Some good news this morning - McCain Sinks on Economy, Palin Pick, Negative Attacks

[geckosfeet]

McCain Sinks on Economy, Palin Pick, Negative Attacks

According to those polls, Obama is not only widening his leads in states won by former Vice President Al Gore in 2000 and by Sen. John Kerry in 2004, he has also drawn even with or even surpassed McCain in several key states -- notably in Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, and even North Carolina -- that McCain must win in order to have any chance of prevailing.

McCain's decline also is increasingly threatening Republicans hopes of minimising their anticipated losses in Congressional races.

Before this week, Democrats had been expected to pick up at least five seats in the Senate, bringing their total there to 56. But new polls published this week suggest that several other states where Republican incumbents were expected to win are now considered either too close to call or leaning Democratic. If all of them went Democratic -- roughly a 25 percent chance, according to 538's statistical models -- the party would gain a filibuster-proof 60 seats.

As for the House of Representatives, Democrats believe they could gain as many as 30 seats, giving them 60 percent of the 435 seats, their largest majority since 1964 when Democratic dominance of Congress reached its zenith under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

McCain Sinks on Economy, Palin Pick, Negative Attacks

A new era approaches.

[nixonwasbetterthanW]

1. Dems have had bigger majorities

As for the House of Representatives, Democrats believe they could gain as many as 30 seats, giving them 60 percent of the 435 seats, their largest majority since 1964 when Democratic dominance of Congress reached its zenith under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Not even close. From 1975 to 1981, 1983 to 1985, and 1991 to 1993, Democrats had more than 60 percents of the seats in the House. And they were very close to the mark in a few other Congresses.

The big difference now, of course, is the near total absence of Dixiecrats, as many of the remaining "Southern Democrats" in Congress are in fact African-Americans.

Oh, yeah, the other thing, in case Joe Biden or another 20th century presidential historian is reading this: LBJ was president in 1964; FDR had been dead nearly two decades.

[Tarheel_Dem]

2. A bit more....Recommended

But if the financial crisis -- a crisis that Republicans had vainly hoped would have been behind them after last week's Congressional approval of the administration's 700-billion- dollar bailout package -- best explains the plunge in McCain's electoral chances, it appears that his surrender to the right-wing base of the party -- signaled most dramatically by his selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running-mate, as well as her performance in both her rare and highly scripted media interviews and on the stump -- is also a major contributing factor.


While Palin has largely succeeded in energising the party's ideological core, virtually ever poll published in the last three weeks, including those following her debate with Obama's running-mate, Sen. Joseph Biden, has shown that she is acting as a drag on the ticket among all-important independent voters, who make up about a third of the electorate.


Friday’s publication by a Republican-dominated Legislative Council of a report in which a special investigator found that Palin had abused her power as governor in seeking the dismissal of her ex-brother-in-law from the state police will clearly raise new questions about her fitness for the vice presidency.


Moreover, her apparent role as the spear point for attacks on Obama's "character" -- including his past associations with William Ayers, a University of Chicago education professor who was a leader of the terrorist Weather Underground 40 years ago and black liberation theologian Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- as well as the increasingly angry and openly hostile crowds that she is drawing to her rallies appear to be alienating more traditional, conservative Republicans.

[Wolfies Revenge]

3. McCain thought he could win Hillary voters with Palin

Then reality sunk in and he realized there are only 12 of them.

[geckosfeet]

5. The few remaining PUMA's presumably. eom

[jazzjunkysue]

4. "she is acting as a drag on the ticket among all-important independent voters

who make up about a third of the electorate.

Earlier this week, neo-conservative David Brooks wrote in his New York Times column that Palin "represents a fatal cancer to the Republican Party," while, in an open letter to McCain published in the Baltimore Sun Friday, former Christian Right leader and one-time McCain supporter, author Frank Schaeffer, warned McCain that his and Palin's joint rallies "are beginning to look sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs".

"If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying (him) as 'not one of us,' I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence," he wrote.

Even more dramatic in its own way was the announcement Friday by essayist and one-time McCain speech-writer Christopher Buckley, son of the intellectual founder of the modern conservative Republican movement, William F. Buckley, that he will vote Obama for president. "

[senseandsensibility]

6. Cool. I never understood what Dems have against gloating

This thread should be on the greatest page with hundreds of responses. It would not cause Dems (who, unlike our competition, can carry two or more ideas in their heads at once) to become complacent. I think if this was the most rec'd thread on DU it would inspire people and energize them.