Obama's Stock Keeps Rising on Iowa Electronic Markets

Obama's Stock Keeps Rising on Iowa Electronic Markets

The Dow Jones may be dropping, but one stock that keeps rising is Barack Obama on the Iowa Electronic Markets.

Tuesday morning, Obama shares on the Winner Take All market were selling at 77 cents, meaning traders give the Democratic ticket a 77 percent chance of winning. That's up 10 cents since the first presidential debate, and more than 20 cents in the last month. The Winner Take All market pays a dollar per winning share and nothing for a losing share.

On the Vote Share market, which predicts percentage of the popular vote and pays a penny a percent, Obama was selling at 54.3 cents Tuesday morning, and Republican John McCain was selling at 47.4 cents.

The University of Iowa College of Business project, in which traders use real money to measure candidates' chances, has had a strong predictive track record since it started in 1988.

Time to Run Up The Score

Time to Run Up The Score

I don't want to jinx anything with a debate tonight. And I'll grant that my location in the dark heart of the People's Republic of Johnson County skews my perceptions.

But I think we'll look back on this election and see the middle of September as the turning point.

The economic crisis put the ball on Obama's end of the field to stay, as McCain double-fumbled; first with the "fundamentals of the economy are sound" (no one really believed he meant "American workers" by that) and then with the "suspended campaign" play that failed.

Not to give too much credit to one comedian, but Tina Fey's dead-on take on Sarah Palin has locked in her image indelibly to everyone except the core Republican vote. There was no "You're no Jack Kennedy" moment in her debate, but Fey provided the one liners that Joe Biden didn't need to: "I can see Russia from my house" and "I'd like to phone a friend."

The other important comedian is David Letterman. McCain's visit on the show was just about the only campaign event that was "suspended," and Letterman had been exacting his revenge every night.

When you become the punchline to the jokes, the game's over.

Perhaps most importantly, people watched Obama in the debate and did NOT see the Jeremiah Wright caricature which the attack ads had painted. He passed the plausible president test for the people who had doubts.

In the subsequent three weeks, the GOP has panicked and retreated to what it know best: attack mode. But, and these may be cliches, but McCain is using the exact same attacks that failed for Hillary Clinton in the primary, and he conceded his strongest argument, experience, with the Palin pick.

From here on out this is about running up the score. It's about coattails. It's about the 58th and 59th and 60th Democratic Senators -- and, we hope, the 61st so we can finally consign Joe Lieberman to his own caucus of one. Georgia is in play, and in North Carolina Elizabeth Dole is a goner.

It's about House races on the bubble, like Judy Baker in Missouri 9 and Becky Greenwald in Iowa 4 and dozens -- yes, dozens -- of others. It retrospect, it almost seems like the Republicans saw this collapse coming, and the Palin pick was designed to hold the GOP base vote at x, rather than x minus y (y being a Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin or Stay At Home protest vote) to hold a few seats.

It's about making this a realigning year that finally kills off the Nixon-Reagan era Republican Southern Strategy and consigns the GOP to a Flags, Fags and Fetuses base from which recovery is impossible and reinvention is necessary. The Republicans won the battles of the 80s and 90s by pulling Democrats to the right and making us fight on their turf, and a big 2008 win followed by a 2012 landslide over a Palin or a Huckabee can do the same. I'd rather spend the 2010s battling a libertarian Republican Party than a theocratic Republican Party.

Linguistics Lesson

Linguistics Lesson

One of the most frustrating things for me about Palin (besides, of course, her inexperience and her position on virtually every issue) is the voice. Because it sounds like it could come from a member of my extended, northern Wisconsin rooted family.

But even though Alaska is also northern, it's half a conitinent away. Shouldn't the voice have a little more Bob and Doug McKenzie and a little less Ole and Lena to it? Well, turns out she comes by it naturally:

The second myth about Ms. Palin is that her accent is contrived, or that it reveals laziness or ignorance on her part. Certainly, Ms. Palin cranked the folksiness dial to 11 during the debate: she dropped more g’s, reverted to “nucular” after being teleprompted during the Republican National Convention to pronounce it “new-clear,” and salted her speech with cutesy near profanities like “darn,” “heck” and “doggone.”

But it would be unfair to question the authenticity of her accent or to use it as a measure of her intellect or sophistication. The dialect is certainly for real. Listeners who hear the Minnewegian sounds of the characters from “Fargo” when they listen to Ms. Palin are on to something: the Matanuska-Susitna Valley in Alaska, where she grew up, was settled by farmers from Minnesota during the Depression.

That would explain the you betcha. Or, as Maureen Dowd put it: "At Sarah Palin’s old church in Wasilla, they spoke in tongues. Maybe that’s where she picked it up." Yah.

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Meanwhile, Team McCain/Palin is playing the William Ayers card. "They're going to drive their campaign into a ditch -- and hope they can find a way to take Obama along for the ride," writes Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight. "I am not here to dispute that this is McCain's best strategy -- in the same way that an onside kick is a team's best strategy when it trails late in the game with no timeouts left. But like the onside kick, it is fairly unlikely to work."

And Marc Ambinder notes that if Ayers is fair game, so is The First Dude and the Alaskan Independence Party.

Minnesota, of course, has an Independence Party, though not in the same way. Their Senate candidate Dean Barkley (who briefly held the seat as Jesse Ventura's appointee after Paul Wellstone's death), is a factor in the race. But the really interesting news is that for the first time, Al Franken has a significant lead.

Al, of course, used to be on Saturday Night Live... and you knew I was gonna show it.

Palin Calls Texas Alaska's "Little Sister State"

Palin Calls Texas Alaska's "Little Sister State"



A lot of Texans are still mad at being geographically outranked, and Palin rubs it in:

"It is good to be visiting here in ALASKA'S LITTLE SISTER STATE TEXAS," the Republican vice presidential candidate told more than 1,000 people at a (Dallas) fundraiser...

The Dallas Morning News has the quote near the lede in their original story, then yanked it (scroll down to the comments for the original text).

Check out this FiveThirtyEight must-read on McCain field operations--or lack thereof.

The most important people on the planet: the undecided swing state voters.

Biden Palin Debate

Biden Gave us an Album, Palin Sang a Single



The fairest take I've seen on the VP debate comes from Jonathan Singer at MyDD:

"She sounded like a moderately effective surrogate -- a little better than a Carly Fiorina, not as good as a Mitt Romney -- but not as an able partner to John McCain, and certainly not as one who could step in as President should God forbid anything happen to McCain."

The endless repetition of platitudes, catch phrases and bullet points might have worked in a five minute talk show guest slot--because Palin had about five minutes of material, endlessly shuffled.

Back before iPods, we had CD singles, and us really old guys had 12 inch vinyl singles, which often had multiple remixes of the same song. Each individual version may be interesting for its minor variations, might work by itself on the dance floor. But stretching the five minute single out too long could get really dull after a while, especially in that extended middle break that repeats and repeats and repeats the beats. And you'd certainly never play all six versions of the remix back to back.

But that's what Sarah Palin, the one-hit wonder gave us last night: the 90 minute remix version.

Joe Biden gave us an album. (Joe Biden would have given us a boxed set if the moderator had given him the time.) Biden presented a veteran's performance based on a long body of work, not just the greatest hits but full of the subtle album tracks that you don't always hear on classic rock radio.

Biden's solo album fizzled on caucus night, but he's integrated himself seamlessly into the new guy's band, keeping his style but never forgetting his role as a backing player, rhythm guitar to Barack Obama's lead.

In contrast, at least one observer thinks Palin is already looking to cut a solo album. "Sarah Palin was looking out for Sarah Palin tonight," said Democrat Paul Begala on CNN. "She thinks it's over and is looking toward 2012." But if she wants to do that, Palin needs to take some time after she gets off the road and develop a bigger back catalog of material than the one heavily produced hit she has now.

Thursday Clips

What Was I Saying Yesterday?

Everyone's looking at the above the fold number in that KCCI poll: Obama 55, McCain 39. But look deep: Harkin 56, Not Harkin (aka Reed) 39 -- same as McCain.

Palin prepares to fight mean in debate:



Joe may be waking up right now with a moose head in his bed.

Questions that won't get asked in tonight's debate.

Who's Chris Reed? He's Not Tom Harkin

Who's Chris Reed? He's Not Tom Harkin

Something's missing on Iowa's political landscape this year: Tom Harkin's perennial red-hot race.

Yet despite the low to invisible profile of Harkin's Republican opponent, Chris "Who?" Reed, a recent Research 2000 poll showed the Marion businessman and first-time candidate with 40 percent of the vote, to the four term incumbent's 54. The two week old Des Moines Register Iowa Poll shows Harkin with a bit bigger lead, 53 percent to 34 percent. That might not sound like much, but remember, John McCain only got 40 percent in that same Register poll.

So how the heck does Reed, who's raised almost no money, has a campaign website that looks like a homemade nightmare straight out of 1996, and has Republicans openly talking about writing in one of the primary losers, even get to the mid-30s to low 40s in a poll? Who IS this guy?

Simple. He's Not Tom Harkin.

To Iowa Republicans, "Tommy the Commie" is the Democrat they love to hate, just as lefties bristle at the mention of Steve King's name. There's enough of a Harkin hater base that he's never broken 60 percent, let alone seen the 70 to 30 margins Republican Chuck Grassley gets every six years.

Despite his work on the farm bill as chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Harkin was denied the Farm Bureau “Friend of Agriculture” endorsement which went to all five Iowa incumbent House members. Farm Bureau endorsements are determined by votes of each county Farm Bureau, and many Western Iowa counties will simply never back Harkin.

Iowa saw revolving door Senate seats through the 1970s. With four defeats (Miller, Clark, Culver, Jepsen) and two retirements (Hickenlooper, Hughes), no Iowa senator was re-elected from 1966 to 1986. In contrast, we now have two high seniority Senate leaders, one in each party.

Running against Grassley has been the loyal duty of a series of eastern Iowa liberals--Jean Lloyd-Jones, David Osterberg, and most recently Art Small in 2004, who would have been a really good challenger in 1986 when he ran for lieutenant governor instead. They all struggled to break 30 percent. Grassley gets all the Republican vote, virtually all of the independent vote, and even picks up votes from Democrats who like his aw-shucks persona.

In contrast, Harkin has had top-tier battles until now. The senator likes to brag that he's defeated more Republican congressional incumbents than anyone in history--Bill Scherle in 1974 for his first House win, Roger Jepsen in 1984 to take the Senate seat, and Tom Tauke, Jim Ross Lightfoot and Greg Ganske since.

It's safe to say Republican leaders were hoping for a similar profile in 2008. But House members Tom Latham and Steve King saw what looked like a good Democratic year and figured their re-election chances were better. (However, Latham has a real race against Becky Greenwald on his hands, and King has an unflapple opponent in Rob Hubler.) Democrats are likely to pick up five and perhaps as many as ten Senate seats, and only one Democratic incumbent, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, is even remotely in trouble.

So Iowa Republicans saw a three-way flip-a-coin primary between unknowns, and the coin almost landed on its edge. Former legislator George Eichhorn, a late recruit to the race, nearly demanded a recount, but that fell victim to the flood. In retrospect, losing re-election to the state legislature may not have been the strongest launching pad for a U.S. Senate race.

Reed has raised almost no money and didn't even formally organize a campaign committee till after he (barely) won the primary. He got negative attention for spending some of what little he has raised on clothing and haircuts.

Some Republicans are concerned enough, and hopeless enough, that there have been reports of a write-in effort on behalf of Steve Rathje, who spent two years running for the seat only to come in third in the primary. “We need a U.S. Senator who has the ability to think outside the box and respond with real answers based on new ideas, instead of the opinions he happens to hear on WHO, Hannity and Colmes, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Rielly,” wrote Clayton County Republican chair Gwen Eilers in a mass email.

So, what's a Harkin hater to do--vote for the little-known Linn County businessman who's on the ballot, or write in the other little-known Linn County businessman who lost the primary? “As a Republican leader, Eilers should support our candidate, Christopher Reed — or step down,” writes state central committee member David Chung on his Hawkeye GOP blog, adding, “Nothing personal, but why Rathje? Wasn't Eichhorn second?”

One of the first things candidates are taught is: if someone else can do something for you, let them. A candidate should spend all her or his time doing stuff only the candidate can do--meeting voters, the bulk of the fundraising, and the human being jobs of parent and/or partner. Yet Reed, on his web site, bragged about saving campaign cash by driving to Kansas City to pick up the yard signs. Himself.

That also drew criticism from Eilers, who said Reed should have spent the money with an Iowa vendor. “He cannot and will not win. That is the truth,” writes Eilers, who hopes that Rathje's write-in total will top Reed's votes and send a message.

Chuck Grassley's races have given political sabermetricians useful statistics on straight ticket Democratic voting levels. He regularly rolls up 99 county wins, and even precincts that go for Grassley opponents are few and far between.

For the first time, Tom Harkin has a race like that. The end result of this race will be a set of statistics, a precinct by precinct measure of the base Republican vote, which is probably about 10 points higher in Iowa than the yellow dog Democratic vote. But Reed will likely carry several counties in the northwest, just by being on the ballot as Not Tom Harkin.