Canvassing for Obama in Shrewsbury, MO

Mary and I are in the suburbs of St. Louis for the next couple weeks both working and hanging out with Mary's parents.

But, as luck would have it, that also means we've found ourselves in the middle of a battleground state of a Presidential election.

We volunteered to do a little work for the Obama campaign yesterday ... and today we were on the street canvassing. It was the first time my political involvement has included doorbelling. But this year's election has marked a lot of firsts for me, including first presidential political donation ... first political fundraiser (last December in Seattle) ... first Presidential gag website ...

Canvassing was interesting. I was surprised how many of the people we talked to were truly undecided about which candidate to vote for. That's not something I'm used to. Most of the people I've talked to previously have already decided. But the majority of people we talked to in the small neighborhood we were in were still trying to decide.

Now keep in mind that as we canvassed we skipped between many houses--the campaign had identified the most fruitful places to go. Out of the many houses we hit only three or four very committed Obama supporters and one committed McCain supporter. Of course a lot of people weren't home or ignored us. The rest were undecided or leaning one way or another, but were still willing to be persuaded.

Maybe that's why things are so close here. Here's the poll of polls for Missouri:



And here's 538's map which shows Missouri as a toss-up.

Very interesting night.

The debate's still pretty fresh at this point ...

...  so I retain the right to keep thinking about it.

The Biden - Palin debate had a whole lotta attention on it (mostly on Palin). Neither really badly screwed up. No major gaffes, etc etc.

And Palin really started very well. She was clear and coherent where in previous interviews it sounded like she was playing a match game with nouns and verbs.

Biden was the one who was rambling and got caught up in minutia.

But there was a change that happened. Marc Ambinder thought that Palin sounded as if she was running out of talking points because she started repeating them. I think there might be something to that in the sense that she would frequently jump off a topic to another one that was entirely unrelated. In the sub prime crisis we got energy. In nuclear proliferation we got Afghanistan.

And Biden regained whatever footing he was missing at the beginning. In the last 40 minutes he was effective, direct, and very good, I thought. And Palin did seem to run out of gas. She ended with some odd rambling and her sentences started to get weirder.

I think Obama fans like me will be very happy with their VP nominee after tonight. And vice versa.

UPDATE: Interestingly, the CNN poll put Biden way over Palin. 51% thought he won, 36% thought she did. And CBS's poll of independents gave it to Biden as well 46% to 21%.

NEXT UPDATE: Inside those numbers are better indicators for Palin however. Nate Silver at 538 notes:

The internals, however, weren't as bad for Palin as the topline results. She got a jump in preparedness in the CBS poll, and the CNN found that a large majority of voters concluded that she had beaten their expectations.

On term limits

The reason for term limits has never been entirely clear to me. I understand the fundraising/name recognition advantage of the incumbent and I understand how entrenched politicians cans become, and how entrenchment can lead to corruption.

But that seems like a perfect time to vote that politician out of office.

Would my district be demonstrably better if long-time Congressman Norm Dicks was prohibited from re-running? Doubtful. Would George W. Bush be running for a third term? Doubtful. Would Clinton have won in 2000 running for a third term? I'm not so sure. Is there any really good reason why Michael Bloomberg should not be able to run for Mayor of NYC again? I just don't see what the big deal is if he wants to run again. If enough people don't like his policies, then he won't win.

This is what the NYT says in their editorial:

Term limits are seductive, promising relief from mediocre, self-perpetuating incumbents and gridlocked legislatures. They are also profoundly undemocratic, arbitrarily denying voters the ability to choose between good politicians and bad, especially in a city like New York with a strong public campaign-financing system, while automatically removing public servants of proven ability who are at a productive point in their careers.

I'm inclined to agree. Same goes for Tacoma's term limits question. If a politician is serving their district on the City Council, why not keep letting them serve? If they aren't serving the district, vote 'em out!

UPDATE: I think the counter-arguments the anonymous commenter below presents are worth considering when it comes to considering term limits for the Tacoma City Council. And the comparison of the Council with a non-profit's oversight board is apt. I'm not sure I've come around, but they are very good points.

Debate Wrap-up

I actually thought that last night's debate was very good on both sides, if not a little dry. I would call it a draw. If you had one informed person arguing in favor of Obama's policies and one informed person arguing in favor of McCain's policies, it wouldn't have looked too dissimilar from last night.

I do think it was one of the best performances I've seen Obama give in a debate, and I didn't watched enough of the Republican debates to judge McCain. But he did just as well, I thought.

That said, CBS polled undecided voters immediately after the debate and show the undecideds thought Obama won--by a surprisingly large margin. 39% thought Obama won and 24% thought McCain won, with the rest thinking it was a draw. CNN's poll also showed Obama winning. As did the Fox News focus group. Interestingly, independent voters in Washington State thought McCain won according to one survey done here.


Next week: Biden and Palin.

Answer.

Would I write the same thing about Obama if he suspended his campaign like McCain did?

No. I'm sure it would be different. But now that there's a little time passed and McCain has said he's going to the debate, let me explain that further.

I've liked Obama since he announced, 18 months ago. I like him because he's a very good politician that aims to get some of the goals done that I want done. He's not the Messiah or the The One, but he is the first Democrat in a long time to not shrink away from a fight, to apologize for his beliefs, and who can land a political punch well. The difference between his campaign and Kerry's are astronomical.

But he is a politician at heart. He has made many political compromises that I don't like (his faith-based initiative for one) and plenty of dumb moves.

McCain has been hurting in the polls since June when Obama wrapped up the nomination. Not only that, he doesn't have the organization that Obama has, and he's in danger of getting out-organized on the ground. So McCain needs news-grabbing political maneuvers that have a chance of tilting the election back to him. His "celebrity" ads were news-grabbing (and effective the polls show). Sarah Palin was very news-grabbing (also effective at consolidating wary evangelical Republican voters).

(Thinking in reverse, if Obama spent most of the summer behind in the polls, would he have run news-grabbing ads? Yes. Would he have picked a more news-grabbing running mate than Joe Biden to try to shake things up? Yes. Likely even Clinton.)

The suspension of the campaign was clearly not a "real" suspension in that the functioning of the campaign actually stopped. Put another way, McCain could have easily gone back to Washington to make sure he was OK with the terms of the bailout without "suspending" the campaign. The suspension part then is the political move that is trying to shake things up and tip it back his way.

Now, if Obama did the same thing, I think my intellectual honesty is strong enough that I would not be blogging about how Obama had put country first by suspending his campaign. I think that I could recognize it as the political maneuver that it was (and, lest this point gets lost I'll repeat it again, Obama is a great politician with an eye for political theater).

Would I feel "gobsmacked" as I said I felt about McCain's suspension? No, of course not. (I would like to point out that if Obama were to sell out a core belief in why I support him I would certainly feel "gobsmacked" and would be posting that and crying foul louder than anyone else.)

But I don't think the difference is unreasonable either. McCain has made his slogan and theme "Country First." And every time he makes a political action, it's absolutely fair to charge that he has not put "country first" by that action, as I have done.

Of course this goes both ways--it's absolutely fair for opponents of Obama to point to Obama's political actions and charge that he doesn't live up to his change theme if he's engaging in rough and dirty politics. (How often did Clinton say, "What happened to the politics of hope?" every time Obama attacked her).

That's a long long answer to the email. I probably don't post often enough to really wear my opinions on my sleeve the way that other bloggers do. Were I to post 12 times a day on politics, readers would get a feeling for where I stand, where my biases are, where my blindspots are, where my strengths are,  and--I would hope--my thought process would be more transparent to the reader and more nuanced.

Some day maybe I'll have time to be a 12-times-a-day blogger and I'm more clear. But until then if you don't like what I say, do comment and argue with me and maybe I'll write an enormous post in reply.

Would I write the same if Obama suspended?

A reader emails:

Get real and be honest about what's going on here. You know for a fact that if roles were reversed in this scenario the press and all of the Atlantic bloggers would 1) praise Obama for having the courage to take a risk and do something *gasp* that is a change from standard politics to combat a national problem; and 2) condemn McCain for being stuck in the out-of-touch method of campaigning and find a way to criticize Palin for being unable to carry on the campaign on her own (as Letterman attempted to).

I'm not making a value statement either way about the choice or whether or not the debate should happen now or later. I'm just calling out one example of the terribly divisive and hypocritical attitude that people get in important elections. Your candidate does not do everything right-- he is not infallible. The opponent does not do everything wrong-- he is a smart and effective politician. Try to view this process without your tinted glasses for awhile.

I've been thinking about this e-mail for a little while and comparing it to my own thoughts. I do think that sometimes my blog and I get out of whack with each other. I don't think of myself as exceptionally partisan, but looking over the blog the last few weeks would likely not give a reader that impression. I'll post something eventually, but thought I would put it up while I think on it.

Suspension Recap

John McCain is not a stupid man. 40 days from the election is a horrendously bad time to "suspend" your campaign. And so he's going to do no such thing. Marc Ambinder asks some questions:

    * Will the campaign shut down its phone banking?
    * Will volunteers be told not to show up for work?
    * Will payroll be suspended?
    * The campaign presumably has polls in the field...will it suspend the field work?

Hmm. Let me venture to answer these. No, no, no, and no. McCain canceled his Letterman appearance, but not his interview with Couric. He still spoke at Clinton's Global Initiative today. So by "suspension," McCain really means pulling ads and trying to cancel the debate. (Hilarious side note: if there is no debate tomorrow night, McCain wants to cancel the Vice Presidential debate and have the McCain-Obama debate then, with the Vice Presidential debate re-scheduled for a "date yet to be determined.")

In the end, I'm feeling a little gobsmacked. "Suspension" doesn't really mean "suspension." It appears that the campaign is wrangling to ensure that the Vice Presidential candidate who hasn't yet given a press conference won't debate either.

It's no secret I'm "in the tank" for Obama, so take this for what it's worth. But I think this is going to backfire big time.

McCain: the Superlative Candidate

I don't mean that McCain is superlative in that he is a superlative candidate, I mean he likes to use superlatives.

He said today that the financial crisis on Wall Street is America's "worst crisis since World War II." (That must explain why it's significant enough to suspend the campaign.) That's different than Russia's invasion of George, which was the first "serious crisis internationally" since the end of the Cold War. But don't forget that he also just called Islamic extremism the "transcendent issue of our time" at the Saddleback Forum. And that's just in the last 6 months.

It's not that I don't agree with some of it--personally I think that Islamic extremism's threat to liberal democracy might be the transcendent security issue of our time. That said, everything can't be "the worst" or "the most serious." Everything is HUGE!

More from an Yglesias post last month.

Yglesias also has a helpful post today detailing presidential campaigns on September 24 at different points in history:

– September 24, 1864: The nation is literally at risk of collapse, mengaged in a large-scale civil war: “Yet the campaign for the presidency was “now being prosecuted with the utmost vigor,” as one could read in the New York Times.”

– September 24, 1932: The nation is mired in Depression, coping with it a full time job, “Yet Herbert Hoover prepared to give a large speech in Iowa and Franklin Roosevelt had just given what became a famous address to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.”

– September 24, 1944: World War II well under way, with the United States engaged in fierce fighting, “Yet President Roosevelt had just officially launched his campaign for a fourth term, while Thomas Dewey took his turn speaking in San Francisco, challenging Roosevelt’s supremacy.”

The Civil War, the Depression, and World War II ... and yet somehow ... the campaigns went on. I really like Marc Ambinder's take:

This is the time when politics matters the most, not the least. When the philosophical differences that each party organizes around are put to the test of reality. When conflict builds consensus, not by ignoring conflict. When the public craves answers and debate from their politicians. When the stakes of the presidential election could not be more acute. Comparative advantage: the best thing the presidential candidates can do now is to practice their politics honestly, not to abandon politics altogether -- itself, of course, a political move.

Well said.

Jumping the shark

Ta-Nehisi Coates was wrong below. The suspension of the McCain campaign is the nail in the coffin. The McCain campaign has officially jumped the shark.

David Letterman puts it very well after McCain canceled going on his show:

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

Honestly. McCain not running ads (but still giving speeches) will helps us deal with a financial crisis on Wall Street? Dropping out of a debate on foreign policy--scheduled for 9:00 pm on a Friday night--will help Congress and George Bush work together better?

But I made plans!

McCain has called for a "suspension" of his campaign because of the financial crisis.

Matthew Yglesias sums it up well:

WTF? You can’t just stop the presidential campaign — what does that even mean? Meanwhile, I think walking and chewing gum at the same time is part of the president’s job.

Harsher criticism from Josh Marshall:

What's changed today in the financial crisis other than John McCain's poll numbers tanking? Isn't this the campaign equivalent of faking an injury when you're down late in the 4th quarter? Note too that McCain was in the midst of debate prep when he made this decision.

Look at what appears to have happened. Obama reached out to McCain privately to agree to a shared set of bailout principles. McCain went off the handle again and tried to use the crisis as a way to call off the debates. 

I made plans to watch the debate with friends! McCain, stop ruining my Friday night!

Well-Observed

There's a blogger at the Atlantic named Ta-Nehisi Coates that I've been reading recently. He has a great post up whose thesis was "Sarah Palin is the nail in the McCain campaign's coffin."

Now that takes a lot of guts to say, but his reasoning is strong, and it's not about her Palin at all. He writes:

No Vice-Presidential nominee--not Vice-President--can be this much drama. Constantly defending old girl's record, having to expend resources to shut down investigations in Alaska, and having to actively shield her from reporters has to exact a price. At the very least it knocks Joe Biden's gaffes right off the radar.

And then:

For weeks we heard this ridiculous line of argument that Palin brought the same "excitement" and "energy" to the table as Obama, thus equalizing the race. That is exactly the sort of fatal underestimation that is going to get John McCain murked in November.

Obama isn't Obama because he is more "exciting" or had me more "heat" or "energy." He's Obama because his handlers had a deft understanding of caucus rules, because they understood the promise of the Dean/Trippi internet strategy, because they understood the ground game. Fuck all the rhetorical flourishes, all the talk of "exotic" lineage, all Ivy League pedigree, all the hoary meditation on the impact of a black president. It's all bullshit. If Obama doesn't hang eleven straight on Team Clinton in February then we'd all be talking about the dream of Susan B. Anthony. If Hillary Clinton's people understood the rules the way Obama's people did, then McCain would be running ads attacking The Restoration.

I think he's got a real point here. Palin has brought incredible drama to the McCain campaign. But it has also made the story and their campaign, not about Obama (like it was this summer with the "celebrity" ads, the European trip, the Hawaii vacation, etc). McCain had a hold of the storyline and they were dinging Obama pretty regularly. That all changed August 29.

Limerick o' the Day - XVI

There once was a site called 538,
With polls and graphs from Silver, Nate.
He says Obama's in the lead,
So now my doubts can recede,
And Obama fans can finally elate!

It took me awhile to get all the graphs over at fivethirtyeight.com, but now that I know what's up, the site is a treasure trove of election data. Love it!

Limerick o' the Day - XV

McCain's lead Obama did slash.
Palin's rep is starting to crash.
In favorables of the four,
She's the lowest score,
And their campaign is starting to thrash!

Really, though, if you want a sense of how quickly Obama has regained the lead, here's the graph from Pollster.com, which averages all the polls and can filter out a lot of "noise." The change in the campaign in the last week has been pretty startling.

Limerick o' the Day - XI

Last month Obama raised 66 mil.
His coffers he did heartily refill.
But that amount's foundations
Are the small donations --
His donors now number 2.5 mil!

Tina Fey nails it

Her "Sarah Palin" is absolutely wonderful. And the sketch is very funny, too. Enjoy.

More?

Man, it just keeps coming. How can you not laugh at this?

Turns out Palin did not go to Iraq, as she and the campaign had previously said. When she was announced, it was said that she has been to four other countries: Iraq, Kuwait, Germany and Ireland. Then it was clarified that Ireland was a refueling stop on that trip and that she didn't get off the plane.

Now it turns out that she didn't go to Iraq. According to the Alaskan National Guardsman who supervised the trip, Palin stopped at the Kuwait/Iraq border and didn't go into the country.

But, you see, this obviously misses the point. She saw Iraq. Don't forget that there is an island off Alaska from which you can see Russia, as she was quick to point out in her Gibson interview. If seeing Russia gives her foreign policy credentials (not that she's actually been to that island to see Russia, but ah well), then seeing Iraq means she's been there!

PS--did she mention that on her transcontinental flight she stopped off at the North Pole and visited with foreign head-of-state Santa Claus? ... Wait, no, Santa wasn't there at the time. ... Oh, actually, she just flew by. ... Oops, that was a misstatement, the plane didn't fly over the pole and just went through Canada. Which, by the way, (did I mention) you can see from Alaska?

Limerick o' the Day - IX

Once again, I almost didn't make it ...

There once was a man named Joe Biden;
Barack Obama's appeal he did widen.
Known most for his gaffes
When he aimed to make laughs,
His best line was his Rudy chidin'.

Limerick o' the Day - VIII (WA State Edition)

It's almost 10:00, so this is just under the wire on my 'limerick o' the day' pledge ... But still, 8 days straight and counting! Just 52 or so till the election!

There once was a man named Rossi.
The GOP was his main posse.
He came close in '04
As our State Governor,
But his chances this year are more quasi.

The New Energy Expert

According to McCain today, "[Sarah Palin] knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America."

Sweet. Maybe when she finally holds a press conference people can ask her energy-related questions. And then we can judge for ourselves.

Bill O'Reilly on Obama

This might not be groundbreaking, but I thought O'Reilly's comments on Obama were interestings:

On the foreign policy front, Obama has convinced me that he is tough but cautious. He rose up quickly because he vehemently opposed the Iraq war. But now I see a man who understands the victory that has taken place in Iraq. I don't believe he wants to screw that up. I could be wrong.

After going mano-a-mano with Obama on television, I am also persuaded that he is a sincere guy-that he wants the best for all Americans. He's an ideologue, but not a blind one. He understands that his story is incredible, and, I have come to believe, he is grateful to the American system for allowing it happen.

... and then closes it with this:

In short, he's a real person trying to achieve an unreal position-that of the most powerful person in the world.

God help him. 

From Politico.