Obama screwed up

It is refreshing to hear President Obama saying "I screwed up", in distinct contrast to the Bush 'caught in headlights' look which famously greeted the question "What has been your biggest mistake?"

How to win an election

I got use to receiving emails from David Plouffe last year. He was Obama's campaign director and I put myself on the campaign distribution list. It wasn't until I read this piece in Esquire that I realised what a key part of Obama's victory Plouffe was. He's an election managerial dynamo. The Esquire article is a must for anyone who wants to understand how Obama won. Take this little example of Plouffe's modus operandi:

It was Plouffe (rhymes with bluff) who gathered the president's unprecedented thirteen-million-name contact list, which has grown into a fulsome pulsing beast, and it is Plouffe who now owns it and keeps it under lock and key. Plouffe sent those thirteen million people an e-mail in mid-November and they replied, Yes, I still want to be involved, and yes, David Plouffe, I'll have house parties when you tell me to. Here is who I am socioeconomically and socially. I am boxers; my next-door neighbor is briefs. Now the president has instructed him to make that list a new lever of government.
No president has ever entered office with this much information. The closest thing to it, Begala says, were direct-mail lists like Ronald Reagan's back in 1980. But, he says, "it's a different thing than Reagan writing, 'Send me thirty-five bucks if you want to fight the Commies.' " This list is granular. And it is flexible and transferable to myriad media outlets — even those not yet invented. Begala believes it could potentially "revolutionize progressive politics."

....as campaign manager of Obama for America in early 2007, Plouffe was charged with building an underdog campaign for president from virtually nothing — no money, one office, five staff members, and a few dreams from one's father. The main thing he knew was that there were no shortcuts. His focus was on 270, and every decision had to flow from there. You had to get the job done. He told Obama the same thing he told everyone who worked for him: You have to be all in. The president asked the manager, Are there shortcuts? And the manager said, No. You get to work, and you stay there.

...To get the numbers right, Plouffe broke down the country into sixteen separate campaigns — a different strategy for each battleground state — and gave each its own ground crew and press office. His desk back in Chicago was the control center. On the walls there were electoral maps in reds, blues, deeper blues. But the helm and the center was the desk, a wood-laminate piece, neat and lap-topped and bolted to the floor. Every morning he sat at that desk with a large to-do list that he parsed out to the to-doers. He watched the scroll of e-mails — he says it was like a volcano, exploding in bold at the top.

"We'd get the clips overnight, and I'd read them all. Hundreds of them. That's basically what it was like. Wake up, reach for your BlackBerry, the way guys used to reach for their packs of cigarettes." He read everything and got on a call, then another, and another and another. A rolling two-year conference call. He looks tired when he tells you.

Because he came from a place where hard workers could barely afford the twenty-five-dollar donations they pushed across the hay bale, he immediately acquired the reputation of budget miser. There was an Axelrodism that claimed that if you went to the bathroom, pulled out a paper towel, then went to pull out a second one, it would actually be a note that said, "See Plouffe."

To find the voters and build a swarm of volunteers to help, he hired twenty-seven-year-old Joe Rospars and the rest of the former Howard Dean Web guys — now Blue State Digital — and made the most confident investment that a political campaign has ever made in the Internet. He brought them up from the basements and into top-line meetings. He told them, We have to beat Clinton. She has the establishment support, she has this huge system of money-raisers, so we must create an alternative network.

Beside the gray walls and atop the gray pattern carpets, they enacted Plouffe's vision. These were futuristic people building small revolutions in a humdrum place. They took the now-comparatively primitive Web-roots platform that Dean — along with his manager, Joe Trippi, and Web guru, Nicco Mele — first unearthed in 2003 and extended it. There were more tools now. YouTube. Twitter. More potential inputs. They used them all and invented new ones.
Obama owned the Web because Plouffe believed in a few smart kids and let them go a little nuts. But the meticulous managerial thing, according to the Blue State Digital guys, is that Plouffe still held those nuts in the palm of his careful hand.

...You talk to anyone who heard of David Plouffe before Election Day, and mostly it was because they got a few hundred e-mails from him, and they liked to see it as a personal thing. On e-mail, he was chatty. Conversationally, he asked for money. The college kid who wired ten bucks of twelve-pack cash to Plouffe felt like he was saving the country with a few fast keystrokes and Dad's AmEx.

And yet Plouffe insists that to focus too much on the netroots is to overlook the pure fieldwork, which was essential to winning. "You can't be too reliant on just technology in politics . . . knocking and phone calls is still the bread and butter." He smiles. He likes the notion. It's how he started. "It'll be a long time before those new apps replace the old ones."

The old application was a line of staffers and volunteers stretching down the fluorescent hall of Obama headquarters, past the great and daily newspaper wall in communications and out across America — each eager college kid, grandmother, and housewife, standing in their campaign T-shirt waiting for a "love note from David Plouffe," in their words, so they might deploy their democratic energy. He drew the most passionate, thousands of them, into two- or three-day Camp Obama training sessions. Each team leader had his own job: You are responsible for finding twenty volunteers. You: fifty, a hundred, two hundred voters. Call them. Write the plan and then we're going to track you.

Teams would report back with stats and the field directors would chart the cumulative info and they would know whether their "supervolunteers" were hitting their targets. Plouffe, back at his desk, sat at the top of the pyramid, checking the checkers, glancing at the North Star on his wall, believing deeply in the prize, in the red, white, and blue of mostly blue.
"Do you realize that more than half those volunteers had never been involved in politics before?" David Plouffe is wide-eyed now, and leaning in. "More than half." He emphasizes the final word to let the incredulity settle. And then there is a moment — it's almost imperceptible, and you almost wish you hadn't noticed, because there is something agonizing about a private man showing public emotion. But it happens. His eyes tear up. The soft-spoken, indefatigable general is talking about his troops and his eyes glisten. Iowa, the grassroots effort, he says, rivaled election night. Then quickly he shakes the chaff from his hair and recomposes. Safely, he returns to his numbers.

This is the passion Plouffe rarely shows. But from top-floor, eventful offices, people will gush about it. The pep talks, for example. "They would, at the end, make you wanna go run off a cliff with the guy. He mixed a very hard edge with a sort of, I'm imagining Barack Obama on Capitol Hill as the next leader . . . a sort of inspirational rhetoric," says twenty-seven-year-old speechwriter Jon Favreau. It was a centaur blend, the gruff, focused mug of the football coach and the graceful neck and confident purr of the golden orator. The night they lost New Hampshire, Plouffe said to get everyone across the country on the phone. In his uneventful and sure voice, he promised that he'd never been more confident and proud of everyone, and he ended it by saying: "Let's go win this fucking thing."

As much as he likes to inspire, he loves to win. When Plouffe plays baseball, he is always the pitcher. Like Roger Clemens, he is turned on by the hectic pulse of unmanageable jurisdiction, the notion of controlling a field with runners on every base. The calm during the storm. But the calm is only on the outside. There is a deeper sense of competition and passion, and Plouffe takes it and he uses it, but he doesn't show it, not even after the win.

Obama saw this in the lead-up to the Iowa caucus. It's when he realized he could trust Plouffe fully, and in the muck: "Plouffe was getting calls and e-mails all across the country, the newspaper reports saying that the campaign was over, and he was able to just keep us on a steady course and instill calm, and it showed me the kind of leader he could be in difficult times. It's always easy to be a campaign manager when things are going well, but when things aren't, that's the real test. He was, in his quiet way, able to maintain focus and confidence."

"I'm a competitive person," Plouffe says, without pride but forcefully. His eyes and chin rise. "Elections are nothing about doing well. You win or lose, and I love to win, and it feels absolutely terrible when you lose. We built something from scratch," he continues, "and we beat Hillary Clinton and John McCain. That's like, uh, beating the L. A. Lakers and the Boston Celtics to win the championship." If he had lost, "I'd have felt like I let the country down."
To win the country, the manager took the risks. "We always seemed to be better when we were up in the high water," says Plouffe. "Whenever we got safe, we stagnated. We liked rolling the dice." This meant bleeding $25 million in North Carolina, $10 million in Indiana, $15 million in Virginia, just to keep McCain off balance. It meant convincing Obama to move his convention speech outdoors, though Obama worried it might rain. It meant convincing Obama to do a thirty-minute advertorial, even though Obama thought it was too risky so close to Election Day.

Ooooh! That power is so sexy isn't ?

The new President Bartlet's Obama's daily habits are outlined by the New York Times:

The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.
“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
Thus did an ironclad rule of the George W. Bush administration — coat and tie in the Oval Office at all times — fall by the wayside, only the first of many signs that a more informal culture is growing up in the White House under new management. Mr. Obama promised to bring change to Washington and he has — not just in substance, but in presidential style.
Although his presidency is barely a week old, some of Mr. Obama’s work habits are already becoming clear. He shows up at the Oval Office shortly before 9 in the morning, roughly two hours later than his early-to-bed, early-to-rise predecessor. Mr. Obama likes to have his workout — weights and cardio — first thing in the morning, at 6:45. (Mr. Bush slipped away to exercise midday.)
He reads several papers, eats breakfast with his family and helps pack his daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, off to school before making the 30-second commute downstairs — a definite perk for a man trying to balance work and family life. He eats dinner with his family, then often returns to work; aides have seen him in the Oval Office as late as 10 p.m., reading briefing papers for the next day.
“Even as he is sober about these challenges, I have never seen him happier,” Mr. Axelrod said. “The chance to be under the same roof with his kids, essentially to live over the store, to be able to see them whenever he wants, to wake up with them, have breakfast and dinner with them — that has made him a very happy man.”
In the West Wing, Mr. Obama is a bit of a wanderer. When Mr. Bush wanted to see a member of his staff, the aide was summoned to the Oval Office. But Mr. Obama tends to roam the halls; one day last week, he turned up in the office of his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who was in the unfortunate position of having his feet up on the desk when the boss walked in.

President Obama's first weekly video address

Called "Your Weekly Address", this is from the White House web site and You Tube. Posted just over an hour ago.



We begin this year and this Administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action. Just this week, we saw more people file for unemployment than at any time in the last twenty-six years, and experts agree that if nothing is done, the unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four. And we could lose a generation of potential, as more young Americans are forced to forgo college dreams or the chance to train for the jobs of the future.

In short, if we do not act boldly and swiftly, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.

That is why I have proposed an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan to immediately jumpstart job creation as well as long-term economic growth. I am pleased to say that both parties in Congress are already hard at work on this plan, and I hope to sign it into law in less than a month.

It’s a plan that will save or create three to four million jobs over the next few years, and one that recognizes both the paradox and the promise of this moment - the fact that there are millions of Americans trying to find work even as, all around the country, there’s so much work to be done. That’s why this is not just a short-term program to boost employment. It’s one that will invest in our most important priorities like energy and education; health care and a new infrastructure that are necessary to keep us strong and competitive in the 21st century.

Today I’d like to talk specifically about the progress we expect to make in each of these areas.

To accelerate the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and biofuels over the next three years. We’ll begin to build a new electricity grid that lay down more than 3,000 miles of transmission lines to convey this new energy from coast to coast. We’ll save taxpayers $2 billion a year by making 75% of federal buildings more energy efficient, and save the average working family $350 on their energy bills by weatherizing 2.5 million homes.

To lower health care cost, cut medical errors, and improve care, we’ll computerize the nation’s health record in five years, saving billions of dollars in health care costs and countless lives. And we’ll protect health insurance for more than 8 million Americans who are in danger of losing their coverage during this economic downturn.

To ensure our children can compete and succeed in this new economy, we’ll renovate and modernize 10,000 schools, building state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries, and labs to improve learning for over five million students. We’ll invest more in Pell Grants to make college affordable for seven million more students, provide a $2,500 college tax credit to four million students, and triple the number of fellowships in science to help spur the next generation of innovation.

Finally, we will rebuild and retrofit America to meet the demands of the 21st century. That means repairing and modernizing thousands of miles of America’s roadways and providing new mass transit options for millions of Americans. It means protecting America by securing 90 major ports and creating a better communications network for local law enforcement and public safety officials in the event of an emergency. And it means expanding broadband access to millions of Americans, so business can compete on a level-playing field, wherever they’re located.

I know that some are skeptical about the size and scale of this recovery plan. I understand that skepticism, which is why this recovery plan must and will include unprecedented measures that will allow the American people to hold my Administration accountable for these results. We won’t just throw money at our problems - we’ll invest in what works. Instead of politicians doling out money behind a veil of secrecy, decisions about where we invest will be made public, and informed by independent experts whenever possible. We’ll launch an unprecedented effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov.

No one policy or program will solve the challenges we face right now, nor will this crisis recede in a short period of time. But if we act now and act boldly; if we start rewarding hard work and responsibility once more; if we act as citizens and not partisans and begin again the work of remaking America, then I have faith that we will emerge from this trying time even stronger and more prosperous than we were before. Thanks for listening.

Audio of Obama oath retake

Very sensible move, retaking the oath, I think. After spending $1 billion on the Obama campaign, it would be daft to risk it all on an accidental split infinitive.

Obama's inaugural factual error

From Obama's inaugural speech yesterday:

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.

Wrong.

Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive Presidential terms and is therefore counted as US President number 22 and number 24.

Marshmallows, rocky road and cookies

That was the sort of thing we enjoyed at our Obama party in Newbury, organised yesterday, to coincide with the inauguration, by local Obamaniac Chris Day. Rocky Road won the popularity stakes. (I was pleased with this as I snapped them up at M&S on my way to the party.) And it ought to be said that someone had taken the trouble to put Obama's campaign emblem on the cookies in coloured icing.

The whole occasion was electrifying. I could feel that - even in semi-rural Berkshire.

What I found remarkable was that, after all the run-up, the swearing in was all over in a few seconds. Never has "So help me God" evoked such a tidal wave of relief. "Congratulations, Mr President" Wow! Ding dong the Bush is dead. A new era brought about in a few seconds with a slightly dodgy swearing-in.

Aretha Franklin? What is she like? I don't deny she was one of the two or three singers who deserved to be on that stage. But could anyone understand a word of what she was singing? It all seemed a bit odd. I wonder how many people thought she was singing the British national anthem. (It's the same tune.)

Cheney in a wheelchair? How emblematic was that? He shot himself in the foot, presumably. Mark Cole put his finger on it: Dr Strangelove without the humour.

I thought Obama made a remarkable inauguration speech. It was extremely sure-footed and had several very soaring passages. What a sense of history the guy has!

Above all, it was impeccably delivered. I am of the belief that Obama could read out the New York phone directory and make it sound like an historic mould-breaking speech. (I also believe that Rod Stewart could sing the New York phone directory and sound like an angel, but I digress).

One aspect which struck me was that Obama really laid into Bush and thereby marked a very clear break indeed with the last administration. To a large extent, the speech restored some of the world’s faith in the fairness and justice of the USA.

A few people said that the speech had no memorable "Ask not..." or "Fear itself.." phrase. I disagree. Both those phrases emerged as famous well after the original speeches. There were plenty of poetic and powerful phrases in the Obama speech. I expect an historic keynote phrase to emerge in good time.

Bush's face was a picture. I remember seeing his face as he waited to swear in during the 2001 inauguration. He looked like the cat who had swallowed the cream. He was clearly looking at Gore/Clinton with a "I beat you - so there!" grin on his face. So, after eight disastrous years, it is not gratifying to report that yesterday he looked like he'd lost a dollar and found a cent. He was not pleased. He looked a bit bitter, it would not be an exaggeration to say.

I was rather intrigued by the media coverage of the inauguration and its run-up, compared to the campaign coverage. Yesterday it was 99% "I never thought I would see an African American President.". During the campaign, that played about 5% a part of the coverage. For example, when Obama won the Iowa primary, how much of the coverage was people saying "I never thought I'd see a African American winning the Iowa primary"? Not much.

Surely the point is that race did not play a big part of the campaign because Obama's appeal is aracial. He straddles the cultures.

I would have preferred to see a little bit more of the coverage centering on the fact that, after eight years, the USA finally has a President with a brain.

Obama's emerging curate's egg

At last Barack Obama has broken his silence on Gaza. It is fair enough to be saying that the USA can only have one President at a time. But Obama has spoken on a host of other topics, giving a record number of press conferences, broadcasts etc. So why such reticence on such an important matter? It does not augur well.

On the positive side, Obama's national security picks, such as Leon Panetta as CIA chief, herald a clear break from the dodgy rendition, waterboarding, unwarranted wiretapping etc of the Bush administration.

O'Bama Irish song hits the big time!

On November 10th I flagged up the brilliant "There's no one as Irish as Barack Obama" record by Hardy Drew and the Nancy boys.

I'm delighted to say that this song has taken off. The Corrigan Brothers, who are Hardy Drew and the Nancy boys, played out Sunday AM this morning and have signed up with Universal, and are now featured on iTunes etc for downloading. They seem to be billed as the "Corrigan Brothers" on iTunes.

I bought a copy of their CD back in November. It looks as though it was lovingly hand-crafted in some Irish country kitchen. So it is wonderful they now have a big-time record deal.

Impressive start

"The Office of the President-Elect" has its own website at www.change.gov. Impressive.

Barack Obama is oging to make his weekly Presidential address, traditionally broadcast only on radio, available as a video on YouTube. He's issued an address as President-elect this week - click below.

Obama Irish song band to play at Washington inauguration party

Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys sing "There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama".

It really is a fantastic song and I have a perverse wish for it to the Christmas Number One!!!

You can buy it here for just £3.26 plus £2.44 p&p. The lyrics are here.

Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys have been invited by the Irish American Democrats to fly over to Washington DC to play at a Presidential inauguration party on 19th of January 2009.

North Carolina adds extra distinction to Obama victory

Obama's historic victory is made a tad more extraordinary with the news that AP has declared him the winner in North Carolina. An October comment from Andrew in North Carolina on this blog, underlines the scale of this achievement:

...from here in Durham, NC is a run-away lead for Obama - I have seen literally nothing from McCain.I got out into the state a bit last month (if you ever get the chance, do come to North Carolina. The Smoky Mountains, the Outer Banks - really beautiful areas) but still didn't see much about McCain past a few garden signs. Didn't even see many McCain bumper stickers at the NC mountain state fair, and that included hog racing, mounted cowboy shooting and the world's largest horse, so you would expect the visitors to vote a certain way!But still, along with the comments on the article you linked to, I have trouble believing that a state that still seems so rootin', tootin' American and has many 'dry' counties is going to go democrat.

US press articulate historic change

Two quotes from the US press emphasise the awesome, historic nature of Obama's victory:

Los Angeles Times:
Barack Obama, the son of a father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, was elected the nation's 44th president Tuesday, breaking the ultimate racial barrier to become the first African American to claim the country's highest office. A nation founded by slave owners and seared by civil war and generations of racial strife delivered a smashing electoral college victory to the 47-year-old first-term senator from Illinois, who forged a broad, multiracial, multiethnic coalition. His victory was a leap in the march toward equality: When Obama was born, people with his skin color could not even vote in parts of America, and many were killed for trying.

USA Today:
America's election of an African American as president wasn't the only breakthrough Tuesday night. By defeating John McCain in such reliably Republican states as Colorado and Virginia -- capital of the Confederacy and a state that hasn't backed a Democrat for president in four decades -- Barack Obama reshaped the electoral map that has defined American politics for a generation.

Joy and rapture

The Huffster, or Huffpo, has posted some great celebatory pictures from around the US here.

I have rather cheekily taken the liberty of temporarily borrowing a small indicative and low resolution photo from the show as a temporary adornment to my masthead to recognise the awesome and historic nature of President-elect Obama's victory last night.

Song for Obama

This morning, I'd like to declare myself more chuffed than a really chuffed thing. More chuffed than a chough, in fact.

It's been a long road since I saw Obama on Panorama and instantly decided to throw my lot in with him and also place a bet for him to be the Democrat nominee. (That reminds me, Stan James owes me some dosh as of today!)

What I saw there on Panorama, in January 2007, in the space of a few minutes' interview, was a man, above all, of great nobility. I would compare it to the first time I saw Mandela speak when he emerged from jail. In Obama, I saw a natural leader, a man of calm, thoughtfulness and sincerity. I was bowled over by the man and have been ever since.

Through the campaign, I was impressed by Obama's ability to promptly fight back under attack, while having very high quality judgment. His grass roots campaign has been awesome.

But what has impressed me most about Obama, is his calm under fire. In that third debate, McCain threw everything at Obama. The kitchen sink was one of the first things to be thrown in Obama's direction. The rest of the bathroom furniture followed (to borrow a Biden phrase) - plus rawplugs and plaster board for good measure.

And what did Obama do? He just smiled and calmly dealt with the points without retaliating. His calm was utterly awesome.

Now that is what I call a man of style and depth. That is real quality. That is the sort of man you want on the phone to Putin in a crisis. Obama has put the cool in cool.

Even though the polls looked good, you never know whether there is going to be a last minute sweep the other way.

I take my hat off to the American people.

Ohio! God bless you!

Florida! God bless you!

Virginia! God bless you! Virginia! I can hardly believe they voted for Obama!

Indiana! Crikey! Obama even won Indiana and looks good in North Carolina! (And it was knife edge even in Missouri!)

God bless America!

My gob is well and truly smacked.

I would like to pay tribute to Barack Obama the only way I know how - By immodestly and unsubtly showing off my knowledge of music trivia and offering the song below for the great man who is to be the 44th President of the Great (once again) USA! "Indiana wants me". Fantastic record by R Dean Taylor. It was issued on the Tamla Motown label.

McCain's chances of winning are worse than 1 in 256

I've been dusting off my little spreadsheet, looking at how the land lies for Tuesday's US Presidential election.

What is extraordinary, when you reflect back on the tasks which Kerry and Gore had in 04 and 00 respectively, is that Obama doesn't have to seize Ohio or Florida to win - although they would help.

If he wins all the states that Kerry won in 04 plus Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado, then he is over the 270 mark and home to tea.

To win the Kerry states, the one potentially vulnerable state is Pennsylvania where McCain has been tightening Obama's lead in the last week. However, electoral-vote.com gives the average of the 10 most recent polls there (from 30th October) as giving Obama 52% and a 9 point lead.

Obama has led all year in Iowa and New Mexico and is currently 13 and 8 points ahead respectively in those states.

Obama is 7 points ahead in Colorado.

If any one of those states goes Pete Tong, then Obama has strong prospects in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana. Or he has a shot at Montana and North Dakota.

So Obama has quite a bit of room for manoevre.

McCain has to win, without fail, in Florida, Ohio, Virgina, Colorado, North Carolina, Indiana, North Dakota and Montana.

As Votemaster puts it:

If we assume that all eight of these states are 50-50, then McCain has to flip a coin and get heads eight times in a row. The chances of this are 1 in 256. But it is worse than that since a number of these states, especially Colorado, look a lot worse for McCain than 50-50.

Or to put it another way: There is going to have to be one hell of a "Bradley effect" for McCain to win!

The Washington Post confirms all this today:

Barack Obama and the Democrats hold a commanding position two days before Tuesday's election, with the senator from Illinois leading in states whose electoral votes total nearly 300 and with his party counting on significantly expanded majorities in the House and Senate.

John McCain is running in one of the worst environments ever for a Republican presidential nominee. The senator from Arizona has not been in front in any of the 159 national polls conducted over the past six weeks. His slender hopes for winning the White House now depend on picking up a major Democratic stronghold or fighting off Obama's raids on most of the five states President Bush won four years ago that now lean toward the Democrat. He also must hold onto six other states that Bush won in 2004 but are considered too close to call.

Obama's strategic masterstroke

One of the most important strategic developments of this year's US Presidential campaign has been Obama's "50 state strategy".

As the target states reduced over the summer, there was much criticism of this strategy.

However, today John McCain is having to visit his own state of Arizona in order to shore up the vote there. And we see the Obama campaign doing well in states previously considered off-limits to Democratic presidential campaigns, such as Indiana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Montana, Virginia and Georgia.

This is obviously making it difficult for McCain. He's been spending a lot of time in states which should have been a shoe-in for him - thus missing important opportunities to spend time in more crucial states such as Ohio and Florida.

Most importantly, by widening the scope of his campaign beyond the focus on Ohio and Florida of recent elections, Obama has motivated volunteers and donors in states which normally don't get touched by the Democratic campaign for President.

As a bonus, Obama's strategy will probably trickle down to win the Democrats some congressional seats which they would otherwise not have won.

So, all in all, the strategy is proving very fruitful.

There is much historical backing for a flexible state strategy. It is tempting to think of the Presidential state map from the last couple or so elections as being relatively fixed: The Democrats win California, the north-east and New England. The Republicans win Texas, the mid-west and the south. Ohio and Florida are the ding-dong battlegrounds.

But if you look back at previous elections, the map has always been changing. Indeed, if you go back to the election of the Republican William Taft in 1908 (below from 270towin.com), the map of the states he won, versus those won by his Democratic challenger William Bryan, was almost the complete reverse of the prevailing map from the last decade or so. Taft won California, the north east and New England. Bryan won Texas and the south.

If you look at the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy map (below), that is quite topsy-turvy, compared to today's conventional picture. Nixon won California. Kennedy won Texas. Obviously, Nixon had been governor of California and Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy's VP nominee, swung his home state of Texas. But you still see Kennedy swabbing up much of the south, while Nixon takes Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, which are currently relative Democratic sinecures.
Even as recently as Jimmy Carter's election in 1976, the map (below) looks rather weird when compared to today's political landscape. (This is, in part, explained by Jimmy Carter hailing from Plains, Georgia). Carter cleaned up the south, including Texas. But Gerald Ford, his Republican opponent, won California and north eastern states which are present-day Democratic strongholds, such as Michigan, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Conneticut.
By the way, Google have an excellent interactive map of the states and counties, and how they have voted in recent elections.

Obama's masterpiece

I've just viewed this "infomercial" for Obama (below), which was watched by 30 million Americans last night.

It is a masterpiece.

One thing I'd say is that if Obama's political career blows up, he could have a lucrative career as a voiceover artist. He's got a great narrator's voice.

Obama's Hawaii trip - could have been written into the script by his campaign manager

Call me an old cynic if you like. But I don't think that Obama taking off 36 hours to see his ailing grandmother will be do his campaign any harm. Indeed, it will help it and already has done.

Think of what we have seen in the last 24 hours: The news cycle dominated by news that Obama is prepared to take time off to fly all the way to Hawaii to see his dear old grandmother (Trivia alert: This must surely be the first time a major US party presidential nominee has visited the proud state of Hawaii two weeks before the election).

Most of all, we have seen photos of Obama's grandmother flashed up on the media (causing, I would suspect, paroxysms of delight in the Obama campaign control tower).

Oh!

She's white!

Oh!

So, the Bradley effect takes a bit of a bashing. The ratings go up for "shares our values" and any McCain shenanigans with Jeremiah "God damn America" Wright videos will now look like very bad form - very mean-minded.

Of course, I don't for a moment suggest that any of this is anything but coincidental, and it is very sad that Obama's grandmother is very ill. I just don't think any of Obama's campaign team will worry about their candidate going AWOL for 36 hours for that reason.

Joe the plumber - a story of fuzzy maths

Of all the stories coming out of the 2008 US Presidential Elections, the one about Joe the Plumber is potentially the most fascinating one.

This guy (who is called Samuel Wurzelbacher) went up to Obama last Sunday. "Wurzelbacher told Obama that, after 15 years of working as a plumber, he's now preparing to purchase a company that makes more than $250,000 a year. "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" he asked."

Look at the man (left). Now consider that Obama's tax increases don't cut in until someone is earning more than $250,000. Something's not right is it? Knowing that he is a plumber, one is bound to ask: does this man really earn over $250,000? Does he have a chance of purchasing a firm that would provide him with salary and profit in excess of $250,000?

It turns out that the answers to those questions are: No and no.

He earns an estimated salary of around $48,000 currently.

The firm he wants to purchase would provide him with earnings of about $6,000 on top of that. So, Mr Wurzelbacher, even if he bought the firm, would be about $200,000 under the threshold at which Obama's tax increases start. Indeed, he would get a bigger tax cut from Obama than he would from McCain.

Why all the confusion? Well, dear old Joe was getting his numbers a bit mixed up. The company he wants to buy has a gross worth of $250,000 but annual sales of only $100,000 with estimated profit after salaries of $6,000.

So, in essence the whole saga has blown up because of an error where either Joe's earnings were multiplied by a factor of five, or Obama's tax rise threshold was divided by a factor of five.

Andrew Romano has the full and fascinating details here:

This presents us with an interesting--and illustrative--case study. Whether or not Wurzelbacher buys his business, he's guaranteeed to get a larger tax cut from Obama than McCain--and yet he still prefers McCain's plan to Obama's. Ultimately, then, we end up with two potential voting blocs. First there are the people who earn less than $250,000 and want the largest possible tax cut for themselves--a group that doesn't include Joe the Plumber OR Joe the Small-Business Owner. Then there are the people--like Joe--who earn less than $250,000 a year, but are willing to turn down the bigger tax cut for one of three reasons. Some are trickle-down/free-market adherents who believe that larger tax cuts for those richer than themselves will best serve the economy. Others simply don't trust Obama to keep his word. And then there are those who identify with the wealthy, believe they're bound strike it rich someday and don't want to pay higher taxes when they do.
Both groups--Group Joe and Group Non-Joe--have valid positions. But the question facing McCain--who hopes to make taxes the centerpiece of his closing argument--is which group is bigger. All told, voters making less than $250,000 a year represent 98 percent of the electorate, so they'll be picking the next president. Traditionally, many of these folks resent the idea of having to pay more money if they ever become part of the other two percent, so they side with Republicans on taxes. After all, that's why George H.W. Bush closed the gap with Bill Clinton in the final days of the 1992 race. McCain may still benefit from a similar shift. But one has to wonder whether the traditional GOP message on taxes has lost some of its luster amid a financial crisis that suddenly makes it significantly easier for people like Joe the Plumber--if not Joe himself--to picture themselves earning much less in the future, not much more. In which case Obama--who offers more people more money more quickly--would stand to gain.