Wow, Clinton sure does have a packed schedule in Florida on Thursday (see it in the extended entry) on behalf of Obama. Makes Maureen Dowd look stupid.

There was a big Bayh boon earlier today that got shot down.

Biden took a successful dump.

Dana Goldstein revels with anticipation in watching the furitive reactions to a Sebelius nod. How unity of Dana.

Late last night, did I really predict that Daschle would be the VP?

Obama is in VA today stumping with Warner, and tomorrow, he's doing a town hall event with Kaine, with reports that Obama is spending the night in Richmond.

The good thing is that its now less than 48 hours till you will know.

A couple of profiles on the Obama operation.

The first, written by Dana Goldstein and Ezra Klein is one of the first to really get at the 'meat & potatoes' of what made it all click for Obama to win the nomination. Basically, Obama has terrific skills himself, but the inheritance of Daschle's DC team (which had already been primed for an '04 race), and the rise of Dean's 50-State Strategy of grassroots and netroots organizing, laid the table for the newcomer to go to the front of the pack. They have excelled at every stage of the campaign, except closing the deal.

The second, on the WaPost, by Jose Antonio Vargas, profiles the Obama web team. It profiles the operation that Joe Rospars has built around YouTube, Social Networking, and Text-Messaging. A nice piece of work in gathering up the most prominent pieces of strategy that the Obama campaign is executing in their online strategy. It doesn't get into their fundraising efforts, their online advertising, or their one-to-one recruitment, but instead focuses on the new media tactics.

Rospars has no peers when it comes to knowing how to write an effective fundraising email. He's done a terrific job at the things set out in the profile and more, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out why he hasn't pursued a blog outreach strategy to date. I'm not talking about a constituency relationship or blogads, but a strategic message one. One that recognizes the blogs as being more powerful in concert with what the campaign is trying to do in opposition to McCain, and coordinating the execution of that strategic message. I'm sure that Josh Orton can speak more to the fault here, so hopefully he'll chime in somewhere with his commentary.

This isn't a ground-breaking idea I'm talking about, but a strategy that's been executed successfully many times over in winning contests over the past few years. Joe was a blogger with Ezra and Nico Pitney at 'Not Genius' back in 2002-03, and then with the Dean campaign, so its not like he doesn't get it. Even John McCain executes on the strategy. Joe ought to do some outreach himself to Peter Daou, who was in a similar situation in '04 with Kerry's campaign. Kerry had won the primary without any help at all from the blogs, and it wasn't until after the swiftboating explosion in August that the Kerry campaign realized they had a problem with controlling the message via the blogosphere. It was probably too late for Peter to do much, but he certainly dived in and worked well with the blogosphere in those last few months to develop an opposition message strategy against Bush.

Now, of course, a number of things have changed, including two big things, which the Obama campaign has recognized. First, blogs have went mainstream, all the traditional media outlets have bloggers and they are 24/7 bloggers with access. They've effectively become the online outreach vehicles for the Obama campaign message push-- the Marc Ambinder, Ben Smith, and Jake Tapper world. Second, there's a world of social networking sites that have huge numbers of available for finding voters and for organizing supporters, and the Obama campaign has leveraged those like none other. But neither have replaced the partisan blogosphere, which has grown about 10X since 2004 in terms of bloggers and readership.

And without the outreach, partisan Democratic bloggers are left on their own to pursue a decentralized strategy which has largely wandered in the desert looking for an attack angle on McCain. Bloggers complain about there not being a consistent message from Obama against McCain because nothing is being coordinated from within the campaign for outreach purposes.

I had to make a prediction, so there it is now.

We know Obama likes Daschle, we know Daschle was vetted, and we know he has a speaker slot on Wed. We even know he's floated as a potential CoS in the WH. It makes sense too, of the whole VP process we've been watching unfold for Obama.

What do you think of an Obama/Daschle ticket?

What Daschle has said this week about the VP slot:

Update [2008-8-19 23:55:14 by Jerome Armstrong]: I missed this at the end of last week, but Markos also is picking Daschle. He points back to a Trapper John prediction of it on July 30th. Now, Trapper John couldn't have been more wrong, given the last three weeks of McCain gains, in his summation of where Obama's candidacy stands against McCain, but his logic for why Daschle is still sound.

Video: "Hey guys, I'm not the guy. See ya."

I'll take him at his word. He goes golfing...

Obama supporter BTD on TL:

Haha, jeralyn had her graphic ready:

I'd agree with her assessment of how its going to happen:

CBS says the announcement will come on Friday afternoon. That's pretty tight timing, just 3 days prior to the opening of the convention.

MyDD will have all 4 of its bloggers at the DNCC convention. I'll be getting in on Sat morn, and not leaving till Friday next, a first-in last-out sorta fun. The DNC added more speakers (below the fold).

For those following along and marking off names as they get named to speak, "On Wednesday, August 27th, new speakers addressing the theme of Securing America's Future include Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley."

Yes, it is a bit strange to name the night the same as Wes Clark's PAC, and not have him involved in speaking about that issue... but he's not, and there you have it.

It has been announced that Gore is speaking on Thursday. The only ones left, whom are talked about as VP but are not yet named to speak thus far, are Kaine and Dodd, both of whom we know, were vetted. So that's the poll below.

Update [2008-8-19 17:15:27 by Jerome Armstrong]: Kaine is speaking on Thur night, he and Gore are speaking before Obama.

Let the Doddmania begin! Long live the DoddSquad!!

Politico is reporting that McCain is going to announce his VP on August 29th in Ohio. This is not surprising, they don't want to cede the remainder of this week with the buildup of Obama announcing his VP, and the bulk of next week wrapped up in the DNCC convention. A smart tactical move by McCain.  Who is it?  Who knows! Viewing it from the perspective of wanting him to chose a loser, here's what I'd project:

Yikes: Meg Whitman, Sarah Palin
Hmmm: Tom Ridge, Cantor, Some Republican Guy from Ohio
Whatever: Pawlenty, Thune, Huckabee
Awesome: Romney, Crist, Lieberman

As for Obama, the timing is said to be as early as Wednesday, and no later than Friday. On Thursday, Clinton is campaigning in Florida for Obama... just saying.

The July fundraising numbers are out.

As thought, the Obama campaign kicked open the doors of the DNC fundraising operation in June, raising over $20M; and the Obama campaign did much better than expectations, raising over $50M.

So lets review the numbers after July.

McCain
          May      June      July...    Sept-Nov

Raised    21       22        27
Spent     12       27        33
COH       32       27        21
GE                                      84


Obama
          May      June      July...    Sept-Nov

Raised    22       52        51  
Spent     27       23        57
COH       43       72        66         +?
GE                                   

I wasn't able to find out yet how much of the July money that Obama raised was GE-designated. Through June, $12M of the amount raised was GE. It's pretty significant though, that Obama's July COH is lower than his June COH. I think, given that Obama raised just $2M for the GE in June, that the July GE number is also low. And that what they are preparing for is holding off until the fall for raising GE monies, thus, preparing for '$100M raised in a month' Obama stories in mid-Sept and/or mid-Oct?

An overall take though from what we have now, from August 1st on out to Nov, is that McCain has $105M to spend and Obama has $66M to spend. I would imagine that McCain raises very little in August, Obama will significantly out-raise the difference (~50M) in Sept & Oct.

This doesn't account for all of the money raised for the election. There is the Party committee money, and there, the RNC and the DNC fundraising looks like this through the end of July:

RNC
          April    May      June      July

Raised    20       23       26         26
Spent     10       10       12         19    
COH       41       54       68         75
GE                                      


DNC
          April    May      June      July

Raised    5        5         22        28  
Spent     6        5         6         19
COH       4        4         20        29
GE                                      

As you can see, the DNC has dramatically picked up the pace. They've turned a 13:1 deficit ratio into about a 3:1 one, over the past two months, and are now spending the same amount per month as the RNC.

Wrap it all together and this is what we get as a amount of money to spend through the GE for each. Together, the RNC & McCain have $180M, while the DNC and & Obama have $95M. This is a significant spot of $85M that McCain has as an advantage ending July (the difference near entirely due to McCain taking public financing in the GE), down from about $90M June ending, but I'm sure that Obama will comfortably exceed that difference while raising w/o a cap for the GE.

And there is more. Both campaigns are exploiting a loophole in the McCain-Feingold CFR that allows unlimited (iirc) donations to the state parties. I recall going over this in 2002, and feeling that this would at some point expand the power of the state parties in the GE. That time is here. The McCain camp started doing this in May, and raised $8M in June in the states. In July, the Obama campaign also started down this path. I believe that this was part of the rationale around the Rick Davis decentralized/regional operations, and I would be surprised if Republicans don't exploint that loophole to deliver an extra $50M to the battleground states in the last couple of months. I've not seen reports on how much has been raised in the states for July. And I'll need to check on it (or someone else here might know better the law), but I don't even recall any coordination limitations either, on the state money raised.

And this doesn't even touch on the 501c(3,4) and 527 money that will be spent...

I know we focus around here on elections, and its what gets our juices and comments going, but I want to comment on the back and forth between the reaction of Open Left's Chris Bowers to the "Netroots Platform" and Natasha Chart's post here in response to Bowers.

Personally, I worked for just a bit on the Energy & Environment Plank, and I found the process really engaging. The final document is going to be found lacking on one point or another, and I'm sure I could individually find things I find lacking too (as I did in the one plank I worked on a bit), but just the fact that about 200 people got involved in this process in the last couple of weeks to  create it really points more to the potential rather than the limitation. "Left-wing political platforms" in the past were created by a few individuals. Imagine how much better and open the netroots platform would have been if it was 2000 individuals, or 200000. What about if the 2 million Obama donors were involved? For one thing, it wouldn't be ideologically stagnate. What it would be is the most people-powered mandate as there ever was in this country for a presidential nominee.

Sure, I'm working on a dozen campaigns, and want to elect as many democrats as possible in 2008, but at some point, we have to turn to actually doing something to make sure the difference happens. This was one of the starting points, through collective organizing of principles, from which to know what it is we want to make happen.

The comment from democracylover is worth broadcasting in whole: