William Katz: Urgent Agenda
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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2008
NOTE AT 7:23 P.M. ET: Tale of two news stories. From the AP:
Palin's first Fla. campaign stop a safe one
THE VILLAGES, FLA. (AP) - Sarah Palin played it safe Sunday on her first trip as John McCain's running mate to the battleground state of Florida.
And from The Tallahassee Democrat:
Sarah Palin's visit to Florida draws thousands of supporters
THE VILLAGES -- Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin told wildly cheering, flag-waving, chanting supporters that John McCain is “the only great man in this race” and promised Sunday he will fix the nation’s economy if voters give the GOP four more years in the White House.
Choose whichever one makes you happy.
SMALL MAN
Posted at 6:52 p.m. ET
Once again, a foreign reporter - well, Canadian - has one of the sharpest takes on the American campaign. Rex Murphy of Toronto's Globe and Mail examines the man he calls "Incredibly Shrinking Obama":
Journalists used to tell stories, now they plumb narratives. Narrative is a pretentious borrowing from the abstraction-clotted world of academic criticism, where texts are interrogated, authors are dead and high-toned fatuousness is king. I'll see your postmodern and raise you a meta.
Mr. Obama's campaign, however, has renewed narrative's trendy fizz. It is the very Perrier water (or is it San Pellegrino now?) of the better campaign reportage. Take no hike up Pundit Mountain without it. From the moment, the Obama surge took forceful shape, everyone - reporters, the scholars of blogland, the partisan howler monkeys of cable-news cage matches - has chattered on about Mr. Obama's narrative.
Wonderful. And more...
Mr. Obama remains something of a floating, uncrowded presence. His story (and he is so impressively self-aware as to have made the most acute comment on it) is temptingly open-ended, very much a page to be written on. He himself has written, most memorably: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."
That is as bold a statement as it is an insightful one. Bold, because it is a remarkable confession from a presidential hopeful. Insightful, because it matches the facts.
And...
Mr. Obama, however, has a kind of welcoming emptiness. Eager acolyte or stern observer, both find it difficult not to add, or project, the most flattering, even jubilant, fill-ins. The Obama candidacy, in its rocket-blast phase when he outsoared Hillary Clinton, drained the dictionaries of every superlative. The great "O" had them swooning in the stands. Why?
True, Oprah had passed her potent wand over him, but even the afternoon regent of a thousand therapies has stays on her sorcery. Mainly, his was very much a candidacy constructed by those who were drawn to him....
...Mr. Obama was the slate; the crowds brought their own chalk.
But the slate is getting dulled.
The sparkle has, in fact, dimmed. He travels now in a lower orbit, closer to Earth - which is to say, he grows more mundane. The great word "hope" sounds less frequently now. He picks a running mate thick with the dust and rancour of many long years in Washington...
...Of late, the flash supernova of U.S. politics is seen "competing" with a second-on-the-ticket female governor of a remote state.
Finally...
He has shrunk into a combative partisan. He crowds his own screen, leaves less space for projection. Others are not writing his narrative now - he's inscribing his own.
A candidacy that leached so much of its energy and drive from the imagination of others, Gatsby-like, is shedding its gift. The narrative stage is over. It's all tactics from here on in.
Maybe there's a kind of genius to our political system, with its long presidential campaigns. The truth starts to come out. We can only hope that the American people will recognize it in time.
September 21, 2008. Permalink 
UPDATE AT 6:25 P.M. ET: Two Florida polls out today spell trouble for Senator McCain, if they are accurate. One shows McCain up by one, the other by two. A week ago it was assumed that McCain was well ahead in Florida. If he loses Florida, it's unlikely he can win the election. Again, a poll is a snapshot in time, so we'll be looking at the trends.
TRACKERS
Posted at 3:45 P.M. ET.
Three trackers are now available for Sunday. We reported that Rasmussen still has Obama up one.
Now Hotline also has Obama one up.
And Gallup, which had Obama leading by six yesterday, has him leading by four today.
We can cautiously observe that Senator McCain may have stopped the slippage of the past week. We'll see. Stopping slippage is one thing, leading again is quite another. As long as the economic hurricane is on page one, it's not helpful to McCain.
Some have raised questions about the timing of the economic catastrophes of the last week. There have been suggestions of economic terrorism. I have absolutely no inside information on that, but I do hope there is a complete investigation, by regulatory agencies, Congress, and those few elements in the media who can take on such a probe and do it well, especially The Wall Street Journal. Without a body of facts, we should hold off on the conspiracy theories.
September 21, 2008. Permalink
UPDATE AT 11:52 A.M. ET: From The Toledo Blade: In the battle for Ohio’s 20 electoral votes, Republican presidential nominee John McCain holds a 48 percent to 42 percent lead over Democratic opponent Barack Obama — but with lots of time left in a volatile race, according to the first Ohio Newspaper Poll.
SARAH TO THE UN
Posted at 10:50 a.m. ET
I don't think we've ever run a story at Urgent Agenda where the real meat was in the comments sent by readers, but here's one that will prove that Palin Derangement Syndrome is now an accepted and medically recognized disease. By the way, Medicare will cover it, but Blue Cross has doubts.
Andrew Malcolm of The Los Angeles Times reports:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will meet in New York next week with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, among other world leaders scheduled to visit the United Nations annual autumn General Assembly Session.
She'll also meet with the president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
A spokesman for the McCain campaign confirmed the surprise visits tonight as well as hinted at as yet unannounced sessions between the Republican Party's surprise vice presidential pick and other foreign leaders.
And...
Introductions by the well-traveled McCain of his running mate to numerous world leaders, they hope, are clearly designed to help draw voters' attention back to her, as well as to establish some photographic foreign policy creds, much the way their Democratic opponent Barack Obama traveled all the way to Paris to be photographed patting the French president on the back.
I'm glad he reminded readers of Obama's let's-get-to-know-the-foreigners tour.
I suggest linking to this story, and then reading the comments below, starting with "Is this Take Your Daughter to Work day?" You'll get a real taste of what psychiatrists see every day. Show your friends.
September 21, 2008. Permalink
UPDATE AT 9:37 A.M. ET: The first tracker is out for today. Rasmussen shows no change from yesterday, with Obama up one over McCain. We'll check other trackers this afternoon, but I have a sense that the race has now stabilized after a week of small losses for McCain. The problem is, it's now back to where it was before the conventions, with no poll showing McCain ahead.
THE DIVIDE
Posted at 8:33 a.m. ET
The AP is running a story that's being picked up by most of the major news organizations that we monitor. It's the story we all expected during this campaign - claiming that race can cost Barack Obama the election:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks - many calling them "lazy,""violent" or responsible for their own troubles.
The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 - about 2.5 percentage points.
Certainly, Republican John McCain has his own obstacles: He's an ally of an unpopular president and would be the nation's oldest first-term president. But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.
Already I don't like this story. I'm sure 40 percent or more of Americans hold at least a partly negative view of a number of groups. Some men may not feel that women are up to the job. Others may not like southerners. Reagan was deemed "too Hollywood" for some. And of course the most loathed group in American society is the "Washington insider," almost an ethnic group by now. But let's go on.
"There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean there's only a few bigots," said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.
It takes a Ph.D. to figure that one out.
The findings suggest that Obama's problem is close to home - among his fellow Democrats, particularly non-Hispanic white voters. Just seven in 10 people who call themselves Democrats support Obama, compared to the 85 percent of self-identified Republicans who back McCain.
This is automatically racism? Some people have discovered that Obama's resumé can fit on the thin edge of a 3x5 card. That might have something to do with it.
Not all whites are prejudiced. Indeed, more whites say good things about blacks than say bad things, the poll shows. And many whites who see blacks in a negative light are still willing or even eager to vote for Obama.
I have absolutely no idea what that paragraph says. If you can figure it out, please e-mail me with the highest urgency. Do you get the feeling that some guy got a grant to do this and had to go through with it?
Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.
But in an election without precedent, it's hard to know if such models take into account all the possible factors at play.
Six percent? That's remarkably low, and the country should be commended. What about the increased number of African-American voters who'll go to the polls, understandably, out of pride? What about young people who'll vote for Obama because of his race, to make a political statement? Were those factors considered?
Researchers used mathematical modeling to sort out the relative impact of a huge swath of variables that might have an impact on people's votes - including race, ideology, party identification, the hunger for change and the sentiments of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's backers.
Just 59 percent of her white Democratic supporters said they wanted Obama to be president. Nearly 17 percent of Clinton's white backers plan to vote for McCain.
This is because of race? How about resentment? How about liking older, experienced presidents?
And here's the kicker:
Among white Democrats, Clinton supporters were nearly twice as likely as Obama backers to say at least one negative adjective described blacks well, a finding that suggests many of her supporters in the primaries - particularly whites with high school education or less - were motivated in part by racial attitudes.
Wait a minute, wait a minute. Read that again. It actually says that some Obama supporters said negative things about blacks. So what does this whole survey prove?
Look, some people have bad racial attitudes. They will vote against Obama, or, just as likely, stay home. But, as I've said, some will vote for him because of his background. And we're now seeing that Obama's standing in the polls, rather than dragging behind his party, may actually be consistent with the Democrats' standing at this moment. It's true that earlier this year the Democrats were well ahead of the Republicans in voter preference, but that gap has narrowed dramatically.
I'm afraid that surveys like this will provide a ready excuse for explaining away an Obama defeat, which would probably be caused by much more solid factors.
September 21, 2008. Permalink
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2008
WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL
Posted at 7:05 p.m. ET
Military writer Ralph Peters switches gears and does a very warm column on Sarah Palin. Probably captures her better than anything I've seen:
I KNOW Sarah Palin, and so does my wife.
Neither of us ever actually met the governor of Alaska, but we grew up with her - in the small-town America despised by the leftwing elite.
I like this already.
The sneering elites and their mediacrat fellow travelers just don't get it: How on earth could anyone vote for someone who didn't attend an Ivy League school? And having more than 1.7 children marks any woman as a rube. (If Palin had any taste, her teenage daughter would've had a quiet abortion in a discreet facility.)
Even with the Ivy League degrees in my family, I'm cheering. We're not all that way. Some of us remember where we came from.
The opinion-maker elites see Sarah Palin clearly every time they look up from another sneering article in The New Yorker: She's a country-bumpkin chumpette from a hick state with low latte availability. She's not one of them and never will be. That's the real disqualifier in this race.
He's dead-on. I call that the giggle crowd. They don't argue political views, they just giggle at anyone who disagrees. I've been on the receiving end of those giggles many times.
When The New York Times, CNN, the NBC basket of basket cases and all the barking blog dogs insult Palin, they're insulting us. When they smear her, they're smearing every American who actually works for a living, who doesn't expect a handout, who doesn't have a full-time accountant to parse the family taxes, who believes in the Pledge of Allegiance and who thinks a church is more than just a tedious stop on daughter Emily's 100K wedding day.
100K? Cheap. Why, darlings, what does that buy in Manhattan these days? Some fast food and a Coke?
That rube accent of Palin's? It's a howler. But she sounds a lot more like the rest of us than a Harvard man or a Smithie ever will.
Why does Sarah Palin energize all of us who don't belong to the gilded leftwing circle? Because she's us. We sat beside her in class.
Might not have been an advanced placement class, either.
For the first time since Ronald Reagan, our last great president, we, the people, see a chance that one of us might have a voice in governing our country.
I once sat behind Ronald and Nancy Reagan at a Broadway show ("Crazy for You"). To watch the president interact with ordinary citizens was a pleasure to behold.
So here's the message Palin is sending on behalf of the rest of us (the down-market masses Dems love at election time and ignore once the voting's done): The rule of the snobs is over. It's time to give one of us a chance to lead.
Sen. John McCain's one of us, too. He raised hell at Annapolis (quadruple ugh: military!), and he'll raise the right kind of hell in Washington.
McCain's so dumb he really loves his country.
Sarah Palin's dumb that way, too. How terribly unfashionable.
If McCain wins, the people who despise Sarah can always move to Venezuela and participate in progressivism.
Great column.
September 20, 2008. Permalink
BULLETIN AT 2:58 P.M. ET: From The NewYork Times: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A huge truck bomb exploded at the entrance to the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday evening, just a few hundred yards from the prime minister’s house, where all the leaders of government were dining after the president’s address to Parliament.
COMMENT: A reminder of what the next president will face. Which candidate do you trust?
UPDATE AT 2:48 P.M. ET: Hotline tracker just released confirms Rasmussen, and has Obama up one, same as yesterday. Gallup, which has him up six, continues as the outlier. The Battleground tracker for today has yet to be released.
TRACKERS
Posted at 1:43 p.m. ET
Both the Rasmussen and Gallup trackers are out, and differ sharply. Ras has Obama up by one, but Gallup has him up by six. There are still two more trackers that will post later today.
The key is the trend. No poll now shows McCain ahead, a dramatic turnaround from a week ago, when the reverse was true. The end of the convention bounce, the effects of the press assault on Sarah Palin (which continues), and the economic crisis, took their toll on McCain. He's had a bad week.
Can the situation be reversed? Yes, of course. But the media now knows how to get at McCain, and it's through economic policy. Guess what will be emphasized in news reporting?
There can be a reversal. But McCain must prevent more slippage. If there's another blow like this last week's, he may be too far gone. And the McCain team must be prepared for the continuing press assault. It's not enough to say that there'll be a public backlash against the press. There will be. But there'll also be damage, as some of those assaults work.
First debate this Friday. That may tell the story.
September 20, 2008. Permalink
UPDATE AT 9:36 A.M. ET: The Rasmussen tracker is out for Saturday, showing Obama up by one. Rasmussen reported a tie yesterday, and says:
While Obama’s lead is statistically insignificant, it is the first time he has held even a single-point advantage in a week-and-a-half. One week ago today, McCain was up by three points.
Three more trackers will post today. Of the four we report, only Gallup has shown Obama with a solid lead - five points yesterday. If McCain can hold Obama down, he can forge ahead again, especially now that the economic crisis seems to be easing. But Obama will try to keep the campaign focused on the economy, McCain's weakest point.
Still, with all that's happened, we might have expected Obama to be much further ahead. He hasn't made the sale, and tends to poll better than he delivers. This race is tight. The first debate is Friday.
WOLVERINES
Posted at 9:20 a.m. ET
Normally Democratic Michigan is emerging as a battleground in this campaign. The Real Clear Politics average shows Obama with only a two-point lead in the state.
What is going on there? Does McCain/Palin have a shot? Henry Payne in The Wall Street Journal reports:
Last year, the Big Three auto makers and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union reached a historic labor agreement. In a move, fundamental to domestic automakers' competitiveness, the union reluctantly agreed to restructure workers' salaries and benefits and give Detroit a chance at erasing the $1,500 per-car labor-cost edge Japanese auto makers enjoy. This altered the state's political landscape in ways the Obama campaign has yet to understand...
...This is the backdrop for the presidential campaign in Michigan. Ironically, the "change" candidate in the race, Barack Obama, fought the labor agreement.
Might come home to haunt him.
Now that people are starting to tune in, what's emerging in Michigan is a surprising amount of strength for the Republican ticket. The latest polls give Mr. Obama only a 1% to 2% lead.
Sen. McCain has always been popular here, notwithstanding his alliance with John Kerry to support expensive fuel mileage standards. Mr. McCain is a fit for Michigan's culture of maverick entrepreneurs, military families and working-class voters. In the presidential primaries in 2000, he trounced George W. Bush.
But alone, Mr. McCain probably wouldn't be competitive. With Sarah Palin as his running mate, he has a real chance of carrying Michigan. Mrs. Palin has rebuilt Mr. McCain's bridge to the GOP base and energized voters that he needs to win in November.
Unleash Sarah. Chant it loud and clear. Consider critical Oakland County:
Though Mrs. Palin's social conservatism will make some wary, Bill Ballenger, publisher of the influential newsletter Inside Michigan Politics, told me he's seeing signs that she is energizing Oakland's hockey moms (one nickname for Metro Detroit is "Hockeytown"), while also reinforcing Mr. McCain's maverick credentials.
Veteran pollster Steve Mitchell concurs, citing Mrs. Palin's appeal to the GOP base, her appeal to women and the appeal of her small-town story.
But she's never had tea with Christiane Amanpour, or lunch at the Harvard Club. How can anyone take her seriously?
And Macomb County, home of the "Reagan Democrats"?
Meanwhile, Macomb County is also up for grabs. Pollster Stan Greenberg, who helped Bill Clinton successfully tailor his message for Macomb voters in 1992, surveyed the county prior to the Democratic convention and found an electorate anxious over lost auto jobs, rising gas prices and high health-care costs. Their ideal presidential candidate? An "outsider, middle-class" senator, who feels their pain and their betrayal by America's economic and political elites, according to Mr. Greenberg.
Both Messrs. McCain and Obama are competing to fit that description, but so far Mr. McCain has a lead in Mr. Greenberg's polling, running ahead by seven points.
And the Sarah effect in Macomb?
She's "Macomb's girl next door," says Peter Brown, Quinnipiac University's assistant director of polling. The McCain campaign knows it. The first stop Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin made after the Republican convention was in Macomb County, an event that drew a 10,000-plus crowd.
The unspoken issue:
Will race be a factor in the election? Mr. Mitchell suspects it might be. He points out that in 2006 a ballot initiative to ban racial quotas trailed by substantial margins in polls until Election Day, when it won by a landslide 16%. Support for Mr. Obama may be overstated. If it is, the slim lead he holds in the polls is very tenuous.
"One year ago, Obama was expected to win Michigan in a landslide," says Mr. Mitchell. "What a difference a few weeks makes."
We hope race can be played down. On the issues themselves, McCain and Palin can win this, if the media lets them.
September 20, 2008. Permalink
NOTE AT 8:41 A.M. ET: Focus-group expert Frank Luntz was on Fox News last night saying that he'd noticed a change in Sarah Palin over the last two weeks - that her tone was becoming more vice-presidential. I've noticed the same thing. After her superb debut at the GOP convention, she seemed a big hesitant, and appeared rattled by the pompous Charlie Gibson. But she seems to have found her voice, and has been solid and effective in recent days, emerging as an effective, convincing campaigner.
I look forward to her debate with Joe Biden. I wouldn't be surprised if she brings a trick or two.
VIETNAM PLAYBOOK
Posted at 8:07 a.m. ET
One of the tragedies of Vietnam was the refusal of the liberal press to acknowledge any progress in the war. The 1968 enemy offensive, the Tet offensive, ended in a spectacular victory for our side, but was reported to the American people as a defeat, possibly the greatest journalistic scandal of modern American history.
Today's Democratic Party seems to have learned well from the Vietnam playbook, as the Wall Street Journal notes in a column today:
Even Barack Obama, who opposed the Iraq troop surge, has finally acknowledged its success. But some of his fellow Democrats in Congress apparently remain unconvinced. Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin teamed up to block a vote on a bipartisan resolution "recognizing the strategic success of the troop surge in Iraq" and thanking our men and women in uniform for their efforts.
Real class.
Under General David Petraeus, who relinquished command of U.S. forces in Iraq on Tuesday, sectarian bloodshed has almost entirely abated, daily attacks have fallen to 25 from a high of 180 in June 2007, and overall violence has declined by more than 70%. In July, U.S. combat deaths were lower than in any month since the beginning of the war. All of the troops sent to Iraq as part of the surge have now returned home and are not being replaced.
Must be a fluke of some kind. Or some propaganda from the Israel lobby. Yes, that's what it is. No doubt about it.
The resolution is sponsored by Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. That may explain things, especially the Joe part.
The Senators -- allies of John McCain -- had hoped to attach the resolution to a defense bill under consideration this week. But Mr. Reid wouldn't allow it. Democrats have often claimed that while they may oppose the war in Iraq, they wholeheartedly support the troops. That's a defensible position, and this resolution honoring our soldiers and Marines for a job well done gave them a chance to back up their rhetoric. Yet they still balked.
How can you say you "support the troops" while your presidential candidate constantly tells them that they're wasting their time. Must be great for the morale.
The reality is that success in Iraq has confounded the political left, which placed a huge political bet on our defeat. Senator Reid famously declared the war lost in April 2007. Joe Biden introduced a resolution opposing the surge.
Where else have you read that about Biden? But if Sarah Palin used a state-supplied pen to write a grocery list, it would be on the front page of The New York Times. And the subject of a CNN documentary.
As for the Iraq campaign's supposed diminished importance in the war on terror, earlier this month General Petraeus told the Washington Post that Iraq remains "the central front" for al Qaeda and other extremist groups.
It's intriguing to think of how a President Obama would deal with Petraeus. How do you deal with a man who's been too successful?
The Lieberman-Graham resolution is a chance for Democrats to show that their support for the troops is more than rhetorical. It changes no policy and in that sense is only symbolic. Yet it is precisely the political symbolism of admitting they were wrong that is stopping the Democratic leadership from letting it come up for a vote before the Senate adjourns. Unfortunately, the last thing that Democrats want to discuss in this election season is success in Iraq.
Thus, the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy finally changes the shingle outside its headquarters. Party of George McGovern and Dennis Kucinich might be more like it.
September 20, 2008. Permalink
"What you see is news. What you know is background. What you feel is opinion."
- Lester Markel, late Sunday editor
of The New York Times.
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