(Semi-update disclosure…. I tweaked some text below to better make my point. Ah, the power of being a site admin…)

We needed a real poll and here it is, reflecting the change in the air that has been present ever since the Rasmussen fiasco of a poll gave Pollina a new boost. From WCAX:

The poll shows Republican Jim Douglas has 47 percent of the vote, Democrat Gaye Symington 24 percent and Independent Anthony Pollina a very close third with 23 percent.

So what’s with the big change? Although such generalizations are never absolute, there’s a real difference in the hardcore supporters of Symington vs. Pollina. Symington’s crowd really has its eyes on only one prize, and they’ve become utterly deflated as they’ve seen that gap continue to be so large. Morale is in the crapper.

Pollina supporters, on the other hand, are often just as passionate (sometimes more so) about beating Democrats as Republicans. So the then-illusory prospect offered to them by Rasmussen of beating the Democrat fired them up as much as anything. Morale is soaring, and what was illusory is illusory no longer.

And many in the neutral zone of the left are likely responding to that difference – exuberance versus glumness. Moths prefer the flame to the sad clown (is that a mixed metaphor? What is that?).

But I think it brings to light the Douglas strategy of late very, very clearly. A strategy conventional-wisdom-gurus Eric Davis and Garrison Nelson apparently haven’t figured out yet. And its smart.

The notion that Douglas is afraid of Pollina is something I can hardly type without cracking up. Republicans are the last people who think Pollina could ever be elected Governor – especially over Douglas (hey, don’t shoot the messenger, here…). But they are concerned about the prospect of their man Jim losing in the Legislature. If he comes in under 50%, there are lots of Democratic legislators just itching at the chance to vote him out. Trust me.

But here’s the thing: they know if Symington doesn’t come within 10 points of a victory, Dem legislators will be hard pressed to justify electing her. And I think its safe to say that neither Symington nor Pollina will be willing to help give the other public support and cover under such a sceario if they come in at number 3 (which is revolting, frankly).

So they’ve figured out the obvious – Symington’s support is inversely proportional to Pollina’s. Therefore, if they don’t consider Pollina a threat, and Symington has to be kept as far out of range as possible, ignoring Pollina becomes just plain stupid. Run against both of them, equating them and raising Pollina’s profile – insure a low split. The most basic of math, and way too easy. If they were scared of Pollina, they wouldn’t be running these kinds of ads, they’d be hitting him on the Milk Company and the Campaign Finance flip-flops. They’d be mean.

This stuff? Well look at the reaction. It’s just pumping Pollina up.

The only – and I mean only – way around this is if Symington and Pollina make a pledge now to throw in with the number two in the legislature and start priming their voters and nervous legislators for the possibility. That becomes a net plus for us because if either of them were running at Douglas head on, it seems highly unlikely that they could keep him below 50% on their own. Both of their negatives are too high.

Fat freakin’ chance of that happening, though.

This is just fluff, but I thought it might be fun to share. PoliticsHome.com is an elections news aggregator site run out of England which has a page tracking the US Elections. As part of that, they have a panel dubbed the Online100, which is a combination of left, right, center and “non-aligned” participants in the greater blogosphere (including major media blogs). Everyday they ask us a couple questions and post the survey response. Today, they asked us the “big” question, and here's the just-released result:

The Blogosphere Predicts:

5% margin of victory to Obama
Electoral College: Obama 338, McCain 200

The PoliticsHome.com Online100 Panel, the daily poll of leading online voices in the United States, has issued its prediction of the Presidential Election result next week.

Each member of the panel was asked to predict which candidate will win, and by what percentage margin. The average prediction was then calculated at 5%. The panel was also given a list of each of the potential battleground states and asked to predict the winner. The majority winner for each state was taken as the result.

Well known names on the Online100 panel include Arianna Huffington, Karl Rove, Joe Klein, Joe Trippi, Gerard Baker, Mike Allen, Mark Halperin, Mark Blumenthal, Charles Johnson, Dana Milbank, Jonah Goldberg, John Fund, Jake Tapper, Chuck Todd, Marc Ambinder and Andrew Sullivan. The survey is anonymous and PoliticsHome does not release individual results.

The Online100 panel consists of 100 leading online voices, weighted evenly between right-leaning, left-leaning and non-aligned, and contains a spectrum of voices from the online mainstream media, big national blogs, and statewide blogs. PoliticsHome launched in the United States in August in association with Pollster.com.

The Electoral Map: Blogosphere Predicts

The panel sees Obama winning the popular vote by a five percent margin, and it sees him coverting that margin into 338 electoral votes, 68 more than the needed 270, and 52 more than the 286 won by Bush in 2004.

The panel presented a list of 19 contested states and were asked to choose who would win on November 4th: “Toss up” or “don't know” were not options.

The panel predicts Obama will win 11 out of 19 states still in play, with McCain prevailing in Indiana, North Carolina, Missouri and West Virginia. However, Obama sweeps the battleground states of Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico; five states carried by President Bush in 2004.

ONLINE100: STATE BY STATE PREDICTION
BATTLEGROUND STATE	PREDICTION
COLORADO	DEMOCRAT
FLORIDA	DEMOCRAT
GEORGIA	REPUBLICAN
INDIANA	REPUBLICAN
IOWA	DEMOCRAT
MINNESOTA	DEMOCRAT
MISSOURI	REPUBLICAN
MONTANA	REPUBLICAN
NEVADA	DEMOCRAT
NEW HAMPSHIRE	DEMOCRAT
NEW MEXICO	DEMOCRAT
NORTH CAROLINA	REPUBLICAN
NORTH DAKOTA	REPUBLICAN
OHIO	DEMOCRAT
PENNSYLVANIA	DEMOCRAT
SOUTH DAKOTA	REPUBLICAN
VIRGINIA	DEMOCRAT
WEST VIRGINIA	REPUBLICAN
WISCONSIN	DEMOCRAT

(Important diary, but you see in it the real problem with holding Douglas accountable… the blogs cant do the campaign’s, the legislature’s, the press’s and the AG’s job for them. – promoted by odum)

Jim Douglas has continued his polling expenditures and must know something the rest of us only suspect. This race is tight and Douglas is very worried about breaking 50%.

Could a scandal finally break Douglas’ calm demeanor? One involving taxpayer money and dirty campaigning, at a time when the unemployment is at a record high?

Every major elected official inlcuding Bush, Leahy, Welch, and every other US Senator, Congressperson and Governor knows that you can campaign on the public dime but you need to pay some, or at least PRETEND to pay, the taxpayer back.

But NOT Douglas:

After a week of dodging repeated questions about whether the Douglas campaign follows Dean’s lead, the governor’s campaign manager Dennise Casey told “Fair Game” on Monday: “No, we don’t.” (Seven Days, Shay Totten)

This is a CRAZY big scandal…

And you can even tell Douglas want to sweep it under the rug by “dodging repeated questions”. But it has been over a week since Shay reported this and nothing… silence.

The question is how can the story break to reach mainstream? Will it take Symington or Pollina to do a press conference and maybe even run TV ads based on it?

If you remember, the VT press corps ignored the Elizabeth Ready story on her resume discrepancies until Randy Brock threw a press conference and ran commercials.

What can a committed group of folks, like those who read GMD, do on something like this?

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From the Symington campaign:

Democratic candidate for Governor Gaye Symington raised $116,931.47 since the last filing report was submitted in September. The report also shows expenditures of $272,338.99 for the period, and cash on hand of $42,928.55

For the campaign to date, the total raised is $491,301.75 and total expenditures are  $448,373.20

There have been 2,082 total contributors, 89% of whom live in Vermont.

Not sure who saw the recent TV interview with Joe Biden but it was one of the worst of the 2008 election. Barbara West of WFTV in Orlando asked Biden questions that sounded like they came straight from FOX. Biden wasn’t having any of it.

Here’s the kicker, West is a former UVM professor and a former Miss Vermont. Here’s her bio.  

 Yellow clothes collection boxes

…Planet Aid, a charity that collects used clothing in 140 distinctive yellow boxes around the state, has received unfavorable ratings from at least two review organizations.Twenty of the nonprofit group’s clothing-collection boxes have appeared in Burlington and Chittenden County in the past year. There are now 140 boxes at gas stations and convenience stores across the state.A collection box at the Rotary Gulf station on Shelburne Road in Burlington explains why people should give to them: “Planet Aid sells your donated clothing to thrift stores and used clothing suppliers in the U.S. and worldwide. The net proceeds are used for development programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America.”

…The Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance said Planet Aid spends just 28 percent of its expenses on its charitable programs — considerably less than the 65 percent the alliance sets as a standard.The Better Business Bureau criticizes Planet Aid for characterizing its selling of old clothing as a recycling program. “The Alliance,” it said in its report, “believes these are actually fundraising expenses

…” http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

This article caught my eye,as my worry has increased about where the RNC will ultimately donate Sarah Palin’s $150,000 worth of clothes.I don’t know a thing about Planet Aid other than seeing one of their yellow donation boxes in a nearby town and now reading an article in the Free Press about low ratings it has been given by two charity rating groups. A quick search tells me that Planet Aid has been criticized in the past. It appears that the basis for the low ratings is threefold: one being the hard-to-factor value of “saving” discarded clothing from the landfill and two, selling the clothes and then channeling the money(profits) to other charities,three competing in a way with older established groups .The overall environmental value is a tough one to quantify, I would think.The profit of donated clothing sold versus the money in turn donated leaves a documented trail – money in money out ratio.

This group itself may have problems but it seems like a good model to explore for an application of Vermont’s new L3C law.It might remove an organization from the gray area between selling ,operating expenses and “re-donating” that this group seems to have fallen.Earlier this year the Vermont Legislature passed a new law for a new hybrid-style low-profit/non-profit corporation. According to reports, an L3C with a carefully written operating agreement, could perform the best services of both a profit and a nonprofit under one structure. The designation allows for the creation of a hybrid between a nonprofit organization and a for-profit corporation. The entity would be a low-profit company with “charitable or educational” goals.  $150,000 worth of good Republican campaign clothes will soon hit the charity world.

I want Gaye Symington and Anthony Pollina to lock themselves into a room and not come out until one of them is running with the other’s support.

             Because that person would become the next governor. And if they both stay in the race, its welcome back governor Douglas.

                I asked Gaye what she thought of the idea. “Not much” was her immediate response. She said that it was the 11th hour, and this should have been worked out long ago.

            But that has it exactly backwards. Only because it is the 11th hour does it make sense to think about unity. In the early months of the campaign, each campaign had every reason to make their case that their candidate would be the star for us to hitch our wagon to.

           But neither Gaye nor Anthony have taken that commanding lead. They should sit down together, realistically decide who has the forward momentum, who has the dynamism to win, then give us a real chance to get rid of Douglas.

          Why couldn’t Governor Symington work with Agricultural Commisioner Pollina, or Governor Pollina work with Transportatipn Secretary Symington, for example?

            It seems obvious to me that Gaye has struggled during this campaign and is barely holding her own if not sinking. Anthony’s performance on the campaign trail and in the debates have been able to keep him abreast with Symington in spite of a fraction of the campaign money, He is my obvious candidate to choose

            But if the two of them emerge and tell me that Gaye is to be the standard bearer, I would do everything that I could to help her get elected. Likewise, If Dems would support a Pollina choice, we could change the political landscape in this state in the next ten days.

Actually, just another excuse to post this picture:

Didn’t See This Comin’ Now, Didja’?

“Twenty-five billion dollars is obviously going to help the folks who are struggling more than Chase,” he began. “What we do think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. And I would not assume that we are done on the acquisition side just because of the Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop.”

Read that answer as many times as you want – you are not going to find a single word in there about making loans to help the American economy. On the contrary: at another point in the conference call, the same executive (who I’m not naming because he didn’t know I would be listening in) explained that “loan dollars are down significantly.” He added, “We would think that loan volume will continue to go down as we continue to tighten credit to fully reflect the high cost of pricing on the loan side.” In other words JPMorgan has no intention of turning on the lending spigot.

(So When Will Banks Give Loans?, NY Times, 10/24/08)

And this post isn’t going to get any prettier …

First, the $700 billion rescue for the economy was about buying devalued mortgage-backed securities from tottering banks to unclog frozen credit markets.

Then it was about using $250 billion of it to buy stakes in banks. The idea was that banks would use the money to start making loans again.

But reports surfaced that bankers might instead use the money to buy other banks, pay dividends, give employees a raise and executives a bonus, or just sit on it. Insurance companies now want a piece; maybe automakers, too, even though Congress has approved $25 billion in low-interest loans for them.

(Deciding how to use bailout funds, Philadelphia Enquirer, 10/26/08)

“It’s clear that the government would like us to use the money to make loans,” said JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s CEO Jamie Dimon at a recent earnings conference call with analysts. “I don’t think the government is telling us what to do with the capital.”

(Temptation for banks to risk bailout funds, SF Chronicle, 10/19/08)

“We will have the opportunity to redeploy that (bailout funds),” John Thain, chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER), told The New York Times. (NYSE:NYT) “But at least for the next quarter, it’s just going to be a cushion,” he said.

Other bankers privately made similar remarks, the Times reported Friday.

(Banks may hoard bailout funds, UPI, 10/17/08)

Oh, and about those preferred shares we, the people, are ostensibly getting in return for our donations to the rich and powerful of the financial industry and Wall Street?

(My bold emphasis)

PNC Financial Services Group Inc., which acquired Baltimore’s Mercantile Bankshares last year, said yesterday that it is acquiring Cleveland-based National City Corp. for $5.58 billion, becoming the first bank to use fresh investments from a federal bailout program to make an acquisition.

The deal came within hours of PNC Financial receiving approval for $7.7 billion in cash from the government under the $700 billion government program aimed at relieving the continuing credit crisis.

. . .

The government will receive warrants to acquire a 15 percent stake in PNC Financial. The warrants will be good for 10 years unless retired by PNC, the company said.

(PNC using bailout funds to acquire National City, Baltimore Sun, 10/26/08)

Don’t know what those “warrants” are? They’re nothing more than a temporary promissory note … ie, for the next ten years we, the people, will have a legal right to 15% of PNC Financial, and then after ten years that all goes buh bye. (See this link for some discussion of warrants.)

Democratic Surrender, copyright Rama Schneider, 2007

We’ll just keep surrendering ’till we got ’em on the run

Just like we tucked our tails when this dumb ol’ war begun

When they’re sick of winning it all

We’ll watch them turn and flee

Yeah, we’ll just keep surrendering our way to election victory

“In our days of glory,” said the Democratic pol to me

“Everything that George Bush wants, you can be sure he’ll receive”

“We’re gonna end this Iraq war, of that you have no fear”

“It’s just gonna take a lot time, maybe we’ll start in a year”

We’ll just keep surrendering ’till we got ’em on the run

Just like we tucked our tails when this dumb ol’ war begun

When they’re sick of winning it all

We’ll watch them turn and flee

Yeah, we’ll just keep surrendering our way to election victory

“What’s a few more billion?” said the Democratic pol to me

“And who really cares about some ol’ Iraqi family”

“And the folk of our America who we send to kill and die”

“We all know they’ll keep doing their job without ever asking why”

We’ll just keep surrendering ’till we got ’em on the run

Just like we tucked our tails when this dumb ol’ war begun

When they’re sick of winning it all

We’ll watch them turn and flee

Yeah, we’ll just keep surrendering our way to election victory

“The important thing is next year,” said the Democratic pol to me

“If things are bad it only helps my electability”

“Cause I know I can scare you into joining my failed fold”

“I’ll scream your only option is the Republicans of old”

We’ll just keep surrendering ’till we got ’em on the run

Just like we tucked our tails when this dumb ol’ war begun

When they’re sick of winning it all

We’ll watch them turn and flee

Yeah, we’ll just keep surrendering our way to election victory

I posted some of this back in May about the last days of the Clinton campaign.  This new edition is about the McCain Campaign.

If you study behavioral psychology, you’ll learn about a concept called “the extinction burst.”  

The specific example I use when I teach is this:

You’ve got a child who is throwing tantrums.  In the past, the tantrums have gotten the child attention, which is exactly what the child wants.  Therefore, you have been providing positive reinforcement to that child’s behavior.  It’s “positive” because you’re adding something (attention), not because it’s good.  It’s “reinforcement” because it increases the behavior.

The much more effective approach to reducing tantrums is negative punishment.  “Negative” because you’re removing something and “punishment” because it reduces the behavior.  When we talk about “punishment” in behavioral psychology we don’t necessarily mean anything specific; it’s just any act in a behavioral context which reduces the frequency of a given behavior.

But here’s why many parents don’t use negative punishment: the extinction burst.

You have a child who’s throwing tantrums and you decide to reduce the tantrums through not paying attention.  You try to ignore them completely.  This will generally work.  But before it works, it gets worse.  The child, knowing that the tantrums have worked in the past, thinks that the tantrums are just not loud enough.  

So they get worse, before they fade out entirely.

This last ditch effort to make the tantrums work is the aforementioned “extinction burst.”  It’s perfectly human: something that has worked in the past is losing its power so you don’t try something different.  You do what you’ve been doing all along, but push harder.

Here are some examples of the extinction burst in action:

Per CNN:

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin “going rogue.”

A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to “bust free” of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls — recorded messages often used to attack a candidate’s opponent — “irritating” even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign’s decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser. “She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

John McCain just making crap up:

Per Yahoo News:

Pennsylvania Republicans are disavowing an e-mail sent to Jewish voters that likens a vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to events that led up to the Holocaust.

“Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008,” the e-mail reads. “Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let’s not make a similar one this year!”

Per Huffington Post:

Sarah Palin had a few memorable moments during her campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday. But the most eye-opening of them all came, it would appear, when the Alaska Governor somehow drew a connection between Barack Obama’s tax policy and an encroaching, nightmarish, communist government. The Illinois Democrat, she hysterically suggested, would, through his proposals, create a country “where the people are not free.”

Per Raw Story:

After several political signs were stolen or vandalized from his front yard, a Missouri man installed video cameras in an attempt to catch the vandals in the act.

And that’s exactly what he did.

A video below shows a woman stepping out of a truck and kicking Mike Brown’s Obama/Biden political signs before running away.

“I’m just a guy who has a sign in his yard, and this is the first election that I have ever felt was important enough for me to voice my opinion in the form of a yard sign,” said Brown.

Hey, let’s pretend terrorism isn’t terrorism:

Hey, what about Ayers?:

ust 28% of voters believe that John McCain’s campaign has been helped by talking about the relationship between Barack Obama and William Ayers. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 50% believe talk of that issue has hurt McCain’s effort while 15% say it has had no impact.

How about we play the POW card and lie about Obama’s record?

Finally, per Talking Points Memo:

John McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established — and even told reporters outright that the “B” carved into the victim’s cheek stood for “Barack,” according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the “B” stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

Stay classy, McCain campaign!