With the latest SurveyUSA poll continuing to show a close race in Georgia between Republican U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin [Source: SurveyUSA, "Democrat Martin Still Hot on Heels of Incumbent Republican Chambliss in GA Senate Contest", October 13, 2008], the Chambliss campaign announced Monday that they will spend the next 22 days defining Jim Martin as unacceptable for Georgia voters.

"We won't be attacking Martin," Chambliss campaign spokeswoman Michelle Grasso said Thursday. "We will be defining Martin based on his past votes. He has a long record in Georgia that a lot of people are not familiar with and need to be."

[Source:  Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Chambliss-Martin senate race getting tighter", October 13, 2008]

Yesterday, Obama pursued a steady course towards election day and unveiled the following economic stimulus proposals:

1. Three month moratorium on home foreclosures
   
2. Temporary tax credit for job-creating firms
   
3. Allow withdrawals of up to 15 percent of retirement accounts without penalty.

As Obama demonstrated his competent stewardship, McCain was pursuing a new flail: "the reboot."

A person whom I'd consider to be one of my primary mentors and colleagues in my career--someone who's now one of the top advisors in the Obama-Biden campaign--turned me onto an old adage a long, long time ago which I've frequently repeated ever since: "Experts are people that make quiet mistakes."

So, as we all follow our national "expert" on the economy, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, off of the cliff, consider his own not-so-prescient words:

(As relayed, third-hand from Barry Ritholtz over at The Big Picture.)

Curious choice to spend -3- days this week?

PHILADELPHIA -- Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain landed in Philadelphia on Monday night.
McCain touched down at Philadelphia International Airport and then headed straight to a Center City hotel.

The senator will hold a town hall meeting Tuesday morning at Montgomery County Community College, and will appear at a rally in Downingtown on Thursday morning.

The National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) today kicked off a national road show and outreach campaign designed to inform voters about the healthcare proposals of both leading Presidential candidates.  5 swing states will be targeted before the election for this healthcare outreach.

As one nurse from St. Mary's Medical Center Reno put it, "Our patients are voters too, and we're here to get them the information they need."

The road show hits 11 different Nevada cities stops this week--everywhere from Reno to Elko to the Shoshone Reservation--with a striking wrapped bus featuring the nurses' report cards on Obama and McCain.  Next week, the bus turns left and heads to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Manchester NH and Bangor ME (along with a visit to healthcare hero Eric Massa, running for Congress in New York.)

I found this incredibly honest /and/ brutal. Frum takes Maddow on about her show, /on her show/, and neither of them back down at all for a full 10 minutes. I find Maddow's sarcastic partisanship a bit over-the-top sometimes, but Frum managed to draw out her intelligent side in this clip. I think she did a decent job of engaging him while remaining in the reality-based community and being reasonably polite to a guest, and that Frum was a bit of a douche. Thoughts?

Up until the Republican convention, observers of this election had been told that this election is going to be different, that the winner is going to "redraw" the electoral map.  After all, between 2000 and 2004, only three states switched sides (New Hampshire, Iowa and New Mexico).  It really was time for a change, and we heard some variant of this idea from really smart guys, like Chuck Todd and Larry Sabato.(1);You know the refrain: close elections are the exception, not the rule; and rarely has the electoral map showed so much long-term equilibrium.  The Cleveland-Harrison map of 1884-1892 was remade by McKinley in 1896; Truman's upset did not resemble the Roosevelt victories of 1940-1944.  So, the "theory" goes, we can discard our preconceived notion of blue and red states, as there are several states that can potentially switch sides.  

    Then came the selection of Sarah Palin, and the race tightened--primarily due to an energized Republican base.  Just like that, we were back to the traditional swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Florida.  This CW lasted about two weeks, until the onset of the current financial meltdown; in its wake, we are told that Barack Obama is once again poised to redraw the map.  The idea seems plausible--but it is probably wrong.  This essay will suggest that, in addition to polling data or economic statistics, there are four sociological factors to consider when modeling voter behavior in so-called swing states (including, of course, the potential for a Bradley Effect).  

Full Disclosure: I am a Democrat, but I know the first rule of the social sciences is to recognize the difference between normative and positive--between how we would like the world to work, and how it really works.  Which is another way of saying: the idea that Obama ever had a serious shot in Georgia, or that he still has a real shot in Montana, is seriously misguided.  It is one thing for pundits to engage in speculation; all it does is to annoy the informed reader or viewer.  But this lack of tough-mindedness can have serious strategic implications for determining where a campaign allocates its resources.  

I had a strange dream on Saturday night.  It was Election Day and Obama was losing because of an unexpected "hate" vote turnout in Virginia, Ohio, and other places.  Rather than gloating against the DNC a la, "well that's what they get for being so stupid," I felt very sad.  When I woke up, I was asked if I had been crying.  It was a very vivid dream and I remember feeling this awful pit in my heart and wishing something could be done to make us win the election.  I think subliminally it was also a throwback to Election 2004 when I felt so devastated by these unequivocal rejections from states and counties I thought we would have won.