Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will campaign in Indiana on Friday.
Not a good sign for the Republican ticket.
The 44-year-old vice presidential candidate wows the faithful wherever she goes. She's mobbed by fans, especially young girls. She draws publicity. All good.
But the Republicans should not have to campaign in Indiana less than three weeks out from election day.
Latest state polls show the McCain-Palin ticket ahead by two points in the Hoosier state; Karl Rove's national electoral map, published regularly here in The Ticket, shows the Republicans just having regained Indiana from the tossup category.
But it's a measure of how the Obama-Biden campaign, rolling in money, has forced the GOP candidates to play defense far too long into the campaign. They've recently also been forced to shore up support in two other once-staunch-Republican states -- Virginia and North Carolina.
Even if the Democratic ticket doesn't take Indiana on Nov. 4, it's forced the Republicans to "waste" a precious day of candidate time defending the heartland state and not chipping away at Democratic states elsewhere.
Indiana hasn't voted Democratic in a presidential election since the year Palin was born.
His father, dead before age 30, left a musical legacy that will live on as long as American songs are sung -- a lengthy list of classics that includes "Your Cheatin’ Heart," "I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, "Hey, Good Lookin’" and "Honky Tonkin’."
Hank Williams Jr. can't match that. But then, few can. And at 59, he can claim a solidly successful career as an entertainer that includes a niche in popular culture as the kickoff act for "Monday Night Football."
Now he's made a foray into politics, penning new lyrics to a song he wrote called "Family Tradition" In the original tune, he linked himself to his dad's drinking and drug-abuse demons. The new version -- a paean to John McCain and Sarah Palin -- takes a decidedly different tack, as evident from its opening lines:
The left-wing liberal media have
Always been a real close knit family.
But most of the American People
Don’t believe 'em anyway, ya see.
An ABC News report on a Palin rally in Richmond, Va., today includes video of Williams performing the reworked song. And a more polished, studio version of it can be listened to below:
Remember Rep. Mark Foley? Republican. Florida. Suggestive text messages. Congressional pages. Scandal. One of several. 2006. GOP loses the House of Representatives.
Well, according to ABC News, Foley's Democratic successor, Rep. Tim Mahoney, now has a mistress problem. Actually, a mistress payoff problem. To buy her silence. And avoid her lawsuit for something.
Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman a $50,000-a-year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, Mahoney staffers said.
Senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chair of the Democratic Caucus, have been working with Mahoney to keep the matter from hurting his reelection campaign, the Mahoney staffers said.
Good luck with that 22 days out.
A spokesperson for Emanuel denies that account, but said Emanuel did confront Mahoney "upon hearing a rumor" about an affair in 2007 and "told him he was in public life and had a responsibility to act accordingly."
The spokesperson added that it was a "private conversation" that had nothing to do with Mahoney's reelection prospects.
Mahoney's district leans Republican. President Bush won 54% of its vote in 2004 and 53% in 2000. Mahoney's in an already tough reelection race against Republican Tom Rooney, grandson of Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney.
Coincidentally, it was ABC News in 2006 that broke the Foley story right before that election that cost Republicans control of the House.
Thank goodness those reformers got into office after 2006 because now things have totally changed there in Congress and everything's just fine. Our blogging buddy Frank James has the full Mahoney story over at the Swamp.
The Ticket professes surprise that the fellow occupying the top slot on the Democratic presidential ticket relied on his most important surrogate -- rather than himself -- to roll out a crowd-pleasing response to one of the high points of Sarah Palin rallies.
Then again, the line probably suits the style that Hillary Clinton developed as a presidential campaigner better than Barack Obama's more reserved demeanor.
Clinton, doing her part for her onetime rival in suburban Philadelphia today, referenced the popular "drill, baby, drill" chant that punctuates Palin appearances when the Republican discusses energy policy. Clinton told her listeners that Democrats have a better slogan: "Jobs, baby, jobs."
Obama, campaigning in Ohio, spotlighted the same subject with a different rhetorical technique. "J-O-B-S," he spelled out to his crowd. "Jobs. We've got to work on jobs."
A package of new economic proposals he unveiled included a temporary tax credit for businesses that create new U.S. jobs over a two-year period. The Times' Seema Mehta has more on this and Obama's other suggestions elsewhere on our website.
The audience-participation part of Palin rallies, by the way, may expand. As she campaigned in Ohio Sunday and spoke of the efforts a John McCain administration would make to increase production of so-called clean coal, she was interrupted by this chant: "Mine, baby, mine."
"That is very good, and that is new," she said. "We haven't heard that yet. OK! Mine, baby, mine... . May I plagiarize that?"
No sign yet that John McCain plans to follow the most well-publicized piece of unsolicited advice he's received of late: the recommendation from leading conservative Bill Kristol that the Republican "fire his campaign" because, the columnist asserts, it's "now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional."
Kristol's proposal, of course, had no chance of being taken seriously by McCain. Although a sweeping staff turnover ultimately served the candidate well in the battle for the GOP presidential nomination, a similar move three weeks before election day hardly would quell qualms Democrats like to raise about his temperament.
For the record, though, here's what McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds -- presumably one of those with a risky job status -- had to say about the shake-up suggestion when asked about it by Fox News:
"I know Bill Kristol is an intelligent guy. I just don't think what he had to say was very intelligent."
It was just four weeks ago that a nip-and-tuck presidential campaign seemed to pivot in the Democratic direction -- in part because of a John McCain miscue.
After a weekend that drove home the fragile state of several leading financial institutions, McCain at a rally in Florida insisted the U.S. economy was fundamentally sound -- a claim that since then has been called into serious question.
Today, at a rally in Virginia, McCain sized up the state of the race, freely acknowledged being behind in the polls, anointed Barack Obama as a front-runner who is "measuring the drapes" at the White House -- and eagerly proclaimed, "My friends, we've got them just where we want them."
The Times' Maeve Reston was at the event and has more from McCain, including the arguments it appears the Republican will focus on during the campaign's remaining three weeks (in summary: Obama is a tax-and-spend liberal who will bend over backwards to help unions and "concede defeat" in Iraq).
As McCain -- with a smile -- cast himself in a beleaguered position and eagerly accepted the challenge, it rang a bell with us. And here's a quote he provided reporters in late June:
I'm the underdog in this race.... I'm behind. I've got to catch up and get ahead. And I expect to do that about 48 hours before the general election.
So partisans on both sides of the battle can take heed -- by his own lights, McCain has plenty of time for a stretch run.
CHICAGO -- Turn on the TV news when John McCain is picking up undecided voters by invoking Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers and, invariably, some liberal talking head will sniff in disgust and say Ayers is no big deal where Obama comes from.
Unfortunately, that's true. Ayers is a terrorist. But this is Chicago.
Obama and Ayers are neighbors, and they worked together on school issues with the same foundation. Obama's political coming-out party was held in Ayers' living room when Obama was running for his first political office.
And the boss of Chicago is Mayor Richard Daley. Mayor Shortshanks has thrown his protective embrace around both men. These are facts.
But the reason Ayers is not a big deal in Chicago has to do with the Chicago Way, and the left fork of that road that has been bought and paid for by the Daley machine, subsidized by taxpayers who foot the bill for public relations contracts from City Hall.
The new Daley machine is much more sophisticated than his father's. And the stereotype of knuckle-draggers and wiseguys -- they're....
As The Ticket, among many online sites, has noted in recent days, much has been made about the anger and fears expressed by a vocal few and aimed at the Democratic ticket by some attending rallies for Sen. John McCain.
McCain quickly retrieved the microphone and said, "No, ma'am, he is a decent family man, a citizen I just happen to have serious differences with on some fundamental questions."
On Sunday, Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic party's vice presidential nominee, again sought to stoke the angry McCain supporter story line by criticizing the GOP nominee for "ugly inferences" about the top of the Democratic ticket.
So as a growing number of political bloggers, including Wake Up America, have asked in recent hours, how long do you think before the mainstream media starts reporting on scenes like a Philadelphia event on Saturday where people wore T-shirts that bore an explicitly crude reference to Sarah Palin? With 22 campaign days left, might perhaps the Democratic ticket also feel the need to warn its supporters to tone it down?
If these T-shirts showed up at a McCain event on people proudly posing like this to proclaim that Obama was the N-word, do you think we might have heard about it by now?
--Andrew Malcolm
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Nearly two dozen new state polls in recent days show the Democratic Party ticket headed by Sen. Barack Obama holding strong with 277 hypothetical electoral votes, seven more than needed for election, but Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have regained traditionally Republican Indiana from the tossup category.
This according to the latest state-by-state poll research compiled by Karl Rove & Co. and published in The Ticket by permission every few days.
With Indiana's 11 electoral votes, the first time since early September that the Republican ticket has gained, McCain-Palin now hold 174 electoral votes while another 87 remain in the tossup category.
A chart showing the weekly movements of this hypothetical electoral vote race is available after the jump, along with an explanation of the research's methodology. Click on the Read more line below.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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Presidential candidates have long used the late-night comedy shows to show off the more amusing or interesting aspects of their personalities. (Remember Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on "The Arsenio Hall Show" in 1992?)
This year's Republican presidential hopeful, John McCain, has made 13 appearances on NBC's "Tonight Show," most recently on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, and a dozen on CBS's "Late Show."
In fact, the Arizona senator is so comfortable with "Late Show" host David Letterman that he chose to announce his candidacy for the White House on the program in early 2007. After his effort sagged badly and appeared dead, he re-announced his bid on Leno's show.
The late-night hosts have returned the favor by largely laying off his Democratic opponent and making McCain by far the butt of far more jokes, according to a study.
McCain was scheduled to appear on the "Late Show" Sept. 24 -- the same day that he announced, with great fanfare, that he was suspending his campaign and returning immediately to Washington to deal with the burgeoning financial crisis. Letterman was understanding -- until he discovered, via an internal CBS feed brought to his attention while he was taping a segment with replacement guest Keith Olbermann, that McCain was not on a plane winging its way to the nation's capital.
Instead, he was five blocks away in New York, getting his makeup touched up before an interview with Katie Couric, anchor of the CBS "Evening News."
To put it politely, the late-night comic was not amused about being stood up. “He doesn’t seem to be racing to the airport, does he?” Letterman said. He then shouted at the television monitor: “Hey John, I got a question! You need a ride to the airport?”
Last week, as the one-way feud simmered, the New York Post reported that the two sides were discussing the possibility of the GOP candidate returning to the program. But on Thursday, as The Ticket reported here, Letterman lit into McCain yet again, wondering whether any pledge to show up "could be trusted."
Well, it looks as if Letterman is not only trusting McCain's promise to return, but has verified it as well: According to Letterman's website, he'll be on the show Thursday, the day after his final debate with Democratic rival Barack Obama at nearby Hofstra University.
"Sorry my husband won’t be there. He’ll be up in New Hampshire today and then Maine. I think you would like Todd. We need to bring him here so you can meet him. He’s a guy like many of you. He works with his hands, he works up in the North Slope oil fields, and he’s a world-champion snow-machine racer. And he’s a proud member of the United Steelworkers Union. Hard-working all-American guy, and I tell ya, he would feel right at home here."
A couple of hours later, we received an e-mail from the McCain campaign, offering "A little color from Todd Palin's event today on the trail."
More than 500 people showed up, said the campaign, when Palin visited Moosehead Trail Trading Post in Palmyra, Maine. They shook his hand, asked for autographs and posed for pictures.
Added Sarah Palin's spokeswoman Maria Comella:
"He spoke to the crowd about the importance of a McCain-Palin ticket and received loud cheers when he noted the McCain-Palin ticket had picked up the NRA endorsement."
Now, as noted elsewhere on this blog, the campaign is a turning into a series of back-and-forths designed to win the upper hand in the battle for better PR.
And that his wife, like most any candidate out there on the trail, wants the blue-collar, socially conservative voters in the battleground state of Pennsylvania to know: He's just like them.
With the number of preelection days dwindling and tempers rising, we had more of the predictable homestretch toing-and-froing over campaign attacks Saturday.
Someone on Side A says something that Side B can seize upon and criticize to create a fight, which the media much prefers covering with military verbiage because it's bored hearing the standard stump speeches so often.
And that puts Side A momentarily on the defensive while it "admonishes" its overzealous supporter, even though, if anyone told the truth -- which they won't -- they're delighted to have the suggestion out there as long as it can't be traced back to HQ.
If these campaigns had referees, they'd be calling offsetting penalties every day now. And we have 24 more of these to watch.
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) likened the politics of Arizona Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to segregationist former Alabama Gov. George Wallace.
McCain shot back his longstanding admiration of civil rights pioneer Lewis but said it was ridiculous to equate legitimate criticism of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and his policies with Wallace and constituted "a brazen and baseless attack on ...
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Our Bloggers
Don Frederick has served as an editor helping guide coverage of every presidential election since 1984. He is a third-generation Washingtonian, so watching the political world comes naturally to him.
A graduate of Northwestern University, he was a reporter for newspapers in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas before joining the (now-defunct) Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1983. Hired by The Times in 1989, he has worked in its Washington bureau since 1996 — a perch providing him a close-up view of the impeachment of President Clinton, the government's response to 9/11 and the day-to-day wrangling of the two major parties.
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000.
A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
old vice presidential candidate wows the faithful wherever she goes. She's mobbed by fans, especially young girls. She draws publicity. All good.
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A graduate of Northwestern University, he was a reporter for newspapers in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas before joining the (now-defunct) Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1983. Hired by The Times in 1989, he has worked in its Washington bureau since 1996 — a perch providing him a close-up view of the impeachment of President Clinton, the government's response to 9/11 and the day-to-day wrangling of the two major parties.
A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.