This year’s presidential race reminds me of John Edwards’ Senate race 10 years ago.

 

You have a fresh – but inexperienced – face (Edwards, Obama) running against an old – but experienced – face (McCain, Lauch Faircloth).

 

As we did in Edwards’ campaign, Obama sees his chance in the public’s disgust for Washington and desire for change.

 

As Faircloth’s campaign did, McCain’s advisers see their chance in persistent doubts and questions about their challenges.

 

Faircloth targeted Edwards’ past as a trial lawyer. But we learned from focus groups that voters saw being a courtroom advocate as good training for the Senate.

 

Faircloth tied Edwards to Bill Clinton, then in the clutches of Monica-gate. But the Republicans overplayed that hand, and voters saw it as more Washington.

 

Faircloth eventually tried to paint Edwards as a Liberal Lying Lawyer. We tried to paint Faircloth as Old Politics.

 

But we had an advantage Obama lacks: Edwards was – and looked like – the All-American Boy.

 

Obama, unfortunately, has to counter the persistent perceptions that he’s some kind of Muslim Manchurian Candidate.

 

Like Obama, Edwards needed a huge black turnout. Democratic consultant Brad Crone of Raleigh notes that the high-water mark for black turnout in North Carolina was in that race: 18.5 percent of the total vote.

 

It’s one reason Democrats retook the state House.

 

Ultimately, the best frame for the choice voters made that year – and face this year – came from our pollster, Harrison Hickman. He gave Edwards the first line of his victory speech:

 

“Tonight the people of North Carolina voted their hopes instead of their fears.”

 

That’s the same choice Obama and McCain offer.

 

 

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House Republican Leader ‘Skip’ Stam is turning thumbs down on North Carolina casting its electoral votes for the candidate for President who wins the popular vote – but it may turn out to be a political gamble that backfires.

Last year – when Democrats put electing the President by popular vote on the table – the Republican powers that be in Washington quickly did the math and said, Well, there’s a chance we could lose the popular vote but win in the Electoral College. Why give that up? So they want Republican legislators in North Carolina to stop the bill – which is fine if you’re, say, a Washington politico. You’re not running for office. Your name’s not on any ballot. But there may be a risk if you’re a Republican legislator seeking reelection.

Every election in America – Senators, Governors and Congressmen – is decided by popular vote. So how safe – politically – is it for a Republican legislator to vote to make the one exception – the only race where the candidate who loses can win – the President?

Here’s what Skip’s betting on: Right now the bill’s buried in a House committee; like a lot of bills hardly anyone – outside the legislature – even knows it exists and Skip’s betting in November no one will either. The theory works like this: What voters don’t know can’t hurt us.

But what if, say, in five key races Democrats decide to tell voters what’s going on?

Skip sent an email to legislators telling them three ways to explain to constituents why they oppose the bill. But none of Skip’s arguments solve legislators’ political problem – or lessen their risk. And each argument has other holes in it as well.

For instance, Skip blasted the bill (in the News and Observer, 5-19-08) saying, “That thing tells our voters that the state would support the very candidate they repudiated.” Politically that sounds fine – until you stop a minute to think about it. Looked at another way what Skip’s saying is if a majority of the American people elect a candidate President we should tell them, We don’t give a toot who you voted for – we’re going to elect the other guy. If you think about it Skip’s saying it’s right for Republicans to make the candidate who lost the election President.

Skip also says the bill is an end-run around the Constitution. But Republicans just tried to change the way California picks its presidential electors – so they’d be picked by congressional districts, not statewide. How could they do that without a constitutional amendment? Because Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution states: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…” That’s the same clause supporters of the popular vote base their bill on. So, how can Republicans argue the Constitution means one thing in California and another in North Carolina?

Beyond that Democrats can just say, Presidential electors were once chosen by the State Legislatures – not voters. That was changed without a Constitutional Amendment. Thirty states (starting with Wyoming in 1869) gave women the right to vote for President – without a constitutional amendment – before the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1920. Let’s get down to brass tacks. This is really about one thing: You’re thinking what happened in the 2000 election may happen again.

And that’s right. We are.

But how on earth does a Republican candidate explain to swing voters he’s for electing the candidate who lost the popular vote for President?

Polls show almost all Democratic voters, almost all Independents and a majority of Republicans favor the bill. Skip’s gambling Democrats are so dumb they won’t run ads in October saying, Listen to this. It’s hard to believe. My opponent actually voted against electing the candidate for President who receives the most votes.

My question is, How could they resist?

 

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Winner: Campaign Symbols

 

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are holding their Unity Rally in – no kidding – Unity, New Hampshire.

 

Apparently they could not find a place called Change. And Bill Clinton owns the deed to a place called Hope.

 

 

Loser: Edwards for Veep

 

Elizabeth Edwards publicly questioned whether Obama should have opted out of the public campaign financing system.

 

She made the remarks from the Edwards home in Chapel Hill during a video conference hookup about the Internet in politics.

 

The New York Times reported that “toward the end of the interview, her husband wandered into view, seemingly surprised to find his wife being interviewed.”

 

 

Loser: Charlie Black Tells the Truth

 

Black, a senior adviser to John McCain, proved the truth of Kinsley’s Rule.

 

Propagated by commentator Michael Kinsley, the rule says, basically, that politicians usually get in more trouble for telling the truth than telling a lie.

 

In this case, Black said another terrorist attack on the United States would be an “unfortunate event,” but “certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” him being McCain.

 

Actually, that may not be the truth. What would Americans think if there is another terrorist attack after McCain/Bush assured us that their Iraq strategy is making us safer?

 

 

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2008 must look worse for the Republicans than I thought.

 

At least, they think so.

 

President Bush stole into and out of Raleigh Friday with nary a photo op or video with Pat McCrory, Liddy Dole or any other Republican politician.

 

This is major.

 

I cannot remember the last time a Republican president – or presidential nominee – came to North Carolina without being surrounded by GOP coattail-hangers-on: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Dole and Bush II.

 

They’re acting like Democrats during presidential election years.

 

Meanwhile, Barack Obama is sending people into all 50 states and looking at ad buys in more states than ever for a Democrat.

 

The pundits and editorial writers beat Obama up for opting out of the public finance system. Looks to me like he has his own public finance system, one that is raising record millions of dollars from small contributors. He’s smart to do that, regardless of what the media wise guys say.

 

There is more than four months to go to November. And Obama has real vulnerabilities that the Republicans will attack.

 

But right now, this looks like it could be a major realignment election.

 

 

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Cullen Browder from WRAL-TV asked me if it helps or hurts Pat McCrory for President Bush to do a fundraiser in North Carolina.

 

The answer is: both.

 

McCrory has several hundred thousand reasons to bring in Bush: That’s how much money he’ll raise.

 

But McCrory doesn’t want too much coverage. So Bush is coming at a slow news time (Friday afternoon) and to a private home.

 

Key question: Will the campaign allow any video and photos of McCrory and Bush together?

 

Bush is unpopular with voters. The Democratic Party already unleashed an online ad tying McCrory to Bush – on school vouchers.

 

But Republican contributors will give big bucks to see the President and maybe have a photo taken with him. It looks good on the wall.

 

What’s striking is that Democratic candidates usually play this game in North Carolina. As Bev Perdue will. Rarely do you see a Republican here debating whether to have the President visit.

 

That may be another sign this is a Democratic year.

 

All the more reason McCrory wants the money.  He may need it to fight the tide.

 

 

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The Obama campaign may be serious about targeting North Carolina. I heard last week they are sending 280 field organizers into the state.

 

The Rasmussen poll on WRAL showed Obama behind McCain by only 45-43. 

 

Obama’s 43 percent is almost exactly what every Democratic presidential candidate going back to Dukakis in 1988 received here. 

 

Big question: Is that Obama’s ceiling – or a floor?

 

Another big question: Are the polls underestimating the black vote?

 

Typically, polls at this point show Democrats getting only about 70 percent of the black vote. Obviously, that won’t happen. He’ll get 95-plus. That’s another 4-5 points for him. More if turnout explodes among blacks and young voters.

 

That’s what the 280 organizers are coming to do.

 

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There’s hardly a problem in America today Barack Obama can’t blame on a corporation. They’re the whipping boys for everything from $4-a-gallon gasoline to soaring healthcare costs – Obama’s drawn a bulls eye on corporate lobbyists and voters are cheering him on.

 

So it came as a shock – politically – to open the newspaper and read, right there on the front page, another article about CEOs’ getting $80 million or $100 million bonuses again this year.

 

Back when corporations were making money in boatloads CEOs had a case when they argued tying executive compensation to performance – even if it did mean hundred-million-dollar bonuses – made sense. Now the corporations are hemorrhaging cash and the CEOs are arguing the salaries are justified because they’re dealing with one heck of a crisis.

 

They are. But you’d think they’d stop long enough to look around and figure out they’re also going to pay a price for making just about every voter in America mad at them; stigmatizing yourself by proving you can repeat the excess of The Gilded Age may not be the better part of wisdom in a modern internet-driven democracy.

 

After all, when voters get good and mad there are always plenty of politicians – whole parties full of them – happy to turn that anger into a political weapon. The other night this professor on Bill Moyer’s TV show was almost giddy about the prospect of the Democratic Party rediscovering its ‘populist roots’ this election.

 

Now, what exactly does ‘populist roots’ mean?

 

It means the politicians get together and screw the corporations.

 

For instance, McCain’s arguing to cut taxes on corporations and Obama’s arguing to cut them on working people and paying CEOs $80 million pretty much cuts the ground right out from under McCain as far as voters go.

 

This is a shooting war – between corporations and politicians – the politicians can hardly lose.

 

Pretty soon – say by January – CEOs may find themselves facing a whole new set of crises. Crises called excess profits taxes. And bundles of new regulations. And they’ll be scrambling to convince Obama voters their particular corporation is not one of the villains who needs to be singled out for special treatment.

 

The other day, in a blog, Gary mentioned two doctors who were talking about politics and healthcare a while back.

 

One doctor said: Well, I’m not interested in politics.

 

And the other said: Well, politics is interested in you.

 

Corporate America is an undisputed genius when it comes to making money – but has a hard time seeing beyond the end of its own sandbox on most anything else. It hasn’t figured out politics is now interested in it. Or that paying hundred-million-dollar salaries is just pouring gas on a political fire that’s already strong enough to elect a couple dozen new Barack Obamas to the U.S. House and Senate.

 

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Albert the pollster’s just gotten back a national poll and he’s in a funk.

 

Albert, as he says, has three levels of warnings when he’s advising a campaign. The first example is when the campaign wants to make a silly mistake, but one that won’t do a great deal of harm. When that happens Albert says, I don’t believe I’d do that, but doesn’t waste a lot of time arguing. He calls that Level One Scream.

 

A Level Two Scream is when the campaign wants to make a mistake that will cause a lot of harm. Then Albert says, I wouldn’t do that, and argues until he’s blue in the face.

 

A Level Three Scream is when the campaign wants to make a mistake that is catastrophic – when that happens Albert rolls on the floor, pulls his hair out and howls bloody murder.

 

He’s spending a lot of time these days rolling on floors because, he says, ‘President Bush’s unpopularity has caused the dam to break.’

 

The way Albert sees it every thirty or forty years there’s a political realignment. Roosevelt in 1932. Reagan in 1980. He says when the Cold War ended the coalition that united to elect Reagan dispersed (because the reason it came together in the first place vanished) and since then the country’s been cruising, tilting between Republicans and Democrats in elections.

 

But now Bush is so unpopular a horde of new voters, women and ticket-splitters are marching straight into the Democratic camp wearing blue and white ‘change’ t-shirts. Part of the Independents now call themselves Democrats and part of the Republicans now call themselves Independents. ‘And,’ Albert says, ‘What they all have in common is they don’t like Bush.’

 

Which brings me to Democratic Chairman Jerry Meek’s email proclaiming North Carolina a ‘Battleground State.’ Chairman Meek may be forgiven if he sounds a bit like a rooster getting up on his perch and crowing before sunrise – but the question is, Is he, like the rooster, confused? Or after thirty-two years of voting for Republicans for President is North Carolina about to diss John McCain for Barack Obama?

 

That, as far as a political change goes, would be pretty profound and if Meek has gotten his teeth into a fact (instead of crowing at the moon) Albert is right, The dam has broken.

 

This is one mystery we Republicans – and primarily John McCain – have to figure out pretty quickly. And you’d think as a proven ‘maverick’ McCain might be in a good frame of mind to look at the damage done by President Bush’s unpopularity from an objective point of view to decide whether it’s a short-term threat to his beating Obama or a long-term catastrophe.

 

But, on the other hand – Albert says – McCain’s brain-trusters are part of the Washington Republican Establishment who tend to take a very conventional view of politics. ‘I’d like to think,’ he adds, ‘They’re sitting in Washington right now staring at a stack of polls, saying, Boys, the world has changed. But I’ve got a feeling they’re sitting there telling themselves, This is all pretty inconvenient but if we wait it out – just like in past presidential elections where the Democratic nominee got an unexpected boost after the primary – it’ll go away.’

 

‘Well,’ I said, ‘They may be right. The wind may go out of Obama’s sails just like it did for the last five Democratic liberals who ran for President.’

 

Albert started frothing at the mouth. ‘None of them,’ he said, ‘Were running when George Bush had a twenty-eight-percent approval rating.’ Then he said something really troubling. ‘Think of it this way. Imagine if George Bush were running against Obama. You got any doubts how that would come out?’

 

‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Bush is unpopular. But Bush isn’t running and Republicans aren’t wrong about everything. They’re right a lot of times – like about cutting government spending.”

 

‘But Bush didn’t do that.’

 

‘Then how about the threat of terrorism?’

 

‘We whipped Hitler in four years. Bush didn’t whip bin Laden in seven.’

 

‘Well, give him a little credit. He did cut taxes. So will McCain.’

 

That cut no ice either. Albert said: ‘Home foreclosures are up. Bankruptcies are up. A friend called the other day looking for a government job because he’s fifty-nine years old, self-employed and can’t afford to pay his own health insurance. How do you think he feels about McCain cutting taxes on corporations?’

 

‘Albert,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you one thing nobody likes – a pollster with no good news.’

 

‘Okay. Here’s some good news. The Republican National Committee just forced Obama to remove one of the three people he picked to ‘vet’ his choices for Vice President – and it’s about to trash another ‘vetter’ because he told Clinton to pardon Mark Rich. That’s two victories.’

 

‘Your point is that’s not a burning issue in Raleigh?’

 

‘The dam has broken.’

 

I hung up and decided to work on something that had nothing to do with politics. Then the phone rang again and it was a Democrat and I asked, From your side of the fence, as a Democrat, do you think the dam’s broken? She said, It’s hard to believe after losing every presidential election here since 1976 that’s possible, but I did hear this: Obama’s campaign is sending an army of workers to North Carolina.

 

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I had dinner last night with my old friend Will, the lawyer, and, right off, after the first beer he said, President Bush is as dumb as a post.

 

Now, Will is an old Reagan man. He remembers seeing Reagan’s speech for Goldwater on TV in 1964 and he’s a purist. He still thinks of the Bushies who stole into Reagan’s tent at the Detroit Convention in 1980 as a horde of Vandals or Visigoths. Choosing George Bush, Sr., as his Vice President was about the only thing Reagan ever did he didn’t like.

 

And George Bush the Younger has pretty much fulfilled all his fears. In Will’s eyes, while flying conservative colors, George W. Bush has sold out conservatives (as Will says, ‘Just look at the deficit’) and left the Republican Party politically bankrupt.

 

But last night he wasn’t talking about history. He was talking about the Supreme Court ruling that the terrorists locked up at Guantanamo Bay have habeas corpus rights – and he was wearing his practical political hat.

 

“Look here,” he said. “Justice Kennedy writes, The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law – and everyone in the Bush administration is screaming bloody murder because they can’t keep whomever the president says is a terrorist locked up a hundred years without a trial.

 

“Now, I can’t think of anything better for Bush – or McCain – than putting 400 terrorists on trial before the election. What if every one of them gets half as much publicity as this Paddock woman got at her trial here in Raleigh?”

 

Will’s painting his case with a bit of hyperbole and political overstatement – but he’s got a point.

 

The only way for democracies to give up hedonism and the pursuit of happiness long enough to confront an external threat for more than fifteen minutes – and win a war – requires them being scared silly. Then all the interest groups bent on getting their hands on power – or the federal treasury – stop fighting long enough to realize they have at least one thing in common. But it takes a real sustained burst of fear to accomplish that kind of unity. The Japanese did it for us in 1941 by destroying our fleet and conquering a good chunk of Asia in the first three months of World War II.

 

And Lincoln understood it during the Civil War – he figured out he only had one real goal: To unite the North and keep it fighting because if he did he couldn’t lose.

 

But President Bush never understood that. So he never built that kind of unity. Instead, during his presidency, the terrorists have gone from a threat to a kind of nuisance.

 

He locked the jihadists in jail in Cuba and tried them secretly (or not at all) in front of military tribunals when what should he have done, Will is saying, is put them all on trial down at the federal courthouse and let the American people have a good hard look at them. Now the Supreme Court’s told him that’s what he’s got to do – and his administration is howling like a stuck hog.

 

But the fact is letting folks get a good look at those terrorists in Cuba is a lot more important than any benefits to be gained by fighting them in secret. Courts no doubt will be messier than military tribunals but real trials will contribute to the only thing that matters – unity – and tribunals won’t.

 

Here’s Will’s bottom line: “If I were President Bush,” he says, “I’d start the trials tomorrow. That way they’ll have up a full head of steam by Election Day.”

 

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Barack Obama is supposed to be quite the pickup basketball player, and he’s putting quite the head fake on John McCain in North Carolina.

 

It’s good strategy. Obama has the money and the grassroots organization to make the Republicans worry – at least for now – about how much time and money to spend here.

 

Every dollar and every hour the Republicans do spend in North Carolina helps Obama nationally.

 

Even better, Obama’s foray here is another sign that his success so far was not based just on inspiration. His campaign also has brains.

 

The post-mortems on the Democratic race expose the internal reasons why he won and Clinton lost:

 

• His campaign was loyal, methodical and disciplined. Hers was rife with dissent, division and disagreement.
• His campaign played to win in 50 states – and, more to the point, in 435 congressional districts. He targeted his efforts to win delegates. The Clinton campaign was groping in the dark.

 

And it is clear now how big North Carolina was. Obama’s big win here – early enough in the evening to dominate the news while the Indiana vote was delayed – delivered the final momentum-killer to Clinton.

 

I’m still dubious that North Carolina will be in play come November. If it is, Obama will be President.

 

But this is good for Democrats. The bigger the field Obama can force McCain to play on, the better Obama’s chances to win the White House.

 

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