The conventional wisdom has it down pat: A bad economy works against the candidate from the party in power as voters take out their rage and fear on the president's party and back the challenger, just like they did in 1992. But this is not a normal economic slowdown (or recession) and Obama is not a normal challenger. I think the conventional wisdom may be dead wrong.

It is not so much that unemployment is so high (5.7%) or that the economy is in the tank (1% growth this quarter) as that everything seems to be falling apart. Banks are under assault, mortgages are in default, and quasi-government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need bailouts, financial institutions go hat in had to foreign sovereign wealth funds peddling shares of their equity in return for desperately needed cash, the cost of filling a gas tank has tripled. It is not the present circumstances that have voters freaked, it is the threats that seem to loom on the horizon.

And Obama is no ordinary challenger. Not like Bill Clinton, for example. In 1992, from the first moment the campaign started, Clinton billed himself as the expert who could solve the economy's problems. His promise to "focus like a laser beam" on the recession won him big points throughout the campaign. His ten year record as a governor and his chairmanship of the National Governors' Association all bolstered his credentials. But we first met Barack Obama as an advocate of racial and partisan healing and then as an opponent of the war in Iraq. When he tried to morph into an economic expert in time for the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries, voters didn't buy it and voted for Hillary.

So the question that hangs over the election is: Are we prepared to trust a new candidate with almost no experience and no claim to economic expertise in the middle of one of the most threatening economic situations we have ever faced?

Add to this backdrop, Obama's pledge to raise taxes and you have a combustible situation which could frighten American voters en masse. When, amid relative prosperity, Obama said he would restore fairness by raising taxes on the rich, it was well received, particularly in the Democratic primary. Raising the top bracket to 40% seemed a no-brainer. Applying the Social Security tax to more earned income, not just to the first $100,000, seemed like elemental fairness and a good way to save the pension system. Restoring the capital gains tax to 28% appeared to comport with the notion that those whose income comes from investment should pay a tax closer to that paid on earned income (despite the argument that it is after tax money that they invested in the first place).

But now, with massive capital outflows crippling the public and private sectors, doubling the tax on capital seems like a very, very bad idea. And a sharp increase in taxes on the entrepreneurial class seems like a risky proposition.

And, besides, when a candidate starts raising taxes, who knows where he will stop once his in office.

McCain can put economist after economist on the air to prophesy depression if Obama's plan for taxes is enacted. And the public will not be reassured by the Democrat's claims that his tax hikes are only on the rich.

It almost doesn't matter that McCain is not an economist and avows ignorance of what Thomas Carlyle called the "dismal science." We know McCain. We know he will surround himself with some pretty capable people and, above all, we know that he won't raise taxes.

Were these calmer times, with less of a threat from abroad and less economic danger, we might indulge our penchant for change and elect an ingénue in the hope that he will offer something different. We might be more easily captivated by his charisma. But, in these times, we may want to stay with the safer candidate.

By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, Town Hall, August 06, 2008

Barack Obama may be the fresh face in this year's presidential election, but nearly half say they're already tired of hearing about him, a poll says.

With Election Day still three months away, 48 percent said they're hearing too much about the Democratic candidate, according to a poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Just 26 percent said the same about his Republican rival, John McCain.

Obama, the 47-year-old Illinois senator who would become the first black president, has dominated political news coverage much of the year. According to an ongoing Pew study, Obama has appeared in more news stories this year and more people say they have heard more about him than McCain, the longtime Arizona senator who also ran for president in 2000.

Two-thirds of Republicans and about half of independents said they've heard too much about Obama, as did a third of Democrats, a significant number.

At the same time, nearly four in 10 said they've been hearing too little about McCain _ about four times the number who said so about Obama. About half of Republicans, four in 10 independents and even a quarter of Democrats said they've not heard enough about the GOP candidate.

The poll was conducted from Aug. 1-4 and involved telephone interviews with 1,004 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Town Hall, August 06, 2008

Come November, more Americans might cast their ballots on paper than in any other election in U.S. history.

That wasn't supposed to happen. If everything had gone according to the government's $3 billion plan to upgrade voting technology after the hanging-chad fiasco in Florida in 2000, that sentence would read "electronic machines" instead of paper.

Instead, thousands of touchscreen devices are collecting dust in warehouses from California to Florida, where officials worried about hackers and fed up with technical glitches have replaced the equipment with scanners that will read paper ballots.

An Associated Press Election Research survey has found that 57 percent of the nation's registered voters live in counties that will be relying on paper ballots this fall.

The number of registered voters in jurisdictions that will rely mainly on electronic voting machines has fallen from a high of 44 percent during the 2006 midterm elections to 36 percent. (Much of the rest of the electorate consists of voters in New York state, who will be using old-fashioned pull-lever machines.)

In fact, because of growth in the electorate over the past decade, expansion of absentee voting rules, and expectations of high turnout for the contest between Barack Obama and John McCain, some experts are predicting a record number of Americans will cast ballots on paper this year.

"More people will be using computer-read paper ballots than at any other time in the nation's history," said Kimball Brace, head of Election Data Services, a consulting firm. "As you get more registered voters and more people in the pool, it exacerbates this bigger issues of paper."

In 2000, about 97 million registered voters lived in counties that relied on some form of paper ballot, Brace said. That figure is expected to top 100 million this fall, according to the AP data.

The return to paper creates extra stress on an already-strapped election system. Cash-poor counties will have to spend tens of millions of dollars printing ballots. Voters, many of them first-timers, may wind up confused by the ballot formats and frustrated by long lines of people waiting to use the scanners. And counting all the paper could hold up the results of the election.

"After 2000, there was a widespread revulsion about paper - everyone had the mental image of the guy cross-eyed looking at the punch-card ballot," said Doug Chapin, director of the watchdog organization Electionline. "But there's no silver bullet. You're trading one set of problems for another."

All states but Idaho have junked the punch-card ballots that caused so much trouble in Florida. But many plan to use paper ballots that require voters to fill in ovals with a pen. The ballots are then read by digital scanners.

Unlike touchscreens, paper can't malfunction or be hacked into. But it has to be printed, shipped and securely stored before and after Election Day. Counties already paying to warehouse electronic machines will have to buy reams of card stock, print extras in multiple languages, pay for delivery and eventually destroy the unused ballots.

In counties that are on their third system in three presidential contests, officials are retraining workers in how to use the equipment and demonstrate it to voters. Broward County, Fla., which was caught in the punch-card maelstrom in 2000, has produced guides showing voters how to feed their paper ballots into the scanners.

Other counties making the switch, including some of California's largest, are planning to collect ballots at polling places and pay workers overtime to feed them into industrial-size scanners at central offices.

None of that is likely to prevent voters from making other sorts of mistakes, such as filling in the wrong oval or using the wrong color pen.

"A lot of officials are in damage-control mode because they're going to try to limit the problems of switching to paper," said Mike Alvarez, an expert in voting technology at Caltech in Pasadena. "You will have ballots not showing up, being printed wrong, the litany of mistakes voters make with these ballots, and then there's incredible pressure in a crowded polling place for people who are trying to make their decision."

As Brace put it: "Paper is traditionally the device that the public is really good at screwing up."

In 2000, about 61 percent of registered voters lived in counties that relied on some form of paper ballot, whether punch-cards or fill-in-the-oval forms, according to Election Data Systems. Only 13 percent of voters lived in counties that used touchscreens or other e-voting devices; the rest used pull-lever machines.

With fewer than 100 days until Nov. 4, the first concern for many election officials is making sure they will be able to get all their ballots printed between the time the national, state and local slates have been selected and Election Day.

California, the nation's biggest electoral prize, with more than 16 million people registered to vote, abruptly outlawed most electronic machines last summer, creating a potential crunch in the highly specialized ballot-printing industry. San Diego contracted with a Washington state company after local businesses said they couldn't produce the 3.5 million extra ballots in the two-month window.

Many paper ballots may wind up in the shredder.

Last week, Ohio's secretary of state ordered all 53 counties using electronic machines to print paper ballots to accommodate voters in November who opt out of e-voting. A similar order during the primary resulted in the pulping of more than a million unused ballots after only 14,484 voters asked for them.




By ALLISON HOFFMAN, August 06, 2008

THE RACE: The presidential race nationally

THE NUMBERS (CBS News)

Barack Obama, 45 percent

John McCain, 39 percent

___

OF INTEREST:

Obama's lead in the CBS News poll has not changed since June. Combining undecided voters with those who favor one candidate but say they may switch, about four in 10 have not made a final decision. Among the likeliest to be undecided are supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton, 24 percent, and women, 17 percent. McCain now is viewed as more believable than Obama: 49 percent say he says what he believes, compared to 42 percent for Obama. In May, just over half said each was believable. Fifty-three percent of voters say they are paying a lot of attention to the campaign - a level not surpassed during the 2004 campaign until October of that year. Three-quarters want the next president to pay more attention to domestic rather than foreign policy issues.

___

The CBS News poll was conducted from July 31-Aug. 5 and included interviews with 906 registered voters. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The Associated Press, August 06, 2008

To understand why Barack Obama and John McCain are emphasizing solutions to the country's energy woes and have scrambled to change their positions, look no further than the voters' distress over $4-a-gallon gasoline and its wide ripple effect.

The presidential candidates' sparring over energy peaked this week as each sought to capitalize on a topic that touches every voter and provides a way to discuss the declining economy at home, national security threats abroad and the changing climate worldwide.

"Sen. McCain's energy plan reads like an early Christmas list for oil and gas lobbyists," Obama charged Wednesday, a day after accusing the GOP of misstating his proposals. He is using the issue to paint the four-term Arizona senator as a Washington insider beholden to special interests while trying to strike a balance on the environment vs. exploration debate that divides Democrats.

Conversely, McCain is leading a Republican Party largely unified in support of oil and gas drilling off U.S. coastlines and is trying to use energy to cut the Democrat's edge in the polls on economic issues. He dubbed Obama "Dr. No" because of his opposition to expanded nuclear power and unlimited offshore drilling. Said McCain on Wednesday: "We need an 'all of the above' plan."

This year energy policies resonate with voters of all political stripes, as high gasoline prices inflate the cost of food, transportation and other necessities. The country's dependence on foreign oil raises national security concerns as U.S. troops fights wars in the oil-rich Middle East. And, the public's concern over global climate change has grown in recent years along with calls for alternative energy sources to curb planet-warming greenhouse gases.

"Almost everyone wants this problem solved," said Andrew Kohut, director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. "The candidates are responding to the fact that the public is hurting and crying for relief."

Interviews and surveys bear that out.

"We can help our family less and less" because high gas costs are "pretty bad" and crunching the family's budget, said Renee Wren, a 50-year-old Riverview, Fla., homemaker with three grown children who are semi-dependent and two grandchildren.

In St. Louis, Carla Fehribach, a 65-year-old airline customer service agent, is shopping and going out less because gas prices have strained her budget. She said: "I don't do things I would normally do right now."

Like many others, Fehribach and Wren say energy proposals will help them determine their vote. Both are leaning toward Obama now.

An ongoing AP-Yahoo News poll that began in November shows that gas prices have risen steadily to near the top of voters' concerns; the issue now is second only to the economy. A whopping 87 percent surveyed now say gas prices are at least a very important issue to them personally, while roughly the same amount as before the primaries - 62 percent - say the environment is at least a very important issue.

Also, a Pew Research Center poll in June found growing support for more energy exploration. Roughly the same percentage of people said drilling and other exploration should be the top priority as said energy conservation should get the most attention. A few months earlier, far more people favored conservation than exploration.

Said Kohut: "Politically, I think it's the only domestic, economically leaning issue where the Republicans have a slight opportunity - even advantage - because of the trend in support for even greater exploration."

More than half of those in a USA Today/Gallup Poll in late July said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who favored easing restrictions on offshore drilling, while one third said they'd be likelier to oppose that candidate. Even more - nearly seven in 10 - said they'd be likelier to support a candidate who favored tax breaks for energy conservation, raising mileage requirements for vehicles, and increasing federal research on alternative energy.

GOP efforts may be swaying some undecided voters.

"I would have to lean more toward McCain with this offshore drilling," said Gene Zupkofska, 71, a retiree in Rockland, Mass. In Amarillo, Texas, Terry Hearn, too, cited McCain's drilling position on that as a primary reason he's seriously considering the Republican over the Democrat. Said Hearn, age 51: "They need to do something" to try to lower gas prices.

McCain reversed his opposition to more offshore drilling in June and endorsed lifting a federal moratorium to allow individual states to decide whether to drill in waters off their coasts. Thereafter, President Bush backed the move and Republicans in Congress beat the drilling drum.

Obama was pulled in two directions as liberal Democrats continued to oppose drilling because of environmental concerns while other Democrats revised their longtime positions to respond to voters' distress.

Over the last week, Obama dropped his longtime opposition to offshore drilling and to using the nation's oil stockpile: He said he'd be willing to support limited offshore drilling if that's what it takes to enact a comprehensive energy policy and proposed releasing 70 million barrels from the nation's 707-million-barrel strategic oil reserve to help lower pump prices.

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press, August 07, 2008

The diverse culture of the nation's 50th state - and the island nature of Hawaii itself - shaped Barack Obama's view of the world and the politics he would practice.

Those who knew him as a child say that view and those politics click with the themes of his Democratic presidential campaign. For Obama, though, Hawaii is even more personal, the place where he picked up basketball and formed his racial identity.

"If you grow up here, where we have no majority and there's a complete ethnic mix, people have learned how to get along with others who look different and are from different places," said longtime family friend Georgia McCauley.

"In Hawaii, because we have a confined space in terms of being an island state, we perhaps have to learn how to cooperate and compromise more," McCauley said. "We learn how to listen to each other and work on things in a positive manner."

This weekend, Obama planned to return to the island where he spent his childhood as a pudgy kid called Barry who lived in a modest apartment with his grandparents. He planned to visit his maternal grandmother and sister for a few days of vacation before the Democratic National Convention in Denver at month's end.

Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to a white mother and a black father who had met in Russian class at the University of Hawaii. He was an island boy most of his first 18 years. His mother's charitable work, his multiethnic friends and the economic gap between his family and his classmates at the island's most prestigious private school - he attended on scholarship - helped forge Obama before he left for college on the mainland.

His father, also named Barack Obama, was a scholarship student from Kenya. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was an 18-year-old from Kansas who went on to become an anthropologist and helped set up loans for poor people to start businesses in Indonesia.

Their marriage didn't last long. When Barry was 6, he moved to Indonesia, the homeland of his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, another university student his mother met in Hawaii. Obama was 9 when his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, was born. She now teaches history in a private girls high school in Honolulu.

Obama's mother sent him back to the islands after four years in Indonesia to live with her parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. His grandfather was a furniture salesman and his grandmother was Bank of Hawaii's first female bank vice president.

Obama entered the fifth grade at the elite Punahou School, where he was a minority among minorities, an out-of-place boy in a school of the privileged. He enjoyed the lifestyle of an island teen, playing basketball, body surfing and spear-fishing, and he worked at a burger outlet and served on the school literary magazine's editorial board.

Obama has recounted numerous instances when he felt like an outsider, as when a seventh grader called him a "coon" and the parents of a white girl objected to her going to the prom with him. The islands' roughly 49,000 blacks account for less than 4 percent of the population.

"Hawaii's spirit of tolerance might not have been perfect or complete. But it was - and is - real," Obama wrote in a 1999 essay for the Punahou alumni magazine. "The opportunity that Hawaii offered - to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect - became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."

He left the islands for Occidental College in Los Angeles, then graduated from Columbia University before taking a church-based community organizing job in Chicago and moving on to Harvard Law School. He returned to Illinois as a civil rights lawyer. When he won the U.S. Senate race in 2004, Hawaii Democrats adopted Obama as the state's "third senator." He continued to make regular visits to be with family and friends, the last in December 2006, as Democrats were urging him to seek the presidency.

"He himself is a child of diversity, and Hawaii gave him that opportunity," said Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, who was friends with Obama's family and remembers him as a boy. "He believes diversity defines you, rather than divides you. That's the central message of change he's bringing. It's nothing to be afraid of."

By MARK NIESSE, Town Hall, August 07, 2008

Republican presidential candidate John McCain is taking up the issue of possible job losses due to the closure of a DHL shipping site in Ohio, the result of a corporate merger aided by his campaign manager during his work as a lobbyist.

In 2003, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis lobbied Congress to accept a proposal by German-owned DHL to buy Airborne Express, which kept its domestic hub in Wilmington in southwest Ohio.

In announcing a restructuring plan in May, DHL said it planned to hire United Parcel Service to move some of its air packages, sending them through an airport in Louisville, Ky., and putting the Wilmington Air Park out of business. Some 8,000 jobs could be at stake, Wilmington officials estimate.

Davis took a leave of absence from his lobbying practice to work for McCain, a self-styled reformer who asked his campaign staff to disclose all previous lobbying ties and make certain they were no longer registered as lobbyists or foreign agents.

McCain on Thursday was to discuss DHL's plans with local officials and others affected by the potential job losses. The economy and job losses are important issues in Ohio, a critical swing state that gave President Bush the electoral votes needed for re-election in 2004.

McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers said Wednesday that Davis had not worked with DHL since 2005, long before DHL announced plans to move its work out of Wilmington. The companies merged in 2003.

"At the time of the merger, no one anticipated an impact on jobs in Wilmington," Rogers said.

McCain, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, had a role in the deal too. He urged then-Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens to abandon proposed legislation that would have prohibited foreign-owned carriers from flying U.S. military equipment or troops, which Airborne Express said was aimed at torpedoing its merger with DHL.

Rogers said McCain opposed the bill because it could have hurt the military's airlift capabilities in a time of war.

The DHL-Airborne deal ultimately went through, despite opposition from competitors UPS and FedEx, which argued that it would violate a ban on foreign control of domestic airlines. DHL is the U.S.-based shipping unit of German postal service Deutsche Post AG.

On Wednesday, Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and supporter of presidential hopeful Barack Obama, called on McCain and Davis to use their past ties to DHL to urge the company not to move jobs out of Wilmington.

"John McCain through this whole thing has said zero about his connection to DHL," Brown said. "We need their help. I'm accusing them of indifference."

A task force of local and federal elected officials as well as business and labor leaders has been working to save the jobs.

"This is worthy of every presidential candidate's attention," Wilmington Mayor David Raizk said. "Whether it's a vote-changing issue or not, I think it might be a little too early to tell. It's a matter of making sure our situation here stays on the front burner."

During a campaign visit last month, Obama discussed the situation with Raizk and other officials and pledged help if elected.

In a statement Wednesday, Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich called the situation "one of the worst job catastrophes that any community in this nation is facing" and said the involvement of both McCain and Obama indicated it merited global attention.

"We are going to need some involvement by the German government," Voinovich said.

DHL declined to comment.

Ohio is a general election battleground state, and rural southwest Ohio, where Wilmington is located, is a Republican stronghold. In 2004, Clinton County - which includes Wilmington - voted for Bush over Democrat John Kerry by more than 2-to-1, even though Bush narrowly won the state.

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press, August 07, 2008