by Frank James

David Gergen, sometime presidential adviser and CNN analyst, was on Steven Colbert's show last night and had advice for Sen. John McCain -- the Republican presidential nominee needs to "rein in" his attacks as well as those by running mate Gov. Sarah Palin on Sen. Barack Obama.

"They used to call it rabble rousing" said Gergen, who teaches at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

The Huffington Post is also reporting that former McCain strategist John Weaver is warning the Republican nominee as well.

"People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Senator Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Senator McCain," Weaver said. "And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive."

As my colleague Jim Oliphant wrote earlier, there are very real concerns that the kind of animosities now being stoked for political purposes could lead to violence against Obama or others.

Before Harold Washington was elected Chicago's first black mayor in 1993, I'm told there were similar worries and tensions. I wonder if the McCain campaign will start running "Vote for McCain ... Before it's too late" ads like those run by Washington's rival, Bernie Epton?

I moved to Chicago a week or so after that election. The cabbie who drove me into the Loop from O'Hare Airportsaid if the campaign had gone a week longer there would have been blood in the streets. If this presidential campaign stays on its current trajectory, many of us may find ourselves uttering something similar.

by James Oliphant

History has proven that some Americans don't take to social change with grace. And with the troubled economy, the wars, and the now real prospect of the first African-American president, there is, in pockets of the country, real confusion, dread and fear.

John McCain's presidential campaign encountered some of that Thursday, judging from accounts in the Washington Post this morning detailing a McCain rally in Wisconsin. Reports the Post:

In recent days, a campaign that embraced the mantra of "Country First" but is flagging in the polls and scrambling for a way to close the gap as the nation's economy slides into shambles has found itself at the center of an outpouring of raw emotion rare in a presidential race.

"It's time that you two represent the rest of us. So go get 'em."

The writer Andrew Sullivan, blogging for The Atlantic, goes further, comparing the situation to the furor in the 1990s in Israel over the Palestinian peace process that resulted in the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and suggesting that the McCain campaign is putting Obama's life in danger.

by Jill Zuckman

Chillicothe, Ohio - Barack Obama accused his rival, John McCain, of "stoking anger and division" amid "a barrage of nasty insinuations and attacks" during a morning rally rally here.

The charge came as McCain released a new ad accusing Obama of "blind ambition" in associating himself with the former 60s radical Bill Ayers when it would help him, and then "lying" about it when Ayers became inconvenient.

"In the last couple of days, we've seen a barrage of nasty insinuations and attacks, and I'm sure we'll see much more over the next 25 days," Obama predicted. "We know what's coming. We know what they're going to do."

But Obama insisted that "misleading ads" and "the politics of anything goes" won't work.

"I think that folks are looking for something different," Obama said, adding that "it's easy to rile up a crowd by stoking anger and division."

Parroting McCain's line about putting country first, Obama said Americans are looking for someone who can lead the country: "Now, more than ever, it is time to put country ahead of politics."

by Frank James

The pressure is only increasing on federal policymakers grappling with the financial and economic slide.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed below 9,000, 680 points down this afternoon, signaling that the financial panic continues.

Part of the drop was due to General Motors being placed under review by Standard & Poor's due to concerns that the company might be unable to finance itself because of the credit freeze and general weakness in auto sales. GM is now trading at less than $5 a share.

Added to this is the growing consensus among economists that the U.S. is likely to have to endure one of the most painful recessions in decades.

According to a piece from The Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. economy has sunk into a recession and government action is critical to stem the damage, according to economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.

It is a challenging scenario for the next president, as the election moves into the home stretch. Either Sen. John McCain or Sen. Barack Obama likely will face an economy in the midst of recession on Inauguration Day, even if the credit crisis begins to ease. The new administration will have to get up to speed quickly, taking over the largest government intervention since the Great Depression.

by Frank James

The McCain campaign has a new negative web ad which seeks to further its effort to fuel questions in some voters' minds about Sen. Barack Obama. It's all a part of the "who is the real Obama?" theme the Republican nominee's campaign has been frenetically pushing in recent days.

The ad's thrust is that Obama knew Ayers better than the Democratic nominee has let on. Of course, the conclusion it hopes voters will reach through this allegation is that Obama hasn't been forthcoming on his ties to Ayers so how could he possibly be trusted in the Oval Office?

There's no news in the ad. The only news is that the McCain campaign is spending another day on this as economic anxieties continue to dominate voters' concerns.

Maybe the McCain campaign is hoping voters will transfer their worries about the economy to Obama and McCain's stock will rise as voters head into polling places a few weeks from now.

These web ads are made in part so journalists like me will pick them up and run with them, since we're suckers for them, which helps to spread them. So it's mission accomplished for the McCain people.

Here's the ad's transcript:

Script For "Ayers" (WEB :90)

When their relationship became an issue, Obama just responded, "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

by Frank James

This is weird. A man introducing Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden at a campaign rally mistakenly says the name of the guy at the top of the other side's presidential ticket. This could be a new Southwest Airlines ad: "Want to get away?"

by Frank James

Gallup's pollsters are reporting that the number of voters who say the race of the candidates could cause them to vote against Sen. Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election -- six percent -- may be offset by the nine percent who say it may make them vote for him.

Thus, Gallup is making the counterintuitive point that Obama may be helped by his race, not hurt by it as recently reported recently by the Associated Press story.

Any student of American history or race relations could be forgiven for being skeptical that being African-American would be an electoral net plus for a presidential candidate. But it's an interesting thought.

Here's how Frank Newport of Gallup puts it:

PRINCETON, NJ -- While 6% of voters say they are less likely to vote for Barack Obama because of his race, 9% say they are more likely to vote for him, making the impact of his race a neutral to slightly positive factor when all voters' self-reported attitudes are taken into account.

The potential impact of Obama's race on the election has been the more scrutinized this year. These data, taken at face value, show that if anything, his race could be a net plus, in the sense that it makes slightly more voters want to vote for him than not want to vote for him.

by Frank James

A lot of people thought last night's debate was really bad. Among them: Jim VanderHei and John Harris, the journalists who run the Politico.

A large excerpt:

With the country at one of its most interesting--not to mention terrifying--moments in a generation, John McCain and Barack Obama met in Nashville for what was surely one of the dullest and was definitely the least satisfying presidential debate in memory.

But the Belmont University showdown was something entirely different. Place the gravity of the moment next to the blah-blah-blah artifice of the rhetoric and overall insubstantiality of the evening and this is what you get: The worst presidential debate ever.

No wonder my eyes were crossing about halfway through. Actually, they started crossing earlier than that.

The writers fault the Commission on Presidential debates:

It would be hard to cook up a duller way of debating than we witnessed last night. The commission allowed the cautious handlers of the presidential campaigns to negotiate a format designed to limit improvisation, intellectual engagement and truth-telling.

It's not Brokaw's fault. Or Jim Lehrer's or Gwen Ifill's. The problem is the commission that has been invested with pseudo-constitutional status to run the debates but in fact weakly defers to candidates and clings to antiquated formats. No serious candidate would skip a debate. So the commission should use its leverage to insist that the debates are interesting to voters, rather than safe for candidates. Allow moderators to be more aggressive - and call-out candidates for lame answers- and then allow the candidates to go at it over the issues that matter most without time constraints.

by Frank James

We've been hearing for days now from Sen. John McCain about the earmark Sen. Barack Obama asked for to replace the failing projector at Chicago's venerable Adler Planetarium.

In case you've wondered what all the fuss was about, here's a picture of the old projector, circa 1970.

(Chicago Tribune photo by Alex Garcia.)

Here's a photo gallery of the projector, past and present.

And here are some details which Taxpayers for Common Sense provided last night on Obama's earmark request:

In tonight's debate, Sen. McCain cited a $3M earmark Sen. Obama sought for a projector at a planetarium.

At the page linked below there is a link to our spreadsheet of all Sen. Obama's earmark requests during his tenure, including the $3M request for the Adler Planetarium. There is also a spreadsheet of the earmarks that he received in FY08. Of course the earmark does not appear because the request was unsuccessful.

http://www.taxpayer.net/search_by_category.php?action=view&proj_id=1321&category=Earmarks&type=Project

The Obama campaign had the following comment:

"Senator Obama is firmly committed to enhancing our nation's science education programming, and he joined a bipartisan coalition of Illinois Members of Congress including Senator Durbin and Congressmen Kirk, Jackson Jr., Davis, and Emanuel in requesting funding to enhance and restore the Planetarium. Before leveling dubious charges against this science programming again, John McCain should check his own record - he voted for $200,000 in funding for the Adler Planetarium."

McCain Voted For Adler Planetarium Funding. McCain voted for the FY06 Commerce/State/Justice appropriations bill which included $200,000 for Adler Planetarium education programs. [Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW.org) Pigbooks, FY95-FY08; 2005 Senate Vote #329, 11/16/05, McCain: Y]

by Frank James

When politicians misspeak, it's often a humorous moment. But a verbal blunder by Sen. John McCain as he campaigned with Sarah Palin in Bethlehem, Penn. today was of the sort that draws more empathy than laughs.

McCain said:

"You and I together will confront the $10 trillion debt the federal government has run up and balance the federal budget by the end of my term in office. Across this country, this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners and the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent."

by Frank James

Sen. Barack Obama's lead in Gallup's tracking poll has increased a percentage point to 52 percent versus 41 percent for Sen. John McCain.

This is how Gallup reports it:

These results, based on Oct. 5-7 polling, are the best for Obama during the campaign, both in terms of his share of the vote and the size of his lead over McCain. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)

Concern about the economy seems to be playing to Obama's advantage; he overtook McCain when the financial crisis worsened in the middle of September, and his strong showing today coincides with the worst rating of the economy this year (59% of Americans describe current economic conditions as "poor"). -- Jeff Jones

The curves for Obama and McCain are really starting to get a lot of daylight between them which is obviously a growing problem for the McCain camp.

Karl Rove recently wrote this in Newsweek:

But the race is tight, no candidate can get above 50 percent for more than a day or two, and it is likely to stay close right to the end.

If the current trend continues, Rove's statement will no longer be operative.

By Andrew Zajac

Newly-installed Fannie Mae CEO Herb Allison, Jr. was national finance chair of John McCain's Republican presidential bid in 2000 and as recently as 2006 he wrote a $5,000 check to McCain's Straight Talk America PAC. But a year later Allison switched his party affiliation to Democrat and this year he's contributed $4,600, the maximum allowed by law, to Barack Obama.

Allison, 65, voted as a registered Republican in New York in the November 2006 election, but a year later registered as a Democrat in Connecticut and voted as one in that state's primary on Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008.

Allison sent a pair of $2,300 checks to the Obama campaign, the most recent on August 25, two weeks before the government seized the struggling mortgage guarantor and put him in charge of it. Previously, Allison's political giving favored Republicans, but he's also donated to New York Sen. Charles Schumer and a few other Democrats.

He hasn't given anything to McCain since 2006, according to the non-partisan Opensecrets.org campaign finance web site.

by Frank James

by Frank James

The second presidential debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain comes at a time in the race when the Democratic presidential nominee has taken a significant lead in national polls though it's still in the single digits.

As the two men meet in Nashville at Belmont University tonight, their backdrop is a nation of rising economic worries, with companies shedding jobs, rising housing foreclosures, tight credit markets and declining values on Wall Street .

Thus, the economy will likely be the debate's main focus though not exclusively.

The debate, which starts at 9 pm ET, will be take the form of a town-hall meeting. This is McCain's favorite format so that would argue for him having a lot of confidence tonight. But Obama has done town-hall meetings too, so the format shouldn't necessarily give the Republican nominee that big an advantage.

So what are five things Obama and McCain need to do tonight besides avoiding any obvious gaffes?

-- Obama will help himself hugely if he connects with the voters in the room and the greater television audience beyond. He's no Bill Clinton, he's not warm and folksy by nature. But if he can make a connection tonight, that could help him win over some undecided voters. Look for him to approach members of the audience tonight as he answers their questions in an attempt to show he feels their pain. As he tries to make that connection, however, Obama can't shift too much. By most polls, he won the first debate. Clearly what he's doing is working. So he doesn't need to make any major changes since one of his strengths is his calm and collected demeanor. In 2000, Al Gore made the respect of markedly changing his approach from one debate to the next, which turned a lot of voters off.

-- Both candidates have to present a credible approach for reviving the financial markets and the overall economy that goes beyond the recently passed $700 billion bailout legislation. In the last debate, they allowed it to become a competition over their respective campaigns' economic talking points which got lost in the weeds. Without getting too granular, they need to tick off a few major points about what they would do. But most importantly, they need to project confidence and courage about the economy. McCain particularly has to do more to convince voters that he's got real answers for the current economic plight since as economic concerns have risen, his polling numbers have fallen.