Spare Some Change for ‘Change’? The Obama camp’s decision to forego public financing may be coming back to bite it in the ass. “…the campaign is struggling to meet ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the campaign and the party. It collected in June and July far less from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s donors than originally projected. Moreover, Mr. McCain, unlike Mr. Obama, will have the luxury of concentrating almost entirely on campaigning instead of raising money, as Mr. Obama must do.” [NYT]
Lieberman’s Day of Reckoning. On Joe Lieberman’s first day back in D.C. after the Republican Convention, his legislative director stepped down in protest over the Senator’s support of John McCain. But things might get worse for Joe: If the Democrats pick up 55 or 56 seats in the Senate, Lieberman could lose his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee. If McCain wins, though, Lieberman will likely land a gig in the McCain administration. His Senate seat is up in 2012, but he would probably have very little Democratic support in Connecticut if he ran for re-election.
If You Can’t Say Nothin’ Nice… What does Condi Rice think of Sarah Palin’s selection? “These are decisions that Senator McCain has made,” she said. “I have great confidence in him.” Um. “I’m not going to get involved in this political campaign,” she added. “As Secretary of State, I don’t do that. But I thought her speech was wonderful.” Uh, anything else, Dr. Rice? “You know, she’s governor of a state here in the United States.” [ABC]
Huh, Huh, Huh. Moose-Shooter. In Michigan, callled Palin’s bio “compelling.” His audience booed. “No, it’s an interesting story.” More boos. “No, no, it is. I mean that sincerely. Mother, governor, moose shooter.” Laughter. “That’s cool. That’s cool. That’s cool stuff,” Obama said. [Politico]
More Bounce to the Ounce. McCain is leading in a bunch of polls since the RNC. Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight says these numbers might actually good news for Obama. “At a macro level, these numbers seem like basically good news for Obama, since the overall numbers in swing states haven’t moved much at all – just shifted around some from region to region. McCain is polling about 3 points better right now than he was at the pre-convention equilibrium. It’s possible that those 3 points are manifesting themselves mostly in states that were already very red. Maybe Obama will lose Idaho and Nebraska and Alabama by 30 points rather than 20, but that doesn’t help McCain very much electorally (an exception might be in a state like Indiana).”
