Fun with Joe the Plumber

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(Picture courtesy of CNN)

One of the big criticisms of the McShame choice of Spunky Palin was that they didn't do their research. If they knew in August what I knew in July, they would never have considered the choice.

That same great lack-of-planning was evident last night when John spoke about "Joe the Plumber." If ONLY they'd done the slightest bit of research!

They would have found out that there are some questions about Joe's status as a registered voter. Yes, he's registered, but under a slightly different name. From the Toledo Blade:

Linda Howe, executive director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, said a Samuel Joseph Worzelbacher, whose address and age match Joe the Plumber’s, registered in Lucas County on Sept. 10, 1992. He voted in his first primary on March 4, 2008, registering as a Republican.

We know this because the nice people over at Daily Kos checked the addresses. And yes, that's plural, because they found that while Joe wants to buy a plumbing company, he already owns several companies.

Remember, Ohio is the state under court decision to get their voter rolls cleaned up by Friday. While that decision was appealed last night, if it stands, Joe could get ousted from the rolls if he were a first time voter. Not like that EVER happens. Well, not to Republicans. But, you know, he wasn't always a Republican. Nope, member of the Natural Law Party.

UPDATE: It gets better. Joe doesn't pay his taxes.

Debate Three, the Real Aftermath

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Before the debate started, our Obama group had a meeting on GOTV, or "Get the Vote Out". The plans of the campaign for the last few weeks, and especially the last 3 day run-up to the election.

The pundits will spin all day, they'll get to the facts McCain got wrong, they'll talk about how McCain looks in hi-def, they'll talk form and function. Our group (about 135 for the training, and about 60 for the debate) alternately laughed, booed, and corrected during the debate.

But for me, the debate didn't matter, and it shouldn't to you, either. We know where we stand, and we know what we need to do.

If you haven't committed to working November 1, 2, 3, 4, you need to. Call your local office and sign up. NONE of the rhetoric, the speeches, the surrogates, the pundits, the excitement, the money, NONE OF IT means ANYTHING if we do not get our vote out.

The target audience for GOTV is that group of voters who vote "sometimes". The people who think we're so far ahead that it doesn't matter if they vote. The people who come home from work tired. The people for whom this is their first election, and they are either confused, or frightened, or both.

While the McShame campaign will have robocalls and mass mailings, thee Obama GOTV efforts are actual phone calls and actual door knocks. The difference is between a "vote for me" message, and the alternative of actually speaking to a voter, answering to their concerns, making sure they have a ride to the polls, and like that.

So enjoy the spin room today, and then, GET OUT THERE!!!

If you don't live in a swing state, get thee to one that is. We'll arrange lodging. Can't travel? You can make calls from home.

And if you say you're "too busy" or "don't like making phone calls" or "are afraid to knock on doors" and you don't believe me when I say, yes, there's training, and we send out canvassers in teams....then ask yourself this:

If I can't convince you to help us win the election, how am I going to convince that on-the-bubble voter who needs just a little more help to come on over?

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Name that Photo

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This photo has been showing up on the web, occurring just after the debate. If you have one of those DVR things, please see if you can check it out and let us all know what is going on.

Then again, comments are open for captions....

UPDATE: Another View

Obama 3 for 3

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CBS: Obama wins 53-22
CNN: Obama wins 58-31

All those pundits who thought this was McCain's best debate? You know, they're probably right. And he still got blown away.

UPDATE: McCain DID win one poll

CNN POLL: Who spent more time attacking during the debate?
McCain – 80%
Obama – 7%

Who Won?

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Update from Matt: Here's McCain struck speechless by the facts...



Floor is open for comments...

Final Presidential Debate Open Thread

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Hofstra has a lot of info about the debate on their website.

CSPAN has some great information at their Debate Hub.

Debate FUN!

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Over on Politico, they have asked professionals to come up with potential one-line zingers for the candidates to use tonight.

Why should they have all the fun?

Comments are open for the one-liners you'd like to see.

By the way, Dave has some ways for John Boy to turn things around. (Don't miss the rejects!)

Round 3: Debate Day

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John's last best chance for ANYTHING arrives in about 17 hours.

If you don't want to watch alone, there are a lot of debate watching parties going on across the country. Click here to find your local event. I watched the last debate, and the veep debate with the campaign kid field organizer who is living in my house. For the veep debate, we kept track of serious errors, and we both went apoplectic over the Constitutional misstatements. Somehow, it wasn't quite "physical" enough for us. So, for the last presidential debate, we had these little dried vegetable things. When we got REALLY angry, we threw them at the TV. As they would bounce off, Olivia would chase them. Happy political junkies, happy dog. It worked well.

Tonight, Rob and I will be at our local event. We have people coming an hour early so we can review the local plans for the next several weeks, and enthuse even more people to work on election day. Remember, the polls only matter if we get our voters out. Please consider taking the day off and helping out. (End shameless plug.)

Will this be brought up at the debate tonight? Ohio has until Friday to have a new procedure in place to validate newly-registered voters.

Change your mind?

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Earlier today, a lot of you commented on the question of how you would advise Obama if McShame raised the issue of Ayers.

Does this change your mind any? (Hat tip, Leah)

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.

And there it is...

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From HuffPost:

Taegan Goddard reports that John McCain confirmed this morning he would try to bring up William Ayers at Wednesday's debate. On a St. Louis radio show, McCain appeared to blame Obama, claiming that the Democrat's comments last week that McCain "wasn't willing to say it to his face" "probably ensured" Ayers would be brought up.

If you were advising Senator Obama on what to say in response, what would you settle on?

Two Debates Down, One to Go

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Obama and McCain have met, and certainly Senator Obama carried both debates in style and substance. I know it, you know it, the only people who don't seem to know it are the MSM who didn't get the blow-up they wanted.

On behalf of DCW, a special "call out" to DCW reader/commenter jinmac, who wrote just after the debate:

If you ask John McShame who won the debate, even he'd say: "That one"

Remember, you heard it hear first.

On MSNBC, after the debate, there was a panel of undecideds in King of Prussia, PA. And while that may be an obscure place to you...if you read my Why post yesterday, well, that oil change place is IN King of Prussia. I kept scanning to see if I knew anyone, but no.

I did however, have the sad misfortune of having a face-to-face conversation with an self-described undecided voter about an hour before the debate. It was the first conversation I've had this election cycle where I actually said "I have to walk away" and then left the building to avoid screaming. I've met racists before, but NEVER has someone stood a foot away from me and used the words "Ku Klux Klan" "kill" and "coloreds" in the same sentence.

And so my thought for today, erev Yom Kippur, is that the polls may look good, but keep up the vigilence, we need a serious margin.

My question for you is that John touched the third rail last night by saying that we would not be able to keep paying Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid the way we have been. I heard that as "benefits cut". I heard him say that health care is not a right. I heard him announce that he has a plan to buy up mortgages without pointing out the provisions for such in the accepted bailout plan (and yeah, since he didn't read the 3 page version, there's no reason to believe he read the longer versions, either.)

Pretend that the MSM actually picks up on what he said.
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And remember, there are racists out there: keep working!

Obama - McCain - Obama Can Win; The Economic Problem Is Why

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This video was created just before the debate, but my prediction seems to have held and for the reasons I state here.

This American Economy is in trouble. It's in bad straights for three basic reasons:

1) According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate topped out 10 years ago and then decreased and continued to do so through to present day. What that means is that more and more people basically stopped looking for jobs and working at jobs than ever before for the first time.

2) The total rate of job growth started to increase at a rapidly smaller rate in the late 1990s and that continues today. You can see the BLS data I collected right on the video. We added about 20 million jobs each decade from the 60s to the 90s, but again in 1999, the job growth party stopped cold. We added just barely 5 million jobs in ten years, that's a drop of 75 percent over what we've produced in the past.

3) During the period of the job losses and labor force participation problems consumer credit shot to rapid rates of annual increase starting just before the turn of the 21st Century. What that means is as we were losing our capacity to produce jobs, we were relying on the credit system to essentially make up for the lack of job growth we experienced in the past.

That's why we're in trouble now. Job losses due to the increased number of competitive market economies -- not the sub-prime mortgage issue -- is the real problem and its been years in the making.

We have to fundamentally alter our economy and the current proposals and the Bailout Bill are only a start of getting at the problem -- but they don't impact this combination of forces that basically creates constant job loss and part of that is the overall International Division of Labor, where cheap workers overseas do jobs that were once located here.

There's an answer, and it's in something I call Zennie's Plan. Stay tuned.

On CNN IReport -- click here.

Who won?

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Floor is open...

Update: Transcript of the debate.

2nd Presidential Debate Open Thread

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Tonight's debate will be at Belmont University which is in Nashville, TN.

The debate starts at 9:00 Eastern Time and will be a town-hall format moderated by Tom Brokaw.

The Obama Campaign started a new website today called The Record. Get the real story on what McCain says tonight in the Debate Center.

The DNC is trying to raise the bar in a big way for McCain.

Who Won?

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And comments are open...

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The Veep Debate – Part 1

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Like many people, I am really looking forward to this debate. Because I wish to concentrate and not be distracted by the potential screams and jeers of others, it will be just me and the one I love. My detail plan includes pizza for the both of us, and a dessert of giant dog bone for her. As you can see from the picture, Olivia won’t need to be convinced, she’s committed.

We need to frame this debate, not in terms of the pundits and their expectations, but in terms of what we really need to hear.

Now, we all know Joe Biden, as do the world leaders who met with Sarah Palin last week. We’ve seen him debate before. We know he has a great command of issues, and usually, words. Here is a great clip from just after the first Presidential debate. About 7 minutes in is his response to how he intends to approach his upcoming debate.

We do NOT know Sarah Palin. She gave a kick-ass speech in Minnesota, and then imploded under brief questioning from Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. The McCain campaign does not seem willing to let her out, and therefore, this debate may be the only time we all get to see and hear her, potentially off-script.

Therefore, will Gwen Ifill use questions to define not only domestic and foreign policy, but Sarah herself? The format:

Under the plan agreed to Saturday, Palin and Biden will have less time than McCain and Obama to reply to moderators' questions and discuss each other's answers. And there will be no guidelines
given to Gwen Ifill of PBS, moderator of the vice presidential debate, as to subject matter, allowing her to mix in questions about foreign and domestic matters, the sources said.

In the negotiations, Republicans wanted to limit the amount of time available for their candidate, Palin, to be questioned on a single topic.

Both sides got what they wanted. Palin and Biden will each have 90 seconds to respond to questions, with a two-minute period for discussion between the candidates to follow.

We’ve all seen debates, and know that the moderators sometimes ask candidate-specific questions. While I’m as interested as everyone else in hearing Sarah Palin on the bailout, abortion, birth control, school vouchers, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc., I also hope some of the following questions will be asked, and that you’ll use the comments to list the questions you would like to see.

1. Governor Palin, you have railed against money from special interests. How do you reconcile that with the more than $25,000 you and your husband have taken in graft gifts over the last 20 months?

2. You claimed you had not met with any heads of state prior to last week’s meetings in New York. Did you forget about Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson?

3. According to the NY Times,

[W]hen Senator Joseph Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, drafted the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, he included provisions to make states ineligible for federal grant money if they charged rape victims for exams and the kits containing the medical supplies needed to conduct them. (John McCain, [your running mate], voted against Mr. Biden’s initiative, and his name has not been among the long list of co-sponsors each time the act has been renewed.)

Why then were rape victims billed for their rape kits in Wasilla?

4. Why did you agree to cooperate with the Troopergate investigation, saying on 24 July 2008,

"I'm happy to comply, to cooperate. I have absolutely nothing to hide. No problem with an independent investigation"

but now are refusing to cooperate?

Them and Us

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Ben Smith put up an interesting tidbit about an hour after the debate. He said:

The mild consensus in the press file was that McCain won, if not in particularly dramatic fashion. The two insta-polls out -- from CBS and CNN -- found the opposite: That Obama won by a wide margin. CBS had it 39% to 25% for Obama, CNN 51% to 38%.

As an aside, if you want to read a round-up of the instapolls, you can see them here.

Once again, it's very interesting how "they", the professionals, differ from "us" the regular folks. Today, we'll likely see "them" pounce on McCain's gaffes about Pakistan, and his lack of engagement with Obama. "They" will also bring up the things that Obama should have said.

But "us", especially those of us who are NOT junkies, don't know what a "failed country" means, and therefore missed the Pakistan gaffe. They can't pronounce Ahmadinejad, so John's struggle won't resonate with them. They don't know that McShame consistently votes against Veteran's benefits (in fact didn't even show up this year for the vote on upping Vet benefits after speaking out about how the bill was flawed because it would encourage people to leave the military early), so they won't notice that Senator Obama didn't make that point.

But there are two more debates left (we'll get to the Senator Biden/Sarah Palin one in other posts), so here's the question: If you could give one piece of advice to Senator Obama for the last two debates, what would it be?

Comments are open.

Well, it's over...

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OK - who won?

Please use the comments to point out your favourite high and low points.

Full transcript here.

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Debate Update

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From HuffPost:

Barack Obama is committed to hosting a public, televised event Friday night in Mississippi even if John McCain does not show up, an official close to the Obama campaign tells the Huffington Post.

In McCain's absence, the Senator is willing to make the scheduled debate a townhall meeting, a one-on-one interview with NewsHour's Jim Lehrer, or the combination of the two, the official said.

Obama delivers statement on McCain's pandering

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Barack Obama just spoke from Clearwater, Florida on the situation.

- "The clock is ticking but we have to get it right"

- "This cannot fall victim to the usual partisan politics"

- Wanted to make a joint statement to let the Bush Administration know what the people want.

- This is an American problem that requires and American solution.

- Asked about the debate Obama said McCain agreed to a joint statement.
McCain mentioned suspending campaign but didn't say he was going to do it. Right after the call McCain made his announcement.

- Paraphrasing Obama... Now is the exact time that people need to hear from the person that could be responsible for dealing with this mess. It's the President's job to deal with more than one thing at once.

- In my mind it's more important than ever to talk to the American people.

- "If I can be helpful I can be anywhere at anytime"

- "If you need us I'm prepared to be there"

- Reiterates that a President has to deal with more than one thing at a time.