A Peek Into The Machine

I just came across an astonishing interview on The Ed Show with Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell about the potential Specter-Sestak primary. It's a combination of a threat, Newspeak, muddled and often contradictory logic, and a depiction of how the spoils system works in government, particularly a machine state like Pennsylvania. It's really something, and it looks almost staged, like an infomercial designed to bash Sestak's chances in public. Here's a transcript.

Schultz: Do you think Joe's got a shot?

Rendell: I'm an admirer of Joe Sestak. I'm going to work hard to get him re-elected when he runs for Congress next year, not for the Senate. Joe should not run for the Senate in the Democratic primary, he'd get killed. And let me tell you why he'd get killed. Number one, Arlen Specter's been going around PA for three decades, as the Senator. He goes into every one of the 67 counties each and every year, and he holds town meetings, and he does constituent service, and he's never asked whether people are Republican or Democrat. Last three weeks or so, we've been having regional conferences with elected Democratic Party chairs, and elected Democratic officials, in every region of the state. It's unbelievable how many of them know Arlen personally, and admired him and supported him, even though he was a Republican in the past. You can't buy that, and you can't overcome that in one campaign. It's been thirty years. Number two, Arlen Specter will raise two, three, four times as much money as Joe Sestak. Number three, Arlen Specter has the support of the President and the Vice President, a President who's got a 90% approval rating among registered Democrats in Pennsylvania. Joe Sestak does not want to be one of the candidates who ran against Bob Casey in the Democratic primary, when the whole governmental establishment was for Bob Casey. He doesn't want to be marginalized, he doesn't want to get 15, 18%. Joe should run for Congress again, establish some seniority, his time will come. He's a terrific guy, his time will come, but it's not this year.

Schultz: Governor, you're very strong with that answer tonight. It almost sounds as if Joe Sestak would be making a fool of himself if he were to try this. Would you go that far?

Rendell: Well, I wouldn't say making a fool of himself, of course, Joe's a terrific guy, and he's got great credentials. But he's being talked into it by people on the extreme of the party, and they're good people, and they care about the right issues, but they don't represent the broad slice... this is a conservative state. I know people shake their heads when I say that, but the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania is more Bob Casey's party than it is Ed Rendell's party. I won because I was a great regional candidate, Ed, and I won re-election because I think I did a good job. But this, our Democrats are middle-of-the-road Democrats, with the exception of the Southeast. And Arlen Specter appeals very much to them. And it's not so much who I support, or who Bob Casey supports, it's all these party chairmen and all these elected officials that Arlen's been taking care of for years. And most people think that Arlen's supported our constituencies, and he has, over the years.

Schultz: So the infrastructure of the party in PA, would, no matter what side it is, is going to be with Arlen Specter. So the question begs, is anybody willing to step up and tell Joe Sestak, don't do this? That we've got a good enough guy, that he's gonna be good on the issues? Because Mr. Sestak was on this program, and the point that he made, he didn't like the idea that there was someone in the party, including yourself, including the President and the Vice President, that were willing to anoint Arlen Specter because he'd been around for a long time.

Rendell: Well, we anointed Bob Casey because he was a good candidate and he had been around for a long time, even though he was a young age, he started very young. Ed, it's not a question of anointing. In the end, people decide, not me, not even the President. People decide. But when they hear from the President that we need Arlen Specter. When people understand that Arlen Specter single-handedly saved the stimulus program for this country and put his political rear end on the line, when they understand that ten billion dollars more for NIH, to help us do research on every incredible disease that we're facing as a human race. People understand, and they like Arlen Specter and they understand that he's who the President wants. Look, I'm the last person to tell Joe not to run, because people told me not to run when I decided to run for Governor, because no one from Philadelphia had been elected since 1914 as Governor. So I'm not about to say to someone don't run. But I think Joe should think about what Arlen has done, the things that, the alliances that he's made over the years, the constituent services operation that has that's second to none, and the fact that he does have the support of Democrats, particularly the President.

Schultz: Well, labor has told me that they're not going to sit this thing out. Now, would this competition make Arlen Specter a better Democrat when it comes to voting on Employee Free Choice Act, free trade issues, and also health care reform? What about those three?

Rendell: Well, it's interesting. Both Joe Sestak and Arlen Specter are trying to broker a compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act, because they know they're aren't enough votes right now. There are at least, and you know this better than I do, Ed, how many Democratic Senators will not vote for the Employee Free Choice Act as is?

Schultz: Well, they're a little nervous about it, there's no question about that. But I think-

Rendell: Arlen and Joe are both trying to make some changes in the Act so that everyone can support it so they can have a broad base of support. So I think Arlen Specter has been for our constituents for the longest time. You know he's been called a RINO, a Republican in name only, and in fact there's a lot of truth to that. He's always been there for poor people, for working people. And he's been there for labor! He ran against a good Democratic Congressman, Joe Hoeffel in the 2004 election, and organized labor was for Specter. Arlen is going to do the right thing on the Employee Free Choice Act, just like he did on the stimulus. He's going to try and broker a compromise. Ironically, Joe's doing the same thing in the House. So, look, these guys are very much the same. Joe Sestak's not a liberal Democrat either.

Schultz: No, he's not. But he is better to labor, and he is, wants a public option on health care, and he is not the free trader that Arlen Specter has been. I think your analysis and your take is great, you know, I don't want to go against you on anything. I always want you on my team. You've got Pennsylvania down, there's no question. But from my instincts, I think Americans are tired of the good old boy network. And I love competition, and I think competition makes people better, that was my Op-Ed last night...

Rendell: And you're right about that, except, we will lose a terrific Congressman. Joe Sestak runs against Arlen Specter, he's out of the Congress, after just two short terms. We will lose a terrific Congressman, and when he loses to Arlen, he fades into political obscurity. He's a guy who should be there for us. We don't have a deep bench among Democrats in Pennsylvania, we need Joe to stay in the Congress and do the work he's been doing.

So, Sestak would get killed because Arlen backslaps all the party chairs and everybody loves him, and he'll raise a lot more money (a veiled threat alluding to what Rendell will tell local donors) and the President wants him in. Then he says that the dirty hippies are pushing Sestak, but Pennsylvania Democrats are conservatives and Arlen Specter, a 30-year Republican, suits them fine, and Rendell (the noted hardcore lib) only snuck in on a technicality, but Arlen's a good guy because he invented the stimulus package himself and he's supported everything Democrats have supported forever, because he's the Dennis Kucinich of the Keystone State. And then Schultz asks why are you choosing for the voters, and Rendell disavows doing that at all - no telling somebody not to run from him - and proceeds to say that Specter's "who the President wants," even though it doesn't matter who the President wants because people decide.

Then Schultz asks whether the pressure is good or bad, and Rendell says that Sestak and Specter are exactly the same on Employee Free Choice, "same" being defined as the fact that one supported it and one said he wouldn't support it in the curent form. But it's all fine because a lot of Democrats don't want to pass the bill - including Specter - and Arlen will "do the right thing" on that because he loves poor people. Anyway, Joe Sestak and Specter are exactly the same - never mind the hippie morons - and when Schultz talks precisely about the areas where they differ and says that competition is healthy, Rendell makes the most open threat of the interview, warning that we'd lose Sestak's Congressional seat (a district Obama won 56-43), and Sestak will fade into oblivion (with a not-so-gentle push from Rendell, of course).

This pretty much is how things are run in Pennsylvania, as I understand it. Rendell recounts with pride how he cleared the field for Bob Casey in 2006. If Rick Santorum, sensing a loss, switched parties then, Eddie probably would have cleared the field for him, too.

Me, I support democracy. And if Ed Rendell wants Arlen Specter to beat Joe Sestak and stay in the Senate, he has a means to do that. He has a vote. We'll see how it turns out next year.

...C&L has the vid:

PA-Sen: Sestak's In

So says Brian Beutler:

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) is privately telling supporters that he intends to run for Senate, TPMDC has confirmed.

"He intends to get in the race," says Meg Infantino, the Congressman's sister, who works at Sestak for Congress. "In the not too distant future, he will sit down with his wife and daughter to make the final decision."

The move would constitute a primary challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), who intends to run for re-election in 2010, after having switched parties earlier this year.

Earlier today, a Sestak volunteer and contributor received a handwritten note from Sestak himself, announcing his intent to run and asking for a contribution.

This is spectacular. Nobody, least of all Arlen Specter, should have a free ride to the halls of power. My personal feeling is that Joe Sestak is superior to Specter in just about every way, but even if he were not, I would support this for just about any and every seat. Primaries are healthy. They keep politicians honest. They allow the people to make the key decisions on who to represent them, instead of having the options shoved down their throats.

FWIW, the Pennsylvania Democratic infrastructure looks to be supporting the incumbent. But if Sestak can raise enough money, I believe he can change enough minds. This is a really interesting development and it bears a lot of watching.

Who Will Save Us, You And I?

I'm typing right now in Pennsylvania. It has a population of 12.4 million. Maybe 7 million of those are over the age of 30 and eligible for the US Senate. There are 4.4 million registered Democrats. Maybe 3.5 million are over 30.

This state can't find ONE better Democrat than Chris Matthews? A guy who believes politics is a game for his amusement and whose sense of history has the depth of a bumper sticker?

Is this the best you can do, PA Democrats?

A Step Back

Before we close the book on John McCain's political career, do give a read to this compendium of the five biggest flops of the election. McCain's penchant for "crazy stunt politics" - inserting Joe the Plumber into the debate, or "suspending" his campaign to deal with the bailout bill - was ill-suited to the sobriety of the political moment. I think the most amusing part of the election is how the Obama campaign used McCain's love of "crazy stunt politics" to bait him into running hard in Pennsylvania when the state was already wrapped up.

1. Obama's campaign learns McCain has just $37 million entering October.

2. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says he's "nervous" that McCain is gaining ground.

3. Obama's team "leaks" an internal poll proving Rendell's anxiety.

4. McCain pulls back in other states to "flood" Pennsylvania with resources.

In the end, Obama won Pennsylvania by double digits.

The key here is the leaked poll. The Obama camp never leaked anything. They were mute. But suddenly, you have their Pennsylvania operation losing track of an incredibly damaging internal poll showing them only two percent abover mcCain, even as all the public pollsters were showing a far less competitive race. And then you have Ed Rendell anxiously running his mouth off in public about his desire to get Obama back in the state. None of it vibed with how the Obama campaign generally operated, and none of it vibed with what we actually seemed to know about the fundamentals in Pennsylvania. But the McCain campaign certainly leapt on it, and time and money that could have gone to Ohio and Colorado and Indiana instead went to Pennsylvania.

I think they were accounting for the fact that McCain rolling the dice in Pennsylvania was a "story" that he couldn't pass up - it would get on the news and allow for lots of discussion. Of course he'd take a swing at that pitch in the dirt. I don't know if you can extrapolate anything out of how Obama would deal with, say, North Korea based on this maneuver, but it was very strategic.

There's plenty of talk that suggests McCain had to shake up the race because running as your basic Republican couldn't have won. Except that, in the public perception, McCain wasn't a basic Republican. He matured into one during the election. Now, it's true that the Obama campaign did a decent job of defining him as a Bush Republican. But McCain had a hand in this as well:

But McCain barely even tried to take advantage of the fact that, when the race began, he wasn’t closely identified with the rotten GOP brand. Of course when he decided he wanted to be president, the first thing to do was to start running to the right in order to win the primary. That’s what you do. And that’s what he did. And it worked — barely — he won, albeit in a way that relied on a lot of independent and crossover votes. Then having won the primary, you want to tack a bit to the center. That’s how the game is played. And it’s especially how the game is played when your party’s image is terrible.

But McCain didn’t do it.

On the climate/energy/environment issues where he really had staked out an unusual position for a Republican, he moved right during the primaries and then moved even further right during the general election, embracing drilling and coal as the centerpiece of his agenda. He shed his image as a moderate on cultural issues with the Palin pick. And he didn’t make up for those rightward thrusts with anything else. Instead of trying to undue the damage to his brand that was caused by shifting right during the primaries, he compounded it by continuing to move right, closing the campaign by dogmatically insisting that run-amok inequality is the essence of America (or something).

I suppose he figured that he had to nail down the conservative base. But they turned out in roughly the same numbers for McCain that they did for George Bush, and it's not like he totally cleared the hurdle of skepticism about him. What McCain lost big was independents, which was supposed to be where he could draw his greatest support. This is why he only improved on Bush's numbers in the Appalachian region and the Deep South, where conservatism is another religion. The far-right strategy is a downward spiral.

It seems like there was another campaign that could have been run. Maybe it wouldn't have succeeded. But it might not have had the same consequences of failure.

I Knew My Keystone State Wouldn't Let Me Down

Pennsylvania called for Obama. New Hampshire too.

The whole Pennsylvania surge was based on a fantasy. There wasn't any way to really make it happen. Philly was always going to come out in huge numbers and Obama had solidified the rest of the state and lowered his deficits.

Looking extremely bleak for John McCain right now.

...the total as it stands is 103 for Obama to 34 for McCain.

Obama: ME, NH, VT, MA, CT, NJ, MD, DE, IL, DC
McCain: SC, KY, TN, OK

The Point Is To Delegitimize The Election

TPM Muckraker has a good rundown of the various voter suppression schemes that Republicans have attempted thus far this election season. Fortunately, most of them have failed to this point. Despite pressure from George W. Bush, the Justice Department has decided not to step in and challenge over 200,000 voter registration forms in Ohio that have not been checked against federal documents (in which case something as small as a typo could disqualify a voter). In Pennsylvania, a favorable ruling forces election officials to supply paper ballots to voters if half of the voting machines in a precinct malfunction on Election Day. Without this measure, long lines would have surely deterred people from voting.

And there are many more wins too, some through the courts, some through elections officials who stand up for justice. But as Zachary Roth notes, that's not quite the point from the Republican perspective.

Of course, the whole point of the voter-suppression game is to throw up as many gambits as possible, and hope that just a few succeed. And there's no way to measure the effect that even the unsuccessful ploys have in generating cynicism about the process itself, and thereby reducing turnout, to Republicans' advantage. So in a close election, it's still possible that voter suppression could make the difference -- as it may well have done in 2000.

But it's worth noting that -- thanks largely to Democratic control of the secretary of state's offices in some key states; the skepticism with which many courts have looked on efforts to put obstacles in the way of voting; and the role of voting-rights groups and the press in exposing the bankruptcy of Republican claims -- the nationwide GOP voter-suppression effort appears to have been far less successful than the party might have hoped.

It's true that we've done a better job ferreting this out this year. But Roth, while correct that suppression is often an end in itself, fails to capture the other element of this - the goal to delegitimize the election and create a "big lie" that a potential Obama victory is fraudulent. This will become accepted dogma on the right and will be returned to again and again to sap away at his public support. And if public confidence in elections becomes brittle, they become easier to steal - not to mention that more people become alienated from the process, leading to the very suppression that the GOP seeks.

Down To Pennsylvania

Now I'm going to have to call all my relatives. Thanks a lot, McCain campaign!

Pennsylvania will see a lot of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin next week.

The scheduling reflects McCain's tough electoral math. With some -- though by no means all -- advisers all but conceding Colorado, McCain would be forced to win a blue state in order to recoup the electoral votes. New Hampshire wouldn't give him enough, and Pennsylvania, the McCain campaign believes, is the most brittle of the remaining states. Public and private polls give Obama a double digit lead in the state, but McCain advisers believe that Obama is underperforming in the suburbs and exurban counties around Pittsburgh. Tensions between the two campaigns in the state is acute.

Pennsylvania doesn't have early voting, meaning that the McCain campaign is not starting from a deficit like in other states, and it's 82% white, a fairly high percentage, as well as one of the older states in the union (15%-plus over 65).

And so the dirtiest of dirty tricks are all manifesting themselves in Pennsylvania. The "B" lady who failed in her race-baiting effort to blame an assault on an African-American Obama supporter was in Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvania GOP - not an outside group, but the state REpublican Party - sent out this mailer aimed squarely at my grandparents:

"Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008," the e-mail reads. "Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let's not make a similar one this year!"

A copy of the e-mail, provided by Democratic officials, says it was "Paid for by the Republican Federal Committee of PA - Victory 2008."

It warns "Fellow Jewish Voters" of the danger of a second Holocaust due to the threats to Israel from its neighbors and touts Republican presidential candidate John McCain's qualifications over those of Obama.

The same spokesperson who's distancing himself from this mailer is the one who was feeding reporters the story of the campaign worker mugging.

And then, in the furthest stretches of Outer Wingnuttia, there's this:

A federal judge in Philadelphia last night threw out a complaint by a Montgomery County lawyer who claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was not qualified to be president and that his name should be removed from the Nov. 4 ballot.

Philip J. Berg alleged in a complaint filed in federal district court on Aug. 21 against Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission, that Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya.

Berg claimed that the Democratic presidential standardbearer is not even an American citizen but a citizen of Indonesia and therefore ineligible to be president.

He alleged that if Obama was permitted to run for president and subsequently found to be ineligible, he and other voters would be disenfranchised [...]

Surrick ruled that Berg's attempts to use certain laws to gain standing to pursue his claim that Obama was not a natural-born citizen were "frivolous and not worthy of discussion."

This guy was all over the map. He said Obama was born in Kenya AND an Indonesian citizen.

And previously, the state GOP sued the Secretary of State and ACORN, claiming that a clean election cannot be assured.

If you're looking for the trends reflecting the worst of the Republican Party, check out Pennsylvania for the next ten days.

... Nate Silver thinks McCain should abandon Pennsylvania as he has no shot there. Which would of course mean that he has no shot. Silver's advice is to hit New Mexico and New Hampshire hard, and defend Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio and North Carolina. The rest of the states he needs would presumably rise if his national poll numbers rose.

Yep, He Did Concede

After denying that they were giving up on states like Colorado and focusing on Pennsylvania, the McCain campaign essentially copped to it by reducing their ad buys in the Rocky Mountain State and four others:

Democrats who monitor advertising spending now put at five the number of states where Senator John McCain is reducing his advertising – New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Colorado, Maine and Minnesota.

In essence, Mr. McCain’s campaign has decided to spread the advertising time he bought for the upcoming week in those states over the next two final weeks.

While station managers in the affected states said they were not ruling out the possibility that Mr. McCain would pump money back in before election day, on Nov. 4, the move represents a stark reordering of priorities.

Democrats were predicting Mr. McCain would use the savings to increase his advertising in Pennsylvania and, possibly, Ohio and Florida, all of which have become that much more vital should Mr. McCain have to concede states like Colorado and Wisconsin.

This is probably happening because the RNC is pulling up stakes. They aren't stopping the creation of "hybrid" ads that they can help pay for because, as the McCain team spins it, they want the nominee to control message. He was doing so anyway. The RNC is going to try and hold the line and save the possibility for filibuster in the Senate.

As for why Pennsylvania and Iowa have become the final frontier for McCain, it's simple: they are at least an option:

*** McCain’s path to 270: So many pundits and analysts are wondering why McCain is continuing to push for Iowa and Pennsylvania, despite the daunting poll numbers in those two states. There are two reasons. First, he's run out of options. If you assume Colorado is gone and that Virginia is teetering, he has to find 270 EVs somewhere. Second, Iowa and Pennsylvania are two of the oldest states in the union, as far as the age of their populations. Both states have tons of seniors, and if McCain can turn things around again with seniors, he should see movement first in these two states. Simply put, the campaign doesn't have a lot of options; it's not worth attempting to hold states that get McCain to 250 or 260 electoral votes. The game is getting to 270, and Iowa and Pennsylvania may be his last hope at keeping a path to 270 alive.

That's pretty much it. They're more susceptible, it is likely, to the "experience" message, as well as any last-minute Jeremiah Wright sightings, as Nate Silver notes. But there's a big roadblock to this strategy: reality.

4,060,647
2,917,747
869,707

Those are the current numbers of registered and active Democrats, Republicans and independents in Pennsylvania. Democrats make up more than half the total -- 52 percent, in fact -- well outdistancing the Republican's 33 percent. Suppose that McCain were to split Pennsylvania's independents with Obama and win Republicans 92-8. He would need to carry 23-24 percent of Pennsylvania's Democrats to win the state; George Bush carried 15 percent.

As we reported yesterday, however, negative advertising does not seem to be a good strategy for winning over lapsed Democrats; on the contrary, Democratic solidarity has increased markedly in recent weeks, with Barack Obama now on target to win as much support among his party any Democratic nominee has in any recent election.

There's always the lawyer strategy, to delegitimize the election as somehow cooked up by ACORN, Bill Ayers and The Army of Nubians. And Pennsylvania not voting until Election Day means McCain is not in a huge hole as it stands right now. But I think we can be realistic about this. Hopefully Obama is pouring a lot of resources into the Keystone State, just in case. I know I'll be calling my family and telling them the election hinges on them.

McCain Concedes

I know we're supposed to be somber and work like we're 10 points down, but I don't know how else you can characterize this strategy, if it's accurate:

Most people top in the McCain campaign now believe New Mexico and Iowa are gone, that Barack Obama will win New Mexico and Iowa. They are now off the dream list of the McCain campaign. More interestingly, most top people inside the McCain campaign think Colorado is gone.

So they are now finishing with a very risky strategy. Win Florida. Win Nevada ... And here is the biggest risk of all -- yes they have to win North Carolina, yes they have to win Ohio, yes they have to win Virginia, trailing or dead-even in all those states right now. But they are betting Wolf on coming back and taking the state of Pennsylvania. It has become the critical state now in the McCain electoral scenario. And they are down 10, 12, and even 14 points in some polls there. But they say as Colorado, Iowa and other states drift away, they think they have to take a big state. 21 electoral votes in Pennsylvania, Wolf, watch that state over the next few weeks.

New Mexico and Iowa were always done; it's fine for McCain to concede those. But it doesn't leave him much of a path to victory, and giving up on Colorado leaves him with basically one path. The Upper Midwest is fine for Obama, and the Pacific Coast is fine. He's really sinking everything into Pennsylvania. And not ONLY Pennsylvania. McCain has to in addition pull off wins in 7 states that are tight right now:

Nevada, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia

If he took Pennsylvania he could afford to lose one or maybe even two of those - but the idea that McCain's going to come back in Pennsylvania doesn't seem plausible. The polling is extremely static:



Here's Markos:

That's remarkable consistency between the pollsters -- Obama between 52-54, and McCain between 38-41. There's nothing here to give McCain's campaign, or his supporters, hope that this strategy will pay off. Not to mention that they're investing so much time and money into Pennsylvania that it has given Obama an opening in places like Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, and so on. And Nevada is looking increasingly good -- pair up the Silver State with Missouri, Virginia, or North Carolina, and it matters little (for electoral purposes) what happens in Pennsylvania.

Indeed, the Nevada early voting is looking fantastic - 59% of the ballots have been filled out by Democrats, compared to 27% for Republicans.

I'm just not seeing what makes Pennsylvania the firewall state - perhaps it's this:

The state Republican Party filed an injunction Friday against Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes and ACORN, alleging a fair vote on Nov. 4 is impossible because of rampant voter fraud.

The injunction signals a step up in action against ACORN, which for weeks has been the recipient of attacks from the state GOP and John McCain's presidential campaign.

At a press conference in the Capitol, state GOP Chairman Bob Gleason Jr. said the sheer number of registrations submitted by ACORN has overwhelmed many county election offices and the state department has not provided the local bureaus with enough support.

"I am not confident we can trust the results of this election," Gleason said.

We all know this is absurd, completely absurd. But maybe it's the last thing McCain can cling to.

...considering Obama outdrew McCain by roughly 99,985 in Missouri, I don't think the Show-Me State is so safe, either. What an embarrassment of advance work two weeks before an election.

Sen. John McCain stopped in Columbia on Monday afternoon.

The Republican presidential nominee from Arizona landed at the Columbia Regional Airport around 12:30 p.m. As McCain disembarked from the plane, a man yelled, "Go get 'em, John."

McCain shook a few hands and embraced Christine Ellinger, the campaign's fourth congressional district co-chair.

Ellinger said McCain is going to tour Columbia businesses "and get to know people and what they're doing and daily life."

A crowd of about 15 people assembled outside the airport's fence to see him descend from the plane.

The New Battleground

With an uninspiring candidate, an enthusiasm gap and a host of fundamentals against them, obstruction and suppression is really all the Republicans have left. You can see exactly where they're worried from this story:

As Barack Obama tries to draw hundreds of thousands of new voters to the polls, Republicans are beginning to scrutinize registrants' eligibility as both sides draw a major battle line over voting rights.

Republicans are moving to examine surges in voter registrations in some states. A Republican lawyers group held a national training session on election law over the weekend that included campaign attorneys for Sen. John McCain and other Republican leaders. One session discussed how party operatives can identify and respond to instances of voter fraud.

Republicans said they are particularly worried about prospects for fraud in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and are beginning to comb thousands of new registrations in those states for ineligible applicants. In some cases the huge numbers threaten to swamp their efforts -- and those of state and local governments to verify and process applications.

Read: we're going to lose Virginia and Pennsylvania unless we invalidate hundreds of thousands of legal votes through bogus voter fraud claims. Both of the Secretaries of State in these commonwealths are Democrats, but of course the county boards of elections have more local control, as we've seen. And be prepared for this meme that the stress of all these new voters may break the system.

The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, which monitors elections, projects registrations this year will surpass the total from any previous single election year, building on momentum from the record 20 million registrations for the combined election cycles of 2004 and 2006. Newcomers helped drive turnouts for the Democratic primaries, which drew roughly 19.5 million more voters than in 2004, according to the Democratic National Committee.

"State elections systems have shown signs of stress, and there's a serious concern that they won't be able to handle the number of voters," said Wendy Weiser at the Brennan Center.

In Pennsylvania, where improper registrations have been a problem in past elections, state officials say rolls have increased by about 230,000, to 8.4 million, since the 2006 midterm elections. Some observers believe the large increase could invite more potential for voter-fraud problems, said Lawrence Tabas, general counsel of the state Republican Party. "When you get so many new registrations like that at record numbers...it's very difficult for people to monitor the validity of it," he said.

The roar of voter fraud will reach its loudest din in the next few months. The RNC has been laying the groundwork for this for over a year, and the power players on the right for longer than that. And we have a candidate whose entire strategy is predicated on inviting more people into the political process.

The McCain campaign is trying to let this happen without their imprint on it. Yet at that little St. Louis get-together which Digby wrote about last week included McCain's Election Day coordinator, Michael Roman.

Check out this bit of narrative setting from a member of the voter fraud brigade:

Ms. Mitchell warned about what she regards as a long pattern of abuses in registration by groups such as Acorn and their Democratic allies. "We're all for getting people involved in the process...and getting them to the polls," she said in an interview later. "What we're not for is registering fake people at fake addresses, and creating barriers to trying to identify voter fraud where it exists, which is everywhere. It's a growing problem, because of the professional vote-fraud denier industry."

She urged lawyers working on behalf of state and local party groups and campaigns to monitor new registrations. She also pointed out that Sen. Obama himself -- in his past life as a community organizer -- was "involved" with some of the groups that have been responsible for abuses in recent years.

That's right. Obama himself is personally stealing the election by writing "Mickey Mouse" on voter registration cards and then showing up at the polls in that hat with ears you get at Disneyland.

Interesting, too, that they're throwing the "denier" meme back in Democrats' faces.

There's no limit to my amount of worry about this. And as Digby has said, whether they can suppress enough votes to steal the election or not, they can delegitimize the election and run back every statement made about Bush v. Gore in reverse. They're very good at things like that. It comes with the lack of shame.

Rachel Maddow on Friedman Units

Rachel Maddow basically just namechecked Atrios on MSNBC and called the race a series of Friedman Units, where pundits and media types say "the next primary will be over!" and then nothing happens. This was the ultimate inconclusive result, the most annoying result, in Pennsylvania, 30-40 million to get a 10-point win with probably less than ten delegates in Clinton's favor. The media has a real desire to keep this thing going and hype up the "this is it!" nature of the next primary, and then nothing happens. I'm with Matt Yglesias - this has to end. There really isn't a whole lot more information that superdelegates are going to get. There's a saturation level that has been reached. We know the strengths and weaknesses of these candidates. We know what demographics they win against one another and what demos they lose. About half the Democrats in the country like Clinton and half like Obama. She's from the Northeast and he's from the Midwest, and they get a tilt in their favor in each of those regions. He can't knock her out because she's really good at campaigning, and she was swamped by him early because he's really good at campaigning. The level of competition is far higher here than it will be in the fall against John McCain, actually. So the superdelegates can make their choice. They could make it today.

And I agree with Stoller, we're going to be fine. Democrats forced a runoff, and came within a hair's breadth of winning, in a seat in the middle of Mississippi (MS-01) tonight, an R+10 seat. The "Clinton/Obama voters will vote for McCain if their guy doesn't win" polling is about as relevant in the middle of a hotly contested primary as a national Giuliani-Richardson head-to-head. There were high numbers for disafffected McCain supporters voting for Gore over Bush at the time. This is essentially a Parliamentary country among core party members, the kind who vote in primaries.

Obama lost the plot in the last several weeks, and Clinton capitalized with a fairly divisive campaign. He needs to get back on his feet in two favorable states. Obama has not lost a single state that shares a significant border with his home state of Illinois (Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri). His speech tonight was pretty much a replay of his 2004 DNC keynote, and he's trying to return to the themes on which he won early. If he wins those two states it will be very significant. But the superdelegates need to come out from under the rocks where they're hiding and end this.

Too Close To Call

That is not the words Sen. Clinton wanted to see 30 minutes after the polls closed. Still no hard numbers, but the exit poll information is kind of interesting. Bowers:

Polls have closed. The first exit poll can be found here. Quick multiplication of the gender crosstabs produces Clinton 52%--48% Obama. The first exits are usually adjusted, however. I can already see a problem where the exits claim that Philadelphia and its suburbs where only 29% of the electorate. Yeah, right.

The Philly metro region was expected to be about 40-45%. And Obama took the Philly suburbs, according to that same exit poll, by 62%-38% (and took the city by 69%-31%). Wow. This could be the nailbiter that I never thought we'd see in Pennsylvania.

Could the vaunted D-Day family straw poll (and I checked on all of them, they were practically all for Clinton) be somehow off?

...now we're moving into the "too early to call" territory, which means that there's a definitive lead for Clinton. Which we all knew, but Obama is doing better than expected. I don't think we'll see double digits tonight.

And the most key exit poll stat I noted was that 30% or so of the Clinton supporters who voted today thought that Obama would be the nominee. The voters are starting to get resigned to it. That's fairly key.

(the other thing is that the Philly metro area is fully 50% of the delegates, which means that the delegate counts could end up close to even. Hm.

...MSNBC just called it for Clinton with 3% of the vote in. That changed in a hurry. Now we'll have to see what the margin is. I'm headed to LA Drinking Liberally.

...Ambinder:

As polls close, here is one way to think about the margin of victory -- if Hillary Clinton wins.

She has no money.

More important than anything she'll do over the next few days, Clinton will try to use tonight's results to raise money through the net. (Notice the banner behind the stage at her victory party. It says HillaryClinton.com for a reason.)

We cannot have a nominee who is broke between now and August. For Hillary Clinton to win she'll have to spend every cent running against Obama. That means not one thin dime spent against McCain until Labor Day. That's unacceptable.

Let's see what the numbers are. But it's telling that Terry McAuliffe mentioned HillaryClinton.com in the first paragraph with MSNBC. They don't have a penny.

Heavy Turnout

This blog has some good on-the-ground information in the Philadelphia area, and the reports around the state share one thing in common - the turnout is off the charts.

Pennsylvania is on its way to the record turnout that election officials have been predicting for weeks, according to poll workers from across the state.

Election officials were reporting extremely heavy voter activity in many of the state’s 67 counties throughout the morning, starting with long lines reported even before the polls opened at 7 a.m.

“Let’s just say it’s very busy,” said Joseph Passarella, the director of voter services for Montgomery County, sounding a little harried. “Our phones have been ringing since 6:15 this morning and have been ringing nonstop. We’ve never had a primary election this busy.”

Among the phone calls were people who wanted to vote in the primary but had not switched their registration to Democratic in time, Mr. Passarella said. Those people were told that they were not allowed to vote in the Democratic primary.

A slice of that may be the Rush-bots and their Operation Chaos, but really we're seeing a sea change in Pennsylvania. Montgomery and Bucks Counties are now majority Democratic, and elsewhere in the state the energy is very high. A voter group is trying to extend polling hours in Philadelphia. After all the nonsensical events of the past six weeks, I think we've pushed Pennsylvania far into the blue column in November. This is true for Iowa and New Hampshire as well. In the states where there was a real focus on retail campaigning, this extended primary had a huge and undeniable impact. In fact, the lack of one in Michigan and Florida was a good argument to hold new primaries.

D-Day Family Straw Poll

If my family, most of whom is over 60, is any indication, Hillary's going to win in a landslide in Pennsylvania today. My parents are both voting for her (in Bucks County, which Obama needs), and I know my paternal grandmother (Northeast Philly) is following suit. Not sure about my aunt and uncle in Bucks, or my cousins or extended family (my younger cousin is a classic young woman who normally wouldn't vote, the kind Democrats need to capture). My mother's family is in Johnstown, and my 80 year-old grandmother has been telling me she's undecided, but I think she's been stringing me along.

They've all been getting dozens of robocalls and mailers (Obama sent my parents a DVD) and are probably happy for this to be over.

I think the secret weapon for Obama today are all of those college towns in the Lehigh Valley and the Northeast part of the state. If they are organized and will actually turn out, we could see a close race.

Last-Minute Ad Blogging

I think I'm with Kevin Drum on this one, the latest ad from Hillary Clinton shows a retrospective of American challenges over 60 years, bin Laden's in it for half a second, and we shouldn't be so afraid of that. Clinton is not associating Obama with bin Laden the way Gephardt associated Dean with bin Laden in 2004, she's saying that the next President has all kinds of challenges and she's better prepared to face them. You can accept or reject that categorical (I reject it), but it's not an off-limits argument.



In fact, in the fall I'd be happy for Democrats to use bin Laden imagery LIBERALLY in their ads, as part of the argument that the diversion of Iraq took us away from finishing the job when we had Al Qaeda on the run, and we've offered a policy of retreat from Al Qaeda ever since, and the terrorist group is stronger than ever with a safe haven in the FATA region in Pakistan. This "bin Laden/ooga booga" reflexivity from Democrats has to stop.

The Obama campaign's response to this ad reflects this to an extent, but then has that addition of whining about the "politics of fear," when in fact the first half of their statement is the right answer, and constantly raising the "politics of fear" angle has the impression of sour grapes.

"When Senator Clinton voted with President Bush to authorize the war in Iraq, she made a tragically bad decision that diverted our military from the terrorists who attacked us, and allowed Osama bin Laden to escape and regenerate his terrorist network. It's ironic that she would borrow the President's tactics in her own campaign and invoke bin Laden to score political points. We already have a President who plays the politics of fear, and we don't need another."

I would have left it at the first half, and even created an ad with exactly that script. It happens to be true.

(I do think this shows a concerted effort to reach undecideds on the part of the Clinton campaign, showing to me that the race in Pennsylvania is fairly close. Obama actually finally broke 45% in a poll overnight, and Survey USA moved this back to 6 points. The internals show that massive turnout in the Philly region could make this even closer. Obama is not predicting a win, which is pretty wily, and he's likely right. But I think he's done a good job of expectations management in what is a tough primary for him demographically.

Pennsylvania Ceilings

A bit on Pennsylvania politics heading into the primary. It's certainly interesting that the Lehigh Valley could swing toward Obama, suggesting that he may be able to recreate Ed Rendell's primary victory over Bob Casey in the 2002 Governor's race. There are lots and lots of colleges right in that area (Obama got thousands to a rally at Muhlenberg, one of about 20 colleges up there I could name off the top of my head), so I'm not too surprised. Still, let's not get out of control here. Obama has not received above 45% in any public poll this entire month. While I don't necessarily think that every undecided will break for Clinton, clearly there's a ceiling that Obama has had trouble breaking through that number.

I do think a 6-8 point victory is possible, which wouldn't really help Clinton all that much. While she'll make the argument that she took yet another big state, the popular vote shift may not be all that large, and she can't catch him in pledged delegate totals. Obama is already going after McCain and running something akin to a general election campaign, which is smart. And he's doing it on economic grounds, which will help in November.

“John McCain went on television and said that there has been great progress economically over the last seven-and-a-half year years,” Mr. Obama said. “John McCain thinks our economy has made great progress under George W. Bush? How could somebody who has been traveling across this country, somebody who came to Erie, Pennsylvania, say we’ve made great progress?” [...]

“Here’s what happened since George Bush took office, here’s what John McCain calls great progress,” Mr. Obama said. “We went through the first period of sustained economic growth since World War II that saw incomes drop; 11 million more Americans don’t have health care; 2 million more Americans are out of work; millions of families are facing foreclosure. The poverty rate has gone up. You are working harder for less.”

“You’re paying more for tuition, you’re paying more for groceries, more at the pump. That’s what John McCain calls great progress,” Mr. Obama said. Later, he added: “Only somebody who spent two decades in Washington could make a statement as disconnected from the hard times that people are facing all across America.”

Obama's tour of Pennsylvania is not a waste of time for the general; he's making very good use of it. But I'd be shocked if it results in a primary victory on Tuesday.

Street Money

This story about Barack Obama refusing to give out "walking around money" to ward leaders in Philadelphia misses the point. There's all of this fist-clenching over whether Obama's refusal to dispense the street money is going to hurt his campaign without a recognition that this Presidential primary is big enough that Obama's campaign is not relying on the internal Philly machine to get out the vote. In fact, in a high-information primary like this such a strategy would never work. I don't think pressure from a ward leader would get a significant amount of Philadelphians out to vote for a preferred candidate; the turnout will be high so there won't be a lot of stragglers to find, anyway. Ward leaders didn't elect Bob Brady, who runs the entire city, against Michael Nutter in the mayoral primary. This is a 20th-century model on 21st-century politics, and making this into some kind of make-or-break decision for the Obama campaign is silly. The article even mentions Brady:

Before the 2002 state elections, a reporter watched two practitioners of the street-money arts in action: Campbell and U.S. Rep. Robert A. Brady, a ward leader and chair of Philadelphia's Democratic committee.

Brady was sitting in his campaign office with two of his political lieutenants. He reached into a desk drawer at one point and pulled out a $50 bill -- street money. Brady tore it in two and gave each man a half. Then the men made a bet: Whoever pulled in the most Democratic votes that day from his precincts would get both halves.

I would have thought it'd be notable to mention that Brady got 15% of the primary vote in 2007, in a local election you'd think would be tailor-made for the dispensation of street money. Don't act like 2008 Philly is like a scene out of "Gangs of New York." It's not.

Also, it's not like Obama isn't going to spend any money on GOTV otherwise. There are plenty of paid staffers that he's brought in, as well as robocalls and direct mail and vans to get people to the polls. The article makes it into a holier-than-thou kind of situation when he probably just wants to control his money and his message. What's wrong with that?

Casey v. Rendell, or Rendell v. Casey?

You know, every analysis I've seen of the Pennsylvania primary is the Obama has to re-run the Ed Rendell strategy from the 2002 gubernatorial primary against Bob Casey, when he won only 10 counties but ran up the score around Philly. Now that Rendell has endorsed Clinton and Casey has endorsed Obama, is that at all operative anymore? Since the players are on the EXACT opposite sides?

Meanwhile, considering that Obama is well ahead in North Carolina (here's a good analysis of that state) and may be more popular in Puerto Rico than everyone thinks (although the indictment of the governor who is supporting him might be a blow), I'm not sure that Pennsylvania matters all that much. But I'm glad Obama is going for it. I want to see a winner actually win instead of back into the nomination at the end.

Let's Be Optimists, Shall We?

If your only source of news is the cable shoutfest, you'd think that the Democratic Party was permanently fractured and unable to recover from this competitive primary between two evenly matched candidates. If you bother to read, you'd actually see that, at the same time as this primary, Democrats have increased their share of the electorate in party identification to their highest level since Bill Clinton's victory in 1992.

Pew says voters now favor the Democrats by a "decidedly larger margin" than the previous two election cycles.

Voters who identify themselves as Independents actually occupy first place at 37 percent, followed by Democrats at 36 percent and Republicans at 27 percent. That's a 3 point gain for Democrats since 2004 and a 6 point drop for Republicans, putting them at their lowest ebb in 16 years.

The Democrats have added to that an edge among self-described independents. In 2004, independents broke roughly evenly among the two parties with 12 percent favoring Democrats and 11 percent the Republicans. But now, 15 percent lean Democratic compared to 10 percent who lean Republican. That means Democrats have a 51 percent to 37 percent margin if the leaners are combined with those who outright identify themselves as being for one party or the other.

It's just going to be hard for Republicans to overcome this in a general election, especially considering that the head-to-head matchups between a presumptive McCain and a feuding Obama or Clinton are at their lowest ebb right now. The fact that Pennsylvania Democrats were so energized by a rare contested primary that they increased their registration by 160,000 voters and now have a 800,000-vote lead in registration statewide is almost insurmountable, and that's a swing state in November. And 120,000 of these new registrants aren't converts; they've never voted before. People are fed up with conservative Bush-era policies and are coming out of the woodwork to make a difference. And the Republican state parties will be of no help in trying to hold back this progressive wave.

At a time when the GOP presidential nominee will need more assistance than ever, a number of state Republican parties are struggling through troubled times, suffering from internal strife, poor fundraising, onerous debt, scandal or voting trends that are conspiring to relegate the local branches of the party to near-irrelevance.

In some of the largest, smallest, reddest and bluest states in the nation, many state Republican organizations are still reeling in the aftermath of the devastating 2006 election cycle, raising questions about how much grassroots help the state parties will be able to deliver to presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.

The state party woes are especially ill-timed since McCain will face a Democratic nominee who may be considerably better funded and organized, and since Republicans will be facing an energized Democratic party that is shattering primary election turnout records.

I already knew this was a big problem here in California, where the state party is mired in debt. I didn't know it was the case nationwide.

Let's finish up this primary and have organizing opportunities in Pennsylvania, along with winnable states like North Carolina and Kentucky and Oregon. And then, let's have the animosity melt away as we focus on the real issue in November - continuing the failed policies of the conservative Bush era, or moving in a different direction.

Pander Bears In Pennsylvania

Western Pennsylvania has a large coal region, particularly around the Appalachian chain. And West Virginia is on the horizon. This has transformed into an opportunity for both candidates to talk about liquid coal and generally include coal in "clean energy" solutions.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) told an NPR affiliate in West Virginia Wednesday that we need to “make sure that coal plays a major role” in the future and when asked about mountaintop removal, said “maybe there is a way to recover once they have been stripped of the coal.” Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) told a crowd in West Virginia Thursday that “clean coal jobs” are “green jobs.”

Mountaintop removal not only shocks the conscience, it bleeds jobs from the region and unecessarily disrupts the environment. Liquid coal projects, which the Air Force wants to run their planes on, are very bad for the environment, generating a ton of carbon dioxide per BARREL of fuel. And "clean coal" is just a misnomer, a name for something that does not now exist and arguably never will:

“Clean coal” is a shorthand term for “technologies designed to enhance both the efficiency and the environmental acceptability of coal extraction, preparation and use.” This includes established technologies used to capture methane emitted during coal mining and to “wash” coal before it is burned to separate toxic impurities, as well as technologies to capture and geologically store its greenhouse emissions (CCS) that are “expensive, experimental and not in commercial use.”

The coal industry, with the assistance of the current administration, has been fighting regulations to establish or enforce the use of existing technologies to reduce traditional air pollutants produced by coal-burning like mercury and sulfur dioxide. In climate scientist James Hansen’s analysis, the only way to avoid climate catastrophe is to establish “an immediate moratorium on additional coal-fired power plants without CCS.”

No matter how advanced coal technology becomes, a coal-industry job is simply not in the same class of ecological responsibility as one that involves renewable energy or actually restores carbon and health to the soil.

It's primary season (still) and I expect a certain amount of regionally-focused pandering, but for two candidates that actually have very good energy policies, to talk about "clean coal" and liquid coal projects in this facile and self-serving way kind of hurts. How about telling the truth for the change, or boldly promoting congestion pricing or a corporate carbon tax, giving the appropriate seriousness to the task of mitigating the effects of global warming? We're beyond the point with the climate that we can afford these little white lies.

UPDATE: Grist has more. And I do appreciate Obama's proposed active role in the oil markets, for what it's worth.