Marc Ambinder over at the Atlantic does a good job summing up today's political messaging as it relates to the economy. In "Fannie, Freddie, or the Future," Ambinder argues that speaking about the future of the American economy is a better political strategy, and, that going for the gutter, as the McCain camp announced they were going to do, while politically enticing, might not be the best way to win (especially executed this poorly).
[Keating economics] successfully jammed up McCain's message of the day, which is that Obama is somehow to blame for the excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Blaming Democrats for Fannie and Freddie's collapse -- implicity, blaming the government for giving people home loans who couldn't afford -- isn't beanbag, but the McCain campaign is using it the way that Democrats used to respond to foreign policy questions: by stumbling around, latching on to a poll-tested response, and ignoring the bigger picture.
Ayers and Keating aside, the leading edge of this debate is about what do we do post-bailout to restore confidence in our economy. The public will rightly pressure both candidates for more answers. It's an opportunity for somebody to come up with a newer, global message. or at least sound like they get the international dimension of our meltdown.
Hitting back with the Keating Five was political necessity from the Obama camp, and as Ambinder writes, has worked today, but Obama's real strength in recent weeks has come on the back of his strong response to the financial crisis. The current narrative about Obama's calm reaction compared with McCain's erratic reaction, believeable because it reinforced preexisting memes about both candidates, will serve Obama well for the next month.
Now, as the Obama campaign launches its Keating Economics piece, Obama himself expands his message on the economy and hits McCain on trying to turn the page. Today in Asheville, North Carolina, Obama had this to say:
We are going to have to then move on an aggressive plan to deal with some of the underlying structural problems in the economy, including the continuing decline in the housing market. Now Senator McCain and I have a debate tomorrow night, and obviously the American people are going to be anxious to hear from one of the two people who’s going to be the next president and responsible for dealing with this economic mess, what their plans are.
As NDN has argued, that plan must include action from Congress and the President to do more to keep people in their homes. For more on NDN's reponse to the financial crisis, visit Keep People in Their Homes.
PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, USC's Annenberg School for Communication, Latino Public Broadcasting and Southwest Airlines are presenting a compelling new documentary by Phillip Rodriguez -- "Latinos '08" -- this Wednesday, October 8, at 9 p.m. ET.
PBS interviewed Simon for the new documentary, which is described here:
From Immigrants to Mainstream to Majority, Latinos '08 Focuses on the Unprecedented Clout of the Country;'s Fastest Growing Demographic - How Latinos Will Impact this Election and American Politics for Decades to Come
In early September, NDN released new polling by long-time NDN collaborator Sergio Bendixen on how the immigration issue is playing in key battleground states. In May, NDN released Hispanics Rising II, an important report on Hispanic electoral and demographic trends.
Check TV listings for your local PBS station and tune in Wednesday night!
NARAL Pro-Choice Amererica has produced this video on U.S. Sen. John McCain's position on the fairness of insurance companies covering Viagra but not birth control.
- The theme of today's news: Everything you thought you knew is, in fact, true! The economy is still in shambles-- not just here, where job losses are piling up, but in Europe as well. (Europeans can take some solace in the fact that they cleaned up in this year's Nobel Prizes for medicine)
- Howard Fineman of Newsweek projects trouble for the next president, when faced with budget shortfalls caused by the bailout. Jonathan Cohn of TNR thinks an Obama administration should not give up its agenda because of the bailout.
- The Economist reports that the financial crisis is proof that governments increasingly need to work together.
- The presidential campaign continues to slide in Obama's direction. Even Karl Rove is projecting an Obama victory.
- Sarah Palin was in Nebraska over the weekend, trying to keep Obama from stealing one electoral vote from that state.
- Newsweek has a deeply damning cover story on Sarah Palin.
- Palin will be in Florida today, perhaps trying to rescue her image among Jewish voters there.
- John Heilemann of New York analyzes how McCain lost his maverick brand and his favor with the press. John Schaffer writes in TNR that, after the election, the press will forgive McCain.
- Disappointed by McCain's withdrawal from the state, one Michigan GOP leader had some choice words for the campaign.
- The McCain campaign's latest attempt to defame Barack Obama consists of tying him to the radical Bill Ayers.
- Sarah Palin told Bill Kristol that Rev. Jeremiah Wright should be back in the discussion, too.
- Howard Wolfson says the tactics won't work. "It's over," he says.
- Paul Begala thinks Obama should shoot back, and fight fire with fire.
- It looks like he'll get what he wants, as the Obama campaign cleared tactics to highlight McCain's rule in the "Keating 5" scandal.
- The Decemberists released a new track called "Valerie Plame." It's pretty good.
If you come across an article, blog post, video or anything else you think should be in the Daily Roundup, send it to me, and I'll try to get it in. Thanks!
The Washington Postreported Saturday that it's going to get ugly.
Gov. Sarah Palin didn't waste any time that day. According to ABC News:
At a private fundraiser in Englewood, Colo., this morning, and later at a rally in Carson, Calif., this afternoon, Palin for the first time raised Obama’s connection to Ayers, one of the founding members of the Weather Underground, a '60s radical group that took credit for bombing attacks around the country, including explosions set off at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.
"Our opponent, though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told supporters at a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser in Englewood. "Americans need to know this."
Palin cited a front-page article in today’s New York Times that explored the ties between Obama and Ayers. Obama had served on a charity board with Ayers in Chicago during the mid-90s, and Ayers was present at an organizing meeting in 1995 to kick off Obama's first election campaign for the Illinois State Senate.
More incoming fire today. U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's team is pushing back against U.S. Sen. John McCain's "guilt by association" campaign.
According to a 6:30 a.m. ET report by Politico's Mike Allen:
Pushing back against what it calls McCain's “guilt-by-association” tactics, the Obama campaign overnight began e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday. The e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends.
The Obama campaign, including its surrogates appearing on radio and television, will argue that the deregulatory fervor that caused massive, cascading savings-and-loan collapses in the late ‘80s was pursued by McCain throughout his career, and helped cause the current credit crisis.
The 13-minute Web video documentary is now live:
Update at 3:41 p.m. ET: Politico's Ben Smith reports that Obama's Keating campaign may be paying off:
Obama apparently had today's Charles Keating attack in the can, ready to deploy against an attempt to revive Bill Ayers, and it seems to be working.
A glance at Google Trends finds "keating economics" the second-most-popular search term right now. Numbers 8, 11, 12, and 21 are terms like "keating five" and "charles keating."
Bill Ayers shows up at 36, just after "mccain keating."
The first term is Neal Kashkari, newly tapped to head the bailout. Voter registration terms also rank high.
Two major articles in today's Washington Post and New York Timesfocus in-depth on how the nation's worsening economy is presenting new opportunities -- and new challenges -- for the campaigns of U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain.
It looks like things were going McCain's way after the GOP convention -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had electrified the base, Obama was losing ground and the Arizona senator took a slim lead.
Then the nation's finanical markets crashed, Palin-mania has subsided as many Americans didn't like what they've seen post-St. Paul and Democrats traditionally do better with pocketbook issues.
Now McCain has pulled out of Michigan and Obama is competitive in traditionally red states like Florida where foreclosures are epidemic; nationally, the economic news just keeps getting worse.
Amidst all of this, yesterday, I picked up a book, "Deer Hunting with Jesus" by Joe Bageant. It is in turn fascinating, frightening and depressing. The book addresses a question that has always bothered me: why do people who are so clearly hurt by the GOP's economic policies keep voting for them again and again and again? Another article in today's Washington Post highlights the economic struggles of a suburban Michigan enclave and focues on why, while some people there may vote for Obama, others struggling to make ends meet are still planning to vote for McCain, despite the fact that his economic proposals do nothing to help them or their children.
Until progressives find a way to reach the voters written about in "Deer Hunting with Jesus" and the Washington Post article, we will continue to lose their votes because they will continue to vote, not on economic issues, but social "hot button issues" such as abortion, guns and sex education. And, sadly, as many of them admitted, they simply will not vote for an African-American candidate. All in all, it is not their failure, but our failure, to explain to them how we will not allow globalization to leave them behind; how we will invest in their education; how we will ready them as we accelerate toward a 21st century economy.
In 2007, NDN conducted a series of polls on the how Americans view the economy. They are well worth reading here and here. I know I will be looking at them for answers.
Lastly, in what can be at best called a sophmoric effort to change the subject, the McCain campaign said yesterday that:
We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days," said Greg Strimple, one of McCain's top advisers. "We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans." "We're going to get a little tougher," a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. "We've got to question this guy's associations. Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here," said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity. [Washington Post, 10/04/08]
In response, the Obama campaign has launched a new ad on the economy, highlighting what has happened over the last eight years during the Bush-Cheney reign.
For the last several years NDN has been making an argument that a "new politics" of the 21st century is emerging. Driven by vast changes in demography, media and technology, and the a whole new set of very 21st century challenges (and one could add the utter collapse of modern conservatism) a new politics was emerging in America that would be very different from the century just past.
Reflecting on the morning papers 3 stories stuck out as interesting examples of how the world is changing around us. 1st up is how the Army is starting to see nation building and the shoring up of "fragile states" as a primary area of responsibility. 2nd is a fascinating piece by Eve Fairbanks on the sensibility of the next generation of Congressional Republicans. Finally, a wide ranging and important piece by our friend David Rothkopf, who argues:
The current economic debacle is far more likely to be seen by historians as a true global watershed: the end of one period and the beginning of another. The financial chaos has brought down the curtain on a wide range of basic and enduring tenets also closely linked with the Reagan era, those associated with neoliberal economics, the system that the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has called "that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently and serve the public interest well." Already this crisis has seen not just our enemies but even some of our closest allies wondering whether we are at the beginning of the end of both American-style capitalism and of American supremacy.
Change is indeed coming to Washington. And this next Presidency will without doubt be among the most important in American history.
Catch the latest poll analysis from DemFromCT this morning, showing among many other things the poll average now at 7 points.
The Post has a story this morning detailing the McCain's camp decision to go scorched earth all the way to the end now.
1045am Update - Rasmussen's daily starts this way:
With one month to go until Election Day, the Rasmussen Reports daily
Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows Barack Obama attracting
51% of the vote while John McCain earns 45%. For each of the past nine
days, Obama has been at 50% or 51% and McCain has been at 44% or 45% (see trends). The stability of these results suggests that the McCain campaign faces a very steep challenge in the remaining few weeks of Election 2008.
This just in from Nielsen: 70 million people watched last night's vice presidential debate between Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and U.S. Sen. Joe Biden.
That's means 17.5 million more folks tuned in to see Joe and Sarah go at it than watched U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain debate, according to the Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet.
And get this:
69.9 million people watched the debate, tying it for second place among all Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. (The second Bush/Clinton/Perot debate of 1992 also have 69.9 million. The all-time debate leader is the Carter/Reagan debate of 1980.)
To read more from Nielsen, click here. A few more interesting tidbits before I sign off:
The Biden-Palin matchup set a new V.P. debate TV audience record, beating the previous high of 56.7 million viewers set by the debate between Rep. Geraldine Ferraro and then-V.P. George H.W. Bush in 1984.
Biden and Palin’s debate also surpassed the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, which drew an audience of 52.4 million last Friday night.
During the last presidential election in 2004, the vice presidential debate between V.P. Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards drew 43.6 million viewers.
Thoughts about our content? Suggestions for how we can improve our blog? Anything else on your mind that you want to share with us? Please, send it our way - shoot me an e-mail at dboscov-ellen@ndn.org. Thanks, and hope to hear from you!
