Here’s a little supplement to my previous post.  The McCain campaign has made it very clear that victory runs through PA.  So in the spirit of understanding their thought process I used DailyKos’s beta version of their electoral scoreboard, which looks like it’s going to be really sweet come Tuesday.  Here it is:

I made this by flipping PA red, and then sequentially flipping states in order of their Pollster.com averages until McCain hit 270.  Here’s the list of states and their margins, that McCain has to win on Tuesday in order to be successful withe his PA strategy:  MT (M +3.3), GA (M +2.2), IN (M +0.6), NC (O +1.8), MO (O +1.9), FL (O +2.7), ND (O +3.1), NV (O +5.9), OH (O +6.3), PA (O +9.3).

That’s a full blown sweep of the current toss-up states, as well as what would be a few surprising pick-ups in NV and OH.  But the most surprising element of all would be the keystone (haha) of this entire strategy: PA.

McCain has not led there pretty much ever. And the trend is by no means moving swiftly enough in his direction. Let’s call this what it is: a hail mary.

Doug Holtz-Eakin, explains away concerns that John McCain’s health care plan would cause young and healthy individuals to drop out of group plans:

Younger, healthier workers likely wouldn’t abandon their company-sponsored plans, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s senior economic policy adviser.

“Why would they leave?” said Holtz-Eakin. “What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit.”

Haha.  Gee, maybe we shouldn’t tax those “way better” benefits, thus creating an incentive to participate in them.  Nah, let’s go with the way worse plan instead.  That oughtta do it.

Barack Obama, quick to pounce:

I just wanted to revisit all this redistribution talk with some comments around blogland…

Jonathan Chait

Need I point out that literally having every any government at all involves taking somebody’s money and giving it to somebody else? Even the more restrivtive definition of redistribution — using government to create a less unequal distribution of wealth — has been going on for a century. If McCain is really opposed to redistribution, then that means he thinks the rich should get back a dollar in spending for every dollar they pay in taxes.

Hilzoy

Some cities and towns are richer than others. Those cities and towns will be able to provide much better schools for their kids. And this means that kids from poor towns will be likely to have many fewer opportunities than kids from rich towns. If you care about equality of opportunity, you’ll probably think that this is a problem. One natural solution would be for states and the federal government help to fund education: in this way, funding levels for different school districts could be made more equal. But this involves, horror of horrors, redistribution: money from taxpayers who live in richer communities is being given to school districts in poorer communities.

The thing is: that’s what Obama is talking about. He’s not talking about cutting checks for the poor; he’s talking about trying to equalize funding across school districts. And his reason for doing this is specifically to “create equal schools and equal educational opportunity”, not to equalize wealth.

Andrew Sullivan

A simple question. I’m a flat taxer, because I don’t believe the government has any business punishing people for getting richer. But I don’t think that people who support the kind of punitive taxation that Obama does or Cameron does in Britain or Reagan did in 1986 is a “socialist.” Is it now the McCain campaign’s assertion that anyone who isn’t for a flat tax is socialist? I should add that if Obama is a socialist, Richard Nixon must have been a commie.

Sarah Palin

We’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.

John McCain

This whole argument is just pure garbage.  Garbage.  And quite frankly, I’m sick and tired of it.  The McCain campaign had a better argument when they were attacking Obama over Ayers.  That’s how stupid this “closing argument” is.  Obama = Socialist is quite possibly the dumbest political argument ever assembled.  I mean, this type of stuff is supposed to be relegated to the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the world.  When did this wingnut crap end up on center stage?

Well, I guess it took a maverick…

I was at a bakery today doing some cake testing for my wedding, and they had these cookies with Obama / McCain on them. The baker went on to tell me that they are participating in an unscientific poll for the 2008 presidential election by selling cookies with the candidates on them. For every cookie purchased, they are counting that as 1 vote for that candidate.

While we were in there some lady walked in and purchased 4 McCain cookies. It was officially on at that point.

I’ll try and post the final results in the next couple of weeks.

Someone has some awesome editing skills.

John McCain is putting all of his chips on Pennsylvania.

Consider that for a moment.  It displays, in plain sight, how far ahead we are right now.  Pennsylvania has not gone red in the past two decades, and here’s how the Pollster.com average looks right now:

That’s pretty steep.  So what the hell is John McCain thinking?  Well, he’s thinking this:

“There’s a tendency in Pennsylvania for the polls to change dramatically in the final days,” says John Brabender, a top Republican political consultant based in Pittsburgh. “In the governor’s race in 2002, there were polls just a few days out showing [Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell] with a 25-point lead and he ended up losing 50 of 67 counties and won by nine points.”

So it’s a combination of thinking the polls are wrong, and banking on some late movement for McCain, and if it were any other state, I would scoff and tell them to keep dreaming.  But there’s two things that bother me about Pennsylvania.  The first is the Bradley effect.  Now I know the Nate Silver has written over, and over, and over again about this, but I always felt that if the Bradley effect were to still exist, it would show up in either Michigan or Pennsylvania.  So that’s that.

The other is that Pennsylvania is critical for Obama’s electoral math.  The path of least resistance to 270 for Obama was always Kerry states + NM + IA + CO/VA.  Losing Pennsylvania throws a giant wrench into all of that, by dropping out a very critical 21 EVs.  Obama would then need to pick up either OH, FL, NV+VA, or NV+NC.  Now, none of these are impossible, or even improbable, but it definitely makes things more difficult when you have to win NM, IA, CO, NV, and VA all on the same night.

Basically what I’m trying to say is, we cannot lose Pennsylvania; therefore, we must not get complacent, especially when the competition is moving into a full court press.  I urge all of you that are close to PA to make a trip.  Remember how fun it was last time?

NARAL and NOW are salivating.

Those darn women concerned about their “health” and “equal pay.”

(On a more personal note, it’s a good thing Jackie was working tonight.  If she saw that, I might not have a TV anymore.)

Open submission for captions over at DKos.

UPDATE:

Btw, McCain is getting absolutely raped on MSNBC right now by Chris Matthews, Howard Fineman, and Roger Simon.

From Politico:

As part of a plan to reinvigorate his flagging campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is considering additional economic measures aimed directly at the middle class that are likely to be rolled out this week, campaign officials said.

Among the measures being considered are tax cuts – perhaps temporary – for capital gains and dividends, the officials said.

Hilzoy slams it:

Because what everyone is really worried about right now is how they’ll manage to pay the taxes on their massive capital gains.

Grasping in the dark…

McCain finally tries to tame the mob:

I still maintain that McCain wasn’t really going for this angle when he started his Ayers attacks.  I really do feel he was going for the leftist-hippie-America-hater attack, not the scary-secret-muslim-foreigner attack.  It’s just not John McCain to push that.  Look, John McCain has definitely been a downright sleazeball this entire campaign, but one thing has always remained certain:  John McCain thinks John McCain is a decent, honorable man.  He must be able to rationalize to himself that he’s not doing anything wrong.  He needs to be able to reconcile with himself so that he can look at himself in the mirror.  And there’s just no amount of rationalizing (and trust me, I know; my brother is masterful at it) that can make the Obama-is-a-scary-arab-terrorist attack OK.

Now, having said that, John McCain definitely unleashed a monster here, and he did very little to stop it from taking shape.  For that he should be rightly ridiculed.  From the word “Terrorist” John McCain should have done something.  Instead, he let these feelings foment into a hateful mob, which has legitimately scared me.  And if you thing I’m being a little alarmist, check out the story of Yitzhak Rabin.

The fact of the matter is, John McCain let this go on for way too long.  Now he’s finally doing something about it.  It’s about time.

So, I was wrong.  McCain doesn’t seem to be dropping Ayers from the portfolio:

(more…)

From BloggerInterrupted

Amazing

This is definitely my favorite “I know how to _____” from McCain:

I’ll get Osama bin Laden, my friends. I’ll get him. I know how to get him.

I’ll get him no matter what and I know how to do it. But I’m not going to telegraph my punches, which is what Sen. Obama did. And I’m going to act responsibly, as I have acted responsibly throughout my military career and throughout my career in the United States Senate.

I think the CIA, DoD and, hell, probably Gen. Petraeus himself would love to be enlightened by the all-knowing McCain.

Nate says:

I’m short on time today, so let’s keep this on point: John McCain is in deep trouble. In spite of some incremental gains that McCain has made in some of the national tracking polls, the set of state polling that follows is so strong for Obama that he continues to hit record marks in all three of our projection metrics. We are now projecting Obama to win the election 90.5 percent of the time, with an average of 346.8 electoral votes, and a 5.4-point margin in the national popular vote.

Just 27 days to go…