Worst political ad ever?

Elizabeth Dole is facing a very tough Senate race in North Carolina. This ad is definitely in the running for most disgusting political ad I've ever seen.



The voice at the end that sounds sort of like Dole's opponent Kay Hagan is absolutely not her. Hagan is in fact a Christian and active in her church. As for that "secret event" supposedly hosted by the Godless Americans PAC... it wasn't secret and it included over forty co-hosts including Senator John Kerry.

But the false implication isn't the worst part. What really pisses me off is that Dole thinks it's okay to attack her opponent's religious beliefs OR the lack thereof. Let's pretend, even though it's false, that the implication of the advertisement is true. Let's pretend Kay Hagan doesn't believe in God. So what? Can you imagine if the ad had instead attacked Kay Hagan for being Buddhist? "Kay Hagan attended a fundraiser by the Buddhist Americans..." *duh duh duh!* Or Hindu? Or Muslim? Oh wait, the Republicans do attack opponents with implications that they're Muslim, but they're usually at least smart enough not to come right out and say it in a campaign ad.

Then despite the outcry over this terrible advertisement, Dole released another ad trying to link Kay Hagan to the Godless Americans PAC.

No US politician at the national level would dare run ads attacking their opponent for being a different religion, but Elizabeth Dole thinks it's fine to attack them for not being religious. Disgusting. Hopefully this close race turns into a landslide for Kay Hagan.

Public financing system for Presidential campaigns is a joke

The McCain campaign has made much hay out of the fact that Barack Obama chose not to stick with his original plan of taking public financing for the general election. The McCain campaign did take the $85 million in taxpayer money, which prohibited them from spending any more than that on the general election campaign. Obama did not and as has been widely reported, has raised far more money than that.

What's not mentioned as often is that both party's national committees can continue to raise money and spend as much as they want on behalf of their candidates. Moreover, and this one surprised me, they are apparently not limited to the $2,300 donations per person that the candidate's on campaigns are. So you can give $2,300 maximum to the McCain or Obama campaign, but you can dump far more into the coffers of the DNC or RNC if you so wish.

While Obama continues to finance his campaign primarily through small donations from what's now over three million different people, the McCain campaign is relying heavily on RNC money and they are getting it from... you guessed it, the wealthy few. In mid October the RNC held a fundraiser in NYC that brought in $10.6 million in a single night. More than 1,000 people paid $1,000 each for tickets to the main fund-raiser. Nearly 250 people who contributed $25,000 got dinner beforehand with Mr. McCain.

As of October 15th, the RNC and McCain campaign combined had $84 million, $20 million more than the DNC and Obama combined, and yes, the RNC spends a great deal of that money on supporting McCain.

So the ideas that public financing severely limits a party's Presidential campaign and that it prevents the negative influence of campaigns being financed by big donors are both utter bullshit.

Once in a generation

While the McCain campaign seeks to divide our country into "real Americans" and everyone else, Barack Obama continues to give a message of unity and hope. He asks much of himself, but he asks much of the American people, too.

Obama speaking today in Canton, OH:


We only see a leader of this caliber once in a generation, if that. Let's vote November 4th and make sure this man has a chance to lead the United States of America.

John the Panderer

Every time I hear the McCain campaign say "Joe the Plumber", I want to punch my television. It's such stupid, hokey, pandering bullshit. The McCain campaign doesn't like to talk to us like we're adults. Bob the Builder, anyone? They're actually trying to get tens of millions of people, 98-99% of whom will never make more than 250k a year, to get riled up about Obama's plans to raise taxes on those who make 250k or more and they're using populist rhetoric to do it. It's very much like how the GOP got so many people who will never, ever have to pay it to get upset about the estate tax.

Most of the poor and middle class Republicans getting mad about the estate tax and Obama's plans to tax the wealthy aren't upset because they don't think it's fair to tax rich people even though they themselves will never be rich. No. The problem is that so many people think that some day they will be that rich and they don't want to pay higher taxes then. It's a fantasy much like people who's retirement plan is to win the lottery. So as they've done in other recent elections, they will vote against their own self-interest because of this fantasy that they will be wealthy one day. Obviously for the vast majority, that day will never come.

The Republicans have successfully gotten people to vote against their own self-interest for several election cycles recently and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. It's now at Roaring '20s and Gilded Age levels. Their efforts are less successful this year though because the economy is hurting so badly. It's harder for people to believe they will one day be one of those upper tax bracket wage earners when they're having trouble putting food on the table today.

It's too bad it takes a massive financial crisis to wake people up.

Undecideds scoring it for Obama

CNN is also saying that undecided voters gave last night's debate to Obama and it's by a wide margin. The poll suggests that independent voters thought Obama won the debate. Fifty-four percent of those identifying themselves as independents said the Illinois senator performed best, with 28 percent saying that McCain did the better job.

So right now we have to assume that Obama will hold his current polling lead and possibly expand it.

No game changer at the debate plus more on the economy

Quick comment on tonight's debate: the title says it all. We went into the debate with John McCain needing a game changer to reverse his recent fall in the polls. It didn't happen. There were no knockouts tonight for either side. Unfortunately for the McCain campaign, they need one to get back into the race.

Update: I've obviously already decided my choice for President. What really counts in the debates is what undecided people think. Once again in the CBS post-debate poll of undecided voters, Obama won.

516 people were polled. 40% said Obama won. 26% said McCain won. 35% called it a draw. The other main takeaway from the poll is this: Seventy-two percent of uncommitted voters remained uncommitted after the debate. Fifteen percent committed to Obama, and 12 percent to McCain. I'd have to say that's within the margin of error, but remember that McCain is behind overall and this reinforces the view that he didn't make up any ground tonight. We'll see what the polls show in the coming days.

On a different note, I've a little self-correction for a comment I posted a couple entries down. The acronym I was looking for related to the economic crisis is CDS, not CDO. The term is Credit Default Swap, and it has a great deal to do with our current crisis as banks were leveraged to the hilt on CDSs, which are a form of insurance on mortgages. Millions of mortgages were given out by brokers who had no significant stake in whether or not those mortgages went bad. Banks issued and traded CDSs backing those mortgages. Home values went down. Far more mortgages started going bad than what issuers and buyers of CDSs anticipated, and we got a huge economic crisis.

Of course it's more complicated than just the CDSs. For one thing, deregulation caused banking sectors that were previously shielded from each other to be thoroughly intertwined. Both parties bear some responsibility for that deregulation. One key example is when Republicans in congress pushed for a bill that gutted the Glass-Stiegel Act, which was originally designed to prevent another S&L crisis. However, Clinton signed it into law after the Republican congress passed it. One of the main architects of the repeal was Phil Gramm, a key economic advisor in the McCain campaign.

McCain has to run the table

If the election were held today, John McCain would have to run the table on states that are tied or "barely Democratic" according to Electoral-Vote's latest tabulations. The states in question are North Carolina, which is a tie, plus Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. They're all listed as barely Democratic. He'd also need to hold on to Indiana and Missouri, which are currently barely GOP. Those are long odds.

Fivethirtyeight.com shows similar odds and calculates a 15.6% chance of a McCain win. It's also worth noting that the only Kerry state for which McCain is really still fighting is New Hampshire, and the latest two polls there showed Obama opening a double digit lead. He's still in Pennsylvania too, but has been trailing in most polls there by more than the margin of error.

Republicans have to hope for a major swing the campaigns over the next 31 days. Either that or they have to hope that all the polls are wrong. That seems unlikely. It would require a big Bradley Effect, or a superior turnout for McCain supporters at the polls. I'm very skeptical of the former having a significant impact on the race. The most recent Senate or gubernatorial races between white and non-white candidates show little evidence of such an effect. This isn't 1982.

As for getting people to the polls, for one thing Democrats still report a slightly higher level of enthusiasm for their candidate than Republicans, which should help their turnout. The bigger factor for the Democrats may well be the ground game. Democrats are way ahead of Republicans on registering new voters this year. Also, at least anecdotally from the guys at fivethirtyeight.com, who've visited numerous campaign offices around the country, the Obama campaign offices are consistently active and busy. The McCain campaign offices are consistently quiet. Even though the "enthusiasm gap" in the polls isn't huge, what people say over the phone doesn't appear to be jiving with what's being seen in the field.

VP debate

Summary on Palin:

1. Palin said she wouldn't answer the questions.
2. Palin didn't answer the questions.
3. Palin loves to say the word "maverick".

Analysis:
Clearly the McCain campaign realized that Palin's problem in interviews was actually having to answer the question that was asked. They told her to forget about that. Just stick with your talking points.

The truly sad part:
My fear is that many, many people will react as Pat Buchanan did and ignore the fact that she didn't answer the questions and just stuck to her talking points. "She was sensational!" Word is that worked for her in the Alaskan gubernatorial debates.

On Biden:
For the most part he answered the questions. He attacked McCain but declined to attack Palin even when she went after him. At times he should have responded more to her points. He did outline Obama's tax plan, but a couple of times he didn't respond to it when Palin yet again kept repeating the obvious LIE that Obama was going to raise taxes for anyone but people making over 250k a year.

On the moderator: Very disappointing. Gwen Ifill didn't push the candidates to ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTIONS.