Truly awesome. John Madden watch out.
UPDATE: What is Ed Rendell's angle? Obama and co. were literally just in Pennsylvania. The state is important, no doubt, but the idea that Barack should be fighting there, instead of Flordia...I mean, maybe. One of the great things about this year is that the Obama cats have found so many routes to victory. Again, not arguing that Pennsylvania should be taken for granted, but this isn't 2004 or 2000. Is this just about preserving the importance of his state? For instance, is the flipside of the 50 state strategy a diminishing of the Big Three? And does that somehow diminish Rendell?
I get guarding against overconfidence, but that isn't the same as doubt. I hear a lack of confidence in Rendell. I'm not sure why. He shouldn't be arrogant about an Obama win, but he should be confident.
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Wow. That's a football analogy even I can understand.
Watching Gov Ed, I become more convinced that PA was an Obama plan: Where can we stash McCain for the final two weeks so he can't do any damage?
I've come to admire Gov Ed as a straight talker. Actually listen to him--for all the "frantically trying to close the deal" stuff, he's saying this might be a 6-point election rather than a 12-point one. Getting people to turn out (Do! Vote! Anything could happen!) but in the details, I see Ed agreeing to come out and shake his head about how close it is in PA, keeping McCain out of CO, NV, barely in NC, etc.
Rendell just wants to be important. Focusing on PA keeps the $$$ coming to PA. I'm from Michigan and let me tell you that business/media folks were upset about the $$ they were going to lose when McCain pulled out and Obama responded by ramping down his ad spending there. The amount of money that the presidential campaigns have pumped into the economy is nothing to sneeze at.
Rendell just wants a piece of the pie and if he can get a bigger one by playing concern-troll then that is what he'll do.
Ed Rendell is speaking dinosaur. He's a bitter, DNC Hillary stalwart who took about 15 minutes of his Obama rally time to talk up Hillary.
He can't stand that he was WRONG about the 50 state strategy. So he takes a snipe at it. Oh, boo hoo, it's such a shame we put Virginia and Colorado in play. If only we had just stuck to Hillary's game plan of settling in PA, OH, and FL. Well, guess what Ed? That strategy sucked, just like the Eagles not calling timeouts in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl. And Ed, you're sitting in the huddle, puking.
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20081029_Poll_shows_Obama_with_13-point_lead_over_McCainin_Pa_.html
PA's done-- now it's time for FL, OH, MO, even AZ and GA. We've got mo in different area codes, Ed.
Asshat.
Rendell doesn't have an angle, per se - he's simply speaking his mind, as he's famously wont to do. He has never believed that Obama can reach white voters. Every bit of his political experience militates against that conclusion. He was similarly skeptical of the polling in advance of the primary, and his concerns were borne out, to an extent - Clinton closed strong in the final week, widening the margin of her win.
It's very simple. You can count on one hand the number of politicians who managed to change the underlying demographics of the electorate. All the rest won office through a mixture of optimistic projection of their own chances and cynical realism about the nature of the electorate. It's why so few politicians were willing to back Barack early on; they didn't buy his game plan. And to this day, many of them can't believe he can actually change the electorate, can actually win over swing voters. They just don't. Rendell wants him to win, he's just panicked that he might lose.
Sure, Rendell might be bitter, or it might all be a devilishly clever conspiracy to dupe McCain. But I'll take the simplest explanation available, thanks.
Rendell seems like a likable enough bloke, but as other posters note, he is still a bloke. The longer PA seems to be in play, the longer he gets a national spotlight. Given that Obama's lead in Florida is slimmer than the one in PA, I would prefer more focus on Florida. Florida also has the interesting second story on Gov. Crist's "Screw You" to McCain, by ordering polling places to extend their hours. Why hasn't the MSM noticed that aside from Lindsey Graham, no other sitting Republican senator is actively campaigning for McCain?
Rendell is just managing expectations; he doesn't want to discourage voter turnout.
Obama has a huge margin in PA with women voters, and his numbers in western pennsylvania (McCain territory) are higher than Kerry's. At the same time, McCain is doing worse in Philly burbs than Bush. Moreover, the poll margins are 7+ pts, with an RCP average of 10+ pts. That means the Pennsylvania is solid blue, not light blue.
Pennsylvania is a must-win for McCain, so he has to campaign there. Obama...not so much. He's better off campaigning in Florida, Virginia, and Ohio.
Yeah, Rendell has never seemed fully on the Obama bus. It's sad, really, how many party apparatchiks have been extremely resistant to Obama because they had supported Clinton in the primary. Refusing to work with the Obama people probably cost about a month or more's worth of time (in the June/July period after Clinton had conceded) in a half dozen states at least. Which means that the campaign has had to put more staffers in these states to make sure they didn't become competitive. I know I would have been upset if Obama lost, but I am not a state party chair that can keep anything important from getting done in my state.
That said, things seem to have gotten better lately, but there are still a lot of people out there who are supporting Obama grudgingly, and I think Rendell is one of them.
I agree he's panicking and afraid, Cynic-- and, my own bitter venting aside, I think it's more that than simple self-serving posturing. But panic is not what Obama's campaign has been about, and it's not served by Rendell's.
I know lots o' liberals are just happy that one of their one finally has a show on the TV (Olbermann is more a centrist who's just really pissed off at Bush), but that shouldn't disguise the fact that Rachel's doing a damn good job of putting on a damn good news/opinion show. I mean, just compare what she's done in a few weeks on the air to the entire broadcasting career of Tucker Carlson.
Mike
Rendell is doing exactly the right thing here. As he said, the worst thing that could happen is for people to believe that PA is locked into the blue column.
Why? Because complacency does not make you step outside on a cold fall day in the northeast. Being fired up and afraid of losing does. Reminding people that losing is still a possiblity is the right thing to do right now.
Ed's on point. Hate the game, not this player.
I think a while back, the support for Obama in PA was a little less solid than it is now. The McCain camp thought they might be able to win there (an idea that was encouraged by some of the naked prejudice in the Western part of the state and the results of the Democratic primary).
Now, I think by the end of September, there was no chance McCain could win the state, but the Obama folks are happy to encourage the idea to keep the McCain camp occupied in a hopeless and expensive market. It's a giant head fake.
As to why Ed is the one advancing this narrative, well, first... Rendell is the natural spokesperson for this idea as governor, and no doubt happy to see the campaign cash flow there. He may also be hoping that Obama's coattails tow some of his party-line votes down-ballot.
Or hell... here's a novel thought. Maybe his motivations are just what he says they are. Maybe he has some reason to not believe the polls or is just a worrier by nature. *shrug* We can only speculate.
In 2000, Rendell was one of the first Dems calling on Gore to concede. He can barely say Obama's name. Bottom line: he is Joe Lieberman II. But he also knows his state. As does Murtha. Caution about those folks is well-advised.
I think the Obama 50 state strategy can be summed up in the words of Nate Dogg:
"I've got votes (i've got vooootes), in different area codes (area codes)....VOOOOTES.....VOHOHOTES...."
Personally I think this is just Obama being smart. If McCain thinks he can win PA, Obama legitimizes it by campaigning there, which makes McCain focus even more on PA.
The problem is, Obama probably knows he's going to win PA regardless of what McCain does. My legitimizing a "horse race" in PA, Obama keeps McCain there, to the detriment of all the other states that McCain needs to contest in, letting Obama run up the score in other states that McCain is ignoring.
It's a smart tactic.
"In 2000, Rendell was one of the first Dems calling on Gore to concede. He can barely say Obama's name. "
Is that true?
And LOL @ Bruce.
He's a bitter, DNC Hillary stalwart who took about 15 minutes of his Obama rally time to talk up Hillary.
Look Rendell was a stalwart for Hillary, but he's a "good democrat." He needed a graceful segue way from HRC to Obama, thus the lavishing praise for HRC (and not a bad way to bring those HRC voters along too, by the way). I know Obama supporters are skeptical about his motives, but they shouldn't be. I think the only way you see a lack of confidence in Rendell's comments is if you're looking too closely. Nothing looks pretty under a magnifying glass.
I want to say three things:
1. Fuck yes, Rachel's show is awesome. That visual aid was helpful and devastating.
2. Rendell is crazy but I think it's good to guard against complacency too. I'd love it if it came out years later that Obama's campaign had more or less encouraged McCain to fight in PA.
3. Is Gov. Crist's open polling places a sign of genuine conviction-- he helped allow convicted felons to vote, too-- or revenge for not getting picked as VP? I think the race would be a lot different if McCain-Crist were on the ticket.
Saw this last night and was truly captivated by Maddow's football analogy and her ability to break it down for me in simple Chargers vs. Raiders terms.
And then the answer to the age-old question: "Which pundit would you rather have a beer with?" become quite clear.
Wow, if Rendell is as bad as you say he is, then it was probably a good thing obama stayed in PA. I remember him being a pretty big Hill-Billy-fan. Not that there is anything wrong with that...
Ta-Nehisi, i consider this the official TNC-bump....fist bump brother!
Btw, how did you get your name, what ancestry is it?
I love the football explanation..LOL
Personally, my dream is Obama wins WITHOUT needing Pennsylvania, Ohio OR Florida.
Ed Rendell thinks its hard for a black man to win a large chunk of PA whites, and has said so. Murtha thinks the same, and has said so. I think, you know, they believe that. And that the 12 point margin is a little unbelievable to them. (Really, we'd be up in arms if Ed was saying "PA's in the bag, no need to worry.")
Someone pointed out that McCain isn't in just PA, he's in rural PA. Even though the swing voters are in the Philly suburbs, McCain is stumping the red part of the state. It's....bizarre. The real America thing isn't supposed to keep you out of the places the 90% of unreal-but-voting Americans live, GOP! It's just something you say! Thus I really think Persia's point 2 will come out within a few months of the election.
As a PA resident, I haven't been worried about Obama losing for months. The polls have been consistantly great for Obama. Only thing that gives me pause, is that Ed has excellent political instincts- so maybe he knows something we don't? Maybe he's worried about voter supression and wants to counter it with heavy turnout- he sure doesn't want to be blamed for losing the state. It does seem odd.
But you've got to get off Eddie, TNC- he's good people. He was a great mayor, and has been as good a governor as you can be in this state.
The only angle I can think of, and it's a doozy, is they're going to work to throw the state to McCain, so he has a chance of winning, so Hillary can run in 2012.
I told you it was a doozy.
He doesn't have an angle. Say all you want about Ed Rendell. He's a bloviator. He's a concern troll. The man knows his state, and he's on the ground, in Pennsylvania, EVERY SINGLE DAY.
He's correct in all his assessments up there. McCain is desperate, and they're throwing anything that will stick, and some of it is starting to stick, at the fringe.
He's calling it as he sees it, that's all there is to it. You'd think people would appreciate the honesty from him, instead of more of "it's in the bag." What he's saying now has value. Saying "we got this," does not.
McCain and Palin HAVE set up camp in Pennsylvania. Rendell is doing what the polls aren't; he's talking to people on the ground.
There is real value in this, people. What a lot of people are missing is what Maddow talked about in the opening: Polls are fun, but they don't tell the whole picture.
Look, during the primaries, when Team Hillary was pushing "he can't be elected; he can't win states like OH and PA and FL" Gov Ed was the one who merrily responded to the question of "Could Obama win PA?" with "Sure." I think he calls them like he sees them--even with his "can't believe the polls" stuff here, he is talking about a "mere" 7 point victory. Contrast his "gotta stay on our toes, gotta get out the vote, don't get complacent" demeanor with what he's actually saying.
Early June seems a lifetime away, but he was also credited as one of those saying "No, Hillary, you don't need time to figure out what to do next, you need to concede. The summer's fight over superdelegates is not going to happen." Rangel too.
I think Rendell is worried about the Bradley effect. And he's trying to manage expectations and get everyone out to the polls that he possibly can.
It seems to me that he's doing all he can to help Obama win PA, and that he sees this as the key to getting Obama's help once he becomes president.
Gov. Ed is a dinosaur and a bit of a jackass, but in a back alley brawl, you'd want him on your side.
Any Eagles fan knows what it's like to settle for a field goal in the red zone.
I wouldn't get too bent out of shape about Rendell's comments. For what it's worth, I'd guess his motives are a mash of a lot of what's been suggested already - some real concern about blue collar folk turning out heavy for McCain in the Pennsyvlania 'T'; some interest in making sure there's heavy Democratic turnout (esp. in Philly & its burbs - Rendell's 'base'); some selfish desire to keep attention on PA; maybe a dash of lingering Hillary love.
But the real question is why McCain is spending so much time on a state that, if he greatly overperforms vs. what the polls have been saying for ages, might only lose by 5 or 6 points. The only compelling explanation I've heard is that he thinks he can win a lot of votes in the greater Pittsburgh area (esp. PA-12, Murtha's district - and Murtha's killing himself, and probably hurting Obama in the process) & the Scranton area (specifically PA-11, where the uber-immigration-restrictionist Lou Barletta is running). I think he's essentially trying to ride the GOP challengers' coattails in those districts. But even then, he has to assume that all the polls of the Philly burbs aren't as bad for him as they are; that Obama isn't really outperforming Kerry & Gore in Delaware, Chester, Montgomery, Bucks. I can't think of any explanation that doesn't rely on delusional thinking from McCain.
As a 40+ voter, I'll also project onto Rendell the same psychology I see in a lot of older Democrats. Pennsylvania is a hard-fought-for place. The governor's office has swung back and forth multiple times between the two parties over the last few decades. The political battles between the cities and non-urban parts of the state have been epic. Across the country, no matter what the polls say, Democrats in battleground areas just can't believe we're ahead. We're too afraid to feel safe. Yet. It's an emotional thing that defies data.
I think Gov. Rendell's thinking goes something like this:
PA is one of the areas where we've heard a lot these stories about white voters telling canvassers they are voting for "that coloured boy" or "the negro" or worse.
We can think about this in a couple ways. Most have taken this to mean that Sen. Obama is even making inroads into what could legitimately be called "the racist vote," and that Sen. McCain is in serious trouble. On the other hand, though, if these are the folks that Obama is counting on to win, then they might be a tad less dependable, and could be susceptible to last minute race-baiting appeals.
The question then becomes, how many of these people are there, and could enough of them switch back to make up for McCain's poll deficit?
I think Rendell convinced himself, while making the case for Hillary Clinton, that there are a whole lot of these people--enough to throw the election to the Republicans.
Is it excessively anachronistic of me (or is the term somehow inherently sexist or diminutive) to point out that the post title could be "Rachel Maddow--Maid Of Win"?
One thing no one's mentioned here so far is the Pennsylvania State Legislature. The GOP controls th Senate pretty comfortably, but the Dems have a 1-vote majority in the House. Sounds safe? It's not -- there are 203 Representatives in the State House.
Furthermore, the Dems have been embroiled in a corruption scandal that has even Pennsylvanians pissed off: the House Majority Leader, Bill DeWeese, was creating bogus jobs on the public payroll for Democratic campaign staffers. One of these folks started an extra-marital affair and then put his girlfriend on the State payroll to keep her quiet. The Republican Atty' General is going to prosecute maybe a dozen people (not DeWeese, he flipped on his staff), some of whom might do really serious time in prison (like 30 years serious).
So, Ed wants to keep the House in the Dem column, and he needs high turnout to do that. It's also likely that he wants to be able to use Obama events in House and Senate districts as political bakshish -- it never hurts to help get the incredibly popular next POTUS into a couple of 30,000 person House districts when you want to have a good relationship with the state legislature.
Ezra nailed this a while ago. Total headfake by Obama and Rendell and a very smart strategy on their part. The more McCain thinks PA is winnable, the more resources he wastes there, leaving less money for the closer and more winnable (for him) states FL, OH, NH, VA, CO: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=10&year=2008&base_name=is_mccain_getting_played
It's a win-win, because the more worried Obama's on the ground supporters are the more likely they are to turn out and vote.
rendell's history has shown that he knows his state, very well. (just as murtha knows his state, no matter how impolitic his words might be.)
rendell is one of the most astute political observers in the country. he is one of the guys who has helped move pennsylvania from being a democratic-leaning swing state to being one that is solidly in the dem's column.
why wouldn't anyone take what he says seriously?
a bunch of reasons - the cultural conservatisim of a good portion of the electorate, the latent racism of older voters and the fact that it is one of the oldest states in the country, the real, measurable tightening of the polls, and other tangibles - argue that rendell is right.
while i have had certain problems with some of his approaches in the past, he is a real pro, a professional politician who is now in this thing to win it.
for democrats and obama. when he was for hillary, he was all in for hillary. now, from what i've seen, he's in it for obama.
to ascribe some selfish, immature motive to his seemingly real concerns is puzzling.
Rachel will interview That One tomorrow nite!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27429817/from/ET/
If you want a feel for some of what is happening in PA, listen to This American Life: Ground Game. They tap into the huge Democratic recruitment efforts but also some seeming weakness among White Democratic support for Obama.
Your're right, frankie d, Rendell is doing what's best for his party and his candidate.
If Pennsylvania is McCain's Hail Mary, then Obama needs to pay attention. As Rendell pointed out, Hail Marys seldom work but sometimes do.
I like Pesto's argument, whether it's true or not, it uses local info so bonus points for that.
I wonder if Rendell is just thinking about his possible political future, the man is an old-school political animal after all. Regardless of what happens on the 4th, "Fast Eddie" wants his state to stay safely blue and all of the powerful Democrats in Washington, (particularly a Pres.-Elect Obama), to think of him fondly. In other words, "I did my job everybody, PA went for Obama.....now how about supporting me for a Senate run/cabinet position?"
I'll admit I stopped the video before Rendell spoke. The fact that Obama is polling 10% above McCain is enough information for me at this point - fingers crossed, and hope that McCain spins out his money futilely trying to turn the state.
But much love for Rachel Maddow - what's great about her show is that she seems to be delighted to be on camera. Her enthusiasm is infectious, and much more genuine than the beetle-browed seriousness affected by her peers on cable. If she keeps having fun, people will keep watching.
I think that Rendell pushing the idea that Obama needs to defend Pennsylvania is a gigantic head fake, which the McCain campaign was dumb enough to fall for. Every hour and every dollar that McCain and Palin spend in Pennsylvania is a dollar and an hour that they don't spend in Florida or North Carolina.
I totally believe this was coordinated with the Obama campaign.