Harvard's Election 2008 Blog

For the first time since April 2008, the RCP average has McCain leading at +1.0. 

USA Today just released their poll showing McCain +10, Gallup has McCain at +3, two other polls have them at a tie. Only the "Hotline/FD" poll has Obama with a lead beyond 1 point.

(September 08, 2008) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls/

It would appear that the RNC actually succeeded in giving McCain a post-convention bump, despite predictions that he would not benefit from a less-than-thrilling nomination speech. What's unusual is that the Obama camp did not manage to see that huge post-convention bump that was expected from the dramatic success of the DNC. I suppose the McCain camp effectively neutralized the Dem's post-convention bump with good timing on the Palin announcement.

Could this be an "uh-oh" moment for the Obama camp?

As someone pointed out to me, it may be possible that these polls will prove inaccurate come November, as the models many of these agencies have been using undervalue the contribution of youth voters, who may actually be energized enough to Google “Voter Registration.”

And, of course, there is the consideration that it will be the polling numbers in key swing states that will ultimately make the difference.

Comment (0) Read More...

Nick and I were observing the Tuesday session of the RNC from the Club Level of the Xcel Energy Center.

Sometime around 8PM, the RNC Chairman (a rather elderly woman) addressed the audience and announced:

"We are holding a convention that will nominate a Republican woman Governor Sarah Pawlenty our next vice president!"

[everyone sitting/standing around us drops their snacks looking puzzled, and then proceed to applaud]

...oops

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

Comment (0) Read More...

Sam and Nick make valid points that the Obama camp will really want to go after Palin's inexperience and ask the question "Is this the woman you want running the country if McCain dies?"

But we have to ask ourselves whether or not that will necessarily hurt McCain. A "Hockey Mom" with motherly, conservative, PTA mom values running the country? That could be hard to resist for stay-at-home PTA moms watching the tv in their kitchen. Why not? If we can run the school board, why not run the country? Sure, Hillary was a woman, but she wasn't on the PTA!

Also, let's not forget history. This is not the first time that the GOP has unveiled such a surprise candidate for VP. When Nixon chose Spiro Agnew and HW Bush unveiled Dan Quayle, the Democrats also ridiculed those pick...

...and then lost those elections.

Oddly enough, it is a trend that has favored Republicans in the past, and perhaps with good, though subtle, reasons.

If I were in the Obama camp I would be extremely careful about attacking Palin for her inexperience. That will open up the debate in such a way that people will ask the same of Obama.

If I were in the McCain camp, I would welcome such attacks with open arms. It would allow the McCain camp to shift the political debate towards the question of experience where Obama is particularly weak. When it comes down to it, Palin is running as VP, but Obama is running for President.

GENERAL THOUGHTS ON PALIN 

Overall, despite being totally surprising, I feel this was a good pick (though the reasons aren't immediately obvious).

Palin, unlike Biden, visibly personifies an important segment of the voting public (stay-at-home moms). Whereas Biden was brought on board to fill the foreign-policy gap in Obama's image, Palin helps to focus McCain's message and image. Sure, she doesn't have much experience to bring, but she can make the claim that she confronted the problems areas within the Republican party and succeeded (she ran her governorship campaign on the premise that she would confront old-Republican stalwarts and, as Adam mentioned, then single handedly put an end to the Bridge to Nowhere). In other words, Palin personifies a different type of GOP, one that sticks to its values, but is trying to make amends for the corruption and recklessness of the past 8 years.

With regards to her inexperience, as mentioned above the Obama camp can either be hands-off on the issue, or risk making their main candidate more vulnerable to similar attacks.

It is interesting that the President and VP debates will look like mirror images of each other. Old-white-man vs. young African American and then Young uppity mother ("latina looking" as Nick put it) vs. Old-white-man.

Comment (0) Read More...

McCain is set to announce his running mate today in Dayton Ohio.

It turns out that Pawlenty and Romney, whom most thought were top contenders are out of the running, so it's a toss-up now, and I think we're in for a big surprise.

I don't know why, but I just have this feelin' that he's going to pick Joe Lieberman. I have to head out now, so I don't have time to explain all my reasons, but if I happen to be right, I will discuss in more detail later..

If I happen to be wrong on the first choice, I guess that he will probably pick a woman. McCain needs to try to recover women voters despite his pro-life stance and could probably try to win over former Hillary supporters still not convinced on Obama.

Just a feelin'...

UPDATE: So it WAS a woman.
McCain Picks Sarah Palin
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/us/politics/29palin.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Comment (0) Read More...

For anyone interested in seeing who is donating money to whom (e.g. celebrities, neighbors...professors), check out:

http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/ 

Here are some interesting listings:

**Michelle Obama (Chicago, IL):
         -$399 to Barack Obama 2008 (...the maximum is $2,300)

**William H. Gates Mr. III (CEO Microsoft Corporation):
         -$2,000 to George W. Bush 2004

**Lorne Michaels (Executive Producer, Saturday Night Live)
        -$2,300 to John McCain 2008

**Clint Eastwood (Actor, Self Employed)
        -$2,300 to John McCain 2008

**John Doyle (Professor, Harvard University)
         -$1,000  to John Kerry 2004

**Harvey Mansfield (Professor, Harvard University)
         -$500 to John McCain 2008

**Howard Georgi (Professor, Physics Instructor, Harvard University)
         -$250 to Barack Obama 2008

**Mehmet Oz (Physician, Columbia University)...for those people who watch Oprah's Health segment (...am I the only one who watched Oprah??)
         -$2,100 to John McCain 2008

**William Clinton (Former President, United States)
        -$2,300 to Barack Obama 2008

**William Clinton (Information Requested, Not Found)
        -$2,300 to John McCain 2008

Comment (0) Read More...

I hate being so negative, but since we’re all mature college students here, who are acutely aware of what it means to plagiarize, I couldn’t help digging up this skeleton from Biden’s past.

It turns out Joe Biden has had an unflattering tendency to copy papers and speeches from other authors without giving proper attribution. For those of us who were following politics back in 1987, you might remember the plagiarism controversy which ended Biden’s first bid for the presidency. Here’s a NY Times article from September 18, 1987 if you want to check it out:

NY TIMES: BIDEN ADMITS TO PLAGIARISM IN SCHOOL BUT SAYS IT WAS NOT "MALEVOLENT"

(Lest I commit the same error, let it be known that the proceeding information was pulled from said NY Times article)

According to the article, the Biden ’88 campaign was called out for plagiarizing large portions of a speech from Neil Kinnock who had been a British Labor Party official at the time.

But that’s not all. The political mudslingers of ’88 dug deeper and discovered he had failed a class and was almost dismissed from Syracuse Law School in 1965 when it was discovered that he had ''used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution'' in one of his papers. In his defense, Biden claimed that he “had simply misunderstood the need to cite sources carefully.” In the end, Biden ended up graduating 76th in a class of 85 (not too shabby compared to McCain being 5^th from last at the Naval Academy). For those interested in his undergraduate performance, his grades weren’t any better (e.g. mostly C’s, D’s, an F in R.O.T.C.  but an A in P.E.)

Not that this should have any effect on the campaign, but for those of us who actually write our papers, if you’re ever feeling down, take pride in the fact that you have greater academic integrity than Joe Biden had at about your age (or, at least, you have superior knowledge of the fact that you should cite your sources).

For any aspiring politicians who plan on plagiarizing a paper or speech in the future, I recommend you look up “Plagiarism” on Wikipedia and look for “Joe Biden.”

Comment (0) Read More...

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

So does this mean that John McCain will not be picking Mitt Romney as his running mate?

Comment (0) Read More...

The excitement around Obama’s choice for running mate has puzzled me since the beginning. So much hype has been heaped on some very unexciting choices. The paparazzi (i.e. the press) was all over Evan Bayh, Tim Kaine and Joe Biden. I’m from Virginia, and I don’t find Tim Kaine to be all that cool (Mark Warner, was cool; Tim Kaine is just a successor). Poor Evan Bayh’s morning breakfast cereal found its way into the morning news cycle.

The Obama camp deserves kudos for the uber exciting announce-via-text-message gimmick. I wonder how many millions of Americans stayed up at last night huddled around their cell phones waiting for the beep from Team Obama (they must have been leaping with joy and pumping their fists when they found out that for the next 67 days their bumpers will be emblazoned with the words “OBAMA-BIDEN 2008”).

…Joe Biden, the distinguished Senator from Delaware (no offense to Delaware). Biden didn’t stir up much excitement in the primaries, and I don’t see how he could stir up any excitement in the general election.

I guess I can buy into the reasoning. Polls indicate that foreign policy is still Obama’s weak spot, and with Russia stealing American made humvees in Georgia, perhaps he should shore up his defenses with an appropriate choice. In the long run, I don’t see how effective this will be to convince Americans they can trust Obama on foreign policy.

Americans don’t vote for the vice president, they vote for the president. The VP selection probably has more importance as a “celebrity factor” (not referring to the celebrity accusations…) in the general campaign, which in Obama’s case is already one of affable charisma. Perhaps the Obama camp chose it was best to play it safe, hence the crop of wholly unexciting choices.

Given the polling data last week indicating that Obama’s lead had fallen to a slim 1.4% points (RCP average as of 8/23/08), largely on account of Hillary supporters continuing to hold back on Obama, I’m surprised Hillary did not get more serious consideration. But then again, lest Obama supercharge an anti-Hillary Republican base to show up at the polls for McCain, that would have been an exciting but risky development.

The names being tossed around for McCain, however, are genuinely intriguing. Relative to Biden these are true political heavyweights (or at names Americans have heard before): Joseph Lieberman, Mitt Romney, Tom Ridge, Bobby Jindal (an Indian-American VP would certainly stir things up)

For John McCain the VP selection will be far more significant and worthy of media attention. John McCain lacks the same sort of charisma (and youth) that Obama has, so the VP has a lot to add to the image of McCain’s campaign. Also for many Americans questioning McCain’s age, his VP selection might actually matter beyond the election.

I wonder what sort of gimmicks the McCain camp has in mind for his announcement.

Comment (0) Read More...