Election 2008

Obama, McCain Tied Among Catholics

Political Wire reports that a Time poll shows Sen. Obama tied with Sen. McCain among Catholic voters. McCain’s 45% to Obama’s 44%. While a majority (59%) of Catholics are pro-life, a sizable portion of them are not single-issue voters.

Rasmussen Reports™: Obama up 20 in Massachusetts and 17 in Connecticut

Barack Obama extended his lead in Massachusetts to 20-points, according to a recent poll from Rasmussen Reports. Obama leads 53% to 33% for McCain. No Republican, except Ronald Reagan, has won Massachusetts since 1956. Obama is viewed favorably by 67% of Bay State voters and McCain has a 57% favorable rating.

What impact would picking Romney as VP have in MA?

Update: Obama leads McCain 52% to 35% in Connecticut. Didn’t the McCain camp recently list CT as a swing state. Joe Lieberman doesn’t seem to be having the desired impact.

Rasmussen Reports™:Obama leads McCain in Montana

A Rasmussen Reports poll shows Barack Obama holding a 5-point lead over rival John McCain in the solidly red state of Montana. Obama 48% to McCain 43%. Two months ago in April, these numbers were reversed. Obama leads among voters under 50 and McCain leads among voters older than 50. 89% of Montana Democrats support Obama, while McCain only gets 85% of Republicans.

This would be a major change if Obama can truly compete in Montana. One poll isn’t definitive and Montana is a stretch, but just making McCain have to think about Montana is probably worth some effort.

Breaking news: rich people get better loan rates

Today the Washington Post had an article about Senator Barack Obama’s home mortgage. I wasn’t going to post it here because it was some of the worst reporting I’ve seen this election and that is saying something. Essentially, the article talked about the discount the Obama’s got on a super jumbo mortgage of $1.32 million. The article went on to discuss the Countrywide Financial, Inc. loans involving Sen. Chris Dodd and Jim Johnson, former head of Obama’s VP search team. The problem with all that? Everything! The Obama’s mortgage had nothing to do with Countrywide. It didn’t involve a special CEO club that got preferred rates.There was nothing unusual about Obama’s deal at all.

Nate over at fivethirtyeight.com did a nice analysis of why this was such a bad article. He points out that a little journalism would have uncovered some pesky hidden facts such as:

• the Obama’s were a newly wealthy couple
• had excellent credit and no debt
• held extremely stable jobs, and Sen. Obama had just signed a $2.27 million book deal.
  
• were prominent public figures with reputations to maintain
• the bank regularly competed for successful families in order to build a long-term relationship.
• and lastly the preferred rate the Obama’s got was within the normal rates the bank offered at the time. Furthermore, it was consistent with standard practice in many banks to offer preferred rates to highly credit worthy people.

Yep, anyone who’s ever gotten a mortgage could have told the reporter this, but that wouldn’t have been a story at all. So much better to say, “Obama got a discount on his loan and look these other rich people got discounts on their loans too. Isn’t that horrible?”

Thank god the Washington Post was on the job. This should get them at least a Pulitzer nomination, because uncovering that rich people with no debt get better mortgage rates than everyone else was an important secret to uncover. I bet this article is used as case study in journalism schools all over the country.

McCain Orders Shake-Up of His Campaign

John McCain put Steve Schmidt in charge of day-to-day operations in his campaign today and gave up a plan to have the campaign run by 11 regional managers. Schmidt worked closely with Karl Rove on President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.

Rick Davis remains on as campaign manager, but his day-to-day responsibilities are severely curtailed with the installation of Schmidt. Schmidt and others had warned McCain about losing if he didn’t reconfigure his campaign operations.

McCain is planning to relaunch his campaign following the July 4 holiday. He’ll tour the country promoting a jobs program and head to battleground states like Colorado, Wisconsin, and Michigan to highlight economic problems.

This is a good move for the McCain campaign. They have been very ineffective lately and Schmidt seems to know what he’s doing. The Obama campaign will have to step up its game to deal with the Rove style campaign McCain is planning to execute. Guess that’s the end of the respectful campaign they’ve been waging.

Obama Seeks Bigger Role for Religious Groups

In his speech yesterday on faith, Senator Barack Obama outlined his plans for expanding a program to fund faith-based social service programs. President Bush established a similar program, but it was often considered primarily a political tool rather than a serious attempt to deliver services to needy communities. Bush also allowed religious-based discrimination within those groups receiving funding.

Senator Obama’s program is a departure from Bush’s, it will be aimed at secular programs that happen to be based within faith organizations. It will not allow discrimination in hiring or delivery of services within the programs.

This is part of Obama’s overall attempt to reach out to evangelicals and other faith groups. Some Obama supporters on the left, who prefer no real interaction between government and religion, aren’t happy with this direction. It’s hard to see how they are surprised by this move since Obama has consistently said that religion shouldn’t be banned from the public square. However, he has said that religion-based arguments for policy positions must be couched in terms accessible to all citizens.