News from the Votemaster

Barack Obama's incredible fundraising machine is slowing down. His take in February, March, April, and May was $55 million, $41 million, $31 million, and $22 million respectively according to a story in the Washington Post. Obama is also hampered now by having to raise money to pay off Hillary Clinton's campaign debt. He undoubtedly promised to do this in return for her support and the support of her big donors. While Obama has more money than McCain, his somewhat grandiose plans for a 50-state strategy were based on having 2-3 times as much money as McCain. If he can't achieve that edge, he will have to scale back his plans enormously.

The McCain campaign is losing no time in taking advantage of the slowdown in Obama fundraising. In a memo issued yesterday the McCain people said Obama would have to raise $200 million between now an election day just to keep pace. Of course, by accepting public financing, McCain is limited to spending no more than $85 million, so if Obama did manage to raised $200 million, he could outspend McCain 2:1. The third paragraph of that story starts with a curious sentence: "Rick Davis, the titular head of the McCain campaign, said on a conference call..." Titular head? Huh? Rick Davis is McCain's campaign chairman. Period. Only as we mentioned earlier, McCain hates to fire people, especially people who are really doing their absolute best for him as Davis has been. So he brought in Steve Schmidt and transferred almost all of Davis' duties to Schmidt but allowed Davis to keep the title. So Davis is now like the queen of England: all title, no power (or as they'd say in Texas, all hat, no cattle). But as the campaign accumulates more and more people who have been stripped of their work but not their titles, it muddies the chain of command and leads to infighting as the former power brokers hunt for new turf. While the Democrats haven't said it yet, at some point they are going to say that if McCain doesn't have the guts to fire an underperforming campaign manager, do you really think he'll have the guts to fire an underperforming cabinet secretary or general?

We have three presidential polls today. One of them, in North Dakota, seems pretty improbable: Obama and McCain tied at 43% each. Despite the fact that both U.S. senators and the lone representative are Democrats, Democratic presidential candidates normally lose this state big time. Bush beat Kerry by 27 points in 2004. This poll is most likely a statistical outlier. The other two polls seem normal.

Dick Durbin is heading towards a landslide reelection in the Senate. While Durbin's race was never in doubt, the presence of Obama and Durbin on the ballot could have a big effect on three key downticket races, the House seats in IL-08, IL-10, and IL-11. Democratic turnout statewide in Illinois is expected tobe huge and that could swing these three House races.