Obama in a landslide?

In a weekend piece from the U.K.'s Telegraph comes a story that should be news to voters in the key states of Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado: Barack Obama thinks he's going to win the 2008 election in a "landslide".  "Barack Obama's senior aides believe he is on course for a landslide election victory over John McCain and will comfortably exceed most current predictions in the race for the White House. 

Their optimism, which is said to be shared by the Democratic candidate himself, is based on information from private polling and on faith in the powerful political organisation he has built in the key swing states.

Insiders say that Mr Obama's apparent calm through an unusually turbulent election season is because he believes that his strength among first time voters in several key states has been underestimated, both by the media and by the Republican Party. "

Obama and his campaign are further convinced that he can win no fewer than nine of the states carried by George Bush in 2004 -- putting him on track to win as many as 340 electoral votes. 270 are needed to become president.

This confidence comes from an assumption that I find dubious: that current polls are underestimating the level of new voter registration that the Democrat's have achieved in their get out the vote drives:

"Public polling companies and the media have underestimated the scale of new Democratic voters registration in these states," the campaign official told a friend. "We're much stronger on the ground in Virginia and North Carolina than people realise. If we get out the vote this may not be close at all."

"Their confidence that good organisation will more than compensate for latent racism will be reassuring to some Democrats, who were concerned by a poll last weekend that found Mr Obama would be six points higher in the polls if he were white. "

In my mind the Obama camp is suffering from having drunk too much of its own punch: voter registration drives are notoriously bad predictors of election outcomes. And this is particularly true if the registration drive is focused on young voters -- which Obama's certainly has been. Young voters are famous for saying they will vote and then not showing up on election day.

As far as the "latent racism" issue goes -- I also think it is overstated. In fact, I think that a reverse sort of racism -- of the politically correct variety -- may be upwardly skewing Obama's polling numbers. I have a sense that many voters tell pollsters that they will support Obama because they don't want to come off as racist or "uncool". It is a natural part of our psychology to be attracted to a black candidate as part of a greater social good, and it is part of a politically correct pressure for people to be seen as socially progressive.

But I don't believe this necessarily translates to the voting booth -- when in private, people cast a vote for president. My guess is that race will have less to do with that decision, and that policies and experience will be the determining factor. And on that score, I don't think that Obama has an advantage over John McCain. I believe that the polling doesn't accurately reflect the hesitation many people have about putting an unknown Obama into power, and that a greater percentage of those polled will choose McCain as a safer alternative.

This may not be enough to win McCain the election -- but it should provide some pause to the Obama campaign in thinking that they will win this in a landslide. I predict as close a race as Gore-Bush in 2000 -- unless something dramatic happens on either side to radically upset the balance.

It isn't surprising, however, that Obama is so confident. Afterall, he is the one we've been waiting for. Right?

'Police state tactics' by BHO in MO

Prosecutors and sheriffs in Missouri are threatening legal action against anyone they believe is lying, not about candidates in general, but about Obama in particular. Here's the report from TexasDarlin blog, courtesy of Karen Kataline, who mentioned it on Backbone Radio this evening. It includes news video from Channel 4 St. Louis documenting the "truth squad" activity, and quotes Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt as saying This abuse of the law for intimidation [has] attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign."

Themeless, alas

"Senator Obama, that kind of thinking is dangerous. With views like that, you are not ready to lead. You've come a long way in a short time, and that's commendable. But you need to take a little more time and get to know the world better. America can't afford that kind of naivete' in its Commander in Chief." There were moments in Friday's debate when John McCain could and should have said something just this blunt. Obama gave him several perfect openings. If McCain had delivered such a body blow to his opponent, it would have rocked the political world for days to come, giving the Republican candidate a real chance to take the lead and hold it till election day. What a missed opportunity.

It's true that McCain hammered repeatedly on the point that Obama is naive, doesn't understand, doesn't get it. I still say he gave a themeless performance because there was no decisive, sizzling sound bite like the one I've suggested that would give the debate resonance in this campaign and earn it a place in history. There was no memorable tag that our guy hung on their guy to put him on defense for the next week and drive his supporters nuts trying to peel the tag off. What a pity.

"Themeless, alas" was one of my headlines as I live-blogged the Ole Miss debate for PoliticsWest.com. Read my whole thread from their 90-minute encounter right here.

Getting to know BHO

Now we start to see the real Barack Hussein Obama. His work with Bill Ayers to radicalize Chicago schools was spelled out in detail this week in a Wall Street Journal piece by Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Most of you will remember Ayers and his now wife, Bernardine Dohrn, as among founders/leaders of the radical and violent Weatherman, aka Weather Underground Organization, which bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon about 30 years ahead of Al Qaeda. Ayers and Dohrn have now been adorned with “respectability” as faculty members at, respectively, the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. Apparently prosecutorial misconduct enabled them to avoid having to serve prison time. However, they were terrorists as that term is used today, and they remain radical: not very long ago Ayers said publicly that he regretted not doing more as a Weatherman.

Obama’s first political campaign began with a party in the home of Ayers and Dohrn.

More elaboration by Kurtz on Obama’s radical background, titled “Senator Stealth,” was the cover story of the September 1 issue of National Review. A September 7 blog at The Spectator (London) by Melanie Phillips, titled “Revolution You Can Believe In,” discusses more of the same; click here.

I hope we all have reason in a few weeks to be thankful for long presidential campaigns. That observation will produce many a questioningly furrowed eyebrow, so I ask, How long has it taken for Americans to know anything about Obama beyond his fine speeches?

Truth and fairness have been disserved by an overwhelming majority of the mainstream media. So the real Obama has been scandalously slow to emerge from beneath a heavy overburden of manure and pretense.

Mark Twain famously observed, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.” I’m not quite ready to argue that overthrow of our government is the objective of any Obama backers, as it was of Sgt. Raymond Shaw’s mother in "The Manchurian Candidate," but it all gets more gravely worrisome by the day.

Several respected friends have been Obama supporters from the get-go. So impressed was one of those that he told me, “In the end, I could not care less about the messenger – Obama, Clinton, McCain. Rather, it is the message that matters.” I have challenged a few of them to give me a single name of anyone in Obama’s background whom one could consider respectable at any level of political leadership. Anyone, that is, before Obama emerged as the Darling of Message for his party and the fawning mainstream media. None of these friends has delivered, nor have I found any such name in rather extensive reading and research. Not one. Zilch.

Obama is so bereft of any public record (aside from his far left but otherwise brief and unremarkable legislative record), about all we have to assess him are his associates. Those include scumbags like Tony Rezco and the usual assortment of corrupt Chicago politicians; radical extremists like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Bill Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn; and, last but not least, his America-hating wife Michelle. Not a name among ‘em most would want mentioned in the same paragraph with our own.

Chicago political corruption, by the way, provides a particularly embarrassing contrast between Obama and the opposition. GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin rose to high office in Alaska by taking on political leaders in her own party whom voters considered corrupt. Obama made his mark in Illinois politics by using lawyers to remove opponents from the ballot and, when he had opportunities to help clean out corrupt officeholders, he either didn’t have the huevos or, more likely, he and they were all one happy family.

A man with Obama’s cronies, not to mention his new idolaters on the left fringe, is a serious threat to the Republic.

Colorado GOP asked for it

"I'd hate to have us responsible for putting Obie in the big house," wrote Ken Davenport in reaction to a top analyst's prediction that Colorado may become the Florida of 2008. My reply to Ken was that I think the forecast by Stuart Rothenberg is spot on. If McCain wins the entire south, the entire midwest except the five upper states that Obama will probably take (MN, IA, MI, IL, WI), and the entire west except the coast (which Obama has in the bag) and except Colorado and NM, that will get McCain to 265 electoral votes. 270 are needed to win. McCain has to hold on to Florida, Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, and Nevada, plus take either Colorado or New Mexico to win. He will probably lose NM, leaving Colorado as the swing state. Think back over all the chicanery, all the back-stabbing by "moderates" against normal, healthy, courageous people just like Sarah Palin, all the missed opportunity, all the perfidious leadership, all the adultery, all the lying, all the other general moral confusion, and all the spinelessness and lack of any kind of consistent conviction or character by Republicans in Colorado over the last 10 years - all of it done because they thought nobody was watching, nobody could hold them accountable because they were rich and influential and famous, it would help their short-term political prospects and not really harm anything, they told themselves, even as it turned the political complexion of Colorado's legislature, governor's mansion, and congressional delegation exactly upside-down in terms of party composition and virtually destroyed GOP spirit and cohesion throughout the state. Now the White House and the political fortunes of the nation and, by extension, the world could ride on the ability of the Colorado GOP to hold the state for the GOP presidential candidate.

This is what Reagan meant when he said that character is built by a thousand little decisions made every day when nobody is watching and nobody is holding you accountable. The future fortunes of political parties and nations, to say nothing of families and individuals and eventually the entire world, ride on the choices of individual men and women, especially those holding government power, to know and do what is right in the present, even when nobody's watching and even when everybody is watching and it's not popular.