Midday open thread

• Christian Broadcast Network's David Brody:

  The fact that Barack Obama would show up at an Evangelical Church and take the tough questions is a credit to him. I mean he knew he was the visiting team so to speak yet he handled these questions like he has in the past: with relative ease [...]

  Overall the night was a success for Obama. He didn’t get put on the spot too much with the abortion questions. He handled the "Jesus" question about his faith with ease and maybe most important he looked comfortable up there.

  This wasn't a night for Obama to "win", but to remind people that he's not a Muslim Manchurian candidate, and in that regards, he had great success.

• Obama raised $7.8 million in San Francisco for his campaign and the DNC Sunday night in scaaaary San Francisco, where gay people live! Hopefully the trip reinforced some San Francisco values, like entrepreneurship, innovation, and tolerance. Those are good values.
• Poor Kristol, being forced to flack for a lying McCain campaign. Tom Tomorrow catches some creative rewriting:

  Kristol's latest column in the dead tree NY Times:

  NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on "Meet the Press" that "the Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context. ... What they’re putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama."

  That’s pretty astonishing, since there seems to be absolutely no basis for the charge. But the fact that Obama’s people made this suggestion means they know McCain outperformed him.

  Now the online version of that column:

  NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on "Meet the Press" that "the Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context. ... What they’re putting out privately is that McCain ... may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama."

  There’s no evidence that McCain had any such advantage. But the fact that Obama’s people made this suggestion means they know McCain outperformed him.

  So he essentially went from, "no way did McCain overhear" to "McCain didn't get any advantages from overhearing". Nice. The online version doesn't even catalog the changes from the print version, and the NY Times abets this dishonesty since in the era of Google, it's the online version that will endure.

• Was McCain's "cross in the dirt" story stolen/plagiarized from Alexander Solzhenitsyn? The evidence sure points in that direction.
• MN-Sen: Norm Coleman

  "If the convention wasn't in St. Paul, I wouldn't be at the convention."

• Poblano/Nate notes (with graphs!) that Clinton fared poorly against McCain while being attacked, but rose only after the RNC and Obama campaign ceased attacking her. Remember, in February of this year, the Obama campaign had pretty much won this thing, and stopped attacking Clinton to 1) focus its fire on McCain, and 2) stop needlessly antagonizing Clinton supporters. The RNC, for its own part, stopped attacking Clinton because it didn't want to further damager her. They wanted a competitive Democratic primary as long as possible.

  It's a point I made often at the time when people claimed Clinton was doing better against McCain than Obama -- it was easy for Clinton to look better when no one was dragging her name through the mud while Obama was getting the full Wright treatment.

  I have come around on Clinton. I think she would at least be a decent VP choice for Obama, and possibly an excellent choice.

  But let's not get into revisionist history. She remains a candidate with significant negatives and, when those negatives were being leaned upon, her electoral position was vulnerable.

  Personally, I still think those "significant negatives" would make her a terrible pick. Unfortunately, I'm resigned to Obama making a terrible pick with someone else anyway (Biden? Bayh? Kaine?), so if it's between one of those three terrible picks or Clinton, I throw my hands up in the air.

• Speaking of Nate, he has his latest list of "battleground states", ordered from tightest to widest gaps. These are pretty much the states Nate considers tossups: Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Montana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Iowa, and North Carolina.
• Gallup sez:

  Regardless of the exact timing, the voter is going to get two vice presidential nominations, and two sequences of four nights of party conventions -- all within the time period from now through Sept. 4.

  A few days after that, say about the weekend of Sept. 5-7, we'll know where things stand as a baseline and starting point for the sure-to-be-hyperactive fall campaign. Meanwhile, our Gallup Poll Daily tracking will monitor the ups and downs of the candidates as each day's new events unfold.

  And not until then will we know where we are starting from. (DemFromCT)

• Obama helps downticket, downticket helps Obama.

  While Mr. Obama could prove beneficial to House candidates by increasing turnout in urban communities and raising enthusiasm among young voters in college towns, party officials believe an association with known Democratic candidates down the ticket could pay off for Mr. Obama among people who frequent Wal-Mart and passed up college to work.

  "It is a two-way street," said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "There are going to be many districts where the Obama campaign helps our candidates, but our candidates are going to bring out people and we want to be sure they vote for Obama as well."

  After success with the program in special Congressional elections this year, the party is putting more money into what strategists call early voter persuasion, getting a jump on previous years in their push to identify Democratic voters and nail down their allegiance by providing background information and other material. It is distinct from voter turnout drives that will begin closer to the election.

  Planning began last November, and the committee has already spent $9 million, as much as was invested in the entire previous campaign season. Seven staff members oversee the national operation, compared with one in the 2006 cycle. The Democrats hope to record at least 13 million personal contacts with voters in 50 House districts before they are through.

• ID-Sen: The first debate of the general election for Idaho Senate is tonight, making Idaho (and U-Stream) history by being the first debate broadcast live, online. It's also significant because Republican candidate Jim Risch, as usual, has refused to participate. But Democrat Larry LaRocco and Independent Rex Rammell will be there. You can watch, and ask your questions, making it an interactive, online forum. Watch it tonight at 7:30 MT (10:30 ET) at LaRocco for Senate. [mcjoan]

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