Politics Blog

John Fund has a great piece on the Voter Integrity Project.

— PoliPundit

California Democrats are in full panic mode:

Democrats plan to attack Schwarzenegger with a flurry of mailers, phone calls and TV ads calling into question everything from his voting record to his association with former Gov. Pete Wilson. The move comes after several weekend tracking polls showed the actor-turned-politician taking a commanding lead over his chief rival, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the only major Democrat running as a replacement candidate.

Meanwhile, the polls indicate a clear margin of voters still favor dumping Gov. Gray Davis, the Democratic incumbent. The recall leads by between 6 and 14 percentage points, according to five different private surveys conducted separately for candidates or special interests.

— PoliPundit

Immediately after the recall debate, I wrote:

Most political analysts are proclaiming that “there was no winner” in last night’s debate. They’re missing the point, just like they did in the first Bush vs. Gore debate in 2000.

Ordinary viewers don’t watch debates like journalists do. They’re voting for governor, not judging a debate. What voters are asking is, does the phrase “Governor Schwarzenegger” pass the smell test? After last night, it does.

Now CNN’s Bill Schneider, using that new Gallup poll, agrees:

Why the Davis drop and the Schwarzenegger surge? Answer? The debate. Two-thirds of California voters watched it last Wednesday.

The big loser? Davis.

…

Opposition to Davis surged among debate watchers. They said the candidate who did best in the debate was Tom McClintock. But it didn’t do McClintock any good. It was Schwarzenegger who built up a big lead among debate watchers, not because he won, [but] because he sounded credible.

— PoliPundit

Everyone, including me, hates Arianna Huffington with a fiery passion. But she’s got a new ad that’s probably one of the riskiest campaign ads ever. Click here to watch it.

— PoliPundit

Now that colleges are implementing the Supreme Court’s ludicrous “critical mass” racial quotas, Peter Wood looks at the even more ridiculous “diversity essays” students are being asked to write.

— PoliPundit

That Gallup poll showing the recall at 63 percent was very reasonable in estimating voter turnout.

— PoliPundit

Adam Nagourney has a must-read look at the Bush campaign and how it’s gearing up for 2004. Key excerpts:

President Bush’s political advisers have set in motion an aggressive re-election machine, building a national network of get-out-the-vote workers and amassing a pile of cash for a blanket advertising campaign expected to begin around the time Democrats settle on their candidate early next year, party officials said.

…

The decision to delay the start of advertising until about the time the Democrats settle on a nominee is a rejection of what had been a central element of President Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign. Mr. Clinton began advertising 16 months before Election Day, in an effort to define the election before the Republicans chose an opponent.

Republicans said that would be a waste of money, given the battle taking place among the Democrats. Instead, aides to Mr. Bush said, their campaign would begin spending when a Democratic nominee starts to emerge from the primary battle, probably battered and very likely almost broke.

…

Advisers to Mr. Bush said they expected the campaign to hit its fund-raising target of $170 million by the end of the winter.

…

On Oct. 4, the campaign will bring together about 500 volunteers in Atlanta to train them in how to organize precincts, canvass voters and get them to the polls in Georgia. Similar events will eventually take place across the country as thecampaign moves to place organizers on the ground in virtually every precinct in the nation.

…

“This is the first time I know of that an incumbent president has undertaken a true grass-roots effort that penetrates precincts and neighborhoods instead of relying entirely on image and media,” said [wunderkind] Ralph Reed, chairman of the state Republican Party in Georgia and an adviser to the Bush campaign.

…

Members of the president’s political team said they were not overly worried about signs of deterioration in his standing. Mr. Bush is still in a stronger position now in the polls, they said, than either Ronald Reagan or Mr. Clinton was at this point in his first term.

In addition, the Democratic attacks on Mr. Bush in the last few weeks have to a large extent gone unanswered, one price of Mr. Bush’s effort to present himself as unconcerned about what the Democrats are doing. And the political calendar means that Mr. Bush can capitalize on an enviable platform to rebut the Democrats in January: His State of the Union Message is expected to be delivered right around the time of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

– PoliPundit

Howard Dean is finally taking on Weasel Clark:

Presidential hopeful Howard Dean yesterday attacked retired Gen. Wesley Clark as a puppet of “establishment politicians” while repeatedly and explicitly comparing his own policies to those of former President Bill Clinton.

“I think what you see in the Wes Clark candidacy is a somewhat of a desperation by inside-the-Beltway politicians,” Mr. Dean said.

“You’ve got a lot of establishment politicians now surrounding a general who was a Republican until 25 days ago,” said Mr. Dean, who assumed Mr. Clark was once a Republican because he served in the military and voted for Ronald Reagan.

— PoliPundit

Two pieces on the LA Times web site accuse that new Gallup poll, showing the recall at 63 percent, of:

1. Using a high turnout model: “The poll of 787 registered voters used a model for probable voters that assumes a relatively high 50 percent turnout among the state’s voting age population.”

2. Using a low turnout model: “The CNN-USA Today poll, conducted among 1,007 Californians between Thursday and Saturday, assumed a low turnout of 51%

As readers know, I consider the TV debate to have been the deciding moment in the recall election. However, Bill Whalen points out another moment that could be just as decisive:

ELECTIONS, like warfare, come down to turning points. And should Governor Gray Davis go down in flames a week from tomorrow, remember last Friday as the pivotal moment in California’s recall election. The event was a West Hollywood rally for women voters. His guest of honor was former Texas governor Ann Richards (talk about the B-list), plus a phone call from Hillary Rodham Clinton, who tried to pump up the estrogen by predicting “California is not going to be stampeded by the same right-wingers who gave us the election in Florida and are trying to do things that are really against our interests.”

Unfortunately for Davis, he chose that moment to have his own hormonal surge, daring Arnold Schwarzenegger to go one-on-one. “I’m not going to take it anymore,” Davis said, alleging the Arnold is distorting his record. “Right here, right now, I challenge him to a debate.”

Davis’s challenge was deliciously hypocritical. Last fall, he refused to debate Republican challenger Bill Simon a second time; in the 1998 governor’s race, he backed out of a fifth and final debate with Dan Lungren. And hypocrisy aside, Schwarzenegger would probably win a one-on-one encounter as Davis would find it hard to resist being condescending or creepy. Remember, this is the same governor who’s ridiculed Ah-nold’s accent and has suggested that Republicans would sooner shoot their mothers than pass a tax hike. Alone, in a debate forum with Schwarzenegger, Davis is bound to have at least one political Tourette’s moment.

But what distinguishes last Friday’s event is how quickly it changed media perception–to the governor’s detriment. Before challenging Arnold to a debate, Davis had spun most beat reporters into believing that he was closing the gap on recall’s first question, and that Republicans were too badly divided to win the second half of the ballot. But once he called out Arnold, conventional wisdom was tossed out the window. In the closing days of a campaign, issuing a debate challenge is an act of weakness–a very public sign that a candidate doesn’t have momentum.

– PoliPundit