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- The New York Times reports on a "Republicans for Obama" group being led by former Iowa Rep. Jim Leach, former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee and Bush fundraiser Rita Hauser (among others) that will be hosted at Barack Obama's campaign web site. It's hard to say how effective such an effort will be, but it has the potential, in the words of Kevin Drum, to have a realigning effect: "This sure feels an awful lot like 1980 in reverse, doesn't it? How longwill it be before the new conservative motto becomes "I didn't leavethe Republican Party, the party left me"? The big question left iswhether Obama can use this discontent to not only get elected, but tocreate as many converts to liberal principles as Reagan did toconservative ones."
- The DCCC is investing $175,000 in a radio ad campaign to counter Freedom's Watch in ten competitive House districts across the country.
- I'm a bit confused about how, exactly, a potential John McCain one-term pledge will actually win him more votes. I know this is supposed to make the Beltway chattering classes swoon over the sheer "maverick-ness" of it, but I think Isaac Chotiner has the right take: "[Ramesh] Ponnuru also thinks that the pledge would help McCain's maverick, above-politics image, and I would agree...if McCain were fifty years old. But he is in his seventies. Making this pledge will just lead to a whole slew of stories about his age, which may cause people to think twice about giving him even a single term."
- Marc Ambinder reports that the Obama campaign is considering a novel idea for the 80,000 people waiting in line to hear the candidate's acceptance speech outside of Invesco Field: arm them with cell phones to call persuadable voters. Not only is this an inventive plan from a campaign that has already set the bar high for field work, but those queued up would automatically be willing volunteers, having sold out the event in less than a day. Also: James Dobson prays for rain during Obama's acceptance speech.
- The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama campaign has broadcast 9,785 ads in Florida to McCain's zero. That's pretty amazing. I know Florida is a swing state and my hunch is that it will go to McCain in November, but allowing Obama to turn it around in the Sunshine State unopposed could change things fast.
- Gregory Djerejian has an excellent post at the Belgravia Dispatch on how McCain's response to the situation in Georgia proves -- as if more proof were needed -- that a McCain foreign policy would actually be worse than that of the Bush Administration. I've always considered this to be McCain's Achilles' Heel -- his preference for Bush on overdrive in matters of foreign policy -- and it's remarkable that Democrats, particularly Obama, are not driving this point home with the public, day in, day out. See also Noah Millman on the logic of neocon foreign policy thinking.
- This Washington Post story on Obama's "age problem" seems a bit misguided. After comparing him to Gore and Kerry's performance among the 65+ crowd, it then breaks the ages down by race and gee, what do you know? Older whites are less likely to vote for the young black man than younger whites! So shouldn't this just be another footnote to the lingering racial preferences of older voters, rather than some supposedly groundbreaking analysis on Obama's "age problem," per se?
- And Finally, Mike Huckabee tapes a pilot for Fox News as a political commentator. Frankly, I think Huckabee would actually be a good fit for a network that tries so hard to demonstrate its serious news bona fides when it's so clearly a mouthpiece for conservative populism. I've long been in favor of partisan news sources as long as they disclose their preferences and adhere to the journalistic norms of honesty and factuality. Putting a genuine conservative populist on the network would be a step in the right direction.
--Mori Dinauer
