(I'm promoting this because I think it is an interesting piece of work and so grateful to have it posted at OMS. I'm sure barath would support me saying also that the ultimate answer to "Where should I volunteer?" is to be found by asking the Obama campaign. They have the demographic data and know the game on the ground better than any presidential campaign ever.
Let's go change the world!!
- promoted by jlarson)
Volunteering is going to make or break this election. And like it or not, some states are more important than others for the next 60 days.
I've been asked many times "where should I volunteer to make the biggest difference?" To answer that question, I've made an easy-to-use Google map using data from 538.
Just click where you live on the map below and it'll tell you where you should volunteer to maximize your ability to help elect Obama. (It'll open a google map in a separate window because I can't embed maps here.) Below the fold I'll tell you why the map is the way it is.
After last week's dismal convention coverage, as rabid media expectations of a showdown on the convention floor were left unfulfilled, Frank Rich isn't sure the downfall of today's media should be mourned.
Journalists, Rich writes, have done an especially terrible job interpreting this election season:
Indeed, the disconnect between the reality of this campaign and how it is perceived and presented by the mainstream media is now a major part of the year’s story. [...]
The latest good luck for the Democrats is that the McCain campaign was just as bamboozled as the press by the false Hillary narrative. [...]
The main reason McCain knuckled under to the religious right by picking Palin is that he actually believes there’s a large army of embittered Hillary loyalists who will vote for a hard-line conservative simply because she’s a woman. That’s what happens when you listen to the TV news echo chamber. Not only is the whole premise ludicrous, but it is every bit as sexist as the crude joke McCain notoriously told about Janet Reno, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.
Given the press’s track record so far, there’s no reason to believe that the bogus scenarios will stop now.
In a world where journalists report about narrative spin without context, they no longer seem to be surprised when their predictions never come true, is it any wonder that Americans are tuning out the pundits and the tube commentators? Thank heavens for CSPAN.
"Will all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he's been a governor for three years," Rove told Bob Schieffer. "He's been able but undistinguished. I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done."
Rove even dragged Richmond into his sights. "[Kaine] was mayor of the 105th largest city in America," Rove said. "And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it's smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa, or Gilbert, Arizona; North Las Vegas, or Henderson, Nevada. It's not a big town."
Richmond is, oh, about thirty times larger than the city of Wasila, Alaska [population 6,715], where Palin served until a year and a half ago.
What's deeply odd about McCain's choice is that in his apparent desperation to play Democratic identity politics, he didn't need to do this. The Republican party is not so devoid of people of the opposite gender to require choosing a total unknown. There are dozens, perhaps thousands, of more qualified Republican women that he could have chosen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Christine Todd Whitman, Elizabeth Dole, and Olympia Snowe all come to mind.
While the Obama campaign chose caution last week by choosing Biden, the McCain campaign threw everything to the wind. The only obvious comparisons are to George Bush's disastrous attempt to tap youth with Dan Quayle and Bush Jr.'s attempt to put Harriet Myers (with no record) on the Supreme Court.
Steve Benen has provided the most incredulous coverage this morning:
McCain barely knows Palin, hasn't worked with her in any capacity, and hadn't even asked her to serve as a campaign surrogate at any point in the process. For all the talk about McCain valuing personal relationships above all else, McCain has practically picked a stranger, to himself and the rest of the nation.
He's infuriated the rest of the VP short list. And when asked a month ago about vice-presidential speculation, she admitted not having a clear sense of what the position is for.
I've been wondering how to respond to this choice. I don't agree with it. I'm not excited about it.
NPR's Morning Edition spent the five minutes contrasting how little experience Obama has in comparison and exploring Biden's reputation for pompous rambling. About the only positive anyone managed to say is that he rides the train home from work --- which is supposed to be a sign of his blue collar credentials.
But this morning I've been reading over posts from bloggers I respect and watching a handful of Biden campaign videos. I don't like him personally. He's not likeable. But it's an effective clip:
Biden is, arguably, the most effective voice Democrats have on foreign policy. And here's why: Joe Biden is an incredibly arrogant jerk. And that's exactly what Democrats need. [...]
In the 2008 election, he was the only Democrat who really figured out how to talk about Republicans and foreign policy. All the other candidates on the stage started from the presumption that Republicans were strong on national security, and voters needed to be convinced of their failures and then led to a place of support for a Democratic alternative. Biden dispensed with all that. He started from the position that Republicans had been catastrophic failures on foreign policy, and their ongoing claims to competence and leadership should be laughed at, and even mocked. [...]
This is probably right. More so than Kaine or Sebelius, Biden is the choice to aggressively challenge McCain on foreign policy. Would Clark have done the same without the poor contrast of a longer Senate record and more of a sense of change? Probably. But he wouldn't have the tenacity of Biden.
In choosing Joe Biden as his running mate, Barack Obama is gambling that Biden's many strengths will compensate for his own weaknesses as a candidate, rather than serve as a backdrop against which those weaknesses will appear in sharp relief. [...]
Rather than whine about how mean Republicans are when they hit Dems on national security, as so many Dems do, Biden has a real talent for responding with an appropriate mixture of mockery and contempt.
Well. It seems a short-sighted choice to me, one focused on winning the election and less on the future of the party, and I'm not happy with it, but in a close race, maybe that's what we need.
We're all waiting this week for Obama to announce his vice-presidential choice.
Privately, most Obama supporters I know have gone from excitement to some resignation about the upcoming announcement. An uninspired set of Washington insiders seem to have the inside track. The New York Times believes the campaign will make a safe choice: Bayh, Biden, or Kaine.
It's worth pointing out that nearly all of the bloggers and supporters I know of, who have been around since the beginning, who have supported Obama through thick and thin, would prefer Sebelius. A rather astonishing near consensus, for a moderate red-state governor from a small state.
Now, there are discussions I'm obviously not privy to. Perhaps her name did not survive the final vetting stages because of something in her record. Or perhaps senior campaign advisers feel that unlike others have spent years on the national stage, Sebelius is an unknown quantity to national media pundits and so would be a distraction.
Also possible is that her name was floated merely as a way to help a friend and political ally find her way onto the national stage.
On the other hand, over the last few years, I've learned a little how journalism works. Bayh, Biden, and Kaine all have large, leaky, DC-Beltway staffs, that drink at all the same bars DC pundits do. That's the center of the political pundit universe. And it's those kinds of connections to Capitol Hill staffers that journalists use to guess how far along the process is. Questions like: Is your boss still talking to Chicago? And staffers love to brag...
From the beginning, Sebelius' staff has been quiet, suppressing rumors about undergoing vetting, and Kaine's has been leakier than a watering can --- allowing pundits to follow the process at a breathless, day-to-day pace.
So who knows?
If I had to guess, I've never gotten the sense that the campaign has been looking to the vice-president for foreign policy experience and balance --- that's what Secretaries of Defense are for. And National Security Advisers. And Obama will obviously have no shortage of generals.
And the same Obama --- who as a candidate for Senate in 2004, was quoted as thinking that Kerry "lacked oomph" as a speaker --- would choose Bayh.
That leaves Kaine the most plausible of the three, but not half the advocate that Sebelius would be.
Yesterday's Republicans for Obama conference call hosted by Jim Leach was notable for the image of nonpartisan appeal it projected -- and not simply because the people on it were Republicans. The rhetoric employed by the Republicans endorsing Obama reveals part of the Obama campaign's fall strategy -- to position Obama as the traditional, common-sense candidate and McCain as the dangerous radical.
Such imagery runs counter to the framing of McCain as a comfortable, reliable presence and Obama as a dangerous, unfamiliar figure. And it seems discordant with Obama's own positioning as an outsider to Washington who will bring change. Looked at more closely, however, and this branding of Obama as being more traditional than McCain is central to the theme of Change You Can Believe In. If pursued successfully, the rhetoric voiced yesterday will make it very difficult for John McCain to win the presidency this November.
More about the conference call and how it reveals a major aspect of the fall campaign strategy after the jump.
It's worth keeping in mind that South Ossetia is a tiny region of a small country in the politically fragmented Caucasus. Roughly the size of Rhode Island --- and well less than half the size of Kosovo --- South Ossetia has an estimated population of a mere 70,000.
It is a minor pawn caught in a border dispute with Russia, a country of over 140 million. Georgia itself has a population of little more than 4 million. So it's worth remembering just how disproportionate Russia's actions have been.
Back in February, I warned about the hyperbole coming from the Clinton campaign about Kosovo's declaration of independence. I argued it would set "a new precedent for a potentially explosive series of other pro-Russian areas of the Caucusus to declare independence, such as Transdniestr from Moldova, or South-Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia." And I applauded the more cautious and even-handed Obama campaign statement.
Interestingly, the events in Georgia are offering a new chance to contrast foreign policy approaches:
Obama’s statement put him in line with the White House, the European Union, NATO and a series of European powers, while McCain’s initial statement[...] put him more closely in line with the moral clarity and American exceptionalism projected by President Bush’s first term.
A McCain adviser suggested that Obama’s statement constituted appeasement, while Obama’s camp suggested that McCain was being needlessly belligerent and dangerously quick to judge a complicated situation.
“I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict,” Obama said in a written statement. “Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint and to avoid an escalation to full-scale war. Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected.”
Obama added briefly that the international community should get involved. More than an hour later, as more details of Russia’s incursion into Georgia emerged, he cited Russia more directly: “What is clear is that Russia has invaded Georgia’s sovereign — has encroached on Georgia’s sovereignty,” he told reporters in Sacramento.
McCain’s statement was longer, more detailed and more confrontational.
"[T]he news reports indicate that Russian military forces crossed an internationally recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia. Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory.
“The government of Georgia has called for a ceasefire and for a resumption of direct talks on South Ossetia with international mediators. The U.S. should immediately work with the EU and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this perilous course that it has chosen.”
