From The Phoenix New Times:
Former Arizona congressman turned AM radio, conservative squawk box, J.D. Hayworth, has quit his radio gig at KFYI-AM in order to begin a campaign to un-seat Senator John McCain as the Republican candidate for Senate.
No shocker here, Hayworth has been hinting at a coup for months.
Hayworth confirmed the move to the Associated Press on Friday but did not officially announce his candidacy.
Maybe John McCain should focus less on "remaking the party in his image" and a bit more on making sure he still has a job in 2011.
Rasmussen: 2010 Arizona Republican Primary
John McCain 45%
J.D. Hayworth 43%
Chris Simcox 4%
Sen. John McCain paid tribute today to the young woman named Neda who was gunned down in cold blood by Iranian government forces while standing on the outskirt of a protest.
For the record, I don't fault Obama for staying largely quiet on Iran. The Iranian state media and government loyalists have been blaming the protests on the CIA, Mossad, and the BBC among other organizations. Having the president come out directly would only fuel the Iranian regime's efforts to quash the protest movement.
Nonetheless, John McCain is free to condemn Iran all he wants in his position without really providing any ammunition to the Ayatollah's propaganda campaign.
What a difference only a few short months have made in Barack Obama's views on spending:
It would appear that "borrowing from China to fund a spending spree" is perfectly acceptable as long you're Barack Obama.
JOE THE PLUMBER ALMOST BAILED ON MCCAIN AFTER BAILOUT VOTE: He wasn't alone. And hardly would have been alone if he did.
POLIS ADVOCATES CUTTING CAPITAL GAINS TAX ON AUTO INDUSTRY: How did we end up with a more fiscally conservative congressman in CD-2 than CD-7?"
"GOVERNMENT SHOUDLN'T JEOPARDIZE JOBS": Colorado House Republicans hit back against the latest attack on the energy industry. Mike May: “We cannot afford to push the energy industry out of Colorado given the current state of the economy, and many fear that the proposed rules will do just that."
Some former McCain campaign staffers have initiated a smear campaign against Sarah Palin. They are essentially trying to cover their own asses by scapegoating the election loss solely on Palin. This is a fairly easy claim to debunk by looking at the polling during the last several months of the election:
(Graph & poll averages from RealClearPolitics.com)
The jump in the polls resulting from the selection of Sarah Palin as running mate and her subsequent performance at the RNC was the only point at which McCain was ahead of Obama in the polls since Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination.
Obama's swing ahead of the McCain-Palin ticket wasn't because everyone suddenly turned against Sarah Palin, it corresponds exactly with the government bailout of A.I.G. and the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac buyout several days earlier. This was about the public being alienated by the Bush Administration's socialist-style economic policies.
Looking at the polls, it's clear that the public was wary of Republican rule after these initial bailouts. McCain was down but not out. Then, on September 22nd, McCain let slip that he would support the Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout plan. Look at the sharp drop in McCain's poll numbers in the following days while Obama's remained remarkably flat. McCain dug himself a hole he would not be able to get out of that day.
The October 15th debate that centered on "Joe the Plumber" gave McCain a 2-point bounce over the following days. Had McCain done the right thing and opposed the Bush bailout, he would not have experienced that precipitous drop starting on September 22nd and could have been in the 45-48% range following that debate.
John McCain's loss can be traced almost entirely to his failure to offer any alternatives to the Bush Administration's handling of the fiscal crisis. That is what ultimately did him in. Sarah Palin and "Joe the Plumber" were the only rays of hope in an otherwise bleak situation. The former McCain staffers engaging in a petty anonymous smear campaign against Pain should be ashamed of themselves.
Early results from the Western Slope indicate that John McCain is holding his own in that region. McCain is only running several points behind Bush's 2004 margins in Mesa County and elsewhere.
Schaffer is posting numbers comparable to the Beauprez/Rowland ticket in 2006 in the region. This indicates that Bob Schaffer will most likely lose the region by a wide margin. It is unlikely he can make up the deficit elsewhere in the state.
Governor Sarah Palin WHEN: Monday, November 3rd Doors Open at 3:30 pm Program Begins at 5:15 pm WHERE: Colorado Springs Airport Jet Center Aviation 1575 Aviation Way Colorado Springs, CO TICKETS: To attend the event, please RSVP by Clicking HERE: or call 303-952-4670 to RSVP via phone Road to Victory Rally Senator John McCain WHEN: ELECTION DAY - Tuesday, November 4th Doors Open at 8:30 am Program Begins at 11:45 am WHERE: WestStar Aviation Hangar #2858 796 Heritage Way Grand Junction, CO TICKETS: To attend the event, please RSVP by Clicking HERE: or call 303-952-4670 to RSVP via phone
and Special Guest
Hank Williams Jr.
with
The MSM will stall calling either of the statewide races in Colorado on election night until the last minute. Partly because many counties are slow to report and they want to avoid any embarassing errors and partly to maintain suspense as long as possible.
There are a few key counties to watch that historically begin reporting very quickly after the polls close. Keep an eye on these four counties and you will get a good idea of who will carry Colorado by comparing the 2008 returns to the 2004 returns. Watch to see if the Republican (McCain or Schaffer) is meeting or within a few points of Bush's 2004 margin or if there is a shift of five or more points towards the Democrat on election night.
El Paso County
67% Bush
32% Kerry
Colorado Springs is among the most conservative cities in the country. Keep an eye on the results as they role in to see if John McCain is underperforming Bush's 2004 returns. If McCain is struggling among the base, this is where it is going to show.
Mesa County
Bush 67%
Kerry 32%
The ticket-splitting nature of the Western Slope has turned the 3rd Congressional District into a kind of kingmaker in statewide races, much like Ohio or Florida at the national level. Mesa County will be among the first to report on the Western Slope and a swing towards either party here will be a bellwether for the entire region.
Boulder County
32% Bush
66% Kerry
Boulder County is a liberal foil to El Paso County's conservatism. It's worth watching to see if Obama or Udall can improve upon John Kerry's 2004 margin. If they can, it shows that excitement surrounding the Obama campaign can squeeze out even more voters in traditionally blue areas. If not, it shows that even if enthusiasm surrounding John Kerry was lacking he still was able to tap out the Democratic vote in these areas.
Jefferson County
52% Bush
47% Kerry
The margins in Jefferson County closely matched the statewide margin in 2004. This time around, polling shows McCain and Obama tied in the county. JeffCo will be a bellwether for the suburban vote in the Denver Metro area and will reflect any movement towards either candidate statewide.
Mitt Romney will be in Colorado supporting the McCain/Palin ticket. Details are below if you're interested:
Saturday, November 1st
4:30 p.m.
Mr. Biggs Family Fun Center
5825 Mark Dabling Boulevard
Colorado Springs, CO 80919
Saturday, November 1st
6:30 p.m.
Colorado Victory Office
5950 South Willow Drive, 3rd floor
Greenwood Village, CO 80111No ticket is necessary but an RSVP is requested.
Please email Jack Dubois at jdubois@mccain08hq.com
or call 303-952-4670.
One of the drawbacks to early voting is that the news media and even the campaigns themselves tend to operate on a more old fashioned timetable. Even though voting now starts via early polling sites and absentee ballots in early October in most states, the media and the campaigns still have a tendency to put out "October surprises" or shift directions in the final weeks of the campaign. In some cases, voting starts before the candidates have even held their last debate. Unfortunately, this means that in extreme cases there will be a sizable number of early voters who regret their choice by election day.
Colorado Republicans are very familiar with an example of this problem. As the results from the 2006 Republican primary in CD-5 rolled in on election night Jeff Crank took a decent lead over Doug Lamborn. Crank was ahead of Lamborn in every county including El Paso and every major media outlet in the state declared him the victor. Much to everyone's surprise, El Paso County entered all of the absentee ballots the other votes had been tallied. The electorate had turned so sharply on Lamborn in the final days of the election that Crank won the votes on election day and the final days of early voting. Lamborn's lead in the absentee votes cast weeks prior was enough to negate all of Crank's gains.
John McCain seems to be facing a similar situation to Jeff Crank. National polls show that the race is moving in McCain's direction and there is movement in state polls in swing states. The trouble for McCain is the effect of early voting on the race. Take this SurveyUSA finding in Ohio for example:
John McCain and Barack Obama are tied at 47% each in Ohio, among voters who have not yet cast a ballot, but who tell SurveyUSA they are certain to do so on or before election day. But, among those in Ohio who tell SurveyUSA they have already voted, Barack Obama leads by 13 points. When the two populations are combined, the data is as here reported: Obama 49%, McCain 45%.
Time Magazine has an article out today entitled "How Early Voting Could Cost McCain Florida":
But so far this year, early-voting Democrats are outnumbering Republicans at those sites by more than 20 percentage points, and a WSVN-Suffolk University poll has Barack Obama leading John McCain by a 60% to 40% margin among early voters. What's more, the number of early voters could approach 30% of all of Florida's 11.2 million registered voters by the actual November 4 election day.
Early voting has advantages and does provide a way to stagger high turnout elections. However, the Crank-Lamborn race and now McCain-Obama should cause us to ask the question of whether or not the race should be decided before the candidates are even done debating one another. Do we want undecided voters to wait until the candidates have finished making their cases and the media has finished releasing any information they have on them or should we encourage voting weeks in advance even if people might regret that vote by November?
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IBD/TIPP places the race nearly tied with Obama down to a 3.7 point lead:
Contrary to other polls, some of which show Obama ahead by double digits, the IBD/TIPP Poll shows a sudden tightening of Obama's lead to 3.7 from 6.0. McCain has picked up 3 points in the West and with independents, married women and those with some college. He's also gaining momentum in the suburbs, where he's gone from dead even a week ago to a 20-point lead. Obama padded gains in urban areas and with lower-class households, but he slipped 4 points with parents.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press has Obama leading by only 1 point:
The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain's "Joe the plumber" analogy struck a chord.
And Zogby is showing Obama leading by 10 and is predicting a Reagan-style blowout:
These numbers, if they hold, are blowout numbers. They fit the 1980 model with Reagan's victory over Carter -- but they are happening 12 days before Reagan blasted ahead. If Obama wins like this we can be talking not only victory but realignment
Given Zogby's recent record, it's usually safe to assume the actual conditions are the exact opposite of what he claims. McCain may in fact be gaining on Obama.
Liveblog hosted by Ben DeGrow and Slapstick Politics:
Neither candidate made much of an impression on me during tonight's debate. Both of them seemed off their game during the initial segment that focused on the economy. McCain seemed uncomfortable with the subject matter while Obama let McCain get under his skin and seemed to be almost pouting. Once the discussion moved on to foreign policy it was clear that McCain had the better grasp of the topic while Obama avoided any major gaffes and seemed less irritable that he did initially.
All in all, if you supporting a candidate already you were probably happy with their performance. If you were undecided you probably left undecided though a little less worried that Obama is clueless on foreign policy or that McCain is an "erratic" loose cannon.
Addendum: The more I reflect on the debate, the more I think of it as an example of why sitting Senators have struggled getting elected to the presidency in the television era. While Obama and McCain's fights over Henry Kissinger's view of Middle East policy and the inner workings of Senate sub-committees may have held the attention of the sort of people who write or peruse political blogs and policy journals, I have to wonder just how much a "swing voter" cared. Part of the problem Bob Dole and John Kerry had during their debates, if not their campaigns as a whole, was their tendancy to get sidetracked with these matters. Only this time there is no Bill Clinton or George Bush to play the role of the strong executive as a foil to the Senate wonk.
As we enter the final stretch of the election, polling from Rasmussen Reports is showing a move in Colorado towards the Republican candidates in the presidential and U.S. Senate races:
President
McCain: 47%
Obama: 50%Senate
Schaffer: 44%
Udall: 46%
Polling has also shown that over the last few days the presidential contest in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania has narrowed to a virtual dead-heat and that Obama's lead in Michigan has almost evaporated. Unless Obama makes a good showing in the debates, he may be faced with a steady erosion of support between now and election day.
McCain leads Obama by 2-points according to the latest poll from American Research Group. Crosstabs are available here. Obama is underperforming McCain by 7-points among members of his own party which suggests that Colorado Democrats might be less enthused about Obama's candidacy than we have been led to believe:
McCain: 46%
Obama: 44%
The Tarrance Group released new polling data showing the Colorado Senate race and presidential race in dead-heats.
U.S. Senate
Udall: 40%
Schaffer: 39%President
McCain: 47%
Obama 45%
There's still a lot of undecideds in the Senate race. The media barrage from both sides might be turning people off to both candidates rather than giving one of them a real advantage.
The polls have been trending towards McCain the last several days and a USA Today/Gallup poll now shows McCain up 10 points among likely voters:
In the new poll, taken Friday through Sunday, McCain leads Obama by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote. The survey of 1,022 adults, including 959 registered voters, has a margin of error of +/— 3 points for both samples.
It's starting to look more and more like Barack Obama is going to pull a John Kerry and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this year. Much like Kerry, Obama's worst enemy has become himself and his own campaign, one needs to look no further than their continued attacks on Sarah Palin for coming from a small town. Let's face it: if Obama and his campaign had learned their lessons from "Bittergate" and their numerous slights to Hillary Clinton that kept her competitive through May, than Obama and McCain would probably still be tied in the polls.
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