The Reddest States

Top of the Ticket:

McCain's best state turns out to be somewhat complicated.

He racked up his highest vote percentage -- 65.6, as of the current count -- in Oklahoma (the N.Y. Times took a look Saturday at antipathy toward Obama in the Sooner State).

But McCain scored his greatest margin of victory in Wyoming. He picked up 65.2% of the vote there and, with Obama getting only 32.7%, that gave McCain a 32.8-percentage-point win.

With Obama having a slightly higher vote total in Oklahoma, McCain's winning margin there was 31.2 percentage points.

In 2004, the reddest of the red was Utah, where George W. Bush won 71.5% of the vote.

In 2000, Bush posted his best showing in Wyoming, where he won 67.7% of the vote (running a close second: Idaho, where 67.1% of the voters backed him).

McCain's Hypocrisy Continues

Political Wire brings us this gem from the past.

"I'd never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield -- it's worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible."

-- Sen. John McCain, quoted by CNN, on the campaign ads used by Saxby Chambliss (R) against Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) in the 2002 U.S. Senate race.

McCain is now scheduled to campaign for Chambliss in his Georgia run off against Jim Martin (D).

More Dirt

LA Times:

There WAS tension between between John McCain staff members and Sarah Palin (as other news outlets previously reported), and part of it stemmed from some rather glaring gaps in what the governor of Alaska knew about the rest of the world.

Cameron, the Fox beat reporter for the Republican presidential ticket, said he had been told by unnamed sources -- and on the condition he not report the details during the campaign -- that Palin could not name all of the countries that are part of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

He did not mention which one (or ones) she whiffed on, but there are only three: Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Nor, according to Cameron, was Palin aware that Africa is a continent. (Perhaps she was hamstrung by the fact that no part of that land mass can be viewed from her homestate.)...

Spelling

Think Progress highlights spelling errors in three recent McCain ads.







Must be a prerequisite to succeed in the Republican party.

Scathing

Maureen writes a scathing indictment of the man McCain has become over the course of this campaign.

Why would he repeat that oblivious line about the fundamentals of the economy being strong, saying it once in August and again in September?

Why would he threaten to not show up for a debate (after denouncing Obama for not rising to the challenge of joint town halls) so that he could go to Washington and play the shining knight if he had no plan and no prospect for success?

Why did he allow his campaign to become a host body for a Bush virus looking for someplace to infect? After working so hard to erase the image of what Senate aides called “the Bush hug,” McCain inexplicably hugged Bushies, surrounding himself with mercenaries trained in the same Rovian tactics that tore up his family — and tore apart his campaign — in 2000.

Why Tennessee?

John McCain has an ambitious schedule today. He's supposed to appear in Florida, Tennessee, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona. Why Tennessee? According to First Read, Blountville, TN is near Bristol, VA. The proximity to closely contested Virginia makes McCain's choice of location more understandable. But then again why not Bristol, VA?

Update: Marc Ambinder says "It has nothing to do with Bountville. It has everything to do with the parts of rural North Carolina and rural Virginia that share its media market."

SNL: QVC Skit

McCain's Open to Dialog with Syria

The Syrian ambassador claims Lieberman assured him that McCain would be open to dialog with Syria.

This is a startling revelation, considering McCain and Lieberman have attacked politicians who have sought to engage Syria diplomatically:

– McCain adviser Max Boot slammed the Israeli government for engaging Syria, casting it as a betrayal of Lebanon. “John McCain is not going to betray the lawfully elected government of Lebanon,” Boot said.

– The McCain campaign slammed David Kutzner, an Obama adviser, for attending a legal summit in Damascus. McCain aide Randy Scheunemann accused Obama of favoring “unconditional summit meetings with state sponsors of terrorism.”

– Lieberman joined the conservative attack machine in slamming Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria in 2007. “I believe her visit to Syria was a mistake, that it was bad for the United States of America,” Lieberman said. “And I say this because we’re in a war. We’re in a war against the Islamic terrorists who attacked us on 9-11-01. Syria is a state sponsor of terrorism.”

How the Candidates Fare Online

Some interesting nuggets from Nielsen Wire:

Unique visitors to BarackObama.com outpaced those to JohnMcCain.com nearly two to one in September. The unique audience at BarackObama.com went from 6.1 million in August to 7.9 million in September (+31%). During the same time period, JohnMcCain.com’s unique audience grew by 56% — from 2.7 million to 4.2 million unique visitors.

***

Although McCain has tried to downplay several public relations challenges that occurred during his campaign, the terms “Katie Couric,” “Interview,” and “David Letterman” are as closely associated with him as “reform,” “economy,” and “Freddie Mac.”

Similarly, Obama’s efforts to distance himself from real estate developer Tony Rezko and Rev. Jeremiah Wright failed — in the online realm, at least. Obama is as closely associated with “Rezko,” “Plumber,” and “Wright” as he is with “economy,” “financial,” and “reform.”

McCain Ground Game to Be Pared Down

The Washington Post reports that the McCain campaign will unleash a wave of last minute ads but this spending on ads will impact the ground game.

The vaunted, 72-hour plan that President Bush used to mobilize voters in 2000 and 2004 has been scaled back for McCain. He has spent half as much as Obama on staffing and has opened far fewer field offices. This week, a number of veteran GOP operatives who orchestrate door-to-door efforts to get voters to the polls were told they should not expect to receive plane tickets, rental cars or hotel rooms from the campaign.

"The desire for parity on television comes at the expense of investment in paid boots on the ground," said one top Republican strategist who has been privy to McCain's plans. "The folks who will oversee the volunteer operation have been told to get out into the field on their own nickel."

See this photo collection from Five Thirty Eight that shows how weak the McCain ground game was to begin with.


Image Source

The Idiot Wind

A blistering editorial from Washington Post defends Khalidi and Obama.

...It's fair to question why Mr. Obama felt as comfortable as he apparently did during his Chicago days in the company of men whose views diverge sharply from what the presidential candidate espouses. Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position. To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable -- especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults. To further argue that the Times, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.

Which reminds us: We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over." That's good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign's increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.

How Low Can You Go?

This brilliant video compilation from TPM provides a comprehensive (and entertaining) list of the sleaze put out by the McCain campaign.

The Reasons for McCain's Troubles

Walter Shapiro argues that McCain would be about even with Obama right now if he hadn't let "the Republican right hijack the Straight Talk Express."

...Whether that candidate was the authentic McCain or an impromptu confection whipped up for a gullible press corps, the result was one of the most beguiling losing campaigns in modern political history.

This time around, the septuagenarian Arizona senator shrewdly (or cynically) decided from the outset that he would get right -- very right-wing -- with the Republican base. In mid-2006, when he still dreamed of replicating the front-runner juggernaut of the Bush campaigns, McCain paid homage to Falwell himself by giving the commencement address at Liberty University. Even though McCain was one of only two Republican senators to oppose the Bush tax cuts (liberal Lincoln Chafee was the other), he implausibly championed the cause of making them permanent.

Mixed Messages

The Hill:

Over the last several days, while Democratic nominee Barack Obama has emphasized his "closing argument," McCain's campaign has employed a variety attacks against the Illinois senator: they criticized him for wanting to "spread the wealth," promoted the Joe the Plumber tour, reminded voters of Obama’s past relationships with domestic terrorist William Ayers, questioned Obama's readiness to be commander-in-chief, warned about the dangers of one party rule, and hit Obama for voting for the 2005 energy bill, among other things.

With five days left until the election, Time's Mark Halperin counted seven messages from the McCain campaign while The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder counted five.

McCain Mailer Invokes Hillary Again

The Pennsylvania GOP is sending out mailers invoking Hillary's historic 18 million votes. The mailers seem to suggest that McCain and Hillary are alike. Perhaps, we can copy the mailers and send them to conservatives in battleground states where McCain is already struggling to get the base excited. Wonder what they'll think of John Clinton... or Hillary McCain, if you will.

For larger images and the original post, click here.

Best in Show

Politico picks the five best ads from the presidential campaigns and five of the worst ads from each campaign.

McCain Loses Fox News!

Alright, he hasn't quite lost the entire network... yet. But Neil Cavuto's dressing down of John McCain has to be seen to be believed.

Crist

Popular Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) cuts an ad for McCain. Is it me or does it sound like he's rushing through the script? It's either too long a script or next time, say it like you mean it, Governor.



H/T: Real Clear Politics

Francis Fukuyama For Obama

Add another conservative to the growing list of conservatives voting for Obama - Francis Fukuyama.

McCain’s appeal was always that he could think for himself, but as the campaign has progressed, he has seemed simply erratic and hotheaded. His choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate was highly irresponsible; we have suffered under the current president who entered office without much knowledge of the world and was easily captured by the wrong advisers. McCain’s lurching from Reaganite free- marketer to populist tribune makes one wonder whether he has any underlying principles at all.

Potato Chips

Conservative columnist George Will excoriates John McCain and his running mate in an op-ed for the Washington Post. Many of the criticisms you've probably heard before but this little factoid with which he ends the column, is memorable

The Center for Responsive Politics calculates that, by Election Day, $2.4 billion will have been spent on presidential campaigns in the two-year election cycle that began in January 2007, and an additional $2.9 billion will have been spent on 435 House and 35 Senate contests. This $5.3 billion is a billion less than Americans will spend this year on potato chips.

Thanks for the tip, Tony!