Greg Sargent has obtained some interesting new numbers which shed some light on the state of the race and the different strategies the two campaigns are employing.
McCain is on the air with TV ads in 11 states, which for the most part are considered traditional battleground states (Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, Missouri, Colorado, Wisconsin, North Dakota). Obama is on the air in all of those states, but McCain is outspending him in most of them, sometimes significantly.
Then there are another seven states where Obama has the airwaves to himself (Indiana, Alaska, Montana, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Virginia).
Greg has more details on the possible implications, which are not cut and dry.
Late Update/Correction: This post originally omitted Michigan and Colorado from the list of states where both campaigns are on TV. Virginia is a special case because Obama is the only candidate advertising statewide; McCain has a limited presence in Northern Virginia.
Simply defies comprehension how stupid this is. But you can say anything on Fox.
We’re getting geared up for our coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions coming up over the next couple weeks. And for our evening coverage, for the first time, we’re going to be streaming live video from the scene with technology from qik.com. In today’s episode of TPMtv, we bring you a preview …
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
Former Washington Post Beijing Bureau chief Philip P. Pan sits down at TPM Cafe all this week to discuss his new book, Out Of Mao’s Shadow, in which he argues that the battle lines have been drawn in the struggle for China’s future:
On one side is the venal party-state, an entrenched elite fighting to preserve the country’s authoritarian political system and its privileged place within it. On the other is a ragtag collection of lawyers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, hustlers, and dreamers striving to build a more tolerant, open and democratic China.
Joining in are Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s China Program, New York Times city reporter Jennifer 8. Lee, Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, former FCC chairman and information industries consultant Reed Hundt, and Ely Ratner, a UC Berkeley PhD candidate studying the effects of U.S. support for non-democratic regimes.
We’re gearing up for November at Election Central and are looking for a serious political junkie to join the EC team as intern for the fall semester. TPM interns are quickly integrated into all aspects of our news coverage, but we’re looking for someone who has a particular interest in and knowledge of campaigns and elections, from the presidential race down to off-the-radar congressional elections. Needless to say, this fall is going to have no shortage of political news. This is your chance to help cover it. To learn the details on how to apply for this unpaid position, click here.
As you probably know, there’s been a lot of chatter over the last couple days about whether or not John McCain’s cross in the dirt story may have been lifted from the life of Alexander Solzenitsyn, the famous Russian novelist and dissident who died earlier this month. Well, whatever the origin of McCain’s story, it didn’t come from Solzenitsyn because it never happened to him either. The whole thing turns out to be an urban legend, apparently cooked up by Watergate felon Chuck Colson.
Shorter David Brooks: Media made McCain run ugly “celeb” ads and smear Obama for lack of patriotism.
The new LA Times/Bloomberg poll shows a tightening race as Obama’s negatives rise and his positives fall.
There’s been a lot of chatter about the state of the race over the last week or two. Some fretting on the part of some Obama supporters; some McCain supporters thinking for the first time that he might have a shot at winning this thing. There’s been some movement in the polls in McCain’s favor in various key swing states and nationwide. But it’s mainly a matter of cutting into Obama’s lead.
Small shifts in polling numbers are very difficult to make sense of in August.
So I want to set that all aside and take stock of where the campaign seems to be in terms of each campaign’s message. On this front, McCain’s message is pretty clear and essentially twofold: 1) Obama is, in so many words, a frivolous phony, someone who really doesn’t have any business running for president. 2) McCain is a strong leader who can defend the country. There are all sorts of sub- and secondary themes — Obama’s an outsider, questionably American, etc. But all the nitty gritty points are subservient to those two interlocking messages.
From Obama, honestly, I don’t sense a really clear message. There are attacks on McCain, some of which are quite good. There are positive uplifting commercials. And there are ads/messages targeted to particular states — like Yucca Mountain in Nevada and the DHL layoffs in Ohio. But it’s hard for me to come up with a clear cut Obama message in way that it’s pretty simple for me to do with McCain. Even the ‘change’ message, which is the basis of Obama’s campaign, seems much more diffuse to me than it was during the primaries.
It’s true that I’m not living in one of the key states — so there’s a lot of atmospherics that I’m not seeing that voters would see in Ohio or Michigan, for instance. But I do run this site, that follows politics pretty closely. So I feel like I shouldn’t need to be following things more closely than I already am.
Now, this is a key time to take stock because it’s really only with the conventions that the battle is joined. Obama’s been on vacation for a week. So when we’ll really get a sense of message is the show that each candidate puts on in his party convention and then the campaign they run through September and October.
Beating up on McCain is critical. But it’s not a message in itself. And the Obama campaign needs to deepen people’s trust in Obama. Not because of all the smears because an outsider running to overturn the status quo always faces trust issues. But, again, not a message. For my money, the essence of this campaign is — Are you happy with the way the country’s been run for the last 7.5 years. Has our foreign policy left us better off? Republican economic policy? You can go through all the different facets. But it’s clear that the public overwhelmingly thinks the Bush presidency has been little short of a disaster. And do you want four more years of that? If that’s the frame of the election, McCain will be crushed. People know they don’t want four more years of Bush. McCain will be another four years of Bush. It’s time for change, etc. That’s the essence of the campaign. But the message, right now, seems very muddled.
I’ve misjudged and underestimated Obama at several points in this cycle. And sometimes the public mood leans so overwhelmingly in one direction — that the electorate gets the message themselves without any help. (This is clearly at least very close to the situation in the public mood at the moment.) But at the moment this is how it looks to me.