-
table talk
billiard room
dining room
parlor
Tag Archives: McCain
As the Republicans begin the long slow walk of shame, things are already looking different on the political horizon. President elect Obama has begun cabinet assignments and Wall Street…well, it remains the same. The devil’s in the details for me though.
6am Wednesday morning, the entire Secret Service squad assigned to John McCain up and left, and he had to drive his gold Toyota Sequoia to work, with senate colleague Lindsey Graham riding shotgun.
Speaking of shotguns, Palin left for Alaska in a motorcade flanked by police. (probably worried about animal attacks and such). And lastly on the subject of attacks, Barney the Bush’s scottie has bitten White House reporter, John Decker. Lucky Decker landed a hand written apology from Laura Bush, but rumor says Barney is in the dog house.
NYMag: Ever heard of something called Dada?”
Rachel Maddow is trying to make an analogy. It’s mid-October, two weeks before the election, and the MSNBC host is comparing the McCain campaign’s recent fixation on “Joe the Plumber” to the anti-bourgeois cultural movement of the early-twentieth century. But this is prime time, and Maddow first has to define Dadaism in as colloquial a way as possible. This is something of a challenge considering she only has about twelve seconds.
“Deliberately being irrational, rejecting standard assumptions about beauty or organization or logic,” she begins. “It’s an anti-aesthetic statement about the lameness of the status quo … kind of?” She twists her face into a cartoon grimace that morphs into a wide smile. “Why am I trying to explain Dadaism on a cable news show thirteen days from this big, giant, historic, crazy, important election that we’re about to have?” she asks with a self-deprecating laugh, as she recognizes the Dadaishness of her own quest. “Because that’s what I found myself Googling today, in search of a way to make sense of the latest McCain-Palin campaign ad!”
It’s hard to imagine many other cable news hosts going down that particular rabbit hole. (Can you picture Glenn Beck referring to the existentialists to make a point?) But then again, Rachel Maddow is not like other cable news hosts. A self-described butch lesbian with short hair and black-rimmed glasses, off-camera she resembles a young Ira Glass more than the helmet-headed anchoresses and Fox fembots who populate television news. Doing the press rounds when MSNBC first announced her show in August, she’d show up to interviews looking like, she says, “a 14-year-old boy” in puffy Samantha Ronson sneakers with iPod headphones dangling from her ears—but then she’d easily segue into an informed foreign- policy or economic discussion that ended with a Daily Show–worthy punch line. Her résumé is similarly unexpected: A Rhodes scholar and an Oxford Ph.D., she’s done stints as an AIDS activist, barista, landscaper, Air America host, and mascot in an inflatable calculator suit. She’s a civics geek who reads comic books, goes to monster-truck rallies, likes to fish, calls herself an “amateur mixologist” of classic cocktails, and even Twitters.
There’s something about the mix of personal details that is—to a young, educated, left-leaning, cosmopolitan audience—instantly recognizable. As one New York acolyte told me, “She is more like one of my friends than anyone else on television.” And her ratings have been astounding, especially in the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demographic. Maddow averaged a higher rating with that group than Larry King Live for thirteen of the first 25 nights she was on the air, enabling the network to out-rate CNN in that time slot for the first time. It’s an impressive feat, even given the fact that the show started two months before the election when political interest was at a fever pitch.
“You come out of the gate as fast as she came out, it gives me incredible excitement,” thunders MSNBC president Phil Griffin. “We are stronger than we’ve been in twelve years. We have more swagger today than we have ever had. It’s because of Rachel. And trust me. The other guys see it. They are watching. And they are scared.”
Over drinks after her show at one of her regular spots, the St. Regis’s red-velvety “old-man bar,” Maddow seems as surprised as anyone by her success. “It’s like winning an ego lottery,” she says. Scrubbed clean of the makeup she wears on television, her features are finer and more feminine, set with big, liquid brown eyes. She finds it hilarious that anyone could think she’s cool. “I’m such an old man! Maybe it’s geek chic, I don’t know.” (full article)
Salon: Barring some cataclysmic change in the race’s final hours, Tuesday’s outcome no longer seems in doubt. What still hangs in the balance is the size and scope of the victory. Do the Democrats bust through, with Obama winning by more than 5 or 6 points — even double digits, 350 or more electoral votes, and a congressional majority enhanced by more than seven new Senate and 25 new House seats? Or does Obama, as often happened in the primaries, fail to close part of the sale and win by a less impressive margin, say 3 or 4 points, with a later than expected Election Night sweat and less modest increase in his party’s congressional ranks?
Here are some things to watch for as the numbers start to come in on Tuesday night:
1) One voter turnout model defines the electorate largely by past voting history, another allows for more young and minority voters than in the past. The latter model clearly helps Obama. Even turnout figures for Eastern states, however, won’t be complete till after midnight. The best piece of early evidence among the night’s numbers as to which turnout model is more accurate may be Virginia. If Virginia is called for Obama immediately after the polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern, based on both exit polls and key precinct results, then a near double-digit national margin may be possible, fueled by African-American and younger/suburban votes. That would undoubtedly bode well for Obama’s chances in North Carolina, Florida and the growing Western states such as Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.
2) Did the late undecideds break for McCain, whether because of racially based doubts about Obama, or, perhaps more likely, some unwillingness to participate in a coronation — to “crown his ass,” to paraphrase former Arizona Cardinals coach Dennis Green. What if undecideds, realizing that Obama is almost certain to win, decide they want to express some reservations about him? Watch Florida and Ohio, the two linchpin states of the last two elections. If their outcomes are in doubt as the evening progresses, then McCain’s late efforts combined with the worries of “undecideds” about Obama may have borne fruit. But while the networks may be reluctant to call these two states quickly, if a clear trend toward the Democrat is emerging in both, it would suggest that the late undecideds did not break toward McCain, and that Obama’s national popular vote margin will be comfortable.
3) Just how big was the impact of the economy? If Obama is running several points better than either Al Gore or John Kerry throughout the Rust Belt — and particularly in more rural or working-class areas such as southern Ohio or southern Indiana, and the “T” that defines the interior portions of Pennsylvania not dominated by the Philadelphia or Pittsburgh media markets — then obviously economic concerns trumped all others and the linkage of McCain and Bush exceeded any question about Obama’s tax policy or redistributive philosophy. But if he is actually trailing the past two Democratic nominees in those areas, and is winning Pennsylvania and perhaps Ohio either by smaller than expected margins or because of huge turnouts in major metropolitan areas, then perhaps the economy was not such a universally powerful weapon.
4) What about the exit polls themselves? Their results in both 2000 and 2004 — or at least the ones made available throughout Election Day to the inside political community — seemed more pro-Democratic than the eventual results. One big reason may be greater reluctance or unwillingness on the part of conservative voters to participate in exit polling. Will we be duped or misled by early exit poll readings that suggest a big Obama/Democratic tide?
I think exit polling will be more accurate this year. There have been previous snafus where exit polling failed to properly gauge the impact of early voting, particularly in California, where it has been common for nearly a generation. Until recently the early vote in most states tended to be older and more conservative, meaning the early vote skewed Republican, thus producing one of the factors that led to more bullish same-day exit polls for the Democrats in 2000-04. But the company providing the exit polls this year has expanded the number of states — based on early voting trends and expansion — where they supplement the same-day interviewing with a telephone sample of early voters. The “partisan evening” as the practice becomes more widespread, plus the intense Obama effort to promote and produce early voting, should have eliminated much if not all of the bias. In short, we can no longer assume that based on this factor the exit polls will lean more Democratic than the actual vote. This does not, however, address any bias in the response rate that might be introduced by the possible reluctance of conservatives to talk to pollsters.
5) And finally, will Obama break the magical 50 percent mark, becoming the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win an actual majority of the votes cast? If the combined vote share for Ralph Nader and Bob Barr is running under 2 percent in the early returns, then it will be very difficult to imagine how Obama will fall short of the 50 percent barrier. And it is not out of the question that he might approach 55 percent, a preposterous thought just a couple of months ago.
