In response today to a reporter’s question about whether he was going to raise taxes, President-elect Obama had this to say:

(M)y tax plan represented a net tax cut. It provided for substantial middle-class tax cuts; 95 percent of working Americans would receive them.

It also provided for cuts in capital gains for small businesses, additional tax credits. All of it is designed for job growth.

My priority is going to be, how do we grow the economy? How do we create more jobs?

I think that the plan that we’ve put forward is the right one, but, obviously, over the next several weeks and months, we’re going to be continuing to take a look at the data and see what’s taking place in the economy as a whole.

Translation: you ain’t gettin’ ‘em. Note the repeated use of the past tense in his remarks: “My tax plan represented”…”It provided for”…etc. The party had barely ended in Chicago’s Grant Park when Nancy Pelosi made similar back-tracking remarks:

During their campaigns for the White House and Congress, Democrats played up their ambitious plans to cool a warming planet, revive the economy and fix a broken health care system.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in her first news conference since the party’s big election victory, warned Wednesday that Democrats might have to scale back the size of their proposals as tax revenues slow and federal budget deficits soar because of a sluggish economy.

“I think it’s important for the American people to know that many of our options have been diminished because of the downturn in the economy,” Pelosi said. “We have a lot less money to draw upon.”

Oh, those poor suckers who actually thought that Obama and the Dems would deliver on all of those promises, even though there were numerous warnings that there was no way to pay for Obama’s trillions of tax cuts and new spending. If only our country and financial futures weren’t at stake, it might be humorous.

This morning, I went to my local community college and cast my vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin in early voting. As I was leaving the polling location, the smiling election clerk offered me an “I voted” sticker. I asked her for a few extra and she passed over a handful. As my Halloween costume today, I am wearing 10-15 of those “I voted” stickers on my chest. What am I? An Acorn voter.

Is it just me or does the “Political Ticker” on CNN’s home page seem biased? (I know, I know–no surprise given that it is CNN.) Let me explain, everytime that I view CNN’s homepage, among the headlines to the right of the main photo on the page is a headline as to what is on the “ticker,” a sort of blog that CNN has that posts campaign news. Without fail, whenever I see it, the headline is always something negative towards McCain, Palin or the GOP generally. That made me wonder–surely the top story on the ticker cannot always be a negative one towards McCain et al (again, I know, it is CNN) so I began to keep track. While the majojrity of “stories” on the ticker are anti-McCain/Palin/GOP, there are some “benign” stories or even stories on the ticker that purport to be negative Obama stories. So, how come we never see those headlines on CNN’s front page? How does the ticker work?

After some observation, it appears that the ticker headline on CNN’s homepage is generally the most recent story in the ticker–you click on the headline, you go to the ticker and the top story is generally the story the headline on the frontpage was about with other, older stories below it. But what about those (rare) times when they do a neutral or even slightly-negative Obama story? Why aren’t those ever on the homepage headlines? Why isn’t the negative McCain headline replaced whenever a newer story comes along? Well, it appears that the helpful and efficient editors at CNN.com change the time on the negative McCain story so that it always remains at the top and, therefore, is always the headline on the homepage. The same negative McCain story will sit at the top of the ticker (and thus on the homepage) for up to 24 hours, despite newer stories being published in the ticker. The time just keeps getting pushed back so it will stay on top. (They also will periodically leave the negative McCain story headline on the front page even while bumping him down on the ticker page, but this occurs less frequently.)

Subtle and sneaky. A way for CNN to subconciously influence voters by keeping the negative story about McCain/Palin/GOP in front of readers’ eyes on the homepage and at the top of the ticker.

An interesting memo from the McCain campaign this morning confirms what I have suspected for the last couple of weeks: mainly, that Obama’s polling numbers reflect all that he can expect to get on election day. Not a lot of time for me to completely explain the analysis here, so here’s the quick-and-dirty version.

The campaign’s memo cites as support for this the historic difference between projected African-American vote and the actual African-American vote on election day: that support for democrats is typically under-reflected in polls prior to election day. Obama is polling in the very high 90s among African-Americans, making it very unlikely that his support is understated there.

What’s more, I firmly believe that most of the “undecideds” aren’t really that undecided and are actually McCain voters who tell the pollsters that they are undecided for any number of reasons: they may not trust pollsters, they believe that their vote is none of anyone’s business, or they feel their vote is not the “popular” choice and so they pretend to be undecided. Doubtful that any member of the Obamanation has trouble telling pollsters who they are for (they’re probably waiting by the phone, hoping for a pollster to call so they can pump up Barry’s numbers and sing his praises). I think it is also doubtful at this point in the process, less than a week out and after months of campaigning and $600 million in expenditures by Obama, that there are really 5-8% of the nation that hasn’t made up their mind. The number of “true” undecideds has got to be much, much smaller. Among these, if Obama (who, in one sense, has the easiest job of convincing undecideds or “soft” Republicans to come to his cause because of the current negative mood toward the current administration and government in general, yet, in another sense, the hardest job of making the sell because of his inexperience, etc.) hasn’t convinced them yet, it is doubtful he will. They would have already bitten on the “change” platform or have reconciled their doubts about his experience. This leads me to believe that even those “true” undecideds will break heavily for the most “comfortable” of the two candidates: McCain.

If you believe that most undecideds will swing for McCain, you realize that Obama’s polling numbers are his probable best-case-scenario on election day and not very likely to be better than they are now come Nov. 4th. Thus, any state in which Obama is currently less than 50% is in serious play. Factor in current trends showing McCain on the rise and with 6 more days for those trends to play out, I think McCain’s team has it exactly right when they say that this will be a very, very close race come next Tuesday.

GOTV!

UPDATE: Dick Morris makes a similar point.

UPDATE II: Dave in Florida makes the same point and includes the analysis that I did not have the time to breakdown.

Promoted from the diaries by Erick.

While I am a Republican and will proudly test my Republican bonafides against anyone’s, I am, first and foremost, an American. I am also a fan of America and a student of its history and foundational philosophies. So, although I have voted overwhelmingly in my life for Republicans (including in every presidential election in which I could vote), I am willing to cross party lines and vote for a candidate that I feel is better for America.

Notwithstanding the fact that six years in the rough-and-tumble world of Texas politics and twenty years of active involvement in national campaigns have disabused me of any notion that politics is a genteel venture, I still remain something of an idealist and believe that politics and public service is a noble calling and should be, and can be, more civil, respectful and reasonable.

It was this idealism that permitted Barack Obama to pique my interest with his speech in March of this year on race. Although Obama trotted out many tired old liberal lines, he also acknowledged the reasonableness of many conservative beliefs about race and seemed to earnestly want to bring about a common understanding. To me, this was new and seemed honest and I wanted to find out more about this guy.

Read More →

In case you haven’t heard, the unmarried 17-year-old daughter of Alaska’s governor is having a baby and marrying the father. But, of course, you HAVE heard that because, even with Hurrican Gustav taking (at last count) at least seven lives and leaving nearly 1 million without power, it was the story getting most of the time and attention of the anchorazzi and blogosphere yesterday (three! headlines on the NY Times web page). And it is okay that you heard. Really. That’s not my point here. If the VP candidate’s daughter is pregnant out of wedlock, that bears a news story. What I am saying, however, is that is where it should stop. At least in a society that still has some level of civility and principles, with a media that still has some bare modicum of neutrality and holds itself to a higher standard than the wags down at the local beauty parlor or barber shop.

Perhaps I have just been naive. While I know that politics in America has sunk to very low levels and personal attacks are, by now, passe and expected, I guess that I always thought that there was still some base level, some line, below which, no one other than the worst of the worst would go. Certainly, our national media would not go there and these types of lies and gossip would not find their way into mainstream conversation. Obviously, I was wrong.

Read More →