Highlights from the Roots n' Blues n' BBQ Festival

http://www.ruthiefoster.com/

http://www.garyclarkjr.com/

http://www.tabbenoit.com/


There is more to come.

Not exactly Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy

The cubs keep losing so I have to try and keep my spirits up somehow. Lets see what dave has to say about the vice president debate.




On a searious note about the debate. I think Palin is in more trouble than everyone thought last after the debate. The initial thought was she met expectations and she survived. As people step away from that mode of thinking and reconsider how she did it was terrible. As people discuss the debates and the late night comedians reinforce the image this is going to turn into an even larger loss than originally thought.

Fight the smears, Fight the smears that be

We knew what to expect next from the McCain campaign. Go negative and now we have confirmation from TPM.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/mccain_campaigns_ad_spending_n.php

The McCain campaign has now shifted virtually 100 percent of his national ad
spending into negative ads attacking Obama, a detailed breakdown of his ad buys
reveals

No surprises of course. It will be interesting to see what the strategy is, how plays out, and how the Obama campaign responds. The initial results from both debates should be encouraging. It didn't appear undecideds were swayed and even turned off by the McCain - Palin negativism. Obama has run an amazing campaign thus far and I expect nothing less. They have a number of resources at their disposal. The vast cache of text numbers, fight the smears website http://www.fightthesmears.com/, the Obama channel http://mysteryj.blogspot.com/2008/10/check-your-local-listings.html that will be integrated in responding and refuting the oncoming rash of smears.

St. Louis Blues........... thoughts on the debate

This is a pretty full extended weekend for me. Last night I had a long planned date with my wife to do the annual Columbia Jazz and Wine Pub Crawl.


http://wealwaysswing.org/schedule/event/pubcrawl/

Friday and Saturday is the second annual Roots n' Blues n' Barbecue Festival.

http://www.rootsnbluesnbbq.com/

So am I keeping pretty busy, in addition to the canvassing I did last night. I didn't have a whole lot of time to watch and analyze the debate. My take away from the debate and response was.

Biden won - no surprise.
Palin met expectations - no surprise.
No major gaffes = no surprise.

Pretty much a non event.

With the trajectory currently sharply in favor of Obama they will happily take last nights effort. What really worked for the Obama camp was Palin wasn't going to stray too far from talking points or get too far out on a limb in the negative area. This allowed Joe to do what he wanted to do and go after McCain. Palin had to worry just as much about defending her reputation as she was at defending the McCain campaign.

The subtle but maybe most important aspect may fly under the radar. Biden continued strengthning the Obama brand. If one accepts the model laid out that a number of voters do not want to vote for McCain but are not certain about Obama, then last night continued the message that Obama established last Friday night. Obama - Biden is smart, experienced, calm, cool, collected leaderly. Last nights performance will continue to convince people that Obama is a very plausible alternative to the current disaster we have. In this regards I conisder this a big win for the Obama camp.

Remember the McCain campaign's premise is that Obama / Obama - Biden are not a safe or viable alternative. Biden went a long way to knocking that premise down. Now we have a news cycle about how they did, about the bail out. Everyday Obama is up front without a major story to his negative is one step closer to 270 electoral votes.

One last thing. Palin did a good job of meeting expectations. However, if I remember right meets expectations was always a "C" in school. I think America is tired of having a "C" President or vice-president. As people go over last nights debate and analyse individual answers and go arounds it is becoming quite apparent she offered little. But she did get through the night.

McCain shows his hand

Ok we have established the game is getting out of control and Obama is starting to run the table. We asked ourselves what is McCain to do. Remembering that he is limited to 84 million he has to decide where to put his resources. McCain was hoping to make in roads in PA, MI, and
MN. As I mentioned earlier in "out of control" once PA solidified for Obama was in the drivers seat. Now that has happened McCain is down to MI and / or MN.

We have just gotten word via: Politico that the McCain is pulling out of Michigan.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1008/McCain_pulling_out_of_Michigan.html?showall

It appears they are redistributing resources to WI, OH, FL. Now OH and FL are absolutely necessary. McCain can't even keep it close let alone win with out both states. Now WI is a hopeful. I am still doubtful. Considering WI has been consistently polling for Obama if not by large margins. In addition I can only imagine the volunteer resources that are being deployed into WI from IL. Thirdly it was WI that pretty much broke the primaries open for Obama.
I will not be surprised if the resources don't leave their soon. However, McCain is going to have to go hunting somewhere even if it is along shot. We have seen McCain is a gambler and not afraid of the long shot. We will see if that plays out in his resource allocation.

"John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play."

"McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. Wisconsin went for Kerry in 2004, Ohio and Florida for Bush."

Check your local listings

Yet another example why so many are impressed with leadership of this man and this campaign. I don't know who in the Obama campaign came up or executed this idea but this is a team that Obama has put together and has lead. It is an example of the kind of Presidency he would offer us.

Here are a couple of practical applications. Many rural voters don't have access to cable and rely on Dish and Directtv. Expect his future tv and web ads to direct you to his channel. There are a lot of people who use the tv as background noise this way they can become better versed in their opinions of OBama. Obama is able to program the channel. Therefore he is able to provide more than 30 second ads for the public. His ability to respond to any attacks has just increased drastically. I am certain there are advantages I am missing. Mean time check your local listing I found him on Channel 73 of dish network.

A little humor to ease the pain of the Cubs loss

I find this particularly funny having had the chance to work a number elections as a poll worker.

Ok it is time to say things are out of control

Late last night I posted that we are on the verge of putting McCain on the defensive foot with a large hole to dig out of.

http://mysteryj.blogspot.com/2008/09/working-board.html

Those of you unfortunate to have been reading this blog for awhile are all too familiar with my argument that this is a redux of the 1980 model of presidential politics.

http://mysteryj.blogspot.com/2008/09/out-of-control.html

Well I think we can safely say that we have reached the out of control moment of the election. It appears to have happened after the combination of America's realization the the Palin pick was a political gamble and John lost, the campaign suspension was a political gamble and John lost, the financial crisis focused the voter on the real issue of the economy instead of made up issues of lipstick etc. and John lost. Then Barack Obama stepped on the stage with John McCain at last Friday's Presidential debate and John lost. You know what Barack wasn't that scary at all. Despite what many have been telling us he was calm, cool, presidential, he knew what he was talking about and seemed to be talking to main stream America. As a matter of fact McCain seemed to be kind of the scare and mean one.

This combination of events seemed to have two effects both positive for Obama. Those supporters who were leaning Obama now have confidence in their pick and a large number of those undecideds who weren't exactly sure about him have started to break for him. We first started to see this movement in the tracking polls and the national polls which is to be expected. Now we are seeing the movement in the state polls which is what matters. Looking at Realclearpolitics.com electoral college map shows Obama up 353 to 185.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=10

It appears the movement in the national numbers are steadying out at about 7 points. Which may not seem huge, but consider each presidential election starts out at about 45 to 45 draw with only 10 points maximum to reach. Therefore the highest either one could truly hope to attain would be 55 to 45 and we are currently looking at about a 51 to 44 race in Obama's favor. There is not much room for him to improve but can possibly see some improvement in the state numbers which is what we are experiencing right now.

The question is what to expect now. Obama has McCain so spread out it doesn't do him a whole lot of good to concentrate on just one or two states. McCain has to decide where to put his resources. One can only expect McCain and his surrogates to go negative and personal soon. If he doesn't there aren't many games changers left. The Palin Biden debate, Palin may be able to redeem herself. However, I am of the belief that a VP can't win a race for you but can certainly lose it for you. Therefore a really good performance simply gets the McCain - Palin ticket back up to par. There is little anticipation that Obama will commit any significant flub in the remaining two debates considering this is like his 30th in a year and half. Remember even if he does he won't drop below 45 mark at absolute max in essence resetting the game were it began.

I am by no means going to say this is where this is going to end up in 5 weeks. This is where we are at at this time and Obama has to be happy about it and McCain must be scratching his head at this time. So I will look for the negative 527 ads to start rolling out possibly over some subtle race issue and definitely expect to hear the Jeremiah Wright tapes some more. The Obama campaign is expecting this and will be ready to respond. McCain will want the financail bail out to be done and overwith for two reasons. There is no question it has hurt his campaign and bad. Secondly it is going to be hard for him acampaign to get overly negative in this current political environment.

It is going to be an insteresting ride over the next 5 weeks hold on tight.

This is why so many care so much to get this man elected

This is a leader not a politician.




"Here in America our Destiny is not written for us it is written by us".

Barack Obama

Point and Counterpoint

"I can see Russia from my house"
----Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin.



But I haven't!