Obama in a landslide?

In a weekend piece from the U.K.'s Telegraph comes a story that should be news to voters in the key states of Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado: Barack Obama thinks he's going to win the 2008 election in a "landslide".  "Barack Obama's senior aides believe he is on course for a landslide election victory over John McCain and will comfortably exceed most current predictions in the race for the White House. 

Their optimism, which is said to be shared by the Democratic candidate himself, is based on information from private polling and on faith in the powerful political organisation he has built in the key swing states.

Insiders say that Mr Obama's apparent calm through an unusually turbulent election season is because he believes that his strength among first time voters in several key states has been underestimated, both by the media and by the Republican Party. "

Obama and his campaign are further convinced that he can win no fewer than nine of the states carried by George Bush in 2004 -- putting him on track to win as many as 340 electoral votes. 270 are needed to become president.

This confidence comes from an assumption that I find dubious: that current polls are underestimating the level of new voter registration that the Democrat's have achieved in their get out the vote drives:

"Public polling companies and the media have underestimated the scale of new Democratic voters registration in these states," the campaign official told a friend. "We're much stronger on the ground in Virginia and North Carolina than people realise. If we get out the vote this may not be close at all."

"Their confidence that good organisation will more than compensate for latent racism will be reassuring to some Democrats, who were concerned by a poll last weekend that found Mr Obama would be six points higher in the polls if he were white. "

In my mind the Obama camp is suffering from having drunk too much of its own punch: voter registration drives are notoriously bad predictors of election outcomes. And this is particularly true if the registration drive is focused on young voters -- which Obama's certainly has been. Young voters are famous for saying they will vote and then not showing up on election day.

As far as the "latent racism" issue goes -- I also think it is overstated. In fact, I think that a reverse sort of racism -- of the politically correct variety -- may be upwardly skewing Obama's polling numbers. I have a sense that many voters tell pollsters that they will support Obama because they don't want to come off as racist or "uncool". It is a natural part of our psychology to be attracted to a black candidate as part of a greater social good, and it is part of a politically correct pressure for people to be seen as socially progressive.

But I don't believe this necessarily translates to the voting booth -- when in private, people cast a vote for president. My guess is that race will have less to do with that decision, and that policies and experience will be the determining factor. And on that score, I don't think that Obama has an advantage over John McCain. I believe that the polling doesn't accurately reflect the hesitation many people have about putting an unknown Obama into power, and that a greater percentage of those polled will choose McCain as a safer alternative.

This may not be enough to win McCain the election -- but it should provide some pause to the Obama campaign in thinking that they will win this in a landslide. I predict as close a race as Gore-Bush in 2000 -- unless something dramatic happens on either side to radically upset the balance.

It isn't surprising, however, that Obama is so confident. Afterall, he is the one we've been waiting for. Right?

'Police state tactics' by BHO in MO

Prosecutors and sheriffs in Missouri are threatening legal action against anyone they believe is lying, not about candidates in general, but about Obama in particular. Here's the report from TexasDarlin blog, courtesy of Karen Kataline, who mentioned it on Backbone Radio this evening. It includes news video from Channel 4 St. Louis documenting the "truth squad" activity, and quotes Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt as saying This abuse of the law for intimidation [has] attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign."

Themeless, alas

"Senator Obama, that kind of thinking is dangerous. With views like that, you are not ready to lead. You've come a long way in a short time, and that's commendable. But you need to take a little more time and get to know the world better. America can't afford that kind of naivete' in its Commander in Chief." There were moments in Friday's debate when John McCain could and should have said something just this blunt. Obama gave him several perfect openings. If McCain had delivered such a body blow to his opponent, it would have rocked the political world for days to come, giving the Republican candidate a real chance to take the lead and hold it till election day. What a missed opportunity.

It's true that McCain hammered repeatedly on the point that Obama is naive, doesn't understand, doesn't get it. I still say he gave a themeless performance because there was no decisive, sizzling sound bite like the one I've suggested that would give the debate resonance in this campaign and earn it a place in history. There was no memorable tag that our guy hung on their guy to put him on defense for the next week and drive his supporters nuts trying to peel the tag off. What a pity.

"Themeless, alas" was one of my headlines as I live-blogged the Ole Miss debate for PoliticsWest.com. Read my whole thread from their 90-minute encounter right here.

Getting to know BHO

Now we start to see the real Barack Hussein Obama. His work with Bill Ayers to radicalize Chicago schools was spelled out in detail this week in a Wall Street Journal piece by Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Most of you will remember Ayers and his now wife, Bernardine Dohrn, as among founders/leaders of the radical and violent Weatherman, aka Weather Underground Organization, which bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon about 30 years ahead of Al Qaeda. Ayers and Dohrn have now been adorned with “respectability” as faculty members at, respectively, the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. Apparently prosecutorial misconduct enabled them to avoid having to serve prison time. However, they were terrorists as that term is used today, and they remain radical: not very long ago Ayers said publicly that he regretted not doing more as a Weatherman.

Obama’s first political campaign began with a party in the home of Ayers and Dohrn.

More elaboration by Kurtz on Obama’s radical background, titled “Senator Stealth,” was the cover story of the September 1 issue of National Review. A September 7 blog at The Spectator (London) by Melanie Phillips, titled “Revolution You Can Believe In,” discusses more of the same; click here.

I hope we all have reason in a few weeks to be thankful for long presidential campaigns. That observation will produce many a questioningly furrowed eyebrow, so I ask, How long has it taken for Americans to know anything about Obama beyond his fine speeches?

Truth and fairness have been disserved by an overwhelming majority of the mainstream media. So the real Obama has been scandalously slow to emerge from beneath a heavy overburden of manure and pretense.

Mark Twain famously observed, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.” I’m not quite ready to argue that overthrow of our government is the objective of any Obama backers, as it was of Sgt. Raymond Shaw’s mother in "The Manchurian Candidate," but it all gets more gravely worrisome by the day.

Several respected friends have been Obama supporters from the get-go. So impressed was one of those that he told me, “In the end, I could not care less about the messenger – Obama, Clinton, McCain. Rather, it is the message that matters.” I have challenged a few of them to give me a single name of anyone in Obama’s background whom one could consider respectable at any level of political leadership. Anyone, that is, before Obama emerged as the Darling of Message for his party and the fawning mainstream media. None of these friends has delivered, nor have I found any such name in rather extensive reading and research. Not one. Zilch.

Obama is so bereft of any public record (aside from his far left but otherwise brief and unremarkable legislative record), about all we have to assess him are his associates. Those include scumbags like Tony Rezco and the usual assortment of corrupt Chicago politicians; radical extremists like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Bill Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn; and, last but not least, his America-hating wife Michelle. Not a name among ‘em most would want mentioned in the same paragraph with our own.

Chicago political corruption, by the way, provides a particularly embarrassing contrast between Obama and the opposition. GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin rose to high office in Alaska by taking on political leaders in her own party whom voters considered corrupt. Obama made his mark in Illinois politics by using lawyers to remove opponents from the ballot and, when he had opportunities to help clean out corrupt officeholders, he either didn’t have the huevos or, more likely, he and they were all one happy family.

A man with Obama’s cronies, not to mention his new idolaters on the left fringe, is a serious threat to the Republic.

Taxes: Here's the truth

Obama isn't the agent of change he pretended to be during the primaries. He's an old-school "tax and spend" liberal who will pursue an economic plan that involves increases in all the major income and investment tax rates, while spending billions on new social programs and regulatory schemes. Now that the general election is well under way, he and Joe Biden have taken on the populist mantra that is popular in front of liberal audiences -- couching these new taxes in typical "soak the rich" class warfare politics, promising to raise the taxes of "those who can afford it most" to help those "who need it most". If this sounds a lot like Marx -- "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" you'd be right. That's why Obama's ecomomic platform is a classic, socialist income redistribution scheme. Not long ago, Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal took a look at income, taxes and wealth in this country. The objective was to better understand whether there is merit to the left-wing contention that the rich don't pay "enough", and whether their largesse really comes at the expense of the middle class.

Here are some of his findings:

** Who pays the most taxes? The latest data show that a big portion of the federal income tax burden is shoul­dered by a small group of the very richest Americans.=2 0The wealthiest 1 percent of the population earn 19 per­cent of the income but pay 37 percent of the income tax. The top 10 percent pay 68 percent of the tab. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent—those below the median income level—now earn 13 percent of the income but pay just 3 percent of the taxes. These are proportions of the income tax alone and don’t include payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare.

** Did the Bush tax cuts favor the wealthy? In static terms, yes. But in reality -- when taking in investments and income generated by those savings, the answer is absolutely not. The latest IRS data show an increase of more than $100 billion in tax payments from the wealthy by 2005 alone. The number of tax filers who claimed taxable income of more than $1 million increased from approximately 180,000 in 2003 to over 300,000 in 2005. The total taxes paid by these millionaire households rose by about 80 percent in two years, from $132 billion to $236 billion.

** Did the Bush tax cuts put a greater burden on the middle class and poor? No. Moore examined the Treasury Department analysis of how much the rich would have paid without the Bush tax cuts and how much they actually did pay. The rich are now paying more than they would have paid, not less, after the Bush investment tax cuts. For example, the Treasury’s estimate was that the top 1 percent of earners would pay 31 percent of taxes if the Bush cuts did not go into effect; with the cuts, they actually paid 37 per­cent. Similarly, the share of the top 10 percent of earners was estimated at 63 percent without the cuts; they actually paid 68 percent.

** What has happened to tax rates over time? They've fallen -- and this has made the tax system more fair, not less so. As tax rates have fallen by half over the past quarter-century, taxes paid by the wealthy have increased. In 1980, for example, the top 5 percent of income earners paid only 37 percent of all income taxes. Today, the top 1 percent pay that proportion, and the top 5 percent pay a whopping 57 percent.

** Do the rich pay more in taxes because they earn more income? Yes. There’s no doubt that the share of total income earned by the wealthy has increased steadily over the past 25 years. Since 1980, the share of income earned by the richest 1 percent has more than doubled, from 9 percent to 19 percent. The share of the income going to the poorest income quintile has declined. Income disparities, in absolute dollars, have grown substantially.

What is significant is that for the top 5 percent and 10 percent of earners, the ratio of taxes paid compared with income earned has risen. For example, in 1980, the top 10 percent earned 32 percent of the income and paid 44 percent of the taxes—a ratio of 1.4. In 2004, this group earned more of the income (44 percent) but paid a lot more of the taxes (68 percent)—a ratio of 1.6. In other words, progressivity—in terms of share of total taxes paid—has risen.

Contrary to the Democrats' class-warfare rhetoric, gains by the rich have not come at the expense of the middle class:

Median family income in America between 1980 and 2004 grew by 17 percent. The middle class (defined as those between the 40th and the 60th percentiles of income) isn’t falling behind or “disappearing.” It is getting richer. The lower income bound for the middle class has risen by about $12,000 (after inflation) since 1967. The upper income bound for the middle class is now roughly $68,000—some $23,000 higher than in 1967. Thus, a family in the 60th percentile has 50 percent more buying power than 30 years ago.

Another canard of the left is that the low taxes on dividend income and capital gains -- a central component of the Bush tax cuts -- favors "only the wealthy".

The latest polls show that 52 percent of Americans own stock and thus benefit directly from lower capital gains and dividend taxes. Reduced tax rates on dividends also triggered a huge jump in the number of companies paying out dividends. As the National Bureau of Economic Research put it, “The surge in regular dividend payments after the 2003 reform is unprecedented in recent years.” Dividend income is up nearly 50 percent since the 2003 tax cut.

The 1997 tax reform, passed under President Clinton, reduced the capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to 20 percent, and taxable capital gains nearly doubled over the next three years. The 2003 reform brought the rate down to 15 percent, and between 2002 and 2005 there was a 154 percent increase in capital gains reported as income.

It is appealing populist rhetoric to cry "soak the rich" while talking to crowds of middle-class workers who think that somehow they will get the benefit from making the wealthy pay more. It even works in front of elite crowds who may feel guilty over their success and feel compelled to pay more in. Joe Biden this week famously called paying higher taxes "patriotic" -- as if somehow giving your hard earned money to the federal government for them to waste on pork is good for the nation.

But this analysis by Moore shows clearly that the fundamental logic of this is flawed. The wealthy already pay a disproportionate percentage of their income in taxes. Higher taxes don't result in more income to the treasury (just ask the state of Michigan) -- but rather create a quieting effect on the kinds of investment that is necessary to create jobs and fuel market growth. The "dreaded" Bush tax cuts did not fall on the backs of the middle class -- but rather have disproportionately hit the wealthy instead. And the cuts in dividend and capital gains taxes have been shown to be a tremendous engine for economic growth -- leading to more treasury dollars, not less.

It may not make good political theater, but the cry should be "tax cuts for the rich" -- because the old adage that "a rising tide lifts all boats" is true.