Just got this message on my mobile phone:
Barack will announce his VP candidate choice through txt msg between now & the Conv. Tell everyone to text VP to 62262 to be the first to know! Please forward.
As for McCain’s timing? I’m going to guess on the back of Loch Nessie as she searches for some of her friends in the form of asphalt-grade oil under the continental shelf, say near Santa Barbara? It will all be quite fun really.
The story of the 2008 election is going to be the epic collapse of the Republican Party in traditional strongholds.
The Republican Party, which overtook Valley Democrats in voter registration totals eight years ago, is losing ground for the first time in at least a decade.
After peaking just ahead of the 2004 presidential election, Republican registration numbers are down in Fresno, Tulare, Kings, Madera, Mariposa and Merced counties.
The GOP’s decline is most obvious in Fresno County, where the losses have turned into an avalanche, even as the party gears up its efforts to keep the White House in GOP hands by electing Arizona Sen. John McCain as president.
The most recent voter registration numbers show the Democrats are closing the gap and are now fewer than 9,000 voters behind the Republicans.At the peak in 2004, GOP registrations were ahead by more than 23,500 voters.
This will obviously help in AD-30, where Fran Florez is facing Danny Gilmore to keep Nicole Parra’s seat in Democratic hands. But this is a nationwide and statewide shift that is generational in nature.
In Riverside County, Republicans have lost close to 34,000 voters since October 2004; in Orange County, an 18 percentage point Republican Party lead in 2004 is now at 14 percentage points.
Bob Mulholland, campaign adviser to the California Democratic Party, points out that Democrats picked up almost 75% of the more than 411,000 new voter registrations statewide between voter-registration reports filed Jan. 22 and May 19.
During that same time, close to 21% of new registrations were decline-to-state. Republicans picked up just 3.6% of the new voters.
I think that in particular, failed conservative policies have most adversely impacted Republican areas. The collapsing home market as a result of “inmates running the asylum” in the lending markets has hit the exurbs hard. Job loss is most keenly affecting the areas where jobs are newer to arrive. And of course high energy prices hurt those with long commutes. The exurbs, the fast-growing counties, the greatest strength for Republicans in 2004, are massively turning to the Democrats. That leaves Democrats with a noticeably bigger tent, and we have to recognize that as an issue moving forward, but for now, this cratering of Republican numbers is truly a sight, as stark a picture as it was right after Watergate in 1974.
Dave mentioned this story on Wednesday about seemingly unlikely donors to the cause of one John McCain. Today, McCain announced that he would be returning $50,000 of that money:
After a report by The Post’s Matthew Mosk raised questions about one of Sen. John McCain’s campaign fundraisers, the GOP presidential candidate decided to return about $50,000 brought in by a Florida oil executive. The McCain campaign acknowledged that some of the funds were collected by a foreign national and came from donors who may not support the candidate.
The Post reported Wednesday that Harry Sargeant III submitted a bundle of checks for $2,300 and $4,600 on a single day in March, all of them from donors in Southern California who had never given before this year’s campaign and did not appear to be likely candidates to contribute as much as $18,400 per household. (WashPo 8/8/08)
It’s not clear how he chose that number of $50,000 or whether he plans on doing anything with the rest of the questionable half million bucks that he raised mostly from SoCal. MoveOn has a petition asking for a Justice Dept. investigation.
Big Oil for McCain…shocking, huh?
This is a budding scandal. The front page of the Washington Post today profiles Harry Sargeant III, a bundler for John McCain who has a knack of getting big-dollar donations out of working-class people in the Inland Empire who’ve never made a political contribution in their lives.
The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Rite Aid Pharmacy No. 5727, the 30-something owners of the Twilight Hookah Lounge in Fullerton.
But the man who gathered checks from them is no stranger to McCain — he shuttled the Republican on his private plane and held a fundraising event for the candidate at his house in Delray Beach, Fla […]
Some of the most prolific givers in Sargeant’s network live in modest homes in Southern California’s Inland Empire. Most had never given a political contribution before being contacted by Sargeant or his associates. Most said they have never voiced much interest in politics. And in several instances, they had never registered to vote. And yet, records show, some families have ponied up as much as $18,400 for various candidates between December and March.
Both Sargeant and the donors were vague when asked to explain how Sargeant persuaded them to give away so much money.
This is extremely odd. Non-donors don’t just pop up and max out, especially when they don’t fit the profile of having $2,300 to spare. There’s at least the possibility here of straw donations, where these names are either picked out of the phone book and used as shells so big-money folks can deliver more than campaign finance limits to the candidate, or the contributors are willing participants who give and then get the money back (with a little extra for their trouble) from the same big-money boys.
Adding to the intrigue is that these donors declined to talk about the donations (at first denying they had made them) or who asked them to do so. Half these people aren’t registered to vote. And all of them appear to be Arab-American, a community with which Sargeant has unique contacts:
Sargeant’s business relationships, and the work they perform together, occur away from the public eye. His firm, International Oil Trading Co. (IOTC), holds several lucrative contracts with the Defense Department to carry fuel to the U.S. military in Iraq.
“It is very difficult and is a very logistically intensive business that we have been able to specialize in,” Sargeant said. “We do difficult logistical things that don’t necessarily suit a major oil company. It’s a niche we’ve been able to occupy.”
The work has not been without controversy. Last month, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) initiated a review of IOTC’s contract to determine whether it was overcharging the military for jet fuel, and to learn how the company, which did not submit the lowest bid, landed the contract to supply the fuel. The Pentagon has said that IOTC won the contract because it was the only company with a “letter of authorization” from the Jordanian government to move the fuel across its territory to Iraq.
Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld have more on this element of the story – Sargeant (no relation to the TPM writer) is apparently being sued by the brother-in-law of the King of Jordan.
This is a very shady tale and I’m guessing we haven’t heard the end of it. John McCain’s absentee leadership has led to serious violations of campaign finance law already – and this could be the worst yet.
A couple of months ago, in the heat of the superdelegate struggle, Steve Ybarra made a bold and public request. Basically, he requested a $20 million commitment to voter registration efforts targeted at Latinos. The media ridiculed him as some sort of vote seller. As I wrote back then, the request was in actuality a request for party building. And that’s a perfectly good request from a member of the DNC to the presidential candidates. Nonetheless, even Comedy Central got in on the make fun of the superdelegate who wants to accomplish something act.
Fine. But, in the end, Ybarra got the last laugh when the DNC and the Obama campaign announced a, you guessed it, $20 million effort for Hispanic voter mobilization. From the Washington Post:
Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee are expected to unveil a $20 million investment in Hispanic voter mobilization Tuesday that targets most major battleground states.
DNC Chairman Howard Dean said the sum is unprecedented for a presidential campaign and represents a show of Democratic confidence that Latino voters could prove pivotal in states including New Mexico and Michigan.
***
Targets will include Florida; Western states such as Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico; and Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, industrial battlegrounds with sizable Hispanic populations. The money will be spent on niche advertising and other outreach, along with mobilization efforts aimed at identifying, registering and turning out new Democratic voters.
It’s not everything that Ybarra had requested, because I’m guessing that big chunk of that money will end up as ads on Univision. You have to start somewhere, though. Latino registration, if done properly in California, could be a boon for Democrats in our state as well. The voting patterns in California were about ten years ahead of the rest of the country, due to the reactionary Prop 187 and other anti-immigrant stances of the GOP wingnut base and the politicians that pander to them.
If Democrats solidify the votes of Millenials alongside other growing voting blocs like Hispanic voters, we have the opportunity to build a progressive governing coalition for a generation or more. Projects like these are just the beginning of an investment project for the development of this coalition.
A quick event announcement. The GOP nominee will be cruising into town today to pick up some cash from a few rich Republican types. (Yes, there are a few. And they are rich.)
Subject: McCain in San Francisco TODAY – 5:30 PM!
What: Rally for Democrats outside McCain Fundraiser.
When: Today-Monday July 28th, 5:30-7:30 pm
Where: Outside the Fairmont Hotel-Mason Street between Sacramento and California Ave. Parking on Grace Cathedral Garage ($11.00 before 6:00pm). Located on Taylor and California Ave.
Please bring your hand-made signs. We will have extra signs for you to use.
For the last few months, Calitics has been part of the Ruckus Blog on Newsweek. This week we’re starting a question feature. The question this week asks who would be a bold pick for John McCain and Barack Obama as VP candidates. This being a California blog, I have some answers for that question. I’m not going to say these would be good picks, but they will be bold. McCain: Duncan “wildebeest” Hunter. Barack Obama: Barbara Boxer.
Duncan Hunter: Let’s look at Duncan Hunter first. He’s a longtime congressman and first time presidential candidate this cycle. The man is clearly insane, so much so that he wants to feed the Darfur refugees with wildebeest that he shoots himself. And that’s not all. He wants to turn Santa Rosa Island into a hunting park for, well, anybody that carries enough political clout for him to get through. He tried veterans, then moved to disabled veterans. I’m pretty sure he’ll next say that Santa Rosa Island should be a wildebeest hunting refuge for the Darfur refugees next. Or something like that.
Hunter is a conservative’s conservative. He won’t help you carry California, but he will bring the NRA and a whole slew of gun enthusiasts to your side. He won’t bring the votes of military families that have been torn apart by the foolish war in Iraq, but he will bring you Pentagon contractors. He’s real tight with them. This is a certainly a bold pick.
Duncan Hunter: Conservative, Gun-toting, and Completely Insane. Now, that’s Bold.
Barbara Boxer: On the more serious side, Barbara Boxer would be a phenomenal choice to take the lower line of the Democratic ticket. She is enormously popular with the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party (meaning us liberals), and would create an historic ticket. While I’m not sure that Boxer would make up for a Clinton loss, the Obama/Boxer ticket would break boundaries that should have been broken long ago.
Boxer has been fighting for California in the Senate since 1990 and has truly done a phenomenal job. Her leadership regarding climate change has been overshadowed by Al Gore, but has been critical to whatever movement there has been on the issue. She opposed the Iraq War, reinforcing Obama’s position.
She’s not on the short list, likely because she would be seen as “too liberal” or due to the fact that she’s from California, a state where Obama leads by 24 points. That’s a shame. Yet, Boxer would be a truly visionary selection to usher in a new governance that could build a progressive majority for years to come.
…will be right here in California, at Saddleback Church.
The Rev. Rick Warren has persuaded the candidates to attend a forum at his Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, Calif., on Aug. 16. In an interview, Mr. Warren said over the weekend that the presidential candidates would appear together for a moment but that he would interview them in succession at his megachurch […]
The forum still falls short of the kind of face-to-face, town-hall-style debates that Mr. McCain, of Arizona, has called for this summer before formal debates scheduled for this fall.
Mr. Warren, the author of the best-selling book “The Purpose-Driven Life,” said he had called each man personally to invite him to his event, which will focus on how they make decisions and on some of Mr. Warren’s main areas of focus, like AIDS, poverty and the environment.
Maybe the fact that McCain missed the vote on the global AIDS bill, like he’s missed every vote since April (and here I thought I was being lax with my Netflix movies!), will come up. Then again, don’t expect a grilling:
“Since I’m their friend, I’m not going to give them any gotcha questions,” Mr. Warren said, adding that a typical query would be, “What’s the most difficult decision you’ve had to make, and how did you make it?”
So the first town hall of the 2008 election will basically be a Barbara Walters interview.
Get your tickets now!
(I wrote about this a few days ago, but I wanted to add something to the story. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Over at the Wall Street Journal, they want to talk about what the media narrative of the day: Obama Buyer’s Remorse from the Left. But here at the actual convention, there is quite a bit of enthusiasm here. Perhaps people can be disappointed in their candidate without abandoning hope? Well, not if the media has anything to say about it.
Sen. Barack Obama‘s support of a recent overhaul of domestic spy laws that rankled many on the left still has them rankled if the opening session at the annual Netroots Nation convention taking place in Austin, Texas, is any indication. (WSJ 7/17)
I spoke to a friend here whom has given Senator Obama several hundred dollars during the primary. All in small increments, part of the small donor legion that has swelled Obama’s fundraising numbers in June to over $52 million. She was clearly disappointed by Obama in the last few weeks, and she wasn’t part of that $52 million last month. However, she admits that she will be back with Obama, and likely give money once again. And she’ll be back calling voters too, but perhaps prioritizing other issues right along side with the presidential election.
The small dollar donors and the netroots folks here in Austin can walk AND chew gum. It’s really quite amazing. Matt Stoller summarizes this pretty well at OpenLeft
While it’s often impossible for consultants in DC to keep multiple thoughts in their head, it is possible for most of us normal bluggers and blug readers to get that we don’t like his vote on FISA but we want him to win the White House desperately anyway. (Open Left 7/17/08)
That was seen in the latest Field Poll where Sen. Obama solidified the left despite FISA and the surrounding hubub.
In the May Field Poll, self-described liberals favored at about an 80% clip. That has now moved up to around 88%. On the right, John McCain is doing considerably worse with self-described conservatives. In May, McCain got around 70% of conservative voters. In the July Field Poll, McCain gathers only 67% of self-described conservatives. Back in 2004, Bush consistently polled around 80% amongst Republicans and conservatives.
Yet the questions are about Senator Obama’s progressive base having buyer’s remorse? In California, it is clear if there are any idealogues that are disappointed with their major party candidate, it would be the conservatives. Not the progressive left. The left is focused on ending the rule of Bush and his newfound crony John McCain. The Right seems a bit wishy-washy about McCain. There’s your buyer’s remorse.
As I walk around the convention center, I’ve been talking people about this “buyer’s remorse” concept that the media seems to be focused on. One netroots leader said that, if anything, he saw many of his activists friends rediscovering the fact that Obama was, in fact, a politician. The Senator looked around and counted the votes, ultimately determining that this fight was not a winner. Very politician of him, perhaps, but he went forward with the motion to remove telecom immunity. Maybe “politicia” doesn’t carry qute the esteem as “hope superhero”, but Obama was still the politician they want to be the next president.
And that sentiment has been repeated over and over again. Temporary frustration yes, but nothing sufficient to shake the core confidence in the Democratic nominee. Yesterday, in a conversation with Harold Ford at the lunch keynote, Markos of DailyKos once agian noted the difference between the two candidates. While Obama isn’t perfect, Obama is so much more aligned with our issues that there is no question whether we must work to ensure that Senator Obama is our next president.
FISA is important, yet it is not the only important item. Wow, who knew?
Over at the Wall Street Journal, they want to talk about what the media narrative of the day: Obama Buyer’s Remorse from the Left. But here at the actual convention, there is quite a bit of enthusiasm here. Perhaps people can be disappointed in their candidate without abandoning hope? Well, not if the media has anything to say about it.
Sen. Barack Obama‘s support of a recent overhaul of domestic spy laws that rankled many on the left still has them rankled if the opening session at the annual Netroots Nation convention taking place in Austin, Texas, is any indication. (WSJ 7/17)
Matt Stoller responds to this general argument of “Buyer’s remorse” at OpenLeft
At any rate, the whining from DC pundits about how the left was undermining Obama’s chances at winning was absolutely wrong. His small dollar donor army wants him in that White House, and they are going to pay to put him there. While it’s often impossible for consultants in DC to keep multiple thoughts in their head, it is possible for most of us normal bluggers and blug readers to get that we don’t like his vote on FISA but we want him to win the White House desperately anyway.
The small dollar donors and the netroots folks here in Austin can walk AND chew gum. It’s really quite amazing. That was seen in California in the latest Field Poll where Sen. Obama solidified the left despite FISA and the surrounding hubub.
FISA is important, yet it is not the only important item. Wow, who knew?