Palin's Big Bang

The Sarah Palin Effect? A convention bounce for McCain of as much as 13 points. Barack's bounce averaged a little over 4 points.

USA Today/Gallup - McCain up 10%
Gallup Tracking - McCain up 5%
Rasmussen - McCain up 1%
ABC News/Wash Post 2%

Jake Tapper reports on his ABC News Blog that:

There are Obama supporters who feel Clinton needs to make a strong case against Palin. And they are intrigued -- and troubled -- by the fact that she won't.

While the New York Times reports:

The names at the top of the ballot on Nov. 4 will be McCain and Obama, but the juicier battle this fall for an important group of swing voters — white working women with children — may be fought between the other two stars of the Republican and Democratic conventions, Sarah Palin and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hillary can't just root for Barack to lose anymore so that she can run in four years. Now she has Vice President Sarah Palin to worry about. It ain't easy being Hillary!!!

She has no intention of turning over her “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling,” as she called her supporters, to Ms. Palin, a social conservative whose policy positions are poison in Hillaryland. What is more, Mrs. Clinton wants to be the one to make history as the first woman to win at the top of a presidential ticket, be it in 2012 or 2016.

Consider, also, how Obama looks if he has to send Hillary out to protect him from Sarah!

Clinton advisers say that Mrs. Clinton wants to do everything she can to elect Mr. Obama, so that she cannot be blamed if he loses — yet she also does not want to be too closely associated with him if he does lose, nor to tarnish her own image by taking on a rookie national politician like Ms. Palin and possibly coming up short.

Meet the Obamas

I missed it, but Jake Tapper stayed up late enough to see James Carville on CNN, who nailed what was wrong with the convention on night one. It was Meet the Obamas, without having any overriding message. Carville wanted to hear about things that make Americans unhappy. Like George Bush.

"I mean we are a country that's borderline recession, 85% 80% wrong track country, people, health care, energy, I haven't heard anything about gas prices, I mean maybe we are going to look better Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday but right now like I say we are playing hide the message pretty good."

This was CNN, with Anderson Cooper hosting.

"David Gergen said this a short time ago, that in the first two hours what is the message?" said Cooper.

Carville was frustrated.

"And you know what? David didn't get to where he was in life because he's stupid. He was exactly right. I look at this and I am about to jump out of my chair...There's no message coming out of here, there is no sense that the party has a sense of urgency, and we've only got four nights this is 25% of the whole thing."

One night of empty introductions is over. Tonight, Hillary takes center stage.

Economy Ad

A well-done new ad for Barack. Not responding to McCain's celebrity theme directly, but sidestepping it and looking serious on the economy. Smart.



ABC's Jake Tapper nitpicks the ad:

There's some pretty iffy stuff in there -- Obama has voted to send tens of
billions to Iraq, too, though quite obviously he has also voted against funding
the war as well. And oil moneys aside, that's a pretty remarkable suggestion,
that the Iraqis are living high on the hog and screwing the very US taxpayers
who are helping them.

He's right, of course. But the ad still works.

Oil Lies

In a new TV commercial, Barack attacks McCain for being in the bag of big oil for having a) accepted money from the oil companies, and, implying a quid pro quo, b) supported tax cuts for big oil. If you had to guess, would you think Barack's ad is a celebration of the new kinda politics, or the old?

"Every time you fill your tank, the oil companies fill their pockets," the narrator says as the screen reads: "$143 Billion in Profits Over the Last Year.

It's true, the profits of oil companies are hitting record setting levels - in total dollars. On a percentage basis, though, their profits are smaller than those of many other industries.

As the ad cuts to a photo of McCain, the narrator says: "Now Big Oil’s filling John McCain’s campaign with $2 million in contributions," citing the Center for Responsive Politics. "Because instead of taxing their windfall profits to help drivers, McCain wants to give them another $4 billion in tax breaks."

This is blatantly deceptive. McCain hasn't proposed any tax breaks for the oil companies.

This claim, cited on screen as the handiwork of the liberal Center for American Progress, is an apparent reference to McCain's proposal to cut corporate taxes -- for all companies, not just oil companies -- from 35 percent to 25 percent.

What ever happened to Barack as the guy who was going to change the way Washington does business? If he won't represent change in the campaign, why would we expect him to do it once he's in office?

As the camera pulls back from the photo of McCain to reveal him standing with President Bush, the narrator says, "After one president in the pocket of big oil, we can’t afford another. Barack Obama: A windfall profits tax on big oil to give families a thousand dollar rebate. A president who’ll stand up for you."

Has McCain done anything wrong here? Only if you want to indict him for accepting the donations from the very companies which would be effected by his policy proposals, but that is, unfortunately, how our system works. Barack, according to McCain's campaign, has also accepted money from big oil, and he's also making policy proposals that would affect them.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds writes to say, "Barack Obama's latest negative attack ad shows his celebrity is matched only by his hypocrisy, after all it was Senator Obama, not John McCain, who voted for the Bush-Cheney energy bill that was a sweetheart deal for oil companies. Also not mentioned is the $400,000 from big oil contributors that Barack Obama has already pocketed in this election."

Barack's Oil Desperation

Is Barack soft? Here's his reason why drilling for oil - a national security imperative to people who are paying attention to reality - is unnecessary.

"There are things that you can do individually though to save energy," Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said. "Making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much."

Jake Tapper at ABC, and others, provide calculations to demonstrate why Barack's assertion is incorrect, but the real point is that it's not an either/or situation. Everyone should take care of their cars to maximize efficiency, but we must face up to urgent need to get off of foreign oil, and all reasonable measures should be pursued to achieve that end.

Media Backfire

Barack's speech certainly made him center stage yesterday - and there's no question that shots of him meeting comfortably with world leaders may allay the fears somewhat of the majority of Americans who question his readiness for the presidency - but media attempts to compensate for its excitement over Barack with balanced reporting may ruin the opportunity for this week's tour to provide the jump start the Obama campaign so sorely needs.

Last night's World News, for example, spent the first 7 minutes on Barack. In the setup, Charlie Gibson mentioned that many see Barack's tour and speech as presumptuous. Then Jake Tapper started his report by mentioning that you don't usually see presidential candidates taking their campaigns to Germany. McCain also received decent coverage.

This morning, Barack momentous moment went without mention during the start of Good Morning America. They focused the news heavy portion of the program on stories such as the airliner that popped a hole yesterday, the possible tornadoes in New Hampshire, and a follow-up on the woman who didn't seem concerned when her young daughter was missing for a month.

While the Today Show considered Barack to be news, it also provided good coverage of McCain's compensatory trips to American towns with European names. Ultimately, the scheduled appearance of Miley Cirus in Rockefeller Plaza generated more heat than Barack.

How eager is Barack for something to change the movement in this campaign? Consider the latest polls from four states, taken partially during this week's trip, that confirm the tightening race seen in national polls.

July 24, 2008 - McCain Closes In On Obama In Four Battleground States, Quinnipiac University/Wall Street Journal/ Washingtonpost.Com Poll Finds

What little air Barack had in his sales 6 weeks after disposing of Hillary is almost gone. It's up to the Berlin speech to provide some lift, and the signs don't seem to be there that any major winds have been generated. Except in New Hampshire.