HorsesAss.Org

As I’ve already written, Sen. Joe Biden clearly won Thursday’s Veep debate, at least on points.  But what really matters is the impact (if any) this debate might have on voters, and whether it changes the dynamics of a presidential race that has been shifting steadily in Barack Obama’s favor.  And the best measure of that, I suppose, are the various national tracking polls that are now being reported daily.

The following polls represent three-day running averages.  The first number is from today, which includes  results from Wednesday through Friday, and thus factors in one day of post-debate reaction.  The number in parentheses are those reported yesterday, and represents survey results from Tuesday through Thursday, all collected before the debate.

                Obama      McCain
Research 2000:  52 (51)    40 (40)
Rasmussen:      51 (51)    45 (44)
Diageo/Hotline: 48 (48)    41 (42)
Gallup:         50 (49)    42 (42)

This only includes one day of post-debate tracking, but as you can see, if there is any movement, it’s not in McCain’s favor.  Indeed, the Research 2000 poll, which is being conducted on behalf of Daily Kos, showed the best single day spread for Obama yet:

On successive days in the R2K poll, Obama was up +11 Wed, +12 Thurs and +13 Fri, which is post-debate and Obama strongest day yet (MoE +/- 5.1 for individual days.) Interestingly, the Obama numbers (48-52) are more consistent than the McCain numbers (40-46), but the polls are all consistent in picking up an Obama lead.

And Rasmussen, which is reporting the narrowest gap between the two candidates, observes a similar stability:

For each of the past nine days, Obama has been at 50% or 51% and McCain has been at 44% or 45%. The stability of these results suggests that the McCain campaign faces a very steep challenge in the remaining few weeks of Election 2008.

To say the least.

Early voting has already started in Ohio, and begins in earnest here in WA state and throughout much of the rest of the nation in another week and a half.  If John McCain is going to turn this thing around, he better get moving quick, because I don’t think Sarah Palin’s collection of half-answers, winks and folksy colloquialisms quite did the trick.

For all you Democratic Party elitists planning to attend tonight’s “4th Biennial Campaign Appreciation Party,” don’t bother; it’s been canceled.  Perhaps you’re just not appreciated anymore, I dunno… you’ll have to ask Jason.

Taking a break from the election contests for a bit here, I wanted to give a plug to a great student organization at the University of Washington that’s kicking off their fall recruitment drive. I didn’t go to UW, but I got involved with the AIESEC chapter in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan back in the 90s when I was getting my engineering degree. It was without a doubt the smartest decision I made while at college.

AIESEC is the largest student organization in the world. What it does is run an international internship exchange program. Students at universities across the globe work with local companies to create internship opportunities specifically for foreign exchanges and then host the students who get matched up to them. Members of the organization can then apply for and be matched to foreign internships of their own.

After being involved in the Michigan chapter for a year and a half – helping build their website and working on exchanging students, I was matched on a foreign internship, traveling to Helsinki, Finland during the summer of 1996 to work for the telecom company HPY. It was an amazing experience to live and work in another country, not to mention how much fun it was to be with dozens of other college students from around the world who’d also come to Helsinki that summer to work at various local companies. Over the 12 weeks I was there, I was able to go on weekend trips to Stockholm, St. Petersburg, and Tallinn, Estonia.

The University of Washington’s chapter has a small group of motivated students looking for more members, especially underclassmen, to get involved with the chapter and promote the AIESEC mission of better international understanding here in Seattle. The head of the chapter, Zhi Wei Wan, just got back from a summer spent in both Turkey and Brazil and is ready to get things going for this school year. He’s looking for people with an international outlook and some entrepreneurial spirit to join the local chapter and have the kinds of extraordinary educational experiences that are hard to get from classes alone.

Here’s the first meeting for those interested in joining:

Tuesday, October 7
6:00-7:00
Thomson 335

I guess it’s all relative, you know, but apparently, the McCain campaign is about to go negative.  Relentlessly, deceitfully, viciously negative.

Sen. John McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama‘s character, believing that to win in November they must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat’s judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said.

With just a month to go until Election Day, McCain’s team has decided that its emphasis on the senator’s biography as a war hero, experienced lawmaker and straight-talking maverick is insufficient to close a growing gap with Obama. The Arizonan’s campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls.

“We’re going to get a little tougher,” a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. “We’ve got to question this guy’s associations. Very soon. There’s no question that we have to change the subject here,” said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

[…] “We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days,” said Greg Strimple, one of McCain’s top advisers. “We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama’s aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans.”

That’s right, they’re “looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis,” not as an actual financial crisis mind you, but as a political one.  They need to change the subject from, you know, actual issues, to Barack Obama’s “associations.”  Shit, they can’t even get Obama on what he’s done, but rather, who he knows.

Here in WA state, where we’ve largely been spared the presidential air war, it might not seem like an unusual election season, but viewers in other, more competitive states should be girding themselves for a political shitstorm of near Biblical proportions.

We have come to the point in this campaign where John McCain only has two possible paths toward victory:  character assassination or… well… the other kind.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise, but the P-I has endorsed Gov. Christine Gregoire, and in doing so, makes a strong argument for sticking with the incumbent during uncertain times:

In Chris Gregoire, Washington has a governor who has served the state well during relatively good times. She is a good bet for a future likely to be less rosy economically.

Washington voters should re-elect Gregoire based on proven performance, capability and drive. Especially for uncertain times, she’s a much more proven leader than her Republican rival, former state Sen. Dino Rossi.

Rossi was a capable senator and is a capable campaigner. But his avoidance of questions about his social conservatism, his unrealistic transportation ideas and even his unwillingness to be labeled Republican on the ballot all warn there’s a lot about how Rossi would govern that most of us, including perhaps the candidate, would learn only after he took on the job.

It should be noted that in a largely positive editorial that lauds Gregoire’s experience, performance and values, this brief excerpt comprises the full extent of their criticism of her opponent.

It will be interesting to compare that to the Seattle Times’ inevitable endorsement of Dino Rossi, which I expect in both tone and content to be substantially more negative… because honestly, even given poetic license, there are fewer positive statements one can manufacturer in support of the Republican.

Because you need to smile.

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey, released today, shows Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire and Republican opponent Dino Rossi tied 48% to 48% tie in the governors race.  That’s a marked improvement for Gregoire over the last Rasmussen poll, which showed Rossi leading by a 52% to 46% margin.

I suppose I should be cheered by the trend, but this race really shouldn’t be this close, this close to election day.  I guess lying and cheating is a good strategy.

In the presidential race, Rasmussen shows Barack Obama regaining a double-digit lead, 53% to 43% over John McCain, after last month’s survey showed the race narrowing to within an unlikely two point margin.

When the House rejected the first Wall Street bailout bill on Monday, the markets responded by shaving 777 points off the Dow, and posting even larger percentage gains off the broader indices, prompting more than few congressmen (and from what I hear, a lot of scared constituents) to reconsider their vote out of fear of a crash of 1929 proportions.

When the wise men and women in the Senate acted on this renewed sense of urgency, passing a goody-crammed bill by a commanding 74-24 margin, the Dow responded by shedding another 350 points.  And today, after dozens of representatives flipped their vote to assure passage in the House, the Dow immediately dropped another 300 points, eventually ending the day down 157 points at 10,325.

That’s some thank you.

Despite a mid-week recovery, the Dow closed down 818 points for the week, a 7.3% decline that leaves total returns during the Bush era in negative territory, the worst market performance during any administration since that of Herbert Hoover.  What should be obvious by now is that a mere $700 billion of taxpayer money can do little to assuage the hunger of a market that can (and has) shed twice that from its total value in less than a day of trading.

The bailout package may indeed prevent some large financial institutions from failing, or at the very least, from failing fast and hard, and in so doing no doubt might stabilize the financial markets a bit.  But the problem is that the Dow and the other indices we tend to obsess on are perhaps less connected to our real economy than at any time in their history.  These are feel good numbers—or feel bad numbers, depending on the day—that have little direct impact on the majority of Americans, most of whom live paycheck to paycheck.  So the implied promise that somehow this bailout would pump up the markets was not just illusory, it was mostly meaningless to the majority of taxpayers who are being asked to foot the bill.

The truth is, our economy sucks, and there are no quick fixes.  This bailout may save the jobs of executives at a handful of financial giants, but it will not prevent the recession in which most economists believe we are already mired, nor end it more quickly; and by emptying our coffers of yet another $700 billion we don’t have, the bailout has left the next adminstration with fewer tools with which to address our ever worsening economic crisis.  We now have $700 billion less to spend on fiscal stimulus, or to serve the ever growing social needs of our nation’s unemployed, or to address the multi-trillion dollar infrastructure deficit (roads, bridges, water, sewers, schools etc.) that threatens to undermine our future health, welfare and prosperity.

Monday’s 777 point drop in the Dow made for great headlines, and in that vice I was as guilty as anybody else, but this bailout was never about the Dow, or rather, it was always about the Dow, but never should have been.  Sure, this bailout was good for Wall Street, or at least, some people on Wall Street… but if you were expecting the markets to rebound and the economy to recover with a simple wave of President Bush’s pen, well, I think you just got played.

You read it here first, the story HA broke about the Washington State Republican Party’s illegal spending on behalf of Dino Rossi, and while the allegations were pooh-poohed at the time by the usual Rossi apologists, WA State Attorney General was left with no choice but to bring suit against his own party and former top aide, WSRP chair Luke Esser.

The Republicans spent “exempt” funds, for which there are no campaign contribution limits, on “non-exempt” activities, for which there are strict contribution limits, essentially laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal contributions on behalf of Rossi and his wealthy patrons like Rufus Lumry and Skip Rowley.  And as I wrote at the time, the charges were “pretty cut and dry“:

This isn’t rocket science.  It’s Campaign Finance 101.  All the political candidates, consultants, committees and parties know damn well what is or is not allowed.  And yet the WSRP chose to blatantly violate campaign expenditure laws that have been in place for the past 16 years.

The question now is not whether the WSRP will be penalized, but rather, will they be penalized enough to discourage future such violations, and whether the court will be willing to issue an injunction barring similar activities between now and the election.  It appears that Rossi, the WSRP and the BIAW are willing to do whatever it takes to win this election, and have made the crass calculation that a Rossi victory is well worth any potential penalty, as long as it is incurred after the fact.

And as long as our media continues to withhold moral judgment of an obviously unethical and illegal strategy until the final court decision is issued months hence, then Rossi and his surrogates will have calculated correctly that crime does indeed pay.

I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conversation for 5 to 10 minutes today, sometime during the 1PM hour, talking about last night’s Veep debate.  I’ll let you know when I know a more specific time frame.

UPDATE:
I’m told I’ll be on around 1:40PM.

Well, all I can say is we better damn well hope this bailout package does what we’ve been promised to do… that it preempts a financial market collapse, prevents our economy from sliding into a prolonged recession, and essentially pays off a dividend as the junk debt we acquire eventually matures at face value.

Otherwise, Republicans will use this vote to beat the Dems into a bloody pulp in 2010, take back control of Congress and impeach Obama for, well, whatever in 2011.  Or at least, I’m betting, that’s their cynical plan.

The revised Wall Street bailout bill passed by a wide margin this morning, 263 to 171.   That’s a pretty big flip, considering a stripped down version of the bill failed last week, 205 to 228.  Who knew the pirate vote was that big?

As for the partisan divide, Democrats voted for the bill 172 to 63, while Republicans slightly opposed it, 91 to 108… you know, the bill that both President Bush and John McCain begged them to pass.

No word yet on how the WA delegation voted, and whether any of our reps flipped.

UPDATE:
Inslee flips, joins rest of the Democratic delegation in voting yes. Our Republicans, Reichert and McMorris-Rodgers voted no.  (Oh yeah, and Hastings.  I always seem to forget Hastings for some reason.)

UPDATE, UPDATE:
I was looking at the wrong roll call vote (the motion to reconsider), and the House Clerk’s office website was slowwww to respond.  Inslee did vote no.  In fact, it was McDermott who flipped, from yes to no.  I’m waiting for a statement.

Gosh, Republicans set an awfully low bar for their candidates…

Shanna Sheridan, 25, a producer for local conservative talk-radio station, KXLY-AM (920), said in the end Palin was good enough.

“All she had to do is get up there and not sound completely stupid,” Sheridan said. “She did that.”

Yeah, well, I guess, after eight years of George W. Bush, not sounding completely stupid would be a step up.

Rep. Dave Reichert was coy the morning of last week’s House bailout vote, apparently indicating that he was waiting to see whether it would win or lose before casting his vote.  The bill failed, and Reichert voted no.

Well, now that it looks like the revised bailout is going to pass the House, will Reichert join a number of his colleagues, and flip to the yes side?  That would of course be classic Reichert, voting both no and yes on the same bill, so that he could take either side of the issue depending on the audience he’s speaking to.  (Or both sides of the issue if he’s talking to the Seattle Times editorial board, who apparently view such flip-floppery as a sign of moderation.)

We’ll soon know.