McCain On Working Class Wages

NBC Nightly News lead with the story tonight that's got the blogosphere rocking. John McCain responded to an interview with Politico on Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own. "I think -- I'll have my staff get to you," McCain said. McCain's comments are a serious potential gaffe, as they dovetail with an increasingly aggressive effort to paint the GOP nominee as wildly out of touch on economic issues. If McCain doesn't know much about his own finances, how is he going to be about to handle the nation's? This all in in the same week we're trying to figure out why McCain thinks an income of $5,000,000/year is needed to be considered rich (see Faith Forum with Rick Warren).

McCain's wealth, while certainly on the upper edge of the spectrum, is not an anomaly among candidates. Indeed, both Clinton and Kerry, like McCain, rank among the top ten richest Senators. The purpose of McCain's "housing crisis" isn't to hold McCain's wealth against him. The man married, and he married well. But when McCain's lifestyle is held up against his policies, it serves to inform voters about his perspective and his judgment. By the way, Obama is not rich according to McCain - He is only worth a little over $4,000,000. (i.e. doesn't pass the $5,000,000 threshold).

So with this "economy" gaffe hitting the air waves, I thought it might be worth revisiting McCain's opinion on the value of wages. I found an interesting story from back in 2006 when McCain, at an AFL-CIO convention, was asked about the effect of immigration in depressing wages, McCain declared that no Americans would be willing to do agricultural work for as little as $50/hour. At that rate, a worker would make as much in 6 months as the average annual household income in the US.

McCain said immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted (not entirely untrue). He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.

Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain’s job offer.

“I’ll take it!” one man shouted.

McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. “You can’t do it, my friends.”

Some in the crowd said they didn’t appreciate McCain questioning their work ethic.

I was not entirely opposed to McCain's position on immigration (atleast the old Maverick McCain). Before he changed his tune to a more Conservative stance in order to run for President, McCain supported a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for "illegal immigrants." But this comment is more than arrogant. McCain is totally out of touch with the realities of working Americans. I'd love for voters to ask McCain at townhalls this summer and fall whether he still thinks nobody's willing to work for as little as $50/hour. It's out of touch with working class America to make such arrogant statements.

State of The Race

There is no question the race has tightened and has become essentially tied on the national level and on a state-by-state electoral vote count basis. However there is no reason for Obama supports to start freaking out. A new poll from Zogby has McCain up 5pts. Well, rest assured, Zogby is one of the most unreliable polls out there and at the same time, a new Q-poll has Obama up five, Gallup has him up three (after being tied a couple of days ago), Rasmussen has him up two, as does Bloomberg/Times. We must maintain perspective, in the poll of polls, McCain has never crossed the 45 percent threshold while Obama bobs between 45 and 50. Another interesting factor is many of the undecideds continue to be Clinton supporters. There is a much greater chance that these traditional Democrats will stay faithful to the Democratic Party and vote Obama.

Still, after weeks of attacks from McCain and the GOP, Obama has lost a lot of his post-primary lead he enjoyed in June and July. The tightening of the race corresponds with the move to the next phase of the nomination. In the next three weeks we will have VP selections and conventions and the the following phase of the election which will include intense campaigning and the October debates.

The Obama campaign spent July running ads and campaigning hard in traditionally GOP states of Missouri, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida with hopes of scoring a knockout on election day. However, Obama will no doubt turn his focus to the true battleground states of New Mexico, Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Obama has in some sense won an early victory by keeping Colorado and Virginia competitive, and maintaining his lead in Michigan, New Mexico and Iowa (all states Obama appears to be likely to win). That's indicative that this is still an election Obama can and probably will win. Assuming Obama will hold the Kerry states (incl. New Hampshire), which is very likely, Obama's path to victory will most likely include one or a combination of these scenarios (270 needed to win):

Kerry States + Win Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada. (this would result in a 269-269 tie and the House would give it to Obama)
Kerry States + Win Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado (273-265)
Kerry States + Win Iowa and Virginia (272-266)
Kerry States + Win Ohio (272-266)

These are the bare minimum requirements to win. It is very possible that Obama will sweep a majority of the swing states and score a 300+ EV count.

In response to the McCain attacks of July, the Obama campaign said the ad, called "Three Times," will air starting today in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

VP Picks Right Around The Corner

Reports have been flying today that Obama has settled on his VP choice and will roll out an announcement as soon as tomorrow morning. In response, Republican sources are reporting that McCain, in an attempt to off-set Obama's convention boost, will announce his VP selection on Friday, August 29th, the day after the Democratic Convention comes to an end.

It really is a guess who Obama and McCain will select as their running mate. However, history has taught us that VP names are typically leaked in advance so the campaigns can gauge reaction. Based on these leaks Obama is said to be focused on three choices, Evan Bayh, a middle-of-the-road Indiana senator with an extensive Democratic family lineage, Gov. Tim Kaine who leads the Republican-leaning swing state of Virginia, that Obama would like to put in his column in the Nov. 4 election, and Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee with extensive foreign policy experience. In preparation for the big announcement and at the suggestion of Laura and Jess, I figured I'd give my thoughts on these choices.

In my opinion, the key for Obama is to go with a relatively safe pick who would reiterate the focus and direction Obama wants to take the country. I don't think Obama needs to pick a risky game-changer like Hillary Clinton or Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. Both of whom would be interesting choices that would help mobilize the female vote. However, both would come with heavy baggage. Clinton and Obama are obviously not going to the prom together and would make a horrible team. Also, would Clinton actually hurt Obama in some of the swing states like Colorado and Virginia? Sebelius would only piss off Clinton supporters in Ohio, Pennslvania and Michigan who would feel Clinton was slighted for the less deserving and inexperienced Sebelius.

Sen. Evan Bayh from Indiana has campaigned a lot with Obama in July and is certainly the safe pick. He would do little harm to Obama and help off-set Obama's liberal record. He is also very popular in the heartland swing states like Indiana, Ohio and Missouri. Bayh was an early backer of Clinton and would be effective in reaching out to disenchanted Clinton supporters. However, Bayh is a conservative Democrat who worked tirelessly in 2002 with Lieberman and McCain to authorize the Iraq War. As someone who is so very anti-war that's a big issue for me. Bayh would be tough to swallow on a personal level, but on a national stage would help considerably in swing states.

Gov. Tim Kaine from the swing state of Virginia was an early supporter of Obama. He is best described as a pro-life, Catholic, moderate Democrat who performed surprisingly well in the traditionally conservative areas of Virginia during his 2005 campaign for Governor. These are areas that McCain will need a big conservative turn out to overcome Obama's huge support in the Richmond area and Northern Virginia suburbs of DC. If Kaine could blunt McCain's support in the conservative areas Obama would have a great chance to win Virginia and the election. The negative is that he could potentially hurt Obama nationally because of his lack of foreign policy experience and his relative lack of results during his brief tenure as Gov of Virginia. I'm afraid that Kaine would provide the GOP plenty of ammo to attack. So while Kaine would reiterate Obama's out-side Washington, change message and would be a very effective and loyal VP, I am afraid he would make the ticket look very inexperienced against McCain, the veteran war-hero.

Sen Joe Biden of Deleware has certainly received the most noise of late after traveling this week to the Russian-occupied Georgia on a diplomatic mission. He has strong working-class roots, is well-respected, and would fill the perceived holes in Obama's foreign policy resume. Biden was originally one of my least favorite for the simple reason that he is old school Washington. He's been a Senator longer than I've been alive and is known for being long-winded and boring. More problematic, Biden voted for the Iraq war six years ago. However, Biden at least began speaking out against the war early, and in his original 2002 vote he tried to push through an amendment that tied the authorization to weapons of mass destruction rather than an open authorization for Bush (it failed). Biden is seasoned as a national campaigner, and an effective surrogate on national media. He excelled in all of the debates back in 2007, and would do well in the VP debate against anyone McCain selects. So other than the early Iraq support and the fact that Biden seems to run contrary to Obama's New-Democrat change message, he appears to be a capable pick.

The bottom line is that each candidate has positives and negatives. If it had no bearing on Obama's chances I would prefer Tim Kaine, only because he appears to share with Obama the desire to change Washington and the direction of the Democratic Party. Also, he and Obama have a genuine friendship and would work very well together in office. However, Kaine is the risky pick. Bayh is my least favorite in that he's so conservative and would not work as well with Obama. However, he would be the biggest asset for Obama in the campaign due to his heartland appeal and ability to impress moderate, independent voters. The liberal blogosphere would definitely disagree with Bayh being helpful, as they have devoted websites campaigning against Obama choosing Bayh due to his conservative record. That leaves Biden somewhere in the middle and by default the best choice in my opinion.

Whose Energy Policy Should We Support?

Recent polling indicates that Americans favor lifting the ban on off-shore drilling by an almost 2-1 margin. Fifty-seven percent (57%) favor offshore drilling versus twenty-nine percent (29%) who are opposed. I have found this national development to be very frustrating as I seek to spread the word that our dependence on both foreign and domestic carbon-burning, air-polluting, oil must be drastically reduced for the consideration of our security and our planet's survival. We have to know that we cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly disappearing. Not when we purchase $700 million worth of oil every single day from some of the world's most unstable and hostile nations. Drilling for more oil is not the solution. It is a political answer of the sort Washington has given us for decades.

Obama has a much larger energy plan -- articulated in an awesome speech today -- centered on investment in renewable energy and fuel efficiency technology. Obama advocates investing in auto-factories in states like Michigan, with loans and tax credits to build the fuel-efficient cars that we need to reduce our dependence. The goal is to get one million, 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years, providing an increased tax credit of $7,000 to consumers to buy these cars. Obama also proposes requiring that 10% of our energy comes from renewable sources by 2012 - more than double what we have now. To meet these goals, Obama proposes that both the government and private enterprise invest more in the clean technology research and development that is already out there. Investments that McCain has voted against in the past. This will certainly be a costly endeavor, but we can not afford not to act. And as Obama said in his speech, "Creating a new energy economy isn't just a challenge to meet, it's an opportunity to seize - an opportunity that will create new businesses, new industries, and millions of new jobs. Jobs that pay well. Jobs that can't be outsourced. Good, union jobs."

Obama also took the opportunity to criticize McCain's constant propagation that we should open up coastal drilling. To be fair that is not McCain's only energy policy proposal. He is also advocating loosening regulations on nuclear power and battery technology. However, anyone who has watched the news cycles and caught any TV ads by the campaigns can't help but notice that McCain is pushing the coastal drilling issue very hard, because he is aware of overwhelming American support for drilling. I believe McCain is promoting bad policy for political gain.

Obama pointed out in his speech today that McCain has said recently that our dependence on foreign oil has been 30 years in the making and caused by failure of politicians in Washington to think long term about the future of the country. McCain neglected to mention that for 26 of those 30 years he was in Washington and did very little to tackle our energy problem. He voted against fuel efficiency standards and tax credits for efficient cars, against renewable sources of energy, against clean bio-fuel, against solar power, against wind power. All of which I believe he opposed because of his conservative philosophy which views wall street and corporate profits as more important to the health of our country than acting to solve our energy and global warming crises.

So, what is McCain aggressively promoting--Off-shore drilling. A plan he only recently supported as the political winds shifted. A proposal that everyone knows will do nothing to reduce prices and little if anything to reduce dependence on foreign oil. It will take 7 years to produce this oil and by then world demand will be even higher resulting in an estimated $0.06 a gallon savings at the pump. We can save $0.12 a gallon just by properly inflating our tires. A fact that the McCain camp has made fun off by distributing tire gauges at an Obama event. In addition, if every square mile of coastal areas and Alaskan Refuge was drilled, which would be impossible, we could still only produce 3% of the world's oil. Nowhere near the 25% we consume. We have 68 million acres currently leased by oil companies that haven't even been touched. Senator McCain knows that, which is why he admitted that his plan would only provide "psychological" relief to consumers. Please, Americans need more than psychological relief at the pump.

What I believe this shows is more failure to lead on the part of John McCain on a great challenge that our generation faces. And perhaps even more important, a lack of judgement. Judgement that McCain also lacked in the run-up to the Iraq war. What judgement can we expect from McCain when it comes to dealing with Iran, poverty and disease relief, disaster preparation and response, job creation, solving the health care crisis and getting America out of our deficit and debt? What can we expect when conservative policies typically protect the upper earners and wall street over main street and the working class?

I choose to support Obama's energy policy, which is another reason I am voting for him in the fall. I urge you to consider these plans as you make up your decision. What energy policy will you support?