“On Friday night, only nine volunteers manned the 24 phones in the McCain campaign office. The phone bank began operating on a daily basis just two weeks ago. And since then, only five people have shown up on most weekdays to canvass local neighborhoods. Obama’s campaign, in contrast, has flooded this GOP bastion with volunteers. Some canvassers first hit the winding streets of nearby subdivisions in March during the Democratic primary, and they have worked almost nonstop since in search of supporters.” [Link]
[Picture via newzgirl]
“McCain opened the show alongside actress and comedian Tina Fey as McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin. The pair began with a joke about competitor Barack Obama’s 30-minute informercial that aired last Wednesday, saying that all the GOP ticket could afford was a spot on a fake QVC show. Fey, who looks like Palin with her brown hair and spectacles, said, ‘These campaigns are expensive,’ as she subtly striked her clothes–a joke on the reported $150,000 wardrobe purchased for Palin. ” [Link]
“A local school district official confirmed after the event that of the 6,000 people estimated by the fire marshal to be in attendance this morning, more than 4,000 were bused in from schools in the area. The entire 2,500-student Defiance School District was in attendance, the official said, in addition to at least three other schools from neighboring districts, one of which sent 14 buses.” [Link]
“Republican John McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by two points (46 percent to 44 percent) in Arizona, a margin that makes the race too close to call, according to a new Cronkite/Eight Poll. The poll of 1,019 registered voters in Arizona was conducted Oct. 23-26 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.” [Link]
“U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman Friday continued to stand by Republican John McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate. But when asked by The Advocate if Palin is ready to be president from day one, Lieberman said ‘thank God she’s not going to have to be president from day one. McCain’s going to be alive and well.’” [Link]
“There is now no perceptible rebound for John McCain; in fact, the race may still be trending toward Obama, although the safer assumption is that it’s flat. Meanwhile, Obama’s electoral position appears as strong as ever. John McCain’s chances of winning the election have dwindled to 3.7%, down from 6.5% yesterday.” [Link]
Obama @ The Beach picture
“Independent Florida voters are on the verge of killing John McCain’s hopes for the presidency. A new St. Petersburg Times/Bay News 9/Miami Herald poll shows Barack Obama leading McCain 49 percent to 42 percent in this state McCain cannot afford to lose. The biggest factor? Less partisan independent voters moving to Obama by a margin of more than 2 to 1.” [Link]
“Obama leads in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to new polls from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. The best news for him is certainly in Ohio—normally considered a must-win state for Republicans–where he widened his lead to 52% versus Sen. John McCain’s 38%. At the beginning of the month, Obama led by just eight percentage points in the state with 20 electoral college votes.” [Link]
“‘That is really bad news for John McCain. If the rural vote is essentially split in these swing states, then John McCain is certain to lose,’ says Seth McKee, a political scientist at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg. McKee specializes in rural voting patterns. ‘In 2004, George Bush won the rural parts of the battleground [states] by 15 points,’ notes Anna Greenberg, the Democratic pollster who conducted the bipartisan survey.” [Link]
“Obama gained the most ground in North Carolina, where he now leads John McCain among likely voters by 51% to 47%, up four percentage points from earlier this month when a similar poll showed the two tied at 49%. In Nevada, Obama expanded his lead to 51% to 46%, up a percentage point from September. Similarly, in the crucial swing state of Ohio, Obama leads the Arizona senator by a 50% to 46% margin, an increase of one percentage point from his lead earlier this month. In Virginia, a state that increasingly looks to be solidly in Obama’s corner, the Illinois senator remains 10 percentage points ahead 54% to 44%. Still, Obama’s ability to make inroads into red states does appear to have some limits; he lost ground in West Virginia — a state his campaign has said they are just starting to contest — and now trails there by 41% to McCain’s 53%, more than doubling McCain’s September lead of 49% to Obama’s 44%.” [Link]
“Less than two weeks before Election Day, Barack Obama leads John McCain 49 percent to 40 percent among likely voters, according to a FOX News poll released Wednesday. Obama’s advantage comes mainly from independents, and from the fact that more voters identify themselves as Democrats these days and almost all of them back their party’s nominee. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats support Obama, and 83 percent of Republicans back McCain. Independents break 44 percent to 35 percent in Obama’s favor. In addition to independents, white Catholics are another important swing voting group and they support Obama 50 percent to 39 percent. White Catholics have voted for the winner in each of the last four presidential elections.” [Link]
“The Arizona Senator may have Crist and a Republican-controlled legislature behind him. But Florida’s deepening economic crisis, as well as the fact that McCain passed him over for the vice presidential slot that many Floridians thought he should get, seems to have made Crist a less than ardent McCain campaigner this fall. By most accounts, McCain’s national campaign staff has done a dismal job coordinating with the usually potent GOP machine on the ground in Florida. ‘This is a Florida campaign being run out of Washington,’ says a concerned GOP official in Tallahassee, ‘and it’s remarkable how little it has its finger on the pulse of this state.’ ” [Link]
“John McCain and Barack Obama swapped self-deprecating jokes instead of campaign jabs Thursday night, the Republican saying he had replaced his team of senior advisers with ‘Joe the Plumber’ while the Democrat claimed his own ‘greatest strength would be my humility.’” [Link]
“The Obama-Biden ticket now leads the McCain-Palin ticket 53 percent to 39 percent among likely voters, a 14-point margin. One week ago, prior to the Town Hall debate that uncommitted voters saw as a win for Obama, that margin was just three points.
” [Link]
“McCain has made little headway in his attempts to convince voters that Obama is too ‘risky’ or too ‘liberal.’ Rather, recent strategic shifts may have hurt the Republican nominee, who now has higher negative ratings than his rival and is seen as mostly attacking his opponent rather than addressing the issues that voters care about. ” [Link]
“‘Sen. John McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin and the leadership of the Republican party have a fundamental moral responsibility to denounce the violent rhetoric that has pervaded recent McCain and Palin political rallies,’ said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, which has endorsed Obama. ‘When rally attendees shout out such attacks as ‘terrorist’ or ‘kill him’ about Sen. Barack Obama, when they are cheered on by crowds incited by McCain-Palin rhetoric — it is chilling that McCain and Palin do nothing to object. ” [Link]
“Is the Palin administration shockingly amateurish? Yes, it is. Disturbingly so. The 263 pages of the report show a co-ordinated application of pressure on Monegan so transparent and ham-handed that it was almost certain to end in public embarrassment for the governor. The only surprise is that Troopergate is national news, not just a sorry piece of political gristle to be chewed on by Alaska politicos over steaks at Anchorage’s Club Paris. ” [Link]
“The defeat reflects poorly on Sen. John McCain — who made a dramatic return to Washington last week in the hopes of salvaging a deal that ultimately collapsed — as well as the Democratic-controlled Congress, which looks powerless in the face of crisis. ‘It’s ugly,’ said Whit Ayres, a Republican political consultant. ‘It makes the Congress look pretty irresponsible. But the more negative the current environment, the higher the hill McCain has to climb.’” [Link]
“‘Sen. McCain doesnt get it. He doesn’t understand the storm that hit Wall Street hit Main Street long ago,’ Obama said, standing before the Detroit Public Library. ‘ That’s why his first response to the greatest financial meltdown in generations was a Katrina-like response. He sort of stood there. He said the fundamental of the economy are strong. It’s why he’s been shifting positions these last two weeks, looking for photo-ops, trying to figure out what to say and what to do.’” [Link]
“Today, during an interview on ABC’s This Week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) finally admitted that his health care tax credits would not cover the costs of a comprehensive health insurance plan” [Link]
“Attacking the New York Times — and the media generally — is a smart strategic move when it comes to uniting the Republican base behind McCain. While that base has never felt warmly toward McCain, they feel even less warmly toward the media in general, and the New York Times in particular. It’s the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ argument and it has worked extremely well for the McCain campaign to date.” [Link]
“Today Newsweek reported that John McCain owns 13 cars - and that contrary to what McCain said in a recent TV interview, the fleet includes three foreign cars. The report shows that McCain wasn’t being honest with voters during a recent interview with WXYZ TV in Detroit when he said: ‘I’ve bought American literally all my life, and I’m proud.’ ” [Link]
“‘There are very, very few lawyers in the country that are better at exploiting campaign finance loopholes than Trevor Potter,’ said Bradley A. Smith, a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission. ‘Of course, that’s one of the odd things about the McCain campaign: ‘Here’s the rules we want, but we’ll play by the rules that are here.’ ’” [Link]
“‘The last straw,’ her lawyer argued, came when he planned a trip to Washington, D.C., to seek federal funds for an aggressive anti-sexual-violence program. The project, expected to cost from $10 million to $20 million a year for five years, would have been the first of its kind in Alaska, which leads the nation in reported forcible rape. The McCain-Palin campaign echoed the charge in a press release it distributed Monday, concurrent with Palin’s legal filing. ‘Mr. Monegan persisted in planning to make the unauthorized lobbying trip to D.C.,’ the release stated. But the governor’s staff authorized the trip, according to an internal travel document from the Department of Public Safety, released Friday in response to an open records request. ” [Link]
“Before a loud Republican crowd in the gym of Grand Rapids Community College, McCain and Palin fielded questions from a former Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter who now backs McCain; another woman who asked for advice on recruiting Hispanic supporters for the ticket; and a Vietnam veteran who told McCain, ‘May the grace of God be with you always, sir.’ Hardball, it was not. ” [Link]
“McCain’s lies have ranged from the annoying to the sleazy, and the problem is in both degree and kind. His campaign has been a ceaseless assault on his opponent’s character and policies, featuring a consistent—and witting—disdain for the truth. Even after 38 million Americans heard Obama say in his speech at the Democratic National Convention that he was open to offshore oil-drilling and building new nuclear-power plants, McCain flatly said in his acceptance speech that Obama opposed both.” [Link]
“Obama is calling out McCain in ads that say the GOP nominee takes an ‘extreme position on choice’ and ‘will make abortion illegal.’ He is spreading his message through low-profile radio ads and campaign mailings, though, hoping to avoid being tagged as too liberal on a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy.” [Link]
“An aide to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in Anchorage Monday that Palin will not cooperate with a legislative investigation into alleged abuse of power. The Republican vice presidential nominee is being investigated for allegedly pressuring the public safety commissioner to fire a state trooper who was going through a custody dispute with Palin’s sister. Palin eventually fired the commissioner.” [Link]
“Sarah Palin did not visit troops in Iraq, a spokesperson for the Republican vice presidential nominee confirmed Saturday, as new details emerged about the extent of the Alaska governor’s foreign travel. Gov. Sarah Palin’s aide confirmed to CNN details of her foreign travel Saturday. In July of last year, Palin left North America for the first time to visit Alaskan troops stationed in Kuwait. Palin officials originally said her itinerary included U.S. military installations or outposts in Germany and Kuwait, and that she had visited Ireland. ” [Link]
“The three-part report begins with an executive summary outlining McCain’s ties to special interests and their disastrous implications for Americans on everything from the economy to foreign policy. A ‘By the Numbers’ section quantifies McCain’s ties to lobbyists (177 lobbyists advising him or fundraising for the campaign), McCain’s lobbyists’ earnings (more than $930 million), and campaign contributions to McCain from his lobbyists’ clients (nearly $12 million). ” [Link]
Sarah Palin picture
“The Alaska governor repeated her claim to have killed the now-famous ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ which her running mate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, has derided as wasteful pork. Palin first approved of the project. She turned against it only after it proved to be a political embarrassment.” [Link]
Army Future Combat Systems picture
“On Sept. 8, the Republican presidential candidate told a rally crowd in Lee’s Summit, Mo., about an Obama video message to a liberal advocacy group. ‘He promised them he would, quote, ‘slow our development of Future Combat Systems,’’ McCain said, according to wire reports. ‘This is not a time to slow our development of Future Combat Systems.’ Flashback to July, however, when his campaign furnished McCain’s economic plan to The Washington Post, declaring that ‘there are lots of procurements — Airborne Laser, [C-17] Globemaster, Future Combat System [sic] — that should be ended and the entire Pentagon budget should be scrubbed.’” [Link]
“Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC News that she’d favor including Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics, in NATO despite opposition by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Asked whether the United States would have to go to war with Russia if it invaded Georgia, and the country was part of NATO, Palin said: ‘Perhaps so.’” [Link]
“Speaking at a high school in Norfolk, Obama took a few moments to address what he calls ‘the made-up controversy’ of the day, Amie Parnes reports. Obama said the McCain campaign moved to ’seize an innocent remark and take it out of context because they knew it’s catnip for the news media.’” [Link]
“More than 40 million people tuned in last week to listen to the speech from Palin, the 44-year-old first-term governor whom McCain announced as his surprise vice presidential pick just days before. Since then, that basic script is all anyone has heard from her publicly, and her only interaction with the media was a brief conversation with a small group of reporters on her plane Monday — off the record at her handlers’ insistence. Associated Press reporters were not on the plane, but an aide told the journalists on board that all Palin flights would be off the record unless the media were told otherwise. At least one reporter objected. Two people on the flight said the Palins greeted the media and they chatted about who had been to Alaska, but little else was said.” [Link]
“‘Our kids and our country can’t afford four more years of neglect and indifference. At this defining moment in our history, America faces few more urgent challenges than preparing our children to compete in a global economy,’ Obama said at a campaign event in Riverside, Ohio. Obama also charged that Sen. John McCain hasn’t done ‘one thing’ to improve public education. ” [Link]
“Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin billed the state for per diem allowances for 312 nights spent in her home, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Palin, who is paid $125,000 a year, collected allowances intended to pay for meals and incidental expenses incurred during travel on state business, the newspaper said, citing an analysis of her travel documents. She billed taxpayers for travel expenses involved in taking her children on official missions and her husband, Todd Palin, billed the state for expenses for travel on official business with the governor.” [Link]
Barack Obama
“It was in St. Paul last week that Palin drew raucous cheers when she delivered this put-down of Obama: ‘Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.’ Obama had a few problems with that. ‘First of all, you don’t even get to read them their rights until you catch ‘em,’ Obama said here, drawing laughs from 1,500 supporters in a high school gymnasium. ‘They should spend more time trying to catch Osama bin Laden and we can worry about the next steps later.’ If the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks are in the government’s sights, Obama went on, they should be targeted and killed. ‘My position has always been clear: If you’ve got a terrorist, take him out,’ Obama said. ‘Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take ‘em out.’” [Link]
Karl Rove & George W. Bush
“Though former Bush political guru Karl Rove insistently denies that he has a working relationship with Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign, the evidence that he is an informal adviser continues to mount. Last week, Time magazine described how ‘Rove speaks regularly with the McCain campaign.’ Today, the Hill quotes a GOP operative who says ‘Rove has had a consistent, ‘medium’-sized role with the McCain campaign’” [Link]
“The Silver State bank of Henderson, Nevada was closed by Federal bank regulators on Friday. On or about July 27, a scant six weeks ago, John McCain’s son Andrew McCain, resigned from its Board of Directors for ahem, ‘personal reasons.’ This closure is significant for two reasons. First, one wonders if there is more to Andrew McCain’s resignation than ‘personal reasons.’ Second, remember John McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five bank scandal of the late l980’s? After all was said and done, he was accused of exercising ‘poor judgment.’” [Link]
“New numbers released by CNN Monday explain just how the presidential race remains so close with 57 days to go until voters weigh in at the polls: the conventions were so successful for both parties that that each essentially canceled the other out. The candidates’ favorable ratings are identical (60 percent) — and almost identical to what they were before the conventions began. The GOP convention made Republicans more enthusiastic (an increase of 17 points). But Democrats are more enthusiastic as well (up 14 points), so an 11 point ‘enthusiasm gap’ favoring remains: 71 percent of Democrats say they are enthusiastic about the election, compared to 60 percent of Republicans.” [Link]
“”She’s had executive experience, and that’s what it takes to be a capable person in here in Washington, D.C. in the executive branch,” President Bush said in an interview to air Tuesdsay on Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends.” “John McCain made an inspired pick,” Bush added. Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney told reporters in Rome on Monday that he “loved” Palin’s speech to the Republican National Convention, which he watched “with great interest.” Cheney laughed when he recounted her line about the difference between hockey moms and pit bulls being a coat of lipstick. “I thought her appearance at the convention was superb,” Cheney said.” [Link]
“The New York Senator touts the economic plan of Obama-Biden while blasting the GOP ticket as “more of the same” in Kissimmee, Florida, on Monday. “I didn’t hear the Republicans at their convention address the needs of real Americans.” “We have a tough road ahead of us, but I don’t think it could be any clearer what the choice will be.”” [Link]
“Days before September 11, on the same morning that John McCain and Barack Obama released a joint statement pledging to avoid politics in light of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks, McCain’s campaign accused Democrats of throwing away 12,000 American flags. But according to a senior official involved in organizing the Democratic convention, the McCain camp is simply lying about the flags. ‘All of the flags at Invesco were picked up and put in bags and into storage, along with the unused flags and campaign signs. The flags were going to be donated, and the signs were going to be sent out to be used elsewhere,’ the official said, speaking anonymously since he was not authorized to talk to the press.” [Link] [Image]
