In the meantime, here are some thoughtful reflections from my friend and fellow business and social entrepreneur Bill Hinchey on his weekend visit to Pittsburgh:

As a little background, I grew up in McKeesport, PA during the 70’s and 80’s.  My very blue collar neighborhood is dotted with red-brick ranch homes all built after WWII and populated by hard working families who teach their kids to study hard, eat their vegetables, and cheer for the Steelers.  It is a heavily Democratic area that view Republicans as the rich elite that have no interest in helping out the middle class.  Today, not much has changed.  The average four bedroom home sells for $125,000 (Steeler banner not included), both parents work, and the local cub scout troop has over 90 kids – three times the size of my day.

I spent the weekend in my hometown with my two young sons showing them how their dad celebrated Halloween “back in the day”.  I also took note of the attitude many of my old buddies and folks in the neighborhood.  The bottom line is that in this small spec of Western Pennsylvania, I guesstimate a 70:30 vote for McCain Palin.  And they will turn out.  Election day is a ritual in my hometown.  A chance to see the kids at the local elementary school, buy some baked goods, and catch up on town gossip.  No one is happy with the last eight years of George Bush, but these folks are not ready to line up behind a new comer like Barack Obama.  I sense that there was no connection between candidate Obama and this old steel town neighborhood.  I can say that the Democratic party itself is as much to blame here.  While Obama is a centrist, folks here view the party as way left on issues such as taxes/government spending and abortion and that is enough for these folks to embrace John McCain.

While it is accurate to say that Pennsylvania is “Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in the middle” I would amend that by saying the boarders of “Alabama” could be larger than one suspects.
–
Bill Hinchey

One thing he points out that we should all remember is that some voters don’t need a GOTV call or driver to get them to vote.

Although it appears to me that there has been little mainstream media (either mainstream old media as in NYT or mainstream new media as in Politico and XM’s Potus 08) coverage of the “moral issues” the abortion issue is stronger than many realize. Nationwide, the anti-abortion vote is relatively small, but in some states, like West Virginia, or regions of states like Central Florida, it is huge.  Politico covered this in an article yesterday entited “No Gain for Obama with Church goers.” Here’s a quote:

It was at that mid-August event at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., that Obama said it was “above my pay grade” to define when a fetus gains human rights, while McCain quickly replied, “At the moment of conception.”

For social conservative leader Richard Land, Obama’s response encapsulated why Democrats have failed to make inroads with highly religious white voters.

“It’s abortion,” Land replied when the Gallup data was read to him.

“I think pro-choice people in this culture have absolutely no idea of the depth and intensity of the moral outrage of the people who are pro-life,” Land said. “They think that conservatives use it only as a wedge issue.”

]]> http://politicaljunkiesplace.com/2008/11/03/very-interesting-thoughts-from-a-pittsburgh-neighborhood/feed/ 0 http://politicaljunkiesplace.com/2008/11/03/democrats-for-mccain/ http://politicaljunkiesplace.com/2008/11/03/democrats-for-mccain/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:33:36 +0000 chu http://politicaljunkiesplace.com/?p=150 As a follow-up to Bill Hinchey’s report from visiting his old neighborhood over the weekend, here’s what the signs say:

Politico reported on the activities of the Democrats for McCain last week:

McCain political director Mike DuHaime told reporters aboard the campaign’s plane that internal campaign polling reflected a tighter race in Pennsylvania than other surveys, in part because public polling does not account for the extensive outreach the campaign has done with Democrats. Workers at Democrats for McCain headquarters in Scranton made 48,000 phone calls, and busloads of Democrats from New York and New Jersey have traveled to Pennsylvania on behalf of the McCain campaign, DuHaime said.

On a personal note, the “Another” is exactly the same word and font that my father used in his successful 1996 gubernatorial campaign.

I will write more about this after the election if Obama wins, but I have felt all along that the best way to attack Obama would be to say something incredibly positive about all that he has accomplished, but then state the facts that he has only X years as a community organizer, Y as an Illinois State Senator and Z as a US Senator. I would go even further to say something like “someday Barack Obama will be qualified to be president and he probably will be president, but right now, he doesn’t have the experience we need in these challenging times.” I would use a neutral, factual tone for both voice and music and let the facts speak for themselves.

A friend of mine close to Joe Trippi told me during the pre-primary period (when was that, about 50 months ago?) that Edwards focus groups and other research were finding that the majority of those they talked to wanted Obama to be president some day, but not yet.

This ad comes close, using the word “yet” at the end, but it is way too negative in tone.

“I thought last night we had reached the limits of absurdity by talking yet one more time about the topic of Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, but today they went even higher with Joe the Plumber with John McCain offering views about Israel.”

Here’s the video of Joe the Plumber:

I cannot get over how different the two campaigns are in the final week of the race.

Look at Obama: he is re-articulating the main points and themes of his entire campaign. The “Are you better off/will you be better off?” ad. He appears composed, confident but not cocky.

And McCain? Hard to tell what he’s saying because most of the noise from the GOP side of the field is stemming from infighting within the party. The off-script controversy involving Palin could not be coming at a worse time. And maybe, just maybe, it would have flown a bit more under the radar had McCain campaign officials not thrown coals on the fire by giving anonymous quotes to the press confirming that there was indeed bad blood within the campaign between McCain’s people and Palin’s people.

By confirming the fued, McCain’s people have projected two of the worst images a campaign can have: a lack of leadership and a lack of organization. The fact that this is all going down eight days before the vote makes it even worse.

At the end of last week with Obama off the trail for a couple of days, I thought McCain had a golden opportunity to make up a lot of ground. He was the only game in town. Obama surrogates were still carrying out his message, but the lack of visibility for Obama himself gave McCain a couple of days to increase his presence, so to speak. By the end of the weekend, though, the stories of in-fighting had come out. McCain’s opportunity was lost.

IMO, the McCain campaign has 2-3 days to put out these fires. If, by the end of this week, we are still hearing as much about the cost of Palin’s wardrobe as we are the cost of McCain’s economic plan, I don’t think there is enough time to recover.

1. McCain played well to the base in last night’s debates, but did nothing to reach out to independents
2. Obama reached out to independents and red state voters with comments about “charter schools,” and his response to the abortion question.
3. Big news yesterday was that the Republican Party has now pulled their spending from Wisconsin, although McCain is still on air. They also pulled out of Maine.
4. That means the only “2004 blue state” that is being contested is now Pennsylvania.

All this gives support to the “other view” of the polls – that they are almost all under-forecasting minority and youth vote. McCain and RNC polls and analysis may have Obama lead much greater than what is being reported.

Here’s the video:

CNN is broadcasting the following flash poll results:

Who did the best job in the debate?

Obama 57%
McCain 31%

Manage the economy

Obama 59%
McCain 39%

Manage the financial crisis

Obama 56%
McCain 35%

Healthcare

Obama 62%
McCain 31%

Taxes

Obama 56%
McCain 41%

Although I am re-watching the debate now, as I could not watch it through real time, if this trend continues, not a good night for McCain. As he said in 2000, “People don’t want to vote for someone who is angry.”

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.

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.”