Can we Wordle?

Yes, we can!

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

Well, here goes: this is the Wordle of all of Obama’s answers during last night’s debate, on the basis of this transcript.

Click to see large.

A hat-tip is in order: I got the idea when I saw the Wordle on The Monkey Cage of the Vice-Presidential debate. That Wordle was of everything both candidates said though, which seemed less revealing to me than what you’d get Wordling each candidate’s words separately.

I’ll do one for McCain later today..

A classmate of my daughter’s told her (yes, even second-graders are talking politics) that his neighbor has a McCain/ Palin sign in his yard, with a twist. The neighbor likes McCain but hates Palin, so crossed out her name from the sign. Heh.

I adore politics. My job is politics-related. I’ve been watching this election cycle closely from the very beginning.

So it’s kind of hard for me to remember that there are a whole lot of people out there who just don’t care very much about politics. Now is when they start to pay attention.

And Barack Obama has shown over and over again that when people pay closer attention to him, he benefits (and his opponent suffers).

Take these three graphs from Pollster, indicating voter preferences in the lead-up to the Democratic primaries in Ohio, Wisconsin and Missouri.

Ohio

Wisconsin

Missouri

See how that orange Obama line goes up-up-up, but especially in the very last stretch before the primary?

Voter Suppression Wiki Home

A sad feature of our modern political climate is organized and intentional voter suppression.  Below is a list of current efforts at voter intimidation in several states.  While many of the efforts are in swing states, it seems to be going on across the country.  This is by no means comprehensive and it paints a sad picture of our democracy where the importance of winning is greater than the importance of the integrity of our system.  Oh, one other thing.  In every case, Republicans are leading the charge to disenfranchise students, minorities, the poor, everyone who might not support their agenda.  On to the list…

For the last one hundred years, Missouri has been the “bellwether” state for the union.  Missouri’s status as the state with the best historical tracking record in the country for Presidential politics regularly makes the press and the University of Missouri even makes note of it on their web site.

“There is no other state like Missouri,” said Marvin Overby, professor and Frederick A. Middlebush Chair in the Department of Political Science. “Missouri is the southernmost northern state, northernmost southern state, easternmost western state and westernmost eastern state. It is geographically and demographically in the middle. It’s in a unique position that tends to reflect well where the rest of the country is politically.”

Can Missouri do it again?

Sometimes, it’s awfully nice to live in a battleground state.

AP/ Terry Gilliam

Barack Obama has paid us a call here in Columbus, Ohio several times already and I’m sure he’ll be back again before election day. And yesterday, Bruce Springsteen came to town to give a free concert and get out the vote.

It was a gorgeous fall day — sunny but cool, with blue-blue skies and leaves just beginning to turn. My daughter was excited about going to her first real concert. (“Rock star” is currently her career goal.) I expected a madhouse but the crowds descended upon the Oval at OSU in a relaxed, strolling way. Lots of smiles.

No tickets were required for the concert, but tickets existed — they could be picked up at various Obama field offices. I didn’t bother. As we were walking, a young guy asked me if I had a ticket. I said “no…” fearing that the rules had changed or I’d misunderstood something. He said “here” and thrust a ticket at me. Uh, thanks!

Then a guy next to him looked at my daughter and asked if we needed another ticket. Well… He handed his over. Wow, thanks!

So, red tickets in hand (indicating that we were Brian and Sam, respectively), we worked our way towards the SPECIAL entrance (closer-up!) for ticket holders.

There were a bazillion people (evidently 10,000 total!) and this took awhile, with much winding and meandering of lines, even though everything moved pretty fast.

There were a small pack of protestors — about five — waving McCain/ Palin signs. I caught the eye of one guy who was smiling fixedly and walked straight towards him instead of diverting around their patch of turf. His eyes widened a bit and he got out of my way. A woman took his place and waved her “NOBAMA!” sign at me. I said, pleasantly, “Why do you support them?”

” I call upon the McCain campaign to stop treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower who will wilt at any moment.” — Campbell Brown

Why did John McCain choose Sarah Palin to be his vice president?

Evidence seems to indicate that he wanted to stomp on Obama’s convention bounce and buzz (timing the announcement for the morning after Obama’s acceptance speech), and get some razzle-dazzle for his own campaign. The actions he’s taken since then seem to show a singular lack of respect for the person he has chosen to serve as his closest advisor.

She’s been aggressively packaged. We know that Palin’s convention speech was largely written before she was even chosen. We know that she willingly mouthed false statements (written for her by the McCain campaign) about the Bridge to Nowhere — and that she continued to do so long after the lie was exposed. Andrew Sullivan points out the differences between the Palin we saw at the debate, droppin’ those g’s and aw-shucksin’ her way through, doggone it, with the relatively lucid Palin of 2006.

Campbell Brown’s rant centered on the astounding lack of media access to the vice presidential candidate. Palin has still not held a single press conference, more than a month after her selection and with a month left to go in this campaign. What does that say about McCain’s respect for her abilities?

Then yesterday she revealed that she hadn’t actually been informed about the McCain campaign’s decision to drop out of Michigan. This was a really big decision. And she didn’t even know about it, much less participate in it. It’s one thing to not ask her advice — I’d find that telling (I can’t imagine Joe Biden being completely left out of the loop on such a major decision, for example) but an argument could be made that campaign decision-making is different than decision-making once in office. It’s another thing to just not even bother to let her know.  The question is begged — is she there to contribute in any substantial way to the campaign? Or is she there to simper and wink and send “little starbursts” to the likes of Rich Lowry?

Is there a point at which she will finally chafe at the treatment she is getting from the campaign?

Or is she just fine with being sequestered from the media and treated like a delicate flower?

The daily tracking polls have been relatively stable over the last three days, since the previous polling update here; hence also the absence of intermittent updates. But today’s polls are interesting because they do not, or hardly, include any impact the Veep debate might have. So they can be used as a yardstick for measuring any such impact in three days’ time, when most of the tracking polls will have a sample completely from after the debate.

(There’s some trickiness involved, of course, in that the Veep debate will hardly be the only development impacting opinions; what about the Senate vote for the bailout bill, for example? Or, as Gallup points out, “the new Labor Department report out today, showing a bigger job loss in September than many analysts had predicted”?)

Daily tracking polls, 10/3 (click to enlarge)

Here’s the graph. Gallup’s poll bounced around a little the last few days, with Obama’s lead shrinking from 8% to 4% between Monday and Wednesday, and increasing to 7% again by today. The Rasmussen and Hotline poll have remained almost entirely stable and similar, showing an Obama lead of 5-7%. And the Daily Kos tracking poll, conducted by Research 2000, is off on its lonesome showing a significantly larger Obama lead of 10-11%.

Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, etc.!

Reviewing the average of the four polls, however, there’s a hint of new movement today.

It’s hard to avoid feeling isolated as a blue guy in a red state.

A few months ago during the primary season, my Mom asked me who I was supporting in the upcoming primary election.  When I said “Obama”, she was shocked, so shocked I could hear it through the phone.  “I just thought with the racial thing…”  It was one of those surreal moments when you realize your mom living in rural Alabama doesn’t quite share your perspective on life. 

Seems like an appropriate link to recommend tonight: The Poetry of Sarah Palin. A whimsical, ironical (re)take on Palin’s words, written with a gentle and creative humor. The author, or should I say editor, is Hart Seely. You might remember how he turned Donald Rumsfeld’s cryptical utterings into The Existential Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld.

“You Can’t Blink”

You can’t blink.
You have to be wired
In a way of being
So committed to the mission,

The mission that we’re on,
Reform of this country,
And victory in the war,
You can’t blink.

So I didn’t blink.

Matt Yglesias thinks so:

Gwen Ifill

If I may state the obvious, the fact that Gwen Ifill apparently has a forthcoming book titled Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama is a huge advantage for Sarah Palin. If you look at the demographic breakdowns of any poll, you could probably count on one hand the number of college educated African-American women who are favorably disposed toward Palin. But because of the book, and because Ifill has a reputation as a professional to maintain, she’s now in a situation where she’ll bend over backwards to avoid appearing too hard on Palin.

I tend to agree. When I chewed my fingernails and worried about how the Biden/ Palin debate would go down, that was one thing that I found reassuring — that the debate would be moderated by a woman. I think that Palin and the McCain campaign are going to look for any excuse to cry “sexism,” and that it will blunt their ability to do so if the follow-ups (which are frequently Palin’s Kryptonite — not that she was so Super in the first place) come from a woman.

That was a big part of why Katie Couric’s interviews created so many jaw-dropping soundbites — Couric would gently, smilingly offer a follow-up, and the follow-up would make it clear that the barn door was flapping but the horses had already bolted. (I either mangled an idiom or coined one there, I’m not sure.)

Note, I don’t think that the book actually indicates that Ifill will be unfair. I just think that

1. It means that Ifill will have to be considerably more careful than she would have been if this wasn’t made an issue ahead of the debate, and
2. The book will be used as a bludgeon in the post-debate spin. Even if Biden is impeccable (which is a largish if), McCain people can (and will) go after Ifill as impartial and attempting to embarrass poor, long-suffering Governor Palin

Update:  Nate Silver has an interesting point — if Ifill is replaced at the last minute, the bludgeon is removed AND it throws both debaters a curveball.  (They have been preparing with Ifill in mind — watching the 2004 VP debate, etc.)  And who is more likely to deal well with a curveball?

Hey, Katie, are you available??

It’s time that normal Joe Six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency.

Carswell: mediocre jurist

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Ak), talking about her qualifications for vice president, 2008

Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.

Sen. Roman Hruska (R-Neb), talking about G. Harrold Carswell’s qualifications for the supreme court, 1970