Today’s crop of national polls show Obama leads from 6% to 10% depending on the pollster. State polls in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio show big gains for Obama. Republicans are upset.

Poll:Obama Takes 7-point lead over McCain

Associated Press, October 1st, 2008

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama has surged to a seven-point lead over John McCain one month before the presidential election, lifted by voters who think the Democrat is better suited to lead the nation through its sudden financial crisis, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that underscores the mounting concerns of some McCain backers.

Likely voters now back Obama 48-41 percent over McCain, a dramatic shift from an AP-GfK survey that gave the Republican a slight edge nearly three weeks ago, before Wall Street collapsed and sent ripples across worldwide markets. On top of that, unrelated surveys show Obama beating McCain in several battlegrounds, including Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania — three states critical in the state-by-state fight for the presidency.

Several GOP strategists close to McCain’s campaign privately fret that his chances for victory are starting to slip away.

These Republicans, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid angering the campaign, point to several factors: Obama’s gains nationally and in traditionally GOP states, no McCain gain from the first debate, McCain’s struggles with economic issues as the financial crisis has unfolded and deepening public skepticism about his Sarah Palin.

They said McCain’s options for shaking up the race are essentially limited to game-changing performances in the final presidential debates or in Palin’s vice presidential debate with Joe Biden Thursday night. Short of that, they said, McCain can do little but hope Obama stumbles or an outside event breaks the GOP nominee’s way.

Democrats hope Obama is starting to build a lasting lead.  Click here to read more of the Associated Press story.

Meanwhile, Fivethirtyeight.com, a website dedicated to analyizing state and national polls is now forecasting and electoral vote of 336 votes for Senator Obama to only 202 votes for John McCain.  That would give Obama the election with near-landside proportions.  Several individual state polls carried on the site today are worthy of notice.

Florida +7% Obama

Virginia +7% Obama

North Carolina +2% Obama

Ohio +7% Obama

Click here for a link to Fivethirtyeight.com

Here are some more polls.  Daily Kos, Gallup, Real Clear Politics, try some you’ll like them.

Well it looks like that battleground state is turning blue… Not exactly the right way to start the VP debates!

McCain abandons efforts to win Michigan

Associated Press, October 2nd, 2008

WASHINGTON – In a major concession, Republican John McCain has abandoned efforts to win Michigan, a Democratic-leaning battleground state the GOP presidential candidate had hoped to capture. Republican officials with knowledge of the strategy said the GOP nominee is removing staff, curtailing advertising and canceling visits to the Midwestern state, which offers 17 electoral votes.

Resources will be sent to Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida and other competitive states.

News of McCain’s decision came as Democrat Barack Obama prepared to take the stage for a rally at Michigan State University, his third event in the state in five days. If he knew about McCain’s plans, Obama didn’t mention it and continued to criticize his rival’s economic policies as just a continuation of the Bush administration philosophy.

“My opponents’ philosophy isn’t just wrongheaded, it reveals out how out of touch he really is,” Obama told more than 15,000 who gathered on a chilly fall afternoon.

Word of the strategy change also came as attention was focused on the vice presidential debate between Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden.

Democrat John Kerry won Michigan in 2004, but McCain had identified it early on as a potential target, particularly in light of Obama’s troubles with white working-class voters. But the terrain in Michigan was never friendly. It has a Democratic governor, and Republican strategists said the state’s poor economy and McCain’s association with the unpopular President Bush proved too much for the GOP nominee to overcome.

More…

Senator Joe Biden delivered a strong articulate case of why Democrats are more to be trusted with leadership than Republicans.  He was especially strong in two unusual areas.  First he broached the topic of a father’s love for his children and proved “he gets it.”  Second his grasp of the problems facing middle class Americans who gather around the “kitchen table” likely touched a responsive chord.

Joe’s Tears the Political Power of Parental Love

Huffington Post, Leah Renna, October 2nd, 2008

Joe Biden did more for the equality of the sexes with his honest display of paternal emotion during the vice presidential debate than Sarah Palin’s presence on the executive ticket has or will ever do.

Biden visibly teared up when he rebutted the idea that “just because I am a man” he didn’t understand what it was like to wonder whether or not a child would “make it” in recovering from a life-threatening medical situation. At the time, he was likely recalling the tragic automobile accident that killed his wife and daughter and severely injured his two sons. It was an authentic, moving and powerful moment. It was, in fact, the strongest expression of real paternal love we have seen from a public official in recent memory and maybe ever.

By bringing that reality to a national political stage, Biden demonstrated that — for all of us, not just feminists — the personal is political, that women alone do not have the sole responsibility for caring about the future of our children and that the concern of fathers is a largely untapped pool of political energy. In his acceptance speech, Barack Obama paved the way for this when he talked about fighting for equal pay for equal work because he wants “my daughters to have the same opportunities as your sons” — and said this while looking with protective ferocity straight into the camera. He has continued this message on the campaign trail with great impact.

Political equality for women will not come from the minimization or idealization of motherhood — but rather from recognizing fatherhood as a significant factor in our culture and politics.

Thank you, Joe, for bringing us to the next level and keeping it real.

Joe Biden “Get’s It” regarding Kitchen Table problems that face Middle Class Families

New York Times, Debate Live Blog

Toward the end of this debate, Joe Biden talked about some of the issues that working middle class families must constantly meet. Joe talked about health care, personal backruptcy, employment and tax issues as issues that affect the middle class. “Can we get mom’s MRI? Can we get Mary back to school?” Continuing on Joe said Mr. McCain is not a maverick “on the important issues that affect people at the kitchen table.”

John McCain is not a maverick on education. John McCain is not a maverick on the Iraq War. John McCain is not a maverick on economic deregulation and the economy. John McCain is not a maverick on health care. John McCain is not a maverick on energy. John McCain is proposing the same failed policies of the Bush Administration.  In fact, “He’s not been a maverick on virtually anything that people talk about around the kitchen table,”

To this Governor Pailin responds “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” she said. “There you go again pointing backwards again.”

“Joe Biden gave the best debate performance of his life. I thought he had superior knowledge, superiority on the debate overall. On political point, it maybe be a bit of a draw,” said David Gergen, a senior political analyst for CNN. “As a debate, I thought he was a superior debater.”

There are a series of stories on the internet this morning talking about John McCain’s shrinking campaign options.  Here are links to a few:  Boston. com, Associated Press, MSNBC.com, and the Washington Post.

In 2004, George Bush won the election with 286 votes barely 16 votes more than he needed.  Now John McCain is a prohibitive underdog to win those same states in 2008.  In fact, 538.com believes that gambler’s odds are worse than 7 to 1 against John McCain.

To put this into perspective, take a good look at Electoral-vote.com John McCain is solidly ahead in states with 163 electoral votes.  In addition he has slight leads in states like Indiana and Missouri that have 22 electoral votes.  So, let’s be generous and give John his 185 electoral votes in Strong or Weak GOP states.

That leaves him 85 electoral votes needed to win the election.  Where can he hope to pick up those 85 votes?

Here is a list of four states with 75 electoral votes that John McCain must sweep in order to have any chance to win:

If Barack Obama wins any of these four states, it’s all over!  Obama becomes President.

But even if McCain wins all four of those states he still must win at least one of these plus an upset victory somewhere else.  So here are the last two states he must win:

Associated Press, October 7th, 2008

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AFP) – Republican John McCain faced fierce pressure in Tuesday’s second presidential debate to grab a lifeline for his sliding campaign in the increasingly nasty White House duel with Barack Obama.

The rivals will come face-to-face in McCain’s favored town-hall style setting in Nashville, Tennessee, after the Republican’s barrage of attacks on Obama’s character ignited a fierce war of words with the pace-setting Democrat.

Less than a month before the election on November 4, the debate marks one of Arizona Senator McCain’s last chances to transform a race which seems to be sliding away, with Obama profiting politically from the economic meltdown.

Obama , 47, has solid leads in most national opinion polls, and has taken a stranglehold on the US electoral map, piling up advantages in the key battleground states each candidate must win to take the White House.

McCain, 72, egged on by his combative running mate Sarah Palin, Monday unveiled an fresh assault on Obama, suggesting he did not share basic American values and slamming him over what he said were questionable past relationships.

More…

Most commentators say Obama won but the vast majority believe that McCain failed to move the discussion to different level.  Another way of saying the same thing….  Here is a typical story from Teggan Goddards Political Wire….

Political Wire.com, October 7th 2008

The Second Presidential Debate

Tonight’s debate wasn’t even close. Sen. Barack Obama ran away with it — particularly when speaking about the economy and health care. Talking about his mother’s death from cancer was very powerful. On nearly every issue, Obama was more substantive, showed more compassion and was more presidential.

In contrast, Sen. John McCain was extremely erratic. Sometimes he was too aggressive (referring to Obama as “that one.”) Other times, he just couldn’t answer the question (on how he would ask Americans to sacrifice.) And his random attempts at jokes (hair transplants?) were just bad.

Tom Brokaw was terrible as moderator. His fixation with the rules — particularly when the candidates were not complaining — was distracting and a disservice to everyone. The format didn’t work very well, but Brokaw made it worse.

Other reactions:

Andrew Sullivan: “This was, I think, a mauling: a devastating and possibly electorally fatal debate for McCain… I’ve watched a lot of debates and participated in many. I love debate and was trained as a boy in the British system to be a debater. I debated dozens of times at Oxofrd. All I can say is that, simply on terms of substance, clarity, empathy, style and authority, this has not just been an Obama victory. It has been a wipe-out. It has been about as big a wipe-out as I can remember in a presidential debate. It reminds me of the 1992 Clinton-Perot-Bush debate. I don’t really see how the McCain campaign survives this.”

Ezra Klein: “Tonight was supposed to be John McCain’s night, but it was the first clear debate win Obama has scored over the course of this campaign — including the primary. McCain, as it turned out, was badly disadvantaged by the format. This debate was more physical than previous encounters. And McCain, for reasons of age and injuries and height, has a less commanding physical presence than Obama.”

Mark Halperin: “McCain spent much of the evening trying to define Obama on his terms, but never broke all the way through.”

Marc Ambinder: “CW says that John McCain had a 90 minute window to turn his campaign around – to put into play the McCain Resurgence Strategy, if you will, and if that’s the CW threshold, I don’t think McCain met it.”

The instant polls taken just after the debate also show Obama as the winner.

Huffington Post, The Atlantic, October 8th, 2008

David Brooks spoke frankly about the presidential and vice presidential candidates Monday afternoon, calling Sarah Palin a “fatal cancer to the Republican party” but describing John McCain and Barack Obama as “the two best candidates we’ve had in a long time.”

In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg at New York’s Le Cirque restaurant to unveil that magazine’s redesign, Brooks decried Palin’s anti-intellectualism and compared her to President Bush in that regard:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he’d rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn’t think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I’m afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

Brooks praised Palin’s natural political talent, but said she is “absolutely not” ready to be president or vice president. He explained, “The more I follow politicians, the more I think experience matters, the ability to have a template of things in your mind that you can refer to on the spot, because believe me, once in office there’s no time to think or make decisions.”

The New York Times columnist also said that the “great virtue” of Palin’s counterpart, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, is that he is anything but a “yes man.”

“[Biden] can’t not say what he thinks,” Brooks remarked. “There’s no internal monitor, and for Barack Obama, that’s tremendously important to have a vice president who will be that way. Our current president doesn’t have anybody like that.”

Brooks also spent time praising Obama’s intellect and skills in social perception, telling two stories of his interactions with Obama that left him “dazzled”:

Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a couple years ago, and I’m getting nowhere with the interview, it’s late in the night, he’s on the phone, walking off the Senate floor, he’s cranky. Out of the blue I say, ‘Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?’ And he says, ‘Yeah.’ So i say, ‘What did Niebuhr mean to you?’ For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say.

And the other thing that does separate Obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. And this is why he’s a politician, not an academic. A couple of years ago, I was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. And I throw in a few sentences attacking the Democrats to make myself feel better. And one morning I get an email from Obama saying, ‘David, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you’re only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better.’ And it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. And everybody who knows Obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception.

Brooks predicted an Obama victory by nine points, and said that although he found Obama to be “a very mediocre senator,” he was is surrounded by what Brooks called “by far the most impressive people in the Democratic party.”

“He’s phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team,” Brooks said. “I disagree with them on most issues, but I am given a lot of comfort by the fact that the people he’s chosen are exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose if we were in his shoes. So again, I have doubts about him just because he was such a mediocre senator, but his capacity to pick staff is impressive.”

Here’s a story from the Campaign Trail.  If you have one you’d like to share, email me at Info@SaddleBrookeDemocrats.org and I’ll share it with our readers.

Lately, I’ve been volunteering for the Tucson Obama for America office making phone calls and canvassing.Today I was making calls into the battleground state of New Mexico.The objective was to find and identify Obama supporters and to urge them to use one of the early voting methods.

The job was routine and I slowly made my way through the lengthy list of likely supporters in New Mexico.Toward the end of today’s list, I was making calls to rural New Mexico and in doing so I phoned Linda.

Linda lives with her husband in a rural area some seventy miles outside of Albuquerque. She answered with a confident voice and quickly made me aware that she supported Barack Obama for President and was anxious to vote for him.But, she confided, there was a problem you see, next week Linda has to start her chemotherapy and she’s afraid that it will make her too sick to vote.  In all the confusion of her medical appointments she hadn’t applied for a vote-by-mail ballot.

I suggested that there were a couple of ways to vote early this year. One of these ways would be for her to go to the county seat and vote in her County Recorder’s Office starting on October 18^th. “Oh, that may be too late because I have to go to Albuquerque pretty often starting next Tuesday (October 14^th) for my first chemo session. Could I go to the Albuquerque Recorder’s Office?”

I allowed that it would be best for her to vote in her own county. And she said “Too bad, but that’s forty miles in the wrong direction. I really, really want to vote. It’s so very important this year, we can’t do this (elect a Republican) again.”

As our conversation continued, I suggested that she call her County Recorder’s office and have a vote-by-mail ballot sent immediately. “Oh, I need to get one for my husband too, he’s so worried that he’ll keep putting it off till it’s too late.” She continued; “thanks for the suggestion, I’ll call them just as soon as we hang up.”

We then talked some more. I learned that she’s a fifth grade school teacher so she has a good health insurance policy. But paradoxically health care is one of her prime concerns and it is one reason (among many) that she supports Barack Obama for President. We closed our conversation and I wished her all the best and hoped that her chemotherapy would be successful and would not make her as sick as she feared.

As you can imagine, I felt real good about this call. She really appreciated the information and I appreciated her determination to elect Barack.

Huffington Post, October 10th, 2008

John McCain sought to walk back some of the hostility that he and his crowds have projected towards Barack Obama in recent days, saying he wanted to run a respectful campaign and urging his supporters to think of Obama as a decent person.

He was promptly booed.

After an attendee at his town hall said he was concerned about bringing up a child under a president who “cohorts with domestic terrorists such as [Bill] Ayers,” McCain didn’t take the bait. Rather, he sought to calm the questioner’s obviously emotional tone.

“[Senator Obama] is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared about as President of the United States,” he said, before adding: “If I didn’t think I would be one heck of a better president I wouldn’t be running.”

The crowd groaned with disapproval. Later in the townhall McCain was pressed again about Obama’s “other-ness” and again he refused to play ball.
“He is a decent family man and citizen that I just have disagreements with on fundamental issues,” he said.

The episode reflected the intensity of the anger that many McCain-Palin supporters have for Obama — anger that was stoked, in large part, by McCain itself. It also underscored just how difficult a situation McCain has walked himself into. Hours before he attempted to calm nerves, the Senator’s campaign sent out a statement to reporters defending the remarks of its crowd members.

More….

Anger Is Crowd’s Overarching Emotion at McCain Rally

Here is more from the Washington Post….

WAUKESHA, Wis., Oct. 9 — There were shouts of “Nobama” and “Socialist” at the mention of the Democratic presidential nominee. There were boos, middle fingers turned up and thumbs turned down as a media caravan moved through the crowd Thursday for a midday town hall gathering featuring John McCain and Sarah Palin.

“It is absolutely vital that you take it to Obama, that you hit him where it hits, there’s a soft spot,” said James T. Harris, a local radio talk show host, who urged the Republican nominee to use Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and others against him.

“We have the good Reverend Wright. We have [the Rev. Michael L.] Pfleger. We have all of these shady characters that have surrounded him,” Harris bellowed. “We have corruption here in Wisconsin and voting across the nation. I am begging you, sir. I am begging you. Take it to him.”

The crowd of thousands roared its approval.

In recent days, a campaign that embraced the mantra of “Country First” but is flagging in the polls and scrambling for a way to close the gap as the nation’s economy slides into shambles has found itself at the center of an outpouring of raw emotion rare in a presidential race.

“I’m mad! I’m really mad!” another man said, taking the microphone and refusing to surrender it easily, even when McCain tried to agree with him.

“I’m not done. Lemme finish, please,” he said after a standing ovation. “When you have Obama, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run the country, we have to have our head examined.

“It’s time that you two represent the rest of us. So go get ‘em.”

The crowd burst into loud chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” More…

FiveThirtyEight.com, October 10th, 2008

This is pretty interesting from the Washington Post.  Norm Coleman who is locked in a bitter battle for a seat in the United States Senate with Al Franken, decided that he did not want to appear on the same stage as the Republican nominee for President.

[Norm] Coleman told reporters that he would not be appearing at a planned rally with McCain this afternoon. Could it be McCain’s sliding polling numbers in Minnesota? His attacks on Obama? Coleman said he needs the time to work on suspending his own negative ads.

“Today,” he said, “people need hope and a more positive campaign is a start.”

There are at least three groups of Republicans that might have an interest in distancing themselves from John McCain. Firstly, purple-state moderates like Coleman and Gordon Smith who don’t like the campaign’s tone. Secondly, the anti-bailout economic populists in the House who might be looking ahead to 2010 and 2012. And thirdly, true conservatives who never trusted McCain that much to begin with.

Far more so than Obama, McCain is dependent on the goodwill of fellow Republicans. With McCain having opted for public financing, RNC funds are an important part of his advertising budget. Because he’s way behind Obama on McCain-branded field offices and ground operatives, he is depending on assistance from state and local party organizations. Republican enthusiasm lags behind that of Democrats, and so volunteer resources are scarcer; conservative activists will need to decide if they’re going to make phone calls to support McCain or to help save their local Republican Congressman.

The further that McCain falls in the polls, the worse these conflicts become. And it won’t help when the campaign is putting out statements like this one (McCain “blew up” the bailout?) and this one (it’s Obama’s fault that some very small minority of McCain supporters have taken to making violent statements?), which won’t pass the media’s smell test and reek of stress, sleep deprivation, and low morale in Crystal City.