McCain quits Michigan

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Post by kos from Dailykos:

Yesterday we discussed McCain's precarious electoral situation, under siege in way too many Bush states, making in roads in way too few Kerry states. Given his tighter financial picture, McCain had to make some decisions and refocus his campaign.

Today, he made the first of what should likely be many such decisions:

John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.   Wisconsin went for Kerry in 2004, Ohio and Florida for Bush [...]

A McCain event planned for next week in Plymouth, Michiigan, has been canceled.


Ohio and Florida make sense. McCain can't win without them. But Wisconsin? That might just be misdirection on the part of the GOP because that would make little sense. Look at our chart from yesterday (with updated averages, including Ohio tipping over to Obama):

State  EVs  Poll  Total EVs
Safe Obama states    193

NM      5   O+7.1 202
WI     10   O+6.1 212
MN     10   O+5.1 222
PA     21   O+4.4 243
MI     17   O+4.5 260
CO      9   O+1.8 269
NH      4   O+1.8 273
FL     27   O+1.1 300
VA     13   O+0.9 313
OH     20   O+0.2 333

NV      5   M+1.5 205
NC     15   M+2.5 200
IN     11   M+2.2 185
MO     11   M+3.4 174
WV      5   M+4.6 163

Safe McCain states   158

Total: Obama 333, McCain 205


McCain is actually significantly more competitive in Michigan than he is in Wisconsin. Looking at Nate Silver's numbers (probably the best anywhere), he gives Obama a 91 percent chance of winning Wisconsin, projecting a 9-point Obama victory. Michigan is looking better for McCain, at 88 percent. Pennsylvania isn't much different, at 86 percent likely Obama.

With New Mexico and Iowa safely Obama, Obama gets to 266 EVs including the rest of the Kerry states. Throw in any other (competitive) Bush state and Obama gets to 270, and Obama has plenty of targets for those final EVs -- Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, etc. And while New Hampshire hasn't been locked down yet, its 4 EVs wouldn't buy McCain much breathing room.

If it was up to me, I'd pull out of every Kerry state except one, probably Pennsylvania, not to win, but to draw a disproportionate amount of Obama's deep resources. Then I'd focus on defense. It'll be far easier to hold Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Indiana, Missouri and West Virginia, than win any single Kerry state. And McCain can win if he holds the line.

But really, McCain is screwed. This whole electoral firewall is on the verge of collapse, and even a gangbusters Palin performance tonight can't save him.

Obama launches iPhone app; US election good for Twitter

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Obama Campaign launches iPhone app


Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign launched an iPhone application on Thursday that turns the vaunted device into a political recruiting tool. You can learn more about this app at the Obama iPhone app Web site.

The most notable feature "organizes and prioritizes your contacts by key battleground states, making it easy to reach out and make an impact quickly," according to the software.

On my phone, the application ranked contacts in Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico at the top; at the bottom was a friend whose cell phone has a Texas number, though she actually lives in California.

The application anonymously reports back the number of calls made this way: "Your privacy is important: no personal data or contacts will be uploaded or stored. Only the total number of calls you make is uploaded anonymously."

The software is the latest effort by politicians to capitalize on technology, joining other examples such as ads distributed through YouTube, Web-based fund-raising, Facebook pages and fan groups, and e-mail recruitment drives.

The Obama for America iPhone application is available for download through Apple's iTunes store, said Raven Zachary, an iPhone consultant who's directing the launch effort.

A "get involved" feature uses the phone's GPS-based location sensing to find the nearest Obama campaign headquarters, and "local events" likewise pulls up a list of activities sorted by proximity.

A "media" section provides links to video and photos, but beware: YouTube showed errors following some of the links. Perhaps the newer videos hadn't been prepared for iPhone display yet.

The application also shows Obama statements to the news media and a guide to Obama's positions on various issues.

Additionally, the application shows how many calls have been made nationwide and how many you made. Those statistics are the kind that can motivate people--they can feel like they're part of something bigger. That may sound a bit silly as a motivational tool, but consider that Smule's Sonic Lighter application for the iPhone is popular, despite the fact that it costs 99 cents more than its free competition, likely because people can see where else on the globe people are using it and because the longer you run the application, the bigger your own spot on the map becomes. It's a kind of competition.


Twitter benefiting from US presidential election debates:


Twitter usage and sign-ups received a healthy boost during last Friday’s first presidential debate for the 08 campaign. The official Twitter blog reports that, despite Friday traditionally being a slow traffic day:

  • Friday updates jumped 18.5% from previous Friday.

  • Updates during the debate increased 160% compared to same time last week.

  • Signups on Friday were up 23%.

  • Signups during the debate were up 135% compared to same time last week.


Although, as Wired notes, the shot in arm for Twitter also co-incided with the company’s launch of a dedicated politics tracker - Twitter’s new Election 2008 site - and the blog/mainstream media attention that followed. Of course the fact that this has translated into increased sign-ups and use suggests that chicken or egg, the strategy is paying off.

Part of Cindy McCain's "Personal" Trip to Asia, Paid for on McCain Campaign's Dime

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Early last week, a reader flagged a report in the online newspaper Narco News which noted an interesting FEC expense filing from the McCain campaign from June. The filing listed expenses for hotels and airline tickets in Singapore and Vietnam -- that seemed to correlate with a trip that Cindy McCain took in June to Southeast Asia. The campaign charges seemed at odds with statements made both by Cindy and the campaign at the time, which said that the trip was for "non-campaign" and "humanitarian" reasons.

The filings list $12,316 in air travel on Thai Airways International, British Airways and Air Singapore, as well as $4,886 in hotel stays for the Raffles Hotel in Singapore and the Caravelle Hotel and "Vinpers Resort" in Vietnam.

But the filings didn't specify who the expenses were for, so TPMmuckraker called the McCain camp, and like NarcoNews, received no response to inquiries on the expense filings or the trip.

Stonewalled by the campaign, we started calling hotels listed to see if Cindy or Meghan had stayed there on their trip which had been part of Cindy's ongoing work with poor children in Southeast Asia -- primarily with the charity Operation Smile.

We found that "Vinpers Resort Spa," is the Vinpearl Resort Spa. Vinpearl Hotel administrators confirmed to TPMmuckraker that both Cindy and Meghan McCain were guests there on the night of June 18th, which was also mentioned in local news reports at the time.

So the campaign expenses were in fact tied to Cindy and Meghan's trip, which seemed sharply at odds with what the campaign and Cindy herself described as a solely "humanitarian" mission:

"This is what I do, and this is what revitalizes me, personally," Cindy McCain is quoted as saying in an AP article from June 10th. "The campaign is extremely important, of course, but this is also important to me, and so you try to balance everything."

The personal, non-campaign nature of the trip was stressed by McCain's own staff who said that the excursion was "private and not related to the political campaign," according to a June 19 report from the French news service the AFP.

Our initial calls to the camp still unreturned, we called again -- but this time asking for a comment on the Cindy's stay at the Vinpearl. We got a response within an hour.

In a conversation with TPMmuckraker, Cindy McCain's press aide confirmed that two campaign aides accompanied Meghan and Cindy on their trip.

"There was a press aide and another press advance person who went along and that the campaign paid for," Cindy McCain's spokesperson Laurye Blackford told us, adding that Cindy and Meghan paid their own way and the way of their guests.

Blackford also confirmed that following her trip to Southeast Asia, Cindy McCain did participate in a campaign function -- she and Megan attended a fundraiser for the campaign in London on June 26.

It is unclear whether this would qualify the whole of the McCain's trip to Asia as a travel expense under FEC guidelines.

Barbour: In a McCain administration,’ Palin will ‘not have much of a role in foreign policy.’

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During an interview with NPR this morning, John McCain said he routinely turns to Sarah Palin for foreign policy advice. “I’ve turned to her advice many times in the past,” McCain said in response to a question about whether Palin would be one of his foreign policy advisers. But McCain’s message was contradicted by one of his surrogates, Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS):

Obviously in a McCain administration she would not have much of a role in foreign policy because of his depth of experience and the people around him. … But in a McCain administration, her role substantively is gonna be primarily – in my opinion – about energy.

Watch video of Barbour’s remarks here.