LEADERBOARD '08

Obama got his supermajority

2009-07-01T13:40:00.002+03:00

Finally it's July and on time for the Independence Day celebrations the United States Senate finally has a hundred members of that most serene body. The protracted court battle in Minnesota ended in Democrat Al Franken's favor, giving Obama the sixtieth seat that enables him to block filibusters in the Senate. There are now 58 Democrats and two independents that caucus with Democrats and only 40 Republican Senators. Last November's election actually resulted in 41 Republicans but since then Arlen Specter has switched parties. Thanks to that one key switch Obama has now a rare opportunity to at least try to block filibusters. Not all Democrats are bound to vote after party line and especially Specter has said he will follow his conscience rather than directions from his new party that also happens to be the party of his youth.

Al Franken lost the original count but won the recount and then went on to prevail in the momentous court battle. He had more votes when all the votes had been counted and recounted, which is hard for any court to overturn. Franken was also ready for the option of the election to be decided by a court even before the votes had been counted. Norm Coleman simply counted on his incumbency and thought that the comedian Franken would be rejected by the voters as a joke. He was wrong and he should have known better given the history of Minnesota where another celebrity, Jesse Ventura, won a gubernatorial election a decade ago.

Al Franken could well turn out to become the biggest celebrity in the entire Congress, an instantly recognizable character as Arnold Schwarzenegger is among the Governors. Obviously he's not even half as famous as Arnie internationally but he certainly is someone the larger public can recognize as a Democrat and as a comedian. For all these months, Franken has been preparing for the new job. He gets to begin his term half a year later than other newcomers but he is finally there, having unseated an incumbent and proven in his court case that the Bush vs. Gore decision has not left a lasting legacy in the United States legal system. Coleman's only hope was the perception of Bush vs. Gore as precedent but that was never going to happen. In this case the recount had been conducted and recounts always take precedence over original counts when such procedures are used. Al Gore did not have a finished recount to hand him victory in the 2000 presidential election.

How long will the supermajority last? It is fully possible that the Democrats will have somewhat less than 60 Senators caucusing with them as soon as January 2011. It is hard to defend your positions when you are the party in power and already hold a very strong margin in seats. Even a long-term incumbent Democrat such as Connecticut's Chris Dodd can be anything but certain of his re-election. Also another party switch might well upset the balance even before end of the 111th Congress. Just as it was at least in the short term worth it for blue state Republican Specter to switch parties, a red state Democrat might do the same in the opposing direction if the GOP is able to offer anything in return. I think that Obama might well hold the balance as it is for a year and a half simply because it is always easier for the majority party to lure a Senator to switch. Only Democrats and those who caucus with them get to chair committees at present.

Al Franken still waiting

2009-06-18T16:44:00.003+03:00

Will today finally bring the result that Al Franken has been waiting for, a Minnesota supreme court decision that would allow him to be seated as Senator from The Gopher State? If that will happen, Barack Obama will also get his supermajority. The twists and turns of the whole Franken vs. Coleman saga have been so tiring and boring that the voters in Minnesota surely at this point can't feel that all of this is being done to secure that their every vote counts. Norm Coleman made his point a long time ago. Now it seems his lawyers must have informed him way back when that he stands no chance to win, not even with the argument that the Bush vs. Gore precedent should tilt the case in his favor. That hasn't unfazed him since he's out to keep Al Franken from being sworn in as long as possible. Minnesotans have hade to do with one Senator for five and a half months now. Yes, longer delays have happened in Senate history but that is no excuse to keep this seat vacant any longer than necessary for justice to be done. My sincere impression is that this can't be about justice, it's politics as usual.

Since you never can be sure when the election contest will be over, it might be worthwhile to think about what kind of public servant Al Franken will be when he finally gets his seat. After all, he must be seated rather soon since the court is not politically motivated to favor Coleman. Perhaps the delay will not really be that decisive once Franken gets down to business. He is certainly not the most experienced politician out there but it may be of some advantage to Minnesotans that his is one of the most recognizable political faces in the nation. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ultimate celebrity politician, Franken is bound to gain coverage for his speeches, not just by the local Land of 10,000 Lakes media but by the national media. Sure, Schwarzenegger is widely covered by foreign media outlets and Franken will probably be ignored by them. But the chance to have his initiatives covered all over America is a good thing for Franken and the visibility might make up for the time lost with the vacant seat. As Franken is a rather polarizing figure, the coverage of his first steps on Capitol Hill might also turn out to be 50% negative. But it is fully up to him not to create any scandals.

What does it say about the Minnesota electorate that so many went for a comedian in 2008 just as ten years earlier former wrestler Jesse Ventura was such a vote-getter? I guess it says nothing more than the election of Schwarzenegger says about Californians. Celebrities have been elected before and funny talking heads of today are what sports heroes used to be for previous generations of voters. Al Franken had a strong instant name recognition and he was determined to work very hard to get elected. He was also going to get a huge boost from the tendency of the presidential election and indeed the high turnout. Far from all celebrities get elected and those who do have to fight prejudice and voter apathy.

I don't know what Norm Coleman's future plans will be after this contest. It may be that he has prolonged this contest so long because he himself doesn't have a clue what to do now that he is out of office. At least his lawyers must be happy about his indecision, after all they have been able to dig deep in a landmark case and get nice paychecks for their work. What must frustrate them, though, is the impossibility to win the case. Sure, Bush won against Gore and if these judges had exactly the same ideas about this election as the US Supreme Court Justices had in 2000, Coleman would win. It's just that the decision in the Bush vs. Gore case states that it should not be used as a precedent in similar cases. It was also a different election and not all the circumstances were the same. No matter what, Norm Coleman has come to the end of the road with his court case. It's only up to the panel to deliver that verdict so that this circus will not waste any more of anybody's time.

Obama looking forward to supermajority

2009-04-29T16:49:00.003+03:00

As Barack Obama celebrates his first hundred days in office, the prospect of getting a 60-40 supermajority in the United States Senate for his Democrats looks ever closer. Supposedly the Republican victory in the runoff election in Georgia postponed such a possibility by two years. Now, however, Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter has switched parties and the Democrats control 59 seats, one short of the filibuster-proof supermajority. One seat in Minnesota is still disputed even if Al Franken was declared the winner of the recount and a court verdict has already fallen in his favor. As long as Norm Coleman has a higher instance to go to in his claim that the election result is flawed, Franken will still have to wait for his being seated. But once the court case is solved, Franken should deliver the supermajority that the Democrats have been looking for.

Obama warmly welcomed the veteran politician from Pennsylvania to the Democrat fold. Arlen Specter used to be a Democrat in his youth and he has now simply gone back to his original political home. Specter is perhaps even better known for his career as a lawyer than for his achievements during his 28 years as a Republican member of the United States Senate. After all, he developed the single bullet theory as Warren Commission counsel which presented Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. As the defense attorney of murder suspect Ira Einhorn, hippie guru and co-founder of Earth Day, Specter succeeded in getting a relatively low bail for his client. Einhorn then disappeared into France for a period of 22 years before being extradited to the United States to serve his life term in prison.

Arlen Specter made a smart move in switching parties back to Democrat. As a Republican he was very likely to lose in the 2010 primary. As a Republican he was also more likely to lose the general election than he will be as a Democrat. Former Club for Growth president Pat Toomey would at least have had a much easier time in defeating Specter in the primaries than he will have if he is to be the Republican nominee in the general election. It is true that Specter already managed to defeat Toomey in the 2004 primary but he was expecting a much tougher challenge this time around. Anyway the Democrats might now soon get a supermajority that they could hold until the midterm elections. Specter may still be defeated then but there are other states where Democrats might make gains. From Specter's point of view, his situation has changed from desperate to difficult. He is probably more at home in the Democratic Party given the huge animosity he has faced from Club for Growth activists and other Republicans who put ideology first and foremost.

While Obama is happy to have Specter in his team, he can also celebrate the confirmation of Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Now Obama has his cabinet team complete and ready for action. Even if there was a lot of talk about Sebelius not getting any Republican support, the confirmation vote was a rather easy 65-31. Sebelius will now finally get into the business of reforming health care. She was succeeded as Governor of Kansas by Mark Parkinson, a Democrat who switched his party affiliation from Republican as late as 2006.

Sebelius pays her back taxes

2009-04-01T11:06:00.003+03:00

Barack Obama's Health Secretary-designate Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has announced that she has paid her back taxes now. As the issue of her minor unintentional errors in paying her taxes has been settled, the new cabinet should be clear for action very soon. It is truly a shame that the very important post of Secretary of Health and Human Services has been so hard to fill. After the withdrawal of Tom Daschle Obama settled on Kathleen Sebelius, a very popular Democrat governing a state dominated by Republicans. Senators Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback decided to support the cabinet nomination of their fellow Kansan, especially as Sebelius' new post means she will not be running for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Brownback in the 2010 midterm elections. Representative Todd Tiahrt, who is very much in contention for Brownback's seat, has forcefully announced his dislike of a pro-choice politician being nominated to a cabinet post where the issue matters.

Senators get to vote on Sebelius in the coming weeks and after that every cabinet secretary should be in place. Obama also needs to get the nomination of his Drug Czar-designate Gil Kerlikowske confirmed. The Seattle police chief is taking on one of the toughest jobs in the Obama Administration. But then everybody's job seems to be very tough right now. There will certainly be tougher measures against drug cartels and moves like that to be expected but no-one is expecting miracles on that front. Sebelius, on the other hand, is getting an opportunity to contribute to the transformation of the health care system. She may not have the Washington, D.C. experience of Tom Daschle but Obama is counting on her skills as a communicator to get the message to the American people that an improvement is on the way.

At least Obama got a Secretary of Commerce on the third attempt. Bill Richardson pulled out early on and then Republican Judd Gregg changed his mind as he saw that he couldn't agree with Obama's political agenda. Gary Locke was then confirmed rather easily. One of the highest profiles in the Chinese American community, the former Governor of Washington said that he has "always believed in fair trade". According to Locke "minimum standards" concerning environmental and safety regulations are expected from countries looking forward to trade with the United States. This is obviously meant as something far better than no standards at all. What kind of trade policy this will in practice mean remains to be seen. Obama also had Ron Kirk confirmed as the new United States Trade Representative by a 92-5 vote. Kirk has promised to enforce the current trade rules in his job.

The ease by which Kirk got confirmed promises well for Sebelius. Even Kirk had tax issues, as did Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer withdrew their nominations because of tax issues but nothing like that is expected of Sebelius. That so many Obama nominees have had at least minor problems with paying their taxes is probably the most memorable aspect of this confirmation process. In the case of Sebelius the abortion issue will probably not be as significant as expected, either. Representative Tiahrt is simply scoring political points and some of the representatives of the clergy who don't like Sebelius are not being listened to, either. Sebelius decided not to veto a bill in Kansas that would require ultrasound or hearing the fetus's heartbeat before going through with an abortion. She has also said that she is personally against abortions even if she obviously isn't politically against a woman's right to choose.

Tom Daschle withdraws

2009-02-04T11:27:00.004+02:00

Tom Daschle is one of the highest-profile Democrats of recent years. A former Senate Majority Leader, Daschle has also strongly profiled himself as an expert on health care reform. As the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Daschle was expected to bring the needed knowhow to the job and the crucial ability to steer the reform through Congress. His appointment was one of the most important of any that comes Obama's way and the task ahead of him momentous. Now Daschle never got as far as to be confirmed by those former Senate colleagues of his who appreciate his past work. He has withdrawn his name from consideration in midst of a scandal where it turns out he has failed to pay more than a hundred thousand dollars in taxes. "I screwed up", says Obama. Not only has Tom Daschle withdrawn, even Nancy Killefer, who was supposed to take up the new job of White House chief performance officer, has done the same because of her tax troubles.

When Tom Daschle and Bill Richardson were announced among the names in Obama's cabinet, many people assumed that two of the most qualified Democrats were going to hold key jobs in the coming years. Richardson withdrew even before Obama himself was sworn in because of the grand jury investigation he is facing in New Mexico. Now it was the turn of Daschle to fade away. Both the posts of Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Health and Human Services are still awaiting for an Obama appointee to take over. In the case of Richardson Obama simply decided that if he can't get a qualified Democrat, he'll try with a Republican instead. Senator Judd Gregg is Obama's new surprise choice, giving the cabinet a more bipartisan streak.

Judd Gregg has made it clear that he will accept the cabinet appointment only if Obama is able to see to it that his replacement in the Senate will be a Republican. Governor John Lynch is a Democrat and it is his job to help out with this quirky issue. How he is expected to solve the dilemma is nothing short of amazing. He is going to pick Bonnie Newman, a Republican who supported his gubernatorial campaign, so that the Democrats will not get a supermajority in the Senate but Lynch still gets one of his own supporters, albeit a Republican, for the seat. If Newman is a Lynch supporter, Gregg certainly was no Obama supporter in the presidential election. Bill Richardson was one of Obama's rivals in the primaries and Gregg, the replacement, was sharply critical of Obama during the campaign, trying unsuccessfully to swing the Granite State the way of the Republican Party.

Some appointments always fail but who could have believed that both Richardson and Daschle would lead to scandal and a panic search for replacements at a time when Obama is already in office? Judd Gregg is certainly an interesting choice for Commerce but Daschle will be harder to replace. The health care reform is really getting started in a bad way. Who will be the new nominee? Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas is one possibility. She was one of the names floated around during the vice presidential speculation before Obama settled on Joe Biden.

Nancy Killefer's withdrawal as the chief performance officer nominee sealed the fate of Tom Daschle. After all, Tim Geithner was confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury even though he hadn't paid all his taxes. Yet the Geithner scandal was an embarrassment strong enough to prevent both Killefer and Daschle from taking office. Obama couldn't afford to have a team around him where the best known common characteristic of his officials is their tendency to evade paying taxes. Perhaps what happened to Killefer and Daschle will inspire politicians with ambitions to serve in high offices to pay their taxes. The tax problems of the people Obama originally chose for key posts brings to mind 1993 and Bill Clinton's problems with his Attorney General nominees. Both Zoë Baird and Kimba Wood had to withdraw from consideration after having hired illegal immigrants to look after their children. Baird even had a chauffeur who was an illegal immigrant. Obama at least has had his first choice for Attorney General, Eric Holder, confirmed to that position.

Blagojevich is barred from holding office in Illinois

2009-01-30T12:26:00.003+02:00

The Rod Blagojevich scandal has been quite a story. Governor Blagojevich has now not only been impeached by the Illinois House of Representatives and unanimously removed from office by the Illinois Senate, he even has been barred from ever holding public office again in that state. Illinois lawmakers certainly acted within their powers when removing Blagojevich from office and replacing him with Pat Quinn. But the penalty not to ever hold office again seems seems rather heavy given that there is no criminal conviction as yet. Blagojevich will have his day in court answering to all the charges against him and getting him convicted will not be as easy the process of impeachment was. Blagojevich has been accused of trying to sell Obama's seat in the United States Senate to the highest bidder but ultimately he appointed Roland Burris who is not suspected of having taken any bribes.

Right before Blagojevich was forced to leave office, he granted clemency to a real estate developer and to a former drug dealer. The Chicago real estate developer is known for having contributed heavily to political campaigns but not to those of Blagojevich. He is also known for having bought Oprah Winfrey's farm in Indiana in 2005. He had already been pardoned by a previous governor for the crime he committed in his youth but now his conviction will be expunged from public records. The former drug dealer is a janitor at a homeless shelter in Chicago and he had been convicted in 2001, spent a year in prison and now has his conviction expunged from the records as well.

One of the high points of the Blagojevich impeachment trial was a FBI wiretap where the Illinois chief executive discusses with a lobbyist signing a bill diverting a percentage of Illinois casino revenues to the horse racing industry. The issue is whether Blagojevich was paid by a racetrack owner to sign the casino bill. The racetrack owner's lawyer denies that any payoff was made in connection to this phone call and it is not even the racetrack owner himself who is speaking on the phone. The money quote that cost Blagojevich his job is probably the one about how valuable Obama's Senate seat is to him, from a different phone call: "...uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for f---ing nothing."

Blagojevich is adamant that he is innocent of any wrongdoing. He claimed in an interview with Fox News that the Democrats in Illinois, the people in his own party, wanted to push through a tax increase that he had been against for the last six years. By removing him the income tax will be raised. Blagojevich also says he considered appointing Oprah Winfrey to Obama's seat, even if he's not so sure Oprah would have said yes to such an appointment. He has no idea what he will do now that he is not allowed to hold public office in Illinois. While the impeachment trial was a very quick affair, Blagojevich is now looking forward to his criminal trial that might last for years. Now he will be calling witnesses and one of them might be Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Inauguration is a day of hope

2009-01-20T15:05:00.003+02:00

Today is the big day when Barack Obama and Joe Biden will be sworn into office. The whole world is watching and hope permeates the atmosphere, probably more so than what will be the case with any other day in the coming months. The economic crisis is deep and the prospect of achieving world peace is far away. But nothing will be achieved without trying. That is the distinctly American feel about this day and hopefully of others to come, whatever the odds, there will be an effort to achieve change. Obama is to many an embodiment of the American dream and his symbolic importance is great. He is going to be there as a source of inspiration and his well-crafted speeches are expected to raise spirits both in the United States and abroad. Many people who didn't care about politics before are following today's events closely. The start is promising but many difficulties lie ahead.

The successors of both Obama and Biden have now been sworn in as members of the United States Senate. Ted Kaufman took his place as Senator from Delaware quietly and swiftly one day after Biden's resignation. Governor Ruth Ann Minner had announced the replacement for Biden long ago and there was never any serious controversy about the pick. This stands in marked contrast to the circus surrounding Rod Blagojevich in his attempt to make the most of having the power to pick Obama's successor. The seat was vacant for about two months until Roland Burris finally was allowed in with the help of the Illinois Supreme Court. In any case it is a relief for the Democrats to have Kaufman and Burris sworn in and part of the Senate shakeup behind them. Two more changes are expected soon with Ken Salazar and Hillary Clinton vacating their seats in order to serve in the Obama Administration.

While Obama's daughters are too young to build a political dynasty just yet, Joe Biden is already rumored to have plans for his son Beau who is currently serving in Iraq. Ted Kaufman is even seen as someone close to the Biden family who keeps the seat warm in between two Bidens. In 1960 John F. Kennedy resigned after having been elected President of the United States. Benjamin A. Smith II, a friend of his, was appointed as his successor in the United States Senate. Two years later Ted Kennedy was ready to run in the special election, taking the seat back to the family. Beau Biden in 2010 could be an attempt to achieve a similar family seat in Delaware as has been the case with the Kennedy clan in Massachusetts. That arrangement proved durable as Ted Kennedy has kept the seat in the family for over 46 years now. As his health is declining, the Democrats could face a fifth Senate appointment within a matter of months. Family name matters a lot in American politics, which is why a possible future presidential campaign by Jeb Bush, the brother of the outgoing occupant of the White House, should not be ruled out. Despite all the talk of dynasties being built and replaced by others, the victory of Barack Obama is a sure sign of Americans feeling tired of dynasties. Even Joe Biden, who would like his son to make it big, has not made it to where he is today because of a famous family name.

The enthusiasm is great and Barack Obama's inauguration speech will automatically be compared with those by famous predecessors such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. There is a feeling that this moment in American history is pivotal. For the Democrats this is an especially great day because many feel a similar change in the political atmosphere as was witnessed when Ronald Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter 28 years ago. Then the change was in a different direction. Yet there were many things that contributed to Reagan's success in getting his agenda through, some of them becoming apparent in the years after he took office. How much Obama will be able to steer the country his way depends on a myriad of factors. But the country listens to him right now as he reaches the peak of his meteoric career. Who could have foreseen that he can defeat Hillary Clinton in the primaries only two years ago? Winning the general election was perhaps easier given that the Democrats were so strong as a party but actually first going up against the party machine and then unifying the party after the bitter primary season was nothing short of miraculous. More of that magic stuff is needed from him to keep the cabinet together and get the best out of all the strong personalities who expect to get their share of the power that now befalls them.

Al Franken close to final victory

2009-01-07T17:04:00.005+02:00

Comedian Al Franken won the recount in Minnesota and he is likely to take up his seat in the United States Senate at some point in the future. Senator Norm Coleman won the original count, now Franken has won the recount and the next thing to happen in Minnesota is Coleman challenging the result of the recount in court. A court order could still stop Franken from winning in Minnesota. Barack Obama can count on a strong Senate majority supporting him when he is sworn in. Still, his own seat in Illinois is still vacant and the seat in Minnesota is still being contested in court. 59 seats it should be for the Democrats, counting Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who both are nominally independent. The situation in both Minnesota and Illinois is truly bizarre, however, and the new Senate began its work yesterday with 57 Senators caucusing with the Democrats.

Minnesota state law prevents Franken from taking up his seat as long as the court case is unresolved. Norm Coleman doesn't mind that Minnesota will have only one member of the United States Senate as long as the case is not finished. It may even be in his interests for the case to drag on. At least there is some possibility for him to win as long as it is not all over. Coleman's lead was 215 votes after the original count, now it is Franken leading with 225 votes after the recount and Coleman wishes to prove that the recount was flawed. The court case could drag on for months, shortening the six-year term of the incoming Senator. A part of the electorate is going to want to be represented in the Senate rather than a court deciding the final outcome but there's not much those voters can do about it. Yet there are two things for Coleman to seriously worry about. The law suit is going to be very costly. After the recount has been finished, it is not supposed to be cheap to keep a Senator from being sworn in. Even if there will be enough money to go on with a prolongeed court case, the other issue is how exactly are Coleman's lawyers going to prove that the recount was flawed. Coleman apparently has the money and how to win the case is his lawyers' problem. They are being well paid so they won't be complaining.

A panel consisting of three judges is going to determine whether Al Franken won, as is shown by the official recount results, or if Norm Coleman has right in that he was cheated of a victory. Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page is apparently going to name the panel that will decide the contested election. Coleman said that the lawsuit is going to be worth it even if Franken ultimately wins. According to Coleman, the most important thing is to ensure that every vote counts. Now it will be three people who really count but this is politics and it is hard to avoid a contested election when the result is as close as it is in Minnesota. What probably guaranteed the court case is that different candidates won the original count and the recount. Something obviously went wrong at some point.

As if there wasn't enough drama in Minnesota, Roland Burris of Illinois was turned away at the door of the Senate when he came to be sworn in as the only African American Senator. Rod Blagojevich acted within his powers when he appointed Burris but Illinois Secretary of State failed to confirm the appointment. This gave the officials a reason to prevent Burris from entering the very exclusive club that is the upper house of the Congress. Minnesota will be without the state's other Senator as long as it takes to resolve the court case that Coleman has opted for. Illinois could well be without having been able to pick a successor to Barack Obama as long as Rod Blagojevich manages to postpone his impeachment. His and Norm Coleman's lawyers have the opportunity to reduce the membership of the Senate to 98 for some months to come, if they are clever and imaginative enough. Blagojevich at least gets to be the Governor of Illinois as long as his lawyers are successful in their stalling tactics. Norm Coleman doesn't gain anything personally by dragging on the process but what he wants is to win his court case. That would bring him back to the corridors of power, out in the cold as he is as long as the result of the recount stays on.

Blagojevich announces his Senate appointment

2008-12-31T19:32:00.002+02:00

Roland Burris, a former Illinois politician, is the final choice of Governor Rod Blagojevich for United States Senator from Illinois. The seat has been vacant since Barack Obama resigned soon after having won the 2008 presidential election. The 71-year-old Burris is generally considered a hasbeen and he was not among the seven people rumored to have been the ones Blagojevich seriously considered. Since Blagojevich tried to sell the seat for the highest bidder and he had conversations with the more serious candidates with varying success, he had to redo the selecting process from the start. His discussions had been taped by the FBI and now Blagojevich came up with a last minute effort to save his skin by appointing someone who is known for being honest. A septuagenarian who has yet to be involved in a scandal, Burris may even be considered a rarity in the stormy waters of Illinois politics. He is also not especially popular and this is his only chance ever to get anywhere close to the United States Senate. But there is already a serious twist, no-one appointed by Blagojevich will be welcome in the august legislative body trying to protect its reputation.

Senate Democrats are already out there to attempt to prevent Burris from taking his seat or unseat him immediately after he has been seated, if that is legally possible. Republicans are urging the Democrats on to prevent anyone who has anything to do with Blagojevich from being appointed. Burris has been in retirement after having lost four elections in a row. He actually has hoped for a one more return to the world of politics and he thinks he should be allowed to be sworn in. After all, Burris has not done anything wrong. Blagojevich has full gubernatorial powers right until the very moment when his opponents succeed in impeaching him. They are doing their best but Blagojevich is postponing the process with the help of one of the best lawyers he could find, someone who has the reputation of having succeeded to keep R. Kelly out of court for a period of six years. For Blagojevich it would suffice to be able to stall the impeachment process until he is out of office in 2011.

Rod Blagojevich is fighting for his political life. Illinois lawmakers want him out before the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. They want Pat Quinn to deliver the crucial birthday speech, after all he is not tarnished by being an associate of Blagojevich, at least not during the time of the scandal. It is quite hilarious given that we are talking about the lieutenant governor who maybe should be close to Blagojevich. Quinn is however very proud of not having spoken with Blagojevich at all for a period of several months. African Americans in Illinois are in a quandary right now, Blagojevich is offering to replace Obama with an African American with a long political record, yet there are high hopes that Quinn will appoint Danny Davis who is actually rumored to having been the first choice of the disgraced governor before the scandal broke out.

It is hard to say what the implications of the Blagojevich scandal are to the presidency of Barack Obama. A scandal in Illinois that involves the Senate seat previously held by Obama is certainly not so good publicity. Yet it is obvious that Blagojevich is not close to Obama at all and is actually prolonging the whole process as long as he can, putting his own career or what remains of it first and not caring much about any implications for his party or for the president-elect. Maybe some people even think that Obama is a different breed altogether from people like Blagojevich who represent politics as usual. Blagojevich is still in office, still stirring trouble and he uses his powers to pass bills and to pardon prisoners without anyone specifically objecting to those actions being performed by the chief executive of Illinois. It is at the same time clear that there are many people who want Blagojevich to resign immediately, Obama being one of them. Roland Burris might just want Blagojevich to stay on long enough to get the already announced Senate appointment through. If the other Senators manage to block his appointment until Blagojevich is out, he may never be seated even if it is highly doubtful that there are any constitutional reasons for preventing this specific action as long as other gubernatorial powers are exercised by the same man without legal challenges to those actions.

Senate seat was for sale in Illinois

2008-12-10T10:57:00.004+02:00

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was trying to sell Barack Obama's seat in the United States Senate for the highest bidder. The seat is apparently not for sale anymore as Blagojevich was arrested and his scheme exposed to the general public. Since Obama resigned from the upper house of the United States Congress, it has been squarely up to Blagojevich to appoint his successor. He could have picked anyone he wanted. He even joked he is the Santa Claus of this holiday season. After all he had a Christmas present to give that most Illinois politicians truly wanted. So Blagojevich apparently decided he'd ask all the politicians what they can give to him in exchange for being appointed. While he otherwise had free hands in picking anyone he wishes to, this practice is also known as corruption and right now it seems highly unlikely that he will ever get to appoint Obama's successor. If he resigns or is removed from office, his successor will get to appoint whoever that lucky person will be.

Illinois politics has been riddled by corruption scandals. Rod Blagojevich will not be the first man in his position to end up with facing criminal charges. Indeed, his predecessor George Ryan was in a precarious position when he left office. The scandal that Ryan, a Republican, was entangled in, basically ensured victory for the Democrats in Illinois in the 2002 gubernatorial election. Blagojevich obviously campaigned against "a system of corruption" but it now seems the change he promised to deliver was at least in some part more of the same. The criminal conviction of former Blagojevich fundraiser Tony Rezko earlier this year raised many question marks about what was going on. If Illinois Republicans had been at an all time low after George Ryan's tenure in office, they are now going to get an opportunity to promise to change the corrupt way of doing things in Springfield. They should even get a serious opportunity at capturing Obama's former Senate seat when that comes up for election. Obama will most likely be succeeded by a Democrat since he will still at first be replaced by appointment but whoever that person is, the next election will be tough because of Blagojevich. The next gubernatorial election will probably be rather wide open. Pat Quinn will rather likely get the keys to the Governor's mansion as his sixtieth birthday present but it remains to be seen whether he intends to stay on in the office for a longer time.

Rod Blagojevich is one of the best known Serbian Americans of all time. He will now be best remembered for this scandal. Americans of other ethnic backgrounds have of course been indicated in the previous corruption scandals in Illinois. The sleaze has been bipartisan and shared among the many ethnic communities of the Chicago area. Still, this is bad news for both Democrats and for Serbian Americans. Senator George Voinovich, the Ohio Republican, and the inventor Nikola Tesla represent high points in the history of the Serbian American community, both of them actually more specifically ethnic Croatian Serbs. Blagojevich is not even the first really famous Serbian American from Chicago, the actor Karl Malden who was born Mladen Sekulovich having been one for decades. Still, Blagojevich's fall is quite a spectacular shock to the Serbian community in Chicago. He won two gubernatorial elections and his supporters had hoped for him to become a major national politician like Obama.

The hypocrisy in the Blagojevich scandal is only too obvious. It brings echoes of everything Eliot Spitzer campaigned against and what he then did as Governor of New York. Still, Spitzer may be a hypocrite but his scandal having to do with buying sex was a highly personal one and not necessarily an indication of how he generally conducted himself while in office. How Rod Blagojevich has handled the political opportunity brought by Barack Obama's resignation from the United States Senate is a different story and an extremely serious matter. Governor Blagojevich was abusing one of the highest powers that befell on him and doing it in an incredibly blatant manner. He was elected to his office as a former prosecutor who promised to get rid of the culture of corruption. Now he is the central figure in one of the most spectacular scandals in the history of Illinois and there has been many such scandals before his time. Still, at his lowest point, Rod Blagojevich is also praised in the news for how he pressured Bank of America to give additional loans to Republic Windows & Doors, a shut down Chicago factory. This he did so that the workers who were laid off could get compensation for their lost jobs.

Obama team taking shape

2008-11-22T16:36:00.002+02:00

President-elect Barack Obama is going to appoint many people close to Bill Clinton in top positions. This was to some extent inevitable as that is where experienced Democrats are to be found. President Clinton himself appointed Warren Christopher as Secretary of State, a politician who had served under previous Democratic president Jimmy Carter. It looks like Obama is going to appoint Bill Clinton's wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, as his Secretary of State. It is a bold move as he is going to give one of the top jobs to a very tough rival of his. But Obama doesn't have the same foreign policy experience as Clinton and if he can make her work together with Joe Biden, he is going to have two strong-willed people with firm opinions around him. President Abraham Lincoln is one of Obama's idols and it looks like the Obama Administration is going to be modeled on Lincoln's "team of rivals". Not all of Lincoln's appointments worked that well, however. It may even be one of the points behind making bold appointments that the persons who get the top jobs are swiftly removable from their positions, much more so than if they were Senators or Congressmen.

Woodrow Wilson appointed William Jennings Bryan, a rival of his, as Secretary of State. Bryan was very much the heart and soul of the party, its chief ideologue and had lost three presidential elections as the party's nominee. Wilson placated Bryan supporters with that move just as Obama is now going to placate Clinton supporters. Bryan lasted about two years in his position and was never to make a comeback in a leading cabinet position after his resignation. Bryan's final hurrah was the job he did for the prosecution in the Scopes Monkey Trial against a teacher who had taught the theory of evolution in Tennessee in the 1920s. If Hillary Clinton is going to go the way of Bryan, the fame she will get after her resignation will be as a lawyer rather than as a politician. I bet she will last longer than Bryan as Secretary of State, though. But no one will last forever.

A very interesting move will be if Secretary of Defense Robert Gates accepts to continue in his job under Obama. I'm sure most people expected everyone in the Bush team to go. George W. Bush and Barack Obama have done all they can to achieve an orderly transition and keeping Gates in his place would cement the tie that would bind the two opposing camps together. Gates used to belong to the inner circle of George H.W. Bush and was called in to rescue when Donald Rumsfeld resigned two years ago. The elder Bush's right hand man James Baker was not willing to come back into the limelight but found the perfect solution in his friend Gates, a somewhat younger man who would bring a wealth of experience to the Obama team. If Gates says yes, a very big if, I suppose he will fit in better with the incoming team than with his current colleagues but not as well as in his natural habitat, the George H.W. Bush Administration.

New York Fed chairman Tim Geithner looks set to be Obama's Treasury Secretary. Larry Summers, Warren Buffett and Paul Volcker would all have been controversial choices. Appointments like Clinton and Gates are uncertain from day one when it comes to how long they will last. Gates will probably be picked with the understanding that he will not serve for the whole of the coming four years. Geithner is the same age as Obama and one of those persons who are expected to stay around for longer. He has studied both Japanese and Chinese and lived in different parts of the world. It looks like he blends in perfectly with Obama, unlike the other potential Treasury candidates. Obama's picks for Attorney General and Chief of Staff, Eric Holder and Rahm Emanuel, both served in different positions under Bill Clinton. Tom Daschle, the choice for Health and Human Services, used to be Senate Majority Leader.

McCain wins Missouri

2008-11-20T10:54:00.003+02:00

Now it is official, Republican John McCain has won Missouri and gets eleven more electoral votes. Democrat Barack Obama won 365 electoral votes and McCain's final tally is now 173. Obama gave McCain a run for his money in Missouri, a swing state that was supposedly one of the Republican's strongest territories. Well, it was not just supposedly, after all McCain lost Indiana, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. Missouri is a state that he actually won so the result there gives some solace to the McCain campaign; it won't be remembered as a complete failure. The Show Me State usually goes with the winner and McCain is the first loser in decades to carry the state, quite a feat in itself. Ralph Nader can add to his third place finish the merit of having achieved a spoiler role in Missouri, so he might in the end be the most satisfied that Missouri stays with McCain after the votes have been counted. Otherwise Nader's performance was not very strong and having made his mark in a state that has gained very much attention in presidential politics might help some people remember that he was actually a part of this year's election.

While independent candidates weren't much of a factor in the presidential election, some of them made a serious difference in Senate races. In Oregon, Constitution Party candidate Dave Brownlow helped Democrat Jeff Merkley to oust Republican Gordon Smith from the Senate. Smith actually ran attack ads against Brownlow. The attempt to portray Brownlow as a "liberal extremist" didn't help the Republicans but the Democrats must be pleased by it all. Independence Party of Minnesota candidate Dean Barkley was the strongest third party candidate in United States Senate elections this year. No-one still knows who won and who was hurt the most by Barkley's candidacy. In December the recount should be ready and the winner in the contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman will be known. Dean Barkley was successful but not as successful as Jesse Ventura in the gubernatorial campaign ten years ago that Barkley himself managed. Libertarian candidate Allen Buckley is responsible for the runoff in Georgia between Republican Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin. Buckley has praised Martin, especially in regard of the Democrat's stance on civil liberties, but stopped short of endorsing him.

Winning Missouri is a nice result for McCain but it doesn't change the end result, a clear Obama victory overall. Obama has been able to enjoy good news from one Senate contest after the other. The Democrats strengthen their control of the Senate and the filibuster proof supermajority is still a possibility. To get that Al Franken must win the recount, which is highly possible but that won't be enough. Jim Martin has to defeat Saxby Chambliss in the runoff which is a far more improbable feat. So I'm still sticking to my original guess of Democrats getting 59 seats. Gordon Smith and Ted Stevens ended up both being defeated and Norm Coleman's defeat depends on the recount.

Ted Stevens got news of his defeat against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich on his 85th birthday. Stevens is the longest-serving Republican Senator ever. To those who remember Strom Thurmond I'd like to remind that he switched parties in 1964. Although he was in the Senate for a very long time, Thurmond actually represented Republicans for less than four decades there, until his retirement in January 2003 at the age of one hundred. Ted Stevens has to leave the Senate at 85 now but he will make four full decades as a Republican Senator in December. Ted Stevens was originally appointed to the Senate on Christmas Eve, 1968, to replace his deceased predecessor, Democrat Bob Bartlett. As long a time forty years is, it's not fifty. Today is Democrat Robert Byrd's ninety-first birthday. Come January, Byrd will have Represented the Democrats for fifty straight years. He is already the longest-serving person in the history of the United States Senate, beating Thurmond's previous record by about two years.

Obama gets one electoral vote from Nebraska

2008-11-15T16:14:00.004+02:00

In this year's presidential election two states, Nebraska and Maine, made it possible that their electoral votes could be divided between the candidates. While Barack Obama won all of Maine's electoral votes he has also won one of Nebraska's five electoral votes. Nebraska awards presidential electors per congressional district and Obama won the vote in Nebraska's second district thanks to the urban vote in Omaha. Nebraska becomes thus the sole exception where the state's electoral vote was split. This is all the more surprising given Nebraska's character as a solidly Republican state. Obama has now 365 electoral votes against McCain's 172 with the official result from Missouri still not ready. McCain leads by 4,900 votes in Missouri according to the unofficial results. By winning Missouri McCain's final result would go up to 183 electoral votes.

The state of Nebraska decided in 1991 that all electoral votes should not automatically go to the candidate who gets the most votes in the state. In the succeeding elections, Republican candidates George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole and George W. Bush managed to win all of Nebraska's congressional districts. Even if Dole lost the 1996 election, Nebraska was easy for him coming from neighboring Kansas. This year was different. Barack Obama's campaign had so much money that it was worth the try to invest in a strong effort to get out the vote in Omaha. Even in solidly Republican states, the largest cities tend to vote for Democrats. John McCain gets four of Nebraska's electoral votes with one going for Obama. The mayor of Omaha is very happy about the success of the efforts in his city to get the one electoral vote for Obama. It would be interesting to know whether the inhabitants of Omaha liked the idea that the name of the Democratic candidate sounds vaguely similar to the name of their city. After all the inhabitants of the city of Obama in Japan were especially enthusiastic this year even if they even didn't get to vote. Their city, of course, really is Obama.

Ralph Nader was rather successful in Missouri with nearly 18,000 votes according to unofficial results. Given how small the gap is in McCain's favor Nader could actually claim achieving the spoiler role that he wanted at least in one state. The Show Me State has a tendency to vote for the winner, earning the state the reputation of bellwether in presidential politics. Nader's strong effort there does not cost Obama the election, even if it looks like costing 11 electoral votes but Missouri loses its magic as the state that picks the winner as a result.

As Obama's margin was so clear it is hard to say which state was decisive. Clearly the one electoral vote from Nebraska is just an added bonus. In many ways North Carolina and Indiana also are just additional victories that surprised many people but weren't absolutely necessary for Obama. Nebraska's second district, North Carolina and Indiana were the three cases where I certainly could not guess the winner. Interestingly enough Obama won both North Carolina and Indiana by a plurality and Bob Barr, the overall fourth place finisher, can claim to have played a spoiler role in both states. I would say that Ohio and Virginia were absolutely crucial but of course even Florida was a decisive state in this year's election. Third party candidates didn't really decide the election one way or the other in those states. It was different with Nader in Florida in 2000.

Al Franken ready for the recount

2008-11-09T14:19:00.004+02:00

How large will the United States Senate majority be that Barack Obama will work with? The Democrats got their 57th seat with Jeff Merkley winning the contest in Oregon where they had trouble counting the ballots that were of larger size than usual, at least in Multnomah County. Will comedian Al Franken increase the Democratic majority to 58? Senator Norm Coleman led the count, when the results were in, by a hair thin margin of about 200 votes. But Al Franken is optimistic about the recount that is set to follow. Had Franken wanted to, he could have conceded the election and there would have been no recount. As long as Franken wants a recount, he won't have to finance it himself as Minnesota law automatically requires a recount in elections as close as this one.

When the votes in Minnesota were being counted, Al Franken's campaign team were already expecting victory and some bloggers were denouncing the election of a comedian by the Minnesota voters even before they had any result to be angry about. The last votes to be counted were supposed to be from areas where Franken had strong support. The thin margin grew thinner but at the end of the day, Coleman was still leading the count. The drama continues as it is not only about recounting the votes that already have been counted. Apparently there are yet uncounted absentee ballots from Minneapolis County that Coleman's lawyers have tried, in vain, to disqualify from being counted. Franken expects that the absentee ballots will in the end put him over the top. Coleman's defeat is not yet certain, however. Independent candidate Dean Barkley reached a very good result overall and his success affects even areas where Franken was supposed to be strong.

If the race in Minnesota was tight, even the outcomes in Alaska and Georgia are still uncertain. As amazing as a Stevens victory after the incumbent's criminal conviction sounds, the veteran politicians from Alaska seems like the surest bet for the Republicans. If Stevens wins, it is absolutely certain that Obama will not enjoy the filibuster-proof supermajority of 60 seats that was the most optimistic projection for the Democrats this year. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia is in an interesting situation. Will he still face a runoff? In Minnesota, even after a recount, the winner will get about 42 per cent of the vote. But they don't do runoffs in Minnesota, as is the case in most other states. But Georgia is different. Chambliss is getting about 50 per cent of the vote, the Democratic candidate about 47 per cent and the Libertarian candidate about 3 per cent. If Chambliss actually has over 50 per cent when all votes have been counted, he has been re-elected, but if he is, say, one vote short of the majority, voters in Georgia would then have a runoff ahead of them.

Senator Joe Lieberman is another question mark for Obama. He used to be a Democrat, was last time re-elected as an independent candidate, yet caucuses with the Democrats and votes with them most of the time. Lieberman is also known as John McCain's biggest fan and no-one could be said to have campaigned as tirelessly for the Republican candidate this year as the white-haired gentleman from Connecticut, also known as Al Gore's running mate in 2000. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is extremely frustrated with Lieberman's appearance at the Republican National Convention not to mention his other appearances for McCain. If Reid manages to get Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus and into the Republican one, in the worst case Obama might actually have to do with 56 seats in the United States Senate. The other independent, Bernie Sanders, the self-styled democratic socialist from Vermont who is not a member of any party, is sure to continue caucusing with the Democrats.

Congressional Democrats win

2008-11-06T10:15:00.003+02:00

It was expected that Democrats would win the elections to both houses of Congress. Not all results are clear, so I'll return to the exact numbers when we know how many Democrats and Republicans will there be in Congress. The Democrats have clearly increased their majority in the House of Representatives with one of the gains being such a core red state area as Idaho's first district. In the Senate one of the most significant successes for the Democrats is the unseating of Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina.

My guess was that eight Republican United States Senate seats would be won by the Democrats. So far we can be sure about Democratic gains in Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia. My analysis of the open seats proved to be correct. Republicans Jim Risch and Mike Johanns scored easy victories in Idaho and Nebraska. Democrats Mark Udall, Tom Udall and Mark Warner captured just as easily Republican seats in Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia.

The excitement was about Republican incumbents in trouble. How many of them would succeed in defending their seats in the United States Senate? Elizabeth Dole and John Sununu lost North Carolina and New Hampshire just as the polls predicted they would. But the power of incumbency is an amazing thing. Already in previous elections I have noticed that incumbents often win even if the polls are against them. Last minute voters often stick with the name they know. In this sense it was quite a bold prediction on my part that Ted Stevens, Norm Coleman and Gordon Smith would also lose their seats. The elections in Alaska, Minnesota and Oregon all are so close that we don't have the final result even now. The margin between Norm Coleman and Al Franken in Minnesota is so close that a recount looks inevitable. But it's Coleman who is leading and he could score a very important victory for the Republicans even if the last days of the campaign looked very bad for him.

Ted Stevens in Alaska is another interesting case. He was convicted of corruption right before the election. As the most senior Republican the 84-year-old has represented Alaskans in the United States Senate since the 1960s. Many Alaskans thought that voting for a convicted felon is a troubling idea but it seems enough of them felt the vote was a referendum on the life work of their beloved elder statesman, "Uncle Ted" as he is known there. Bumper stickers like "Vote for Ted Until He's Dead" told their story about the independent minded Alaskans not being swayed even by a court verdict. The margin is narrow but it is right now looking like a narrow Stevens victory. Sarah Palin, who is wildly popular in Alaska, was not campaigning for Stevens and John McCain said openly that he wanted Stevens to withdraw his candidacy after the guilty verdict. Senator Lisa Murkowski did campaign for Stevens, however, giving significant moral support to the veteran politician that other politicians in Washington, D.C. wished to avoid being seen with.

So I'm still expecting results from Alaska with great interest and another big race is in Oregon, where Gordon Smith is fighting to retain his seat against Democrat challenger Jeff Merkley. Smith has won rural Oregon by crushing margins yet it is still unclear whether the Democrat has won the cities with large enough margins to unseat the Republican incumbent. It looks promising for Merkley but nothing should be taken for granted before all the results are in. Many people have been wondering what's the problem with counting the votes in Oregon. An official in Multnomah County, Oregon that has been furthest behind explained that the size of the ballot was a problem. This year the ballot was 17 inches long, three inches longer than in 2004 and it takes extra time for the machines to count longer ballots.

Obama-Biden ticket coasts to victory

2008-11-05T09:32:00.006+02:00

It has been a moving presidential election and the resulting Obama victory certainly highlights the desire for change among the voting public. Senator McCain was a tough opponent and the result in many states turned out to be close. As the Obama-Biden ticket generally edged out the competition in battleground state after battleground state, the electoral college goes to the Democrats by a very clear margin. It looks like Obama will get a majority of the vote in a country where presidents usually win by a plurality. I felt tears coming in with Obama's words about "the government of the people, by the people and for the people" not having perished even if it was neither my government nor my people. Not that I haven't always felt a deep sympathy for the American people but I guess I hadn't expected such simple and often spoken words to be delivered in such a powerful and calm manner. Even McCain's beautiful and eloquent concession speech felt very touching and on the spot. Already in 2004 I was happy about the relatively high turnout and in this election, I must say, the enthusiasm that was shown everywhere for this vote proves that the political process can still attract millions in a way that all the naysayers telling how passive everyone is getting never could imagine.

North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana and Montana are still processing presidential election results. It looks like John McCain will carry Montana and he is closely leading in Missouri, a state where you can never be sure before every vote has been counted. I predicted a McCain victory in both North Carolina and Indiana. Right now it looks like both states are turning blue by a slender margin and I'm still feeling the grip of excitement about how it will turn out in both states. If Obama wins Indiana, it means that most pollsters and many pundits have totally failed to see the enthusiasm generated by the Obama campaign there. No one expected a McCain landslide there but a narrow Republican victory right at the heart of Middle America. I saw Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Colorado and New Mexico coming but I'm stunned if Obama really carries Indiana. Had the Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton, it would have been easier to predict the result in Indiana. Even the fact that Indiana votes are still being counted without a clear result shows how much this election was about the economy and about the general trend toward an incredibly strong result for the Democratic Party as such.

If the pollsters were predicting a McCain victory in Indiana, many polls actually predicted an Obama victory in North Carolina. I feel ashamed that I didn't take those polls so seriously. Elizabeth Edwards said the other day that the Bradley effect is going to be about four percentage points in North Carolina. There has been no Bradley effect in the Tar Heel State, even if some kind of an effect might be traced nationally when some polls promised a ten percentage point margin for Obama that, however, never really seemed realistic given McCain's strong push right until the end even if the Republican defeat seemed inevitable. Was there really a Bradley effect in the national polls? It may be that racially motivated voters are less willing to answer the pollsters' questions in the first place than other voters but my general feeling is an absence of racism across the board, an event that makes the Obama victory very significant increasing the respect for the United States in the eyes of the world. I emphatically also wish to say that it is wrong to attribute the support for McCain that actually existed in many states to questions of Obama's ethnic background. Senator McCain has been long respected by a large segment of the American public, not so much by his fellow Republicans but by independents who don't look through the lense of partisan politics. It was just that Barack Obama earned the respect of average Americans with his campaign that managed to raise the enthusiasm of so many people who had previously been unsure about their faith in democracy itself.

This election was always going to be a great triumph of the political process. The closeness of the numbers in states like Florida, North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana shows that even if the end result generally seemed rather certain nationally, in some states a huge enthusiasm about the election was combined with an extremely close race. Right now it looks like Obama will take North Carolina and McCain will take Missouri but a full certainty comes only with the final result. Remember that North Carolina tends to vote Republican in presidential elections and didn't go for John Kerry even when John Edwards was his running mate. The last time Virginia went for a Democratic presidential candidate was in 1964 and McCain is very popular in Florida, another key state in the South. Northern Virginia and the Miami area are far from the typical red state, even if parts of Virginia and Florida are deeply Republican territories. Yet it is one of the northernmost counties of Virginia, Loudoun County, that has often been seen as the surest place to see what the balance in the whole of the Old Dominion will be. It's not the typical American county but important in the politics of Virginia. George W. Bush got 56% of the vote in 2004 in that county with the highest median household income of the United States. This time Democrat Barack Obama carried Loudoun County as he carried Virginia, one of the states Republican John McCain just couldn't afford to lose.

Guessing United States Senate results

2008-11-03T13:16:00.003+02:00

For the president-elect one of the most important things will be the future relation to both houses of Congress. The balance in the United States Senate has been very close but most polls promise a clear majority for the Democratic Party in this year's elections. If Barack Obama wins, he will have a strong position with majorites in both houses of Congress. A landslide victory for the Democrats in congressional elections looks even more secure than Obama's victory in the presidential election. Here I provide a guess for tomorrow's Senate results. Most races are not that competitive with a strong incumbent and a challenger with few resources, so there is not much to guess about Dick Durbin's prospects for re-election in Obama's home state of Illinois, to name one example. Durbin and many others can coast to easy re-election. But there are many competitive races and the tough situation the Republicans are in has resulted in surprisingly tough fights in races that were expected to be easy. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is facing a surprisingly strong challenge from Army veteran Bruce Lunsford in Kentucky, yet McConnell looks like to be one of the lucky ones to actually to be able to keep his seat.

Five Republicans are retiring from the United States Senate. Three of these seats look like they are going to the Democrats. Larry Craig of Idaho and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska are leaving their seats open in such secure red states that the Democrats are not expected to capture their seats. Wayne Allard of Colorado, Pete Domenici of New Mexico and John Warner of Virginia all have represented swing states and their seats look like lost causes to the Republicans, most clearly Virginia. As no Democrats are retiring, of the 35 seats being contested, only five concern an open seat. Representatives Mark and Tom Udall are cousins and they are both on their way to take a Republican seat for the Democrats, in Colorado and in New Mexico, respectively. Mark Warner, the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention this year, is likely to achieve a landslide victory in Virginia. Conveniently he has the same last name as the retiring Republican incumbent.

My prediction for the winners of open seats looks like this: Udall (D-CO), Risch (R-ID), Johanns (R-NE), Udall (D-NM) and Warner (D-VA).

Then there are the races with a Democratic incumbent. There are no prizes for guessing who will win in those races. Not a single Democrat is seriously threatened. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who won his seat six years ago rather narrowly, doesn't even have a Republican challenger. He will win the biggest landslide of all against a Green Party candidate. Had Mike Huckabee chosen to challenge Pryor, the situation in Arkansas would have looked very different but the only seat held by a Democrat that the Republicans could have won is now surely out of their reach.

My prediction for the winners of seats held by Democrats is very clear: Pryor (D-AR), Biden (D-DE), Durbin (D-IL), Harkin (D-IA), Landrieu (D-LA), Kerry (D-MA), Levin (D-MI), Baucus (D-MT), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Reed (D-RI), Johnson (D-SD) and Rockefeller (D-WV). Note that Joe Biden looks set to score two victories, nationally and in Delaware. This means that some other Democrat will be nominated as his successor and the seat will be up again in a special election in two years' time. Had the Democrats nominated someone else, the seat would have been theirs for the coming six years.

The biggest excitement concerns races with Republican incumbents. There are two special elections caused by the resignation of Trent Lott in Mississippi and the death of Craig Thomas in Wyoming. These states get to elect both their senators. In these two deeply red states the Republicans will get a sum total of four victories. There is not much else for them to cheer so they can take solace in their appointees Roger Wicker and John Barrasso coming up with strong performances. As neither of them is an elected incumbent, they could have been the Republicans' weakest links but this is far from being the case. Democrat Ronnie Musgrove has come up with a very strong challenge to Wicker in Mississippi but he has recently lost his lead in the polls. Musgrove is running in a state where McCain is going to win a landslide and he has been fearful of appearing too close to Obama. This means he isn't getting any help from the Obama effect.

My guess for the winners of the seats held by Republican incumbents is not half as informed as the guess for the other seats. Some of these seats are seriously competitive and the outcome can be extremely close, Georgia and North Carolina being among the tightest. This is who I think will win those races: Sessions (R-AL), Begich (D-AK), Chambliss (R-GA), Roberts (R-KS), McConnell (R-KY), Collins (R-ME), Franken (D-MN), Cochran (R-MS), Wicker (R-MS), Shaheen (D-NH), Hagan (D-NC), Inhofe (R-OK), Merkley (D-OR), Graham (R-SC), Alexander (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Enzi (R-WY) and Barrasso (R-WY).

The Republican incumbents who I believe are about to lose are Ted Stevens of Alaska, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Gordon Smith of Oregon. With the three open seats looking like changing hands this would mean eight seats turning from red into blue. Stevens would have won if he hadn't been convicted of corruption right before the election. Minnesota, New Hampshire and Oregon are impacted by the Obama effect, as I believe are the open seats in Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia. Mark Warner is running far ahead of Obama in Virginia and he would have won anyway, so all the credit does not go to Obama. North Carolina is the most interesting of all, as it could vote Republican in the presidential race but vote out Elizabeth Dole nonetheless. That would be the negative impact on Republicans of McCain being more popular than his party.

Guessing the result

2008-10-31T10:46:00.004+02:00

Barack Obama is leading in all the polls and it is hard not to guess him as the winner of the United States presidential election. It is fully possible that the outcome will be closer than what most polls show. Still to me it seems unthinkable to guess that McCain will win, I simply don't see it coming. There is one Fox News poll where McCain is only three percentage points behind but Obama has a stronger lead in the other polls. Even if McCain would come very close to Obama in overall votes, it looks like there is no way he could get enough states behind him to win a majority in the electoral college. I have come up with a guess, state by state, as to which candidate will win each state and the three electoral votes of the District of Columbia.

The hardest to guess was Florida, it is so tight there but I have a strong belief in that the Democratic Party organization will manage to get out the vote in a way not seen in a long time, especially in Florida. John McCain's personal popularity is strong in the Sunshine State and he will get many votes there. I think that McCain could lose both Florida and Ohio simply because he has no other option but to make the greatest effort in Ohio, a state that should be less winnable for him than Florida. Obama, on the other hand, is all over Florida with Bill Clinton and Al Gore campaigning for him. So this is my guess and anyone willing to try is truly welcome to make a guess of their own in the comments section of this blog.

Alabama: McCain
Alaska: McCain
Arizona: McCain
Arkansas: McCain
California: Obama
Colorado: Obama
Connecticut: Obama
Delaware: Obama
Florida: Obama
Georgia: McCain
Hawaii: Obama
Idaho: McCain
Illinois: Obama
Indiana: McCain
Iowa: Obama

Kansas: McCain
Kentucky: McCain
Louisiana: McCain
Maine: Obama
Maryland: Obama
Massachusetts: Obama
Michigan: Obama
Minnesota: Obama
Mississippi: McCain
Missouri: McCain
Montana: McCain
Nebraska: McCain
Nevada: Obama
New Hampshire: Obama
New Jersey: Obama
New Mexico: Obama
New York: Obama
North Carolina: McCain
North Dakota: McCain
Ohio: Obama
Oklahoma: McCain
Oregon: Obama
Pennsylvania: Obama
Rhode Island: Obama
South Carolina: McCain
South Dakota: McCain
Tennessee: McCain
Texas: McCain
Utah: McCain
Vermont: Obama
Virginia: Obama
Washington: Obama
Washington, D.C.: Obama
West Virginia: McCain
Wisconsin: Obama
Wyoming: McCain

McCain sprints to the finish

2008-10-30T15:03:00.003+02:00

Senator John McCain is not about to give in just because he is down in the polls. He is doing all he can to close in the gap. While the polls show that Obama's lead is not as large as it was a week ago, time is definitely running out for McCain. Obama retains a double-digit lead in Pennsylvania even if McCain is continually pouring in resources there looking for an upset. Obama should secure his victory in Ohio. Whether he can do that is the most exciting question of the presidential election. Ohio and Virginia put together is the combination that makes McCain's efforts elsewhere rather futile. Most likely McCain will not lose the election in a landslide. To go down with his head held high suits his style. Even if Florida and Missouri won't be enough to win the presidency, capturing both of them would be a big success for the Republicans as both swing states looked like they were slipping away from them.

Right now McCain and Obama are even in Florida. There will be plenty of excitement in the Sunshine State even if the Obama victory looks like to be decided in Ohio. McCain is up by two percentage points in Missouri with the latest poll showing four per cent of the vote going to Ralph Nader in the Show Me State. The situation in Missouri thus resembles somewhat the scenario four years ago in Florida between Bush and Gore. Nader seems to be the only one of the minor candidates seriously influencing the presidential race and his prospects of gaining third place look good. The poll that gives Nader a key role in Missouri promises Bob Barr one per cent of the vote there.

There is a reason to why Bob Barr is trailing Nader in Missouri. The Libertarian candidate is focusing on Ohio. Barr is very conscious of the possibility that the entire election may be decided in the Buckeye State. Third place in Ohio would then be worth more to Barr than third place overall. In Barr's dream scenario Obama wins Ohio only narrowly with the Libertarian candidate providing the margin of victory. Barr sounds almost like a cheerleader for Obama, telling voters that McCain is a Bush supporter, not a maverick. That's an interesting take on the McCain record but it certainly resonates with Obama's message. Bob Barr said he was in the race to win when he entered the campaign. Now he is out there to get the spoiler role. If Nader might achieve a spoiler role in Missouri, Barr is aiming at such a feat in Ohio, one of the biggest prizes there is.

Let's say that McCain comes across a complete success in everything he does in the days leading up to the election. He will win in Indiana, one state where Obama has been campaigning very hard. Now if McCain will also win North Carolina and Missouri, not many people will be surprised. In McCain's dream scenario he would also win Florida, Nevada and Ohio. I don't believe for a moment he will win all three but let's say he does. He would most probably still lose the election by losing Virginia and Pennsylvania. As the situation in Florida is even, there are no guarantees that McCain even gets close to any kind of dream scenario. A defeat in Florida would be a nightmare for McCain. Obama has run an effective and smart campaign in the Sunshine State and his chances there are as good as McCain's. But try McCain will, in all the battleground states, all he can.

Many battleground states remain close

2008-10-28T18:08:00.004+02:00

While a victory for John McCain still looks extremely unlikely, the race is going to be very tight in many battleground states. The race in Missouri is extremely close and there is no way of telling which candidate will carry the Show Me State. Today my feeling is that McCain could well win there but a lot of things can happen with a week to go. Another state where the candidates seem to be even is North Carolina. Voters there have been toying with the idea of going for Obama but McCain has been waging a tough negative campaign in the Tar Heel State and looks prepared to capture the state that these days usually votes Republican in presidential elections without exception. Obama has a good shot at taking both Missouri and North Carolina and even if he loses both, McCain will have spent plenty of time and money playing defense in states he was supposed to win rather easily.

Losing Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia would be absolutely devastating for McCain. While he has a good chance at winning in Missouri and North Carolina, these four big prizes are within his reach, yet winning all of them looks like an impossible task. Obama has a lead in all four and winning two of them should ensure the White House for the Democrats. Of these four most important battleground states Ohio is where McCain has his best opportunity. Hillary Clinton is popular in the Buckeye State but Obama has never really been that big there. It's just that his policies seem to resonate better in Ohio than McCain's, all the hoopla about Joe the Plumber notwithstanding. Ohio will however be close and McCain will give as good as he can because he knows he can't afford to lose there.

Obama's lead in Florida is not very large. The same goes for Virginia but it seems more stable there. Southern states going for the Democrat from Illinois are a huge cause for desperation among the Republicans. Obama's surge in North Carolina really helped him, even if he ultimately loses in the Tar Heel State, he has forced McCain to concentrate much of his Southern strategy there when it was only supposed to be about Virginia and Florida. Everything is pointing toward a close Obama victory in the Old Dominion. McCain is fighting strongly in the Sunshine State and he has a better shot there but so far Obama has the advantage.

Given the trouble McCain is in, he has had to push forward in Pennsylvania all he can. It is mathematically possible for him to win overall without carrying Pennsylvania. Of the big swing states the Keystone State seems the surest bet for Obama. McCain is essentially wasting his resources there but he needs to force Obama to play defense somewhere. The Democrats can never be too sure about victory, however. So McCain's gamble in Pennsylvania is also aimed at Obama taking off his resources from states like North Carolina and Missouri that he can ultimately do without but McCain can't.

Colorado is another swing state where the race is looking like staying close until the finish line. Obama has a good chance of winning Colorado as well as Nevada and New Mexico. Yet the trend toward an Obama victory is not happening in all close states. Day by day McCain is securing his grip of Indiana despite a vigorous campaign by the Democrats there. Georgia is not exactly a swing state. The Republicans are expected to win there even if Obama has kept the race competitive. McCain's lead in the Peach State seems solid enough to hold until the end. Yet Obama is still doing remarkably well there given that he was already previously about to abandon his campaign in Georgia. Of course Obama is not going to win all the close states and there will be plenty of excitement come next Tuesday. McCain is still behind in too many states for him to be humanly possible to turn the tide in enough of them to go all the way to the White House. But he certainly is trying any way he can.

What about third place?

2008-10-26T17:03:00.003+02:00

Third place in the United States presidential election is still up for grabs. Barack Obama is increasingly looking like the front runner to win the election and John McCain will get second place unless he pulls off a dramatic upset victory. Bob Barr entered the race late, yet his prospects for third place still seem reasonably good. But Ralph Nader has a great opportunity to upset the minor parties as an independent candidate. Cynthia McKinney might well finish in fifth place but third place is still possible even for her.

Bob Barr must have known how he is going to be completely ignored by the media when the race between Obama and McCain really gets going. The economic crisis should be a good opportunity to gain publicity for the Libertarian Party platform where economic issues usually seem to come first, second and third. But Barr hasn't really been the right person to attract attention. The Ron Paul effect was supposed to help Barr but it hasn't. More and more people who like Paul are coming to the conclusion that the Republican primary was a much more effective vehicle to hammer home the core issues close to the right-wing libertarian agenda than what the third party presidential candidacy offers. Only an exceptional individual like Ross Perot can pull off a serious third party challenge. Bob Barr is generally coming across as a regular politician. His background in the United States House of Representatives raises the question whether the Libertarian Party is being used as a vehicle by Republicans who are not formidable enough to make a difference in their own party.

It is hard to see Bob Barr getting much more than one percent of the vote nationally. Now this is where Ralph Nader comes in. He is not likely to replicate his stunning performance from the 2000 election but he is perceived as a genuine independent, not as a representative of a disenchanted faction within a major party. Indeed he represents a faction disenchanted with the Green Party whose biggest goal looks like becoming a respectable junior partner to the Democrats. Not that the Democrats will need such a partner in any viable short term scenario. Ralph Nader is nobody's partner. I think he is pretty much even with Barr and could very well get third place.

Cynthia McKinney has be very invisible during this campaign. I can't imagine anything else than many of her supporters secretly dream of Barack Obama winning the election. A third place for McKinney might be nice for them but a first place for Obama could open up opportunities for Green politicians to profile themselves as an alternative to the Democrats governing the country in a way that possibly can't satisfy all the expectations of those people who are now voting for change. The ideological wind is blowing toward more government intervention which is perhaps a reason why Bob Barr hasn't dominated the third party scene this year. Yet Ralph Nader's presence is making it hard for McKinney to find her niche.

Bob Barr is so clearly a former Republican and Cynthia McKinney equally clearly a former Democrat that it is hard to see either of them as truly genuine third party politicians. Neither of them would finish top five in a major party presidential primary, that's at least how I feel about them. Ralph Nader on the other hand is a towering personality but as a truly independent candidate he lacks a credible organization. Nader's presence is very important when looking at who finishes third. Had he chosen not to run, Green Party would've had a serious shot at achieving third place this year. Now McKinney is at least to some extent not only in Obama's but even in Nader's shadow. What's more significant, Nader could beat Barr. Nobody can tell for sure today who will finish third and fourth.

Every day Obama is closer to victory

2008-10-25T16:33:00.007+03:00

Senator Barack Obama's prospects of winning are improving all the time. With a healthy lead in the polls, the general feeling is that time is running out for John McCain. Four years ago, George W. Bush did very well among married women and among white Catholics. Now both demographics are leaning toward Obama. The Republican candidate tends to win among white male voters and this is likely to happen even this time but even there Obama is fully competitive. Most significant is that Obama's lead in Ohio is increasing. The Buckeye State could very well be where McCain loses the election. That's where Bush sealed the deal four years ago.

Sarah Palin did a lot to energize the Republican base in an election where many of the party faithful were not so sure about supporting John McCain. But the Palin effect seems to be evaporating. Active churchgoers and Southern voters feel very good about Palin's status as prolife icon and her presence is helping McCain in red states like Alabama and Mississippi. But the overall effect of McCain's pick seems to be that Palin is not helping the Republican ticket among swing voters. McCain was initially very strong among independents and moderates and his reaching out to the Republican base has undermined much of that advantage.

Obama never had to convince Democrats that he is one of them. There is some irony to the situation right now that Obama is considered as the more centrist of the two candidates by many voters. But there is also a change going on in the political landscape. Something similar happened when Ronald Reagan won in 1980. Views like his had long been far out of the mainstream; one example of which is Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964. During the 1980s, the mainstream of US political thought came very close to the conservative base of the Republican Party. Now the Obama campaign is out there to embrace a shift in the political mainstream closer to the traditional Democratic Party line. These shifts happen perhaps every once in a generation and the current fiscal crisis is paving the way for the Democrats who are expected to win big in the congressional elections.

The candidacy of John McCain is itself proof of a switch in the American political climate toward the Democrats. Had the Republicans been really sure of the popularity of their core principles, a more ideological candidate would have emerged. The pragmatic McCain is well suited to offer a moderate platform to the voters. But he can't do away with the troubles his party is in right now. All the attention that Sarah Palin has very successfully caught to the Republican ticket has been of the sort that has contradicted the message that voting Republican this year is essentially a moderate vote. McCain and Palin complement each other ideologically in the same way as George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle did in 1988. But in that election, when moderation also was popular, there was not as much focus on the running mates as this time around. Bush won in spite of Quayle, McCain can't win without the help of Palin and right now the running mate isn't helping him among swing voters, only among those already in the Republican fold.

Ken Adelman endorses Obama

2008-10-24T12:17:00.002+03:00

Barack Obama continues to garner support among prominent Republicans. Veteran foreign policy analyst Ken Adelman who served seven years under Ronald Reagan has not only endorsed Obama but openly questioned John McCain's judgment when it comes to economic policy and the choice of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate. At least among some pundits Adelman's endorsement is seen as a telling sign of McCain being in big trouble. Conservatives have generally viewed Colin Powell as a moderate and someone who is pretty close to Democrats in many of his views. Ken Adelman has been perceived as a solid Reagan Republican, at least until now, as he is emerging as one of the leading Obamacans, or Obama Republicans.

Ken Adelman is neither nationally nor internationally as well known as Colin Powell and there is some skepticism as to the significance of the endorsement. But he is very much a Republican insider with a very long record of service. George Packer of the New Yorker exchanged e-mails with Adelman and broke the story, including the reasons behind the endorsement. It was very clear that Adelman did not give his support to the agenda of the Democratic Party as a whole. His criticism of John McCain was much stronger than his praise for Barack Obama. He hoped, however, that Obama would turn out to be "centrist" and "Clintonesque". It could very well be that the Republican foreign policy gurus voting for Obama are trying to ensure continuity and indeed that their opinions would be listened to in the White House after the switch of parties in power.

Iraq has been one issue where McCain and Adelman have had many things in common. Both supported the war, Adelman even predicted that the invasion would be a "cakewalk". Both McCain and Adelman have been critical of the handling of the aftermath of the invasion and neither of them is presently very close to George W. Bush. Adelman is not even very close to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld anymore and he used to be their close associate for forty years. The last time a Republican from Arizona was nominated, Barry Goldwater in 1964, young Ken Adelman supported him enthusiastically. Now he supports Barack Obama, not so enthusiastically but with a strong dose of realism based on his appreciation of the failings of the McCain campaign.

When people like Colin Powell and Ken Adelman make cross-party endorsements, some of the swing voters with doubts about Obama's foreign policy may very well see their doubts soothed. Obama is also getting some interesting endorsements from members of the Goldwater family. Barry Goldwater's granddaughter, C C Goldwater, wrote a curious post in the Huffington Post where she lengthily explains why it is possible to stand for her grandfather's principles and based on those vote for Obama. Another Goldwater granddaughter, Alison Goldwater Ross, cast an early vote in Georgia for Obama. Apparently there is a history of resentment between the Goldwaters and the McCains. Barry Goldwater himself originally viewed McCain in very positive terms but was later on disappointed in his successor in the United States Senate. But Barry Goldwater himself is dead and not everyone in the Goldwater family is against McCain. Barry Goldwater, Jr. carries the name forward. The former member of the House of Representatives and his father's namesake who endorsed antiwar candidate Ron Paul in the primaries has endorsed John McCain in the general election, telling his niece C C Goldwater in the best individualist Goldwater tradition that no one should use the family name in an exclusive manner. All Goldwaters decide for themselves but Obama seems to be pretty popular among the younger generation.

Colin Powell endorses Obama

2008-10-20T18:26:00.003+03:00

Senator Barack Obama got the endorsement of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a key moderate Republican who served during the first term of George W. Bush. In the 2000 election the appointment of Powell was announced by Bush before the election because he was so popular it was calculated as a sure vote-getter. Obama, while campaigning in North Carolina, said he was "beyond honored and deeply humbled to have the support of General Colin Powell." With the support of one of the most prominent African American public figures ever Obama not only underscores the overwhelming support he enjoys among African Americans but also has the backing of a true foreign and defense policy heavyweight.

Senator John McCain countered with reminding of Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Lawrence Eagleburger and James Baker, all former Secretaries of State who endorsed him early on. McCain also pointed out the overwhelming support he enjoys among retired generals and admirals. This is rather natural given McCain's own war record and his background in one of America's most prominent military families. Given the strong support he enjoys among veterans and other people with ties to the military it is all the more significant that McCain is in big trouble in Florida, a state with many military retirees.

Colin Powell made it clear that he had been disappointed by McCain's negative campaign. A lot of people have been upset by harsh personal accusations coming from the McCain camp against Obama but in politics with high stakes, the highest in the world, it is usual that the candidate who is behind tries all the tricks in the book and then some to even out the gap. McCain knows also from personal experience that it is possible to sink even a popular campaign with simple mudslinging. It has been done to him before. But Obama should have all the resources in the world to fight back, something McCain didn't have when he faced the character assassination tactics applied against him in the 2000 Republican primaries.

Obama says that "McCain is almost out of time". Yet with all the robo calls linking Obama to terrorism there is no way to tell how much time is enough. Perhaps McCain will make a strong comeback in the last days in the states where he had the advantage all along. But I can't imagine him winning enough states to get elected, not with the current poll numbers at least. What is clear is that huge resources are being spent to portray both candidates as crooks who hang out with even shadier characters and whose policies are harmful to the nation and to the world. Yet I'd imagine most independent observers would see both candidates as honorable persons, great campaigners and able politicians. It's just a crying shame that an enormous part of all the gigantic campaign resources will have been wasted in mudslinging when this election is over. In the debates and otherwise in person both candidates have played it rather nice. But the campaign teams are ready, ultimately with the approval of the candidates themselves, to unleash dark forces by all the accusations that sometimes border on the ridiculous. McCain is losing much of his esteem because being behind he is forced to play it dirty more than his opponent who needs to play it safe now.

McCain tries to battle on

2008-10-18T11:52:00.004+03:00

Senator John McCain is facing a difficult moment in his campaign. The trend across the board is negative and there is not much he can do to change that. The external situation in the form of the fiscal crisis has simply made the setting for the whole campaign very promising for the party not currently occupying the White House. John McCain has tried his best to distance himself from George W. Bush but that distancing always comes with a price leaving people confused about what the Republican Party stands for and how are the voters supposed to punish the economic policies of the current incumbents that most of them are by now tired of. McCain hasn't simply been the Republicans' strongest voice on economic policy during the Bush years. He has asserted his independence on a matter of issues but he also had to court the favor of the White House many times in order to establish himself as the Republican candidate. Had the Republicans seen it coming that the election is going to be almost only about the economy they most likely would not have picked McCain. Yet Mitt Romney did not succeed in selling his economic expertise to his fellow Republicans who were very concerned about foreign policy and not sure about Romney's record when it comes to world affairs.

If there is to be no major international crisis before the election, there is no way John McCain can shift the focus of this election to foreign policy where he'd like it to be. In domestic policy he constantly looks like trying to focus on issues that are of secondary importance. With his war record and his foreign policy credentials he reminds somewhat of John Kerry four years ago. That's partly how I see him, as a candidate who has a strong record but who isn't sure how to make his mark on the issues that make or break a presidential election. The strongest similarity to Kerry is obviously in the way how both campaigns were given up for dead by the pundits during the primaries, then managed to switch their focus from a presidential perspective to partisan concerns to win the primaries and then facing serious trouble with readjusting the campaign to the main prize again.

It may be too late for McCain to turn the tide and resurrect his campaign. Still, nationally he is only about five percentage points behind and nobody knows yet if Obama's poll numbers will hold. Obama himself reminded of the tendency of Democrats to bungle races that are theirs to win in past elections, a comment that gives McCain some hope but also intended to reassure Democrats that nothing should be taken for granted and it's full speed ahead until the election. McCain tries to defend his advantage in many of the states that Bush won four years ago. He will make a spirited last ditch effort to win Florida, a state where he was supposed to be especially strong. One question mark for his campaign is that even if he succeeds in winning Florida, he may lose Ohio and ultimately the election. Does he really have resources to fight back in both states or is he bound to lose both narrowly?

McCain's main effort will from now on be in states that he can't afford to lose. Obama looks set to win each and every state that Kerry won four years ago without even a very hard fight. This means he can concentrate on taking over Republican territory without having to concentrate so hard on defending the old positions of the Democrats that are looking more and more secured by the day. McCain's original scenario for winning this election was very much based on the idea that Florida, North Carolina and Virginia will fall into his column and he will then proceed to seal the deal in states like Pennsylvania. Now he is defending old Republican positions in the South. He may yet come up with a valiant battle and win Florida and most other Southern states where Obama is currently a threat to him. Even if he does that there is a strong likelihood that he will lose the election in Ohio.