Palin: A Feminist?

From Talking Points Memo:

Many people are unfamiliar with Feminists for Life and wonder what the choice of Sarah Palin, who is against abortion rights, signals to the electorate.

Well, let me tell you something about Feminists for Life. In 2003, I decided to investigate this group and its energetic leader, Serrin Foster. What did it mean, I wondered, to be a feminist and actively fight against the right to choose when or whether to have a child?

...

Feminism is all about having choices, Foster told me, after her talk. I couldn't agree more. Young women, she says, should have the right to bear a child and have access to high-quality, affordable child care. Again, I heartily agreed.

But Foster is cleverly disingenuous. When I asked what she does to promote child care, her answers were vague and evasive. When I read the organization's brochures aimed at campus physicians and psychologists, I found nothing about campaigning for child care. The real goal is to convince professionals to persuade young women to "choose" to bear a baby.

...

In the end, I decided that Feminists for Life is neither about feminism nor about choice. It is a cunning attempt to convince young women that choice means giving up the right to "choose."

Sarah Palin is the inexperienced woman Sen. John McCain has chosen as his running mate, hoping that she will attract the vital female vote.. It's the worst kind of affirmative action, choosing a person he barely knows, who is completely unprepared to assume any national office. It's like nominating Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. It's all about ideology and not about competence.

To put it bluntly, Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton. Nor does she have the vision and brilliance of Barack Obama. This is an incredible insult to most American women. Just how stupid does he think we are?

Relentless

Wonderful recap of the primary election. Download it. Read it.

Florida?

There is a very interesting take on fivethirtyeight.com about why HRC would make a good choice for VP. I have been saying that for weeks now, that I totally changed my opinion on adding her to the ticket. We may know today, or tomorrow, but it is very doubful that she's the pick. However, with 25 + % of the HRC primary voters saying they will vote for McCain, it's hard to imagine a running mate who would do more for Obama than her.

The other name that I haven't heard at all, except for a slight blurb on POTUS '08 (XM Channel 130), is Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida. As electoral-vote.com put it, "[He] would certainly put Florida in play. That alone might be reason to choose him. There is no conceivable way McCain could get 270 electoral votes without Florida." Nelson won his last race in Florida by the largest margin by a Democratic candidate in the last century.

All of this leads me to question why Obama isn't concentrating more effort into Florida. If Obama gets Florida (and he is only a few points back) his job gets monumentally easier. 538.com has him only 50-50 to win all the Kerry states, but with Florida, Obama can lose multiple states that Kerry won and still win. Assuming he wins Iowa (where he has not trailed in a poll since 2007), Iowa plus Florida means that McCain would have virtually no chance of winning.

The bottom line is today is a huge news day. There is no major Olympic event finals tonight (gymnastics, swimming, and the 100/200m track finals are over), and any news would be big news. I would love to see Obama take advantage. HRC is in Florida today and Florida is busy recovering from a hurricane. It would be a wonderful pick-me-up to all of the Florida voters who went to the "beauty-contest" primary and voted for Clinton to get a text message this afternoon that says only this:

"Dream Team."

He's Fighting Back

I like this ad. It hits McCain where he is vulnerable. His wife is worth over $100 million and for as much of a 'One of the Guys' act as he puts on, he's as out of touch as President Bush.

The big thing for the Obama campaign is that they need to have a consistent attack.

Kerry was "flip-flooper"

Obama is "Celebrity"

McCain needs that label.

Obama has been doing a great job of running attack ads in individual states, but he has yet to come out with the consistent attack theme that all of his surrogates can latch onto.

Ugly Math

A look at the most recent electoral map, with each state being decided by who is leading in the RCP average, indicates that for the first time this entire election cycle, Mr. Obama is now trailing in the electoral vote count. This is a massive and significant development.

First, for a candidate that is claiming he will drastically "change the map," he is trending towards an identical finish as John Kerry with the additions of Iowa and New Mexico. This is a major blow to the argument that HRC's 'Kerry +1' strategy was not aggressive enough. It is hard to see her losing any of the states he is ahead in (except maybe Iowa), but her prospects would be much better in places like Florida, Ohio and West Virginia.

Second, the reality has become that McCain dominated Obama in the Saddleback forum. For a candidate that shunned townhalls with McCain (apparently to prevent McCain from getting free media coverage) the one he did agree to was in front of an audience that was 70% against him, and with a questioner who's religious philosophy unquestionably differed from his own.

This was a major mistake. Obama is not going to win a forum on Christianity. What he needed was a forum with mothers of fallen soldiers or with people who lost their jobs under Bush. The conventional wisdom has become that Obama is terrible without the benefit of a teleprompter and a podium. Saddleback did nothing to change that.

Third, McCain is controlling the media, the discourse, and the message. What are the three current themes of the campaign? Celebrity, drilling, and the Georgian conflict. All of which Obama loses on. It is downright embarrassing for his campaign that he has completely lost control of his own message and the direction of the race.

With McCain picking his VP a day after the close of the DNC and a convention-bounce unlikely, Obama needs to take some drastic steps immediately to regain control of the race.

Milli Vanilli: Part Deux?

No fictitious Grammys were awarded, and no cassette tapes malfunctioned. But this is pretty bad: Fake Singer during Opening Ceremony. My only hope is maybe we'll get a chance to meet the real singer on GMA or the Today show. But I won't hold my breath.

The Projected Map

Although there are a lot of polls showing how Obama can win in Virginia, Ohio, or even Missouri, my guess is he will not. As of today, my projected map is as follows:

<p><strong>><a href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/electoral-college/'>Electoral College Prediction Map</a></strong> - Predict the winner of the general election. Use the map to experiment with winning combinations of states. Save your prediction and send it to friends.</p>

Carpetbagging?

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the strategy for the Obama campaign is to win the election on the ground. As a former ground organizer myself, I understand the importance and potential effectiveness of this strategy. Politics isn't necessarily about being the "best" candidate. It's about making sure that more of the people who are going to vote for you make it to the polls than those that will vote for your opponent. In Iowa, particularly, Obama showed how effective his ground ops can be. He turned out every last individual that had pledged support for him, and he won a convincing and effective victory there back in January.

We know that Obama is pushing for a 50-state strategy and he already has large and growing operations in key states such as Missouri (up to 150 paid staffers), and Ohio and Pennsylvania (200 staffers in each state). If these organizers can rally support and ID each of Obama's supporters, this move will pay huge dividends. But, as reported in a Washington Post article this morning, there are risks associated with Obama's ground organization. Yes, it is incredible that in the first week of August, the following can be said of ALASKA:

While the John McCain campaign has yet to open an office anywhere in the state, Obama has dispatched dozens of paid staffers here over the past month; the latest batch arrived over the weekend. It is assigning field coordinators in each of the state's 40 legislative districts and has been buying television ad time since June.

Yet, the article talks about the trials and tribulations of young 18 year-old organizer, Celine Gammond. Although I know nothing about her, my guess is that she wasn't born and raised in Alaska. Many of Obama's paid staffers are recent college graduates who are shipped around the country. These are the individuals that made up his ground team during the primaries, and while their ranks will certainly swell in the coming months, it will likely be the same types of young people that make up his ground campaign for the general election.

The problem is that there is a risk that these college liberals and "east coast" liberals won't connect with the voters they are attempting to organize. How effective is a recent Princeton grad who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth going to be at gathering support in a small Appalachian town in Southeast Ohio or on the Alaskan Frontier? Not very, according to one McCain supporter in Alaska:

"Obama is trying to take advantage of our situation," Pierre said. "Obama has a lot of East Coast liberal staffers in Alaska" while McCain, he said, "has a real grass-roots effort, Alaskans talking to Alaskans.

For each 20 hours of work that an Obanma staffer devotes to getting to know the community, reaching out to potential voters, attempting to establish a bond or connection with voters, etc. - 1 McCain volunteer who KNOWS folks in the community can put in 20 minutes of work and potentially get the same result.

The ground game is important, but I hope that Obama is utilizing his resources wisely. Sending staffers into a community that is going to reject them is not only a waste of money, but it can have an adverse affect as well. It can start the drumbeat of support for your opposition.