Election 2008: What’s At Stake?

Nevada Feeling Blue?

Sen. John McCain has held slim, within-the-margin-of-error edges in Nevada polls since the GOP convention. But Jon Ralston writes today in the Las Vegas Sun that “despite the history and some of the intangibles… [Nevada] is starting to lean to Obama, if ever so slightly.” Ignoring the (statistically meaningless) polls, the numbers game favors Sen. Barack Obama. Ralston notes the voter registration trends: George W. Bush bested John Kerry by 21,000 votes in 2004 when Republicans held a 5,000 voter advantage in registrations, but today Democrats command a 76,000 lead in registered voters; Clark County Democrats have more than doubled their registration edge since 2004, leading Republicans by 100,000; and Republicans in the media’s new favorite swing county in a swing state, Washoe County, have seen their 17,000-person advantage dwindle to 3,000. Turning out Latino voters and winning over conservative Democrats could still pose a problem, as could making inroads in rural communities.Ralston asks if Obama’s continued effort to reach the seemingly unreachable is smart politicking or a “fool’s errand,” using Obama recent visit to rural Elko, Nevada, as a case in point. “Elko is 2-to-1 for the GOP in registration, and Bush beat Kerry 4-to-1. So if Obama can make it there — that is, cut his losses to 2-to-1 — he can make it anywhere.”

But don’t count out McCain just yet. “If Barack Obama rented a house and lived there from now until Election Day, he wouldn’t move that county by five points,” Pete Ernaut, a Republican consultant who grew up in Elko, told the Las Vegas Sun. New volunteers shot up from a few hundred to more than a thousand a week following Gov. Sarah Palin landing the VP slot on the Republican ticket and her recent stops in the state, Rick Gorka, the McCain campaign’s regional communications director, told Bloomberg News. And as for the Republicans’ disadvantage with statewide voter registration, Sue Lowden, chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party isn’t worried, telling Bloomberg, “We have a huge number of Democrats who are part of our `Democrats for McCain,’ so the numbers this time around as far as registration do not mean as much to us.”

Diddy For President

Is it just me, or does the Obama drawing from a recent Maureen Dowd column look more like Sean “Puffy” Combs than the Illinois senator?

New Mexico: Leaning Left

With polls in the last week showing Obama up in New Mexico by 7 to 11 points, CQPolitics.com is moving the former tossup state from “Leans Democrat” to “Democrat Favored.” Obama continues to campaign aggressively in the state, with a particular emphasis on reaching out to Latino voters. But McCain won’t give up without a fight, outspending Obama on TV ads in the state the week following the GOP convention $214,000 to $155,000. McCain should benefit when the NRA comes out shooting this week with anti-Obama ads aimed at voters in New Mexico, Colorado, and Pennselvania.

But in the state with the highest concentration of Latinos, the controversy surrounding comments made by a local GOP leader — basically saying McCain will benefit since Latinos won’t vote for a black man — can’t help McCain-Palin’s cause. Bernalillo County GOP Chairman Fernando C de Baca was quoted in the BBC’s “Talking America” blog saying, “The truth is that Hispanics came here as conquerors… African-Americans came here as slaves. Hispanics consider themselves above blacks. They won’t vote for a black president.” Despite calls for his resignation by the state GOP chairman and Republican Sen. PeteDomenici, de Baca insisted the quote was taken out of context.

Obama Terrorist T-Shirt Update

The “liberal loons” that head up Aurora Public Schools insist they weren’t quashing free speech when they suspended 11-year-old Daxx Dalton for wearing a homemade t-shirt emblazoned with “Obama - A Terrorist’s Best Friend.” Superintendent John Barry told the Rocky Mountain News the shirt only became an issue when it caused a disruption. “A number of kids came to a number of teachers expressing that they were upset. There was shouting and yelling,” Barry said. He also noted that Dalton’s sister also wore an anti-Obama shirt but since there was no disruption, she was not reprimanded. In the article, Dalton acknowledged the shirt was disruptive, but doesn’t think he should have been suspended. When an African-American student confronted Dalton and accused him of just not wanting a black president, “I agreed with that because that would be the only thing that made him shut up,” Dalton said. “But I’m not racist.”

“Students have a constitutional right to express their opinions about politics, and this t-shirt was not vulgar or anything other than a political statement,” said E. Christopher Murray, president of the New York chapter of the Civil Liberties Union, in an email to the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog. Conservatives may find themselves conflicted should a group like the ACLU take up this case. “I agree with the message [on the shirt], but I agree with the school keeping discipline too, but it’s still a controversial free speech argument. I wonder if the ACLU would break from their usual absolutist opinion or sit on their hands if asked to defend this one,” read a blog post discussing the controversy on the Stop The ACLU blog, whose logo refashions the “C” as a communist sickle and hammer.