Progress Illinois

John McCain says Barack Obama lacks the requisite experience to make sound judgments. It's hard to buy that theory, considering McCain has been wrong on every single decision about Iraq, particularly before 2003. But recently, the Arizona Republican seems to have taken a break from judging ... anything.

Chicago Public Radio highlights his Senate absenteeism:

In the past three months, Obama's missed more than 3 out of every 4 votes in the Senate. No gold star for attendance there, but Obama's numbers blow away those of his campaign rival, John McCain. The Arizona Republican hasn't cast a single Senate vote since early April, which is about 90 straight absences.

A spokesperson for McCain could not be immediately reached for comment. Obama's office stuck to its standard statement, insisting the senator balances his campaign and Senate responsibilities.

I guess we shouldn't complain. Non-votes are better than bad votes.

John McCain has had some mental lapses in recent weeks. There was his confusion over whether his cap-and-trade plan had a mandatory cap, his conflation of Sunni al Qaeda and Shiite Iran, and his repeated references to Czechoslovakia (divided now for over a decade) just to name a few. But as Katha Pollitt writes in her most recent Nation column (which the Tribune reprinted today), his muddled rebuttal to a reporter's question regarding whether some health insurance plans cover Viagra but not contraception could be more dangerous than any of the other gaffes:

McCain's non-response when queried about this by a reporter was astonishing. As you can still see on YouTube, he squirms and grins and smirks (Viagra! embarrassing!) and fumfers about evasively.

"I don't know enough about it to give you an informed answer," he manages to splutter, "because I don't recall the vote. I've cast thousands of votes. ... It's something I've not thought much about."

So, John McCain is so opposed to contraception he voted against requiring insurance plans to cover it like other drugs, and either so indifferent to women's health and rights or just so out of it he doesn't even remember how he voted. That's the way to show American women you really care.

The Arizona Republican's radical disregard for reproductive rights and women's health doesn't stop at contraception. Dana Goldstein digs a little deeper:

I guess [McCain surrogate Carly] Fiorina hasn’t heard that McCain’s anti-choice agenda goes far beyond overturning Roe v . Wade — he also voted against requiring insurance companies to cover birth control. And for the record, McCain is opposed to comprehensive sex-ed and has said he’s not sure if condoms prevent the spread of HIV. “Choice” is not exactly the guy’s calling card.

For more on these crucial issues, check out this Wonk Room post we linked to in June.

In an article in today's New York Times, Adam Nagourney reported on new polling purportedly showing that racial attitudes remain unchanged by Barack Obama's campaign and that the Illinois Senator is struggling to appeal to white Americans. We even highlighted it in the Early Bird, assuming the analysis was fundamentally fair. But as the folks at Obama headquarters have noted, what Nagourney left out was just as important as what he included. Via TPM, which received a detailed critique of the piece from Obama's press camp:

"The NYT story about their poll ignores multiple and significant pieces of data that actually indicate a trend much different from that which the story suggests."

The campaign offered some "straightforward points from their data" that were omitted from the story. Among these factoids:

More white voters say Obama cares about people like them than say the same thing about McCain by 31 to 23 percent.

Obama's 31 percent favorable rating among white voters is virtually identical to McCain's 34 percent level.

White voters are more likely to say that Obama would improve America's image in the world by a two-to-one margin over the Republican nominee.

Obama is winning by six points against McCain while he only trails among white voters by nine points --- a margin smaller than independent expert on voting patterns, Ruy Texiera, said would give Obama a "solid win."

As Talk Left points out, the key finding in the poll should have been McCain's ties to the Bush economic polices. Sixty-three percent of respondents said McCain would continue that agenda, while only 20 percent said they approve of it.

Kossacks -- and later the Obama campaign -- erupted yesterday in response to this week's New Yorker cover, which features a cartoon depicting Barack and Michelle Obama "as fist-bumping, flag-burning, bin Laden-loving terrorists in the Oval Office." Both major Chicago papers come to the magazine's defense today, with the Tribune editorial board writing that the cartoon successfully lampoons the smear artists on the fringe right and the Sun-Times suggesting the cartoon "exposes irrational fears and doubts about the Obamas."

Over at Division Street, Steve Rhodes argues the satire lacked proper context and bombed as a result:

But on the cover, without cover language, or without the context of being attached to an article inside, the desired effect is lost. If, as Kelly McBride, head of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute has said, the cartoon’s title, “The Politics of Fear,” appeared on the cover as well, there would have been no problem. Or if the drawing was inside the magazine surrounded by an article giving it context. But alone on the cover without context - and with such a dead-on depiction of the way the Obamas are perceived and/or smeared by right-wing nutjobs - is too dry and removed to qualify as successful satire. The New Yorker is wrong, and I can’t remember such an egregious misstep by the magazine.

While I wouldn't go as far as Rhodes, I'm largely in agreement with both Matt Yglesias and Ta-Nehisi Coates, who argue that the satire doesn't work because it's not exaggerated enough; it only encapsulates and reflects what a decent size of the population actually believes about the Obama's. Indeed, it's tough to satirize destructive public perceptions without simply reinforcing them.

Should the Republicans rejoice? Has their presidential candidate weathered the Obama storm? The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza flagged some national polls yesterday that suggest John McCain might be closer to Barack Obama than people realize, aided by a boost among Independent voters:

Take the most recent poll by Newsweek magazine on the presidential race. Obama takes 44 percent of the vote while McCain receives 41 percent, a statistically insignificant margin and a major change from the 15-point bulge for Obama in the same poll less than a month ago.

This follows news of solid June fundraising for the Republican nominee, which has allowed him to outspend Obama on the air in places like Missouri. While such news isn't encouraging for lefties, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder and Sean at FiveThirtyEight.com both throw some water on the flames. First, here's Ambinder contextualizing the polling:

First, don't fall for the availability heuristic and obsess over just the latest poll, which comes courtesy of Newsweek. The poll of polls and internal campaign polling for both campaign gives Obama a lead of anywhere between four and nine points using a tight likely voter model.

It's almost an axiom of modern political polling that, depending on the question and the sample, surveyees extremely susceptible to daily, even hourly, shifts in elite opinion. Voters are paying attention to the big picture, but they're not paying attention to the details just yet. Methodological differences account for random fluctuations, as do random fluctuations. As both candidates have had rough weeks, it's entirely predictable that these polls would regress to a mean.

He suggests that state polling is a better indicator of each candidate's strength, and FiveThirtyEight's regression model currently gives Obama a 68.8 percent chance of winning the race, netting over 307 electoral votes. Pollster also shows Obama with sizeable leads in Ohio (a must-win for the GOP), Pennsylvania, Colorado, Michigan, and Iowa, to name a few.

With regards to campaign strategy and outreach, it's important to look beyond the headlines.

Continue reading »

In the wake of the Jesse Jackson "incident," there's been a lot of talk about what the reverend meant when he said Barack Obama has been "talking down to black people." Both in private conversations I've had and in discussions I've observed on the airwaves, there seems to be an assumption that Obama has only stressed personal responsibility and good parenting when speaking to black audiences. For instance, check out Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell's claim on WTTW's Chicago Tonight last Friday that this is "not a conversation he has with white America":

But while it's true that Obama tends to linger on these issues a bit longer in front of predominantly black audiences and that he tends to employ a slightly different vernacular in those settings, Mitchell's assertion that he's not telling white audiences to turn off the TV and encourage their kids to study is false.

For instance, here's what he told an audience in Spirit Lake, Iowa, on December 16 of last year:

Parents, you’ve got to turn off the tvs and shut down the video games. [And] our students have to understand that education is not a passive activity. You don’t just tip your head over and have it pour in....You’re gonna hear me as President not just talking about programs--I’m going to be talking about our obligations to our kids.

And here's what the audience looked like:

In Youngstown, Ohio, on February 18, Obama hit on a similar theme.

Continue reading »

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) is dedicated to restoring communities by "promoting walkable, neighborhood-based development as an alternative to sprawl." Last month, CNU assessed where Barack Obama and John McCain "stand regarding questions and concerns of new urbanists." They described their methodology as follows: "We visited each campaign’s website and other news sites to find what information and position papers we could about energy and the environment, land use and sustainability, transportation, and urban policy."

Here's what they found on Obama's site:

The Urban Policy page includes a section titled “Strengthen Livability of Cities” and makes the following points:

• Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities: “As president, Barack Obama will re-evaluate the federal transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account.” [...]

A link from this section includes statements that an Obama administration would require Metropolitan Planning Organizations to create incentives for bicyclists and pedestrians, and that “…he will also re-commit federal resources to public mass transportation projects across the country.”

Further, Obama supports changing the tax code to “…make benefits for driving and public transit or ridesharing equal.” [...]

Building efficiency shows up under Energy & Environment, too. Obama supports a national goal of making all new buildings carbon neutral, or zero emission, by 2030. This includes improving new building efficiency by 50 percent, and existing building efficiency by 25 percent “over the next decade” to meet that 2030 goal. [...[

Under Transportation, Obama’s policies include support for Amtrak and development of high-speed passenger and freight rail, even while citing support continued subsidies for air travel to smaller cities: “Obama will work to improve the effectiveness of these programs and increase the availability of rail transportation options for residents of rural communities.”

So what did they find on McCain's site?

Continue reading »

On WTTW's Chicago Tonight yesterday, the Sun-Times' Laura Washington echoed the widely-held sentiment that the controversy this week over Rev. Jesse Jackson's comments about Barack Obama represented a "huge favor" to the Democratic nominee. The logic is: A) white working class voters wary of electing a black president will be encouraged to see Obama and Jackson in a fight; and B) the flap preempted the rash of stories about unrest in progressive circles over Barack's perceived shift to the center.

Watch it:

The Reader's Mick Dumke expressed a similar opinion on Clout City yesterday:

The only people possibly damaged by Jesse Jackson's "I want to cut his nuts off" remark about Barack Obama are John McCain and the Reverend Jackson himself.

This is not like the racial-theory sermons of Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger. Those clergymen were tagged as mentors and allies of Obama's at the time they were seen on tape giving extended diatribes about the sins of powerful white people. When you're a black candidate trying to convince skeptical heartland types that you really do love America, that sort of thing is a blow.

But when Jesse Jackson rips you for not being enough like Jesse Jackson, that's a blessing from the heavens.

Dumke goes on to make a convincing case that it was actually Jesse Jackson Jr. who benefited the most from the flap.

But while I see the broader "blessing" argument, I'd have to say the "curse" wins out here.

Continue reading »

A report today from the South Bend Tribune:

They were, once upon a time, opposing regiments of the same army.

The Sen. Hillary Clinton campaign and the Sen. Barack Obama campaign: two groups of local volunteers fervently working for their respective Democrat, each trying to get a little more support than the other team.

On Thursday night, party officials brought the two sides together for pizza and chatter in hopes, pundits would say, of unifying the party perhaps divided by a contentious primary campaign.

In hopes? Where has the media been, South Bend resident Vera Peele said. "I was unified from the beginning," she said. "I'm a Democrat."

There are some who were quoted in reports immediately after Clinton stopped campaigning as saying if they couldn't vote for Clinton they just wouldn't vote for president.

Chalk that up to emotion in the heat of the moment, said Bev Shelton of South Bend, who supported Clinton during the primary. "Sometimes you're like a volcano, and it erupts," she said.

But now it's about getting a Democrat elected to the White House, Shelton said, wearing a button that says "Do not vote Republican."

Don't assume people who were angry after Clinton's exit from the campaign will remain that way, said Pat McQuade, also a Clinton supporter in the primary campaign.

"We are more than one emotion," she said. "Sometimes people are pigeonholed into one specific response. Loss is grief."

But people get over it, she said. They move on.

(H/T Blue Indiana)

More Poverty-Related Coverage, Please
According to a poll conducted by the group Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, 56 percent of respondents disagreed with this statement: "The media has spent an adequate amount of time during the presidential campaign covering the issue of how to fight poverty in the U.S.” A study released earlier in the year by Spotlight found that the mentions of poverty in the media's primary coverage had increased substantially. But the poll results suggest "voters still want to hear even more," according to Spotlight editor John Freedman. He told The Politico that he thinks the increased interest is directly tied to the "tightening" of the economy nationwide.

The Muslim Myth Keeps Growing
A new Pew poll has Obama leading McCain nationally by a 48-40 percent margin, which represents a slight uptick since their last poll in May. While that's good news, the poll also found that the percentage of respondents who identify Obama as Muslim has grown from 10 percent in May to 12 percent in the most recent survey. Kind of amazing when you think about it.

North Dakota? Really?
A Rasmussen poll has Obama and McCain tied in ... North Dakota. To provide a little context, President Bush beat John Kerry there in 2004 by a 27-point margin.

McCain Regains Missouri Lead
Last month, Obama was up 43-42 percent over McCain in Missouri. A Rasmussen poll released yesterday has McCain up by five. It's worth noting that McCain has been flooding the Show-Me State airwaves with ads as of late.