After initially taunting Barack Obama about tire gauges, the message-makers for the just-concluded Republican National Convention segued to a new target -- that portion of his resume when he worked as a community organizer in some of Chicago's lower-income neighborhoods.
Several speakers made cracks about the job, none more memorably then the GOP's new vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, in her Wednesday night speech to an enthralled partisan throng.
Referring to her own background as the chief executive of Wasilla, Alaska, she said: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities."
Clearly she (and her handlers) like the line: Palin just recycled it at a rally in Cedarburg, Wis., with John McCain.
For its part, the fraternity of community organizers are fighting back (after getting over what must have been the shock of hearing their chosen field singled out for ridicule).
Our colleague Frank James at The Swamp blog noted The Center for Community Change, a D.C.-based group that trains community organizers, quickly responded with a sharply worded statement. It said, in part, that when Palin "demeaned community organizing, she didn't attack another candidate. She attacked an American tradition --- one that has helped everyday Americans engage with the political process and make a difference in their lives and the lives of their neighbors."
And the New York Post has more quotes today from upset community organizers. Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, says: "I don't like seeing the really hard work that goes on in really poor communities being demeaned by cheap politicians."
Add this to the list of disputes in this campaign season that we didn't see coming.
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 For the purposes of these tables, we're leaving out the withdrawn candidates.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 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.
Eagerly awaited polls from four key states will be welcomed by the Barack Obama camp today -- he leads in every case (though his edge over John McCain in Colorado is within the margin of error, barely).
Here are the results from the surveys conducted by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, in conjunction with washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal:
And here's an attention-grabbing quote from Peter A. Brown, the polling institute's assistant director: "November can't get here soon enough for Sen. Barack Obama. He has a lead everywhere, and if nothing changes between now and November he will make history."
But then Brown hedges his bet, adding that Obama "should not be picking out the drapes for the Oval Office just yet. His lead nationally, and double digits in some key states, is not hugely different from where Sen. John Kerry stood four years ago at this point" in his ultimately unsuccessful bid to unseat President Bush.
Kerry carried Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Obama almost assuredly needs to hold them as part of assembling the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Bush won Colorado; if Obama triumphs in all the states that went for Kerry, a win in Colorado would put him 10 electoral votes away from 270.
More of what Brown has to say and a raft of polling data can be perused here. The Swamp's take on this story is available here.
Perhaps the politician who will be most chagrined by the results is Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. He is widely mentioned as a vice presidential prospect on McCain's ticket, but his stock will drop if, as the summer progresses, it continues to appear unlikely that his home state is in play.
Whatever it is Barack Obama has going in Wisconsin, his campaign would be well advised to bottle it and ship it.
The state, with its 10 electoral votes, is a mainstay on lists of this year's battlegrounds because of the results there in the 2000 and 2004 presidential races.
Eights years ago, Al Gore carried it over George W. Bush by 5,708 votes out of almost 2.6 million cast. Four years ago, John Kerry did slightly better, winning it in his matchup with Bush by 11,384 votes out of almost 3 million cast.
How could it not be achingly close again?
But if a new poll is to be believed, it won't be.
The survey, a joint venture by the University of Wisconsin and WisPolitics.com conducted Sunday through Tuesday, gave Obama a 13-percentage-point lead over John McCain, 50% to 37%.
Perhaps it isn't to be believed. A poll earlier this month by Rasmussen Reports showed the contest more in line with the past barnburners -- Obama led by only 2 percentage points, 45% to 43%.
The Obama camp could be excused for having faith in the more recent numbers, given that Wisconsin already has come through for him. The state gave him one of his most impressive primary wins: He thumped Hillary Rodham Clinton by 17 percentage points in the Feb. 19 contest.
Exit polls showed that he walloped Clinton among male voters, held his own among female voters and carried the lower-income voters that proved so elusive for him in the primaries that closed out the Democratic race.
The new poll served as a welcome mat for Obama: It was released as he traveled Thursday to Kaukauna, Wis., where he attracted about 1,500 people for a town-hall meeting (pictured above) on a topic he currently is dwelling upon, the struggling economy.
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.
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.
The debate has been joined -- and will continue -- over the relative merits of the primary and caucus scorecards for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The Clinton camp has been the most aggressive -- in part because she trails Obama in the delegate count -- in arguing that her wins have been more meaningful.
Her aides note that she's won the lion's share of the most populous states that have held nominating contests, including the two essential building blocks for any Democratic presidential candidate -- California and New York -- and one of the most crucial swing states -- Ohio. They also have been dismissive of many of Obama's triumphs in small states that are a virtual lock to vote Republican in November, such as Idaho, Utah and North Dakota.
Obama and his staffers, understandably, scoff at such reasoning. First off, they note, a win is a win is a win; a convention delegate from Boise counts at the party's national convention just as much as one from Los Angeles. Secondly, they point with pride to his successes in states Democrats have struggled to hold in recent elections -- such as Wisconsin -- and in two states the party would love snatch from the GOP column -- Missouri and Virginia.
Catching up on our reading over the weekend, we came across a recent column that had this to say about fixating over the relative merits of carrying this state or that one at this stage of the campaign:
"Winning states in primaries and caucuses has little to do with winning them in general elections."
Mort Kondracke, writing for the Capitol Hill-centric publication Roll Call, today goes where most other commentators have shied away from -- the role of race in Barack Obama's Tuesday losses, especially in Ohio.
Kondracke makes a persuasive case that Obama's effort to, as he aptly puts it, run as a " 'post-racial' --candidate -- the political equivalent of Tiger Woods," has had only limited success.
Actually, Kondracke fleshes out his argument by relying on Jay Cost -- whom he characterizes as a "brilliant elections analyst" (we concur).
Cost, Kondracke notes, "has developed a convincing theory about the Democratic racial factor: Obama wins in states with majority-black Democratic turnout, like South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana, and in states with few blacks, like Wisconsin, Washington and Vermont.
"He also has won in states with mixed populations where white family income is high, such as Maryland and Virginia.
"But [Hillary] Clinton, Cost contends, wins in states where blacks constitute a major minority, but where average white income is lower, such as New Jersey, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Ohio.
"So, in largely white Wisconsin, Obama carried white males by a margin of 63% to 34%. But in Ohio, Clinton won, 58% to 39%."
This does not bode well for Obama in Pennsylvania, which is much more like Ohio than Wisconsin.
With the Democratic presidential race essentially back to square one, the two contenders for the nod could hardly have delivered more starkly contrasting messages Tuesday night. Nor could they have projected more dramatically different auras.
Hillary Clinton -- having proved that, like her husband, she seems to perform best when she's on the ropes -- beamed in Ohio as she celebrated her impressive victory in that state's primary. She was going to end up with a solid winning margin -- which by itself, she stressed, was enough to propel her on, regardless of what happened in the more closely contested Texas primary. (After she spoke, she eked out a narrow triumph in that state, as well.)
She also was feisty, keeping Barack Obama squarely in her sights. She took a few obligatory pokes at John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, but it was her Democratic rival that was the target of none-too-subtle barb after barb.
Obama had the opportunity to knock Clinton out of the ring going into Tuesday's voting. Instead, Clinton not only kept the fight going, it appears she now has the sense that Obama may not be able to take a punch.
Her unyielding mantra of late -- that Obama is mostly talk, with little substance to back it up -- finally seemed to hit home over the past few days. And she signaled that ...
The folks at the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project report that Barack Obama hit the airwaves hard in that state ahead of last week's primary -- and it apparently paid off.
Obama spent five times more on television ads than Hillary Clinton, and more than twice what all the other campaigns (including the two Republicans) spent combined. The four candidates spent about $2.1 million to air more than 8,000 spots, according to the report.
Specifically, Obama spent $1.5 million to air 6,000 ads, while Clinton spent about $300,000. Obama's first ad went up the day after the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primaries; Clinton's first ad aired Feb. 12. On the Republican side, John McCain spent about $180,0000 and Mike Huckabee about $150,000. From the release:
All of the ads aired by Republican candidates McCain and Huckabee were positive, outlining their own positions and priorities. Half of Clinton ads had significant negative content while one quarter of Obama ads attacked or counterattacked Clinton.
The results? A double-digit win for Obama in the contested Democratic primary, and a similar margin for McCain in the Republican race, which he has all but sealed up.
Ostensibly, both of Wisconsin's presidential primaries were old-fashioned routs. But there actually was a cliffhanger that unfolded Tuesday night: Which winner, Barack Obama or John McCain, would claim the largest margin of victory?
It was surprisingly nip-and-tuck, given that McCain's main opponent is running on fumes while Obama's last rival draws upon a vaunted political machine and remains financially viable. In the end (well, more precisely, with 99.97% of the vote counted), McCain won his race by a wee bit more than Obama won his.
McCain's margin over Mike Huckabee: 17.85 percentage points.
Obama's over Hillary Clinton: 17.37 percentage points.
Not so long ago -- like, earlier this month -- one of the dismissive talking points that the Hillary Clinton camp pressed against Barack Obama was that he was winning nominating contests in states the Democratic presidential ticket won't have a prayer of carrying in November: North Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Nebraska.
Those triumphs, the case went, offered no clue as to whether he would be a candidate capable of putting together a winning electoral college majority later this year.
As Obama's winning streak has stretched to 10, that argument has subsided. And Obama's sweeping victory in Wisconsin should bury it once and for all.
As a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story astutely notes, the win "came in a 50/50 battleground ... that is a virtual must-win for Democrats in November."
How tight have the recent presidential elections been in the Badger State?
Pollster Dick Bennett thinks he's caught sight of a significant wave that will crest in today's Wisconsin primary. Either that, or he's going to catch a significant amount of grief on Wednesday.
We contacted Bennett, president of the New Hampshire-based American Research Group, because his organization's most recent surveys had left our head spinning.
A poll conducted Friday and Saturday of likely voters in Wisconsin's Democratic presidential contest had caused a buzz because, in contrast to other recent surveys that had shown Barack Obama slightly ahead, it gave Hillary Clinton a 6-percentage-point lead (49%-43%).
Bennett's questioners were back at it on Sunday and Monday, and the results were dramatically different: Obama led by 10 points (52%-42%).
Michelle Obama graces the cover of the latest Newsweek (headline: "Barack's Rock"). And right on cue with her escalating public profile, a mini-tempest was sparked by comments she made Monday as she headlined a rally for her husband in Wisconsin.
The Newsweek profile noted: "As a political spouse, she is somewhat unusual. She isn't the traditional Stepford booster, smiling vacantly at her husband and sticking to a script of carefully vetted blandishments."
That proved prescient -- she's taking heat today from some conservative commentators and bloggers for telling her crowd: "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm proud of my country."
[UPDATE: We missed a word in this quote, due to a blip in the replay of it we viewed. And, as a reader points out below, it's an omission that could change reactions to the comment. The correct quote is: "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country."]
Obama, 44, went on to say that her feeling stemmed not only from the success of her husband's presidential quest, but also from the yearning for change she detects in the vox populi. "And I've been desperate to see our country moving in that direction ..." she added.
You can check out the pertinent portion of her speech here, along with a blog posting taking her to task. (Sample rhetorical question: she's not proud of "the fact that she and her husband were able to go to Ivy League schools before embarking on extremely lucrative careers?").
In an amazing coincidence just days before another crucial Democratic primary, Sen. Hillary Clinton, campaigning in Wisconsin -- where thousands build their annual vacations around deer-hunting season -- has let it slip that she went hunting once.
"I know you don't believe it," she told an enthusiastic audience at Kenosha's Brat Stop over the weekend, "but it's actually true. My father taught me to shoot 100 years ago."
According to The Times' Nicholas Riccardi, who was there, she then launched into an explanation of how school shootings can be stopped without infringing on gun owners' rights. She declined to elaborate on her hunting career later except to say that she had nailed a duck.
But anyway here's a photo of another Clinton holding a dead duck like the one his wife recalls shooting down.
But then today, on the eve of voting in the Badger State, the New York senator remembered more details about hunting once in Arkansas with male colleagues and standing in chilly water early one morning.
"They said, 'We won't shoot. You shoot,' " Clinton told reporters. "They wanted to embarrass me. So, OK, the pressure was on. So I shot, and I shot a banded duck. And I was as surprised as they were."
Some signs this morning that black support for Sen. Hillary Clinton is fracturing. The New York Times reports that in an interview Rep. John Lewis, a very influential black Georgia Democrat who endorsed Clinton last fall, has decided to switch to Sen. Barack Obama.
In a similar report early Friday the Associated Press was more cautious, quoting Lewis as praising Obama's campaign and inspiration but stopping short of unendorsing Clinton for the Illinois senator. Either way, the apparent erosion presages serious trouble for the New York senator's camp.
Speaking of endorsements, Sen. Barack Obama seems to have gotten one from a possibly unwelcome place. Daniel Ortega, the Soviet-backed Nicaraguan leader whose Sandinista forces battled U.S.-supported Contras there in the 1980s, says he sees "revolutionary" change coming to the United States in the persona of Obama.
Speaking of Obama's candidacy, Ortega, who was ousted in a 1990 election and then returned to the presidency in an election last year, says Obama forces "are laying the foundations for a revolutionary change."
Ortega, who's apparently seen Obama's large campaign rallies, said he has ''faith in God and in the North American people, and above all in the youth, that the moment of great change in the U.S. will come and it will act differently, with justice and equality toward all nations.''
And despite polls showing most U.S. Latino voters support Sen. Hillary Clinton, Ortega called Obama a spokesman for the millions of impoverished Mexicans and Central Americans who've migrated to the United States in search of a future. These statements will be especially helpful for the Illinois senator in places like Arizona.
Meanwhile in Houston, where the Texas primary is set for March 4, Obama spokesmen still struggle to convince viewers that a scene captured by a TV news crew occurred in an unofficial Obama volunteer campaign office. Last week the camera filming joyous post-Super Tuesday Obama volunteers inadvertently showed a prominent wall decoration: the Cuban flag overlaid with a picture of deceased communist guerrilla leader Che Guevara.
Protests erupted immediately. In an on-camera interview with Channel 26 this week, Maria Isabel, who runs the office, was to explain the communist icon's presence, when she developed sudden second thoughts and ran off-camera.
TODAY'S POLITICAL PANDER PRIZE goes to former Gov. Mike Huckabee, who's still campaigning for the Republican nomination as Sen. John McCain continues to collect GOP endorsements. (Mitt Romney did his party duty Thursday and quietly got in line for 2012.)
Huckabee was in Wausau, Wis., where several people cheer for the Green Bay Packers. These fans apparently include a reporter for WJFW, obviously a real news professional who publicly promised Huckabee his vote if he'd don a Packers tie.
Huckabee, known more as a baseball fan (St. Louis Cardinals), said to do that would be the ultimate in pandering. And then he did it. Hey, you get votes any way you can when you're that far behind.
Then Huckabee, along with The Times' James Rainey, headed for....
Don Frederick has served as an editor helping guide coverage of every presidential election since 1984. He is a third-generation Washingtonian, so watching the political world comes naturally to him.
A graduate of Northwestern University, he was a reporter for newspapers in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas before joining the (now-defunct) Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1983. Hired by The Times in 1989, he has worked in its Washington bureau since 1996 — a perch providing him a close-up view of the impeachment of President Clinton, the government's response to 9/11 and the day-to-day wrangling of the two major parties.
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000.
A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
TODAY'S POLITICAL PANDER PRIZE goes to former Gov. Mike Huckabee, who's still campaigning for the Republican nomination as Sen. John McCain continues to collect GOP endorsements. (Mitt Romney did 
A graduate of Northwestern University, he was a reporter for newspapers in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas before joining the (now-defunct) Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1983. Hired by The Times in 1989, he has worked in its Washington bureau since 1996 — a perch providing him a close-up view of the impeachment of President Clinton, the government's response to 9/11 and the day-to-day wrangling of the two major parties.
A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
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