Campaigns refine strategy: Obama expands map, McCain targets Reagan Democrats

As both presidential campaigns have started airing their first ads and hiring staffers in various battlegrounds, the time has come for more definite decisions on what states ought to be contested and what constituencies ought to be targeted. Last week, Obama started to air his first general election ad in a series of 18 states (14 of which were won by Bush in 2004) that included Indiana, North Dakota and Alaska. This week, Obama's campaign manager confirmed to Politico that they are intending to contest all of these 14 states and extended the list of states the campaign is looking at to... Wyoming and Texas.

Steve Hildebrand suggested that, while the campaign is unlikely to air advertisement here, they are thinking about the possibility of sending paid staffers to organize in such states in order to help down-the-ballot candidates. Indeed, the difficulty of Democrats to win congressional races in Wyoming or Texas in a presidential year is that they are dragged down by the top of the ticket. But Obama has enough money to take care of his own business and afford to also ease the way for red state Democrats.

Of course, Obama can expect something in return: Red state Democrats are notoriously weary of supporting their party's presidential nominee but for Obama to make sure he is not a drag could make them more supportive in return. Given that we are seeing a few Democratic representatives decline to endorse Obama (as they had refused to endorse Kerry) and that the special election in MS-01 last May had Travis Childers struggling to explain that he had no connection to Obama, this would be a welcome development.

Now, we are also getting a better idea of McCain's strategy. As I have noted many times before, the Republican's biggest challenge is the shift in partisan breakdown. With the LA Times poll, the Newsweek survey and countless SUSA state polls all showing a dramatic improvement for Democrats since 2004 and as much as a 15% partisan ID edge for Obama's party, all Obama needs to do to win this election is secure the vote of registered Democrats and not fall too far behind independents.

In other words, if all three partisan groups vote roughly according to the 2004 patterns, the 3% Bush victory would transform itself into an Obama blowout -- all thanks to the changes in partisan affiliation over the last four years.

McCain then must convince registered Democrats to vote for him -- and I insist on the word "must," as this is not simply a strategy meant to put his opponent on the defensive (as is, for instance, Obama's appeal to moderate Republicans) but a matter of absolute survival. The Arizona Senator is perhaps the only GOPer who can even entertain any hope of succeeding at such an effort, though the latest national polls suggest that the road is getting tougher. Now, McCain's general election ad buy gives us an idea of how McCain intends to appeal to registered Democrats.

Marc Ambinder details McCain's latest ad buys to find that McCain is targeting former Reagan Democrats and working-class voters, groups among which Obama was very weak throughout the primary. In Pennsylvania, for instance, McCain is not spending in the Philadelphia market but in the state's blue-collar regions. The same pattern holds in Ohio. The Appalachia region in a number of states will also be targeted heavily by McCain given that these are all are areas in which Hillary Clinton crushed Barack Obama, sometimes by gigantic margins.

By rolling out proposals like offshore drilling and by insisting that Obama is a country club elitist, Republicans are hoping to drive a wedge between the beer track and the wine track constituencies of the Democratic Party and thus offset Obama's advantage in partisan identification. And the high stakes of the success of inspiring distrust among Democrats about their candidate guarantees that the tactics will only get more ugly as we get closer to the election.

More generally, it is striking that the list of McCain's buys is more traditional, with no unexpected expense popping up. And also telling is McCain's heavy spending in Minnesota, since the Obama campaign did not include that state in the list of states it is running its ad. McCain looks committed to keeping that state competitive -- perhaps a reflection of the likelihood that he will select Gov. Pawlenty as his running-mate or perhaps just a reflection of McCain's confidence that he will appeal to Midwestern independents.

FISA bill: Obama's about-face disappoints, in first renounciation of strategy of clear contrasts

It was just last week that Obama delivered an admirably strong response to Republican accusations that he was stuck in a "September 10th mindset," hitting back that he would not be lectured on September 11th by "the same guys who helped to engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq at a time when we could have pinned down the people who actually committed 9/11." This prompted me to remark that Democrats in 2008 seemed perfectly happy to draw clear contrasts on national security issues, in a clear departure from the the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election.

Well, that didn't last long. On Friday, Barack Obama announced that he would support the FISA bill that dramatically extends the state's surveillance powers. Ever since the New York Times revealed Bush's wiretapping program, Republicans have been clamoring that these are essential tools in the fight against terrorists and that anyone who holds a contrary position is weak on terror (starting with the NYT, accused of treason).

In mid-February, Obama missed a vote on a previous version of the FISA bill but issued a statement announcing he stood with those "who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty." Something evidently changed over the past four months. Might it be that Obama won the Democratic nomination in the interval, and is now starting his drift rightward to contest the general election?

Given the Democratic Party's record in standing up to George Bush over the past 6 years, this would hardly be a surprise if it weren't for Obama's insistence that he would usher in a new era of American politics, an era in which Democrats would no longer automatically cave in when accused of helping terrorists. After all, it is for similar reasons of political expediency that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards voted in favor of the Iraq resolution in 2002 -- and we know how central a moment that became in Obama's campaign against them. Yet, opposing one of the most controversial programs of the Bush Administration and insisting on the importance of court-issued warrants became too much to ask of the Illinois Senator.

Particularly frustrating is Obama's revisionist attempts to change the terms of the debate. Just as Hillary Clinton argued that the 2002 vote was not about taking the country to war but about prolonging the diplomatic effort, Obama is reducing opposition to Bush's program to criticism that it was illegal. "Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over," Obama wrote in a letter released on Friday.

So was the only problem with Bush's surveillance program that it was illegal? Are we forgetting that the first issue here is the expansion of executive authority and the strengthening of the police state -- policies that are questionable whether or not they are authorized by law? By accepting the FISA bill and by calling it a "compromise," Obama and a depressingly high number of Democrats are essentially saying that the way to address the executive branch's illegal actions is to make those acts legal... and the problem will be resolved!

What will not be resolved, however, is the fact that this bill grants extensive and excessive powers to government and limits civil liberties. Sen. Feingold, one of the bill's main opponents, blasted this latest bill in a statement for "fail[ing] to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home" because "the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power." This deal "is not a compromise; it is a capitulation," Feingold laments, joined by other Democratic lawmakers like Senator Chris Dodd and Rep. Holt.

A second bit of revisionism is Obama's acting as if retroactive immunity for telecommunication companies is the only part of the FISA bill that is controversial and worthy to fight. He promised to fight on the Senate floor to remove the provisions granting immunity to telecommunication companies, though he indicated that he would still vote in favor of the overall package if his efforts fail (as they are likely to). MoveOn is particularly furious and is insisting that Obama keep the promise he made this past October that he would filibuster any bill granting immunity.

But as is obvious from Russ Feingold's statements and the anger of many liberal activists, the reasons to oppose the FISA deal go far beyond the immunity question and into the problem of insufficient judicial oversight and the extension of the surveillance state. Obama's using his renewed opposition to the immunity issue to mask his about-face on the rest of the bill is particularly frustrating given that it is the parts strengthening executive authority that are the bill's most problematic provisions.

Washington Monthly has a strong explanation of the issues with the FISA bill, including the extension of the period the NSA can conduct wiretaps without FISA approval and the fact that they can still be used in court evne if they are struck down, as well as disregard for what has come to be defined as probable cause, as algorithms will now come to define who is suspect and what merits surveillance. Kevin Drum explains that,

We're tapping the phones of anyone who fits a hazy and seldom accurate profile that NSA finds vaguely suspicious, a profile that inevitably includes plenty of calls in which one end is a U.S. citizen. But the new FISA bill doesn't require NSA to get a warrant for any of these individuals or groups, it only requires a FISA judge to approve the broad contours of the profiling software. (...) The oversight on this stuff is inherently weak. (...) For all practical purposes, then, the decision about which U.S. citizens to spy on is being vested in a small group of technicians operating in secret and creating criteria that virtually no one else understands.

And Salon's Glenn Greenwald adds:

It is absolutely false that the only unconstitutional and destructive provision of this "compromise" bill is the telecom amnesty part. It's true that most people working to defeat the Cheney/Rockefeller bill viewed opposition to telecom amnesty as the most politically potent way to defeat the bill, but the bill's expansion of warrantless eavesdropping powers vested in the President, and its evisceration of safeguards against abuses of those powers, is at least as long-lasting and destructive as the telecom amnesty provisions. The bill legalizes many of the warrantless eavesdropping activities George Bush secretly and illegally ordered in 2001. (...)

This bill doesn't legalize every part of Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program but it takes a large step beyond FISA towards what Bush did. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here. (...)

He's supporting a bill that is a full-scale assault on our Constitution and an endorsement of the premise that our laws can be broken by the political and corporate elite whenever the scary specter of The Terrorists can be invoked to justify it.

And Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin adds:

Most Americans don't realize that the FISA compromise comes in two parts. The first part greatly alters FISA by expanding the executive's ability to wiretap and engage in much broader searches of communications than were permissible under the law before. (...) People aren't paying as much attention to this part of the bill. But they should, because it will define the law of surveillance going forward. It is where your civil liberties will be defined for the next decade.(...)

So, let's sum up: Congress gives the President new powers that Obama can use. Great. (This is change we can believe in). Obama doesn't have to expend any political capital to get these new powers. Also great. Finally, Obama can score points with his base by criticizing the retroactive immunity provisions, which is less important to him going forward than the new powers. Just dandy.

Sure, Obama's move is shrewd and designed to prevent the GOP from using FISA as an issue against him. Sure, most other Democrats would have done the same and are doing the same, and Hillary Clinton was moving rightward on national security as early as late September, when she was shifting to general-election mode and voted for Kyl-Lieberman. But that doesn't obscure the fact that (1) the FISA bill is a major issue and a dramatic extension of executive authority and the surveillance state and (2) those who are against its provisions have to speak up against Obama's decision and those of other Democrats (and there will be a lot) who support the bill.

It makes no sense to hold criticism on a bill of this importance, on an issue on which Democrats have been fighting for years now. It also makes little sense to silence criticism to win this election. For one, since when have liberals criticizing a Democratic nominee hurt that candidate? If anything, Democratic candidates have purposefully sought such criticism. Unfortunately, Obama changing his mind has prompted many Democrats to conveniently give up a difficult fight. As Greenwald points out:

People who spent the week railing against Steny Hoyer as an evil, craven enabler of the Bush administration -- or who spent the last several months identically railing against Jay Rockefeller -- suddenly changed their minds completely when Barack Obama announced that he would do the same thing as they did. What had been a vicious assault on our Constitution, and corrupt complicity to conceal Bush lawbreaking, magically and instantaneously transformed into a perfectly understandable position, even a shrewd and commendable decision... Numerous individuals stepped forward to assure us that there was only one small bad part of this bill -- the part which immunizes lawbreaking telecoms -- and since Obama says that he opposes that part, there is no basis for criticizing him for what he did.

This bill's acceptance by many in the Democratic Party -- including now Obama -- is nothing but the party's continued willingness to be boxed in into Republican positions out of fear of being portrayed as weak on terror. This is exactly what Obama was supposedly going to rebel against last week, and exactly what we are back to today. Maybe this was necessary for Obama to avoid accusations that he was too soft in his commitment to securing America, but has that not gotten the country into enough trouble from the Patriot Act to the Iraq War and now to wiretapping and surveillance laws? As Hunter points out over on Kos, it is the fact that enough Democrats are supporting this bill to make it a "compromise" that is a true sign of weakness:

FISA was not expiring. FISA was not falling into a legislative black hole. It continued to exist, as the exclusive means for electronic surveillance of the American people, and all it required was a warrant, and all the warrant required was probable cause. That's it. That's what this entire, months-long parade of panic, bluster and torn hair has been about, that it was just too damn difficult for the administration to be asked to show two sentences of probable cause to a judge in a secret hearing before collecting whatever electronic information about you (...)

And if you object to it, then even Barack Obama will hold the threat of imminent Terror over your head as justification for why we should ignore past violations of Constitutional rights and declare a massive, flag-waving, star-spangled do over that simply declares there's no more problem.

As for electoral consequences, none of this is likely to hurt Obama, of course. The enthusiasm of liberal activists and groups like MoveOn will not fade based on this, especially since most Democratic presidential candidates behave this way once they have wrapped up the nomination (see John Kerry and the Missouri anti-gay amendment). But it does call into question what sort of campaign we will see over the next few months: Will Obama keep firm on his determination to draw clear contrasts with the Republican Party? Or will he minimize differences on issues relating to national security to concentrate on the Iraq War?

Gore, Solis Doyle, Iraq: Obama prepares himself for the months ahead

The exchanges between the two campaigns are already getting heated, but don't forget that Democrats just recently switched to general election mode. While John McCain had ample time to take control of his party in the months that followed February 5th (whether he succeeded, of course, is another question), Barack Obama is still busy taking steps to ensure that Democrats are unified and preparing various other plans for the months ahead.

(1) After keeping a low profile for months (not without silly speculation that he might jump in at any moments), Al Gore made his first high-profile appearance in the presidential campaign today as he endorsed Obama at a rally in Detroit, Michigan. Gore celebrated Obama as "the candidate best able to solve these problems and bring change to America" and rejected any criticism of the Illinois Senator's (in)experience. Given the elder statesman stature Al Gore has achieved within the party, this was a necessary step for Obama to claim the mantle of Democrats past and proclaim himself the new leader of the party.

Note the importance of the event taking place in Michigan. This is also the state in which Obama organized John Edwards's endorsement on May 14th. The Obama campaign has no doubt noticed that Michigan has unexpectedly emerged as their weakest link, with a number of polls suggesting that Michigan could be the Kerry state in which Obama is the weakest. The importance of the state's blue-collar population reinforces the challenge that awaits Obama. His campaign's decision to stage two of the biggest shows of Democratic unity in this state reveals their belief that it would be enough for the party's base and registered Democrats to come home for Obama to pull ahead in Michigan. Whoever Obama chooses as his running mate, he will surely send politicians like John Edwards who are close to labor to campaign in Michigan.

Speaking of last night's Michigan rally, Obama better find a way to instruct his supporters not to boo when they hear Clinton's name if he wants to sooth over hard feelings. The Washington Post reports that, after Gov. Jennifer Granholm mentioned she had supported Hillary in the primaries and before she was able to move on to the standard line about how she is now fired up to support Obama (what does Obama want more right now than former Clinton supporting women publicly backing him), she "received a deafening chorus of boos..."

(2) Obama's campaign hired Patti Solis Dolye, Clinton's former chief of staff, to serve as the chief of staff of the... VP contender once he or she is chosen. This is one of this week's richest political stories, but also one that is entirely reserved for political junkies. It might be true that the Obama campaign is intending his gesture as an overture towards the Clintonites and it might be true that placing Solis Doyle in such an important position is meant to appeal to Hispanic voters, but which insider works for whom in what post and at what time is not the kind of question that moves undecided voters. If anything, it will prevent Republicans from attacking his campaigns for the lack of high-profile Latinos -- a line of attack campaigns typically attempt to put their opponents on the defensive.

The consequences of Solis Doyle's hire on the Democratic veepstakes, on the other hand, are fascinating. Hillary fired her longtime aide and confidante shortly after Super Tuesday, and their relationship is said to not have survived. We also know that many (and not just in Clinton's entourage) have been blaming Solis Doyle for a series of mistakes and for mismanaging the campaign. The reaction of Clinton insiders to Solis Doyle's new role in the Obama campaign leaves no doubt as to the lingering hard feelings. So does Obama's decision to hire Doyle for this particular position not imply that he has already decided to not give the vice-presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton, or is he planning on welcoming his former rival to the ticket with the poisoned gift of an awkward reunification?

(3) Finally, the Obama campaign announced today that the candidate would travel to Iraq and Afghanistan before the general election. The GOP has been taunting Obama for weeks now on why he is not imitating McCain's decision to take a trip there recently. Obama's trip will come later than the foreign travels general election candidates have taken in recent cycles (John McCain also traveled through Europe this spring), but he could not afford living the country when Hillary Clinton was still in the race. With the media's attention now devoted to the general election, Obama is sure to receive a lot of press when he embarks on this journey and this will be a crucial moment for his presidential hopes.

The upside of a well-covered trip is obvious, as it would immediately raise Obama's stature and increase voters' confidence in him on national security. The drawback is as evident: Given that Obama's lack of foreign policy experience, a single misstep or misstatement could cost him dearly as it would feed a concern voters already have about him. This is what happened in the French presidential election last year, as Socialist candidate Ségolène Royale was pilloried for two silly mistakes during a trip to China and then again when she provided the wrong answer to a question about the country's military. As a woman, Royal had more to prove on national security issues and these missteps ended up being devastating. But when her opponent Nicolas Sarkozy blundered the same exact question a few weeks later, no one seemed to care.

Obama, general election polls and the vote of registered Democrats

The most common reaction to polls showing Obama posting weak numbers in a poll and particularly among registered Democrats is the assertion that the problem will get resolved by itself once Obama secures the nomination. This is an assumption that Kos systematically and unproblematically posits, dismissing most poor poll results with the insistence that Obama cannot but shoot up among registered Democrats; for instance in this post in which he discusses a Kansas poll, Kos holds that, "If you take Obama's Democratic performance and match it to McCain's (81-16)..."

While it is certain that Obama will significantly improve his numbers as the party unifies around him and do so in all voting groups (particularly registered Democrats), saying that the entirety of his weakness in Massachusetts polls or among registered Democrats is due to the primary season and that it will just go away when Clinton drops out is too hasty a conclusion. Obama will probably get a large boost when Clinton drops out (we will monitor that in the next few weeks), but we will have to see whether the boost lasts and whether it gets the Illinois Senator to his full potential among groups Democrats ought to do well in.

For one, the same polls show Clinton is stronger among registered Democrats, though she typically fares worse among independents (we know there are a lot of Obama supporters who don't think warmly of Clinton right now). The two candidates are not symmetric in their weakness, suggesting that the issue is not the party's polarization but that Obama and Clinton each have constituencies among which they struggle; there is no reason to think party unity will resolve this situation. It explains why Clinton is relatively stronger in states like Ohio and Florida and why Obama is stronger in states in the Northwest and the Mountain West.

Second, as long as Obama has a consistent weakness in the Democratic primary with blue-collar white voters, there is nothing surprising in the fact that he is weak among registered Democrats in countless polls. In Kentucky, where Obama suffered a drubbing in the primary, a SUSA general election poll found McCain winning the vote of registered Democrats. Party unity or not, states at the center of the Appalachia region -- West Virginia and Kentucky -- seem lost for sure for Obama. He will have much more of an opening to woo blue-collar voters in other states like Ohio or in the Mountain West but These are, after all, the very voters that have been willing to bolt from the Democratic Party in past elections; even if Obama was not the Democratic nominee, McCain's appeal to conservative Democrats and to independents would have made them open to crossing-over to the GOP.

This is not to say that Obama cannot unify the party and gain as high numbers among registered Democrats as he ought to have, but I am simply trying to suggest that we cannot simply assume that he will do so once the primaries are over. Whether Obama succeeds in polling stronger number among registered Democrats will be key to his chances in the fall. Given how dismal Bush's approval ratings are and the coming multi-million campaign to link McCain to the incumbent president, I believe odds are that he will -- but it will require a concerted effort.

In fact, it might very well be that strong support among registered Democrats is all Obama needs. All evidence points to the Democratic Party being very energized and to the Republican base being low on energy. Very importantly, Democrats are building an advantage in registration and party identification that by itself makes them the favorite to November. The 50-state primary has led to the registration of hundreds of thousands of new Democratic voters, while Republicans cannot say the same thing. These shifts are exemplified by SUSA's polls, as the partisan breakdown of the polls is systematically much more favorable to Democrats than the 2004 exit polls. Though SUSA might be overstating the change, there is no doubt that the ground has shifted.

In other words, Obama has less of a need to appeal to independents and to Republicans than Democratic nominees in the past few cycles. As long as he can hold his own among independents, Obama can build a majority by gaining the strong support among registered Democrats, which would includes -- though is not limited to -- outreach to supporters of Hillary Clinton. While there are segments of the registered Democratic population that are probably lost to Obama (most notably in Appalachia and in states like West Virginia and Kentucky), constituencies like the union vote and non-Appalachia blue collar Democrats will be key to his chances.

In brief, what we are talking about when looking at whether Obama will solidify the registered Democratic base is whether he will win the presidency, which is one more obvious reason to remember that there is no reason to believe that Obama will get as high a level of support from his party as McCain will get from his, nor does he necessarily need to. But it will be very important to keep an eye on the proportion of registered Democrats that support Obama in polls in the coming months, for any upward movement could put him in a formidable position.