NOTE: The latest PJ Media tech change ate my homework this morning. Sorry for the delay, and for any problems going on, some of which posters have complained about.
** DAILY NATIONAL TRACKING POLLS. Barack Obama has a six to 10 point lead over John McCain in the daily national tracking polls. I talked at length earlier today with a top Republican strategist who thinks Obama has it.
** PENNSYLVANIA POLL: OBAMA BY 8. The brand-new Rasmussen poll of battleground Pennsylvania has Barack Obama opening up a big lead over John McCain in the Keystone State, 50% to 42%. Obama has doubled his edge over McCain in the last three days. Obama has the edge on the economy, by a whopping 52-39, while McCain has a narrower edge on national security, 51-43. Nearly twice as many voters in Pennsylvania – one of McCain’s most targeted states – view the economy as the key issue as compared to national security.
The top issue? “The economy, stupid.” Another top issue: The swiftly declining standing of Sarah Palin.
** NORTH CAROLINA POLL: OBAMA BY 2. Barack Obama has taken a 2-point lead in longtime red state North Carolina in the brand-new Public Policy Polling survey. It’s Obama 47%, John McCain 45%. Economic concern is rated as the top issue by a record 64% of likely voters.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Reno, Nevada.
Joe Biden is in Wilmington, Delaware, in debate prep.
John McCain is in Des Moines, Iowa.
Sarah Palin is in Sedona, Arizona, at John McCain’s ranch, in debate prep.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST THIS MORNING. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs a bill this morning which makes California the first state in the nation to have its restaurant chains with 20 or more locations statewide post calorie information on menus and indoor menu boards for consumers. At a Chili’s, in Elk Grove.
Do I really want to know that, given the near collapse of the nation’s financial markets? They only serve beer at Chili’s, as I recall.
** THAT FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE WE’RE NOT HAVING. Let’s face it. This has been a disappointing campaign. Two very interesting candidates. Some of the biggest issues going, both within and without the US, and they have to blow up in our faces to get much attention. Then there’s the ridiculous media coverage. Which brings us to tonight’s foreign policy debate, which is finally back on.
Part of the problem is what it’s called. Because foreign policy is not “foreign,” it’s geopolitics. The underlying essential dynamics of geopolitics deeply affect domestic politics. In the flows of energy and capital and products and people, in our military budget, and in flash-point electoral politics. When there is debate, we end up debating symptoms — illegal immigration from Mexico, a surge in Iraq — rather than systems. … From Friday’s Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA. Here is my series of five columns for the Los Angeles Times in debate with Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times reporter/editor Bill Boyarsky, whose columns are also included.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California until 2011. No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in its preparation.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading now in the $98 to $99 per barrel range.
The drop of over $49 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
Barack Obama’s new TV ad attacks “golden parachutes” for CEOs in any Wall Street bailout package, noting that John McCain’s National Republican Victory Fund chair Carly Fiorina received a huge golden parachute of her own when she was ousted from Hewlett-Packard.
** BILL CLINTON HITS THE ROAD FOR OBAMA. Former President Bill Clinton hits the road for Barack Obama on Wednesday, hosting two rallies in Florida. Clinton, who I think is key in locking down Obama’s victory, as I pointed out in this Huffington Post column, entitled “Obama Needs Bill Clinton,” the day Obama delivered his nomination acceptance speech in Denver, will appear in Orlando and Fort Pierce. Obama and John McCain are locked in a dead heat in the Sunshine State.
A lot of the chatterers heavily parsed Clinton’s remarks yesterday on Meet The Press, when the ex-prez described McCain as “a great man,” while not saying that about Obama. Who he nonetheless praised greatly.
Actually, I consider McCain a great man, having backed him in 2000 as a member of Veterans for McCain. But just because someone is a great man does not mean he should be president of the United States. Which is the point Clinton was making. McCain is a great hero of the US Navy. Does that mean he should be president? In my view, that is a separate determination.
** OIL SLUMPS ALONG WITH THE U.S. STOCK MARKET AND WASHINGTON’S BAILOUT BID. Crude oil closed down on global markets over $10 per barrel today, on news of the collapse of the Wall Street bailout package. $96.36 per barrel. That is down over $51 per barrel from July 11th.
What’s the problem? Well, if credit markets further dry up, so does the global economy.
** WILLIE SAYS JOHNNY BURTON IS COMING BACK. In his weekly San Francisco Chronicle column, legendary former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown confirmed the big rumor, that former state Senate leader John Burton is returning to politics as the leading candidate for California Democratic Party chairman next year. Longtime state Democratic chairman Art Torres, the former state senator from LA, is stepping away from the post.
Willie Brown is a longtime ally of John Burton and his late brother, former Congressman Phil Burton, going back to the 1960s. John Burton, incidentally, and this has not been mentioned by other writers, who apparently don’t know it, is not only a former congressman – Senator Barbara Boxer got her start as his district aide – but also a former state Democratic Party chairman.
Willie, who is a great raconteur (as well as a pal of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger), also allowed as how Barack Obama won the Friday night debate with John McCain. No kidding. As an analyst, Brown is, shall we say, fashionable. A few weeks ago, he was going on and on about what a great pick Sarah Palin is. Now he sees that, in fact, she is a liability. No kidding …
** PENNSYLVANIA POLL: OBAMA BY 7. Few states have received more attention from the McCain campaign than Pennsylvania. But a new poll by Muhlenberg College has Barack Obama with a comfortable lead there, 49% to 42%, over John McCain. When the undecided voters are asked how they lean, Obama has the edge there, 50-35. The biggest issue? “The economy, stupid.”
** A BIG BLOW TO BUSH AND MCCAIN. The US House of Representatives has just voted down the Wall Street bailout package. Which, in some form or another, is needed to avert an even deeper financial crisis than we are in. President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been pushing for this. John McCain seemingly suspended his campaign for a time to push for a resolution, and said he was in favor of the current version of the bill.
But it went down, 205 to 228, with less than 70 Republicans voting in favor. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had made it clear that there would have to be around 100 House Republicans voting in favor. Because she refused to have this bailout of Bush/Cheney economic mismanagement come in a Democratic package, in a year in which House Republicans are otherwise in deep political trouble.
Anger at Wall Street is, needless to say, very high in the country. And while right-wing Republicans in the House are responding to this anger amongst their constituents, the overall impact is actually negative to their own party’s hopes to win the White House. As McCain, like Bush, is tagged with being a deregulationist, surrounded by lobbyists, who fiddled while Rome burned.
In this post-debate TV ad, John McCain says Barack Obama isn’t ready to lead.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK
This is a very key week in presidential politics. Barack Obama has opened up a real lead over John McCain, in circumstances very difficult for any Republican. The current administration, mostly backed by McCain, has mismanaged the economy and two wars. The situation is compounded for McCain because of the evident weakness of his running mate, Sarah Palin, who engages in her only debate this week with Joe Biden.
McCain has dispatched Steve Schmidt and other top aides to counsel with Palin, who, in an unusual move, was held out of spin duty following Friday night’s presidential debate, and help her prepare for her own debate.
But Palin, as I’ve said from the beginning, is a base play and a sideshow. While her selection raises questions about McCain’s judgment, she is not fundamental to the choice in November. The epic financial crisis is.
In his post-debate TV ad, Barack Obama says John McCain doesn’t get it.
With these sorts of fundamentals, as it were, Team McCain will have to come up with some more trick plays to stay in this game. Last week’s gambit of staying out of the debate unless there was a successful deal in place did not play. McCain had to show up, as I said he would. And when he did, according to the polls and focus groups I’ve seen, he got the worst of it at the hands of Obama.
I’ll be writing about McCain’s coming moves in a new column.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street bailout unfolds this week. Will it pass? And will it succeed if it does? Who knows? NWN is not your go-to place for high finance. My guess is we muddle through, muttering angrily all the way.
Incidentally, a note to both the McCain and Obama campaigns. The only people who talk about “Main Street” — as distinguished from the supposed rocket scientists of Manhattan — are folks in the political/media bubble. If you actually are in a town, you realize that virtually no one lives on its main street.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has two more days to decide on hundreds of legislative bills. Then he pivots into other matters. Which I’ll be writing about.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Denver, Colorado.
Joe Biden is in debate prep.
John McCain is in Columbus, Ohio and Des Moines, Iowa.
Sarah Palin is in Columbus, Ohio and Sedona, Arizona, the latter for more debate prep.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST THIS MORNING. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tours the Nelson Nameplate Co. in Los Angeles and then signs two bills to move California toward a green chemistry program to reduce hazardous chemicals. The event will be webcast live at 9:45 AM on www.gov.ca.gov.
** THAT FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE WE’RE NOT HAVING.Let’s face it. This has been a disappointing campaign. Two very interesting candidates. Some of the biggest issues going, both within and without the US, and they have to blow up in our faces to get much attention. Then there’s the ridiculous media coverage. Which brings us to tonight’s foreign policy debate, which is finally back on.
Part of the problem is what it’s called. Because foreign policy is not “foreign,” it’s geopolitics. The underlying essential dynamics of geopolitics deeply affect domestic politics. In the flows of energy and capital and products and people, in our military budget, and in flash-point electoral politics. When there is debate, we end up debating symptoms — illegal immigration from Mexico, a surge in Iraq — rather than systems. … From Friday’s Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA. Here is my series of five columns for the Los Angeles Times in debate with Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times reporter/editor Bill Boyarsky, whose columns are also included.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California until 2011. No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in its preparation.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil closed is trading now in the $100 to $101 per barrel range. This is down $6 per barrel from Friday’s close, on concern that the Wall Street bailout package will falter.
The drop of over $47 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
“Why, you crazy … the fall will probably kill ya!” The big jump from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Paul Newman passed away Friday night.
** ENCOMIUMS FOR PAUL NEWMAN. The encomiums for Paul Newman continue to pour in. My recollection of the man is that he would welcome them, but with a big shaker of salt. The current hagiographies would have caused him to gag.
Warren Beatty, who knew Newman well and considered playing the Sundance Kid (ultimately played in his breakout performance by a fellow named Robert Redford) — which would have meant he’d have to wear a cowboy hat, one of his least favorite things to do — told me this weekend that Newman was “a sweet, unpretentious guy.” And the gold standard for younger actors like Beatty coming up in the seminal 1960s.
We never got the chance to appreciate Newman’s great contemporary and (mostly) friendly rival, Steve McQueen, in the fullness of his life. McQueen, who lived for a time down the hall from Beatty on the penthouse floor of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel — what an interesting elevator that was — died a most untimely death at the age of 50, way back in 1980. Also from cancer.
Newman earned five Academy Award nominations after that, including his Oscar win as best actor in The Color of Money. I was pleased to have met both Newman and McQueen back when they were vying for the crown of top box office star in the world. They both starred, and nobody is mentioning this movie, merely one of the biggest hits of the era, in a movie set in my home town called The Towering Inferno. Newman played the architect of the world’s tallest building (in San Francisco!) and McQueen played the fire chief out to save it.
A thoroughly silly film, which also starred the great Faye Dunaway, a Beatty discovery. Which megastar had the top billing, Newman or McQueen? Well, it depends on how you look at it. Literally. One had his name on the left, mindful that in English, you read left to right. One had his name slightly above the other’s. Which was which? Bygones.
Let’s hear it for Paul Newman, one of the most enduring stars in history, well into this era of disposable celebrity. A gentleman with a deep sense of humor, who turned in some of the most indelible performances in some of the most classic films of the post-war era.
** IS THIS WEEK THE DECISIVE WEEK? This coming week may be the the decisive week in the presidential race. Barack Obama has taken the lead in the race, even before his debate performance Friday night, which polls and focus groups — if not the ponderings of pundits — show was won by him over John McCain. Even though this was the debate in which John McCain was supposed to shine.
There seems to be a deal in place in the Wall Street bailout, with both candidates in various forms of support, notwithstanding the anger of most of the country toward the rocket scientists of Manhattan.
But the deal, if it is passed in short order, will not mean that the economy is out of the woods. The obvious mismanagement of the US economy by the Bush/Cheney Administration, coupled with its obvious mismanagement of two wars, will continue to be a dominant issue in the campaign. Can the McCain campaign distance itself? It certainly hasn’t so far.
** SUNDAY — WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Detroit, Michigan.
Joe Biden is in Detroit, Michigan.
John McCain is in Washington, DC.
Sarah Palin is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, off the campaign trail cramming for her vice presidential Thursday night against Biden.
** ANOTHER POLL SAYS OBAMA WON THE DEBATE. The new USA Today/Gallup Poll shows Barack Obama defeating John McCain in Friday night’s debate, 46% to 24%. Obama did even better on the question of who has the best proposals to solve America’s problems, out-pointing McCain, 52% to 35%.
** TINA FEY TEES OFF ON SARAH PALIN AGAIN. Tina Fey, fresh off her Emmy wins last weekend as a comedy actress and writer, did her dead-on impersonation of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin again on Saturday Night Live. Most of Fey’s dialogue is actually lifted from the real Palin interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric. With a few further amusing tweaks.
** FAR RIGHT GROUP BACKS OFF SCHWARZENEGGER RECALL. The far right California Republican Assembly (CRA) voted yesterday to “investigate” the recall of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger threatened by the state’s prison guards union. The union, which once ran roughshod over state politics, has been working without a contract for two years. CRA president Mike Spence, who came onto NWN last year to defend his characterization of then Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez as “a Communist fellow traveler,” backs the recall on account of Schwarzenegger’s insufficient conservatism.
Paul Newman, seen in this classic scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, has passed away.
** THE GUY IN MY REFRIGERATOR. The man whose picture has been in my refrigerator for 25 years has passed away. That would be Paul Newman, who said of his Newman’s Own salad dressing: “The sad thing is that the salad dressing out-grosses my films.” He was being amusing, as usual. The proceeds, incidentally, went to charity.
Paul Newman died of cancer last night at his home in Westport, Connecticut. His illness, which came on this year, had been kept private. He was 83.
Newman was one of the biggest stars in the history of movies, equally adept at playing the hero and the anti-hero. Like his mostly friendly rival, Steve McQueen, Newman set the standard in the ’60s for the action-oriented matinee idol. Like McQueen, he was also a top race car driver, finishing second in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and running a US racing outfit for decades. Yet offscreen, he was a staunch political activist. He said he was prouder of making the Nixon enemies list than he was of his 10 Academy Award nominations.
Among his classic roles: Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke (“What we got here is failure to communicate”), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (perhaps my boyhood favorite), The Sting, Absence of Malice (not an inducement to journalism), The Verdict (not an inducement to lawyering), The Color of Money (in which Newman won the Oscar he was nominated for in The Hustler by playing the older-but-wiser Fast Eddie Felson, who can teach that whipper-snapper Tom Cruise a thing or three), and Road To Perdition (his last Oscar-nominated role, in which he plays the current 007′s dad).
Newman was a great gentleman, a Hollywood oddity in that he was married to the same woman, Oscar-winning actress Joanne Woodward, for 50 years. “When you have steak at home,” Newman quipped, “why go out for hamburger?”
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it this way: “Paul Newman was the ultimate cool guy, who men wanted to be like and women adored. He was an American icon, a brilliant actor, a Renaissance man and a generous but modest philanthropist. He entertained millions in some of Hollywood’s most memorable roles ever, and he brightened the lives of many more, especially seriously ill children, through his charitable works. Paul was one of a kind.”
The Fox News focus group in Las Vegas had Barack Obama as the winner of last night’s presidential debate over John McCain.
** FRIDAY NIGHT’S DEBATE: ADVANTAGE OBAMA. As I predicted yesterday, Barack Obama emerged from last night’s debate with the edge over John McCain. Neither candidate did what I thought they needed to do. McCain, I felt, needed to find a way to distance himself from his own deregulationist philosophy. I suppose he did, in a way, by going on and on about earmark reform. But, at $18 billion total, that’s Potomac-speak that most voters don’t relate to, and a drop in the bucket when it comes to the federal budget. Compared to his hundreds of billions in proposed tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. As Obama pointed out.
Obama didn’t really depart from his cool persona, which many find off-putting, but others find authoritative. He didn’t need to start waving his arms and shouting like Hubert Humphrey or Huey Long, but a more visceral identification with “they,” as he referred to the middle class, by which he means “we” before he became a best-selling author, is advisable.
But Obama did enough. He was very strong right out of the gate. At 18 minutes in, I texted a friend and told her Obama was owning the thing. Since the financial crisis portion of the supposed foreign policy debate went on for 40 of its 95 minutes, it was a real advantage for the freshman Illinois senator. Even though he stopped being aggressive by linking everything back to McCain’s support of the Bush/Cheney economic program and let McCain argue on Republican grounds, increasingly content to counter-punch. Nevertheless, Obama had the clear edge over McCain in the first roughly half of the debate.
And he was quite good in the geopolitics portion, showing in-depth knowledge and a cool command of the concepts. He was especially good when McCain tried to make the Iraq surge his winning issue, withering the Vietnam War hero with a barrage of reminders of how inaccurate his assessments of Iraq had been when it came time to invade in 2003.
Obama did struggle some with McCain’s effective attacks on Iran and Obama’s advocacy of talks “without preconditions” with its leader and those of other hostile nations. But McCain did himself no favors by getting the name of Pakistan’s new leader wrong and by repeatedly mispronouncing the name of Iranian boogeyman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
He also committed a gaffe by claiming that Pakistan was a “failed state” when Musharaff became president. That’s a term of art that applied to Afghanistan, which is what I initially thought he said, but not Pakistan.
McCain looked frequently angry and was continually condescending. Obama was friendlier, on the surface, repeatedly agreeing with McCain on something and then slipping the knife in.
Having a sense of where the undecided independents and fringe Democrats are on these things, it was clear that McCain’s pique toward Obama — which I noticed and wrote about in May – was getting the better of his performance.
The two public polls, CNN and CBS, bore that out, with both showing Obama to be the winner.
Next Thursday night is the vice presidential debate, between Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joe Biden and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Biden, incidentally, was on all the news nets last night spinning for Obama in the debate’s aftermath. Palin, in contrast, after her unintentionally amusing interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric, was nowhere to be seen.
SATURDAY — WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Greensborough, North Carolina, Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Washington, DC. He and Joe Biden have big rallies in battleground states North Carolina and Virginia.
Joe Biden is in Greensborough, North Carolina, Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Washington, DC.
John McCain is in Washington, DC, working on the Wall Street bailout.
Sarah Palin is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with no public events. I presume she is studying up for her debate, but she’s doing so badly I hesitate to ask.
** SCHMIDT’S ARRIVED. The guests on Sunday’s Meet The Press are former President Bill Clinton, Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, and McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt, who ran Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2006 re-election campaign.
** THAT FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE WE’RE NOT HAVING.Let’s face it. This has been a disappointing campaign. Two very interesting candidates. Some of the biggest issues going, both within and without the US, and they have to blow up in our faces to get much attention. Then there’s the ridiculous media coverage. Which brings us to tonight’s foreign policy debate, which is finally back on.
Part of the problem is what it’s called. Because foreign policy is not “foreign,” it’s geopolitics. The underlying essential dynamics of geopolitics deeply affect domestic politics. In the flows of energy and capital and products and people, in our military budget, and in flash-point electoral politics. When there is debate, we end up debating symptoms — illegal immigration from Mexico, a surge in Iraq — rather than systems. … From yesterday’s Huffington Post column.
** F1 SUNDAY. The globe-spanning Formula One racing circuit moves from Europe to Asia for the Singapore Grand Prix. England’s own Lewis Hamilton, the first black driver in F1, continues his duel for the world race driving championship with Brazilian Felipe Massa of Ferrari. With four grand prix races to go — Singapore, Japan, China, and Brazil — Hamilton leads Massa by one point. The race starts at 5 AM Pacific on Speed TV.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA. Here is my series of five columns for the Los Angeles Times in debate with Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times reporter/editor Bill Boyarsky, whose columns are also included.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California until 2011. No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in its preparation.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil closed Friday at $106.89 per barrel. The global oil market is reacting to the proposed massive American move to stabilize Wall Street. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
The drop of over $41 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin discusses Russia with CBS News anchor Katie Couric. Fortunately for John McCain, his running mate is not debating foreign policy tonight.
** TONIGHT’S FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE (OR IS IT?). Below I link to my new column, discussing the big geopolitical focus that probably will not happen tonight, lamentably, despite the debate’s official subject area. The US financial crisis — and there is no bailout deal yet — is just too big for it not to have the most dominant impression.
What will happen? Here’s a short way of putting it. Both candidates need to go in different directions, John McCain with regard to his philosophy, Barack Obama with regard to his persona. McCain, who has had a bad week with his various oscillations, has to go against his deregulationist economic philosophy to identify with the fear and anger out in the country. Obama has to go against his cool persona to identify with the fear and anger out in the country. McCain has to go further in his different direction than Obama has to. I expect Obama to win the debate.
** LATE HITS. Senator Ted Kennedy has been taken to the hospital, after complaining that he felt ill in his Massachusetts home. Kennedy, as you know, has brain cancer, but made a dramatic speech at last month’s Democratic national convention. The 911 call came in from the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport late this afternoon. He suffered a seizure, but will return home tonight. … His nephew-in-law, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, announced his speech today at the Commonwealth Club, viewable by webcast link below, that he will convene the Governors Global Climate Summit November 18-19. “We will bring government officials to California from around the world,” said Schwarzenegger. “From provincial governments in China and India. From European nations. From Australia, from Mexico, Canada. And every governor in America will be invited. The goal is very simple: To form a broad international alliance so that when the Kyoto negotiators start their work in Poland this December, they will have our summit as a framework.”
** VIRGINIA SENATE RACE: MASSIVE LEAD FOR DEMOCRAT WARNER. He may have given a bad keynote address at the Democratic national convention, but former Virginia Governor Mark Warner may give a big boost to Barack Obama in his bid to win the Dominion State. Warner leads former Governor and Republican national chairman Jim Gilmore, by an amazing 60% to 34%, in the brand new Rasmussen poll. That has to help Obama, who now leads in Virginia, to win the longtime red state in presidential politics.
** VIRGINIA POLL: OBAMA BY 5. The brand-new Rasmussen poll of battleground Virginia has Barack Obama pulling ahead of John McCain, 50% to 45%. The same poll over the weekend had McCain by 2. 52% of Virginia voters say the economy is the top issue; 83% say it’s getting worse.
** CALIFORNIA POLL: OBAMA BY 17. The new Rasmussen poll of California has Barack Obama holding a landslide lead over John McCain, 56% to 39%. McCain’s controversial pick for a running mate, Sarah Palin, is very unpopular in California.
** THAT FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE WE’RE NOT HAVING.Let’s face it. This has been a disappointing campaign. Two very interesting candidates. Some of the biggest issues going, both within and without the US, and they have to blow up in our faces to get much attention. Then there’s the ridiculous media coverage. Which brings us to tonight’s foreign policy debate, which is finally back on.
Part of the problem is what it’s called. Because foreign policy is not “foreign,” it’s geopolitics. The underlying essential dynamics of geopolitics deeply affect domestic politics. In the flows of energy and capital and products and people, in our military budget, and in flash-point electoral politics. When there is debate, we end up debating symptoms — illegal immigration from Mexico, a surge in Iraq — rather than systems. … From my new Huffington Post column.
** REPORT FROM THE MCCAIN PRESS POOL.McCain now boarding plane at DCA with Cindy, Salter, Rudy Giuliani, wife Judith, and other aides plus pool.
Heading to Memphis, 1:50 minute flight, then motorcade to site.
General atmosphere is utter confusion.
9:10 AM UPDATE: The debate is on, as I expected. But what will it be about? It’s scheduled to be about foreign policy and national security or, more accurately, geopolitics. But with the massive financial crisis still very much unresolved — remember, its resolution was John McCain’s prerequisite for debating tonight — how can the economy not dominate tonight?
** AS OF NOW, 7:30 AM … No Wall Street bailout deal and no final word on whether John McCain will participate in tonight’s debate. McCain is meeting with House Republicans, the main impediment to a deal. I expect McCain to be in Mississippi tonight for his scheduled debate with Barack Obama.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Washington, DC and Oxford, Mississippi.
Joe Biden is in Cudahy, Wisconsin.
John McCain is in Washington, DC and Oxford, Mississippi.
Sarah Palin is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST AT NOON ON CLIMATE CHANGE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses the Commonwealth Club at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel nearly two years since his signing of AB 32, the landmark climate change program co-authored by former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and former LA Assemblywoman Fran Pavley. Schwarzenegger will take questions and hold a discussion with a Commonwealth Club official.
The Western Climate Initiative, a consortium of American and Canadian states and provinces spearheaded by Schwarzenegger, put out its climate change plan earlier this week.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will not address this weekend’s California Republican Party convention in Anaheim. He will appear at a debate watch party there tonight.
The far right California Republican Assembly is having a board meeting this weekend at the convention, and will take up the question of whether to back the prison guards union’s proposed recall of Schwarzenegger. CRA president Mike Spence — longtime readers will recall him posting here in defense of his characterization of then Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez as a “Communist fellow traveler” — favors the recall. Schwarzenegger should be so lucky as to have this group join forces with the prison guards union.
Russia is making a big move into Latin America with this tightening alliance with Venezuela.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA. Here is my series of five columns for the Los Angeles Times in debate with Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times reporter/editor Bill Boyarsky, whose columns are also included.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California until 2011. No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in its preparation.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading in the $105 to $106 per barrel range. The global oil market is reacting to the proposed massive American move to stabilize Wall Street.
The drop of over $42 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
In his new TV ad, Barack Obama says prosperity has not “trickled down, pain has trickled up.”
** NO WALL STREET BAIL-OUT YET. The White House meeting, naturally enough, did not result in a resolution of the nation’s financial crisis. My read is that John McCain’s presence actually exacerbated the situation, leading to House Minoriy Leader John Boehner, a McCain ally, digging in his heels and denying Republican votes for the package.
Nevertheless, I expect that McCain will have to show up for tomorrow night’s debate on geopolitics. The poll I cited below shows that his stance of avoiding a debate is a loser. The debate of course will include some economic questions. All this stuff is connected, as I point out in a forthcoming column setting up the debate.
** POIZNER LINES UP SUPPORT. While potential Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, the ex-eBay CEO who is national co-chair of the John McCain campaign, keeps a surprisingly low profile in the present national economic crisis, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, another super-rich Silicon Valley person, lines up more support for his prospective 2010 California governor’s race.
Poizner announced today that he has the backing of seven former state Republican Party chairs: Mike Schroeder, Truman Campbell, Tirso Del Junco, John Herrington (a former Reagan Cabinet member), John McGraw, Mike Montgomery and Frank Visco
** AN UNSUCCESSFUL GAMBIT. While we wait for the meeting with Bush, Obama, McCain, and congressional leaders in the White House to break up, we learn that John McCain’s gambit to postpone tomorrow night’s debate is not flying. According to the Marist Institute poll, US voters back Barack Obama’s insistence that the debate go forward, 53% to 42%.
** PALIN’. Incidentally, the word that Governor Palin is groping for, in the excerpt below, is “caricature.”
** PALIN DISCUSSES HER EXPERIENCE WITH RUSSIANS. From Katie Couric’s interview on tonight’s CBS Evening News:
COURIC: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?
PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land– boundary that we have with– Canada. It– it’s funny that a comment like that was– kind of made to– cari– I don’t know, you know? Reporters–
COURIC: Mock?
PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah.
COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.
PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our– our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They’re in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia—
COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?
PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We– we do– it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is– from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to– to our state.
** NORTH CAROLINA POLL: OBAMA BY 2. The new Rasmussen poll of battleground North Carolina shows Barack Obama leading John McCain in the longtime red state, 49% to 47%. This is a 5-point reversal in a week. The big change comes from independents moving to Obama.
** MICHIGAN POLL: OBAMA BY 10. The new Detroit News poll of battleground Michigan shows Barack Obama opening up a big lead over John McCain, 48% to 38%. 80% of likely Michigan voters see the economy worsening. Only 2% see it improving.
** DODD SAYS: WE HAVE A DEAL, ER, “FUNDAMENTAL AGREEMENT,” ON THE FINANCIAL CRISIS.Read the details here.
Friday night’s presidential debate on foreign policy — read: geopolitics — is on. And McCain and Obama haven’t even had their grandstanding meeting with Bush yet. One potential sticking point. Democrats want to make it easier for homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages. Republicans don’t.
** CLINTON GLOBAL INITIATIVE CONFERENCE IN NEW YORK. If you want to watch the CGI meeting in Manhattan, the webcasts are available here.
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was interviewed last night by CBS News anchor Katie Couric.
** PALIN WITH COURIC. GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin did her third interview in this campaign last night, with CBS News anchor Katie Couric. It didn’t go that well. Palin repeated basic talking points throughout and proved unable to cite one past example of John McCain favoring regulation of financial markets. You can watch the video above.
** CALIFORNIA POLL: GAY MARRIAGE BAN GOING DOWN, REDISTRICTING REFORM IN BALLPARK, CAPITOL CHANGES WANTED. The new Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll shows the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, Prop 8 on the November ballot, going down, 41% to 55%. Brad Pitt recently gave $100,000 to defeat it, as did Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw. (Incidentally, Pitt’s real name is William Bradley Pitt, so when you imdb me, you come up with that other guy first. Which is only the beginning of our tremendous similarities …) Prop 4, which would require parental notification for teenage abortion, is up 48% to 41%. The redistricting reform initiative, Prop 11, is ahead 38% to 33%. Ordinarily, that’s not a good number. But 70% of California voters say they want the redistricting system changed, which indicates room for growth in support with a good campaign. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be campaigning heavily for Prop 11 in coming weeks.
There’s tremendous dissatisfaction with the state Capitol scene in the wake of the record budget impasse. 76% say major changes are needed in the budget process. By a margin of 49% to 37%, voters say they want to change the two-thirds vote requirement for budget passage to a 55% majority of the Legislature. Last year, that idea had only a 2-point margin.
How do voters want to handle the chronic California budget crisis? 43% favor a mix of spending cuts and tax increases, while 7% favor tax increases alone. 36% want to do it mainly through cuts, while 5% want to borrow their way through.
The Legislature has a collective 21% approval rating. Governor Schwarzenegger is down to 38%. Which is only a little lower than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at 40% and Senator Barbara Boxer at 44%. Senator Dianne Feinstein has a 48% job approval rating.
President Bush’s approval rating in California hit an all-time low in the PPIC poll of 23%. Barack Obama has a comfortable lead over John McCain, with Sarah Palin having no impact on women voters or independents.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Clearwater, Florida and Washington, DC. Obama continues debate prep in Florida, addresses the Clinton Global Initiative by satellite, and meets in Washington on the financial crisis with President Bush, John McCain, and congressional leaders.
Joe Biden is in Greensburg and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
John McCain is in New York City and Washington, DC. He addresses the Clinton Global Initiative in Manhattan and meets in Washington on the financial crisis with President Bush, Barack Obama, and congressional leaders.
Sarah Palin is in New York City and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST THIS MORNING. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses the League of California Cities conference in Long Beach at 11 AM. The event will be webcast live at www.gov.ca.gov.
Schwarzenegger spends the rest of the day going through the hundreds of legislative bills he must accept or reject by the end of the month.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA. Here is my series of five columns for the Los Angeles Times in debate with Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times reporter/editor Bill Boyarsky, whose columns are also included.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California until 2011. No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in its preparation.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading in the $105 to $106 per barrel range. The global oil market is reacting to the proposed massive American move to stabilize Wall Street.
The drop of over $42 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
** MCCAIN’S DRAMATIC GAMBIT, WITH SLIDING POLLS … So you see the item just below. Obviously I stockpile information, since I can’t write 24/7 and think at the same time, much less conduct a personal life.
Meanwhile, I have been wrapping up a column in advance of Friday night’s first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. Which means that I do a tour d’horizon, then put it into relatively brief and accessible terms for a large audience.
Team McCain has a different, confounding idea. While I have been in the process of wrapping up a column, several NWN posters have informed me that John McCain wants to postpone the debate, which is on his seeming strong suit, and suspend his campaign per se, in order to focus on the financial crisis.
A reality check. McCain has been all over the lot on the financial crisis. His problem? He is a staunch deregulationist, at a moment in history in which it is clear that that approach has failed. I’m not going to get into the question of the role of his key staff in lobbying for and receiving major value from various big finance entities.
More to the point, despite Team McCain trotting out one of their pollsters this morning on a conference call, it is clear that Obama is surging in various polls. I haven’t bothered to comment on all of them, one of them being the Fox News poll.
Personally, I hope Obama does not cancel the debate. Because I have spent some time on this forthcoming geopolitics column. And because the issues have been ignored, they are all linked when you see the overall, and it is an obvious ploy.
It would be amusing to see this tried in California …
** MENDELSOHN HANDLING MCCAIN PRESS AT FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE. John McCain campaign topper Steve Schmidt’s partner in Mercury Communications, former Arnold Schwarzenegger communications director Adam Mendelsohn, flew to Oxford Mississippi yesterday to take over communciations operations for the first presidential debate, scheduled for Friday. The issue area being foreign policy.
** BATTLEGROUND STATE POLLS: OBAMA UP IN IOWA, NEW HAMPSHIRE, MICHIGAN, PENNSYLVIANIA, OHIO.The Marist polls are now out for these battleground states. In Iowa, it’s Barack Obama over John McCain, 51% to 41%. In New Hampshire, Obama 51-45. In Michigan, Obama 52-43. In Ohio, Obama 47-45. In Pennsylvania, Obama 49-44.
** THE CLINTONS ARE COMING. Hillary and Bill Clinton will be campaigning for Barack Obama next week in various states. The former president is in New York City this week for his annual Clinton Global Initiative conference (see the Schwarzenegger item below) and the New York senator is focused this week on the Wall Street crisis. Obviously, the idea behind the timing is to have them out there to reinforce Obama following his first debate with John McCain on Friday night.
** NATIONAL POLL: OBAMA BY 9. The new ABC News/Washington Post poll gives Barack Obama a clear lead over John McCain, 52% to 43%. The poll was conducted Friday through Monday amongst likely voters. Obama’s lead is due to a big shift toward economic concern as the driving issue of the election, and an increase in the number of voters who see Obama as better than McCain on the issue. Also driving Obama’s lead is a shift of independents to Obama, and a shift of white women to Obama. Neither John Kerry nor Al Gore ever had this large a lead in the ABC/Post poll.
All other polls show Obama in the lead now, but this has the highest margin for Obama. It’s also the most extensive poll of the most recent ones. McCain led by 2 in this poll early this month.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Tampa, Florida for debate prep. He holds a rally in Dunedin, Florida. Joe Biden is in Cincinnati, Ohio and Jeffersonville, Indiana. He delivers a major foreign policy address in Cincy.
John McCain is in New York City. He and Sarah Palin meet with various foreign leaders in town for the United Nations — including the presidents of Georgia and Ukraine and U2 lead singer Bono. He also meets with Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a former Hillary backer who says that Obama is “elitist.”
Sarah Palin is in New York City, for the United Nations. Today is the second day in which she will have met a foreign head of government.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in private meetings and discussions today in Los Angeles. His focus is on the hundreds of legislative bills he must decide upon between now and the end of the month.
Schwarzenegger had agreed to participate in the annual Clinton Global Initiative conference, which begins today in New York City, accepting former President Bill Clinton’s invitation. But the crush of bill signings and vetos, accordioned by the long budget impasse, made that impossible.
** CALIFORNIA STORY. I will have a lot of California material tomorrow, pivoting off the release from embargo of a major new California poll.
** DISTRACT AND DETRACT: TEAM MCCAIN FOLLOWS FORM IN CRISIS. On Monday in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s, John McCain’s campaign wanted to talk about the Chicago political machine, the New York Times, Bill Ayers (who?), and Hugo Chavez. … From my new Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA.Here is my series of five columns for the Los Angeles Times in debate with Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times reporter/editor Bill Boyarsky, whose columns are also included.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California until 2011. No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in its preparation.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading around $109 per barrel. That’s over $4 more than the Friday close, but over $7 under Monday’s close. The global oil market is reacting to the proposed massive American move to stabilize Wall Street.
The drop of over $38 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
Barack Obama’s new TV ad attacks John McCain for a trip to Bermuda, and Bermuda off-shore tax shelters.
** BUFFETT HELPS GOLDMAN SACHS AFTER MITSUBISHI PITCHES IN WITH MORGAN STANLEY. A day after Japan’s Mitsubishi Bank bought nearly a quarter of Morgan Stanley, one of only two remaining Big 5 independent investment banks starting out the year on Wall Street, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway will invest $5 billion in the other, Goldman Sachs, to help shore up its position. Goldman Sachs has a major presence in California, via managing director Kathleen Brown, the former state treasurer. And Buffett is a great friend of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Who’s going to shore up Las Vegas, to refer to a major item earlier today?
** COLORADO POLL: OBAMA BY 7. The new Public Policy Polling survey of battleground Colorado, newer than the numbers below, has Barack Obama leading John McCain, 51% to 44%. Two weeks ago, Obama had only a one-point edge. The difference? Independents shifting to Obama in the wake of the Sarah Palin selection.
** NORTH CAROLINA POLL: DEAD EVEN. The new Civitas poll of battleground North Carolina, long a red state, shows Barack Obama and John McCain each with 45%. McCain had held a slight lead. The difference? Moderates and independents shifting to Obama in the wake of the Sarah Palin selection.
** FLORIDA POLL: OBAMA BY 2. The new Mason-Dixon poll for NBC of battleground Florida has Barack Obama barely ahead of John McCain, 47% to 45%. There’s a reason he’s doing debate prep in Tampa.
** VIVA LAS VEGAS?The Western icon of endless growth, global icon of glitzy materialist aspiration, Las Vegas, is having a major downturn. More than expected. Casions are laying off thousands. Tourists are still coming to Sin City, but they’re bargain hunting and spending less. And Nevada, along with Florida, is the hardest hit in the country by the housing and mortgage crisis. At least half of Vegas tourists arrive by car or bus, so high gasoline prices are impacting things as well. It’s no surprise that the Silver State is looking like prime territory for a red-to-blue pick-up by Barack Obama. Ironically, it’s John McCain who has much the stronger ties to Nevada. McCain loves to gamble, and his son was on the board of a Nevada bank. Which recently went under.
The old Vegas advertising slogan? “What Happens In Vegas, Stays In Vegas.” The new Vegas slogan? “Crazy Times Call For Crazy Fun.” I’m not sure Don Draper would have come up with that one …
Respondents were read statements by each of the candidates spelling out what they see as the cause of the crisis. Neither candidate was identified as the source of either statement of responsiblity. Then respondents were asked which they most agreed with.
46% of likely voters agreed with this statement: “The challenges facing our financial system today are more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren’t minding the store. [Eight] Years of policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
31% agreed with this statement: “The financial crisis we’re living through today started with the corruption and manipulation of our home mortgage system. At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
The first statement, which 46% agreed with, is by Obama. The second statement, agreed with by 31%, is by McCain. This indicates that Obama’s framing of the issue is much stronger than McCain’s, despite the notable populist tropes in how the Arizonan apportions blame. If Obama drives home his message, and the contrast with McCain’s, he will increase his lead.
** QUINNIPIAC BATTLEGROUND POLLS: OBAMA LEADS IN COLORADO, MICHIGAN, MINNESOTA, AND WISCONSIN. The new Quinnipiac poll of four battleground states for the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post finds Barack Obama running ahead based on his big edge — from 20 to 24 points in each state — over John McCain as the “candidate of change.”
Obama leads in Colorado, 49-45. Obama leads in Michigan, 48-44. Obama leads in Minnesota, 47-45. Obama leads in Wisconsin, 49-42. Obama leads amongst women voters by double digits in every state except Minnesota.
President Bush’s approval ratings in the four states range between 24% and 26%.
** DISTRACT AND DETRACT: TEAM MCCAIN FOLLOWS FORM IN CRISIS. On Monday in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s, John McCain’s campaign wanted to talk about the Chicago political machine, the New York Times, Bill Ayers (who?), and Hugo Chavez. … From my new Huffington Post column.
John McCain’s new TV ad says he has “tough new rules for Wall Street” while Barack Obama is “mum,” aside from wanting more taxes for Americans.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Tampa, Florida for debate prep. He appeared this morning on The Today Show.
Joe Biden is in Woodbridge, Virginia and Washington, DC.
John McCain is in Strongsville and Middleburg, Ohio and Freeland, Michigan.
Sarah Palin is in New York City, for the United Nations. Today is the first day in which she will have met a foreign head of government.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs the California budget this morning after a record impasse, sans ceremony, then appears on the East Steps of the Capitol with leaders of Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the California Chamber of Commerce, and AARP to promote his redistricting reform initiative, Proposition 11 on the November ballot.
Schwarzeneger then spends the remainder of the day in private meetings and discussions and study of the nearly one thousand legislative bills awaiting his decision, along with a half-billion in line item budget vetoes.
A Russian naval squadron is en route to the Caribbean for the first time since the Cold War to conduct maneuvers.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA.Here is my series of five columns for the Los Angeles Times in debate with Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times reporter/editor Bill Boyarsky, author of biographies of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Unruh.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California until 2011. No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in its preparation.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading around $109 per barrel. That’s over $4 more than the Friday close, but over $7 under yesterday’s close. The global oil market is reacting to the proposed massive American move to stabilize Wall Street.
The drop of over $38 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
Barack Obama’s brand-new attack ad rips John McCain for his new article praising Wall Street deregulation and promising more deregulation of the health care industry.
** DISTRACT AND DETRACT: TEAM MCCAIN FOLLOWS FORM IN CRISIS. In the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s, John McCain’s campaign wants to talk about the Chicago political machine, the New York Times, Bill Ayers (who?), and Hugo Chavez. … From my new Huffington Post column.
** SCHWARZENEGGER WILL SIGN CALIFORNIA BUDGET TOMORROW AND PIVOT TO NEEDED GOVERNMENTAL REFORMS. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will sign, with a notable lack of fanfare, the tardiest state budget in California history tomorrow morning. Then he will pivot to some needed governmental reforms in California. More to follow. As part of it, Schwarzenegger will join leaders of Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the California Chamber of Commerce, and AARP in an event promoting passage of his redistricting reform initiative, Prop 11 on the November California ballot.
** OIL MARKET GOES WILD, COMMODITIES SHOOT SKYWARD. The price of crude oil skyrocketed today, surging a record $25 per barrel for a single day’s trading to $130 per barrel before settling back at a close of $120.92, up $16.37, from Friday’s close.
Gold also had a sharp upward move today of $40 per ounce. Commodities are an investment safe haven in tumultuous economic times.
** “GunBaNObama.” The National Rifle Association has begun a multi-million TV and radio ad campaign against Barack Obama and Joe Biden. You can see the ads here. The NRA says it’s up now in Pennsylvania, with Colorado and New Mexico and other states coming. My observation, without getting into the particulars of the group’s expansive claims, is that the style of advertising is such that it’s not going after anyone who was considering voting for Obama in the first place. You’ll see what I mean.
** VIRGINIA POLL: OBAMA BY 6. The new Survey USA poll of battleground Virginia shows Barack Obama leading John McCain, 51% to 45%. Before Sarah Palin was named to the Republican ticket, Obama led McCain among women voters by six points. After Palin was named to the ticket, Obama’s lead among women voters jumped to 16 points.
** SCHMIDT ATTACKS ON SEVERAL FRONTS, NONE OF THEM ABOUT THE ECONOMY. John McCain’s campaign director, Steve Schmidt, in a morning conference call, attacked on several fronts. First, on the new anti-Obama ad seen below, claiming Obama is nothing more than a product of “Chicago’s corrupt political machine.” Then, with an attention-getting slashing of the New York Times, calling it “not by any standard a journalistic organization. And then on Bill Ayers, the ex-Weather Underground terrorist-turned-university professor, claiming that Obama launched his political career with a fundraiser at Ayer’s home. (He didn’t. It was one of several houses Obama visited for neighborhood meet-and-greets when he first ran for state senate.)
What do these things all have in common? They’re not about the financial crisis.
I’ve explained the approach several times in my columns.
Obama has developed a consistent lead in the daily national tracking polls.
The Morning Column: MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK
There’s one good thing about an epic global financial crisis. We’re not engaged in trivial pursuits. This is a big week in presidential politics. Both Barack Obama and John McCain will continue grappling with the correct policy response to the crisis, and the current administration’s attempts to deal with it. And they will both be preparing for their first debate, which comes Friday in Oxford, Mississippi.
Obama has moved up some in the polls on the strength of economic crisis, and McCain’s faltering response to it. Not that Obama has been a beacon of light on the issue. Though he has been a beacon of calm. The slight frontrunner has been cautious in his pronouncements, calling for more detail from federal bailout leaders, criticizing McCain for his longtime deregulationist stance, and demanding more oversight. And now joining with other Democratic leaders in insisting on mortgage relief for Americans, not just a bailout of the big firms involved, and limits on executive compensation.
But if Obama has been far less than incisive, McCain has been a portrait in confusion and contradiction. Just a week ago today, he said America’s economic fundamentals are “strong.” A few hours later he was backpedaling on what he meant by that, defining “fundamentals” as “workers.” After his first inclination, a punt to a “9/11-type commission” to study the matter failed to launch from the carrier deck, he began alternating between blaming Obama for the crisis and launching angry populist attacks on Wall Street.
The problem with blaming Obama is that McCain’s entire campaign has been geared to the proposition that Obama has no experience. That is to say, it was geared that way until the very late decision to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate. If Obama has no experience, how can he be responsible for the crisis? Er, because he’d received advice and some donations from the former heads of the Fannie Mac and Freddie Mac housing finance entities. Casualties the week before, which McCain didn’t delve into then since he was profiting from Sarah Palin’s sense of victimization and the question of whether it is sexist to use the old phrase, “lipstick on a pig.”
This brand-new John McCain attack ad says Barack Obama is “born of the corrupt Chicago political machine.”
But the problem is, obviously, much deeper than Fannie and Freddie. And, in any event, it turns out McCain’s longtime campaign manager Rick Davis made $2 million heading up a lobbying effort for … Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
This is what happens when you are in scramble mode, with a candidate who has touted his chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee and has long stated that he is for financial deregulation.
By Sunday night, McCain was hugging close to Obama’s policy positioning, while attacking him constantly on taxes and a variety of things. Including the Chicago political machine.
Obama fired back with a tough new ad this morning, citing a new magazine article by McCain (clearly not written in the last week) in which he praises Wall Street deregulation and proposes to bring more deregulation to the health care industry. I suspect we will also hear more about McCain’s past support for some privatization of Social Security.
There are also major geopolitical developments taking place, which I’ll get into later.
This new John McCain ad ties Barack Obama to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. It is not a parody.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Joe Biden is in Baltimore, Maryland, to address the National Guard convention.
John McCain is in Scranton and Media, Pennsylvania and in Middleburg Heights, Ohio.
Sarah Palin is in Media, Pennsylvania and New York City.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger holds private meetings and discussions in and around the Capitol today. With the record state budget impasse decided much more in his favor than seemed likely a week ago, though the chronic budget crisis is not solved, he now has nearly a thousand bills to decide on.
** SCHWARZENEGER: LEGACY AND FUTURE. (From my Friday LA Times column)
What will be Arnold Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California? What lies in his future? Will he have political heirs?
These are rather futuristic questions, as Schwarzenegger has another 27-plus months as governor. But the gubernatorial election cycle will commence right after the presidential election, and Schwarzenegger, thanks to term limits, can’t seek a third landslide victory. And he became a global icon as the star of scifi action films, so a bit of futurism it is.
As he brandished a broom before a roaring crowd of 10,000 outside the Capitol the weekend before the 2003 recall election, with his anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It” roaring behind him, Schwarzenegger vowed to sweep aside the old political ways. He was elected as a reformer, with the mission of straightening out state government and getting California moving again.
But of course, the image of him striding off the silver screen, smiting the bad guys and freeing Mars, er, California was not actually to be. For one thing, it’s tough to be a reformer when you’re smashing all fundraising records, even if much of the money is going to fund your version of reform. For another, politics isn’t exactly like the movies, needless to say.
Schwarzenegger did get California moving again, as former rival Gray Davis was one of the first to acknowledge. Now things are at a low ebb, with the Golden State battered, first by its own business cycle and chronic budget crisis, now by what is clearly an epic global financial crisis.
Schwarzenegger, who at times has arguably been the most popular governor in California’s history, is at one of his lower ebbs. But he’s proved to be resilient, the public likes him, and he’s been relentless in each of his careers. In conversations, both former Governor Davis and former Governor Jerry Brown, now the attorney general, have marveled at Schwarzenegger’s audaciousness and determination to think big.
He’s already had major accomplishments. In 2004, Schwarzenegger stabilized the state’s finances by winning voter approval of the multi-billion-dollar deficit bonds Davis and the Legislature put together to keep state government running, making the package constitutional and averting a legal challenge that could easily have shattered the state’s finances. He then passed a major workers compensation reform package which, while decidedly imperfect for workers, helped many businesses.
Then, frequently working in post-partisan fashion with legislative partners, the biggest infrastructure investment program in California’s history; the biggest solar energy program in the country; an increase in the minimum wage; his rescue of what is now the biggest stem cell research program in the world; and a landmark program to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, which the next president has vowed to approve.
He fell short last year on universal health care, but I expect more moves on that front, as well as on the environment, water, and other issues.
Schwarzenegger has not solved California’s chronic budget crisis, fed in part by his first act as governor: The extraordinarily popular decision to cut the car tax. While he has pushed unsuccessfully for various budget reforms and revenue sources, he has been whipsawed by the anti-government and ultra-government factions and the nearly unique two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget, which cause fiscal entropy in the Capitol.
He’s just won a budget stare-down with legislative leaders, who were slow to realize they didn’t have the votes to overturn his promised veto of the budget package. But the concessions he won don’t solve the problem.
So Schwarzenegger gets another crack next year. Hopefully everyone can think outside their little boxes. Conservative icon Ronald Reagan pushed for a big tax hike. Liberal icon Jerry Brown pushed for the Gann spending limit. The most conservative governor of my lifetime, George Deukmejian, shredded that limit. The crisis will be solved only when people get beyond stereotypical thinking.
What’s next for Schwarzenegger? Both Barack Obama and John McCain say they want him in their Cabinets. McCain owes him, after Schwarzenegger helped him clinch the nomination in the California primary. He could run for the Senate, but would be one of 100 if he came up with a rationale against the spirited Barbara Boxer. He can do a global foundation and serve in international posts. He can make movies.
Who are his heirs? He may be a one-off. I doubt many movie stars are thinking: “Gee, that looks easy.” The Republicans in this state are becoming more insular. It will be very tough for any Republican not born in Austria to win in 2010.
One thing is certain. The Schwarzenegger story will continue.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA.Here are my five columns from last week for the LA Times, opposite Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times political reporter and editor Bill Boyarsky, author of biographies of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Unruh.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California for nearly 28 more months. No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in the preparation of this column.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading around $109 per barrel. That’s over $4 more than the Friday close. The global oil market is reacting to the proposed massive American move to stabilize Wall Street.
The drop of over $39 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
Don Draper discusses “new” and “nostalgia,” pitching the Kodak “Carousel” in this scene from Mad Men, the show about the origins of Madison Avenue advertising and big media in 1960 America, nominated for the most Emmy Awards Sunday night and my vote for best series in the SAG Awards. Draper is played by Golden Globe-winning actor Jon Hamm.
** SUNDAY — WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Joe Biden is in Wilmington, Delaware, off the campaign trail.
John McCain is in Baltimore, Maryland, for the National Guard convention, and Philadelphia and Pittston, Pennsylvania
Sarah Palin is in Lady Lake, Florida.
Obama and McCain will both appear tonight on 60 Minutes, taking up the entirety of the program with a discussion of the financial crisis.
** THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE. Barack Obama now leads in all four daily tracking polls. What is interesting about this is that he has the edge in all age groups under 60. And in each of the three major regional groupings — West, Midwest, Northeast — other than the South, where John McCain has a huge edge.
** SATURDAY — WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Dayton and Jacksonville, Florida.
Joe Biden is in Castlewood, Virginia.
John McCain is in Washington, DC and Annapolis, Maryland, for the 50th reunion of his US Naval Academy class.
Sarah Palin is in Orlando, Florida, where she has no public events. Palin is in the process of cramming for her vice presidential debate with Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Biden.
** ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER’S CALIFORNIA.Here are my five columns this week for the LA Times, opposite the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times political reporter and editor Bill Boyarsky, author of biographies of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Unruh.
Among them is what I’m sure is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California for nearly 28 more months.
No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in the preparation of this column.
I’ll publish the latter piece here in its entirety on Monday.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil closed at $104.55 per barrel on Friday. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
After plummeting to around $90 per barrel at the trough of the week, oil recovered a bit as it became apparent that US and other central banks would inject a trillion or so dollars to save the teetering global financial system.
The drop of over $43 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
Barack Obama hits John McCain for his top economic advisors Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina, and for his support for President Bush’s economic program.
** END OF DAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he has an improved California budget deal with legislative leaders, after promising to veto the budget they passed late Monday night. Both houses of the California Legislature are meeting late this afternoon and are expected to pass the revised budget, which includes three budget reforms demanded by Schwarzenegger and replaces the scheme to forcibly borrow money from taxpayers through accelerated income tax withholding with larger penalties on corporations underpaying their taxes. When asked about a budget-signing ceremony, Schwarzenegger said he would sign the budget sometime early next week, but said he would definitely not call it a “ceremony,” as there is “nothing to celebrate.” … Barack Obama’s opened up a big lead in battleground Iowa in the new Survey USA poll, 54% to 43%. … A variety of polls, public and private, show McCain in a slow slide in Rust Belt battleground states, with Sarah Palin not helping.
This, I’m sure, is the first piece examining Schwarzenegger’s legacy as governor of California. Since he will actually be governor of California for nearly 28 more months.
No technology known to be disruptive to the space/time continuum was used in the preparation of this column.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST THIS AFTERNOON ON THE CALIFORNIA BUDGET CRISIS. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger holds a Capitol press conference at 3 PM this afternoon to discuss the chronic state budget crisis. After promising a veto of the budget produced by the Legislature, whose leaders mistakenly thought they could swiftly override, he won a few concessions and there now seems to be a deal going forward, with votes set for late afternoon in both the Assembly and Senate. The event will be webcast live at www.gov.ca.gov.
** CURIOUS DEBATE AROUND THE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN. Well, at least California’s chronically messed-up budget is stabilized again, even somewhat better than it was set to be just a few days ago. But for all the murk and inertia around that mess, it’s a beacon of clarity compared to the debate around the meltdown of much the national and global financial sector.
With the crisis full-blown, the laissez faire Bush/Cheney administration is reacting like a social democratic regime. Big bailouts, still hazy in their particulars but not in their scope, are the order of the day. Hundreds of billions of dollars of government money is being used to float financial markets and bail out at least one firm, the world’s biggest insurance firm, and perhaps more.
In the midst of all this, the presidential campaign debate has become quite murky. It’s an environment once again advantaging Barack Obama and the Democrats, as Obama moves quickly this week to leads in most polls.
But it’s not clear precisely what Obama wants done. He met with key economic advisors today in Florida — including much of the top Bill Clinton team from his Cabinet and White House — and came forth with a similar speech to what he said earlier in the week. Action is needed. Regulators and overseers have failed. He’s not against what the Bush administration is doing. But he’s not specifically endorsing it and is continuing to evaluate the situation. Oh, and this shows the problems of financialist greed and the failure of John McCain’s deregulationist approach.
For his part, McCain has lurched around this week. On Monday, he called the American economy strong and called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate. He later adjusted his remarks on the state of the economy. And lurched into an angry sort of populist rhetoric against greed. Hit with reminders of his deregulationist record and the numbers of Wall Street lobbyists deeply involved with running his campaign, he attacked Obama as a tax-and-spend Democrat and tried to link him to the disgraced former head of the failed Fannie Mae home finance corporation. He said he would fire Securities & Exchange Commission head Chris Cox, which he couldn’t do. Today he declared he is against more bailouts — even as the Bush team is pressing forward — and unveiled a plan to help some homeowners. And attacked Obama, implying he bore responsibility for the meltdown.
If McCain is hyperactive, Obama is phlegmatic. While the overall environment should favor Obama, it’s quite dangerous for him. I’ll get into why in a forthcoming column.
** PALIN PALING.Two weeks ago, I wrote that Sarah Palin would prove to be a base play for the Republicans, someone too controversial to be more than a colorful sideshow, who Democrats should not concentrate on unless they wanted to allow Team McCain to win sympathy for her. That she was a target-rich environment for the media. That’s showing up in the polls already.
“Over the course of a single weekend, in other words, Palin went from being the most popular White House hopeful to the least.” In another poll I’ve heard of, she’s heading to net negative in favorable/unfavorable.
** CALIFORNIA UNEMPLOYMENT RATE NOW NATION’S THIRD HIGHEST.California’s unemployment rate hit 7.7% last month, tying Mississippi for third highest in the nation. It trails only Michigan’s 8.9% and Rhode Island’s 8.5%. Mississippi’s is probably higher now, though, due to hurricane disruption. California is especially hard hit by the housing and subprime mortgage crises.
** NATIONAL POW/MIA DAY AND THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE. Today is National POW/MIA Day, honoring those who served as prisoners of war and those still missing in action. And it is the 60th anniversary of the US Air Force.
The Air Force began decades earlier as part of the US Army, the Army Air Corps. But after World War II, when air power became a decisive element for the first time in the history of warfare, and with the global struggle with the Soviet Union known as the Cold War in full bloom, the Air Force became its own officially separate service with its own dimensional doctrinees.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Coral Gables, Florida. Obama confers with economic advisors and delivers a speech on the financial crisis, in part reacting to fresh news of a massive federal bailout in the works.
Joe Biden is in Sterling, Virginia.
John McCain is in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Blaine, Minnesota, and Washington, DC. He delivers remarks on the financial crisis, also reacting to the sudden massive federal bailout
Sarah Palin is in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Blaine, Minnesota, and Orlando, Florida.
In this brand new TV ad, John McCain attacks Barack Obama for having nothing to say about the financial crisis.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will have private meetings and conversations in and around the Capitol today. His principal topic, of course, is the chronic California budget crisis. Having won his budget stare-down with legislative leaders, who were curiously unaware of the political reality that they didn’t have the votes to override his veto of their budget package, both houses of the Legislature will meet late this afternoon to vote on a revised budget.
I kicked things off Monday by addressing this question. Is California better off now under Schwarzenegger than it was before the dramatic 2003 recall?
On Tuesday, the topic was Schwarzenegger on taxes. Wednesday, should he have decided to veto the state budget? Yesterday, what about post-partisanship? Today, what is Schwarzenegger’s legacy and future?
** SCHWARZENEGGER: POST-PARTISANSHIP VS. HYPER-PARTISANSHIP. (from yesterday’s LA Times column)
What to make of Schwarzenegger’s post-partisan mode of politics? And how effective is it? First, you have to define what it is and why it exists.
I agree with Bill Boyarsky that a constructive partisanship is part and parcel of the American system of politics and governance. But partisanship has jumped the curb, morphing (to use a word made popular by Terminator II) into hyper-partisanship.
Hyper-partisanship infects state and national politics today. It’s a corrosive political style that plays to the extremes of both parties. It’s about “mobilizing the base,” which is how Karl Rove’s approach to re-electing President Bush can be summed up. It’s about demonizing your opponents, a tactic that characterizes both the left and the right ends of the blogosphere, not to mention talk radio.
It’s not really about finding solutions — and it’s really not very popular.
Post-partisanship is the effort to move beyond hyper-partisanship, to engage with voters and deal with issues beyond the crouched ideological confines of gerrymandered districts, base mobilization strategies, and the politics of personal destruction.
Here in California, the rise of hyper-partisanship has actually undermined the parties themselves. Independent voters, officially called “decline to state,” are the fastest-growing bloc, while the Republicans and Democrats are seeing their shares of the electorate fall. When you include the American Independent Party (most of whose registrants — which included Jennifer Siebel, new wife of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom — unwittingly signed up not realizing it’s actually a tiny right-wing party), independent voters are about 22% of the California electorate.
Schwarzenegger’s smashingly successful re-election campaign — in which he crushed a hyper-partisan Democrat by 17 points in a great year for Democrats across the country — was largely geared toward independent voters. With most Republicans backing Schwarzenegger, notwithstanding the yapping about him from hyper-partisans of the far right, the post-partisan approach was the clear path to victory in the statewide election. It assured that Schwarzenegger would win most of the independents and a good slice of the Democrats.
It’s no coincidence that 2006, a year in which Californians paid a lot of attention to state politics on account of the gubernatorial election, was also a year for notable post-partisan accomplishments: The biggest infrastructure investment program in California’s history; the biggest solar energy program in the country; an increase in the minimum wage; Schwarzenegger’s rescue of what is now the biggest stem cell research program in the world; and a landmark program to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
These accomplishments came about, in many respects, through Schwarzenegger’s ability to work with Democratic legislative leaders Fabian Nuñez and Don Perata. Nuñez in particular was a fascinating player in this. Coming from the ranks of organized labor, you can’t say he’s not a real Democrat. While former Treasurer Phil Angelides, the Democrat Schwarzenegger defeated in 2006, had styled himself as “the anti-Arnold,” reflexively opposing anything the former action superstar did or said, it was really then-Assembly Speaker Nuñez who deserved the moniker. He created far more trouble for Schwarzenegger than Angelides or anyone else.
But Nuñez kept trying to figure Schwarzenegger out, wondering if there might be a way to work together. The two finally met at length, secretly, in late summer 2005, looking for ways to avert the special election Schwarzenegger had called for his initiative reform package. Naturally, the hard partisans in both men’s camps worked to keep the battle on. Although they couldn’t quite find the deal to stop the 2005 special election, they had found a way to work together. And in 2007, their post-partisan approach came tantalizingly close to achieving a universal healthcare program for California.
The health care experience last year points to the shortcomings of post-partisanship, or perhaps of politics itself. Unlike infrastructure, which even some conservative Republicans could be convinced to support, health care is an extraordinarily complex issue with many moving parts that are hard to articulate. And on the state budget, with legislative Republicans dominated by their anti-government faction and legislative Democrats dominated by their ultra-government faction, it’s even more difficult — especially in a non-election year for California’s governorship, with the public not paying attention and the news media in a state of devolution.
** FANTASY & REALITY: MCCAIN/PALIN ON RUSSIA AFTER THE GEORGIA WAR. There’s a big gap between the political fantasy being expressed and the political and military reality. … From my column last Friday.
** DECONSTRUCTING THE BIG MAC ATTACK: 12 KEY THINGS TO UNDERSTAND. It’s important to step back from the hourly yip-yap of the campaign to understand what’s really happening. Especially with more than a few Dems coming down with “a case of the drizzles,” to borrow a phrase from Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. At least until the polls started turning again in Obama’s direction, that is. … Better still to understand what Team McCain is doing that is allowing it more success than seemed likely in a year like this. … From my September 10th column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
After plummeting the last few days over the global financial turmoil emanating from Wall Street, the price has gone back up a bit upon news of the massive US governmental bailout of the world’s largest insurance firm, American International Group, and upon news that the federal government is prepared to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system.
The drop of over $48 per barrel since the record high two months ago comes on acknowledgement that the weak US economy will cut future demand and the easing of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The Russian war with Georgia, confounding much speculation and reporting to the contrary, actually decreased the geopolitical risk premium in the oil market.
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