By Hanlon, on October 28th, 2008 at 11:56 PM
 If you need a nice little concise explanation for what’s different between Republicans and Democrats this time around, then here’s a few stories to explain.
Barack Obama has, pretty much since the beginning, built up his strategy on the idea of registering tons of new voters. Not only does he want to appeal to the voters, he wants more voters, to get more people involved in politics. It’s a very “all of us” outlook, and really does enforce Obama’s whole “yes we can” slogan and all that “I want you to believe in your ability to change Washington” hullabaloo.
By contrast, the Republicans seem to want to stop people from voting. I’m not talking about registration issues, we’ve been there already, I just mean that their whole strategy is built on winning by making sure that as few people vote as possible. Exhibit A, a flyer being passed around in Virginia telling voters that Democrats vote on a different day.
State Board of Election officials today said they are aware of the flier but disavowed any connection to it.
“It’s not even on our letterhead; they just copied the logo from our Web site,” said agency staffer Ryan Enright, noting the flier has been forwarded to State Police for investigation as a possible incident of voter intimidation.
Exhibit B, Charlie Crist’s declaration to let early voting go for 12 hours a day, which angered Republicans.
As to the perception that more early voting helps Democrats, Crist said: “This is not a political decision. This is a people decision.” (audio here)
Last week, all nine Democrats in the Florida congressional delegation wrote a letter urging him to expand early voting and to order all early voting sites to be open on Sunday.
And finally Exhibit C, Karl Rove’s brilliant strategy on how McCain can win, which seems to be at least somewhat based on the idea that as long as the percentage of first-time voters doesn’t go up, this is a good thing:
And thirdly, we’ve got to be very careful. This is what both campaigns are trying to figure out. Are they cannibalizing their Election Day turnout? That is to say, are they getting to the polls people who would otherwise vote and banking them early, or are they getting new people who might not otherwise vote? And that’s — that we won’t really know until Election Day.
But the evidence is starting to appear that what’s happening is these are not first-time voters. In fact, it looks like first-time voters and younger voters are essentially the same percentage that they were in 2004 or less.
Once again, divisive politics. The Republicans have settled on the idea that they have their supporters and they need to make sure that only their votes are counted. If we let too many people vote, then Obama has some kind of “advantage”. Apparently “more people support him” is considered an unfair advantage these days.
By Hanlon, on October 28th, 2008 at 09:18 PM
 I am in shock. If this is true, then Obama should get his ass down to Arizona pronto and capitalize on it.
Well, the preliminary word is in from Dr. Merrill. Hold onto your hats folks, we got us a neck and neck horserace!
Merrill’s brand new poll, taken from sampling over the weekend and Monday, in it’s entirety, is to be released tonight at 7:00 pm local Arizona time and has McCain up by two little itty bitty points: McCain 46% Obama 44% and Obama still seen as closing with a full week left and undecideds still expected to break significantly Obama!!!!!
Bruce Merrill is a native Arizonan, has been teaching at Arizona State since 1971, and has been doing the absolute finest and most accurate polling of Arizona races for many decades. He really is the gold standard here.
Two points.
Two… points… in Arizona.
This is one of those moments that just about forces Obama’s hand. If he has even a fighting chance in Arizona, he needs to get there pronto. It’s true that AZ’s ten electoral votes aren’t going to break the election in either way, and maybe Obama has less of a chance than it seems, but if we’re talking about playing the political game, there is simply no better way to smash what’s left of McCain’s morale than to force him to fight for his home state.
On the left we’ve gotten into this General Patton mindset that says we don’t just want to win, we want it to be a landslide, a crushing victory, we want to humiliate McCain. I want John McCain to look back on this and see a big blue stamp over his home turf. I want him to look back on 2008, knowing he sold his soul to the devil to win, and that it ruined him.
By Hanlon, on October 28th, 2008 at 07:05 PM
 We throw around accusations of media bias pretty heavily on both sides here. It all comes down to a basic principle: everyone is dead set sure that the media is against them. That everyone seems to think that is probably evidence that neither side is totally right (though both can probably find copious evidence). However, there’s one thing to keep in mind: tallying up positive and negative stories is not a good way to denote bias.
The Swamp digs into the issue, also referring to an article over at Politico that does the same. Both try to explain why McCain has been slammed with a lot of negative press lately, coming to basically the same conclusion.
But, they argue, the fault doesn’t lie with them but with McCain. Basically, they’re saying: It’s not our fault you’ve run such a lousy campaign.
And once Obama was up and McCain was flat on his back, the rest came naturally. Any bias, they say, is the inherent bias in the press that favors the front-runner over the team that suddenly finds itself three touchdowns behind in the fourth quarter: No commentator ever raves about the strategic choices of the losing team.
There is a wide difference between “balanced” reporting and “objective” reporting. Just because the media has been reporting 70% positive stories about candidate X and only 40% positive stories about candidate Y doesn’t mean we’re talking bias, you have to look at the content of the stories and decide whether there was simply negative news about a candidate or if the source spun a story.
Here’s an example of massive bias: the WFTV interview with Biden. The “reporter” asked such hilariously slanted questions that Biden himself started laughing, in comparison with “probing” questions she asked McCain like “why haven’t you gone after Obama more?” That is, in fact, media bias.
When Sarah Palin does an interview and totally muffs a question like “what does the Vice President do?” it’s not “bias” if the media calls her on it. That’s how reporting goes. Sometimes, and largely so in this case, one side simply has more good things to be reported.
What the right is clamoring for is forgiveness for McCain and Palin’s transgressions in exchange for hounding Obama over things that simply aren’t news. No matter how much they’d like us to talk about it, Rev. Wright and ACORN just aren’t news any more. We’ve heard all there is to hear about the pair of them. Now, a circular firing squad with the entire McCain campaign blaming each other for how badly things are going? That IS news.
That’s why things like a seven year old clip of Obama using the word “redistributive” suddenly got blown up into a “story” by Drudge and FOX. They’re at a point where there just isn’t anything happening to attack Obama with, so they have to dig through ancient history to find things to distort. Then they’ll accuse the media of “bias” for not biting.
By Hanlon, on October 28th, 2008 at 06:15 PM
 Note to anyone involved with a political campaign: avoid admitting that your plan sucks.
McCain advisers counter these concerns. Changing the tax treatment wouldn’t hurt the employer-sponsored system and would allow more of the uninsured to buy their own coverage, they say. Also, his advisers say a McCain administration would keep an eye on the credit to make sure it didn’t lag behind the cost of coverage, while also working to lower the rate of medical inflation.
Younger, healthier workers likely wouldn’t abandon their company-sponsored plans, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s senior economic policy adviser.
“Why would they leave?” said Holtz-Eakin. “What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit.”
From the horse’s mouth, folks. You can’t get anything worthwhile with McCain’s cockamamie $5000 “credit”.
And that’s for “younger, healthier” people, no less. If an employer’s health plan is better than what a $5000 credit can get someone who’s in great shape, imagine how useless that tax credit will be to someone who’s got a chronic condition, is older, or otherwise needs more comprehensive care. Plus, don’t forget, McCain’s plan will likely dump a lot of people from employer-paid health care, leaving them with that now admittedly worthless credit.
Thanks Doug, for clearing that up.
By Hanlon, on October 28th, 2008 at 01:01 PM
I’m swamped, tell me a story and perk up my day. Here’s a sweet music video to get your brain started.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bAN7Ts0xBo[/youtube]
By Hanlon, on October 28th, 2008 at 12:00 AM
If I had three wishes, the first two would be to hit this woman in the face with a cinder block.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SFu7NUekwM[/youtube]
I’m glad someone’s finally calling these people out on their pro-McCain BS. Frankly I don’t care what the viewers think about whether or not it’s biased, that just tells me a frighteningly high number of people bought the okey-doke.
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