Here's One Analysis That Might Give McCain Voters a Spring in Their Step on Election Day 

There is no doubt that this election will be a close contest and every vote will be important in the final count.  Fear, hope, anxiety, optimism and despair are gripping voters of all backgrounds and the country has been plunged into a cauldron of racial politics, class politics and good old fashioned lying for a year and a half.  If Rasmussen or Zogby could correlate blood pressure and heart rate along with voting preference insurance actuaries would be bracing for a run on the hospitals.

Here's how I justify giving McCain the states that are currently painted blue on most mainstream media maps, states that could tip the election for a McCain victory.

Pennsylvania (21 EV), Minnesota (10 EV) and Wisconsin (10 EV): There is every reason to believe that Obama has failed to secure crucial support among union workers (as differentiated from the union leadership) that is so crucial to these blue collar states.  High democratic turnout in the primaries was at a time when Obama and Senator Clinton were going at each other full force.  There will be a lot of Clinton supporters who will simply stay home or jump the fence to vote for McCain.

Florida (27 EV): In the primaries, the ratio of GOP votes to Dem votes was 1.12:1, and Florida is a state in which party politics still drives electioneering.  Also, in the primary election, McCain got a 5.3% better showing than polls were predicting just before the vote, demonstrating that Team McCain knows how to get out the vote in the Sunshine State.

Three other voting blocs will be critical.

Jewish voters have proven to be difficult to poll accurately.  The issue of how Obama will protect Israel may bring many of these voters to a single issue decision.

Florida is represented largely in the military.  All responsible polling has indicated a heavy McCain vote coming from the armed forces.

Immigrants who came here seeking asylum from despotic or communist oppression.  This includes tens of thousands of Vietnamese, Cuban, Haitian, and other Latin Americans who have made their homes in Florida.  Will McCain's efforts to pin Obama as a socialist be in their minds as they mark their ballots?

Nevada (5 EV): Using the primary turnout to calculate the same 'strength-of-base' ratio as I used to predict Florida for McCain, Nevada shows a 2.11:1 ratio of GOP voters to Dem voters.

Of course, McCain also has to win the races in which he is currently running ahead in the polls.  It's not going to be an easy victory, and at this point he has to be considered an underdog.

It is time to simply go and do our civic duty, come what may.

The New York Times has dropped even the pretense of applying a delicate coat of sophistication to their bias.  Perhaps this is just a strategy born of the Old Grey Lady's survival impulse, that by leaning hard to the left they might hijack the readership of the Village Voice and thus delay their hastening demise.

The picture accompanying this post was a teaser on the New York Times web edition's Politics main page at midday today.  It wasn't an extraordinary experience, finding an example of liberal bias.  No cause to bring in Mulder and Scully, but was it an accident that the photog was lined up perfectly for the shot that placed Senator McCain's head in the middle of the bold red 'X' that is is, in fact, the Florida state flag? 

Plausible deniability will be the order of the day if some of the bigger blogs notice this image and shake the Times for comment, but it is ultimately the photo editor who chose this one image out of hundreds available of the Republican candidate. 

Since the press has advocated the idea that Americans respond to - or even act on - subtle messages embedded within speech and images, we owe it to them to take a moment and consider the potential message being transmitted by the Times' photo. (It is uncredited, so I'm going to assume it belongs to the Times.)

If memory serves me, the bold red 'X' is used most frequently to label something in need of elimination. It is a shorthand, easy for our eye and mind to interpret and store without conscious thought. 

Is the Times sending out subliminal orders that McCain is to be "eliminated"?  Of course not, but this kind of sophomoric camera work used to be relegated to news blooper segments on The Tonight Show, not applied to the sober business of reporting from the campaign trail. 

Does this kind of juvenile antic really rise to a level worth spending a great deal of time talking about?  Were the Times' photographer to have carefully lined up Senator Obama so that his cranium was centered betwixt a red 'X', would the NAACP or the DNC have anything to say about it?  They would label it inflammatory and say that it might be sending a message that Obama should be targeted and eliminated.  My feeling is that such hypothetical charges would be fair and justified.

The media has truly abused its license in its coverage of this election.  We rely on the media for information and context, and we need it to be stripped as cleanly as possible of bias, or labeled appropriately in the case of commentary or opinion.  Our way of life breaks down without a free and responsible press.  This very fact is what makes reform such a challenging proposition.

One would have thought that reform would have been self-imposed, within media organizations, as the market of ideas began to heat up with the ascendancy of Fox News, talk radio and Internet blogging.  Instead, the traditional media have attacked those new media and the people who consult them for news and information.  The mainstream media are championing the cause of the candidate who is most likely to impose federal guidelines for how the media comment on news, much as the British loyalists of Revolutionary America courted the aristocracy in a vain attempt to gain favor with power as a means of protecting their own way of life.

Our system was built with an elegant attention to checks and balances, to prevent the government ascribing enough power to itself that it would cast aside the "negative liberties" Obama lamented in his 2001 interview on Chicago Public Radio.  All of the bodies of government were placed under the watchful guard of the press, who the government was specifically not allowed to tamper with.  This is as it should be, but then who stands vigilant over the press to ensure that it does not become drunk with its own power?

With the power to shape opinions, set norms, transmit values - all of that glorious sociological material that you should have been learning in your Communications 101 class - the press is only constrained by how much power the public feeds to them by either being an audience of buying advertisers products.  The question for us now is: Are the press acting responsibly, or are they abusing their power?

Place the journalistic and editorial decisions involved in two stories side by side and make a common sense judgment of whether the press is doing their job. 

In the case of Joe the Plumber, as the substance of a story begins to hurt Senator Obama, Joe, who questioned the candidate on the nature of the candidate's economic views has reporters investigating his past, digging for dirt.  His reputation is sullied; he is smeared.

In another case, a single reporter for a small-town newspaper claims to have heard someone yell, "Kill Him," at a McCain-Palin rally.  Although the reporter gives no description of the alleged hate speaker, no other witnesses have reported hearing the remark and Secret Service on the scene do not report hearing or seeing any such event, the story is reported as fact by a variety of willing media sources with the commentary added to imply that the McCain-Palin campaign is generating and tolerating a dangerous culture of hate and violence.

How do we communicate to the communicators that we want balanced reporting?  The answer is... competition and consolidation.  Maybe an editor or two who don't have Carter campaign buttons in their junk drawer.  It would be a start.  Since many papers are losing readers, I would think it might don on one or two to try something... different?  Who knows?  If it worked it might spread to other papers.  My guess is that's what they're afraid of, but I would think that unemployment would scare editors more than the distaste they might have for working alongside people with different points of view.

I am not saying that liberal voices in media are a cancer that needs to be excised.  America is a fabric of competing ideas, but the ideas must compete honestly in order for the system to properly function.  If the 'debate' consists only of contradiction, but does not contain elements of agreement, it fails miserably to arrive at conclusions and only serves to polarize supporters of propositions pro or con.

The media should, at least, be functioning as an impartial referee, sorting through the partisanship to keep both sides honest.  As they currently operate, the media is furthering the endemic apathy (verging on nihilistic compulsion) in the public-at-large.

Still, there are signs that the public wants something different.  The commencement of a purge in traditional print media begins with the rapid downgrading of New York Times bond issues, this in the same time that non-traditional media are thriving.  There will be advancements in how non-traditional media delivers its content that may make it far easier for "small" media to develop the kind of large circulation that big newspapers had at one time.  In the entrepreneurial period, there are always opportunities for new content and forms of presentation to emerge.  In that phase, the public can have its greatest impact on how news is reported.

The need for reform in our media is great. 

The results of a poll done by the Pew Research Center showed that 70% of respondents believed that the media favors Obama to win the upcoming election versus 9% who believe they favor McCain.  (You might be surprised to learn that only 8% feel that the media supports neither candidate, but that is actually the highest percentage since the first time the poll was taken during the 1992 election.)

When the election is over, and the ballots have been counted, vetted, and possibly recounted, a discussion of how consumers of media can effect reform will have to occupy some of our attention, regardless of who will occupy the White House next year.  The abuses of the media in this election have been committed in pursuit of vengeance against a party they don't like, but with reckless disregard to their ultimate duty in our society, the duty to provide for the "public enlightenment ... by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues." (That's excerpted from the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.  Context intact.)

The media has a conscience and they know in what instances they have fallen down on their responsibilities.  If they feign amnesia, remind them.  If they promise to do better, hold them to that promise.  Organize a letter-writing campaign to the editor of your least favorite newspaper, detailing stories in which context was tipped to favor one ideology over another.  Offer suggestions for creating balance.  Do anything except doing nothing.

One Post-Debate Politico.com Snap Poll Finds McCain Capturing Majority of Independents

Even among many conservative commentators this morning there seems to be a shift in focus, away from winning and toward dealing with the eventuality of an Obama presidency.

It is not time to drink the Kool-aid, and there are reasons to ignore the funhouse mirror the major media are using to instruct us on what most of our fellow Americans are thinking.

The results of the poll commissioned by Politico.com and conducted by InsiderAdvantage, with a margin of error of plus/minus 3 points, found that, overall, Obama won last night's debate by a 49-46 margin. However, among respondents stating no party identification McCain was judged the winner 52-41. With some states still showing sizable percentages of undecided voters, this may be a ray of light for the McCain campaign.

Cross-posted on Unequal Time http://unequal-time.blogspot.com

There are large numbers of voters out there who have yet to understand the relevance of Senator Obama's associations with left-wing radical extremists, and his apparent membership in a political party whose platform was radically socialist. I don't blame them, really, because the on-stage Obama talks like a Clinton Democrat - middle of the road; a staunch defender of the middle class and promoter of America as a global economic force. The accusation that he has a socialist agenda just doesn't seem to fit because, in order for Obama's soul to be wedded to the far left, he would have to be lying (gasp!) about what he truly believes just in order to get elected. This could not happen because, as we all know, politicians never lie in order to fulfill their political ambitions.

The truth is that when you turn down the volume on the Obama "White Noise" Machine (yes, that is a direct reference to Don DeLillo's novel, and if you don't get the reference you should read the book), and examine the path of his rise to power, a realization emerges that Obama is not the skilled politician we are supposed to admire him to be, or he is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Obama's eventual denouncement of Reverend Wright was done only for political expedience, as anyone who reads Obama's Dreams from my Father can learn for themself. (Check it out from the library to avoid putting any more money in Obama's pocket.) He was aware of, and attracted to, the Reverend's extreme beliefs, and they fit in nicely with Obama's own racially-tinted worldview which is described in great, glorious detail in his own words in his best-selling book.

To what extent does Obama share Rev. Wright's feelings about Jews? It isn't entirely clear and Obama has not been outspoken enough in making his differences clear on that specific issue. Perhaps he is satisfied to keep certain communities guessing, using racial politics to his advantage. Or maybe the message he sends to Israel by suggesting that he would meet with Ahmadinejad without pre-conditions is also a coded message of solidarity to the anti-Semitic factions of the left?

Obama's spectacular flamenco dance around the Bill Ayers association is also an amazing display of distraction tactics. Logic and American wisdom are all that is needed to cut through the stagecraft.

If Obama was a mover and a shaker in Chicago politics, and Ayers hosted his coming out party to the Dem apparatus, and he dined on occasion with Ayers and his wife, and he worked on committees with Ayers, and Ayers and his wife were giving interviews to Connie Chung in which they beamed with pride about their terrorist agenda while operating the Weathermen, and Obama was supporting educational programs that paralleled Ayer's own ideas, if all of those things (and more, but I fear that this run-on sentence will soon become lethal) are occurring within the same time scope, is it still plausible for Obama to recite the story that he wasn't aware of Ayers radical beliefs? If so, I think Orwell just lost a side bet with Stalin in the great beyond.

Even with all of the mainstream media assistance, McCain and Palin having turned up the heat on these connections has begun to force the Obama campaign to subject us all to more laughable explanations (see "lies" in your Berlitz Axelrod-to-English Dictionary) and I think the time is right for public common sense to kick in and break the trance in which these snake-charmers have placed millions of Americans.

The event horizon in which undecided voters make decisions is around 4 or 5 days, meaning that whatever the main street or water cooler buzz is in the 5 days leading up to the election will have a large impact on those voters who were not already voting along party lines. Even those who may have professed a decision to choose one candidate over another, might be prone flip-flop depending on late-breaking changes in the conversation.

(Side Note: When you analyze poll numbers, look closely. Obama leads are not as juggernaut-like as one might think from listening to CNN or MSNBC.)

If a late break for McCain is to occur - as happened for Truman and Kennedy - it will come as a result of both campaign efforts and grass roots, friend-to-friend melee. To deny Obama the privilege of making the White House his final stepping stone in a political career that seems to have benefited only Barack Obama, and not the people he has made promises to, each person is going to have to be willing to bravely conduct their own 25-day political campaign.

Unleash the politician within yourself. Be prepared to put your ideas on the line and persuading people you know to consider carefully who they are going to vote for. Keep coming back to this blog and others for talking points. I, for one, will try and give you solid, non-confrontational ways to start these conversations, and we'll avoid the kind of extreme lunacy that turns off the average person. This won't be won by making attacks, it will be won by winning the overall battle of ideas, and that can be done.

Keep coming back in these final weeks of the election season. Send your friends, too. Don't be afraid of ridicule. We all differ in opinions; you have the right to yours, and we all have the responsibility to keep an open mind. Our job is to challenge those open minds that are left in this country and make the case for voting for McCain.

Cross-posted at Unequal Time.

Even if you believe only one of the candidates running for president, it is clear that at least one pair of pants is on fire.

"Liar! lia!" has been both the chorus and refrain from Senator Obama's camp running all the way back to his snatching of the nomination from the jaws of Hillary Clinton. As desperation set in, the McCain-Palin ticket has finally caught on that their straight talk rhetoric begs for straight walk follow-through. McCain has launched an attack against Obama's lies that is short on subtlety and will likely be the deciding skirmish in his campaign for the White House.

When Obama lies - and by that I mean that he denies certain facts, or chooses to play a hide-and-seek game on topics that do not present a strong image to the general public - John and Sarah will no longer avoid using the "L" word. After listening to Biden and Obama smear both of their records and then hold the distortions up for all to see as an example of "lying" on the part of Team Maverick, it's about time they took the gloves off.

I will disclose that I have previously written on the distastefulness of using this potentially slanderous verb - lie - in public discourse. It is the nuclear bomb of political campaigning because of the collateral damage it inflicts by polarizing the electorate and lowering the standards of political discourse.

The verb should only be entered into a campaign when it is clear that a candidate is stubbornly omitting or obfuscating in order to avoid taking any consequences for some action they have taken that the people need to know about. Each politician must make their own Truman-esque decision and will be judged by the voters on whether the end justified the use of catastrophic rhetorical ordnance.

In my opinion, the preconditions to allow McCain to go on the attack, and not wait for the media to catch Obama in lies, have not only been met, but I believe that he is morally obligated to make these charges.

It's a double jeopardy strategy on McCain's part that will only work if McCain can activate that most valuable portion of the human character - common sense. When confronted with an accusation and uncertain facts, the average person tends to want to fill in the blanks to make some judgment of their own. We are all reporters at heart, and when something stinks we are compelled to find the cause.

So far, the public's ignorance of Obama's messy past and the full weight of his ambitions has not met the stink test, because the mainstream media has done a fantastic job of spraying him down with several cans of air freshener every day. At any moment in the news cycle, Obama and Axelrod can select from the pleasing scents of Katie Couric, Soledad O'Brien, Campbell Brown, and a host of other starry-eyed media cohorts to neutralize their unpleasant campaign aromas.

What McCain must do over the course of the next week - and beginning in tonight's debate - is to hold up a big flashing red neon arrow pointing to the steaming pile that Obama has tried to keep the public from getting a deep whiff of. Even media voices who bathe each morning in Eau de Barack won't fight the public if the common sense wakes them up. Just ask Dan Rather.

It is obvious that McCain is prepared to make his case not only that Obama is lying, but that his cult-like following is beginning to take on some sinister characteristics.

In his speech this morning, McCain said, "I guess [Obama] believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed."

Whoever wrote McCain's speech was deliberately referencing (for those of us in the know) the infamous quote from Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's chief propagandist, who said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." McCain is willing to risk inciting Armageddon in order to alert us to something much more dangerous than the loss of this election. He seeks to alert us to the abandonment of logic that has fueled the insomnia of many freedom-lovers and has seductively ensnared many Obama supporters in a fog of ignorant bliss.

Americans have always been proud of their individualism, their self-proclaimed immunity to nationalism and fascism. Those movements start when the masses begin to follow without question, to subordinate their own instincts and thoughts to the great good of "The Cause". If "The One" can't even submit himself to a mild vetting, he is not fit to lead. Whatever their final ballot choice may be, voters deserve answers.

Cross-posted at Unequal Time.