TPT gives some advice to McCain

Seven steps the Senator from Arizona should take

I’m going to repeat the exercise that I performed last year of looking at the strategies that the major campaigns should adopt. I’m going to kick off with the McCain campaign.

1. Fire Phil Gramm and the rest of his economic team and replace him with Irwin Seltzer and refugees from the DLC. Emphasise a mixture of closing tax loopholes, ending both pork barrel spending and homeowner handouts, and regulatory reform. Steal Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan (the plan he actually implemented, NOT his 2008 plan) and start acting like the McCain of 2000-6 on economic matters.

2. Get a proper Rapid Response unit so that the constant smears and low level psuedo-‘scandals’ (eg ‘Lobbygate’ and Hagee are dealt with). Letting Daily Kos and MyDD go unchecked is a bad idea since the mainstream media seem to be paying them a lot of attention.

3. Get Joe Lieberman, Condi Rice & Rudoph Giuliani to blast Wright on national security (and only national security). Get Lieberman to go around the country speaking to the religious voters (having Lieberman sponsor some family values legislation in the Senate would also be good) and Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney speaking to Mormon voters in the Mountain West.

4. Give Collin Powell, Chuck Hagel and Michael Bloomberg positions within the campaign (say Chair of the campaign in the North East) so they can’t endorse Obama.

5. Make sure the Paulites attempt to overturn the primary results are nipped in the bud. Build a decent organisation in FL, MO, MI, PA, WI, OH and NY. Visit the states such as New York, New Jersey and Massachusettes rather than wasting time in states like Alabama.

6. Select either Joe Lieberman or Condi Rice as his running mate, but keep it a surprise until the nominating speech. If it is Lieberman get someone like Newt Gingrich, who has floated the idea of a McCain-Liberman ticket, or Rush Limbaugh to give the nomination speech.

7. Begin sounding out some DLC and Blue Dog type Democrats about the possiblity of getting endorsements from disillusioned Dems. Getting someone like Charlie Wilson to speak at the convention would be really great (but no Zell Miller type rants).

Hillary leads by 7.84% in Indiana

More bad news for Obama

I’ve come up with the following projections for Indiana.

Hillary Clinton 50.35
Barack Obama 42.51

Although the PPP gives Hillary a slightly smaller lead, it boosts her by confirming her larger lead in Indiana. My view is that winning Indiana and losing by less than 15 will strengthen Hillary’s hand. Although Hillary can’t win in terms of pledged delegates she can win in terms of the popular vote, which will give the Superdelegates enough reason to start justifying voting for her.

Obama leads by only 10% in North Carolina

Obama’s lead falls in North Carolina

Adding the latest polls to the collection of North Carolina polls, I’ve come up with the following projections.

Barack Obama 50.31
Hillary Clinton 40.31

Obama support is diminishing in North Carolina, but the Survey USA poll that had him only 5% ahead of Clinton was balanced out by the Rasmussen poll that had him 14% ahead. My view is that Wrightgate will hurt him even more. However, if Hillary wants to gain the nomination, and my view is that she has a good shot at achieving it, she is going to have do so over the face of a tremendous amount of opposition. Such opposition will not be fatal to her chances but it will require a bit of courage.

Too little, too late

Is Obama really a ‘victim’ of Wright?

Unfortunately, it looks like Obama and his supporters will probably have the chutzpah to claim that Obama is a ‘victim’ of Wright. Of course, in realty Obama spent 20 years in Wright’s church and knew fully well what he was getting into when he dedicated his autobiography to Wright, donated a large sum of money to Wright’s church, asked him to serve on an advisory council and said that Wright was ‘a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible’. Obama’s prolonged association with Wright shows, at the very least, appalling judgement and heavily hints at a worldview that is sympathetic to dictators and doesn’t view America as a force for good. In times when the West is facing a concerted enemy, there is no room for this sort of thinking. It is also ironic that find it that Obama’s supporters praised Obama for not repudiating Wright but now, once it becomes obvious that Wright was not misquoted, have changed their tune and now think that Wright is attempting to destroy Obama’s campaign.

Of course a quite a few commentators have been sympathetic to Obama about this latest outburst and some people will buy into this latest spin that Wright has ‘gone postal’. Indeed, Rush Limbaugh has gone so far as to state that, ‘Clinton minister set up Obama’s minister, exactly right, Errol Louis is saying today that the organizer of Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club was set up, and she was sitting right next to him at the dais talking to him. He was set up by Barbara Reynolds who is a Clinton operative’. A I’m willing to entertain the possibility that, like Samantha Power’s outburst about Hillary Clinton, Wright’s latest rantings may have been a tactical move to allow Obama to disown Wright without repudiating Wright’s value. However, I don’t buy into the conspiracy theory that Wright wants to destroy Obama’s campaign or the bizarre assertion that Hillary Clinton is somehow behind this.

To be honest both the McCain and Clinton campaigns have handled it badly. Saying nothing has enabled Obama to spin it the way that he wanted to and left the nastier element of the GOP, such as the Republican party in North Carolina, to try to turn this into a question of race rather than of foreign policy. Ironically, the New York Times complains that, ‘Mr. McCain has not tried hard enough to stop a race-baiting commercial’. As soon as the first tapes were aired Hillary should have held a press conference in New York and denounced his comments about 9/11 and tied it into Obama’s leadership. If she or McCain were unwilling to do so themselves they should have got surrogates like Chuck Schumer or Rudy Giuliani to do so. I also think that to compare it with Hagee is silly, since despite what the New York Times tries to imply, Hagee has not been McCain’s pastor for 20 years, nor has McCain used Hagee as a sounding board. Although McCain’s decision not to fully repudiate Hagee’s endorsement was disappointing, comparing the two is silly. While McCain may have accepted Hagee’s endorsement (and that of Rob Parsley) McCain is not an ethusiastic congregant of either. This episode does show the extent to which some in the media are prepared to shill for Obama, even to the extent of trying to spin his relationship with Wright as a positive.

Hillary’s price begins to gather some mometum

Are Punters Starting to wake up to the fact that Hillary is still there?

The prices on both Hillary Clinto and Al Gore have picked up in the last twenty-four hours. Gore is now trading at 4.5 and Hillary is now trading at above twenty. I believe that this is not only a combination of Jeremiah Wright’s latest outburst, which to be fair has generated a fair amount of sympathy for Obama, or the Indiana poll figures, but a realisation that Obama’s lead in pledged delegates might not be enough to guarantee him a victory. This has been the case for some time, but finally people are starting to wake up to this fact, as the reality that Obama’s support is more atkin to a bubble than a paradigm shift becomes ever more obvious. Certainly, I feel that Obama will not benefit fromt the wish to ‘put Hillary out of her misery’ that prevent Hillary from putting her margin into dobule figures.

Clinton leads by 7.56% in Indiana

Is Obama’s campaign starting to implode?

I’ve come up with the following projections for Indiana.

Hillary Clinton 50.98
Barack Obama 43.42

Hillary now has a substantial lead in Indiana. With Jeremiah Wright seeming to care more about cashing on his fifteen minutes of notoriety than getting Obama elected, the Super Delegates must be seriously worrying about Barack Obama’s electability. Of course, polls like these raise the expectations bar for Hillary and Wright’s antics may serve, in a paradoxical way, to drive a wedge between him and Obama in the public mind, but this is still very bad news for the Senator from Illinois. Perhaps some money on Harold Ford Jr as the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate might be a wise investment?

Obama leads by 11.40 in North Carolina

Obama’s lead falls in North Carolina

Adding the latest polls to the collection of North Carolina polls, I’ve come up with the following projections.

Barack Obama 51.38
Hillary Clinton 39.98

Obama support in North Carolina continues to decline. Previously, even I had thought that Clinton could never hope to reduce his lead to single digits. Evidently, the results in Pennsylvania seem to have pushed Obama’s weaknesses to the forefront of voters’ minds. Expect to see some very close results on May 6th.

Punters a little more bullish about Hillary Clinton in Indiana

Hillary’s Intrade price rises, but is it justified?

Surprisingly, after the Pennsylvania polling blitz, there haven’t been any new polls about North Carolina or Indiana. However, the betting markets are a little bit more optimistic about Hillary Clinton’s chances in Indiana, with the last traded price on her Intrade contracts in the Hoosier state going above 60. My view is still that Hillary has only a 55% chance of winning this state. However, the decision of Barack Obama’s mentor Jeremiah Wright to give a number of high profiile speeches will throw some more gasoline on an already hot primary contest. Although it can only be good for Barack Obama’s candidacy to remind people about the groundbreaking nature of his candidacy it is undeniable that his comments about Iraq/9-11 and other matters also diminish both his credibility on national security and as a potential commander-in-chief. Also, some of the Rev Wright’s more bizzare statements, including his psuedo-scientific neurological ‘theories’, do nothing for Wright’s reputation or to raise the tone of the debate.

Too much chaos is never a good thing

Why Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are being too clever for their own good

Having been defeated in their attempt to prevent John McCain from becoming the Republican nominee, many on the Republican right have turned their attention to a rather surprising cause; helping get Hillary Clinton selected as the Republican nominee. Although a few commentators on the right, most notoriously the pundit Ann Coulter, may consider John McCain so repugnant as to make the election of Hillary Clinton preferable, the stated aim of these pundits is to delay the moment of Hillary’s concession, rather than to get her nominated. Indeed, the notorious ‘shock-jock’ Rush Limbaugh has stirred up massive controversy by stating that his ideal would be a brokered Democratic convention that ends in recriminations and disaster, stating ‘this is about chaos. .. the dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention and that we have a replay of Chicago 1968, with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that’. Rather appropriately, this attempt to get Republican voters to cast their votes for Clinton has been dubbed ‘Operation Chaos’.

However, even ignoring the utter irresponsibility of encouraging anything that could lead to violence, Limbaugh’s assumptions are faulty because Hillary could still win the nomination. Although Barack Obama is virtually certain to have a lead in pledged delegates by the time of the convention, such a lead doesn’t carry any more weight than Clinton’s lead in the total number of votes cast in the primaries and caucuses. At the same time Obama’s defeat in Pennsylvania reduces the chances of either enough super-delegates moving towards him or the possibility that a crowd of Democratic grandees will ‘take Hillary to one side’, something they have been reluctant to do so despite their leaning toward the Senator from Illinois. Although nominating Hillary will risk alienating younger voters, the sad reality is that many of them won’t vote anyway in November. In contrast, selecting Obama could alienate the swing voters and moderate that the Democrats need to win if they are to take the White House.

Although it has been claimed that any overall victory for Clinton would be pyrrhic, this is not the case. By selecting either Harold Ford, Sanford Bishop or Ken Salazar as her running mate, Hillary could heal the wounds created by the primary battle while appealing to the vital centre. All of these of these prospective running mates would boost her either the South or the Southwest, while neither of them have the huge amount of baggage, both ideological and personal, that Obama possess. Of course, Hillary Clinton is still intensely polarising, but in an environment where Democrats have a clear lead in party affiliation, this might not be the disadvantage that many commentators believe it to be. A Clinton-Ford or Clinton-Sanford ticket would also blunt the two major lines of attack that the Republicans plan to use against Obama, namely his inexperience and his ability to deal with the threat of terrorism. Having a moderate like Ken Salazar on the ticket would boost turnout among Hispanic-Americans, the one traditionally Democratic demographic where turnout can realistically be boosted.

Ironically, every exit poll has suggested that the majority of the Republicans taking part in the Democratic primaries have voted for Obama rather than Clinton. Although this could be evidence of Obama’s appeal it is far more likely that Republican voters see Clinton as the real threat to a McCain victory and are ignoring Coulter and Limbaugh’s attention seeking antics. It must also be pointed out that the Democrats managed to put the disturbances of August 1968 behind them to come, despite the fact that the outgoing President Lyndon Johnson was deeply unpopular, within a few votes of defeating Richard Nixon. This is a point that both those who rub their hands together at the prospect of chaos and those who are urging Hillary to drop out, ‘for the good of the party’, should remember and consider. Of course, John McCain is a stronger candidate than both Clinton or Obama, but Hillary should not be written off as a weak candidate by either friend or foe.

A good idea

Why Bill could be a help rather than a hindrance to Hillary

The coventional wisdom is that Bill has been bad for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. However, while Bill’s moronic comment about Obama in South Carolina may have cost Hillary several states on ‘Super Tuesday’, especially Missouri, taking Clinton’s advisors onboard and toughening up her tone has helped her considerably. Indeed, if she had replaced Penn with Carville after New Hampshire she would be in a much better position. In short this can only be a positive development for Hillary, provided Bill Clinton is kept on a tight enough least to prevent him making any more gaffes. Politics aside, Bill Clinton needs to find some time to apologise for those comments that he about Obama and acknowledge that they have done much to lower the tone of the primary season.

Markets still betting on a Clinton victory in Indiana

The betting markets still think Hillary will carry Indiana

Although Hillary Clinton’s price has fallen from the low 70s, the betting markets still think that Hillary is the favourite to win in Indiana. For once, I have to agree with the betting markets because I believe that while she is currently leading in the polls, this is a state that would naturallly move to the Senator from Illinois, all other things being equal. My personal predictions are that Clinton has about a 55% chance of victory.

Hillary Clinton leads Obama in Indiana by 1.37%

Good news for Hillary

I’ve come up with the following projections for Indiana.

Hillary Clinton 46.61
Barack Obama 45.24

Hillary has now taken the lead in Indiana, although in real terms it remains a dead heat. If Barack Obama cannot carry Indiana then we can expect some of the Superdelegates that have moved to him to change their to support to Hillary Clinton.

British Polling Projections: Conservative Majority of 136

Will this put Brown’s head on the line?

Adding the latest ICM poll to my collection and filtering it produces the following projections:

Conservatives 43.69 (393)
Labour 26.4 (195)
Liberal Democrats 17.07 (33)

As a point of reference, popular alternatives produce the following; (Poll of polls) Con 40.2 Lab 30.6 LDm 17.8 (5 Poll Rolling Average) Con 41.2 Lab 30.6 LDm 17.8 Although the idea of a 17.29% Conservative lead is probably an exaggeration (though not too far of reality), the double digit rolling poll averages and the similarly dire poll of polls are bad for Labour. Very serious questions about Brown should now be asked by backbenchers. My £8 on Charles Clarke at 50/1, £1 on Hazel Blears at 100/1 and £ on John Reid at 50/1 might not be so crazy after all!

Will this really be that effective?

A contrarian perspective on Obama’s voter registration drive.

The internet is buzzing with the news that Barack Obama’s campaign is going to be launching a massive voter registration drive in all 50 states. While this is a publicity stunt more than anything, and a rather suspect attempt to try and create the illusion that he is anything more than a mere contender for the Democratic nomination, its does raise the question as to whether Obama can get any milage out of bringing unlikely voters to the poll. On the fact of it this would be a logical idea, because the Democrats overwhelmingly lead with young voters and ethnic minorities, two demographics that have poor turnout records. It is also something all parties should be doing, as a gift to the American political process. However, the groups that the Democrats have targeted are either already are more likely to vote than the average voter of comprable incomes or are simply unwilling to come to the polls. Although any increased turnout is good for borth Democracy and the Democratic party, the Democrats should not rely on getting new voters to the polls, but spend more time trying to win over existing voters. Indeed, according to one analysis in 2004, Kerry beat Bush by around 10% among first time voters, but Bush still won the election!

Obama leads in Indiana by 1.84%

Hillary and Obama are still in a virtual dead heat

I’ve come up with the following projections for Indiana.

Barack Obama 45.45
Hillary Clinton 43.61

Obama and Clinton seem to be tied in Indiana. Although Obama was leading by 15 points a few weeks ago, and it is a state which borders his own, my prediction is that the expectations generated by Clinton’s (temporary) leads will mean that the winner of Indiana will be the Democratic nominee.