Political Junkies Place

20 Days to go – With friends like these, who needs enemies?

NEW YORK, Oct 14, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — The American Jewish Committee (AJC) has condemned the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s statement about “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades.”

“Rev. Jackson’s remarks, which appeared in an interview with the journalist Amir Taheri in today’s New York Post, echo classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish power,” said AJC Executive Director David A. Harris. “This statement, regrettably, is not the first troubling comment by Rev. Jackson regarding Israel, Zionism and the Jewish people.”

“As poll after poll has revealed, over a span of decades, the United States is deeply committed to Israel because the vast majority of Americans, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, identify with Israel as a proven friend and ally,” said Harris. “It is this commonality of shared values and shared interests, and not Jackson’s conspiratorial notions of power, that unite Israel and America.”

Rev. Jackson made his remark at a conference on international relations in France last week.

Arguing as a private citizen that an Obama administration could bring significant change to U.S. foreign policy, Jackson was quoted as saying that “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades” would lose much of their influence should Senator Obama be elected president.

Harris expressed AJC’s appreciation that the Obama presidential campaign was quick to reject Jackson’s comments and reaffirm the senator’s “unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Tags: Israel, Jackson, Jewish Vote, Obama

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Campaign de ja vu?

Is it just me or does it feel like Obama is running a better version of Clinton’s 1992 campaign, while McCain is running a weaker version of Bush 2004?

Clinton’s 1992 (or probably more correctly Carville’s) mantra was: “It’s the economy, stupid;” “Speed kills;” and “Don’t forget health care.” “Speed kills” referred to their strategy of responding to the Republican/Bush attacks to prevent being pummeled like Dukakas was in 1988 by GHW Bush. Obama’s adds, which thankfully are getting more pointed are all based on these themes: the economic crisis, health care and anti-attack adds. Operation Obama has taken speed kills to the next level – they have and in some cases are running anti-attack ads before McCain airs them.

The most impressive part of the 2004 Rove strategy (and again, let me point out that the original idea of the blog was to “park our ideology at the door and talk strategy for both sides.”) was how they were able to split their message. Starting with the convention, the core Bush advertising and mass public facing branding was essentially positive/patriotic/wrap the President in the flag/9-11, while the attack advertising was either micro-targeted direct mail (e.g. “gays in, god out of the white house” direct mail delivered in WV where Bush carried the 2:1 Democratic state by 12%) or run by the “Swiftboaters” and other independent groups. McCain and Palin, on the other hand, have been attacking Obama aggressively themselves, although McCain seems to be trying to put the horses back in the barn as we saw in the video I sent around earlier today.

Here are some of the latest ads:

Latest Obama Ad

Latest McCain Ad

If you are really into advertising and branding, check out the M Network and click on the XM radio button.

Tags: attack ads, Carville, McCain, Obama, Rove, strategy, TV

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Politicing at the Sandwich, NH Fair

We spent the weekend in New Hampshire with friends and took our annual Columbus Day trip to the Sandwich Fair.  Sandwich is a quntissential New England town that seems stuck in a time warp representing the best of the 30’s.  Although I was not able to conduct the kind of “man/woman on the street interviews” like I did last year, it appeared that the Democratic/Obama/Shaheen presence was at least 4X that of the Republican/Obama/Sanunu signs, buttons and bumper stickers. The lastest polls have Obama ahead by 8-13%.

Here are a couple of pictures from politicing at the fair:

for additional photos, visit my smugmug gallery

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21 Days to go; McCain pulling back on attacks?

Iphone election 08:

Obama 364

McCain 174

I will send some additional thoughts tomorrow, including our political photos from the Sandwich, New Hampshire country fair. But thought you should see the clip of McCain trying to correct his supporters claims that “Obama is an Arab.”

Tags: attacks, McCain, Polls

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Two Views of the Polls and The Outcome

Electoral vote forecast from iphone app Election ’08 (as of 4;30 PM today):

Obama 286
McCain 252

Cash on hand (as of Sept 21st reports)

Obama $77MM
McCain $36MM

Catching up (as I listen to the news about the vote against the rescue plan and think about implications for the race) on the debate and where we stand.

On the vote (and the market cratering) this should help Obama and hurt McCain.  65 republicans voted for the bill; 133 against it.  McCain camp claims he moved republicans from 4 to 65 by going to capital hill last week, but clearly if that was the case it was not enough.

I had a chance to catch up with several of you while driving over the weekend.  I agree with the general consensus that no one scored a knockout blow at the debate. I thought McCain was at risk of appearing either very tired or making a colossal mistake, given how bad he looked getting on the plane in DC and all of his conflicting statements over the previous 12 days, but he didn’t.  Both sides have something to cheer about (McCain that Obama agreed with him 7/8 times, Henry Kissinger support, etc.; Obama that he looked presidential and held his own on McCain’s strongest turf).

I thought they both left a lot on the table and were not nearly as aggressive as they could have been.  I would have advised McCain to hit on 2 points a lot harder: (1) his track record of reaching across the aisle, challenging his own party, etc. vs limited/no examples for Obama and (2) repeating that Obama’s experience to lead the country in this critical time has been a Senator for less than 4 years and a State Senator for 3 years.

I would have advised Obama to hit on 2 more detailed and irrefutable points: (1) Expand the Reagan question “are you better off than you were 4 years ago” to “are you better off, do you feel safer; are we less dependent on foreign oil, are you more confident that you can pay for your and your parents health care, your kids college, etc.” and (2) Using the opportunity presented by the questions about terrorist attacks and others to replay the events of the past week and cast them as an example voters can use to assess the candidates judgment.  He could have said something like “We took very different approaches. I talked with Secretary Paulson and respected his request to review the administration’s plan before announcing my own, I met with my advisors including Warren Buffet (and others) and then I laid out my principles (help for homeowners, transparency, over site, no CEO profits ahead of taxpayers, etc.). My opponent said Monday that the fundamentals of the economy are strong, on Tuesday he said we should not bail our AIG, on Wednesday he said we should, cancel debate, come to the debate, etc.”  It would have been very difficult for McCain to rebut these statements and could have caused him to lose his temper.

The reasons Obama appears to be so conservative in both this debate performance and almost all of his recent advertising can be explained in part by the two major views of where we are in terms of who is ahead.

One view holds that unless Obama is ahead in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia by at least 8-10% he will not win them due to what is being called “racial leakage,” referring to the trend in other elections where black candidates polls over-forecast their votes on election day.  If you have looked at polls in these states, they are very close (1-4%).  Holders of this view also tend to believe that Reverend Wright’s “na, na, na God damn America” and Obama’s “cling to their guns and religion” YouTube videos will have huge distribution and impact in the last weeks before the election in these key battle ground states.

The other view, which is supported by some of the smartest people I know regarding the impact of youth on recent elections, holds that almost all of the polls are wrong because they are land line telephone polls that under represent the youth vote and/or fail to account for the massive increase in registration.    See Ann Selzer’s article on Youth and Minority Turnout for more on this.  This camp believes that Obama is being conservative because their own data shows them significantly ahead and they want to play “protect the lead” football.  Some have gone so far as to suggest that Obama is not more aggressive with their advertising (and otherwise appear to lack the “killer instinct”) is that they don’t want the (incorrect) polls to have Obama too far ahead and negatively impact their turnout.  A huge stretch, IMHO.

Thoughts?

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