The Obama campaign understands polling

The Obama camp's David Plouffe and Dan Pfieffer:

We tried to get Plouffe to react to a spate of national polls showing a tightening race.

"All we care about is these 18 states," he said. He repeated, with emphasis, that the campaign does not care about national polling. Instead, the campaign's own identification, registration and canvassing efforts provide the data he uses to determine where to invest money and resources.

Plouffe also emphasized that the internal polling the campaign does is focused on those same 18 states, and that their real concern is not the horse race results but the "data underneath." Later, he added, "the top-line [polling data] doesn't tell you anything." Rather, they focus on who the "true undecideds" are, "how they are going to break," and what messages will best persuade them.

The Gallup Daily tracking poll is apparently a particular sore point. When asked whether they were unhappy that the Biden announcement had not produced a bounce in national polls, Plouffe shot back: "How would we know . . . from the Gallup Daily?" The Gallup Daily is "something we don't pay attention to," he said again.

Communications director Dan Pfieffer later put it more bluntly, expressing unhappiness with the "inordinate focus on bad polling" by the media and also in the routine misinterpretation of sampling noise in the Gallup Daily poll. "The Gallup Daily is the worst thing that's happened in journalism in 20 years," he said.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES. YES. I feel so good about this campaign right now. Everything Plouffe and Pfieffer said is true, and it's stuff that professionals in politics and journalism very rarely understand. This is the best news I have heard in a long time.

...(Personal note: I promise I'll start writing long posts again soon. Two things have to happen first: the Convention has to end, and then I have to sleep for like a week.)

(Also: did you see Schweitzer's speech? If not, you should fix that immediately.)

The best piece on the Biden choice--

--by far, is Al Giordano's.

Yet the words in that 1988 speech were essentially true, if not original. He was the first Biden to go to college. He did descend from coal miner country. This was a man with the class resentment that comes naturally to being born from below. And as the national media vetting process will disclose in the coming days, after 36 years in the US Senate, he's still one of the poorest US Senators: he never availed himself of the back-door personal enrichment techniques that most of his colleagues - Democrat and Republican - have utilized. Beyond class resentment, he retains a sense of class solidarity. His wife since 1977 never went into Washington lobbying: she remained a public schoolteacher.

Biden has also lived personal tragedies that would have splat most people like watermelons tossed from the sixth floor of a Wilmington tenement: between his first US Senate election in 1972 and being sworn in, his first wife and three small children were in a gruesome car accident. Mrs. Biden and his daughter died, his two boys were wounded, and he became a single father. Biden never quite entered the Washington DC culture so seductive to his peers: commuting from Delaware to DC, always coming home at night.

...I think [Obama and McCain] are going to get along splendidly, and have a lot of infectious fun using John McCain as a punching bag. Apollo Creed has now signed on as coach and sparring partner with Rocky Balboa. Multi-racial class warfare - there's a place for us, somewhere a place for us - now becomes the wedge against the millionaire McCain. ...

Yes, I would have preferred the "three point shot" - that Obama pick a running mate from outside of Washington - but as DC insiders go, it's interesting that Biden chose all these years to refuse to live inside it, or meet with its lobbyists. ... The 2008 election now has its very own "Comeback Kid," and his name ain't Clinton. Oh, yes, I can live with that.

Go read.

Joe Biden: American Hero

I neither know nor care whether Joe Biden is going to be Vice President -- but:

As he left his house for the second time today, he had a load of wood in the back of his pickup and told the assembled reporters, "Don't get hit (by the traffic), guys, I'm just going to the dump."

Upon his return from disposing of the logs, Biden pulled up in his pickup, saying he had nothing to report, but "I had a successful dump."

"I had a successful dump. I dropped everything at the dump. It all worked out and by the way I got a second load, guys, coming and if anyone wants to help me unload let me know, those stumps weigh about 150 pounds."

Hats off, people. Hats off.

GA-Sen: Woah! Chambliss at 50%, Dem Martin within 6

I follow the Senate races pretty closely but I have to admit this surprises me. Rasmussen has Sen. Saxby Chambliss of GA (the man who, you may recall, beat Max Cleland in one of the most depressing elections ever six years ago) just clinging to the magic 50% number, with challenger Jim Martin rapidly closing the gap. Who would have possibly expected this race would be competitive?

Of course, Rasmussen is right to point out that this could just be a bounce produced by Martin's finally winning the primary, and we are talking here about just one poll. But look how well it fits the trend:

And it's also true that Chambliss has like eighty bajillion dollars in his campaign account and Martin has, I don't know, $10. Which, regardless of close polls, makes the odds of a Democratic win here pretty microscopic. But it could happen if Martin picks up momentum (and remember, the presence of Bob Barr might cause screwy things downticket in Georgia)... keep an eye on this one.

--Another indicator of growing dissatisfaction with Republicans in unlikely areas: Oklahoma. A DSCC poll (and, yes, consider the source) has Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) at that same 50% mark, up 9 against his opponent Andrew Rice. Even if national numbers do now appear to be stalling, the picture in downticket races just keeping looking better for Democrats...

"Buy American, Vote Obama"

I like this.

Now this is how you start a Monday morning

It's 10 AM out here in Colorado and my coffee hasn't kicked in yet. So can somebody else please go over to RedIvy, read this, then come back and tell me what the fuck this dude is talking about? I gather it has something to do with Ron Paul, but that's about all I got. And anyone who makes analogies about "savages being given a slice of pie" is surely destined for Internet stardom, so we really ought to get on this...

UPDATE: DID YOU KNOW? "Our tax is a burden to choke on the bromides provided on a platter of charm, radicalism and novelty." NOW YOU KNOW!

Re: Dear Markus

Whee! This is fun. Brian, here is why your concerns are misplaced:

See that tiny little uptick in the red line there? That's the thing that has everybody horrified. Meanwhile, Obama has since about April been consistently pulling 45-47% or so, which considering unallocated undecideds and a race with THREE prominent third-party candidates is clearly a winning percentage. Damn but Democrats scare easy.

To your specific points:

1. John McCain is a terrible candidate who is running a terrible campaign... Barack Obama, on the other hand, is the most exciting candidate the Democrats have ever had. So WHY IS HE ONLY WINNING BY TWO POINTS?!

   Excitement about a candidate, and the quality of the campaign, will manifest itself almost entirely in election-day turnout and polls from the days immediately beforehand, as marginal base voters decide whether or not to bother voting. You can't measure that in August. Meanwhile, Obama's lead -- which has ranged in the past few months from about 2 to 7 -- reflects the structural advantages he has in this electorate very well. (I repeat: John McCain is not, in fact, winning.)

2. I disagree that people aren’t paying attention. This election is different from every other before it, and I think people are watching.

   Be careful with your assumptions here. Yes, this election is different; but in order to know that, you have to have been paying attention already, and you have to be familiar with previous elections. That leaves out the huge and decisive portion of the American public that only follows politics with a passing interest, and which never pays attention before the conventions and Labor Day. It's quite likely that the politically-engaged population (like us, and all of our friends) is more excited and paying more attention than usual, but that doesn't matter, because we vote consistently. It's the disengaged, low-information marginal voters that matter.

   But even if they’re not paying too much attention, every household in every swing state is currently getting bombarded with McCain’s attack ads. And while the ads may be completely freaking ridiculous, the problem is that they’re not being countered by the Obama campaign, and impressions are formed early and are hard to change.

   Yes, there are a bunch of attack ads airing, but their main purpose right now isn't to reach marginal voters (who, I reiterate, don't give a damn this early) nearly as much as it is to define the media narrative which, in traditional campaigning, shapes the actual gameplay in September and October. Now, Obama's campaign is hardly traditional, and it's going to rely on a whole different voter universe (see: their startling voter registration efforts) than the one which is traditionally swayed by media, so I'm not too concerned about that.

3. I also reject the argument that the race is all about the electoral votes and the popular vote doesn’t matter.

   I didn't say that. My point was that national polls aren't very indicative because they can't reflect Obama's weird impacts on turnout. Certainly a rising presidential tide lifts all downticket boats, and I expect that to happen much more dramatically than the polls can possibly represent.

...The thing to remember is that not only does Obama have a consistent lead, recent Chicken-Little-ism notwithstanding, but we can reasonably expect him to overperform that lead substantially on November 4. Feel better?

Politico: Obama is winning, therefore, Obama is losing

See this right here? This is why I don't bother reading Politico.

In the two months since Barack Obama captured the Democratic nomination, he has hit a ceiling in public opinion polling, proving unable to make significant gains with any segment of the national electorate.

While Obama still leads in most matchups with John McCain, the Illinois senator’s apparent stall in the polls is a sobering reminder to Democrats intoxicated with his campaign’s promises to expand the electoral map beyond the boundaries that have constrained other recent party nominees.

GAAAAHHHHHH. Three things.

1. Only in DC journalism does it make sense to write an article claiming that, because Barack Obama has a narrow but significant lead, Barack Obama is clearly in trouble. This is like a sportswriter saying that the Bruins are obviously screwed because they keep winning games by just two goals.

2. It's not surprising that the polls haven't moved this summer -- it's the summer. Nobody pays attention to politics in the summer, except high-information voters (basically all of whom have already made up their minds). What would be strange is if the polls were moving. Gallup's Frank Newport seems to agree, in this delightfully loopy (and obviously truncated) quote from the article:
   

   “What’s remarkable this summer is the stability of this race,” Gallup’s director Frank Newport said. “In a broad sense, it is similar to previous elections.”

   (Sidenote: why do reporters always quote pollsters to make them sound like Zen masters? Take this, also from the article: "ABC News Polling Director Gary Langer asked, “If everything is so good for Barack Obama, why isn’t everything so good for Barack Obama?”" I really don't think that sentence means anything at all.)

3. Obama's promise to "expand the electoral map" would naturally expand it beyond pollsters' likely-voter screens, so we really can't ascertain whether that strategy is working by looking at national polls. We won't know that until election day.

It really saddens me that people spend their time reading this bullshit. WHEN will the elite media learn the basics of polling? WHEN?

If only, Wal-Mart. If only

(Hello, everybody! Thus ends my prolonged blog-absence; I had rather more important things to do last week, and continuing intertube problems [for which I blame the angered Ted Stevens] this week. Apologies to my loyal readers -- both of you.)

The Wall Street Journal has a remarkable story today about Wal-Mart, whose profit margins depend largely on substandard wages and working conditions, quaking in fear at the thought that a 2008 Democratic victory will (via the desperately needed Employee Free Choice Act) force unionization on them. Look:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings... The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

Well... as heartening as this is to an old social-democrat crank like me, I have to caution: EFCA is just a small step toward restoring unions to the role they should play in the American workplace, a process which (if it happens at all) will take decades. Nothing will come overnight.

Besides, today's Democratic Party is hardly the working man's best friend; it is riddled with "business-oriented Democrats" like Chuck Schumer, Bill Richardson, and Mark Warner (not to mention Evan Bayh, and I should add that if he's chosen as Obama's VP I will have to consider ritual suicide). Once in power, it is an open question whether this party can overcome its ties to the business community and work to help the people who really need it.

Certainly from Wal-Mart's perspective, it's much less effective to fight and demonize Democrats than it is to just buy us. The very same WSJ article tells the tale:

So while I'm not going to say that this "RUN! DEMOCRAT REVOLUTIONARIES!" thing is just a corporate head-fake -- that's a level of mouth-frothing I'm not yet ready to embrace -- it's certainly true that one election and one new law won't bring unions into the retail market the way Wal-Mart (for whatever reason) wants people to think. We should work for even small steps in that direction, of course, but we shouldn't let our opponents define the debate.

Kick-ass

What I learned from RedIvy today: you don't mess with Frances Martel.

And if the angle from which this particular reader criticizes homosexuality [link for context] is religious... I have to question what kind of God this wrathful evangelical deity really is, and why He is so desperate to smite everyone. Does He have nothing better to do, like create beauty in nature or answer the prayers of the faithful? My Christian God (and His Son), the one I talk to and worship every day, who in name and denomination is the same as yours, is kind, loving, forgiving, and understanding. He interprets sin and deprivation as an exclusive choice of the sinner, and not something thrust upon him from above (or below). Gays and lesbians can engage in sinful debauchery in the same way that straight individuals can, and aren’t considered sinners by default more than any of us are. I do not pretend to read the mind of the Lord, but if I am to believe that whole New Testament thing as the true way to lead one’s life(which I do), I cannot believe that God creates some people more sinful than others, or that there are sins that He is not willing to forgive.

...It is highly irritating to me that any mention of [Rachel] Maddow in the media has to come hand-in-hand with her sexuality, as if it were relevant to her occupation. Read any piece about her success and you’ll see what I mean. Those that abuse the stereotype will claim that she is “asking for it” with her short hair and, uh, eloquence, and all those “masculine” features like “snark” and “education”. Never mind that she rarely engages in discussion of gay and lesbian issues on MSNBC- she’ll talk about them when they’re relevant (she does have an extensive history in gay rights advocacy), but the scope of her political lens is much broader. She was “asking for it,” just for leaving the kitchen and not bowing down to the Valley Girl-esque image of the socially traditional newsgirl. Taking issue with her political beliefs (I myself disagree with her on almost every single point) is completely fair and, I believe, warranted. She’s practically wrong about everything, and it’s her choice to be so. Taking issue with her sexuality- which is neither here nor there in the political world- is disrespectful and uncalled for.

It’s almost as if the more envious elements of the media want to chalk up her success to her sexuality and not her talent, as if she is a product of this new socialist “Affirmative Action” thing and not a respectable pundit. And envy is always a thing to be mocked, traditional or otherwise.

FRANCES MAD. FRANCES SMASH.

...As much as I despise libertarianism -- and boy, do I ever -- I have to admit that the Internet, and the Republican Party, would be better if they had more people like Frances Martel in them. At least, they'd be more entertaining.

Sunday Screening

Everybody, this is Corb Lund. Corb, this is everybody. Now that we're all acquainted, let's hear some music.

CORB LUND is Canadian -- I know, me writing about Canadian music, you're shocked -- from Alberta, to be specific, and he plays country music (variously, along "the Corb Lund Band" or, lately, the wonderfully named "Hurtin' Albertans"). But it's not really country like most people understand it. Yes, there's yodeling in this song (which is part of a long tradition, actually, going back to Jimmie Rodgers who is arguably the founder of country music); but more than that, Corb Lund's music is just weird. Dense, inscrutable, sometimes deliberately stupid and sometimes deadly serious; you won't hear much else like it. Here's another example:

Now, I'm no fan of that video -- can't quite tell if it's a deliberate throwback to grunge, or just cheap and ADD-addled, but either way I'll pass -- but the song is just great. (That line: "This is grape juice and cheap vodka, man! This isn't even wine!" kills me every time. Not to mention it's an excuse to bring up the recent ridiculousness involving PZ Myers and a Communion wafer, which you should look at if you need more proof that this country's religious right is completely unhinged). You can hear the obvious Dylan influence in this one, but it's got that rootsy twist to it that adds a new dimension. Here's another, much more serious (and political) song -- follow the lyrics now:

Corb Lund's music, like a lot of Canadian rock, is an acquired taste. (I'm thinking here specifically of the Tragically Hip, whose songs are so dense both lyrically and musically that it often takes dozens of listenings before you can unravel them -- and that's not counting the YEARS of radio acclimation you need before you can get past Gord Downie's weird-ass voice.) But once you acquire it, man, do you ever acquire it; I've been spending a lot of time lately trying to tease out "Expectation and the Blues," under the logic that any country song which rhymes "over-intellectualize" with "self-actualize" must be worth understanding. (Here's a little low-quality snippet, if you're hardy enough to try it for yourself).

And it's not like he doesn't have a sense of humor. Here's "The Truck Got Stuck," one of Corb's most irresistibly dumb and catchy songs -- I warn you now, this is a talking blues about trucks getting stuck in mud, and if you hear it you WILL have it playing in your head for days. Listen:

(Agriculture Canada is our equivalent of the USDA, incidentally. Many Canadian federal agencies are just the name of what they do with the word "Canada" tacked on -- "Health Canada", ""Environment Canada", "Sport Canada", "Western Economic Diversification Canada", etc. You get used to it.)

Anyway; if you want to hear more Corb Lund, his albums are in all the usual places. I recommend eMusic, which sells real DRM-free MP3s at sensible prices ($10 for 30), and has a catalog of everything you need (they just don't carry the major labels, which is fine, because all that mainstream shit is on the filesharing networks anyway). Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of your weekends; this is an open thread.

Deregulation solves everything. Deregulation is magic. Deregulation is your father

Nathan Newman's little article about the failure of deregulation and the current financial crisis made me have an equally little thought -- remember after one of the more recent Wall Street shocks, I think it was the Bear Stearns collapse, when McCain went on TV and gave a big speech where he said the answer to our problems was more transparency and a simpler tax code?

My thought: Boy, that was stupid.

McCain opposes gay adoption

Sickening.

Q: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

Q: Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents.

Mr. McCain: I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.

Q: But your concern would be that the couple should a traditional couple [sic]

Mr. McCain: Yes.

So-called "social issues" aren't normally my purview, but this pisses me off. There are innumerable children out there who desperately need a stable home, and innumerable gay couples out there who could provide them one with love and care. And -- surprise -- there are no psychological issues associated with growing up in a gay household, none. No reasonable person in the 21st century should hold this position; the fact that McCain and other conservative politicians can say this stuff publicly without immediate rebuke and ostracism is a sign that our national discourse is still, in fundamental ways, retarded.

I hate Mondays. Somebody get me a drink.

(Both links via the Washington Independent.)

UPDATE (Thursday): "Actually Senator McCain only kind of opposes gay adoption, and also he doesn't, and it's a state issue anyway, and PLEASE GO AWAY SCARY GAY PEOPLE."

What Not To Do On CNN

This clip has been making the rounds today, in which Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) does a total faceplant trying to articulate any contrast between McCain and Bush on the economy. This is one of the worst appearances by a high-profile surrogate you'll ever see, and it highlights the severe message difficulty McCain's campaign is having on the economy. Look:

Brutal.

(Also, as Taegan Goddard notes -- we can probably strike Mark Sanford off McCain's VP list.)

Sunday Screening

OH MY GOD. Seems The Americanization of Emily, one of my favorite relatively-unknown classics, is available in full on YouTube (and in handy playlist form, at that). It's been up for over a month, which is a good sign that the YouTube Copyright Gestapo isn't on the hunt for it in particular, but these things often vanish suddenly so get it while you can. To whet your appetite, here is an appropriately bizarre and incoherent trailer:

Don't let the black & white fool you, this was 1964; the young James Garner plays opposite the younger Julie Andrews in a biting satire of war and war-politics. Almost unknown and criminally underrated, this is everything Dr. Strangelove should have been: calm, intelligent, and devastating. (I hold Dr. Strangelove, like all of Kubrick, to be criminally OVERrated, but that's for another day.) It's not a great film, to be sure -- the directing is lackluster, and Julie Andrews is not exactly known for her dramatic range -- but the writing alone makes it more than worthwhile. Paddy Chayefsky, who you probably know as the guy who wrote Network in 1976 and then died, is the force at work here; Americanization of Emily is one of a series of movies he did as he transitioned out of 1950s TV and radio. (I'm not qualified to comment on the rest of Chayefsky's work -- the only one I've seen is the absurd Paint Your Wagon from 1969, with Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, singing. Let me tell you, the only worthwhile thing about seeing Paint Your Wagon is that you can subsequently say you sat through it -- a not insubstantial accomplishment, actually. ...I'm digressing.)

I imagine that some of you shiftless, MTV-addled teenagers will lack the patience to watch this whole movie (and you productive, career-building Harvard types certainly won't have the time); if so, I demand you at least watch this one scene. Here, James Garner devastates Julie Andrews' war-widow mother at a garden tea party, delivers a subversive speech about the virtues of cowardice, and in his grinning, clean-cut, all-American way, starts the 1960s. Skip to 3:27 and watch through into the next clip.

I'll leave you with that to ponder, and for heaven's sake, watch the entire movie. Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of your weekend; this is an open thread.