November 20, 2008
Washington, D.C.
Political Update
My apologies for a delay in this issue of the Update… Everyone knows what happened on November 4; so I took my time to get inside the results to be able to make some cogent comments about the election…
Actually, today, the final electoral vote count is in… Missouri was the one state whose popular vote for the office of President had not been officially called. Today, it has been determined. For the first time in decades, Missouri voted for the loser in the Presidential race. After taking its time to get the absentee, provisional and other extraordinary ballots counted, the state has reported a final count with John McCain winning it and its eleven electoral votes by just a whisker.
With the decision earlier this week that Mark Begich defeated Sen. Ted Stevens in Alaska, there are still two United States Senate races up in the air. Minnesota is scrambling to recount its extremely close Senate race… not expecting to get that finished until December. Georgia has a run-off between the Republican incumbent Saxbe Chambliss and his Democratic challenger, Jim Martin, when no candidate got the 50% plus one vote margin that state law there requires. That will happen on December 2.
The two seats in play will determine whether the Democrats achieve their coveted goal of 60 members. That is the magic number to overcome filibusters and control the agenda in the Senate. And that is a BIG deal.
In the House of Representative, there are still a half-dozen “uncalled” races; some going to recounts. There the current count is 256 Democrats and 175 Republicans, for a net increase for the Democrats of at least 20 seats.
The late count in Missouri is much like the Pittsburg-San Diego football game last weekend. The fact that the officials made a big error on the final play and disallowed a Steeler touchdown did not affect the winner or the standings. But to an awful lot of bettors in Vegas who took Pittsburgh to beat the spread, it was tragic.
In our own little contest to pick the winner and call his actual electoral vote count, we needed to see what happened to those eleven votes from Missouri. We had one entry that was perfect at 364 before Nebraska results gave one vote to President-Elect Barack Obama. But if the eleven votes from Missouri tipped his way, we would have had a different winner. So we waited.
One of the many wonders of the Obama campaign was that their planners and strategists would have won the contest, had they entered and if Missouri had turned blue. I am amazed at the accuracy of their targeting. You may recall that they suggested that they were going to expand the playing field and told people where they would go. When they did that, their projections appeared to be quite bold…How on earth could they win North Carolina and Indiana? But they did and they won every one of their projected turn-around states – except Missouri where it is just a few votes one way or the other.
The Obama/Democratic Campaign
I had the privilege of being involved in and observing presidential campaigns close up for many years. Some have been more effectively run than others… some have been downright terrible. But never have I, or any of my cronies, seen anything that would compare to the excellence of the campaign of Barack Obama and the other Democrats this year. It was a masterpiece in strategy, in the tactics they employed and the innovative techniques they brought to the table.
First, they had more money than anyone had ever raised… It was not an accident. From day one, they went after the small donor on the internet in ways that had never before been practical. The combination of the “rock star” popularity of Obama combined with the most sophisticated and aggressive state of the art internet technology brought in money day after day after day. Together with their traditional fund raising efforts, they will have brought in nearly three quarters of a Billion dollars in just less than two years of operation. The internet brought in over $100 million in small contributions in the month of September alone.
In their political work they developed a data base of more than 3 million contributors and more than ten million supporters, volunteers and organizers. This enormous resource base allowed them to use that technology edge to develop the broadest and most sophisticated campaign organization on the ground throughout the entire nation. It operated on a grand scale in all of the targeted states and many more. It put people to work selling the candidate to voters one-on- one everywhere the Obama campaign thought it needed to win. Everything was organized, planned, computerized and managed effectively. It was like a piece of art.
Now, what to do with this army of supporters? That is exactly what the campaign manager David Pflouffe asked them this week. The Obama people know what they have and what it can do to help the new President govern. The questions relate mainly to the structure of its after-life… Should it be stitched into the Democratic National Committee to support it? Should it be free-standing as a foundation or action committee? There are many options and many opportunities. Be assured, this resource will be used in some imaginative manner to help Barack Obama lead and challenge the people he will govern.
“What Do We Do Now”
Remember that great line Robert Redford spoke in the final scene of “The Candidate” after he had won the hotly contested race for Senate from California? He looked up at his campaign manager and said, “What Do We Do Now”
Well, that was not a problem for the Obama team. It turns out that they were indeed measuring the curtains in the Federal Government in the days before the election. They had developed a “transition in waiting” organized, and fully ready to deploy and begin the big job of managing the enormous tasks associated with the transfer of powers in just two and one-half months.
The tasks are daunting. There are more than 8,000 jobs listed in the Plum Book that the General Services Administration published on November 5. That book, officially “Policy and Supporting Positions of the United States Government” is the bible for the team that needs to find, vet and hire these top officials who will make up the Obama Administration. It lists positions from Cabinet officers to Director of the Montana State Farmers Home Administration. It is complete and daunting.
But in addition to the personnel task, there are the development of policies and programs that the President-elect will make a part of his Presidency. Beginning the interactivity with his fellow leaders of the world takes much of his time. On the day after his election, President-elect Obama took calls from nine national leaders of our closest allies.
And then, there is the nation’s business. This is a unique interregnum. Seldom, if ever are there so many big challenges to our nation occurring during the time between the election and the Inaugural. In 1932, the last time that we had an economic challenge like we have this year, the economic damage done during this period was severe and led to the change in the date of the Inauguration from March 4 to January 20.
President-elect Obama has made it clear that he has no authority yet. He has said that there is only one president at a time and that he expects to respect President Bush’s responsibilities and not try to impede or impact on presidential actions.
Unfortunately, Bush has become the lamest of lame duck presidents. His moral authority is weak and his ability to influence even the Republican caucus in Congress has been lost. We just have to hold on and hope that our economy and our security can hold on until we get some leadership on January 20.
Congratulations to Jayne Loader of Cambridge – our Winner!
She was nearly perfect. When I went through the entries of our quadrennial contest, her entry jumped out. Jayne Loader had projected that Barack Obama would garner 364 Electoral votes… and that 258 Democrats would be elected to the 111th Congress. On that day, a couple of weeks ago, both numbers were correct.
But into this perfection, jumped the Second District of Nebraska. Under that states law that assigns its electoral votes by the winner of congressional districts, Obama won the traditionally Republican state’s only urban district. Then, there was the note in all of the result charts that the eleven votes from Missouri were not really official… they were still counting. It turns out that there was an entry from Christian Malard, a French television analyst, who suggested that Obama would get 375 votes… If Missouri went blue, he would been the winner, just one vote off of the total.
If I might make an observation about the contest entries – our entrants were quite cautious… Malard’s entry, out of dozens, that was the only one on the high side… and that he would have been exactly correct if the Obama picked up eleven Missouri votes. Everybody was cautious about their prognostications. Most entries projected under 300 total Obama votes. But only three entries thought Sen. John McCain would win.
Schedule
Monday, December 15 – Electors meet in their state capitals to select President
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 – Presidential Inaugural
Meanwhile, In Iraq
Lest we forget, Americans keep dying and keep being injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. The official count as of November 15, 2008, of the dead in Iraq since our involvement began on March 23, 2003 is 4,201. There have been 627 Americans killed in Afghanistan since that war was begun in 2001. The Department of Defense says that more than 35,000 American service personnel have been wounded in these two theaters.
President-Elect Barack Obama repeated this week that he plans to call the military command into his office in the first days of his Presidency to determine a plan to withdraw American forces from Iraq as quickly as it is safe and sensible to do so.
President George W. Bush has now reached an agreement with the Government of Iraq to provide a legal basis for out continued occupation of that nation. The agreement has not yet been approved by the Iraqi parliament and, strangely enough, it will not be presented to our Congress for their approval. It seems that our President has been pushing hard to get this piece of business done on his watch and has made concessions in the negotiations that will severely hamper our troops safety and operational activity after January 1, 2009.
Unfortunately, one of the principal reasons for the withdrawal from Iraq is to free up troops to move into Afghanistan where our efforts are somewhat stalemated. More troops there are said to be necessary to stabilize the situation. We heard that before in Iraq, so I hope this is not a repeat performance. At least the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai is moving to achieve some sort of accord with the despicable Taliban. He is calling for discussions with their leaders to sort out a peaceful atmosphere in his country.
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Robert J. Keefe
Principal – Meridian Strategies, LLC
1920 L Street, NW, Suite 410 – Washington, D. C. 20036
Telephone: 202 223-8839 – Cell: 202 255-8161 – E mail: rkeefe@verizon.net
Past issues of Political Update available at www.bobkeefedc.com
