Obama talks to the "undecideds"; can McCain match him?

The Obama 30-minute infomercial was a shrewdly spent $4 million worth of campaign money. Its primary target was those "undecideds" who probably amount to less than 10% of the electorate, but because of the tightening race, may truly decide who will be the next President.

The main vibe I picked up from the show was that Obama is a guy who doesn't get rattled easily, if at all, even when the subject is what he calls America's biggest economic challenge since the Great Depression. With many Americans feeling the pangs of panic, those who tuned in or watched replays had to be struck to the calmness and steadiness that Obama projected.

With less than five days of electioneering left, the McCain campaign will have to act fast to make a counter-appeal to the undecideds. It'll have to be better than the "socialism" label that GOP ads have tried to pin on Obama. It should be woven around McCain -- why this war hero and courageous senator is the best person to be President in these dark times. It's a powerful message, but it may be too late to deliver it.

In polls, Obama's blue line keeps going north, and McCain's red line south

It's easy to get carried away by polls when they seem to back up what you wish for. Still, I was struck by the uniform pattern of state polls trending for Obama, as compiled by Real Clear Politics. In 12 "battleground" states, polling charts show a consistent pattern -- Obama's blue line rising and McCain's red line falling. Sometimes the blue line flattens out, but since September, in all 12 states -- including GOP strongholds like North Carolina and Missouri -- it never yields to the red line. Even in Indiana, which Bush won by more than 20 percentage points in 2000 and 2004, the blue line is now on top, albeit slightly (46.8% to 46.5%).

To find battleground states that are still polling for Bush, you have to go to the West or Deep South, but in some of those -- Montana and Georgia in particular -- Obama's blue line grows stronger.

GOP bloggers like Hugh Hewitt cherry-pick the rare national poll that shows the presidential race tighter than the composite of state polls, which typically are based on more respondents. There are also the warnings, like this one aimed at the mainstream news media, that voters might "pull a Truman" on Nov. 4 and leave the polls looking like confetti on the convention floor the morning after.

There is still a week left in the campaign, and McCain and the GOP could unleash a multi-megaton accusation at Obama aimed at suddenly reversing the steady upward path of that blue line. After Bill Ayers and "spreading the wealth around," what might that be?

With Stevens now a convicted felon, what will reformer Palin do if he won't step aside?

So Ted Stevens, the longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate, is now a convicted felon. The Republicans are being ground down by an amazing string of bad luck. Stevens can appeal and keep his case going for several years, during which he could probably continue to serve in the Senate, assuming he wins on Nov. 4. While the Democrats are hungry for as big a Senate majority as they can get, they might prefer to see Stevens choosing to hold on by his finger nails -- a desperate act that could turn off undecided voters everywhere, not just in Alaska, and move them toward Obama and Democratic congressional candidates on Nov. 4.

Sarah Palin is in yet another predicament in her short national political life. If Stevens decides to keep running for office despite his conviction, will she -- the acclaimed reformer who took on her own party in Alaska -- oppose that decision? If she says no to Stevens, she's got a good chance of turning his scandal into a net plus for her party --and for her and her running mate John McCain's chances in the White House race.

Interesting!

A Republican warns Republicans, but is anyone listening?

How McCain's post-convention campaign strategy -- to re-energize the deeply conservative GOP base -- is wrecking not only his chances but those of many incumbent Republican members of Congress is mournfully laid out in this Washington Post op-ed by David Frum. Author of the recent book "Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again," Frum is resigned to the Democrats capturing the White House, but he thinks it's not too late for his party to hold on to enough of its Senate seats so it can thwart what it considers the worst of Democratic tax-and-spend legislation.

Even Democrats might see the wisdom in their party not controlling Pennsylvania Avenue from one end to the other. But with about 10 days remaining in the campaign, will McCain and GOP strategists step back from their suicidal march that could cost them what should be secure Senate seats in North Carolina, Minnesota and Oregon? It's possible Republicans could even lose their contested seat in bright red Georgia.

Talking about what he'd do if he lost, McCain said no problem, he'd just go back to Arizona and be a senator again. But if he and his party keeps pushing the campaign to the base-pleasing right, some of his colleagues in the Senate may not be able to do the same.

Is Palin the next Reagan?

If Obama wins -- and I join the big and increasing crowd of guessers who thinks he will -- what fortune awaits Sarah Palin? Her future is very bright, according to this blog post in the New Republic. I nod at all the points that are made. Palin is a political animal, she is a quick study and she has that je ne c'est quoi quality. But is she a 21st century Reagan?

I say no -- at this point. Palin, for all her formal gifts, remains too aligned to, too imprisonend by, her GOP base. Reagan was no one's prisoner. He and his LA-based advisers knew where they wanted to take the Republican Party. It was not with a Goldwater road map.

In her campaign speeches, Palin is talking the standard line of the GOP base -- when she should be at least giving some hints of where she would take the party post-2008 (after the Obama victory).

A Rovian culture war won't make it. Too many people -- too many people who are supposed to be in the vanguard of the GOP faithful, like the socially conservative working class -- are being so ground down by the economy.

Look at Joe the (Non-) Plumber. McCain and the GOP tried to make him into a hero fighting against Democratic tax policies. Joe says Obama's tax policies would penalize him if he carries out his dream of buying the plumbing firm where he works and makes more than $250,000 a year. But in metro Toledo, Ohio, where Joe lives, the central issue is not how to make $250,000+ a year and avoid taxes. It's people already unemployed, the under-employed or the likely to be without a job soon as the auto industry continues to downsize. Most working families make under $40,000 a year. While Joe is talking economic fantasy -- making the kind of money that only 2% of Americans make -- thousands of Toledo area residents, even those who are employed, are struggling to buy groceries, pay for health care and cope with foreclosure.

Palin addresses none of these issues in her speeches or statements. As the economy goes deeper into recession, Toledo area workers and their families will suffer even more. Joe-the-(non)- Plumber tropes, even if they're delivered by an accomplished public speaker like Paylin, will not increase their salaries or find them jobs.

'Joe the plumber is me': An encounter in a looking-glass world

Byron York, a National Review writer who can't be easily pigeon-holed into any right-wing media box, captured a revealing "Joe the Plumber" encounter at a recent McCain rally in Prince William County, Virginia.

York provides the backdrop:

"In recent days, the Joe the Plumber phenomenon has taken on a deeper meaning for McCain’s audiences, for two reasons. First, he is a symbol of their belief that Barack Obama is going to raise their taxes, regardless of what Obama says about hitting up only those taxpayers who make more than $250,000 a year. They know Wurzelbacher doesn’t make that much, and they know they don’t make that much. And they’re not suspicious because they believe that someday they will make $250,000, and thus face higher taxes. No, they just don’t believe Obama right now. If he’s elected, they say, he’ll eventually come looking for taxpayers who make well below a quarter-million dollars, and that will include them."

The focus of York's piece is documented immigrant Tito Munoz, a native of Colombia, who's "disgusted" with the media and its coverage of Joe the Plumber:

“Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me….I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

The reporter who tries to answer Munoz -- Mother Jones magazine's David Corn, who has done highly regarded investigative digging into "Plamegate" and other Bush administration misdeeds -- is portrayed as being no match for Munoz and his indictment of the media.

"Joe the Plumber is me!" shouts Munoz at Corn. Is he? Munoz thrusts all his documentation, including U.S. passport, in Corn's face. But let's say Munoz was from Lucas County, Ohio, and that he was a plumber -- a licensed one. Then, in the economic downturn, there are fewer plumbing jobs, and Munoz loses work to outfits like Joe's firm because Joe, being unlicensed, can charge less for a job. Would Munoz then be shouting "Joe the Plumber is me!"? Who would he be madder at -- unlicensed plumbers who can cut into his earnings or a President Barack Obama whose tax policies, Munoz fears, with no evidence, may some day clip more dollars from his paycheck?

Paulson's bailout team should start culling insolvent banks

This is an interesting interview in the WSJ with a monetary expert who who is not only a scholar of the earlier big financial crash -- the Great Depression --but was around when it happened. She is Anna Schwartz, who co-authored, with Milton Friedman, "A Monetary History of the United States" in 1963. Since 1941, Ms. Schwartz has been on the staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York City. At age 92, she was a teenager when Wall Street crashed in 1929.

Ms. Schwartz fears Treasury Secretary Paulson and his team will use federal bailout money to try to make weak banks solvent. I hope her fears are misplaced. As she emphasizes, the problem is not liquidity -- the Federal Reserve and Treasury have flooded the banking system with liquidity -- but solvency. Solvency is the ability of a financial institution to withstand a rush against its deposits and other funds. If an institution is leveraged, say, 40 to 1, it has little chance of surviving panic withdrawals, regardless of injections of bailout cash it may receive.

It shouldn't take Paulson and his team that much time to size up an institution's ability to stay solvent. Experts have pointed out that Fannie Mae has all the tools that are needed to calculate the value of so-called "toxic" securities and weigh them on balance sheets. Those institutions that are over-leveraged should not get any bailout money. There are 5,250 banks and saving banks insured by the FDIC, more than enough to survive a solvency evaluation and provide adequate credit for personal and business customers.

Let the culling begin.