This evening's Rescue Rangers are Louisiana 1976, jlms qkw, HansScholl, dopper0189, BentLiberal and ItsJessMe, with jennyjem spinning around in the editor's chair. Wheeeee!
The diaries up for rescue tonight are:
While the warmongers beat their chests over Georgia, ignatz uk writes about a brewing humanitarian crisis in a forgotten corner of the world in 160,000 refugees at risk as Tamil Tigers face defeat. (HansScholl)
What happens when former prisoners of war play soccer against the forces occupying their country? Read all about it in gjohnsit's Games of Life and Death. (BentLiberal)
Construction is underway on the Big Tent in Denver. Hosted by Daily Kos, ProgressNow, and The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, the Big Tent will be the place to be for new media journalists, bloggers, and non-profit leaders covering the Democratic National Convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado has graciously given their building, parking lot, and untold hours of staff time to make this event a reality for the mass of bloggers descending upon Denver. The Alliance Center is one of only two double-LEED certified buildings in the world and 27 non-profit organizations currently call it home. They represent a range of educational and advocacy interests -- social justice, environmental protection, consumer awareness, public health, and cultural diversity.
In addition to resources like WiFi, podcast areas, Fat Tire beer, food, and much more for the registered bloggers, the Big Tent has a Digg Stage featuring national leaders and speakers like Van Jones, T. Boone Pickens, Carl Pope, Majora Carter, James Rucker, Donna Edwards, Donna Brazille, John Conyers, and our very own Markos Moulitsas. The growing schedule of speakers can be found at the Big Tent website. Can't make it to Denver? Don't have a Big Tent pass? No worries, you don't have to be in the tent to be a part of the tent. The Digg Stage will be streamed live, courtesy of UStream, on the Big Tent website, beginning with the Media Consortium's Live from Main Street Denver event this Sunday at 4pm MDT.
We'll be reporting from the Big Tent throughout the convention, so stay tuned to Daily Kos and The Big Tent website for the latest and greatest from Denver.
Yesterday I ranked Senate races per Rasmussen polls, based on the latest Louisiana Ras poll. Today, let me do a better version of that post, this time using the Pollster.com polling composites (a more accurate way to gauge the state of these races).
I've ranked them in order of likelihood of switching, including all races within 20 points:
State Incumbent Margin over challenger
NM Open (R) -26.3
VA Open (R) -25.3
AK Stevens (R) -18.2
NH Sununu (R) -10.6
CO Open (R) -6.4
MS Wicker (R) +1.5
MN Coleman (R) +6.8
OR Smith (R) +7.6
GA Chambliss (R) +7.7
NC Dole (R) +8.7
KY McConnell (R) +12.1
ID Open (R) +12.5
ME Collins (R) +12.9
NJ Lautenberg (D) +12.9
TX Cornyn (R) +13.8
LA Landrieu (D) +15.2
OK Inhoffe (R) +16.3
IA Harkin (D) +17.2
KS Roberts (R) +19.6
So there are 14 Republican-held seats that are more endangered than Louisiana. New Jersey, always such a tease, is actually close than Louisiana, though Republicans seemed to have wised up to the Garden State's shenanigans. Too bad. The more money they sunk into NJ, the less money they'd have to try and hold those other 14. And there are signs that Oklahoma may be more competitive.
Bottom line? NM, VA, AK, and NH look like solid pickups. Colorado is shoring up, likely (D) in my book. I think we pull off Mississippi, which gets us to six.
If the elections were today, I think that's where things would settle. Can we get four more from that list in the next 2 1/2 months to get to a Lieberman-proof 60? I'm increasingly optimistic. It's not just the favorable political climate, but also this:
DSCC: $43 million
NRSC: $25.4 million
That's the Senate party committees cash on hand at the end of July. Democrats quite simply have the cash to create mass havoc behind enemy lines. Republicans barely have enough to keep the lights on at party HQ, much less actually play defense. While Republicans spent $2.8 million in July, Democrats have been barraging Republicans with over $8.5 million in ads and other spending.
The DSCC artillery assault has already begun, and Republicans have half the cash the Dems have to respond.
The new NBC/WSJ and CBS/NY Times polls are out and there are no radical changes from yesterday's poll tightening. As previously noted, we pay special attention to media polls because of their ability to drive narrative. (For a complete view of all the polls, see pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com.)
One narrative that seems clear as a short term gain and long term pain: McCain is perceived as running a negative campaign.
By a nearly six-to-one margin, voters say Republican presidential candidate John McCain is running a negative campaign against his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
Nearly three in 10 voters, 29%, pointed to McCain as the candidate running a negative campaign, compared to just 5% who said Obama is running a negative campaign. McCain’s 29% rating is the highest of any one candidate in the previous two presidential elections according to the WSJ/NBC News survey.
In October 2004, 15% of voters identified both President George W. Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry as negative campaigners. In July 2000, 8% identified Bush as a negative campaigner, while 13% said Vice President Al Gore was a negative campaigner.
However, 41% of respondents said neither McCain nor Obama is running a negative campaign, while 19% said both men are guilty of using negative tactics.
CBS/NY Times Presidential choice 8/15-19/08 (7/31-8/5/08) (7/7-14/08)
Barack Obama 45 (45) (45)
John McCain 42 (39) (39)
For CBS/NY Times, it's 45 (45) Obama, 42 (39) McCain, also a tightening. The enthusiasm gap is 48-24 (guess who), and 28% of McCain's supporters are either 'he's the GOP nominee' or anti-Obama. And like the NBC/WSJ poll, more people perceive McCain as negative on Obama than positive on McCain. From NY Times (my bold):
There were indications that the more negative tone Mr. McCain adopted this summer could prove risky. Attempts by Republicans and the McCain campaign to cast Mr. Obama as elitist, or out of touch, do not seem to have moved popular opinion much yet against the Democrat, but they appear to have led more voters to view Mr. McCain as a negative campaigner.
Obama leads 20 points with 18-34s, McCain leads by 1 with everyone else.
Back to NBC/WSJ: Hillary Clinton's voters are half the 13% undecideds. See Ruth Marcus:
It's not that Obama has a problem with female voters. To the contrary, he does significantly better among women than among men. It sounds paradoxical, but the campaign, lagging badly among white men, may have its biggest growth potential among female voters. Women, especially women without a college education, tend to make up their minds later. Recent polls show twice as many women as men are undecided.
77% still think McCain will follow Bush's policies. Not good for McCain.
In any case, with both polls, there's a 3 point Obama lead, well within the MoE (usually +/- 3). That feels about right. McCain, as noted throughout this week, is consolidating his (smaller) base).
McCain has given them something to think about this summer: Obama. And Obama hasn't returned the favor. He hasn't defined McCain in a visceral way, yet. He hasn't demonstrated that he can connect with working class white voters, although voters do find him empathetic enough. He can do both of these at the convention, and there are indications that he's doing the former in states with advertising.
With the convention coming up, there's lots of upside for Obama to do the same, and more talk about Lieberman for McCain. Now, that may be a head fake to distract and get some attention away from Obama's VP, and it would severely hurt with the religious right. But the fact is the next week belongs to Obama. We'll see what he does with it and how well the numbers look afterwards. McCain has built up some significant negatives, he's still tied to Bush, and the economy is still the driving force in this election. Think about what that means in the long run. From NY Times:
Slim majorities said neither candidate had yet made clear what he would do as president, suggesting that both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain need to use their conventions to provide voters with a better sense of their plans for addressing the deteriorating economy, high energy prices, access to health care and national security.
Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is still closely associated with the deeply unpopular President Bush: nearly half of those surveyed said they expected him to continue the Bush administration’s policies if he is elected president. But voters, by a wide margin, view Mr. McCain as better prepared to be president than Mr. Obama, and as more likely to be an effective commander-in-chief.
My read is that McCain is spoiling his own brand with independents in order to consolidate his own base (my prediction from way back was that he can't have both) while the Democrats take their time to make up their mind. We will see what happens, starting with the next eight days, but I don't think this is great news for McCain no matter how the media spin goes. For all his vaunted "great couple of weeks" McCain is still stuck in the low 40's and has an unenthusiastic base behind him (one that's smaller than Obama's.)
Plus, yesterday's LA Times/Bloomberg and Q-poll both show Obama winning with indies, and McCain is perceived as a negative camapigner closely associated with the unpopular George Bush (CBS/NY Times: 47% think he'll continue Bush's policies but only 9% want him to. 48% want him to be less conservative.)
Finally, it would seem this year, the Obama campaign, as has been posted at fivethirtyeight.com, is investing in the ground game rather than blowing their wad on negative ads with limited effect, the way McCain did.
Can McCain win? Maybe. Obama still has plenty of work to do, and there are no guarantees (and, in fact, the real campaign starts Monday) but McCain might just have hit his ceiling with these polls while Obama still may have a lot of upside.
Note on CBS poll: Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones.
Stevens' gamble for an early trial suffered its first setback, when a judge refused a motion to move the trial to Alaska.
Sen. Ted Stevens cannot move his corruption trial from Washington to his home state of Alaska, a federal judge ruled Wednesday in a decision that could hamstring the powerful Republican's re-election bid [...]
Stevens, 84, had hoped to stand trial by day and campaign on nights and weekends. In a state where he is known as ''Uncle Ted,'' he could have faced a more sympathetic jury. Stevens was named the Alaskan of the Century in 2000, the Anchorage airport bears his name, and he has brought billions in federal aid to the frontier state.
Wednesday's ruling puts a damper on his campaign plans. Stevens asked for, and received, an unusually speedy trial that he hopes will clear his name before voters go to the polls. But with the trial in Washington, Democrats will have the state largely to themselves while Stevens is tethered to a defense table in the weeks leading up to the November election.
There's still about three weeks for Stevens to withdraw from the race. He'd have to do it after next Tuesday's primary, or one of his no-name primary challengers might end up being the nominee. But if he does it between next Wednesday and September 17-ish (give or take a day), state Republicans can replace him with however they want.
But the defense also rejected an offer by the judge to hold trial only four days a week so Stevens could spend more time in Alaska. The deal would've delayed the verdict, and the overriding Stevens bet seem to be that acquittal will boost his electoral prospects. So given that they've decided for early decision over more time at home, it suggests that Stevens intends to stick it out to the bitter end.
And if he's convicted? Who cares? It wouldn't be any worse than the big, double-digit deficit he currently faces against O2B Democrat Mark Begich.
Leaving aside the idea that illegal immigrants are enjoying the best medical care that this country can offer, this is a shocking admission from John McCain...from a town hall meeting earlier today:
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Senator McCain I truly hope you get the opportunity to chase Bin Laden right to the gates of hell and push him in as you stated on your forum. I do have a question though. Disabled veterans, especially in this state, have horrible conditions [...] My son is an officer in the Air Force, and I am a vet and I was raised in a military family. I think it is a sad state of affairs when we have illegal aliens having a Medicaid card that can access specialist top physicians, the best of medical and our vets can't even get to a doctor. These are the people that we tied yellow ribbons for and Bush patted on the back. If we don't reenact the draft I don't think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.
JOHN MCCAIN: Ma'am let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said and thank you and I am grateful for your support of all of our veterans.
Someone is sending out fake text messages to people's cell phones claiming to announce Obama's veep pick. Some say it's Clinton, others Gore, and they look like this:
"Dear supporter, today our campaign joins in a historic partnership with Al Gore. Together we will move America forward. Yes we can."
The messages seem to come from 62262, which is the Obama text number. I don't know how easy or hard it is to spoof text messages, but someone is doing it.
Here's a new ad, Three Times, from the Obama campaign, scheduled to air in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia beginning today.
The GOP has just released the theme of their upcoming convention.
Country First: 2008 Republican National Convention to Highlight Service, Reform, Prosperity and Peace
In other words, they intend to focus like a pack of frickin' laser-beam equipped sharks on everything they don't provide.
Maybe I'm misreading this. It could be an example of the kind of literary inversion John Kennedy used in his "Ask not," speech. Maybe what they meant to say was "For the first time in our country, Republicans will give a damn about service, reform, prosperity, and peace."
Otherwise, there's the problem of a party that's left us with two open-ended wars bragging about "peace." The party that's left us with an unprecedented level of corruption and cronyism talking about "service" and "reform." And the party that's generated the worst economy in thirty years while running up a tab that our great-great grandkids will still be paying talking about "prosperity."
Speakers for Monday night, which will focus on "Service," will include Joe Lieberman demonstrating his ability to serve any forum that will feed his petty ego. Lieberman will be scheduled on the same evening as his war buddy Dick Cheney and official Lil' Abner Mattress Testing Award Winner, George W. Bush.
Tuesdays "Reform" brings Rudy Giuliani to talk about how you can reform law, order, and heroism to mean anything you want. And 9/11. Lots and lots of 9/11.
Speaking on "Prosperity" will be Cindy McCain, who will explain the traditional Republican means of getting by in hard times: inherit millions from your daddy. Cindy will demonstrate her pity for the middle class workers struggling to get by on three million a year, and for the poor who must survive with no more than two vacation homes.
And finally, John McCain will be there on Thursday night to focus on (I'm not kidding) "Peace."
Here’s hoping he gets enough publicity that we all become thoroughly sick of him.
But here’s the real secret about Taking on the System: It’s not about Markos, or even blogging, at all. It’s about you. About us. About people who find each other, who collaborate and share, and who trade war stories and strategies and inspiration in the furtherance of a goal that's bigger than any one of us.
It’s the story of people who join together as co-creators, people who make things happen, and the methods they use to change their slice of the world. It’s a book about people who refuse to stay in their place, or to shut up, or accept no for an answer.
In short, it's about finding your passion and your niche and acting upon it.
What Markos has done in Taking on the System is celebrate the democratization of media and culture – something that we live every day at Daily Kos – by telling the stories of unlikely real-life heroes who are blazing trails in collaborative self-determination. From the grassroots activists who recruited Jim Webb (and flipped the Senate in the process), to the African-American activists and bloggers who wouldn’t rest until a nation’s attention was drawn to blatant injustice in Jena, Louisiana, Taking on the System is a collection of case studies on how everyday Americans can better their world by reinventing protest and redefining conventional narrative. Along the way, Markos draws lessons from personalities as disparate as Graeme Frost and Cindy Sheehan, Carol Shea-Porter and Fiona Apple, all of whom have in different ways used their resources and creativity to challenge conventional wisdom to change, bypass or convert the gatekeepers – or, in some cases, to make them irrelevant altogether.
Under ordinary circumstances, I’d give a straightforward review of the book, but I’ve had the privilege of reading every revision along the way, and I’ve come to adore this book the more I’ve read it. And it was a treat to watch Markos himself become inspired by the heroes he wrote about – people who, like him, often shot from obscurity to prominence, from feeling ineffective and powerless to daring to claim their own power and use it. As our community continues its journey together to reclaim the promise of democracy, I can think of no better practical guide or inspirational work than this salute to the father of modern organizers, Saul Alinsky.
This book is for you and about you, Kossacks, and for and about all of our allies in the new and unapologetic progressive movement—or, as Markos puts it in the acknowledgements, "everyone who gets off his or her ass to change the world."
(Come join Markos and other Bay Area Kossacks tonight at the official launch party, a benefit for Netroots Nation. Details on the where, when and how can be found in this morning's open thread).
NC-Sen: Another day, another steaming stack of stupid emanating from the smiling empty seat that is the very senior Senator from the great state of North Carolina.
Responding to criticism from her rather perceptive Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, that Sen. Dole spends remarkably little time in the state she purports to represent, Liddy had this to offer.
After her speech, Dole said she’s spent lots of time in North Carolina lately.
"Lately", eh? Senator, it would have been nice if you'd paid a modicum of attention to the state at, you know, some point in the last 35 years, when not running for the Senate.
But one can't have everything, I suppose.
Dole said she also supports drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, where drilling would have a small footprint that wouldn’t harm much wildlife.
"Even the caribou like to snuggle up to the pipeline," she said.
Indeed. Every caribou I have interviewed in the past six months has expressed his support for banging a big fat honking pipeline through his home, so as to give him warmth and comfort as he sleeps.
Would there was oil in New York City, so that I, too, could snuggle up next to a pipeline as I lay me down to sleep. I think some pipeline would look great in my apartment. Really tie the room together, you know.
The overall goal must be to cut reliance on foreign oil imported from nations run by the likes of Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, she said.
"A lot of that comes from people who don’t necessarily like us," Dole said.
Gee, it might help if our foreign policy had not been an outright fiasco of late, Liddy. And whose fault is that, anyway?
Amid Liddy's laments about gas price, by the way, she has given a boatload in tax breaks to Big Oil. Naturally, MoveOn is all over this:
AK-Sen: A hearing was held this morning in federal court in Washington, DC, to determine whether indicted Senator Ted Stevens would get to move his trial back to his home turf of Alaska.
Meanwhile, the Anchorage Daily News notes the role of new media in affecting public opinion on the Stevens scandal, to the point where new media are a screening point for potential jurors in the Stevens case:
Several joint questions seek to find out if potential jurors are political active or read about politics, especially the insider Capitol Hill publications. Do they listen to talk radio, read political blogs or go to Internet forums? The government, in particular, wants to know if they read the conservative Drudge Report or the liberal Huffington Post online.
Apparently, even Bush's Justice Department thinks reading Daily Kos is OK.
NH-Sen: Jeanne Shaheen is cooking with gas, as she seeks to unseat incumbent Republican John Sununu. Per Rasmussen:
Shaheen (D) 51 (50)
Sununu (R) 40 (45)
Ras' 3-poll average puts the race at 51-41, while Pollster's average has it at Shaheen 52.6%, Sununu 42%.
Shaheen's double-digit lead has remained remarkably consistent this cycle, and she has proven to be a formidable candidate.
House Races
OH-15: Here's the first ad of this cycle from Democratic candidate Mary Jo Kilroy, as she seeks to take the open seat she nearly won in 2006 against incumbent Deborah Pryce.
MN-03: The Minnesota blogs have named this "Ashwin Madia Blog Day", in honor of a fine progressive candidate (and Netroots Nation attendee) in Minnesota's Third District.
If you'd like to learn more about Madia's candidacy on Madia Day, check out MN Blue or MN Publius.
WY-AL: As we noted last night, Wyoming's Republican State Treasurer Cynthia Lummis has won her primary in the state's at-large district.
The Hotline thought her primary opponent, Mark Gordon, was the more formidable of the two:
The party's been searching for a way to stem the growing Dem tide in the region, and a return to its libertarian roots may be the answer. In addition, his profile as a rancher seems to be a better match against '06 nominee Gary Trauner (D) than ex-Treas. Cynthia Lummis (R), with her years of gov't service, can provide.
The most recent Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos shows Trauner leading Lummis, 44% to 41%.
WI-08: Meanwhile, Republican John Gard is still feeding the debunked myth (perhaps we should just start calling it an outright lie) that China is drilling off the coast of Cuba).
NY-25, NY-26, NY-29: Today is the pre-primary filing deadline for New York House candidates. We have no more than three terrific New Yorkers on the Orange to Blue list, and here's a golden opportunity to help them finish the pre-primary period with a bang. They are Jon Powers in NY-26, Eric Massa in NY-29, and Dan Maffei in NY-25.
Please head to the Orange to Blue ActBlue Page and give them a little (or a lot!) of love, as they head towards election day.
"Barack Obama said he would consider embracing a single-payer health-care system, beloved by liberals, as his plan for broader coverage evolves over time.
"If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system," Obama told some 1,800 people at a town-hall style meeting on the economy.
Barack Obama is getting praise from Nashville, courtesy of one big, patriotic country star.
Toby Keith, perhaps best known to non-country audiences for his post-Sept. 11 song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue," says he's a Democrat, and was impressed by the senator from Illinois.
Keith has said in the past that the 2002 song — which included lines aimed at the Taliban like "we lit up your world like the Fourth of July" — was more patriotic than pro-war.
Wouldn't it be nice if we really had a "liberal media"?
Giuliani to keynote Republican convention. I can't wait to see what drinking games are devised for that one. And no, "9/11" shouldn't be one of the drink markers. We don't want a rash of alcohol poisoning that night. Then again, maybe he's McCain's veep nominee, which would be totally awesome.
Aren't you glad we kicked Lieberman out of the Democratic Party? Otherwise, he'd be pulling his Zell Miller act as a Democrat.
Wait, what? NATO is in crisis because it didn't render aid to Georgia, which is not a NATO nation?
DC readers, Raising Kaine's Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox will be at Busboys and Poets (2021 14th) tonight promoting their book, Netroots Rising. The signing will be 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
New York has a pre-primary filing deadline for candidates tonight -- and wouldn't you know, the Orange to Blue list has three New York candidates on it: Dan Maffei, Eric Massa, and Jon Powers.
Maffei's fundraising has been dominating his Republican opponent for this open seat. But Massa and Powers face tough opponents. In the primary, Powers faces Jack Davis, a self-funding multi-millionaire who's engaged in a string of dirty campaign tactics and who on the issues is exactly the kind of Democrat we don't want to see elected. Meanwhile, for the general election, Massa faces Shotgun Randy Kuhl -- and if a Republican incumbent who's threatened his wife with a shotgun doesn't make you want to win, I don't know what will.
Powers' need is immediate: He faces a so-called Democratic opponent with bottomless pockets and a willingness to sink to the bottom of the slime pit in campaigning. We do not want Jack Davis in the House at all, let alone with a (D) next to his name.
As for Massa, he doesn't just face a Republican incumbent, he's being advertised against by Freedom's Watch. They've been on the radio in the district for a while, and a couple weeks ago the DCCC made an answering buy -- but Massa's campaign recently heard that Freedom's Watch is inquiring about buying TV time. Massa will need a lot of help to be able to answer Freedom's Watch].
These candidates are true friends of the netroots. They attend Netroots Nation, they post diaries here -- but more importantly, they're with us on the issues. We couldn't do better than to put Maffei, Massa, and Powers in Congress.
If you have a few dollars to spare, today is a great time to give since tonight's filing gives these candidates another chance to show big donors and the DCCC that they're doing what it takes and deserve further support.
U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the first African-American woman to represent Ohio in Congress, has died after suffering a brain aneurysm, said sources familiar with the situation.
She was removed from life support at 12:19 p.m. at Huron Road Hospital, the sources said.
Tubbs Jones, 58, served as a Cuyahoga County judge and prosecutor before succeeding U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes. She has served five terms in Congress and was expected to easily win her sixth in November.
Our hearts go out to her family and friends.
Update: Mixed reports, apparently. Plain Dealer reporting she has died, CNN saying no, her doctors at a press conference are saying she's in critical condition, according to commenters.
In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?
According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.
Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."
No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?
Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, is reported to have suffered an aneurysm and is not expected to recover, according to CBS affiliate WOIO in Cleveland.
WOIO also reported that the congresswoman is on life support at this time.
The station reported today that she was transported overnight to Huron Hospital in Cleveland after police found her in her car last evening.
There's an ongoing discussion in ClevelandEgghead's recommended diary as well.
The Daily Kos community extends best wishes to her family, friends and constituents during this difficult time.
So over at the post announcing the launch of my book, I saw a couple of people freaking out -- freaking out!!!! -- that McCain has the lead in some national polls.
So I sauntered over to Pollster.com to see what all the hoopla was about, and clicked through to their national polls page. Then I rolled my eyes when I saw that the poll causing such aneurysms was ....
A Zogby poll.
Some people are frackin' hopeless. Really. At the same time, a new Q-poll has Obama up five, Gallup has him up three (after being tied a couple of days ago), Ras has him up two, as does Bloomberg/Times.
Look, the race is tightening at the national level, but it's much less tight when you look at the state-by-state numbers that, you know, actually decide the presidency. So while it's not exactly a cakewalk, freaking out over single polls from shitty, discredited pollsters like Zogby is pretty pathetic.
We've got the veep announcements and the conventions to get through, and then the race will start in earnest. Be zen. Freaking out over crappy pollsters is just lame. Keep your eye on the composite -- Obama still leads that by 1.4 percent -- and maintain perspective -- McCain has never crossed the 45 percent threshold while Obama bobs between 45 and 50.
I'll be officially worried when McCain shows the ability to break that barrier of support. If he suddenly starts hovering in the upper 40s, then we might have trouble. But ultimately, this is a state-by-state battle. And in the electoral college fight, Obama still has a solid lead -- without even taking into account the ground machine Obama is building (pollsters aren't).
