A Life Reset

With the calling of the Oregon seat for Jeff Merkley, the Democratic Party looks set for 55 seats in the United States Senate. Along with the two independent seats including Joe Lieberman, that puts the Democratic caucus at 57 seats. All of the seats that were considered to be cinches, Democrats won while the marginal pickups like Minnesota stayed with the incumbent but could potentially switch pending recounts or re-votes. 60 seats to get to that filibuster proof majority was considered to be a long shot in any event but it can be quite attainable in 2010.

Senate seats that are up for election in 2010 are an interesting set of seats. Currently divided between 19 Republicans and 14 Democratic seats, there are two reasons why we have may have numerous pickup opportunities that year.

First of all, 2004, the year which these seats were up for election, was a presidential election year which means a higher turnout for elections but also it was a year where the nation was still feeling anxious about national security and therefore gravitated towards the Republicans who picked up a net of 4 seats. 2010 is a mid-term year which means lower turnout at the polls for many states and unless the situation changes by that year, national security issues may not be that important on the minds of voters.

A much more significant development for that year is the potential for mass retirements by many of the senators. here is a list of Senators who will be 73 years or more by that year:

• Daniel Inouye of Hawaii (D) – 86
• Barbara Mikulski of Maryland (D) – 73
• Richard Shelby of Alabama (R) – 76
• John McCain of Arizona (R) – 74
• Chuck Grassley of Iowa (R) – 77
• Jim Bunning of Kentucky (R) – 79
• Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania (R) – 80
• Bob Bennett of Utah (R) – 80
• George Voinovich of Ohio (R) – 74

That is a high portion of that Senate class, about 25%. Of course, many of them may continue on in the Senate and may try to approach Byrd or Thurmond in their ages as members of the Senate. Additionally, several are in states that despite this year’s blue wave are just not going to turn blue like Utah.

There is one declared retiree so far: Sam Brownback of Kansas (R). Chris Dodd is receiving some speculation that he may retire at the end of his term. Much of his future is tied to seeing how the financial crisis is resolved as he has Senate chairman oversight over the financial services industry.

Florida (Mel Martinez), North Carolina (Richard Burr) and New Hampshire (Judd Gregg) are states that could flip their Senators as these are blue states or at least purple states.

Many of the Democratic senators up for election that year like Barbara Boxer of California and Evan Bayh of Indiana look pretty solid.

So with a wave of potential retirements and that Republicans are defending more seats than Democrats are for that year, there is a strong possibility that 3-4 more seats can be picked up by Democrats that year to attain that filibuster -proof majority of 60. Now in reality getting 60 seats to prevent filibusters is something that could be accomplished this year with moderate Republicans like Arlen Specter or Olympia Snowe so in conjunction with the Democratic caucus so to reach that number on strictly Democrats is symbolic. Even then there are Democratic senators who may not always vote the party line on bills so as always, there always must be deals to get the filibuster-proof majority. But as symbol of where the power lays in the US Senate, getting 60 seats is as good as it gets.

So it is the day after the election of Barack Obama. As you may expect, it is all that anyone is talking about today. It is a seminal event in so many ways not which the least being a change from the eight years of the Bush administration and the philosophies that have guided this nation.

It was a long night for me last night though not because of the results themselves. When Pennsylvania was called shortly its polls were closed and the trends were favorable to Obama in such states like Indiana and Florida, I knew then it was virtually a done deal. The call at 11:00pm when the west coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California closed their polls was a mere formality but one that had to be followed as it was those states that caused him to reach the threshold of 270 electoral votes. Still, it was nice to seeing such stalwart Republican states like Virginia come over to the Democratic side of the vote tally.

As the vote totals kept coming in, I hit all of my commentary sites on the Internet for additional results, and analysis. I brought my Mac out to the kitchen so i could use the computer while watching the networks. As for the networks, I stuck closely to my chosen ensemble of MSNBC, NBC and CNN. I had been using them for the course of this entire election season and I was not going to change now.

This morning I followed up on some of the outstanding races to be called when I finally turned in for th night. North Carolina is a state that still is yet to be called for Obama even with his 12,000 vote lead as there are many votes, absentee and provisional ballots, to be allocated but the total number remains less than Obama’s lead.

As for the rest of the races, Democrats have expanded on their leads in the Senate and Congress from the 2006 elections. Not as sweeping as expected but still quite decisive. Enough to give Democrats a mandate of sorts to enact some significant changes in how things are now done in this country.

Here in North Carolina, Kay Hagen decisively defeated Elizabeth Dole. Dole’s near invisibility in this state since she was elected along with her age and pro-Bush policies put in her in a bad spot but the clincher was the ad she ran accusing Hagan of being an atheist when Hagan was a prominent member in her church. For the governor’s race, Bev Perdue, Democrat, won over Pat McCory. At the state level, this is a solid conservative Democratic state and it does not seem that is going to change anytime soon.

So what now?

It is go to be a let down for me now as so much of my attention for the past year has been wrapped up in the presidential campaigns. Now that is over, I have to return to my mundane life and deal with the problems of making it through the days.

But I feel pretty good right now. Times are a changing and Barack Obama will see the country through a most difficult time. Choices are not going to be easy and we all will be called upon to make sacrifices. But I have hope that things will work out for the best. Just need some time to set things right.

Reviewing the various news shows this weekend, most of them were in some combination of predicting the results on November 4th and a retrospective of the presidential campaign over the past year or two.

Nearly uniformly, most commentators are predicting an Obama win on election day. Question is whether to what degree will his election be decisive. Most of the predictions fall around the 320 electoral votes range. The caveat in that prediction is that many of the electoral votes will come from states that he will eked out a narrow win like in North Carolina and Florida.

It is hard to say what the final day of electioneering will cause the results to change in any meaningful way. Same too as for any significant event that will change the course of the election narrative. There will not be enough time for the electorate to process the information and rethink their election choice. As for that block of undecided voters out there, about 6% of the electorate, the profile of these voters is that they are mostly 2004 George Bush voters. So for these voters, if Obama manages to keep it in a roughly even split, say 60% McCain 40% Obama, Obama should come out well in the end.

I think when it is all said and done, come Wednesday morning, everyone will be just plain exhausted and not just on television. I think the whole population is also exhausted to a degree with the election but not in the sense that they had enough with the election. Rather, it is that people have been so invested in this election as no other in recent history. There is a sense for some that it does not end because so much of their lives for the past 10 months have been wrapped up in the election whether directly through volunteering or contributing or just passively through following the news and opinion makers.

I think much of the involvement of the electorate has been amplified through the maturity of communication tools like the Internet and cellphones. The Internet, through partisan blogs and websites, has been used to drive messages, provide news and context and provide communities on-line for like-minded people. As a communication tool, the Internet has finally reached a point that it can compete directly with mainstream media outlets whatever they may be. Where in elections past we just get a very filtered version of the news, now we can get as many polls we can handle and also whatever news comes out of the campaign, we will know about it in hours. In a sense we are in the world of election information overload.

As for me, I would not know what to do with my life after November 4th. My time these days is now constantly searching the web for new information from the campaigns and read as many pundits and commentators as I can possibly read. All of that will come to an end soon after the election. No doubt there will be several days of post-mortem analysis of the election on who did what right and what they did wrong to sustain my interest. But I feel it will all essentially come to a conclusion of sorts by the weekend. Then I will be in some of political withdrawal for a few weeks.

After that, life will take its normal course. I think the family will appreciate getting their father/husband back. It is a glorious autumn here in North Carolina so I will take a few days off after Tuesday and enjoy it.

Over the next few months, I will keep tabs on the transition process and see how the government will position itself to act on the policies it had put forth during the course of the election. Bu as for me, I will disengage myself from politics for awhile and focus on more in getting in shape for the terrible recession that I expect for the first six months of the year. Life goes on but I do have hope.

How soon will the networks and other media call the Presidential election? If certain states are considered to be key to either of the two candidate’s chance of victory for the day, it is conceivable that we may know the result as early as 7:30pm EST.

Why is this so?

Using the Greenpapers.com site and its collection of polling time closures as a guide, we find that many of the states that are now considered to be battleground states will be closing early. This include the following:

Closing at 7:00pm EST:

• Indiana (CST part of the state closes at this time while the EST time closes at 6pm)
• Kentucky (CST part of the state closes at this time while the EST time closes at 6pm)
• Florida
• Georgia
• South Carolina
• Vermont
• Virginia

Closing at 7:30pm

• Ohio
• West Virginia

Now poll closures do not mean that the results will be known right away. Also, the nominal poll closing time in some areas may be extended because of line-ups at polling states. Finally, networks are loathe to call any states prematurely until a certain percentage of votes come in from monitored districts considered to be bellwether districts for the state. When those results confirm whatever exit polls they have on hand, then they will call the state for the candidate.

Having said that, four of those states (Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Florida) were red Republican states in the past two elections and if we know that at least one of them have flipped to Barack Obama, then it is pretty good chance that the night will be his.

Indeed, the earlier that one of those states is called with something like a significant margin of polls, the better Obama’s chances. This is because certain states are considered to be in the bag for either candidate. States like New York or Wyoming will be called for the candidates as soon as the polls close in those states.

Watch for states like Georgia which are expected to go for McCain. If the margin becomes very close and a winner is not declared early on, that will mean that Obama’s support will be considered to be very broad.

In any case, by the time the Pacific states close their polls at 11:00pm, we should have a good time how the voting goes for the election.

I wrote a prior post on the local outlook of the upcoming election and I received some feedback on the current state of the congressional race in District 5 between Virginia Foxx and Roy Carter. Apparently the race is tighter than most people expect it to be.

Perhaps it is. There is some polling to suggest that Foxx’s lead in the race is not insurmountable if she has one at all. Thing is though I hardly see any presence of Carter in the area where I live. He has one commercial (The Coach) that gets intermittent play locally. Signage seems predominantly Foxx; On my trip to the mountains, 90% of the signs especially around Boone appear to be Foxx’s.

As for Foxx herself, she seems to be keeping a low profile. I have not seen any rallies by her and she has one ad running occasionally that is re-run from two years ago. I think her most vigourous campaign was when she had to compete against other Republicans in their primary four years ago to replace Richard Burr.

Still, it would be nice to see her go. Her type of conservatism which runs to the far right seems to be out of place with the transformation of North Carolina into a swing state. If she says something as outrageous as Michelle Bachmann did in dividing the country into pro-America and anti-America parts, then Carter could see a bump in contributions to be competitive. As it is, there are higher priority congressional seats that the Democratic party is trying to win in this election cycle so it is unlikely that the party will send significant funds his way especially this late in the campaign.

Still, it would be nice if he had the money to run advertising such as this one, a true indictment of who Foxx really is:

Via a circuitous route on my Internet surfing, I came across an article written by William Galston at the Democratic Strategist. In the article, he outlines a way for Barack Obama to set the tone for the remainder of his campaign.
An Open Letter From William Galston

The article is lengthy and I will not repeat it verbatim but outline the points he made as advice to Obama to win the campaign:

1. Offer a coherent account of what has gone wrong with the economy
2. Offer a focused, parsimonious list of remedies for the economic ills you cite
3. Draw crisp, punchy contrasts between your plans and McCain’s
4. Make the stump speech no more than 15 minutes long
5. Provide coordination between an economic message and the rest of your campaign

What Galston repeatedly says in the article is that even though McCain is no where near the intellectual that Obama is, by distilling his message, fraudulent it may be, by harping on a few themes in a simple fashion, he is getting his message across better than Obama is.

There may be some truth to that. Many of us undoubtedly hear or read the transcript thereof of the speech Obama gave today in Colorado outlining his take on the situation facing the economy. He showed his understanding of the situation and the challenges it poses but also prescribing the solutions needed to fix it.

In terms of governance, Obama demonstrates his unmatched qualifications as compared to McCain. But to govern, he first has to win the campaign.

There are times I wish that Obama stays on a theme for more than one day. It seems that whenever the campaign tries something out in terms of messaging it and it starts to register it is confronted with a change in the campaign environment making it move onto to the next message. Part of that is because of pressure from the media and supporters to respond as quickly as possible. There are some things I wish they could sustain for longer periods like the McCain “I do not how many houses I have” gaffe which reflects the disconnect McCain has for the real economy. For media coverage, it last for just two days which is the usual lifespan of such things but what irritates me about it is that it was just thrown away and never incorporated in the larger picture that needs to be revealed about McCain in terms of his character and what he stands for.

The Sarah Palin wave is starting to recede now and the national polls are tightening now and moving in Obama’s favor. This was not unexpected. Question is whether Obama can create enough momentum to open up a clear lead on McCain.

Looking at Galston’s prescription for success, there was little harping on the emotion part. On Hardball, this evening, Chris Matthews played a bit of the speech today for Governor Richardson and Matthews asked where is the passion? There has been a lot of discussion on that topic in the past few weeks but Galston does not go there but he emphasizes that there must be a clarity in Obama’s message. Not necessarily dumb it down but make it succinct enough that a few phrases or moments will resonate with those who hear it.

This approach requires relentless focusing on the economy as the issue to the exclusion of everything else including Sarah Palin. In essence it is the old “It’s the economy, stupid” phrase from the Clinton campaign of which Galston was a part of in 1992.

While political junkies and pundits can relish the details of an Obama speech, most people do not have the time to do so. The soundbite era is truly alive and well but Obama’s message does not need to be reduce to that extent. Rather, just stay on message, repeat it often, keep it short so that when people are in the voting booth on election day but with their thoughts focused on their own personal financial situation, it will be Obama’s message that they will remember as the one that gives them hope that things will turn out better.

It is now part of the accepted thinking that the selection of Sarah Palin has been a momentous game changer for this election. Where the crowds were small and lackluster for McCain, now they are out in number and enthusiasm.

Before despairing, we should also recognize that Obama has had his own fair share of game changing moments. The first one was the endorsement of Ted Kennedy back in January. Kennedy’s endorsement gave Obama’s the legitimacy of the establishment Democratic Party and made old time liberals more comfortable with Kennedy.

The next big game changer moment was the wins especially in the caucus states on Super Tuesday in early February. By staying close to Hilary Clinton in delegate but with a financial reserves she could not match, he was able to win the next set of primaries and caucuses without too much opposition providing momentum for the rest of the campaign.

A third game changing moment was the endorsement of John Edwards after the West Virgina primary. By coming out with that endorsement, whatever media coverage that Clinton hope to sustain after her victory was gone as the media talked nothing but the endorsement and what it meant for the Obama campaign.

So here we are just 8 weeks out from election day. The media is in a frenzy about the McCain-Palin ticket (or is it the Palin-McCain ticket?). All they talked about is that and Obama/Biden are lucky to get any attention at all. Whatever critical insight the media had in early part of last week, is pretty much gone now in terms of a more fawning approach akin to Extra or Entertainment Tonight.

The conversation needs to change and must be soon or there will not be enough time to move the media narrative of the campaign.

Question is though, what game changing opportunities exist for Obama? It has to be significant to get everyone’s attention so it has to meaningful. Getting the endorsement of a minor non-Democratic person will not do.

So what is the best game changing opportunity exists that Obama has control over?

There are four possible game changing events:

1. Major endorsement by a non-Democratic figure like Colin Powell or Chuck Hagel. An endorsement like this especially from a Republican would definitely make people take notice but are there any one of any particular statuture who could make a dramatic difference. I do not think so. Powell or Hagel will definitely make the pundits talk about it for a day or two but essentially all it does is change the conversation for a day or two without any lasting effect. There is also the fact that such endorsements bring little in terms of any political base. Perhaps someone like Michael Huckabee would have a greater impact but such people are firmly in McCain’s camp now.
2. Hillary Clinton replaces Joe Biden as Vice President nominee. Such an event would definitely will cause a stir for a long while but would it be a positive one? The selection of Palin seems to have galvanise many of Clinton’s supporters to go to Obama now as it is apparent that the choosing of Palin to bring Clinton supporters strictly on the basis of gender is failing. So it unlikely that choosing Clinton now will bring any more support to Obama. What a choice like that does is make the Obama camp look defensive and weak, that it needed Clinton to get them the presidency. It would reflect badly on the integrity of Obama in that he would thrown over his personal choice as VP for expedient’s sake. As it is though, there are no other VP picks now that would have an impact like Clinton.
3. Obama announces a major policy initiative like Universal Healthcare. This election is about change and hope for the future. Healthcare is increasingly important in the lives of everyone these days and while healthcare is an important plank of the Obama campaign, it really never has gain a point of prominence. Many elections have been decided in the past based on simple slogans that distill the complexities of policy initiatives. A forty page document about healthcare on a website will not capture the hearts and minds of ordinary voters. But a slogan such as Healthcare for Everyone or All troops out of Iraq by 2010 reinforced constantly on the stump and in advertising may sway public opinion more than any policy document.
4. Obama crushes McCain in the debates. From what I have heard fom media reports and on the interview Obama had with Keith Olbermann, it seems that the Obama camp is putting more emphasis on the upcoming debates to help build a lead and sustain a lead straight to the election day. It is a sound policy on the face of it. Three debates will have more viewers and decide more minds than any news event or advertising campaign. The problem, though, is that Obama has repeatedly shown himself in group debates and one on one debates with Hillary Clinton during the primary campaign as a fair debater at best. A haltingly delivery, the thinking before saying approach while getting the approval of pundits and commentators, comes across to the television audience as someone not sure of himself and perhaps indecisive. Against a man who made strength of character as the centerpiece of his personal history, it may not be the best approach regardless of how many errors, lies or gaffes McCain will commit in the course of the debate. Debate requires an ability to repartee quickly and to frame the answer to highlight your best qualities or your opponents worse ones. The second debate is in the town hall format, a supposed strength of McCain’s. If somehow, Obama does average in the debates then it makes his job harder to open a lead on McCain.

Much to take away from Sarah Palin’s speech the other night but one thing I like to touch upon which has been the subject of much commentary is the comment about community organisers which was also mentioned by Rudy Guilani in his speech preceding hers.

From the take from the speech and the commentary that followed, it appeared that the whole concept of community organization is some radical liberal program which should be stamped out at the first chance the Republicans get in returning to the White House. But as we all know, community organizers are part of the non-governmental organizations that step into communities when no one else will.

We know of Barack Obama’s background as a community organizer and it is featured in his advertising and his speeches. We also know that some of the resistance to him in polling comes from various blue collar groups. Perhaps, this criticism provides an opening for the Obama camp in terms of new advertising in a way as an outreach to those groups. To show other community organizers making a difference in towns across America; ordinary people making an extra-ordinary difference in the lives in others.

For example, feature a true community organizer like this:

Jane: My name is Jane Wilcox of Anywhere USA and I am a community organizer and a single mother of two.

[feature scenes of Jane working in her role]
VO: My life is dedicated to my community in making a difference doing [counseling, teaching, support]. When I hear Republicans like Rudy Guiliani and Sarah Palin knocking community organizations down, I wonder if they know what it is like in the Real America where people are struggling to find jobs and keep their homes. It is a tough job but Barack Obama knows what it is like working to improve the lives of his fellow Americans and that is why I am supporting him.

There is much to work with from those critical and truthfully vicious speeches from Republicans as a counter attack but I think a approach like this will help reinforce the difference between Democrats, who build people up, and Republicans who only seek to tear people down.