Obama Gains Some Serious Ground

They may not be "battleground states," but Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky have been solid red states for some years now.

Suppose Obama doesn't win any of the three—chances are he won't—but in 2004 Bush won the three states by an average of over 15%.

Fast forward to Barack Obama, 2008, that number is down to just over 6%.

Holy smokes.

Is it even necessary to bring up that Obama is up now (by 1%) in Indiana, something yours truly didn't believe could happen.




[graphs from electoral vote]

14—12, for now.

For a while I've held that the general election will come down to a small handful of issues (more so than it will come down to certain swing states): Iraq, energy policy, and McCain's perceived "ethics."

Looking at my results from American Public Media's candidate quiz, my match with Obama would have jumped significantly if I agreed with him on Iraq, and McCain's score would be a lot lower if I no longer believed McCain put country over politics.


I may score a 14-12 now, but August could bring a 10-16, and November a 20-6.

I said back in early April: "It's unfortunate and hard for many people to realize that when you force your politics down someone's throat, they'll never say something that could potentially weaken their own position. Being more civil, however, you notice that the distinctions between Obama and Clinton, for example, are more nuanced. Furthermore, you're more comfortable admitting that your side isn't perfect."

I still believe that dynamic exists between Barack Obama and John McCain, and I'm curious to see which issues are guiding voters' decisions.

Take the quiz below and let me know what your result is by leaving a comment on this post or sending me an email at lukevargas2040@gmail.com.

Happy quizzing!

Worn Out

2.5 jobs, a week of travel, a concert, lots of dinners and receptions, and finally a (sort of) free day tomorrow.

I've been working on a few interesting posts for the week ahead, so they'll be some new content arriving on the blog over the next few days, but for now I'm off to enjoy a relaxing night and as many hours of sleep as I can squeeze in.

Letting Others Do the Talking

Yesterday I posted a rather fiery response to Obama's decision not to take public financing for his campaign, and I got a lot of heat for it. I deserved it. Now that I've taken the post down I decided I'd let some more credible sources do the talking for me.

Below are a number of great articles from around the web that are consistent with the way I feel:

"Obama out of system, but not out of character," by Ben Smith, POLITICO

"Obama chose winning over his word," by Liz Sidoti, AP

[If you can survive the kind of sarcasm I only wish I could write]
"Oooh, The New Politics," by Mona Charen, RealClearPolitics


Don't say you heard it from me.

A Fantastic Ending

There are few better ways to end a week in New York City than club seats to a R.E.M. concert.

...which is to say I had a great time.

MSG

As in Madison Square Garden.

R.E.M.

7:00PM

Beyond excited.

Despite the Polls...

The news this week is that Obama is beating John McCain in a number of important swing states in recent polls, but what I've been hearing is a lot less positive for Obama.

I've been in New York City since Monday night and the enthusiasm for Barack Obama among New Yorkers that I expected is, if not gone, greatly reduced. In the past two days I have heard Obama's economic recovery plan mocked by countless businessmen as uninformed and naive. Not every voter is an economic policy expert, but a lot of people read the Wall Street Journal and know enough to detect an economic strategy that won't work. A line I overheard on 58th and Park yesterday:

"McCain doesn't know a thing about the economy, but he admits it and hires good advisors to tell him what to say. Obama knows what's really going on with the economy right now, but he doesn't have the guts to throw some hard reality into his platform."

Is this a signal of a significant problem for the Obama campaign? No, but I spoke with a high-ranking supporter of Bill Clinton and advisor to Jimmy Carter this week who admitted to me that they were not planning on voting for Barack Obama. Why? Because as a New Yorker, John McCain is better prepared to protect America.

Now there's a problem for Obama...

Missing New Hampshire

New York City is a difficult location to experience your first “business trip,” especially as an eighteen-year-old. I’ve flown alone, driven solo all over creation, and held down the house for a few days while my parents were away, but taking the bus down to Manhattan and being plopped down into the heart of a neighborhood that doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with you, even at 10:30 at night, is difficult. I can imagine older business travelers taking a taxi straight from the airport to the front step of their hotel, but having to kill an hour in the city before I can head off to where I’m spending the night threw me into a situation I struggled to handle.

Going into last night I had tremendous confidence. Whenever I traveled with my parents I would walk quickly through the airport ahead of them, noticing how I ended up taking all the right turns and making it to the gate without consulting a directory or trying to locate where I was. In my eyes, whenever I traveled with others I thought I was doing a much better job.

The fact of the matter is that I did do alright; I made it from South Station to the Upper East Side with no help, but I was not confident in the least. As a measure of how turned around I was, once I got off the bus on 34th street it took me almost ten minutes of embarrassing walking and rewalking of the same city blocks (with a fair share of walking in circles) to locate an ATM, one of the easiest tasks I could imagine in New York.

Yesterday may not have been the crowning success of independent travel I had hoped for, but today brought new successes, even with a handful of failures.

Traveling through New York is nothing like the traveling I’ve done in New Hampshire. Ask me turn by turn directions to Daniel Webster College or the Puritan Backroom in Manchester, I can do that. Ask me where the nearest subway stop is from where I’m staying in New York….I’m stuck.

I miss New Hampshire.

The Veteran's New Tour

On Thursday I felt like the odd one out. The last campaign I had covered before John McCain's June 12th Nashua, NH town hall meeting was Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvania Primary celebration on April 22, and it's been more than six months since I've caught up with McCain. Since late last year there has been a noticeable change in the tone of Senator McCain's campaign events, and I felt something different as soon as I walked into the Daniel Webster College gym on Thursday.

At McCain events, local tech crews have been replaced with 50ft high lighting trellises, staff have changed from polos to suits, and the overall feel of the "maverick" in a pack of bland (in my opinion) Republican candidates is gone. The production value of John McCain's once rural-feeling campaign events has increased tremendously, thanks largely in part to the full support of the RNC. I never attended a George W. Bush campaign event, but I can imagine it felt like this.


Even the look of the traveling press corps has changed—they are no longer a frequently-changing mix of local, regional, and national reporters, but a much closer-knit group of elite journalists resigned to the fact that they'll be covering the same candidate together for months to come.

A far cry from the cash-strapped campaign that trudged (often literally, see snow plow story) through New Hampshire, McCain is now running up expenses equal to his opponent's campaign operation.


So what separates McCain's expensive campaign setup from Obama's? Both candidates' events may look like concerts now, but for Obama the lights are bright, so the masses can revel in their company of thousands. At McCain's events now, the lights are dim and McCain ascends the stage, illuminated by a soft spotlight.

This is, after all, the election of the scene's new star and the veteran rocker—solo and performing at his second home.

McCain hasn't changed, I'm just seeing him under new lights now.


(All photos: Luke N. Vargas. 2008. All Rights Reserved)

Only Met Him Once

Actually, I didn't really ever "meet" Tim Russert, but he did let me stand in front of him at a John McCain rally in Des Moines this past January. I told Russert I was a high school student and traveled all the way out to Iowa for Christmas. Russert said something to the effect of, "that's fantastic! Hope you're having a great trip."


One sentence and one photo I snapped as Tim was entering the room. That was it. But it's in the unprecedented level of journalistic integrity and hard work that now will live on in my memory of Tim Russert.

What's my first political memory?

Waking up on Sunday mornings, running down the stairs for breakfast and finding my dad watching Meet the Press.

Since 1991, always bringing enthusiasm to the job:

Straight Talk Photos

Nashua, NH. June 12, 2008.

I'm still in New Hampshire and the internet is too slow to update more photos, but I'll try to have a full event summary of John McCain's Nashua townhall by Saturday afternoon.

Washington: Decades Behind

Do you believe in the slogan, "Change That Works for You?"

Does "Courageous service—Experienced Leadership—Bold Solutions" sound like a joke to you?

The past few days we've heard about how two energy bills, one that would place a windfall profits tax on oil companies, were stopped in the United States Senate. The jury is still out on who to blame for the high cost of gas now, and in my eyes it's not just the oil companies. I can see why a tax on oil companies wouldn't make it through Congress, but the fact that the other bill—promoting alternative energy sources—didn't make it to the floor astonishes me.

Washington DC. 2008. Still decades behind.

No matter who our next president is, alternative energy bills won't just be taken up starting in January of 2008, they'll be raced through Congress by either Barack Obama or John McCain.

Plain and simple, there's NO good reason we shouldn't start thinking about life after oil.

Mission Accomplished

Going [LIVE]

For anyone planning on waking up early tomorrow, I will be doing a live television taping for CN8 (Comcast News) "Your Morning" tomorrow at 7:00AM. The station is available on cable from Maine to Virginia.

The stomach butterflies are showing up already...

Quick Update

If I've been absent from this blog for a few days it is because I am now working for a website called VoteGopher.com.

VoteGopher was started by a pair of Harvard undergraduates that will be comparing the positions of John McCain and Barack Obama on key issues.

For the moment my work with VoteGopher is part-time. I am serving as their Multimedia Content Coordinator in preparation for their new website launch in a few weeks.

I will try to spend as much time blogging and covering the election for this site as I can (and I am going to be in New Hampshire later this week for some John McCain events), but starting in a few weeks you will be able to see where my energy has been going.

My Hall of Fame

For anyone visiting here for the first time I wanted to create a post of links to some of my posts from the past fifteen months of this blog. Of the 287 posts I've published since March 12, 2007, the following are my all-time favorites:

"'Super Volunteers" Reshape America: A Profile" — May 7, 2008

"How to Have a Conversation" — April 1, 2008

"My First Vote" [Video] — February 6, 2008

"Two Americas Came Together" (Edwards ends campaign) — January 30, 2008

"The Road We've Already Tread" (Hillary Clinton endorsement) — January 13, 2008

~IOWA CAUCUS COVERAGE~ — January 1-5, 2008

"Who Shows Up" (Barack Obama in Des Moines, IA) — January 3, 2008

"Sticking Around" (Joe Biden in Plymouth, NH) — October 11, 2007

"A New Dodd" (My Dodd endorsement) — August 31, 2007 [My #1]

" 'God Bless Him' " (Dennis Kucinich in Dover, NH) — August 17, 2007

Insider Access Makes for Great Entertainment (and Concern)

Yesterday, John McCain's official campaign website posted a new video slideshow prepared by McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis.

Over the course of fifteen minutes Davis presents the data and tactics behind McCain's strategy to defeat Barack Obama. Granted, what you'll see is far from the entire official campaign plan drafted behind closed doors and being quietly executed — in the form of strategic fundraising pitches, event planning, and alliance-building, not to mention VP selection — but this taste of "insider" strategy reveals interesting information nonetheless.

One of the most noteworthy parts of the video is the McCain campaign's identification of its battleground states. It seems the campaign will be focusing highly on two states in the Midwest that I previously pegged as this election's hottest contests — Ohio and Michigan — as well as Wisconsin.


In addition, Davis says the Southwest (including the recently liberal-leaning state of New Mexico) is McCain-friendly due to the Senator's record of public service in Arizona and his "strength with Latinos and his record on immigration."

My guess is the McCain folks uploaded the video to show potential GOP fundraisers that a win in the 2008 election in within reach and the Republican Party is stronger than many might have previously thought; if Davis' remark about over 500 campaign offices opening in targeted states during the next four months isn't an inspiring line for Republican supporters, then McCain has no chance of rallying support.

I believe posting the video was a smart move. A lot of what's in the video is disconcerting for any Democrat and could lead some Democrats to second-guess Obama's nomination and erode their confidence in his candidacy. Take for instance Davis' line that a state like West Virginia — where Clinton defeated Obama by 41% — is essentially "off the map" for Obama because Democratic defectors will now vote for McCain since Clinton's out of the race. If that's the case, McCain picks up an easy 5 electoral votes.


Though the new McCain strategy briefing would lead one to believe McCain will sweep the November election, it's important to consider that a similar presentation by one of Obama's lead strategists would show quite the opposite. It's also worth noting that Obama is already fighting back with a new fundraising effort against McCain. Today, Obama's website sounded a call to arms against indications that the GOP fundraising machine is now stronger than Obama's. The advertisement urges Democrats to top McCain and the GOP's collection of over $45 million in the past month.


If Obama's fundraising totals from the Primary Election are any indication of his strength, his campaign should achieve their June goal.

No matter how many "all-knowing" campaign managers like Davis make predictions, we should take each one with a nice big grain of salt. That's not to say they don't make for entertaining reading (or viewing)...

Listen to Good Reporting

Tonight's TV highlight might be the Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals game (especially here in Boston), but the cable news networks are abuzz with their sensational campaign news story of the day. For them, Barack Obama's meeting with Senator Clinton tonight serves as an opportunity to pull out live camera shots and a handful of political experts who purport to know what no other American not directly involved could know—what is going on behind closed doors.

However, if the Obama-Clinton meeting doesn't satisfy your newsy cravings and you have an hour to devote to the soothing radio tones of WAMU's The Diane Rehm Show, the best political commentary of the day comes from NBC News correspondent Richard Engel. Particularly noteworthy is Engel's presentation of what he sees as the "five wars" that have taken place in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003. Listen to the segment HERE, and skip ahead to the end of minute 17 to hear Engel's "five wars."

The heyday of network news might be over, but there's no question that the best correspondents—Engel included—continue to report with an intelligence and insight that make their reporting a waning form of art.

Pictures May be Worth 1,000 Words, But One Sentence Says More For Me

From a donor and supporter email I received from Hillary Clinton:

Whatever path I travel next, I promise I will keep faith with you and everyone I have met across this good and great country. There is no possible way to thank you enough for everything you have done throughout this primary season, and you will always be in my heart.