I shouldn't even given this garbage the time of day, but it's just so damn funny. Indiana now has its very own Barack-Obama-is-a-foreigner lawsuit!
The suit, filed in Marion Superior Court, Room 10, is among five loosely coordinated challenges that question Obama's status as a "natural born citizen."
Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Republican and Democratic national committees are named as defendants in the Indiana suit, filed by Steve Ankeny, New Castle, and Bill Kruse, Roselawn.
The Star gave this nonsense front-page billing the other day, which probably says more about the Star than it does the case. My favorite part of the story was this, though:
Ankeny -- who is not an attorney and describes himself as a legal researcher and "interested citizen" -- said similar suits were filed this month in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois and Michigan.
The Marion County suit contends neither Obama, a Democrat, nor Republican Sen. John McCain proved he was a "natural born citizen," a constitutional requirement to qualify for the presidency. They also claim neither candidate was eligible to be elected president because both were sitting U.S. senators at the time of the election.
"Our argument is that there has to be evidence that a candidate -- any candidate -- actually meets the qualifications," Ankeny said.
It's that time of year again: Disgruntled conservatives far and wide are pulling out their bichromatic "look how many red counties there are!" maps and sputtering wildly about the far-right nature of our country/state/city, popular and electoral votes be damned.
As if often the case with arguments from the far-whatever side of any political spectrum, the truth is a bit more complicated, and provides a ringing endorsement of Barack Obama's decision to open over 40 field offices in some of the reddest of red areas in Indiana.
Not only did Indiana go blue for the first time in 44 years, but nearly every county in the state was a little (or a lot) more Democratic at the presidential level than in previous years.
OK, winning NC and VA is really impressive. CO? A great get. OH, FL? Solid. IA and NM? Paint 'em blue. NV? What happens in Vegas.... But IN? I-N-D-I-A-N-A? Indi-friggin'-ana? You mean Indiana as in Bush 60% Kerry 39%?
Indiana as in basketball, car racing, and cornfields? Former KKK stronghold? THAT Indiana?
I thought it might be useful -- or at least pass the time -- if we took a look at the final survey results from the various outlets that have taken a stab at pegging the Hoosier State over the last two weeks. I haven't included any "internet" polls, because they are on the whole useless.
+9 Obama -- Big Ten Polling
+4 Obama -- SurveyUSA
+1 Obama -- Public Policy Polling
+1 Obama -- Star / Selzer & Co.
Tie -- Downs Center / SUSA
Tie -- Research 2000
Tie -- American Research Group
+2 McCain -- Howey-Gauge
+3 McCain -- Rasmussen
+5 McCain -- Reuters / Zogby
In their Indiana average, Pollster.com includes the dubious internet results. Assuming they aren't too outlandish, we are left with roughly 5% undecided going into today. Conventional wisdom says that last-second voters generally break for the challenger, which means that the entire election might come down to who voters decide the "challenger" is this year.
Those of you in the Indianapolis area should keep an eye tomorrow, especially if you will be working the polls or casting your ballot. Barack Obama may drop by:
Obama planned to visit the Indianapolis area on Tuesday in his ninth Indiana campaign stop since mid-July.
The Obama campaign released no details, saying the Illinois senator planned to meet voters in person and ask for their support. Obama's Indiana stop on Tuesday will happens as he travels to Chicago for a massive rally in Grant Park.
Many Hoosiers, meanwhile, have already voted.
As of early Monday, 572,360 people had cast early absentee ballots - more than 12 percent of the state's 4.5 million registered voters.
John McCain, as we have noted, will be in town today. And by "in town," I mean that he will stay within eyesight of his trusty airplane, lest he be torn away from the dwindling party faithful to actually meet with voters.
The American Research Group has issued their final survey of the Hoosier State, and they hop on the trendy "it's all tied up" bandwagon. Here are the results, with their September findings in parenthesis.
American Research Group 600 Likely Voters -- MoE +/- 4% Oct. 28 - 31
48% (44%) - Barack Obama 48% (47%) - John McCain 4% (9%) - Other / Undecided
They peg Obama with an 8-point lead among Independents, and a 10-point lead among women voters.
This thing is going to be close, one way or the other, but with Obama's ground effort so much stronger than McCains, I'm willing to give slight advantage to the Democratic effort -- assuming you all get out there and help out in these last 24-hours!
All apologies for the light posting today. As it turns out, the first year of law school is not especially designed with blogging and election years in mind, even for a slacker like myself.
Time's online outfit takes a look at Indiana's development into a hotbed for presidential politics, and although it won't be anything new to any of you, I'd recommend it for anyone who hasn't been playing particularly close attention for the last few months. That being said, their descriptions of the two campaigns is a useful reminder of the fundamental difference between Barack Obama's approach to this election year and that of the rusted, outdated Republican machine.
The Obama campaign has opened 44 offices across Indiana, including two in Elkhart County, a historically Republican-leaning county just to the north of here. "Two years ago, I would have told you that'd be crazy," says Shari Mellin, the county's Democratic Party chair. Now Obama-Biden signs have become fixtures along two-lane country roads abutting cornfields. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has been credited with registering many of Indiana's new would-be voters. Already, some 410,000 Indianans have cast votes. Indiana's secretary of state, Ted Rokita, projects some 65% of the state's 4.5 million voters will participate in this election - the highest since 1992.
[...]
McCain's campaign here, by contrast, is notably weak, a sign of how the GOP has long taken Indiana for granted. It hasn't opened a single campaign office, and the Indiana Republican Party's local offices are managing McCain's outreach efforts.
The problem with McCain's supposed reliance upon the local GOP machine is the simple fact that although Mitch Daniels supports him privately, he long ago cashed in the national Republican narrative and bought himself a rhetorical ticket to the "change" party. The strategy was as bizarre as it has been effective, and I find it incredibly difficult to believe that Mitch's targeted Election Day constituency is even all that similar to McCain's at this point.
Luckily for him, he hasn't had to push all that hard to get out the vote. In a lot of ways, a more competitive Democratic candidate would have placed pressure on Mitch to choose sides in the national back-and-forth, but his ability to disengage entirely has allowed him to keep his conservative credentials without touching the plague that is McCain/Palin '08.
Am I the only one who laughed out loud a little bit when they read this?
Republican Sen. John McCain will make his first Indiana campaign stop in more than four months -- a rally at the Indianapolis airport Monday afternoon, the day before voters choose the nation's next president.
So the Republican presidential campaign is reacting to the criticism that John McCain views Indiana as nothing more than a flyover state by ...wait for it... having a hastily concocted rally at the airport.
It's poetry, I swear.
Barack Obama has made 40-odd trips to the state. He's sat in people's homes, he's talked to thousands upon thousands in rallies north and south, far and wide. Time and time again, he's taken the time to actually listen to Hoosiers.
John McCain has made a only a few short stops, and they usually involved a high-dollar, closed-door fundraiser. Now, he's bringing his message of desperation and fear to the Hoosier State at the last minute, and I can't think of anything more fitting than the "Keep the plane running" motif we'll see on Monday.
Barack Obama was in Lake County yesterday, making what was described as a "closing argument" to Hoosier voters. Over 20,000 showed up in Highland to hear his message, and I certainly hope that the evening rally allowed the good senator to sleep in his own bed. Doubtful, I know...
Yesterday also brought us another statewide data dump, the product of a partnership between the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics and SurveyUSA. The results show Change v. More of the Same still locked in a close contest.
The poll showed Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama each receiving 47% of the support from the 900 registered and likely voters questioned. Despite the tight presidential race, the same poll showed Gov. Mitch Daniels with a commanding lead over his Democratic opponent, Jill Long Thompson.
[...]
While the choice over president was split, the poll showed the majority of Hoosiers believe the economy is the most important issue, and a slight majority of respondents felt Obama would handle that better than McCain. Obama also had leads in voters concerned about the environment, health care, Iraq and education. McCain held leads in voters concerned about terrorism, Social Security and immigration.
Daniels has a wide margin over Long Thompson, leading 55% to 38%.
The poll shows 4% voting for Libertarian Andrew Horning and 3% undecided.
Social Security? Are you kidding me?
Dubious single-issue results aside, these results echo everything else in the world, begging two obvious questions: Will Barack Obama carry down-ticket Hoosier Democratic candidates with him on election day? Will Jill Long Thompson be a drag on these same candidates?
Thoughts and opinions are welcomes in the comment section. The floor is yours.
A new poll done by Research 2000 for CBS shows both Congressman Andre Carson and Governor Mitch Daniels cruising to large victories in their respective races next Tuesday.
Democratic Congressman Andre Carson is posting a 15 point margin against Republican social worker Gabrielle Campo, leading 53% to 38%. Carson is buoyed by near-universal support among black voters and a strong lead with independent voters. The only category Campo is leading other than Republicans is with white voters, where she has a 20-point edge.
Likewise, Governor Mitch Daniels leads former Democratic Congresswoman Jill Long-Thompson by 14 points, 54%-40%. Daniels leads among men and women, Republicans, Independents, and even takes 12% of Democratic voters. Most concerning for the Democrat are the numbers from Marion County, which show Daniels leading Long-Thompson by 8 in a county essential for a statewide Democratic victory. That's a 12 point swing downward for Long-Thompson since the last CBS poll in September. Of course we have to remember that during the last half of September and first half of October, JLT didn't even have ads on the air so it isn't shocking that her numbers cratered in Marion County. Daniels has run a positive campaign and has run some truly great advertisements. Jill was never able to cut through the clutter. To the right is one of MMM's more memorable campaign ads.
On the presidential front, the numbers tell the same story they did a month ago. Indiana is tight as a tick on a deer's behind. Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican Senator John McCain are tied with 47% each. This is fueled in part by Obama's performance in Marion County, where he is leading McCain by 8 points in a county that was split 50/50 between Bush and Kerry four years ago.
Interestingly, the number of ticket splitters is the key to this. Back in May, I think most observers would have said the most likely ticket split is the one that usually happens in Indiana. People will vote for the Republican presidential nominee and the Democratic candidate for governor. This year, the anecdotal evidence points to the reverse. I can't count the number of Daniels/Obama yard sign combinations I've seen here on Indy's north side.
The economy is the issue that dominates. And Obama's latest ad reminds voters of what McCain has to offer on that front:
That is probably one of my favorite Obama ads of the season.
For you junkies out there, Sarah Palin is the only candidate who has a negative favorability rating. She is seen favorably by 45% and unfavorably by 48%. The other Pres/VP candidates have a favorability of +10 or more.
Whatever the final numbers on Tuesday, Indiana will be deep purple rather than crimson.
The most remarkable thing about the polling we've seen in Indiana over the last few months? The lack of any substantial movement.
True to form, Hoosiers have been reluctant to swing back and forth in any dramatic fashion, and aside from a few outliers in the gubernatorial contest, the numbers have stayed in the same general area. The presidential contest has provided us with a painfully slow uptick in the Obama numbers over time, but has remained on the whole a neck-and-neck contest. The gubernatorial trend-line has just been painful.
With that in mind, Research 2000 has new numbers out for WISH-TV, and the script is all too familiar.
Yet the WISH-TV Indiana Poll shows Palin as the only member of either ticket with a favorable rating (45) lower than her unfavorables (48). And John McCain's last visit to Indiana came on July 1 when, in a 24-Hour News 8 interview, he talked about a greater presence in the Hoosier state.
Governor 54% - Mitch Daniels 40% - Jill Long Thompson
The poll also shows the governor gets more support from men than from women.
It's a ten point difference, 59 percent of men said they would vote for Daniels if the election were today. Forty-nine percent of women would re-elect the governor. About a third of the men surveyed said they prefer Jill Long Thompson. They're outnumbered by the women who say they prefer her.
Another day, another neck-and-neck poll of the Hoosier State. Selzer & Co. is the pollster that everyone loves to hate, but these numbers echo everything else we've seen lately.
Matt Tully wrote in the Star this morning of a McCain campaign with too much campaign, too little McCain. Tully pegs the problem as such:
One new GOP flier places Obama's photo next to one of DiCaprio and says Obama would rather party with "Hollywood's elite" than deal with the economy. Fear-mongering follows; the flier eerily warns Obama is "not who you think he is." Another piece says Obama is a better friend "to criminals than to cops" and, again, is "not who you think he is." According to yet another mailing, Obama is nothing more than an "unknown charming pied piper."
[...]
The GOP mailings could be dismissed if McCain's Indiana campaign had stood for anything else, if he'd followed Obama -- and Daniels -- and spent time meeting with Indiana voters and talking about real issues. If he'd done that, we'd have more with which to judge McCain's campaign. But he didn't.
I agree with Tully's basic premise -- something that has been happening far too often lately than I'm comfortable with -- but I do think he may be missing a larger systemic flaw in the McCain campaign's approach to the Hoosier State. Namely, the fact that their "base" is what it used to be.
As I wrote yesterday, there seems to be a movement afoot among GOP activists to place blame on McCain and praise on Palin, citing her dedication to the ideological foundations that have guided social conservatives over the last eight years or so. This is all based on the premise that the electoral wave rode by conservatives in 2004 could be reclaimed if the right notes were struck in the right order.
This, my friends, is simply not the case.
I know this because, in essence, the McCain campaign has followed the GOP playbook of yesteryear. Fear! Wedge issues! Taxes!
The result of which, here in Indiana and elsewhere, has been the pulling away of the silent majority facade to reveal an electorate that has been by and large immunized to the tactics of old. Put another way, voters had their chicken pox four years ago -- and during the domestic crisis that followed -- the result of which has been a people that just aren't as susceptible to the same mechanism of message delivery.
The McCain campaign and national Republican infrastructure failed to recognize this, and this ignorance has left them behind in the polls in places they never could have imagined. The statements a few months ago by Republicans as to the political impenetrability of the Hoosier State were on the whole sincere -- they simply couldn't (or wouldn't) recognize the potential ineffectiveness of a rhetorical toolbox that had served them so well in the past when it came to swelling the ranks of the party faithful.
But the base wasn't there, or at least wasn't there in the numbers they envisioned. And while Mitch Daniels successfully took a pseudo-post-partisan high road, branding himself as above the din of the convoluted national narrative, John McCain abandoned his seemingly similar track record and donned the Rovian talking points.
The rhetoric hasn't changed, but the American people have, a fatal error in judgment that will haunt John McCain for years to come and has left the Grand Old Party in shambles from sea to shining sea.
Governor 61% - Mitch Daniels 30% - Jill Long Thompson
Third Congressional District (MoE +/- 5.7%) 44% - Mike Montagano (D) 41% - Mark Souder (R)
This is the second independent poll to show Montagano competitive, and provides further affirmation of Obama's statewide competitiveness. The gubernatorial numbers are obviously a reason for concern, and I would imagine that even Brian Howey doesn't believe we'll see a margin that large on election night. A recent Research 2000 pegging of a 12-point race seems much more believable.
There is a lot of additional information in the full data dump, and I'm still parsing it all myself. Feel free to drop in the comments any other gems you come across.
Thanks to our friends at the South Bend Tribune, we have yet another statewide poll to parse this morning. In short, the news is good if you're a Barack Obama fan.
48% - Barack Obama 47% - John McCain 5% - Other / Undecided
The close contest in Indiana is bad news for McCain, who needs the state to win the election, said pollster Del Ali, of Rockville, Md.-based Research 2000, which conducted the Tribune/WSBT poll.
"I think McCain very well could still win this state, but it's going to be very close," Ali said. "At this point, nothing would shock me, and the fact that I'm saying that nothing would shock me this close out is not a good sign for the McCain campaign."
This will be a tight race, but there is no denying that the Obama campaign's GOTV effort is far superior to anything the Republicans have been able to muster. I think we could see this translate into a 1-2% bump on election day.
My favorite quote in the entire article, though, is actually this:
"We just need to keep doing what we're doing," said Jay Kenworthy, spokesman for the Indiana Republican Party.
I can't think of anything better for us than the GOP continuing to do what they have been doing for the last four months. Let's hope he wasn't kidding.
Score one for the good guys, and chalk up an unanticipated result of Indiana's anti-robocall legislation. People don't like being the messenger when the message is despicable. TPM brings us the story:
Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.
Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."
Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it's located in Hobart, IN.
The employees weren't fired, but sacrificed their pay for the day. They deserve our respect, just as much as John McCain doesn't. Hoosier values won out in this case, and we should all be proud of these folks.
This is easily dismissed as a classic, well, Rovian move to lower expectations, but against my better judgment I'll give this tidbit up for discussion. Karl Rove is joining the Blue Indiana team:
Rove, who often puts a positive spin on things for the GOP, on "Fox News Sunday" offered a bleaker assessment of the state of the race from a Republican point of view. In his own electoral map, Rove has Democratic nominee Barack Obama ahead with 317 electoral votes after moving Ohio, Indiana, Colorado and Virginia to the Illinois senator's column.
The GOP analyst noted that McCain would have to turn things around in all four states and sweep the remaining toss-up states in order to win the necessary electoral votes to prevail.
"It's a steep uphill climb," he said.
Don't fall for this trap: Get out there and do everything you can in these final days to make sure Obama and our down-ticket candidates excel on Election Day.
Interesting to me at this point? There is almost no talk by even the most delusional Republicans about McCain winning the popular vote. They conceded long ago that the only path to the presidency runs through the Electoral College.
All of which raises the genius of Obama's strategy of providing resources to nearly every state. Not only has he pushed traditionally red states such as ours into play, but he will run up the score in places like New York and California, and outperform historical averages elsewhere. All of this going toward the kind of "mandate" that Bush and Rove could only dream of back in 2004.
If there is any remaining doubt that Indiana is in play -- and despite my best efforts, there still seems to be some -- perhaps the third poll in as many days showing an Obama lead will have some effect?
President 49% - Barack Obama 45% - John McCain 3% - Other 3% - Undecided
Compared to a SurveyUSA poll 1 month ago, McCain is down 3, Obama is up 4. Today: White voters split; McCain had led by 9. There are few plausible scenarios in which McCain loses Indiana and still wins the White House.
Governor 54% - Mitch Daniels 35% - Jill Long Thompson 7% - Andy Horning 3% - Undecided
Compared to a SurveyUSA poll 1 month ago, Daniels has increased his lead by 3 points, at a time when John McCain lost 7 net points in Indiana to Barack Obama and Republicans nationwide are being swallowed by a rising Democratic tide. Among white Hoosiers, Republican Daniels is 20 points ahead of Long Thompson, but McCain is zero points ahead of Barack Obama. Among Moderates, Republican Daniels ties Long Thompson, but Republican McCain trails Obama by 33 points.
I think these results are a testament to the benefit of two things: branding, and boatloads of cash.
The former is much easier with the latter, obviously, but there is no denying that both Mitch Daniels and Barack Obama -- as different as they are in nearly every way -- have shown a similar ability to brand their campaigns as something larger than themselves, and in the process generate a much broader appeal.
One other note would be the African American results out of this survey, which I still find somewhat dubious. Obama will garner more than 80%, and Long Thompson will almost certainly not push with Daniels. For that reason, always remember your healthy grain of salt when parsing numbers.
This one's not over, folks. Get out there and hit the streets!
Detractors will be quick to question the veracity of this relatively untested pollster, but the numbers are hard to ignore at this point, especially on the heels of PPP's pegging of the contest as leaning toward Obama.
Big Ten Battleground Polling 586 Likely Voters -- MoE +/- 4% Oct. 19 - 22
51% - Obama/Biden 41.5% - McCain/Palin
"In September, we saw virtually the entire Big Ten as a battleground," said Franklin, co-developer of Pollster.com. "Now Obama is clearly winning the Big Ten battleground. The dominance of the economy as a top issue for voters is the overwhelming story."
The new Big Ten poll shows Obama ahead in every Big Ten state, including Indiana, where McCain held a slight edge in September and a Democrat has not won since 1964. Obama also leads in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where last month's poll results showed the two candidates in a dead heat.
Oh, and one final thought I meant to throw in a post yesterday: Anyone who cites, relies upon, or even reads a Zogby Interactive poll is just plain silly. I do it every so often out of some masochistic impulse, but it is not to be recommended.
An "internet" poll that only reaches individuals who register with the website? Uh, right.
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