To keep Wisconsin in the Democratic column this November, Obama needs to generate more black voters in Milwaukee. He must forcefully cite the Bush-McCain economy to appeal to working-class white voters in industrial cities. Finally, he needs to hold the traditional rural Democratic counties in the southwestern part of the state.
Wisconsin has been in the Democratic column in every election since the Reagan landslide of 1984. So one might ask, why should Obama worry about this Democratic stronghold? The reason is that Democratic presidential candidates have consistently won in Wisconsin by only razor-thin margins. And polls this year show that Wisconsin remains a key battleground state.
This past summer, polls showed Obama with a double-digit lead in Wisconsin. But voters in the state appear to have responded to McCain’s maverick message of reform. Also, the nomination of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate has given a major boost to the GOP ticket in Wisconsin. Palin’s own image as a working woman and a hockey mom has solid appeal in many areas of Wisconsin. Recent polls in Wisconsin show that the race is now close. (Click Here to Read More)
The United States Student Association has filed a lawsuit in federal court aiming to overturn two procedures used in Michigan ostensibly aimed at preventing voter fraud. Michigan now cancels the voter registration of any person who is found to have obtained, or renewed, a driver’s license in other states. The obvious target of this rule are college students at universities in Michigan whose parents live out of state. The vast majority of these out-of-state students retain driver’s licenses from their home state. But many students have chosen to register to vote where they attend college.
Courts have ruled that college students have the right to vote in states where they attend college.
Also Michigan automatically removes voters when mail sent to an address on a voter identification card is returned as undeliverable. This procedure strips the voter registrations from many low-income people, a group who tends to move quite often. Voters assume that they are registered to vote, only to find out when they go to the polls on Election Day that their names have been purged from the voting rolls. (Click Here to Read More)
Barton Gellman’s widely praised new book Angler explains how in 2000 George W. Bush incorrectly informed American voters that there had been an independent review of the health of vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney.
Denton A. Cooley
In the 2000 presidential election the health of GOP vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney was a concern. Cheney had suffered three heart attacks. To alleviate voter fears, George W. Bush called on family friend Dr. Denton A. Cooley. Cooley is one of the world’s most respected heart surgeons. Cooley performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States and was the first surgeon to implant an artificial heart in a human patient.
Bush announced that he had commissioned an independent review of Cheney’s fitness. He reassured the public that Dr. Cooley had determined that Dick Cheney’s “cardiac status was sound.” Cooley never looked at Cheney’s medical records, electrocardiogram data, or images of his heart. Dr. Cooley’s review consisted of talking to Cheney’s personal physician on the telephone.
This assurance from Bush that the nation’s foremost cardiologist had given Cheney a clean bill of health put the issue to rest. (Click Here to Read More)
This Friday’s presidential debate on foreign policy is a major opportunity for Barack Obama to convince the American people that he is the most reliable and qualified candidate to lead the foreign policy of the United States.
Right now many voters think that John McCain is better equipped than Obama to conduct America’s foreign policy. But in fact, on foreign matters, McCain is embarrassingly uninformed. For example, McCain has repeatedly referred to the nation of Czechoslovakia, which hasn’t existed since 1993. He has called Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin the president of Germany. He has talked about hostilities along the Iraq/Pakistan border, where no such border exists. He referred to the crisis in Darfur as being in Somalia when in fact it is in Sudan. In a visit to Iraq earlier this year McCain confused Sunnis and Shiites.
The bigger question is: How can Obama show his superior wisdom and competence on foreign policy? (Click Here to Read More)
There are nearly a half million eligible black voters in the state of Missouri. The vast majority of them are in the St. Louis or Kansas City metropolitan areas. In Missouri, more than 150,000 of the eligible black voters have not registered to vote.
A solid increase in the black vote in St. Louis and Kansas City would give an important boost to Obama’s chances of taking Missouri’s 11 electoral votes. To energize more black voters the Obama campaign can call on the standard measures of placing voter registration and issue-oriented advertising in black newspapers and on black radio stations in both St. Louis and Kansas City. In an effort to increase black voter turnout, Obama can almost surely count on a horde of eager volunteers at University of Missouri campuses in St. Louis and Kansas City. Also large numbers of students at Washington University, Saint Louis University, and historically black Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis need to be enlisted to volunteer in getting out the black vote.
But increasing the black vote alone will not do the trick. (Click Here to Read More)
Michigan has an unemployment rate of 8.5 percent, the highest in the nation. Scores of factories in Michigan have closed. Tens of thousands of autoworkers have lost their jobs.
More than 1.4 million people in Michigan, 14 percent of the total population, are living below the poverty line. In each year of George Bush’s presidency, the poverty rate in Michigan has increased. One third of all residents of the cities of Detroit, Flint, and Kalamazoo are poor.
The crisis in Michigan is best viewed in the data on food stamps. Over the past four years, the number of people in Michigan using food stamps has increased from 838,000 to more than 1.2 million. That’s an increase of 43 percent.
Let’s draw an analogy from emergency medicine. If all 50 states were competing for economic rescue in a hospital emergency room, Michigan would be the first to require attention. (Click Here to Read More)
George Bush beat John Kerry in the state of Montana by 21 percentage points in the 2004 presidential election. So one asks, why would Barack Obama think he stands any chance of winning that state? The explanation is that polls now show that Montana may be in play in 2008. Obama did well in Montana in the Democratic primary. Increasingly, Democrats have been winning statewide office in Montana. In Montana, both U.S. senators, the governor, and the attorney general are Democrats.
Obama’s optimistic view of Montana also has to do with changing demographics. The number of registered voters in the state has increased by only about 10 percent since 2004. But the population is shifting from the more conservative eastern plains to the more liberal western counties. (Click Here to Read More)
It is estimated that there are 8 million eligible African Americans nationwide who still have not registered to vote in the November election. This figure is almost one third of the eligible black electorate in this country.
Laws vary from state to state, but in many key states registration deadlines are close at hand. Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Florida have a registration deadline of October 6. This is only three weeks away.
The black vote in these states may prove decisive. Obviously, the Obama campaign will need to devote huge resources to register voters in key battleground states over the next three weeks.
With polls showing a tight race, the campaign that can register the most voters and do the best job of getting its voters to the polls on Election Day is likely to be the winner.
John McCain recently sent out a clear signal of his support for efforts to divert water from Colorado to his home state of Arizona. This was a revolutionary statement. It is also a clear political windfall for Obama.
The water resource story in the western states is direct and easily understood. The Obama campaign staff must use the Colorado media to make certain that over the next two months voters are constantly reminded of the serious harm McCain aims to bring to the state of Colorado regarding its water needs. (Click Here to Read More)
Over the past decade John McCain has voted not less than 20 times against legislation that would lower or moderate the price of prescription drugs for the nation’s senior citizens.
In the most insensitive vote of his career, McCain voted in 2003 against a proposal that would have included all cancer patients under Medicare’s prescription drug plan.
Over his 22-year career in the Senate, John McCain has consistently voted to protect the profits of drug companies at the expense of senior citizens.
All eyes should be directed toward Florida as the state where McCain’s callous policies should draw millions of voters to Obama.
There are 3 million senior citizens in the state of Florida. OEW calculates that if John McCain had his way and the Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act had not been enacted, Florida seniors today would be paying an additional $4 billion each year out of their own pockets for prescription drugs. (Click Here to Read More)
