Lots of discussion on the intertubes about Zack "Liberal Hottie" Exley's HuffPo piece examining Obama's GOTV operation. There is really only one word for it: impressive. Smart R Patrick Ruffini goes so far as to say it's superior to the Bush-Cheney model which, as everyone knows, was premised on voter fraud anyway.

Ruffini on Exeley on Obama:

Instead of packing the phone banks early, the Obama campaign built out its organizational pyramid first. Instead of assigning volunteers the daunting task of contacting voters not tuned in, they sicced them on the low-hanging fruit first: other identified supporters on the email list who could volunteer. It's also clear that building lateral connections among volunteers -- deepening their sense of commitment to the cause -- is also important, as evidenced by the MyBO groups function. Nor is this some wild-eyed kumbaya idea born of Cesar Chavez or Saul Alinsky. Small groups are the core of many Evangelical congregations. They're what made Rick Warren and Saddleback.

Incidentally, the #1 form of contact I have received from the Obama campaign -- other than emails or text messages -- are phone calls urging me to volunteer. The campaign has flagged me as a casual person on the e-mail list, and they have my cell number. And I get bombarded with calls trying to upsell me to volunteer status.

In the summer when McCain didn't have many volunteers, they should have been calling through the e-mail list to get more volunteers. Instead, they were dependent on a big bang moment (the Sarah Palin selection) which seems to have fizzled out without a strong underlying infrastructure.

As much as it's fun to believe in the magic of hope and and the power of cool speeches, no one should forget that Obama is where he is because of much, much more than that. Remember when Clinton was comparing Obama to Adlai Stevenson? Not to take away from the accomplishments of charisma, but the discipline with which he's put the nuts and bolts together suggest he might actually be good at, you know, governing.

So I was on a panel today with Mark McKinnon and Matthew Dowd--who brought you the last two Bush presidential campaigns--as well as Donna Brazile and Hilary Rosen....and Matt Dowd's candor was up on Huffington before I got back to the office:

"They didn't let John McCain pick the person he wanted to pick as VP," Dowd declared during the Time Warner Summit panel. "When Sarah Palin got picked instead of Joe Lieberman, which I fundamentally believed would have given John McCain the best opportunity in this race... as soon as he picked Palin, that whole ready versus not ready argument was not credible."

Saying that Palin was a "net negative" on the ticket, he went on: "[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with... He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that."

McKinnon pushed back a bit half-heartedly about this, but the bottom line on the Palin selection is increasingly clear: it was a historically bad decision by McCain, a gimmick that backfired--not just because Palin is so clearly unsuited for high office, but because it demonstrated McCain's own severe deficiencies as an executive.

It has been striking to me this year that the public seems far more serious about this election--far less tolerant of diversions--than some of my colleagues in the media. In this particular case, with Palin's support evaporating in the polls as people get to know her better, the public (with the exception of the Republican base) has proven that it is taking this election more seriously than the Republican candidate.

With three weeks to go, and absentee voting well underway, both campaigns -- and outside group -- have been asking voters and the media to look at the possibility of election fraud. At McCain rallies, supporters intone "ACORN" and "FBI! FBI!" with increasing regularity. And, it's true, ACORN -- a predominately left-leaning group with (limited) ties to Obama -- has a particularly spotty record when it comes to voter registration. The problem is that attempting to register voters improperly or fraudulently (under names like "Mickey Mouse" or maybe a local restaurant) only seems to be beneficial to Democrats. To be actually beneficial, Mickey Mouse (or the restaurant) would have to show up to vote.

In the mean time, paranoia about bad registrations threatens to impede the flow of legitimate new registrants -- and that flow is really more like a tidal wave. So while I'm all hats off to the McCain campaign's "Open and Honest Elections Committee" for, among other things, "reach[ing] out to Rep. John Conyers, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to reject reports on voter challenges based on home-foreclosures," it might be temperate to stop complaining about bad registrants and instead help to figure out a way to make the voter registration system withstand the flood of new, legitimate voters. (Full McCain statement after the jump.)

From a recent statement by "Election Protection" (reprinted in full after the jump):

In the next three weeks, we must maintain the integrity of the system, while also working to ensure that anyone who is properly registered is not intimidated by political operatives questioning their right to vote. We must unmask voter suppression tactics disguised as voter integrity measures.

The concerns we're seeing now with voter registration are eminently fixable. We need a system in which registration drives and the crush of new applications to be processed before Election Day are replaced by a more standard and logical process. Government should make sure that all citizens are permanently registered to vote as soon as they become eligible and that registrations are automatically updated with changes in address and marital status. This will eliminate the need for community groups or partisans to conduct voter registration drives and make our government clearly responsible for maintaining voter rolls throughout the year.

In other words, we can stop worrying about ACORN's tactics once we put an end to the need for ACORN to exist.

(more...)

The former Arizona Cardinals defensive back Pat Tillman died in 2004 because of a mistake, a military confusion in the canyons of Afghanistan about where the bad guys were. In service as an Army Ranger, Tillman was shot by another American in what the military calls "fratricide," but what the rest of the nation knows as "friendly fire." That was bad enough. But even worse was the military's repeated failure to come clean about the cause of Tillman's death.

In 2007, Rep. Henry Waxman summarized the military failures this way:

Specialist [Bryan] O’Neal was standing next to Corporal Tillman during the firefight. He knew immediately that this was a case of friendly fire and described what happened in an eyewitness statement he submitted up his chain of command immediately after Corporal Tillman’s death. But Specialist O’Neal told us something else. After he submitted his statement, someone else rewrote it. This unnamed person made significant changes that transformed O’Neal’s account into an enemy attack. We still don’t know who did that and why he did it. We just know that although everyone on the ground knew this was a case of friendly fire, the American people and the Tillman family were told that Corporal Tillman was killed by the enemy. And that doesn’t make any sense.

Today, my former colleague, the investigative reporter Mark Benjamin, has a new, highly disturbing story up at Salon.com that clearly shows the Army still has a problem with transparency and credibility in the investigations of possible friendly-fire deaths. The story concerns the death of Pfc. Albert Nelson and Pfc. Roger Suarez-Gonzalez, two soldiers who were killed by a 2006 blast in Ramadi, Iraq.

Benjamin's reporting, which includes a contemporaneous video of the attack, clearly shows 1) that immediately after the blast, several witnesses said they saw the fire come from an American tank, 2) that moments later the soldiers' superiors put pressure on the soldiers to say the blast came from an Iraqi mortar, 3) that the investigation that ruled-out friendly-fire as a cause of the blast was overseen by the commander of the tank brigade accused of killing the soldiers, 4) that despite efforts by superior officers to silence dissent, several soldiers who witnessed the events continue to speak out, under fear of punishment, to say that the cause of the deaths was friendly fire.

"I was behind the tank that shot the house," says one soldier. "I saw the tank fire. The way it was oriented, it was pointed in that direction."

"It is f------ plain as day that the tank shot at the building I was in and killed two of my friends," says another soldier who was in the building that was hit. "And then we were all asked to lie about it."

If there is one lesson to be drawn from the Tillman scandal it is this: Commanders on the ground cannot always be trusted to investigate their own units. There were seven investigations of the Tillman case, and still we do not know all the answers, like for instance, who altered O'Neal's statement. Three high-ranking officials, including the three-star general who commanded Army Special Operations forces after 2001, were reprimanded for their treatment of the Tillman case.

At the very least, the Army and Congress should revisit the deaths of Nelson and Suarez-Gonzalez. Their families have a right to know the truth that the Tillman family was so long denied.

Well, it's at least another song that McCain can use... (To the tune of "Family Tradition.")

McCain - Palin Tradition

By Hank Williams Jr.

The left wing liberal media have

Always been a real close knit family

But, most of the American People

Don’t believe em anyway ya see

Stop and think it over

Before you make your decision

If they smell something

They’re gonna come down strong

It’s a McCain - Palin tradition

Now this old Union’s got problems

That is plain to see

The Democrats bankrupted Fannie Mae N Freddie Mac

Just like 1, 2, 3

The bankers didn’t want to make all those bad loans,

But Bill Clinton said you got to

Now they want a bail out, what I’m talking about

Is a Democrat liberal who doo

CHORUS

John N Sarah tell ya

Just what they think

And they’re not gonna blink

And they’re gonna fix this country

Cause they’re just like you N ole Hank

Yes John is a maverick

And Sarah fixed Alaska’s broken condition

They’re gonna go just fine

We’re headed for better times

It’s a McCain - Palin tradition

I am very proud of America’s name

Bu no society is perfect

And we have had our stains

If I’m down at the coffee shop and

Somebody wants to give our flag friction

We say please move on

Cause we’re standing strong

That’s an old John McCain tradition

CHORUS

John N Sarah tell ya

Just what they think

And they’re not gonna blink

And they’re gonna fix this country

Cause they’re just like you N ole Hank

Yes John is a maverick

And Sarah fixed Alaska’s broken condition

They’re gonna go just fine

We’re headed for better times

It’s a McCain - Palin tradition

Some are bound to tell you I’m

Preaching to the choir

And that is very true

And we are going even higher

Like a mama bear in Idaho

She’ll protect your family’s condition

If you mess with her cubs

She’s gonna take of the gloves

It’s an American female tradition

CHORUS

John N Sarah tell ya

Just what they think

And they’re not gonna blink

And they’re gonna fix this country

Cause they’re just like you N ole Hank

Yes John is a maverick

And Sarah fixed Alaska’s broken condition

They’re gonna go just fine

We’re headed for better times

It’s a McCain - Palin tradition