* MSNBC First Read: was the Obama infomercial worth it? Yes!

Was the Obama infomercial worth the millions the campaign spent on it? It looks like it. Almost 34 million people watched the 30-minute advertisement. In fact, as the Times reported, that total easily surpassed the audience for the final game of the World Series and last season’s finale of American Idol. Also, the networks that ran the advertisement beat the one that didn’t. Nearly 10 million people tuned into NBC to watch the ad; 8.6 million saw it on CBS; 7.1 million watched it on FOX; and the rest watched the infomercial on cable.

* Noonan (WSJ): the case for Barack Obama

Peggy Noonan writes in today’s Wall Street Journal …

• Barack Obama has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing;
• his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking;
• his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief.
• He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections.
• He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make.
• We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.

Read the entire column at … http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122539802263585317.html

* The Truth About Barack’s Birth Certificate (he’s an American)

thanks to MAUREEN for this link …

• Smears claiming Barack Obama doesn’t have a birth certificate aren’t actually about that piece of paper — they’re about manipulating people into thinking Barack is not an American citizen.
• The truth is, Barack Obama was born in the state of Hawaii in 1961, a native citizen of the United States of America.
• Next time someone talks about Barack’s birth certificate, make sure they see this page.

read the entire article at … http://fightthesmears.com/articles/5/birthcertificate

* CBS News Poll: Obama Maintains Comfortable Lead

• With less than one week until Election Day, Barack Obama maintains a clear lead over John McCain in the presidential race, a new CBS News/New York Times poll suggests. 
• The Democratic nominee now leads his Republican rival by 11 percentage points, 52 percent to 41 percent, among likely voters nationwide. 
• A small percentage of these voters could still switch sides: 
• on the economy – the most important issue to a majority of voters in making a choice for president – Obama has a clear advantage.
  • A majority of registered voters say Obama’s policies would make the economy better, while half as many say they would make the economy worse. 
  • By contrast, nearly as many expect McCain’s policies to make the economy worse (31 percent) as expect his policies to make the economy better (32 percent). 
  • Low income voters, in particular, expect Obama’s policies to help the economy and McCain’s to make things worse. 
• McCain does have a slight edge when it comes to raising taxes, a topic he has focused on in recent weeks. 
  • Fifty percent of those surveyed expect Obama to raise the taxes of people like them, while 46 percent expect McCain to do so. 
  • Vast majorities believe Obama would raise taxes on big business and McCain would not. 
• Sixty-six percent believe an Obama administration would result in more Americans having health care. Just 23 percent think this would happen in a McCain administration. 
• A majority believe McCain’s policies would lead to more U.S. involvement in Iraq. Eighty percent say Obama’s policies would result in less involvement with the country. 
• Obama’s efforts to tie McCain to unpopular Republican president George W. Bush appear to be resonating: Fifty-three percent expect the GOP nominee to continue Mr. Bush’s policies. Forty-one percent do not. 
• A third of voters saying the vice presidential nominees will factor in their vote, and here the Democrats have the edge: 
  • 74 percent say Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden is prepared to be vice president
  • just 35 percent say GOP counterpart Sarah Palin is prepared for the job. 

Read the entire article at … http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/30/opinion/polls/main4559179.shtml

* FOX News Poll: Obama’s Edge Over McCain Narrows

• The race for the White House has tightened significantly — with Barack Obama now ahead of John McCain by three percentage points — according to a FOX News poll released Thursday.  
• The race has tightened in part because of changes in a couple of important swing voting groups. 
  • Independents back Obama by 5 percentage points today, down from a 9-point edge last week. 
  • Similarly, among white Catholics, Obama held an 11-point edge over McCain last week and today they split 46-46.
• New voters, those 11 percent who have registered in the last two years, support Obama by 54-38 percent.
• Obama also has a 52-43 percent edge over McCain among the more than one of five voters who say they have taken advantage of early voting in their state and already voted.

Read the entire article at … http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/30/fox-news-poll-obamas-edge-mccain-narrows/

 

* Kennedy & Palast: Will the GOP’s campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST write in Rolling Stone (thanks to CAROL for the link) …

 

• In state after state, Republican operatives — the party’s elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. 
• If this year’s race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP’s nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November.
• Suppressing the vote has long been a cornerstone of the GOP’s electoral strategy.
  • Since 2003, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, at least 2.7 million new voters have had their applications to register rejected. In addition, at least 1.6 million votes were never counted in the 2004 election — and the commission’s own data suggests that the real number could be twice as high. 
  • To purge registration rolls and discard ballots, partisan election officials used a wide range of pretexts, from “unreadability” to changes in a voter’s signature. And this year, thanks to new provisions of the Help America Vote Act, the number of discounted votes could surge even higher.

 

 

Read the entire article at … http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote

* Chuck Todd (MSNBC): Can McCain close?

Chuck Todd writes on MSNBC First Read …

• Don’t dismiss the likelihood that this race will tighten
• A number of folks will view the polling memo from John McCain’s pollster, Bill McInturff, as nothing more than rose-colored spin in order to prop up the Republican mindset in the days before Election Day.
• But you’d be a fool to dismiss it out of hand.
• First of all, it’s hard to imagine this race not tightening. Why? Just take a look at the remaining undecided voters.
• These are folks who, four years ago, voted mostly Republican. They are undecided now because they are upset with Bush and upset with the economy. But they are not yet on board when it comes to voting for Obama, either because of his party I.D., or his race, but mostly because of the fact that he’s a Democrat.
• The question all of us in the analyst community are trying to figure out is, will these undecided Republican-leaning voters show up and vote McCain? Or will they stay home?
• If they show up and vote, then Obama’s margins will shrink dramatically because McCain — as I’ve argued before — will garner some 70+ percent of the undecided vote.
• What does this mean for the map? It puts a lot of states into too close to call territory, including North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri and Nevada.

LMW COMMENT: This means that all of us who think it is so critical that Obama win must get out and work these last few days. Pat and I got back to Key West last night, and we’ll be at Obama HQ today, right after we vote.

read the entire post at … http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27439060/

* Suffragettes for Obama

thanks to CAROL for forwarding this image to us …

  

* Financial Times endorses Obama

Financial Times endorses Obama …

• We have learnt a lot about Barack Obama and John McCain during this campaign. In our view, it is enough to be confident that Mr. Obama is the right choice.
• a campaign is a test of leadership. Mr. Obama ran his superbly; Mr. McCain’s has often looked a shambles. 
• After eight years of George W. Bush, the steady competence of the Obama operation commands respect.
• In responding to the economic emergency, Mr. Obama has again impressed – not by advancing solutions of his own, but in displaying a calm and methodical disposition, and in seeking the best advice. 
• Mr. McCain’s hasty half-baked interventions were unnerving when they were not beside the point.

Read the entire article at … http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1d0b127c-a380-11dd-942c-000077b07658.html

* Robinson (Washington Post): McCain and Palin do not deserve to win

Gene Robinson writes in the Washington Post …

• Probably, John McCain and Sarah Palin will lose this election. Certainly, they deserve to.
• There’s always race, of course, and we can’t say with certainty whether there’s some huge, hidden racist vote out there just waiting to emerge next Tuesday. My hunch is that race is already factored into the poll numbers
• It’s not just that they have run a weirdly erratic campaign, bitingly sarcastic one minute, earnestly serious the next, uncertain whether to present McCain as a serious, experienced statesman or a hypercaffeinated, overeager publicist for Joe the Plumber.
• It’s not just that Palin, and let’s be honest, should never have been allowed anywhere near the ticket — and certainly not anywhere near those frocks from Saks and Neiman Marcus.
• More damning is the fact that at a time when it could hardly be more obvious that Americans desperately want to change direction — more than 80 percent tell pollsters the country is on the wrong track — the Republicans offer nothing new.
• In choosing a running mate, McCain made absolute mockery of his “country first” slogan and instead put politics above all other considerations. It suffices to note that the Anchorage Daily News — the biggest newspaper in Palin’s state — endorsed Obama, saying that Palin was being stretched “beyond her range” and that she clearly is not ready to be “one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world.”
• It’s hard to imagine that a McCain presidency could possibly be as scattered, irresponsible, uninspiring and intellectually bankrupt as the McCain campaign.
• It’s even harder to imagine that Americans, at this crucial juncture, will take that risk.

Read the entire article at … http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/mccains_missteps.html