I was invited to participate in Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr’s first blogger conference call and decided to do so as a public service to OTB readers.

I called in three minutes before the call was scheduled to start and was the first one in.   Doing so required entering two different sets of pin numbers, which strikes me as not very Libertarian.  Then again, the call started late and (unlike every other such call I’ve participated in) everyone was live the minute they completed the login gauntlet, so I was able to chat with Ed Morrissey and Jazz Shaw while I waited.

Jazz points out that Barr finally has an Issues Page up for examination.  I’ve yet to examine it.

Congressman Barr joined us at 2:09 and we were apparently the entirety of the audience ( a couple of others joined in during the call).   The difference between major parties and third parties, I guess.

What follows is a summary, not a transcription, unless quotation marks are used.

Morrissey: What does Barr hope to accomplish with this campaign?

Barr: Three goals:

1. Sour political climate. Current system not serving us well. Presents opportunity, especially with maturation of Libertarian Party, to make this truly competitive three-way race. Winning our goal.
2. People not bound to “artificial constraints of two party system.” Young people not as wedded.
3. Discuss issues of importance to people in “more fundamentally constitutional ways.” Beyond sound bytes. FISA, e.g., about listening into conversations of Americans, not just al Qaeda operations. Econ and tax policy, go beyond “earmarks” and other simplistic solutions. “Get people to focus on what a $3.1 trillion budget is” and whether all spending needed.

Shaw:  Where to make substantive cuts in spending?

Barr: Most president can’t do without Congress.  “First day in office” mandate 10 percent cut in EOP spending to “set the example.”  Both parties part of same fraternity, need a broker.  Would be beholden to country, not party.  His victory would “send shock waves” and demonstrate that they would be out if they don’t fall in line with the people’s wishes.   Would call for freeze in federal spending as starting point.

Would follow Reagan’s example with Grace Commission to identify and study waste, fraud, and abuse.  Would folow through better, though.  Two commissions:  1) Identify every agency’s Constitutional basis and cost-benefit analysis.  Slate for disbanding if fails to meet test. Dept. of Education likely at top of list.  Stands in the way of improvements at state and local level.  Dept of Commerce does “little more than spend billions of dollars putting out statistics” and the Dept of Energy, most of whose legitimate functions could be spun off.

Me:  Given constraints of Electoral College, which states does he think he can win?  Map to 270?  And how to break through fraternity as outsider?

Barr:  Russ Birney, the campaign manager, is “the best guy in the country” to figure this out after experience with Ross Perot’s campaign.  Will have to “prioritize our efforts” by focusing on states and regions where we feel we’re competitive.  The Mountain West states, “common sense tells us,” would be more receptive than Northeast.   New Hampshire, Georgia, and others also quite likely receptive.

Me: Follow-up:   Perot won zero electoral Votes.  How is 2008 different?

Barr:  Perot got close to 20 percent of the popular vote in an environment less ripe for a third party.   We “need to boost our poll numbers to meet the requirement to participate in the debates” and they’ll do that by focusing on key states.

Shaw: Switching to foreign policy, what would a President Barr say to Israel right now?

Barr: Would emphasize our friendship but also the need for cool heads.  Iran not at all close to posing threat to Israel, so rash action not warranted.   We’re making a mistake and boost Ahmadinejad’s prestige unduly by focusing so much on him, especially since he’s not in charge.

Overall, despite the call’s brevity, it was an interesting exercise.  Barr comes across as serious, with none of the “Crazy Aunt in the Basement” vibe that one got from Ross Perot, the narcisism of Ralph Nader, or the Wrestlemania circus act of Jesse Ventura.  He’s an intelligent, experienced guy who has command of the issues.

At best, though, his candidacy can serve as a platform for getting out a message.  It’s simply inconceivable that he’ll win a single state, much less 270 Electoral Votes.  Jazz noted in the call that all Barr has to do is to deny either McCain or Obama 270 votes.  But, at that point, the election would go to the House of Representatives with its 435 Members, none of whom are Libertarians. As such, as much as third party candidates hate to hear this, Barr’s role is that of spoiler.  He is likely to take away votes that would otherwise go to John McCain, making him essentially an Obama stalking horse.

None of that’s to say that Barr doesn’t have a right to run.  He does.  And it may well be that he doesn’t think there’s enough difference between Obama and McCain or the Democrats and Republicans for it much to matter.

UPDATE:  Jazz Shaw and Ed Morrissey have their own summaries and reactions.

Radley Balko notes a “strange dichotomy” in the election polls:  Obama’s lead in the national head-to-head polls is narrowing at the same time his Electoral College numbers based on state-by-state polls is widening.

Sure enough, that’s the case.   Here’s the RealClearPolitics snapshot:

Here’s the current Electoral College map from electoralvote.com, which has the race at Obama 320 – McCain 204  – Ties 14:

How to explain the difference?   Radley argues that it’s the Bob Barr factor.

Barr isn’t yet mentioned in many of the national polls. But in state polls, he’s consistently pulling in five percent or more, and it seems to be coming mostly from McCain. My colleague Dave Weigel–who follows this stuff more closely than I do– thinks it’s too early to give Barr that much credit. He may be right. But for the moment, Barr’s hurting McCain. If McCain’s spending money in Texas or North Carolina after Labor Day, this is going to be a bloodbath. Of course, that kind of showing from Barr would also force the GOP to pay more heed to its neglected limited government wing, and less to its David Brooks faction.  So that would in general be a pretty good thing.

I tend to agree with Dave and Mark Blumenthal on this one.  Polling, especially early polling, for third party candidates is always vastly overstated.  Plus, Ralph Nader’s running, too, and will likely offset Barr in any case.

And, as always, the usual caveats apply.  The same map for July 15, 2004?  Kerry 322, Bush 205.

Ralph Nader says that Barack Obama “talks white” and ignores “black issues.”

“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American,” Nader said. “Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.”

The Obama campaign had only a brief response, calling the remarks disappointing.

Asked to clarify whether he thought Obama does try to “talk white,” Nader said: “Of course. I mean, first of all, the number one thing that a black American politician aspiring to the presidency should be is to candidly describe the plight of the poor, especially in the inner cities and the rural areas, and have a very detailed platform about how the poor is going to be defended by the law, is going to be protected by the law, and is going to be liberated by the law,” Nader said. “Haven’t heard a thing.”

I’m reminded of Charley Pride’s recounting of how often he was asked in the early days, “Why you don’t sound like you’re supposed to sound?” Of course, that was in the 1960s.

It’s not at all clear why black candidates have a particular obligation to talk about “black issues.” Indeed, as a major party nominee, it’s his job to forge a broad consensus on issues that appeal to Americans as a whole. Running as “the black candidate” and focusing mostly on the issues Nader wants him to would ensure he’d lose. Certainly, those issues haven’tNader much good.

Elsewhere, Ed Morrissey notes the irony of Nader trying to tell a black man how to talk black and that the focus on Obama’s race continues to come from those on the Left and Eric Kleefeld reminds us that this is, after all, Ralph Nader we’re talking about.

Barack Obama has a 12-point lead in the latest Bloomberg/LAT poll, giving those of us who thought the 15-point lead in last week’s Newsweek poll was an outlier some pause.

In a two-man race between the major-party candidates, registered voters chose Obama over McCain by 49% to 37% in the national poll, conducted Thursday through Monday. On a four-man ballot that included independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr, voters chose Obama over McCain by 48% to 33%.

Obama’s lead — bigger in this poll than in most other national surveys — appears to stem largely from his positions on domestic issues. Both Democrats and independent voters said Obama would do a better job than McCain at handling the nation’s economic problems, the public’s top concern. In contrast, many voters said McCain was the more experienced candidate and better equipped to protect the nation against terrorism — but they ranked those concerns below economic issues.

McCain suffers from a pronounced “passion gap,” especially among conservatives who usually give Republican candidates a reliable base of support. Among voters who described themselves as conservative, 58% said they would vote for McCain; 15% said they would vote for Obama, 14% said they would vote for someone else, and 13% said they were undecided. By contrast, 79% of voters who described themselves as liberal said they planned to vote for Obama.

I’m still skeptical of the numbers but find the conclusions reasonable. Indeed, I didn’t need a poll to tell me that Americans care more about domestic issues than foreign policy, especially now that the war in Iraq has moved to the back burner, or that Obama has more intensity of support than McCain.

The numbers just don’t make sense. We now have two polls showing double-digit Obama leads, while most taken during the same time period show a very modest gap:

Aside from the fact that Newsweek and LAT/Bloomberg are sampling registered voters whereas Rasmussen and USA Today/Gallup are using likely voter screens, it’s not obvious what methodological differences might account for this degree of variation. More oddly, Gallup’s registered voter tracking poll shows a closer race than their likely voter poll for USA Today, albeit within the margin of error.

The bottom line is that we don’t have a very good read right now and, as I continue to emphasize, June polls are historically poor predictors of November behavior. The RealClearPolitics average of 7.5, though, is probably as good an indicator as any on where the national race stands.

Of course, we elect presidents via the Electoral College, so what really matters is how the candidates are doing in each of the 50 states. Nate Silver has it at 343.8 to 194.2. (He’s also got an intriguing hypothesis about Obama’s strength as a Midwestern candidate that I may revisit in a later post.) Electoral-Vote.com has it at Obama 317, McCain 194 with Florida too close to call. Those numbers are the ones to watch.

Along with a few hundred thousand other folks in the area, the power’s been out at my place since yesterday afternoon, so I’m a bit behind on my blogging. As everyone knows by now, Hillary Clinton has put out word that she will suspend campaigning and endorse Barack Obama at a rally in DC Saturday.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will endorse Senator Barack Obama on Saturday, bringing a close to her 17-month campaign for the White House, aides said. Her decision came after Democrats urged her Wednesday to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around Mr. Obama.

Howard Wolfson, one of Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategists, and other aides said she would express support for Mr. Obama and party unity at an event in Washington that day. One adviser said Mrs. Clinton would concede defeat, congratulate Mr. Obama and proclaim him the party’s nominee, while pledging to do what was needed to assure his victory in November.

Her decision came after a day of conversations with supporters on Capitol Hill about her future now that Mr. Obama had clinched the nomination. Mrs. Clinton had, in a speech after Tuesday night’s primaries, suggested she wanted to wait before deciding about her future, but in conversations Wednesday, her aides said, she was urged to step aside.

“We pledged to support her to the end,” Representative Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who has been a patron of Mrs. Clinton since she first ran for the Senate, said in an interview. “Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.”

Mrs. Clinton’s decision came as some of her most prominent supporters — including former Vice President Walter F. Mondale — announced they were now backing Mr. Obama. “I was for Hillary — I wasn’t against Obama, who I think is very talented,” Mr. Mondale said. “I’m glad we made a decision and I hope we can unite our party and move forward.”

One of Mrs. Clinton’s aides said they were told that except for her senior advisers, there was no reason to report to work after Friday, and that they were invited to Mrs. Clinton’s house for a farewell celebration. The announcement from Mrs. Clinton was moved to Saturday to accommodate more supporters who wanted to attend, aides said. “Senator Clinton will be hosting an event in Washington, D.C., to thank her supporters and express her support for Senator Obama and party unity,” Mr. Wolfson said.

Mr. Obama, not waiting for a formal concession from Mrs. Clinton, announced a three-member vice-presidential selection committee that will include Caroline Kennedy, who has become a close personal adviser since endorsing him four months ago.

My strong guess is that Clinton will not be chosen.

I’m at least mildly surprised that she bowed to reality given that, technically at least, Obama has not reached the delegate threshold since indications from superdelegates as to how they will vote is not binding. Presumably, her advisers were able to persuade her that fighting on would irreparably damage her political future.

It may be too late to avoid that fate, frankly. If Obama wins in November, she has a shot at rehabilitation. If, however, he loses, her divisive tactics during the closing stretch, employed despite near-universal consensus that she could not win, will receive much of the blame.

I concur with the view Dave Schuler has expressed repeatedly on OTB Radio that this was her last shot at the presidency. If Obama wins, her next opportunity will be in 2016, a mighty long time after her husband’s presidency. If Obama loses, as previously noted, she’ll be viewed with all the love Democrats now have for Ralph Nader. Still, she’s relatively young and could well rise to Senate Majority Leader in the not-too-distant future.

Doug Mataconis rejects the idea that Bob Barr and other third party candidates should defer to the major party candidate most closely aligned with them ideologically.

If McCain loses, it won’t be Bob Barr’s fault anymore than Al Gore losing Florida in 2000 was Ralph Nader’s fault. It will be because he didn’t convince enough people to vote for him.

Well, “fault” is certainly the wrong word. These oddball candidates have a right to put themselves up for a vote, after all. But their vanity runs have foreseeable consequences and they have some responsibility for helping bring them about.

Splitting the vote results in skewed allocation of preferences. Presumably, most Nader voters would have preferred Gore to Bush in 2000 even though they preferred Nader to Gore. By voting for Nader, though, they got their distant third choice instead of their relatively close second choice. That’s not an ideal outcome, I’d say. (For them, anyway. Those of us who preferred Bush to Gore and Nader were quite pleased.)

Clearly, some sizable portion of the Republican base is less than thrilled with McCain as their nominee. Ironically, in this context, they face this choice partly because the social conservative vote was split among many candidates, most prominently Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, allowing the “moderate” McCain to win.

Regardless, however, only McCain and Obama are plausible winners in November. Barring tragic circumstances, one of them will be our next president. It’s therefore irrelevant if one would actually prefer some third alternative.

The only way it makes sense, then, to vote for a Bob Barr or Alan Keyes or Ralph Nader or some other person who will not be our next president is if you honestly have no preference whatsoever as to whether McCain or Obama prevails. Otherwise, even if it’s a 1 percent, hold-your-nose difference, you should vote for that guy.

(In reality of course, it’s a bit more complicated because most states will be uncompetitive in the Fall, with all its electors preordained for either the Democrat or the Republican. If you vote in one of those states, a “protest vote” is perfectly reasonable. And, of course, this all presumes that thinking your one vote will matter is rational, anyway.)

Ralph Nader is making another presidential run, ABC News’ Rich Klein reports.

Ralph Nader has formed a presidential exploratory committee, and said in an interview Wednesday that he will launch another presidential bid if he’s convinced he can raise enough money to appear on the vast majority of state ballots this fall. Nader, who ran as an independent candidate in each of the past three presidential elections, told ABCNews.com that he will run in 2008 if he is convinced over the next month that he would be able to raise $10 million over the course of the campaign — and attract enough lawyers willing to work free of charge to get his name on state ballots.

Nader said he filed papers with the Federal Election Commission and launched a Web site after Dennis Kucinich, a liberal Ohio congressman, announced his decision to withdraw from the presidential race last week.

He was set to announce that he had formed an exploratory committee Wednesday, even before former Sen. John Edwards made it known that he’d be ending his candidacy. But with Edwards — who has made economic populism and ending poverty cornerstones of his campaign — leaving the Democratic field, Nader said, he feels his candidacy is more urgent than ever. “When Kucinich threw in the towel, now you have Edwards gone — who’s going to carry the torch of democratic populism against the relentless domination of powerful corporations of our government?” Nader said. “You can’t just brush these issues to the side because the candidates are ignoring them.”

He has harsh words for the leading Democratic candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, chastising them for failing to advance aggressive plans to tax corporations more fairly, and to fight for a vastly higher minimum wage. Obama, he said, is a particular disappointment, since his background suggests that he knows the importance of progressive issues yet hasn’t fought for them in the Senate. “His record in the Senate is pretty mediocre,” Nader said. “His most distinctive characteristic is the extent to which he censors himself. He hasn’t performed as a really progressive first-term senator would.”

Ralph Nader: Because Barack Obama Just Isn’t Liberal Enough!

Seriously, the guy’s a vanity candidate who’ll simply serve as a spoiler, taking votes away from the Democratic nominee. The Republicans can certainly use the help this cycle.

Ralph Nader, a four-time presidential candidate whom many Democrats blame for costing Al Gore the 2000 election, has endorsed John Edwards’ candidacy.

Ralph Nader unleashed on Hillary Rodham Clinton Monday – criticizing her for being soft on defense spending and a chum of big business – and expressed his strong support for John Edwards.

In an 11th hour effort to encourage liberal Iowans to “recognize” Edwards by “giving him a victory,” the activist and former presidential contender said in an interview that Clinton will “pander to corporate interest groups” if elected.

Nader specifically accused Clinton of failing to challenge military spending because “she is a woman who doesn’t want to be labeled as soft on defense and she doesn’t want to be shown as taking on big business.” As Clinton campaigned through a snowstorm in southeast Iowa, pledging to “bring about the changes we need,” Nader accused the Democratic senator from New York of using empty rhetoric. “[Clinton] has not led the way against the avalanche of military contracting, corporate crime, fraud and abuse,” he said. “We want to inform the people of Iowa about Hillary Clinton because all the focus is on, do they have the experience and do they have the personal charisma, and can they cross the aisle” Nader said.

“The issue is corporate power and who controls our political system and it’s not who has experience for six years or two years,” he said, alluding to an ongoing debate over experience between Clinton and freshman Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). “She has experience in the Senate, and what that experience has meant is going soft on cracking down on corporate crime, fraud, and abuse, soft on cutting tens of millions in corporate subsidies,” he continued.

While one would think Nader would be anathema to most Democrats, has still has some fans, apparently. And he sees Edwards as a kindred spirit.

Nader said he has watched Edwards from afar and sees his more pugilistic brand of populism as an encouraging sign. “It’s the only time I’ve heard a Democrat talk that way in a long time,” Nader said, acknowledging what was, for him, a rare moment of praise for a Democratic leader. “Iowa should decide which candidate stands for us,” he added. “Edwards is at least highlighting day after day that the issue is who controls our country, big business or the people.”

Because, of course, big business isn’t run by people.

The Hill headlines news that Houston’s Ron Paul finished third in a Texas straw poll “Ron Paul: Trouble back home.”

While Texan Ron Paul’s stock is soaring nationally, there is trouble on the home front. In September, Paul finished third in a straw poll of 1,300 Texas Republican activists who had been delegates to recent Republican conventions. The congressman corralled just 17 percent of the votes cast, trailing California’s Duncan Hunter with 41 percent.

This outcome says Texas Republicans aren’t terribly concerned about viability. Otherwise, one of the national front-runners like Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney would have beaten these long-shots. But if they were willing to “waste” their votes on Hunter, why didn’t most back a fellow Texan? The truth is that Ron Paul, the angry prophet, has little honor in his own land. He’s about to lose his congressional seat.

[...]

Angst over Paul has been building for years. In 2004, disgruntled Republicans asked me to find encouragement for challengers. We polled his suburban Houston district and found that voters resist his contrarian and stark libertarian perspective that even sells out local interests. When told that “Ron Paul consistently opposes taxpayer funding for NASA and wants to eliminate the agency,” 61 percent of Republican primary voters said this information would make them less likely to vote for Paul’s reelection. Similarly, a 54 percent majority said they’d be less likely to vote for Paul when told he “was one of only four Republicans in Congress to vote against President Bush’s plan to encourage faith-based charities.” The list of negatives was long.

To be fair, the 2004 polling also found that his voters endorsed some of the quirky congressman’s actions, particularly his refusal to take a congressional pension and his vote to allow airline pilots to carry guns after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But there was significantly more bad news than good in that poll for Rep. Paul. But detractors were unsuccessful is recruiting a suitable opponent.

While I think Paul the longest of longshot’s, David Hill’s analysis is rather dubious. This is, after all, a straw poll of mainstream Republican activists whereas Paul is a Libertarian who happens to align himself with the GOP out of convenience. That he’s opposed to pork barrel projects that benefit Texas naturally harms him in Texas but that’s precisely what endears him to his supporters.

Meanwhile, a new poll shows Paul attracting 8 percent running as a Libertarian:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found Hillary Clinton leading Rudy Giuliani by three percentage points in a four-way race that includes Ron Paul running as a Libertarian candidate and Ralph Nader representing the Green Party. The poll shows Clinton earning 42% of the vote while Giuliani attracts 39%. Ron Paul is the choice for 8%, Ralph Nader is preferred by 4% and 7% are not sure.

It’s somewhat interesting that Paul, a relative unknown on the national scene, is polling twice Nader’s numbers. Then again, there’s no reason to think that Paul’s going to mount a third party bid if he fails to win the Republican nomination.

John Derbyshire and Andrew Sullivan see great similarity’s between Ron Paul and a young William F. Buckley, Jr. John Podhoretz and Richard Fernandez, though, see more similarities between Paul and Ralph Nader. Ed Morrissey, meanwhile, thinks he’s this years’ Howard Dean.

To the extent he’s following any of those parallels, I’d go with Dean.

As Derbyshire notes, Buckley’s conservatism was founded on anti-Communism as a principle that united otherwise disparate ideologues. Paul’s brand of libertarianism is relatively isolationist and lacks a unifying principle to rally the different parts of the Republican constituency.

Nader ran as an independent to the left of Al Gore and cost his erstwhile party the presidency. I take Paul at his word that, should he not win the Republican nomination, he’ll bow out of the 2008 race. Were he to nonetheless run as an independent, though, it’s far from clear to me that he draws more Republicans than Democrats. While there has been a strong libertarian strain in the GOP since at least Barry Goldwater, there has been a social libertarian strain in the Democratic Party even longer.

Dean, though, strikes me as the likeliest analog. Both raised wild sums of money from a highly energized online constituency and seemed to be the only candidate in their party’s field that sparked genuine excitement. Neither, though, seemed to have the experience or disposition to pass the “gravitas” threshold expected of those who would be president.

The difference between Paul and Dean is that Paul’s campaign is still active and he therefore still has a theoretical chance. He’s got the deepest support of any candidate in the Republican field. Until he wins a primary, though, I’m not likely to be convinced that his support is very broad.

Yesterday’s bid to raise $10 million in one day for Ron Paul fell well short. Paul’s campaign will happily settle, I’m sure, for the $4.2 million they brought in, which is easily the most brought in on a single day of online fundraising. He’ll also gladly take the outpouring of media attention.

“Ron Paul Raises More Than $4.2 Million,” Jim Kuhnhenn, AP:

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, aided by an extraordinary outpouring of Internet support Monday, hauled in more than $4.2 million in nearly 24 hours.

Paul, the Texas congressman with a libertarian tilt and an out-of-Iraq pitch, entered heady fundraising territory with a surge of Web-based giving tied to the commemoration of Guy Fawkes Day. Fawkes was a British mercenary who failed in his attempt to kill King James I on Nov. 5, 1605. He also was the model for the protagonist in the movie “V for Vendetta.” Paul backers motivated donors on the Internet with mashed-up clips of the film on the online video site YouTube as well as the Guy Fawkes Day refrain: “Remember, remember the 5th of November.”

Paul’s total deposed Mitt Romney as the single-day fundraising record holder in the Republican presidential field. When it comes to sums amassed in one day, Paul now ranks only behind Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton, who raised nearly $6.2 million on June 30, and Barack Obama.

Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said the effort began independently about two months ago at the hands of Paul’s backers. He said Paul picked up on the movement, mentioning in it speeches and interviews. “It’s been kind of building up virally,” Benton said.

The $4.2 million represented online contributions from more than 37,000 donors, fundraising director Jonathan Bydlak said Monday night.

Paul has been lagging in the polls behind Republican front-runners. But he captured national attention at the end of September when he reported raising $5.2 million in three months, putting him fourth among Republican presidential candidates in fundraising for the quarter. Paul as of Monday had raised more than $7 million since Oct. 1, more than half his goal of $12 million by the end of the year, according to his Web site.

Paul advocates limited government and low taxes like other Republicans, but he stands alone as the only GOP presidential candidate opposed to the Iraq war. He also has opposed Bush administration security measures that he says encroach on civil liberties.

“Ron Paul Raises More Than $4 Million in One Day,” David Kirkpatrick, NYT.

Historians and British schoolchildren remember Guy Fawkes as the Roman Catholic, anti-Protestant rebel who on Nov. 5, 1605, tried to assassinate King James I by blowing up the Parliament. Supporters of the Republican primary campaign of the libertarian Representative Ron Paul may remember Fawkes as a wildly successful fund-raising gimmick.

[...]

Mr. Benton clarified that Mr. Paul did not support blowing up government buildings. “He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education,” Mr. Benton said, “but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner.”

Thanks for clearing that up!

“Ron Paul says he’s broken one-day online fundraising record,” Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence, USA Today OnPolitics.

Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican presidential candidate from Texas, says today that he’s broken a record: the record for online fundraising in a single day during the pre-convention primary process.

According to Paul’s campaign, he raised more than $2.7 million online in 16 hours that ended at 4 p.m. ET. The campaign called that “the largest single-day online primary fundraising effort by a presidential candidate in United States election history.”

“Ron Paul’s ‘money bomb,’ records and lessons,” Mark Silva, Chicago Tribune’s The Swamp blog.

That so many people have invested so much in someone who stands such little apparent chance of winning his party’s presidential nomination, let alone the White House, speaks volumes about alienation in modern American politics.

It is the same alienation that once handed H. Ross Perot close to 20 percent of the presidential vote. It is the same alienation that handed Ralph Nader just enough of the vote to deny Democrat Al Gore an Electoral College victory to accompany his popular-vote majority.

It is people voting for someone other than the establishment, odds be damned.

[...]

In one day, the Paul campaign asserts, about 25,000 supporters had contributed to the building of the “money bomb.”

This is the bombshell which Paul suggests he needs to convince “the mainstream media’’ that he is a real candidate.

There’s one problem with this financial calculation. There are only so many times that the same 25,000 people can contribute – an equation which Democrat Howard Dean encountered, in somewhat larger numbers, albeit with the same ultimate result, in 2004 — and it’s unlikely that all of them live in Iowa, or in New Hampshire, where money might translate into the votes necessary to catapult someone into the second stage of the primaries.
.
Dean ran up record-breaking fundraising tallies in his upstart — and also anti-war — campaign for president. But his campaign was undone literally overnight by an under-performing turnout in the Iowa caucuses, and finished off with his own scream heard ’round the world.

“Ron Paul’s Cash Flow,” Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times:

At this point, Paul’s ability to raise money is not in question. But his skill in translating that sizable campaign treasury into voters at the caucuses and primaries still is.

Rasmussen Reports’ seven-day tracking poll ending Nov. 4 shows Paul garnering 3 percent of likely Republican voters, the same as fellow Rep. Tom Tancredo. Paul’s campaign says polls are a poor predictor of his voters’ support.

“Another Ron Paul Surge,” Dave Weigel, Reason :

Even if you don’t like Paul, you have to gasp at what’s happening in the GOP race. There are three phenomenons running in tandem: Paul’s fundraising, Huckabee’s cash-strapped poll surge, and McCain’s running-on-fumes poll comeback. Anybody working for the Rudy-Fred-Mitt power trio has to wonder why the Republican base is so hungry for these other choices. (Also, more reason to ignore the campaign finance reformers who whine about big money trumping ideas and good people in politics.)

“Ron Paul’s Record Online Haul,” Jose Antonio Vargas, WaPo’s The Trail blog:

Today, Nov. 5, marks not only Paul’s best fundraising haul in a single day — approximately $3.75 million by 11 p.m. EST — but online observers say it’s also the most money raised by a candidate on the Web in a single day. And the day’s not over yet. “Damn. Wow. Um, that’s pretty awesome,” said a stunned Jerome Armstrong who served as Howard Dean’s online strategist. Armstrong, the founder of the popular blog MyDD, said Dean raised as much as $700,000 in one day toward the end of the primary race. “But not a million,” Armstrong added. “What Paul is doing — or what his supporters are doing — is really impressive.”

Paul supporter Avery Knapp Jr., guesting at TechPresident, explains “The Power of Flashmob Fundraising.”

People respond well to seeing their names up in lights on their hero’s campaign website and getting immediate feedback about their contributions. At a recent lecture showing the rolling names of donors projected behind the lecturer, the author and his girlfriend were tempted enough to donate using a blackberry and cheer in the back; the lecturer mistakenly thought the cheers were for his speech. Perhaps this feedback is a reason the open-source approach to presidential fundraising is likely to continue and increase. Perhaps one day the Federal Election Commission monitoring of election finances won’t even be necessary as campaigns will make all fundraising data public.

I tend to agree with Silva that, as impressive as it is to harness to thrill of a focused event and the enthusiasm of a hard core of supporters, it’s unlikely that this haul will catapult Paul into serious contention for the Republican nomination. There just aren’t enough people who truly want to do things like shut down the Department of Education. Still, the viral nature of this will at least allow him a window for making that case.

Not my headline, but rather that of the alternative Seattle Weekly to describe The Nation’s all Liberal cruise to Alaska, with prices from $2600 to $8400. Focus cruises are proliferating, started by The National Review decades ago. The cruise departed Seattle last Saturday.

Of course it was the success of The National Review’s cruise that obviously prompted The Nation’s first seminar-at-sea 10 years ago, a clever means of fundraising, cultivating subscribers, and rallying the base, so to speak. And I’m not sure which is worse: a boatload of smug, rich, insular conservatives, or a boatload of smug, rich, insular liberals.

Cough. You won’t find me on either cruise, though you might find me on an Alaskan cruise. I don’t need a week of political boot camp = fundraiser for a magazine.

Oh, but it’s not just a week-long sightseeing cruise to Alaska, it’s a seminar, a learning opportunity, a chance to rub shoulders not only with Nader (guaranteed not to remove his suit in the hot tub), but The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel and Victor Navasky, actor Richard Dreyfuss, journalist Mary Mapes (she who pushed the Bush-Air National Guard story a little too hard on 60 Minutes), several other lefty authors, the mayor of Salt Lake City (he’s a liberal Democrat?), and actress-journalist Annabelle Gurwitch (whom we kind of like after her stage show and movie Fired!, which leads from getting shitcanned by Woody Allen to a broader examination of downsizing and corporate insecurity)….

But the point is this: Liberals on the high seas! Birds of a feather flocking together! It’s a blue-state booze cruise, and some tickets may yet be available.

Seriously though, the minute you include Mary Mapes as a headliner you have destroyed any claim to objectivity. But you can sit with her at dinner.

Confirmed speakers include Richard Dreyfuss, Mark Hertsgaard, Ralph Nader, Mary Mapes, Liza Featherstone, Patricia Williams, Doug Henwood, Robert Scheer, Gary Younge and Salt Lake City’s mayor, Rocky Anderson as well as others soon to be named. They’ll join Nation publisher emeritus Victor Navasky and Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel in what has always been both an enlightening exchange of ideas and a no-hassle, relaxing vacation. Each day and night you’ll mingle with these Nation comrades – in both informal and formal settings. And dinner seating is arranged so that everyone has a chance to dine with the guest speakers.

And don’t forget, you can buy carbon offsets and make Al Gore richer at an additional cost.

we’ve partnered with Eco-Logic to re-forest a recently devastated area in Guatemala, paying for the planting of enough trees to offset the carbon emissions of each passenger on the Nation cruise.

Or as the Seattle Weekly says

it’s probably best not to consider what those Guatemalan tree planters are being paid—just like the Filipino deckhands and boiler stokers laboring in the bowels of the ship.

Even the left-leaning weeklies see through the charade. Though they are way behind the times as far as cruise ship propulsion, which is mostly gas turbines, not boilers.

I would have the same response to a cruise featuring O’Reilly and Coulter. These are preaching to the converted fundraisers.

If you want full marketing details on the cruise, The Nation has set up a cruise website.

Ralph Nader may make yet another run for the presidency in 2008, Roger Simon reports.

Ralph Nader says he is seriously considering running for president in 2008 because he foresees another Tweedledum-Tweedledee election that offers little real choice to voters. “You know the two parties are still converging — they don’t even debate the military budget anymore,” Nader said in a 30-minute interview. “I really think there needs to be more competition from outside the two parties.”

Even the possible entry of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg into the race as an independent might not dissuade Nader. “He is interesting (but) unpredictable,” Nader said of Bloomberg. “I really like the stand he took against smoking, but he goes along with corporate welfare in New York and tax-funded stadiums. So he is unfinished in that way.”

It’s long been clear that Nader is motivated by ego rather than moving public policy. While there’s no doubt that Nader feels the Democrats are too pro-business and too soft on the environment, it’s manifestly obvious that both Al Gore and John Kerry were more likely to move things in a direction he preferred than George W. Bush and that his entry into the race would make it harder for the Democrats to win. He’d rather be talked about than advance his other agendas, though.

This is interesting as well:

While Nader praised two candidates who have almost no chance of winning their party’s nomination — Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Mike Gravel — he was severe in his criticism of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. “She is a political coward,” Nader said. “She goes around pandering to powerful interest groups on the one hand and flattering general audiences on the other. She doesn’t even have the minimal political fortitude of her husband.”

Chris Lehane, who worked in Bill Clinton’s White House and Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, said of a possible Nader candidacy: “His entry into the race, even to those who voted for him in 2000, would be just another vainglorious effort to promote himself at the expense of the best interests of the public. Ralph Nader is unsafe in any election.”

Lehane and I agree.

UPDATE: Reason’s Dave Weigel is surprised this story is getting so much attention, since Nader has said these things before. Further, he thinks a Nader candidacy will be, as it was in 2004, a non-factor:

The disgruntled voters on the right and in the middle are going to be looking at Bloomberg or, if the LP or a right-wing third party nominates a real candidate, one of those parties. (Someone who ran on the Constitution ticket with a few million and Pat Buchanan’s message from 2000 could play well with the irate anti-immigration sector of the GOP base.) If Cynthia McKinney actually runs and wins the Green nomination, there’s no doubt she’d get more votes than Nader.

There’s no doubt that, with the race starting this early, there’s plenty of time for niche candidates to emerge to exploit voter dissatisfaction with the major party nominees. Funding and ballot access are the keys there. Bloomberg has the advantage simply because of money an the UnityO8 “party” seems to be getting organized; conceivably, the two could marry up.

Mike Allen begins a story with a rather stunning aside: “Even many Republicans will tell you that the presidency this cycle is Sen. Hillary Clinton’s to lose . . . .”

Given how polarizing she is, can that really be the case? Maybe.

Months of head-to-head polls showing that every plausible Republican nominee would be her have now reversed. The current averages tracked by the folks at RealClear Politics have her beating or within striking distance of the Big 3, although the polls that make up those averages are all over the map:

In many cases, Barack Obama and John Edwards do even better but the current RCP poll averages have Clinton leading all comers for the Democratic nomination by 11.4% and Rudy Giuliani with an even 6% lead among Republicans.

If the election were held today (and I hasten to add it won’t be) we would expect Clinton to beat Giuliani by an incredibly narrow margin, right? Not necessarily.

First, the constituent polls are mostly (if not all) based on “adults” rather than registered voters, let alone likely voters. Giuliani may well be somewhat ahead of Clinton among those who will actually decide the election.

Second, we don’t decide presidential elections with a national popular vote but by 51 separate contests in the 50 states and the District of Columbia (which OTB hereby calls for the Democratic nominee, with 0% of the precincts reporting). We have no useful information about how those breakdowns will go at this point.

Third, there may well be one or more significant third party candidates again this year. We may have sore losers from the current primary crop, self-financed campaigns by the likes of Michael Bloomberg, and the Unity08 slate running. And there’s always Ralph Nader.

Regardless, Clinton’s numbers are hardly such that we’d say it’s hers to lose at this early stage. The nomination, yes, but not the presidency.

Newt Gingrich is disgusted with the pathetic, bizarre, and shallow manner in which the current crop of Republican candidates are conducting the campaign.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the 2008 White House candidates are “demeaning the presidency” by focusing on the race rather than ideas. “We have shrunk our political process to this pathetic dance in which people spend an entire year raising money in order to offer non-answers, so they can memorize what their consultants and focus groups said would work,” Gingrich said.

[...]

“This idea of demeaning the presidency by reducing it to being a game show contest … is wrong for America, and I would never participate in it,” he said.

Gingrich told reporters there is room for a him in the race. “There’s a tremendous vacuum of leadership willing to stand up and talk to the country in clear ways about what we have to get done to create a generation of opportunity and what we have to do to avoid a generation for bureaucracy and problems,” Gingrich said.

The irony, of course, is that the Contract With America, Gingrich’s claim to fame, was itself a product of consultants and focus groups and he rose to power partly through the use of deliberately chosen buzz words that cast Democrats are evil and anti-family and Republicans as protectors of all that’s good and holy. Shortly after assuming the Speakership in 1995, he circulated a memo called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” to incoming GOP freshman. Here’s an excerpt:

Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

abuse of power anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs betray bizarre bosses bureaucracy cheat coercion "compassion" is not enough collapse(ing) consequences corrupt corruption criminal rights crisis cynicism decay deeper destroy destructive devour disgrace endanger excuses failure (fail) greed hypocrisy ideological impose incompetent insecure insensitive

intolerant liberal lie limit(s) machine mandate(s) obsolete pathetic patronage permissive attitude pessimistic punish (poor …) radical red tape self-serving selfish sensationalists shallow shame sick spend(ing) stagnation status quo steal taxes they/them threaten traitors unionized urgent (cy) waste welfare

This tactic worked brilliantly and, like all successful tactics, was quickly copied by the opposition. While by no means the only cause, it has helped create the current atmosphere of extreme polarization that characterizes the American political landscape.

Hypocrisy aside, though, Gingrich is right. I’d certainly prefer to see the candidates spend more time discussing issues and outlining their vision for the country. Then again, like Gingrich, I’m a policy wonk with an academic inclination; a debate focusing on the finer points of public policy would likely bore most people to tears.

While I’m not a fan of Gingrich the man, he’s a compelling figure and he would add a lot to the debate. He’s in the mold of H. Ross Perot, Jerry Brown, and Ralph Nader. You can forget, for a while at least, that they’re kooks and would make lousy presidents because they’re charismatic, smart, and refreshingly candid.

via Political Wire