecided. She plans to make her decision after learning more about both candidates’ health plans and how they would aid those struggling with medical costs, particularly families affected by cancer.
McCain, in his opening remarks at the LIVESTRONG Summit held on the campus of The Ohio State University, noted that both presidential contenders had been invited to the gathering by Armstrong, the world-renowned cyclist and cancer survivor.
Said McCain: “You have billed this event as a presidential town hall, and I sincerely hope that the next president is here this evening.”
He then directed one of his characteristic jibes at Obama and the media covering his foreign travels.
“My opponent, of course, is traveling in Europe, and tomorrow his tour takes him to France. In a scene that Lance would recognize, a throng of adoring fans awaits Sen. Obama in Paris — and that's just the American press.”
Obama now has missed two LIVESTRONG forums that have had a campaign contest; he was not at one conducted last summer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that was attended by several of the candidates in the then-crowded Democratic race. Also absent was McCain, who at the time was not investing much political time or energy in Iowa.
The eatery choice was the latest in a Republican effort to none-too-subtly turn up its collective nose at Obama's widely anticipated appearance in the city that once personified the Cold War divide.
As the Ticket noted previously, the Republican National Committee bought airtime (which could not have been that expensive) for ads attacking Obama in three U.S. cities named Berlin, and then continued the schtickwith broadcast plans for the spots in a trio of U.S. cities named Paris (Obama will be stopping in the French capital as he wraps up his world tour).
McCain ate a bratwurst at Schmidt's -- making a point of noting that the eatery has no link whatsoever to Steve Schmidt, the aide he recently tapped to ride herd over his campaign -- and indulged in a chocolate cream puff for dessert. His dining companions included best pal Lindsey Graham, the GOP senator from South Carolina, and a covey of local businessmen.
As he digested his Teutonic fare, McCain held a brief media availability outside Schmidt's Fudge Haus (it rarely hurts for a business to diversify). He immediately pressed what is becoming one of his party's main narratives in this year's campaign: that Obama is prematurely, and arrogantly, assuming the trappings of the presidency.
Asked about the point he sought to make with his stop at Schmidt's, McCain said, "Well, I’d love to give a speech in Germany ... or a speech that maybe the German people would be interested in. But I would much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate for the office of the presidency."
A more barbed reaction to Obama's address came from the communications staff at the Republican National Committee (they, like their counterparts at the Democratic National Committee, get paid to mercilessly needle the other side).
In a release headlined "Ich Bin Ein Hypocrite," the RNC scoffed that while Obama urged Germans to hang tough in the fight against Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, he has failed on that front in the U.S. Senate.
As usual, McCain's face-time before the cameras was less than carefully choreographed. As he responded to a handful of questions, some pesky wind chimes ...
Ticket readers no doubt remember our item the other day about German Chancellor Angela Merkel sending out a spokesman to express "great skepticism as to whether it is appropriate to bring an election campaign being fought not in Germany but in the United States to the Brandenburg Gate."
It's a really nice-looking gate all right, not in the Wyoming sense, but in that monolithic, stone European horses-and-chariots sense. In fact, the Brandenburg has horses on top.
It would make a terrific backdrop for some freshman senator from Illinois with not that much foreign affairs experience to be seen giving a speech on, say, foreign affairs.
Ronald Reagan, who was also from Illinois, spoke there as a sitting president, not someone running for it. And when he went against his advisors' urgings and called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, the gate was a symbol of the Cold War.
Today, it's a symbol of German unity. But to Americans, it just looks really foreign -- in large part because nothing in the United States would be allowed to stand like that for 219 years.
Not without being rezoned for lofts.
Foreign-looking is all an American candidate really needs anyway.
Friday, just two days after the Germans seemed to ...
This is another in a continuing series of conversations between The Ticket and those people involved in many aspects of modern American presidential politics, which explore the inner workings of this complex business.
This item is the first of a two-part conversation with Ralph Reed, a Republican political strategist who's been involved in seven presidential campaigns, including as senior advisor to both campaigns of George W. Bush. He has not endorsed or donated to any presidential campaign yet, but is on the host committee for a John McCain event next month in Atlanta.
Reed was the first executive director 15 years ago of the Christian Coalition and currently runs Century Strategies, an Atlanta public relations firm that advises major corporations. He's also the author of a new book, a novel titled "Dark Horse," published by Simon & Schuster.
In this item, Reed examines the GOP side of the 2008 presidential race and talks about his surprise at the outcome of those primaries, the difficulties for the party in 2008, what McCain needs to avoid between now and Nov. 4, and the genesis of his book.
TOTT: What most surprised you about the outcome of the Republican primaries?
Reed: John McCain winning the nomination after essentially running out of money and laying off most of his staff in the summer of 2007 was amazing. His win in New Hampshire was a real Lazarus moment.
Mike Huckabee doing so well in Iowa and then winning a string of later primaries showed the continuing strength of the evangelical vote and underscored the importance of good candidate skills.
TOTT:McCain seems to have had some trouble gaining traction in this three-month general election head start. How do you explain this and do you see the latest reorganization in his camp having any effects, positive or negative?
Reed: Steve Schmidt, Mike DuHaime, Nicole Wallace and the rest of the people playing new and important roles at the McCain campaign are extremely capable. I worked with all of them in the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign and found them to be professional, talented and smart.
They'll do a good job, but it's a tough environment for Republicans this year. If they let the election be about style, Obama will be hard to beat. The McCain campaign needs to make the election about issues and substance. If they do, McCain will win.
TOTT: Given the historical reservations toward Sen. McCain in the evangelical community, do you think most of them will or are coming around to him, given the Democratic alternative? Or is your reading that they'll likely sit this one out on Nov. 4? What should McCain do about it?
Reed: I think they're highly unlikely to sit it out because the stakes are so high. In fact, this election...
The Republican National Committee has spun off its own independent expenditure committee and plans an initial $3 million ad buy targeting Barack Obama in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Politico reports.
Why the separate group?
Brad Todd, who will run the effort, blamed Obama in a statement to Politico:
"Following Barack Obama's decision to become the only major party presidential candidate in history to not adhere to campaign spending caps, the Republican National Committee has begun an independent expenditure campaign in accordance with FEC regulations."
Under federal law there are no limits on how much the group can spend, though it cannot coordinate efforts with John McCain's campaign or the RNC. Still, both have helped to raise some of the funds that will launch the new effort.
So now we know where the RNC will be funneling some of its cash advantage over the Democratic National Committee to try to compensate for the record-breaking fundraising Obama has enjoyed. And the decision to target those Rust-Belt states underscores the GOP view that Obama is vulnerable in that part of the nation. Three of the four -- Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- went Democratic in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
Lot of white working-class men and women in those states, which account for 68 electoral votes.
The national polls taking the temperature of the presidential race will ebb and flow (much as they have during the last week). The two candidates will be on their game and off. Attention will be lavished on Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Colorado and the other states deemed critical to the contest's outcome.
It all matters for naught. John McCain peered down the road Friday while speaking to reporters, including The Times' Bob Drogin, at an auto plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and laid out the following scenario:
"I’m the underdog in this race. ... I’m behind. I’ve got to catch up and get ahead. And I expect to do that about 48 hours before the general election."
That view is totally in character for McCain. As The Ticket noted earlier this week, the former fighter pilot "is right where he wants to be, behind his opponent. You can't shoot someone down from in front."
Indeed, McCain's embrace of the underdog role was the topic of one of the video chats that Matt Welch, author of "McCain: Myth of a Maverick," recently had with The Ticket's Andrew Malcolm (see below).
Much attention, understandably, is being paid to the notes Barack Obama sounds in his first general election television ad, which starts running Friday and can be viewed here.
Its emphasis on family values, self reliance and patriotism would have made Ronald Reagan's media shop proud. And in case anyone misses the point, the spot's title -- "Country I Love" -- says it all.
What really grabs us, however, is where the ad will appear (and, in one case, where it won't).
For the most part, the 18-state list is predictable. It includes the battlegrounds, large and small, that political analysts expect to watch through election day: Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico among them.
But the list also includes a handful of reliably Republican places where Obama aides have been saying they believe he can compete, based on strength he showed among certain voting blocs during the primary season.
The states in this category are Georgia, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina and Virginia.
And then there are two states -- Alaska and North Dakota -- where the airing of the Obama ad demonstrates that:
A) His campaign knows something about these GOP redoubts that the rest of us doesn't;
B) When you're riding herd over an organization that raises massive amounts of cash seemingly without breaking a sweat -- and just today announced it was breaking free of the restraints imposed by the campaign finance system, as our friends at The Swamp write about here -- you can afford to take a flier on a couple of longshots, especially when the media markets are inexpensive;
C) It's always fun, when the November election still seems a long way off, to play in a few of your rival's backyards, if for no other reason than to cause some headaches on the other side.
Probably some combination of A, B and C explains the decision to advertise in Alaska (which President Bush carried with 61% of the vote in 2004) and North Dakota (which Bush won with 63% of the vote four years ago).
Looking at all seven states where the Obama ad buy raises eyebrows, here are some of the daunting historical facts ...
It strikes us that both presidential campaigns this week ignored the cardinal rule of real estate: location, location, location.
It was a foregone conclusion that Barack Obama would receive an official blessing from Al Gore, the question was when and where. The ringing endorsement Gore bestowed Monday came a bit later than might have been expected, but the real surprise was the setting -- a rally in Detroit, the leading city in the one state where words from perhaps the world's best-known advocate for transforming oil-based economies might be greeted with chagrin.
True, Gore carried Michigan by about 5 percentage points in his 2000 presidential bid. But in that campaign he did not stress the environmental call to arms that since then has become his life's mission.
Although we appreciate the skepticism with which many greet any analysis of Democratic maneuvering by Karl Rove, we do think he got it right on Fox's Hannity & Colmes when he said, "If you're an autoworker or in the auto-parts business or somebody who feels strongly about the auto economy, you don't want to have Al Gore sort of rubbing your nose in it in your own hometown."
Rove mentioned alternative sites for the Gore/Obama love-fest, and two made particular sense to us: Colorado or New Mexico, states expected to be battlegrounds in the general election and places where the environmental movement is revered by some and supported by most.
Similarly, of the possible venues for John McCain to announce his change in position of offshore oil drilling, was Houston the best choice? We don't think so.
McCain's decision to propose an end to the longstanding federal moratorium on oil exploration in coastal waters -- a ban he had long backed -- may play out as a bold stroke that benefits from growing public anger over rising gasoline prices. And, as the Houston Chronicle reported, McCain's audience at a ballroom "in the nation's energy capital gave him two standing ovations as he called for fewer federal regulations on oil exploration."
Maybe his campaign wanted to ensure he received a warm response. But the chosen audience also made it that much easier for critics to argue that McCain, on most issues, was little different than President Bush and that his policies were more oriented toward big business than the average citizen.
An audience of long-haul truckers or residents of exurbs in Ohio or Pennsylvania -- two of the key targets in November -- probably would have been just as welcoming toward McCain's new policy.
On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.
Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.
Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.
In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.
His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.
His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.
Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."
Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.
The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.
Let's see: It's June 11, election day is Nov. 4, that's just under five months away.... Yep -- time to start watching the polls!
Not really. There will be more lead changes than in a Lakers-Celtics game before this thing is done, but some numbers have cropped up in recent days that are interesting to ponder. First, there are the dueling tracking polls. Gallup today gives Obama a "statistically significant" six-point lead in the national head-to-head matchup, a lead the pollsters describe as "stabilizing" after holding in that neighborhood for a couple of days.
Over at Rasmussen , the lead for Obama is five points, 46% to 41% -- "a slight decline for Obama who had attracted 48% support for each of the preceding three days. For McCain, the results are little changed. For the past week, his support has stayed between 40% and 42%."
So it looks as if Obama still is getting a bit of a bump -- on the back side of it -- from the attention surrounding his sealing of the nomination, a cycle in which McCain didn't get a whole lot of free media time. Now that they're one on one, expect the coverage to balance out more and those numbers to yo-yo.
More interesting is to look at the polls in some of the battleground states, where things are much tighter. In Michigan, Obama has been holding a slight lead within the margin of error, as he has in Wisconsin and Ohio (note, though, that some of these polls are a week or more old). The Obama campaign has made some noise about maybe being able to put Georgia into play. So far, that's not happening.
In the Western states of Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico? There hasn't been any polling there in at least three weeks, so it's anybody's guess what's going on. But you can usually get a sense of where the campaigns believe the close contests are by where they're spending time and energy. So far, not a lot of either has been happening in the Western states.
Potential vice presidential nominees routinely stress that they are happy with the jobs they have, scoff at the mention of their names as possible running mates and insist they have no strong interest in the second spot on their party's national ticket.
Almost always, such comments are accepted for what they are: required social niceties from ambitious politicians who are quietly angling for the nod and, understandably, would accept the invite in an instant.
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, however, is breaking the rules. Widely considered a prime contender for a running-mate offer from Barack Obama, Strickland issued a blunt, unequivocal rejection of such a prospect.
In an interview airing this evening on NPR's "All Things Considered," journalist Michele Norris asks Strickland -- a staunch Hillary Clinton ally during the Democratic primary -- if the energetic campaigning he has promised on Obama's behalf would serve as a veep audition for him.
"Absolutely not," Strickland replies. "If drafted, I will not run; nominated, I will not accept; and if elected, I will not serve. So, I don’t know how more crystal clear I can be."
Indeed, to drive his position home, Strickland was "Shermanesque" -- parroting the phrasing coined by Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman when he was in the mix as a Republican presidential candidate in 1884.
Turns out, it's an old tune for Strickland. A story in the Columbus Dispatch last November on Strickland's official endorsement of Clinton reported that he repeatedly had said he was not interested ...
With the Democratic presidential race finally settled, there's been a "modest bump" for Barack Obama in the Gallup organization's continual nationwide survey of voter preferences.
The pollsters write that Obama "has consistently held a lead of 5 to 7 percentage points each night since it was reported that Hillary Clinton intended to suspend her campaign. These represent Obama's strongest showing versus McCain to date" in the daily tracking poll.
Obama's forces no doubt are heartened by that; McCain's strategists will be heartened if the margin stays roughly at that level over the next few days and doesn't escalate to double digits.
Both campaigns, though, appreciate that in our electoral college system the national figures, which are indicative of a general trend, aren't nearly as useful to them as readings from certain key states, such as those from the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll, which released some new results today.
The survey questioned more than 1,300 state residents -- a large sample group -- from mid-May through early June. It eschewed candidate matchups, focusing instead on two other matters: attitudes toward President Bush and the state's governor, Democrat Ted Strickland (assumed to be on Obama's starter list of veep prospects).
The findings on Bush delineate the challenging environment for McCain in Ohio, currently considered an absolute must-win for him in his White House quest. The president's favorable/unfavorable rating in the state is slightly better than it was a month ago, but it still represents a stiff wind McCain must overcome.
In an April survey, 74% of Ohioans disapproved ...
The long-anticipated close to the Democratic presidential race seemingly has arrived, with only the theatrics of the final act yet to be scripted. Still, a mini-drama well worth watching will be played out in South Dakota tonight.
Barack Obama is expected to win in Montana, but as South Dakotans vote today in the other contest that brings the curtain down on the primary season, the result there are seen as up in the air. And although Obama will be focusing tonight, Wednesday and the rest of this week on officially clinching his party's nomination, he and his brain trust undoubtedly would like to do so with two final wins, rather than a split decision.
Symbolism is at work; the difference between a final sprint through the finish line, rather than jogging across it.
Taking even a longer view, recall that Obama pulled ahead in his race with Hillary Clinton -- to stay, as it turned out -- thanks to an impressive string of primary and caucus wins in the four weeks after Super Tuesday on Feb. 5. But Clinton rebounded at that point.
On March 4, her wins in the Ohio and Texas primaries enabled her to stave off calls that she end her candidacy. And since then, she's showed impressive strengths -- especially in her landslide wins in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico.
Tallying all the contests from March 4 through today -- and counting the Texas primary/caucus "two-step" as distinct results -- finds that Clinton has won 8, Obama 6, and one was a virtual tie; Obama's margin in the Guam caucuses was 7 votes and the two candidates split the 4 delegates at stake.
It's purely academic, but the Obama forces would prefer to look back on this final segment of the nomination battle and see a scorecard that, with victories in Montana and South Dakota, reads 8-8-1.
That is especially so for one senior advisor to Obama -- the former senator from South Dakota, Tom Daschle.
It was bad enough that his constituents ousted him from office, and his perch as the Democratic Senate leader, in 2004. It would be another embarrassment for him if he can't bring his home state into the Obama column. Nor would it help his prospects, which have been discussed, as an Obama running mate.
One special interest -- television stations -- profited mightily from the prolonged nature of the Democratic presidential battle.
A study released today found that close to $200 million has been spent so far on televised ads by White House candidates in both parties -- with more than two-thirds of that figure accounted for by Democrats.
Indeed, the almost $75 million disbursed by Barack Obama's campaign on TV ads easily surpassed the roughly $58 million in total spending by all Republican contenders. (The leading spender in the GOP race -- by a sizable margin -- remains Mitt Romney, who folded his campaign in early February.)
A spending chart -- so comprehensive it includes the handful of spots aired by obscure Republican aspirant Hugh Cort, plus the four ads that plugged the little noticed candidacy of Democrat Dal LaMagna -- can be studied here.
Deep in the report, Ken Goldstein, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, offers some noteworthy observations ...
Rudy Giuliani's rapid descent from leader in the national polls among the Republican presidential candidates to virtual non-factor when caucuses and primary voting actually began this year did not provide a political template others will want to follow.
Be that as it may, the Republican National Committee has signed up several survivors from the Giuliani fiasco as it gears up field operations in a number of states for the fall election.
RNC Chairman Mike Duncan today unveiled a list of operatives expected to lead the party's efforts in nine states, and fully five of the appointees were part of the Giuliani campaign.
Charged with helping deliver the "positive message" from presumptive GOP presidential nominee JohnMcCain and "energizing voters to elect Republican candidates up and down the ballot in November," the Giuliani refugees will be at the helm in Ohio, Arkansas, Colorado, Washington state and Nevada.
Party partisans can only hope that these aides -- especially those assigned to the expected battlegrounds of Ohio, Colorado and Nevada -- did not pick up too many bad habits while working for a presidential campaign that tanked so dramatically.
When the general election campaign hits fifth gear this fall in all-important Ohio, residents of the Buckeye State can be forgiven for casting a jaded eye on the presidential contenders from both parties. Given their experiences with state pols, they have reason to be skeptical about anyone seeking their votes.
A few years back, a multimillion-dollar scandal involving state investment funds roiled the Republicans who reigned over state government. The result, in 2006, was a banner year for Democrats; the victors included then-Rep. Ted Strickland, who was swept into the governor's office (and could end up as the vice presidential nominee on his party's ticket this year).
Recently, another Democrat who snared a good job two years ago -- state Atty. Gen. Marc Dann -- was forced to resign after a sexual harassment scandal in his office was made worse when he acknowledged an affair with a subordinate.
On Wednesday, Ohioans learned of yet another misdeed by a public official -- a state legislator from the Akron area gave up his seat after reports of improprieties involving Ohio State football tickets.
The lawmaker, Republican John Widowfield, spent almost $8,000 from his campaign coffers over several years to purchase the tickets, which in and of itself is legal (even if his contributors might be a bit taken aback by the practice). Where Widowfield went wrong was scalping the tickets for personal profit.
More can be read here about the wayward Widowfield.
Yes, there are still states -- and a territory -- to vote, Democratic delegates to select, superdelegates to decide and conventions to be held, but it's hard not to peek ahead to the fall matchup. You can make your own presumptions about whether the Dems will go with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, but for the sake of argument, we'll presume it's Obama.
And polls, fickle though they may be, show that the general election could be just as tight as the Democratic primaries in crucial swing states where Obama's race and perceived class work against him (witness Kentucky). The tallies maintained at Real Clear Politics give a broader sense of the challenge for Obama and for John McCain.
You can go over there and play, but the overview is the latest state poll aggregates give the current advantage (some of these are within the margin of error) to McCain in Ohio, Florida and Missouri and the advantage to Obama in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin (though McCain led in the most recent poll) and Iowa with Michigan essentially a dead heat.
Now take those poll numbers over to an interactive electoral college map and the advantage is: Nobody. Under that scenario, with Michigan a virtual tie and polls too erratic in New Mexico to count, Obama and McCain would be separated by four electoral votes and both would need Michigan to put them over the 270 threshold.
