Election excitement hits Colorado

For whatever reason, Colorado with its nine electoral votes, is "in play" this year, as a key determiner in the presidential contest.

For years, candidates flew over the Rocky Mountain and plains states, on their way from the vote-rich East and Midwest, on their way to California. Barack Obama spoke in Grand Junction, Colorado yesterday, the first Democrat since Harry Truman to campaign there as a presidential candidate.

This still seems questionable on a raw numbers basis, as big states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio are very close in the polls. It takes all the Rocky Mountain states together to equal what one of the biggies will do for your campaign in the Electoral College. And yet, Colorado broadcast airways are full of expensive presidential campaign commercials.

After Obama was here for the Democratic National Convention in late August, John McCain and Sarah Palin together were in Colorado Springs a week ago. This week, Palin was in Golden Monday, while Obama spent a day and a half here, visiting Golden again and Pueblo, in addition to the Grand Junction stop.

Colorado has a narrow plurality of registered Republicans, with Independents next and Democrats third among the registered voters. Bush carried the state both times, but more recently we have elected a Democratic governor in Bill Ritter, U.S. Senator in Ken Salazar and a majority of the seven-member congressional delegation are currently Democrats. That's why Obama thinks there's hope.

We undoubtedly have not seen the last of the major party candidates in the remaining 49 days until the election, unless one or the other jumps out into a big lead in the polls. McCain is from neighboring Arizona, so should sweep the Rocky Mountain states--but such a trend is not apparent yet.

We'll just continue to bask in the glow of all the attention.

Obama drops vision, becomes attack dog

The old saying is "dance with the one who brung ya."

Obama has abandoned the soaring rhetoric, the gauzy, fuzzy, feel good phrases in his stump speeches. He sounds like Al Gore or John Kerry, in the old liberal attack dog mode of "Hate Bush." Having little luck running against John McCain and Sarah Palin, he has fallen out of the visionary, futuristic "dream with me" of his early campaign, back into the same old Democratic tactics.

They failed in the last two elections, and almost certainly will this time. George Bush is term limited and can't run again. He is not a candidate in this election, and America is ready to move on. Obama is virtually abandoning the change theme to McCain and Palin.

As tragic as the big Wall Street blowout was today, and the inevitable collapse of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, blaming it on Bush is hardly going to gain credibility with the American people. Particularly since it was the liberals in Congress who outlawed redlining and virtually demanded that lenders make housing loans to unqualified people.

When the loans defaulted and brought the collapse of the lenders, hardly a surprise, it can't be credibly put at Bush's door. Obama has got to do better than that.

America is tired of sniveling and finger-pointing. They want solutions and and liberation from the past. McCain and Palin have seized on that, co-opting Obama's own message and rhetoric. Unless he returns to the vision and future message, he is a dead duck.

Stock market shakeout helps Obama

The last week's plunge of the Dow Jones Industrial average has left investors counting their pennies, and looking at their hole card.

It hasn't been a real rippy-dippy year in the Stock Market anyway, and the last week makes it much worse. There are always jitters at elecction time, and this will be the shortest presidential campaign in history, with just 60 days left until the election. Then the stock market will settle down at some level or another.

I'm no stock picker or market timer, but at some point investors will find stocks cheap and leap back into the market and it will go up. Are we at such a bottom right now? If I knew the answer, would I tell you?

The conventional politics is that a lower stock market helps Obama and hurts Republicans. Probably this is true, but so far the year is not running true to form. Republicans should have no chance whatsoever, given President Bush's unpopularity, the Iraq war's lack of broad-based public support and the economic slowdown.

However, the conventional choice of Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney didn't hapen, and now McCain has upset the apple cart again with his selection of a running mate in the person Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She is wildly popular with values voters and has changed the chemistry of the race.

It's too early to tell, but seemingly Obama got very little bounce out of the Democratic convention, trumped by the Palin announcement. Her appeal to Rust Belt, gun-toting hunters is sterling, and to a lesser extent, snubbed women voters backing Clinton.

With all the bad economic news, Obama would be the conventional beneficiary, but 2008 is proving to be a very unconventional year.

McCain's speech very strong

Perhaps John McCain didn't hit the home run his running mate Sarah Palin did last night, but his speech was strong, positive and showed him to be very statesman-like, looking and sound like a President. He is not, and never will be Mr. Charisma and Charm, but came across warmly and professionally.

His minor jabs at Obama left a good impression, and his specifics about the economy, Republican failings in recent years, Iraq, energy policy, opportunity and the future set a good tone.

The CBS poll shows he and Obama tied going into the speech tonight, which is much stronger than anyone expected at this point. He and Palin look well positioned at the start of the campaign, and with Arnold Schwartzenegger's man Steve Schmidt leading the way, there is reason for hope. The Democrats will continue to control Congress, but the GOP team may well eek out a respectable victory. McCain's base in the Republican Party and with the Christian Right is very strong and energized, as it hasn't been since Reagan.

This is a seminal, change election, with no incumbent on either ticket for the first time in decades, and we will wind up with either a Black president or female vice president for the first time ever.

It is going to be an exciting fall.

Palin hits a home run

Having just turned off Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, I can make several observations:

1. She was strong and confident, tough but charming. Democrats are going to have their hands full, messing with her.

2. She said it all with her joke about hockey moms--the only difference between a Pit Bull and a Hockey Mom is the lipstick.

3. She demonstrated outstanding grasp of the energy issues, and heavily exploited her experience and knowledge in the oil rich state of Alaska. She was very effective talking about the $40 billion natural gas pipeline she signed the deal to build.

4. She shone brightly compared to the speakers ahead of her--Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliana and even Mike Huckabee. Huck was funny and the most effective of the trio, but didn't light up the crowd like Palin. Romney never caught fire, just like his presidential campaign, and Giuliani may have pushed the bounds of good taste in going after Obama.

Palin really comes across as Every Woman, warts and all. A lot of Americans can relate to that. She will give Obama and Biden fits, trying to figure you how to handle her, without destroying themselves in the process.

Where was this Fred Thompson a year ago?

Tonight at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, former Tennessee Senator and Law and Order star Fred Thompson delivered the keynote address.

He was animated, alive and delivered a real stemwinder, blasting Barack Obama, and playing up John McCain and Sarah Palin. He was very effective, both on television and in the hall. in front of the GOP base.

Thompson has always had this ability, and displayed it numerous times in being elected and re-elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee. There were times when he rose up and took a leadership position on some issue in the Senate, but most of the time he was just going through the motions, a very diffident, lackadaisical solon, at best.

So it was with his ill-fated presidential campaign last year. Some said his best speech was his withdrawl speech. Fred was laconic on the stump, ill-prepared and seemingly very unconcerned. He just walked through the debates, frequently unprepared and uninspiring. It seemed like his young trophy second wife wanted badly to be first lady, but that he was just going through the motions, to please her but not have to serve as President.

We Fredheads (As his backers were known) are asking, after watching him at the GOP convention tonight "Where was this Fred Thompson a year ago?"

Liberals fit to be tied

As Barack Obama's post-convention bounced never occurred or evaporated--take your choice--liberals are starting to panic. The uncoordinated, scattergun approach to what to do about McCain, and particularly his running mate Sarah Palin, shows desperation and uncertainty.

The Zogby poll shows McCain and Palin two points ahead--when a winning Democrat normally comes out of his convention with a 10-15 point bounce, a cushion to get them through the fall. They are apoplectic.

Former national chairman Don Fowler said Hurricane Gustav is a "gift from God." It is, but not as Fowler thinks. Instead of disrupting the GOP national convention, it is legitimately keeping George Bush and Dick Cheney away to take care of hurricane business, allowing the party to look very humanitarian in raising money for disaster relief and eschewing partisan politics. We don't know how the rest of the week will play out, but so far so good.

The only real negative is the protestors, who the Denver police had under control at the Democratic convention in their city, but are much more violent in St. Paul, throwing bleach at the Connecticut delegation, resulting in 80 arrests in one day--when Denver barely broke 100 for the week.

McCain and Palin look much more the change than Obama and his tired old-Washington-hand veep nominee, Joe Biden. The right is rallying around Palin in supporting her pregnant unmarried daughter, proving her anti-abortion credentials not once, but twice. This has forced Obama to declare family members off limits--ordering his staff not to politicize Palin's daughter.

It still looks like the perfect storm to this blog, with McCain having things well in hand.