--> Today, voting begins. You seem shocked. I know that many of you are merely waiting until the EDC clock strikes 0, but some of you (especially our loyal readership in Virginia, Kentucky, and Georgia) can start early voting today. Experts expect record amounts of early-voting this year, as much as 1/3 of the electorate, which is great because long-lines in densely popualted urban areas are always thorns in the side of the Democratic GOTV effort.
--> In earth-shattering, election-strategy news today, the Obama Campaign announced that it was pulling out of North Dakota. That's right, Obama's 11 field offices will be shut down, and workers redeployed to Minnesota and Wisconsin. I personally think it is fool-hardy to forfeit the 3 electoral votes of the home-state of the winning contestants of both Cycle 5 and Cycle 7 of America's Next Top Model, but more and more the electoral map is looking like it did in 2004. Obama has expanded the map to a certain degree, and will probably come closer in places like Georgia and North Dakota than any Democrat has in awhile. However, the only remaining Red States that Obama is targetting are Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, and Indiana. Still not a bad list.
--> Continuing our theme of surprising news items, today John McCain's chief strategist Steve Schmidt attacked the New York Times for being biased. I'm just gonna pass on this. I think from now on, whenever a Republican operative attacks a credible news organization for printing facts (which tend to hurt their side of the debate), I'm just going to post this:
--> In more irrelevant, why-on-earth-is-the-media-focusing-on-this news, it turns out that John McCain owns 13 cars and Barack Obama owns one (a hybrid at that). To make matters worse, two of McCain's cars are foreign-made. To play devil's advocate here, more Americans own foreign-made cars than American-made. So maybe this is a sign that John McCain understands average Americans better than Barack Obama.
(and yes, this is the only picture I could find of 13 cars - sue me)You know, I have an idea. Let's just evaluate these candidates on their positions in determining how much they care about ordinary Americans. Barack Obama wants to cut the taxes of 97% of Americans, ensure that everyone has access to healthcare, and recruit an army of teachers so that every American child can go to a public school and get a quality education. John McCain wants to cut taxes for the wealthy and the huge corporations, deregulate healthcare just like the economy has been deregulated, and has no education plan whatsoever. Hmm, I wonder who actually cares about ordinary Americans...
--> Andrew Sullivan notes that it's been 24 days since Sarah Palin became the potential next Vice-President of the United States, and she still hasn't give any sort of press conference or had plans to hold one. This is unprecedented in modern American politics, and I'd be surprised if it wasn't a matter of time before lots of people start wondering, "What are they hiding?"
Maybe she's getting help from this lady:
--> The focus of this coming week will be preparing for the debates, the first of which is on Friday. In the most cliched anecdotes this article could provide, Obama will prepare by playing basketball, and McCain will prepare by taking a nap (so that's what he was doing during the State of the Union).
However, the article does point out something very interesting. Obama's advisors are training him on how to provoke McCain. This is exactly what I would have suggested as well. Obama needs to go into that debate with a laundry list of vicious lies and smears that McCain's campaign has used against him. In one of these debates (not necessarily the first one), the moderators will almost certainly address the negativity surrounding this election, since the attacks have become an issue in themselves. Obama needs to take that opportunity to hammer McCain on all he's said about him, and then ask, "Have you no shame?" If a direct questioning of Mr. Former-POW's political honor doesn't get McCain (known for a hot temper) to lose his cool, nothing will. If McCain has any sort of minor meltdown in any of the three debates, this election is over, and he'll do everything he can to prevent one. It would also be a completely justified question.
--> And finally, Maureen Dowd and I are clearly on the same wavelength. Two of my last three entries have mentioned my firm conviction that no one would be able to handle our current political situation better than Former President Josiah Bartlet, fictional creation of Aaron Sorkin (scribe and resident-genius of The West Wing). Thus, Maureen Dowd did what I of lowly-blogger stature could not - she dialed Sorkin's number, and asked him WWBD? (What Would Bartlet Do?). Sorkin responded, and the result is a must-read.
--> As a special bonus, your quote of the day:
On asked about her brilliant performance as Sarah Palin on SNL:
"I want to be done playing this lady Nov. 5, so if anybody can help me be done playing this lady Nov. 5, that would be good for me." - Tina Fey
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