WOW! Someone with some common sense! “Scaring people is not leadership.” RIght on, Lindsay! Right on!

I just wish there were MORE MEAT like this, by an intelligent and thoughtful guest, than the filler that passes for news but is NOT news. I’m also bored stiff by the repetitiveness of TV cable news. I try to watch some so I know what they’re emphasizing but I always end up turning to NPR or BBC World News. Today, CNNMSNBCFNN have got the tapes of the plane that landed in the Hudson, and they’ll be playing that every hour, all day and all evening long. It’s perfect fare, because it’s the kind of news that does ALL work for them. It requires no reporters, no investigation, and very little analysis; the networks just toss it up on the screen and let the watchers watch.

But you’re probably like me, and you want MORE actual news, so here’s some of what I’ve found today:

*** Sad news: “U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had surgery today for pancreatic cancer.” (Via CNN’s breaking news e-mail)

*** “Deluge Is Holding Up Benefits to Unemployed
Decline in Funding Forces Staff Cuts as Claims Swell:

Thousands of people in the Washington area and hundreds of thousands more across the country are waiting longer than they should for unemployment benefits at a time when they need the money the most because rising joblessness is overwhelming claims offices, records show.

The problem is compounded by a simultaneous decrease in federal funding, which has reduced staffing at some local government offices. The result is that the District and many states, including Maryland and Virginia, are failing to meet federal guidelines that require timely processing of unemployment claims. …

It’s likely to get worse. …

*** Eric Shinseki, the brave general who told the truth to Donald Rumsfeld and ended up with his career ruined, is ON THE JOB as Secretary of the Veterans Administration.

According to the WSJ, he’s beginning with a careful analysis which, from all the stories we’ve heard about chaos and inefficiency at the VA, sounds like a plan: He is “launching a top-down review of his embattled department, saying major change is needed soon to ensure the “highest levels of integrity, transparency and performance.” More snippets:

“Our veterans deserve and demand a Department of Veterans Affairs that remains relevant over time, that is responsive to their individual and changing needs, and that cares enough about them to undertake this challenging transformation. We care,” Mr. Shinseki said in testimony prepared for a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday.

… Thousands of veterans currently endure six-month waits for disability benefits, and the VA is scrambling to upgrade government technology systems before new legislation providing for millions of dollars in new GI benefits takes effect in August.

In recent weeks, the Government Accountability Office found that the VA was still lowballing budget estimates to Congress at the expense of tens of thousands of patients needing long-term health care. The VA also acknowledged at least nine cases of giving incorrect doses of drugs — mostly blood-thinning heparin — due to widespread computer glitches that it didn’t disclose to patients. …

*** Ken Rudin, the political blogger for NPR, has a fascinating report on the race to succeed Florida’s retiring senator, Mel Martinez, and also on the future of Minnesota’s Norm Coleman:

FLORIDA:

[...]

Jeb Bush had frozen the GOP field while he was considering the race. Now it’s Charlie Crist’s turn. The popular governor said he would sit down with his new wife and discuss it after the legislative session, which ends in May. Crist, like Bush, could probably have the nomination if he wants it. He is barred from seeking a third term in 2010. Way back in 1998, Crist was the GOP Senate nominee against Democratic incumbent Bob Graham and got clobbered by nearly a million votes. But that was a long time ago.

[...]

The latest news has former Sen. Bob Smith (R) thinking about running. That’s former Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire. Smith, who moved to the Sunshine State to sell real estate since losing his seat to Sununu in the 2002 primary, has sent out an email trying to gauge his support.

MINNESOTA:

[...]

After a hand recount of 2.9 million voters, Al Franken, the Democratic challenger, has a lead of 225 votes. For the longest time, the assumption (here at least) was that it’s just a matter of time before Franken is sworn in. But not so fast. On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the state Supreme Court agreed to review 4,797 previously rejected absentee ballots. This was in response to a motion made by Coleman, who actually wanted the judges to review about 11,000 votes; Franken wanted the scope to be limited to 771 rejected

So the review of nearly 5,000 ballots has begun. Just because they are being looked at does not necessarily mean Coleman will prevail. There’s no telling how many of the ballots will be reinstated, and it’s quite possible that Franken could get a healthy portion of them. And, if after this process Coleman moves into the lead, we know that Franken will come up with his own list of ballots he wants reviewed.

We may not know who won the election until March. At the earliest.

[...]

So: What else is going on in the big bad world?

There’s NO doubt about that ballot. Honest to god.

It’s rude to waste people’s time examining a ballot like that. The voter’s intent is utterly clear.

The info about Mr. Gore is interesting, eh?

And what else is going on in the world?

Okay! But are ya sure? ‘Cause I mean, how do you know? Do you do a count, or what kind of a routine do you have here?

From the big paper, that Star-Tribune paper in Minneapolis:

Coleman camp to deploy lawyers, observers for recount

Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign is concerned that an effort by Al Franken’s campaign to have 461 rejected absentee ballots counted might be an indication of further “shenanigans,” a Coleman lawyer said today.

The Coleman campaign has received dozens of calls from supporters reporting other “disturbing” incidents, campaign attorney Fritz Knaak said at a news conference. …

Pretty soon, this could get kinda ugly here, ya know. Like this, ya might’ve heard about this case here in, what was it, 1996?

And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well. I just don’t understand it.

Nope, I just don’t understand it.

You know, this is my idea of the sweet innocence of Minnesotans:

is it any wonder that the film Fargo ranks #114 in the top 250 movies of all time at IMDb.com?

It’s not right that the Democratic election officials in Minnesota are as stupid and bungling as Jerry Lundegaard, the character portrayed so well by William H. Macy.

Norm Coleman is NO prize. But, honest to god, Al Franken as a U.S. Senator? Good lord almighty. Let’s hope that the judges in Minnesota put a stop to the nonsense going on there.

OPEN THREAD!

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Hoping to shore up support in his suddenly undependable backyard, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama flew here Monday to talk about how he’d handle economic crises as president.

Recent polls have shown that Wisconsin — once pretty solidly in Obama’s column — is now a statistical dead heat between Obama and Republican John McCain.

“You all know that you hold this election in your hands,” Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat who said he worked on ethics legislation with Obama, told a crowd of about 6,000 cheering Obama fans in the arena next to Lambeau Field. “We just barely won this state for Al Gore in 2000 and we just barely won this state for John Kerry in 2004.”

While it’s true that Obama has had an uptick in national polls over the last week, he is also on the defensive in more blue states. John McCain is locking down states like Ohio and Florida, and is now expanding the map into Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. Obama, it appears, has a small advantage in New Mexico and Colorado.

National Public Radio reports that the battleground states are becoming fewer:

The number of battleground states has shrunk — from 19 to 14 — as Alaska, Georgia, North Dakota and Montana returned to their Republican roots.

In August, Obama led in the 14 states by 3 points. Now McCain leads in those states by 2, and the underlying political landscape has shifted a bit as well.

If national polls swing back to McCain, and there’s no reason to think they won’t, then we should expect McCain to take a small lead in Minnesota, Wisconsin and, perhaps, Pennsylvania.

Kerry beat Bush in Wisconsin by a razor-thin .38% or 11,384 votes of nearly 3 million cast, while Ralph Nader received just over 16,000 votes. The Nader campaign recently announced that Nader will be on the ballot in Wisconsin this year, having collected 3,500 signatures.

Although not as close as Wisconsin, two other swing states are worth watching. In 2004, Kerry beat Bush by 98,319 votes in Minnesota of almost 3 million cast, and in Pennsylvania by 144,248 votes out of 6 million cast, a 2.5% margin.

What is causing Obama such problems in swing states? NPR says it’s The Clinton Factor:

something else is holding Obama back: He still hasn’t won over enough of Hillary Clinton’s voters.

“One thing that Obama tried to do in his convention was unite the Democratic vote behind him, and it still hasn’t completely happened,” Bolger said. “Our survey found that of the voters who said they voted for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, 20 percent of them are still voting for John McCain.”

One Clinton voter is Louis Brandenburg, a heavy-equipment operator from Avella, Pa. He said he has made up his mind for November.

“Yeah, I guess so: Mr. Obama, I guess. I have no choice,” he said.

Even with little enthusiasm, Brandenburg — a Democrat — is sticking with his party. But plenty of his friends in southwestern Pennsylvania are very enthusiastic about Sarah Palin.

“There’s a lot of them who are going to vote for her and McCain because of the hunting issue,” he said. “I can’t understand what happened to our party; it just seems like the Republican Party is always the ones who back hunters and sportsmen, and all we get from the other one is flack about hunting and guns.”

————————————————————
Photographs of empty seats at the Obama rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin:

According to Jake Tapper of ABC News, “Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin packed the house last week in Green Bay, Wis., at the Resch Center.”

Is Axelrod right? Could it be McCain has energized his base but that Obama remains ahead?

Using Electoral-Vote.com’s numbers, I created a list of red states and compared Obama’s numbers to Kerry’s percentages in 2004. All but three of the state polls are post-Palin.

This is not a comprehensive list of all red states. However, I believe it’s a fair representation of reliable Republican states. Our purpose is to see if there’s been an uptick for McCain over Obama relative to the previous presidential election.

All battleground states are out, regardless of who won in 2004. Additionally, I did not include red states which Obama is now actively fighting for, like Virginia, or historically red states like New Hampshire, which Kerry won. In most states, there’s no difference in the relative position between Kerry’s final result and Obama’s current standing; in other states Obama is actually doing better than Kerry.

Let’s take a look at Axelrod’s assertion that red states are becoming redder:

As you can see, Obama is faring no worse than John Kerry did. In fact, the current state of the race is remarkably similar to the final results in 2004. It follows, then, that state polls reflect similar numbers as 2004. Obama’s weak numbers, as I believe Axelrod is implying, are not coming from intolerant red state voters. According to Rasmussen, McCain is leading Obama by approximately 2%, and in 2004 Bush beat Kerry by 2.4%. Obama is performing in Republican states about as well as any Democrat could be expected.

Contrary to Axelrod’s statement, Obama’s decline in national polling is not due to inordinately low numbers in deep-red states. Indeed, the opposite is true: Obama is under-performing in reliably Democratic states. As Truthteller demonstrates with the spreadsheet below, Obama is under-performing in blue states such as New York (population 20 million) and New Jersey (population 9 million). These high population Democratic states will skew national numbers far more than low population red states like North Dakota (population 640,000), while Republican Texas (population 24 million), where Obama is in nearly the same spot as Kerry, is easily offset by the densely populated California and Illinois, both states where Obama is doing very well. Additionally, Obama is trending down in the swing state of Ohio:

	New York	New Jersey	Minnesota	Pennsylvania	Ohio
McCain-Palin	41	45	45	47	48
Obama-Biden	46	48	45	47	45

Because of these weak blue- and swing-state numbers, Obama now has to defend more real estate than McCain. Truthteller writes:

So now Obama must invest precious and finite resources in states such as New Jersey and New York. And instead of campaigning in Arkansas, Nevada, Florida or Louisiana, he will hold events in Minnesota, a state that should be solidly Democratic in the current political climate. He may even have to campaign in New York now that McCain is within five points of the underperforming Obama.

And Hill Buzz sees a potential map-changer in McCain:

If McCain was only leading in Utah by 5 points, we’d say this election was over, and that McCain would lose GOP strongholds.

Instead, the opposite seems to be true. SoetorObama leads in NY by only 5 points, in NJ by 3 points, and in MI and PA by just 2 points.

To us, it looks like McCain could be the one changing the electoral map this year, with traditionally blue states having a better chance of turning red instead of the other way around.

Shortly after Obama’s grandiose trip to Europe, I wrote: “I think Obama would have been wise to go somewhere he lost big, like West Virginia, leaving behind his entourage and asking working people about their concerns in the streets and cafes of small town America.” There’s nothing earth-shattering in my suggestion, but I think that’s exactly what’s so troubling about the Obama campaign. It’s not the economy, it’s the arrogance. I think Obama’s odd trip to Europe — and the arrogance of selecting Biden over Hillary — is at the heart of many of Obama’s troubles today. The American people will vote for Ivy League candidates, but only those who come to their towns to listen and not to lecture.

Obama’s arrogance is now becoming a matter of concern for Democratic strategists. The statement below by an unnamed source in the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph should send fear into the hearts of Obama’s supporters:

A senior Democratic strategist, who has played a prominent role in two presidential campaigns, told The Sunday Telegraph: “These guys are on the verge of blowing the greatest gimme in the history of American politics. They’re the most arrogant bunch Ive ever seen. They won’t accept that they are losing and they won’t listen.”

With this mentality, it’s no wonder Axelrod is blaming Obama’s woes on red states. Ani writes:

Of course there is a bunker mentality. Obama’s campaign manager, David Axelrod, must protect his carefully sculpted media creation at all costs. Their whole strategy has been to overwhelm their way into the presidency with huge rallies and concerts, presidential emblems, soaring rhetoric and platitudes.

Barack Obama is not the “map changer” CNN and all the discredited Democratic blogs claimed he would be; he is a supercilious underachiever who promises to color the entire nation red, not blue. He is tied with McCain in Minnesota and Pennsylvania; he is trailing McCain in Ohio AND MICHIGAN; he is CLINGING to a lead in New Jersey; and women in New York state are abandoning the Democratic ticket, thereby catapulting McCain-Palin within striking distance of Obama-Biden in a state Gore and Kerry won by 25 and 17 points respectively: portentous numbers, these, but the Democratic Party refused to listen when we warned them about this during the primary season. Democrats, I guess, want to lose. Indeed, they seem to enjoy it.

So now Obama must invest precious and finite resources in states such as New Jersey and New York. And instead of campaigning in Arkansas, Nevada, Florida or Louisiana, he will hold events in Minnesota, a state that should be solidly Democratic in the current political climate. He may even have to campaign in New York now that McCain is within five points of the underperforming Obama. A Democratic strategist quoted in the New York Post article I cite above summarizes this state of affairs succinctly. I quote:

“If it winds up being tight in New York, that means McCain wins the election nationally,” said a prominent Democrat familiar with some of the polling data.

I hope Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Donna Brazile and all the venal bloggers and operatives who manufactured support for Obama online are satisfied. For once McCain wins, and he will win, it will be time for real Democrats who enjoy winning elections to reform OUR presently defunct Party apparatus from within and from without. We have worked too hard for this Party to allow them to squander opportunity after opportunity in order to satisfy the warped desires of a small band of elitist mediocrities who again and again take those of us who comprise the Democratic base for granted.

A new Survey USA poll in Minnesota shows Senator Obama leading Senator McCain by two points, 47% to 45%. Since that’s within the margin of error, the race in the Gopher state is effectively a dead heat.

On the plus side for Obama, Minnesota appears one place where Obama does not face a PUMA backlash. PUMA is a wide coalition of anti-Obama forces that coalesced out of the supporters of Senator Clinton. Obama has a comfortable nine point edge among women in Minnesota.

According to a KSTP exclusive new SurveyUSA poll, Barack Obama leads John McCain by two points, 47 to 45 percent in Minnesota.

That’s well within the three-point-eight percent margin of error. Four percent prefer another candidate. Only four percent are undecided.

The poll not only shows a close race, but also points again to Minnesota voters becoming increasingly polarized.

In the poll of 682 “likely voters,” McCain has the support of 89 percent of republicans. Obama garners support from 86 percent of democrats. McCain has a narrow two-point lead among independents.

McCain does have a bit of a gender-gap to contend with. He leads by three points among men, but Obama leads by nine points among women.

No matter how you analyze the numbers, they point to a close race in Minnesota just over 70 days until Election Day.

From my blog, By The Fault.