2nd Presidential Debate Preview

The second debate will be held Tuesday night at 9PM in a town hall format at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Obama could wind up being nervous and stiff. McCain almost always is relatively smooth and could come off better. But I don't think that is how it is going to play out.

If the candidates move around and walk into the audience, then the age, height and physical differences between the two of them will be obvious and will make it difficult for John McCain to get the upper hand in the debate.

Expect John McCain to attack Barack Obama several times and try to keep him off guard. With such a large audience an attack could have some instant impact. The problem with attacking in a planned event is that the other side may be able to effectively prepare to counter the attacks. If a lot of people see a good response, it may effectively deflate the ability of that issue to gain any traction for him.

Our prep on the 2nd Presidential Debate wouldn't be complete without the SNL review of the Vice-Presidential Debate:

Going Positively Negative on the Campaign Trail

As I mentioned last month in my post "Campaign Reform Dies a Final Death", the McCain/Palin team had launched a series of negative ads about Barack Obama. Over the last few weeks, they had backed off and run more pro-McCain ads. Well, from here on out, expect an even greater focus on negative ads. They are desperate at this point and regardless of McCain's desire to rise above partisan attack politics, if he has any desire to win, there is only one option that has a chance of working.

Sarah Palin has already been proclaiming that Obama associates with terrorists referring to his association in recent years to William Ayers who 30-40 years ago was a leader of the violent radical left organization Weatherman. You can read more about William Ayers for background info, but as for a more recent picture of him, know that Ayers is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. He has edited and written many articles and books on topics such as education theory, policy and practice. He has also appeared on many panels and symposia and served on the board of directors for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where Barack Obama was Board President. Decide for yourself how much this effects your opinion of Obama. It is a last gasp effort for McCain.

I am actually interested in seeing new polls for North and South Dakota. They had somewhat unexpectedly become battleground states until Sarah Palin was named McCain's VP mate at which points, polls showed a big McCain lead in both states. But there have not been any polls since the 3rd week of September. Obama's lead in national polls has increased significantly since then, so these states could be back in play. Although both states have the minimum 3 electoral votes, if they are close and McCain has to spend any time there, it will make an already difficult task even more challenging.

The Soccer Dad Lawn Sign Presidential Poll

SOCCER DAD, DANCE DAD LAWN SIGN POLL for November 1 - Obama 43, McCain 27
SOCCER DAD, DANCE DAD LAWN SIGN POLL for October 25 - Obama 31, McCain 21
SOCCER DAD LAWN SIGN POLL for October 18 - Obama 24, McCain 12
SOCCER DAD LAWN SIGN POLL for October 11 - Obama 21, McCain 13
SOCCER DAD LAWN SIGN POLL for October 4 - Obama 20, McCain 9

While driving our 4 kids around today to a total of 10 soccer games and 3 field hockey games, I decided to count properties with lawn signs for the Presidential candidates. There was a lot of back-tracking between fields, so in an attempt to avoid double counting signs, I only counted once on each approach to a field.

This highly un-scientific poll was conducted in South Eastern Pennsylvania in the suburbs surrounding Philadelphia. Although Philadelphia is predominantly Democratic, the suburbs have long been Republican although they have continued to move closer to neutral over the last 3 decades. Most of the observations occurred in Delaware County, which used to have a Republican to Democratic registration ration of 70 to 30, but is more like 57 to 43 now and a number of those registered Republican act like independents, so the County in recent years has been considered a bellweather of Pennsylvania and at times, National sentiment.

The tally was 20 signs for Obama/Biden and 9 for McCain/Palin
Now while I can safely say that Obama will not take almost 70% of the vote in Pennsylvania, these observations lead me to surmise that either the Obama ground game is much more impressive in a battleground county in a battleground state, or the there are more Obama supporters than McCain supporters who are fervent enough to declare their preference for all to see. Or perhaps a bit of both. Any way you slice it, this tells me that polls showing Obama to be 7% ahead in Pennsylvania are unlikely to be overstating Obama's lead.

Although this poll is perhaps one of the least scientific that I can imagine, I don't think Pennsylvania will turn Red this year.

McCain should forget about all states with the exception of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. He has to win all of them. He has already withdrawn from Michigan and probably should from Wisconsin and Minnesota as well. New Hampshire has new polls showing a average of a 9 point Obama lead and if that is even remotely close to reality, that state is gone as well.

Vice-Presidential Debate Review

It doesn't often happen this way, but both debaters and their campaigns have to be very happy this morning.

There were no major gaffs. Both candidates sounded intelligent, spoke with some passion and weren't caught off-guard at any time. Sarah Palin did have a few moments of minor hesitation, but that is rather common in debates as your brain spins in a few directions at the start of a response, but she always got traction.

Palin did herself proud, she certainly stopped the bleeding of her reputation in the public eye. I think it quelled any movement to try to get McCain to find a new running mate and probably stopped the momentum swing to Obama-Biden, but I doubt it started to swing momentum back to the Republican ticket.

Joe Biden was pretty crisp, made no major gaffs and had several moments where he weaved his wonkish knowledge with a "down-home" feeling talking about his dad, where he grew up and even being a suddenly single parent.

Two things Biden said really stuck out to me. He did a serious slap-down on what exactly John McCain had been a maverick on and that on issues that were very important to the American public, he was in lock-step with George Bush. I think that took some steam out of Sarah Palin's ability to keep using the moniker "original maverick" for John McCain.

Joe Biden also painted a pretty clear picture of how he would be utilized and benefit Barack Obama as his VP. Not only did it instill confidence in the Obama-Biden team's ability to lead, it had to bring to mind questions of what exactly Sarah Palin would do for John McCain as his VP.

You can see the VP debate again and see how a group of Ohio Uncommitted voters judged the candidates continuously during the debate by going to the CNN video transcript website

Two important developments in different directions on the Electoral Vote side. First, it is being widely reported (but not officially confirmed yet) that John McCain is pulling campaigning resources out of Michigan and redeploying them to other battleground states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota). While this is probably sensible given recent polling changes, Michigan was one of the only states John Kerry won that McCain had a legitimate shot at winning.

Second, some polls out today that were run earlier this week show McCain closing or going ahead in some battleground states Obama had been consistently leading. The one that seems to have the most heft behind it is a Survey USA poll from Sept 30 - Oct 1 in Minnesota showing John McCain ahead by 1%. Survey USA polls in Minnesota all year have shown the race closer than most other polls, but this certainly will provide some energy to the McCain campaign.

Vice Presidential Debate Preview

Are you not sure you know enough about the Vice Presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin? You may want to look at this review from Good.is.

Sarah Palin doesn't need to not make mistakes, she needs to convince people she is competent to be president. This is not easy given the Katie Couric interview that has been released in snippets over the last week. She won't all of a sudden become a policy wonk, so she has to show leadership abilities in another way.

Here is how I think it will play out:

Palin will go on the attack right from the start. She will say very little about McCain's policies other than high level glossy concepts like the fact they are "The New Energy". Going negative may be their only hope at this point and it has always been the best course for her in this debate with Joe Biden. She needs to get Biden off balance and tempt him into unleashing a verbal tirade against her.

Biden will look like my dog when our daughter has dropped food on the floor and he is told to sit at attention. A massive dissonance between instinct and training. Look for Biden after a Palin attack to be biting his lip, shaking, tapping his foot or some other quirk as he wants to rip her apart but knows he shouldn't. He should daydream about walking along beautiful beaches all over the world visiting foreign leaders as the Vice President of the United States. If the worst that can be said about Joe Biden was that he seemed distant, that would play a lot better than "he verbally beat up a woman". he best tactic would be to find a way to let Palin talk some more. The format tonight provides for very short responses and provides few opportunities for the candidates to respond to one another. Biden should use the time to ask Palin a specific question and offer to give her the remainder of his time to respond. You can tell if Biden is starting to get flustered if you find yourself counting the number of times he begins a sentence with "Look...".

It will be interesting to see how things play out.

Unless Palin can start turning the Republican ship around, this is going to quickly turn into a rout. (That may not be in Obama's best interests, which we will cover in a few days). New polls show Obama leading in Florida by anywhere from 3% to 8%, Ohio by 8% and Virginia by 9%. John McCain needs to win all 3 of those states to have a chance to win. In other states where McCain was hoping to have a shot, he is now down by 1% to 4% in Nevada, 11% in Minnesota, 15% in Pennsylvania and 16% in Iowa. McCain is also only leading by 1% in Missouri, 2% in Indiana and is tied in North Carolina, all of which he needs to keep this from becoming a total wipeout.

The Vice Presidential Debate

Since I heard her speak at the Republican Convention, I have been telling people that I believe Sarah Palin will do just fine in the Vice Presidential debate this Thursday. I was actually concerned about how many ways Joe Biden could come off as rambling, condescending, patronizing, etc. The Palin-Couric interview has me seriously reconsidering that opinion. I still think there is a pretty good chance that she will be able to hold her own in 1 and 2 minute segments as happens in a debate. However, some of the things she has said in the Couric interview just make you wonder.

The segment that aired this morning is very peculiar. After telling Katie Couric that she does not have any debate coaches, Couric followed up by asking about those helping her prepare:

I have quite a few people who are giving us information about the record of Obama and Biden, and at the end of the day, though, it is -- it's so clear, again, what those choices are. Either new ideas, new energy and reform of Washington, DC, or more of the same.

Has anyone told her that Obama has been saying this exact same thing for several months? Does she forget that she is of the same party as that which currently resides in the White House? Barack Obama is more of the same of what exactly?

I hope for her sake that she doesn't uncork a doozy with tens of millions of people watching (about 50 million watched the 1st Presidential Debate last week) or the polling numbers will quickly move to a place from which John McCain would have no chance to recover with less than 5 weeks to go. Already, 4 MUST states for John McCain are showing a tie (Florida, Ohio, North Carolina) or Obama slightly ahead (Virginia). Winning all 4 of those states still puts McCain 5 electoral votes short, which means he would probably have to win Colorado as well where he is polling about 3 points down.