News from the Votemaster

Second Presidential Debate To Be Held Tonight

The second presidential debate will be held at Hofstra University on Long Island tonight. It will be a town hall format, with an audience of likely but undecided voters chosen by Gallup. The moderator will be CNN's Candy Crowley.

President Obama is no doubt getting a lot of advice about the tone and style he should use. No one (except Republicans) thinks he should repeat his listless performance from the first debate. Some people are surely telling him to huff and puff like the Big Bad Wolf and Joe Biden, but the format (talking to someone in the audience) doesn't lend itself well to that. Also, it is not his style. Biden is the kind of guy one can imagine saying: "My mother told me never to interrupt someone who is speaking--unless he is lying through his teeth." That's not Obama, though.

Nevertheless, being passive again would be a disaster for Obama. Probably the best public advice is from Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor. Here it is in a nutshell.

• Keep noting that the economy is improving and Romney can't explain how his tax cuts for the rich would make it improve faster. Nor will he say what he would replace Obamacare or Dodd-Frank with after he repeals them.
  
• To solve our problems, we need to work together but Romney is hugely divisive on Arizona's anti-immigrant law, self-deportation of illegals, marriage equality, and making the middle class pay for a tax cut for the rich.
• Romney wants to be a reverse Robin Hood by cutting taxes for the rich and benefits like Medicare and Medicaid for the middle class. Harp on his view that 47% of Americans are moochers.
• Romney sees America as a corporation and sees corporations as people. He wants to deregulate corporations even more, despite deregulation having caused the economic mess.
• On foreign policy, he is rash and doesn't think. Upon arriving in Britain, he instantly insulted the whole country. In Israel, he praised its universal health insurance without realizing he was doing so. Concerning Libya, he made inflammatory statements before he knew the facts.

Above all, Obama should be passionate, not passive, and harp on the point that he genuinely wants to help the middle class whereas Romney genuinely wants to help the rich and not the 47% he sees as not taking responsibility for their lives. All this can be done without interrupting Romney and being impolite. Focus on the questioner and make it clear he wants to help him or her.

Both Obama and Romney are aware that the gold standard in town-hall presidential debates was Bill Clinton's 1992 performance in which he walked close to the questioner and made it clear he felt his or her pain. Neither Obama, a professor used to lecturing large groups, nor Romney, a businessman used to looking at spreadsheets on a computer, is especially adept at one-on-one communication, but that is probably what is needed with tonight's format.

For many viewers, the facts and statements made by the candidates tonight will not be important. Experts say that voters are much more influenced by the candidates' body language and demeanor. Think about Obama's bored appearance during the first debate, Biden's eye rolling last week, George H.W. Bush's looking at his watch, or Michael Dukakis' clinical reaction when asked how he would feel if his wife were raped. Voters put a lot of stock in facial expressions and gestures and far less in the words the candidates utter, in part because they don't believe them.

What Will the Moderator's Role Be?

So far we have had two very different moderators. Jim Lehrer emulated a doormat and the candidates walked all over him. Martha Raddatz was firmly in control and called the shots. Candy Crowley's role is already controversial--and the debate hasn't even happened yet. The problem is that the candidates want her to simply announce the name of the next person to ask a question and then shut up. That is clearly not what she has in mind. If a candidate is evasive or fails to answer the question, she wants to ask a follow-up question or try to pin the candidate down, much as Martha Raddatz did. The candidates don't want this and agreed to it in a written memo. The only problem is that Crowley didn't sign the memo and doesn't feel bound to it. It will be interesting to see what happens if she asks a follow-up question. If a candidate says: I am here to answer audience questions and not yours" and Crowley, a very experienced reporter persists, we could have a real food fight.

Crowley has said: "I'm not a fly on the wall. We don't want the candidates to spout talking points." Clearly she intends to play an active role if the candidates just try to repeat their stump speeches, without really addressing the questions.

One factor that the candidates should be aware of is the location of the debate: wealthy Nassau County, 23 miles east of Midtown Manhattan. Unemployment is lower there than in the country as a whole and incomes higher, so the questions may not focus as much on unemployment as they would had the debate been held, say, in Nevada, where unemployment is higher than the national average. The names of the attendees, who are undecided voters selected by the Gallup organization, is a closely held secret.

David Stockman Says Romney Was a Speculator, Not a Businessman

David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director and later a private equity investor has brutally dissected Mitt Romney's claims to be a smart businessman. Stockman says Romney was simply a financial speculator who bought troubled companies, sold off their assets and outsourced their jobs, and made them look good enough to get rid of them before they collapsed. Stockman's critique carries weight with Republicans who worship Ronald Reagan since it was Stockman who actually carried out Reagan's economic program and he knows in great detail how this stuff works.

Romney Raises $170 Million in September

The Romney campaign has announced that it raised $170 million in September, almost as much as the Obama campaign's $181 million. Television viewers are in for a bad month. If you live in a swing state, October and the first week of November might be a good time to turn off your TV and read all those books you never had time for. In Las Vegas, for example--never a city given to moderation in anything--there have been 73,000 television ads shown this year so far, and the worst is yet to come.

Forget the Debates and TV wars, Maybe It's the Ground Game, Stupid

While all the attention today is on the second presidential debate and it is always on fundraising and television ads, there is another factor that may ultimately decide the election: the ground game. That is the hum-drum business of identifying voters and getting those who support you to the polls. For example, Obama has 120 field offices throughout Ohio, many of them simple storefront operations that have been there since 2008. The scale and sophistication of Obama's get-out-the-vote operation in 2008 was unprecedented and has left Republicans scrambling to duplicate it this time. Republicans now have 108,000 volunteers working nationwide and have made 40 million voter contacts in an attempt to catch up. While the media insist that the election will be decided by the 4 or 5 percent of the voters who are still undecided, party operatives think the winner will be the campaign that does a better job of getting its supporters to the polls.

In addition, both parties are looking for unlikely voters. For example, under Ohio law, past felons who have served their time and felons who have been convicted but not yet sentenced are allowed to vote. Only those felons who are actually behind bars on election day are prohibited from voting. Also targeted are apathetic voters, many of them definitely not undecided, but too disinterested to vote. It is the job of the field offices to find these people and convince them to register and vote.

Also a factor is the voter ID laws, many of which are still being played out in the courts. Ohio, in particular, has two cases currently being weighed by the courts. These cases could determine who is allowed to vote and thus greatly affect the election.

Elizabeth Warren Raised $12 Million in Third Quarter

For a Harvard professor who has never held public office, Elizabeth Warren is pretty good about raising money. She pulled in $12.1 million in the third quarter, more than the $7.5 million her opponent, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) collected. It is not a record though. In 2010, World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon (R) in her first run for the Senate raised $20 million--much of it her own money--in her failed attempt to buy a Senate seat. She is running again this year.

Today's Presidential Polls

State	Obama	Romney		Start	End	Pollster
Florida	48%	49%		Oct 12	Oct 14	PPP
Georgia	43%	51%		Oct 08	Oct 12	Atlanta Journal
Iowa	48%	48%		Oct 11	Oct 14	ARG
North Carolina	47%	49%		Oct 12	Oct 14	PPP
New Hampshire	47%	47%		Oct 12	Oct 14	Suffolk U.
Pennsylvania	49%	45%		Oct 10	Oct 14	Muhlenberg Coll.
Pennsylvania	51%	44%		Oct 12	Oct 14	PPP
South Dakota	41%	52%		Oct 01	Oct 05	Nielson Bros.
Virginia	47%	48%		Oct 12	Oct 14	ARG

Today's Senate Polls

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	I	I %	Start	End	Pollster
Florida	Bill Nelson*	45%	Connie McGillicuddy	37%			Oct 12	Oct 14	PPP
Florida	Bill Nelson*	46%	Connie McGillicuddy	45%			Oct 11	Oct 11	Rasmussen
Indiana	Joe Donnelly	42%	Richard Mourdock	47%			Oct 10	Oct 11	Rasmussen
Michigan	Debbie Stabenow*	51%	Pete Hoekstra	39%			Oct 11	Oct 11	Rasmussen
New Mexico	Martin Heinrich	48%	Heather Wilson	39%			Oct 09	Oct 11	Research and Polling
Pennsylvania	Bob Casey*	41%	Tom Smith	39%			Oct 10	Oct 14	Muhlenberg Coll.
Pennsylvania	Bob Casey*	50%	Tom Smith	39%			Oct 12	Oct 14	PPP
Virginia	Tim Kaine	48%	George Allen	47%			Oct 11	Oct 11	Rasmussen

* Denotes incumbent

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---The Votemaster