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Joe the Plumber may never
have fancied himself the mascot of the Republican Party, but Tito Munoz seemed
fully prepared for the role.
Munoz showed up at a McCain rally in Woodbridge, Va.
last weekend dressed in a yellow hardhat and orange surveyor vest, decked out in
McCain-Palin flair and
sporting a sign that read “Construction Worker for McCain-Palin” on one side
and “Media—Tell the Whole Story!” on the other. During McCain’s stump speech,
Munoz was behind the candidate, alongside “Phil the Bricklayer” and “Rose the
Teacher.”
After McCain had left, Munoz planted himself a few yards
behind the press bleachers and started shouting about the media. He quickly
attracted a small crowd of reporters and fellow rally-goers. (Listen to audio of Munoz here and here, and see the Mother Jones video here.)
“Why you guys have to go and find every little thing that
Joe the Plumber is about?” he demanded. “How come you have not done the same
thing with Obama?”
If publicity was Munoz’s goal, it worked. National Review’s Byron York devoted
800 words to Munoz in a story about the “Joe the Plumber” phenomenon, which
received considerable
blog attention. The McCain campaign noticed, and two days later Sarah Palin
introduced "Tito the builder" into her stump speech.
“Tito is not pleased with how the Barack Obama campaign and
some of the media friends there have been roughing up Joe the Plumber,” Palin said
at a Colorado rally.
Is it really that easy to insert oneself into the campaign
storyline? Munoz’s case is worthy of a close read. Here are a few tips on how
to become a McCain campaign personality:
- Make Your Profession
Clear. Sarah Palin cannot shoehorn you into the “(name) the (profession)”
formula if she doesn’t know what you do. Blue-collar jobs are preferable but
not required. If your line of work involves a uniform, wear it. (Note: Party
City has hundreds of locations nationwide.)
- Choose a red-meat
issue. Choices include media bias, taxes, and William Ayers. No need to
confine yourself to one if the spirit moves you. Just let it flow.
- Find David Corn. The
bulk of Munoz’s tirade was directed at Mother
Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn, who provoked
him for several minutes with requests for facts to back-up his arguments. That
exchange got the crowd riled around Munoz, which attracted more people and more
reporters. If Corn isn’t present, any journalist willing to engage the mob will
suffice.
- Humility, humility. “I’m
just an ordinary person, like everybody,” Munoz told the crowd. “But I’m tired
of listening to the bias in the media. And today I make a decision to come and
support [McCain] and come and confront you guys.”
- Project. Munoz
was not without competition during his impromptu press-bashing press
conference. At one point, a taller man in a brown jacket directly behind
him—pictured here—briefly stole the spotlight when he started yelling that
“human life begins at conception, end of story.” Not to be outdone, Tito simply
out-shouted his competitor.
It worked for Tito. Meanwhile, Senate candidate and former Virginia governor Jim
Gilmore stood twenty feet away, looking lonely.
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See all Swift Boat Watch entries here.
Who They Are:
Health Care for America
Now
Purpose: To
support quality, affordable health care for all Americans.
Director: The national campaign manager is
Richard Hirsch, previously executive director of Citizen Action, an
organization that helped the poor find insurance in New York state.
Funding: The
organization has received a $10
million dollar grant from the Atlantic Philanthropies as well as $500,000 a
piece from their 16 steering
committee members, which include MoveOn.org,
the Center for American Progress
Action Fund, and the recently
targeted community-organizing group ACORN.
Cost: $1 million,
part of a larger $4.3 million dollar ad buy that will air similar ads against
congressional candidates.
Where It Ran: The
ad aired on national cable and major markets in Ohio for two weeks starting Oct. 8.
Claims: The ad is
narrated by a woman with cancer who says that John McCain’s health care plan
could cause 20 million people lose their employer-provided health insurance
plans. Those with existing conditions like her, she says, would not be able to
get a new plan.
Accuracy: John
McCain’s health care
plan would give families a $5,000 dollar tax refundable tax credit to
purchase health insurance while reducing incentives that encourage employers to
provide their employees with coverage. The main thrust of the ad – that 20
million people would lose their insurance if John McCain’s plan were instituted
– is supported by a recent
paper published in the journal Health
Affairs and a follow-up
report (PDF) by the Economic Policy Institute. These studies argue that, with
fewer tax incentives, fewer businesses will offer insurance plans. The
Commonwealth Fund has documented
the difficulty of finding health care individually after losing an
employer-sponsored plan and the Kaiser Family Foundation including in the case
of breast-cancer
survivors (PDF) and other individuals with pre-existing conditions. However,
another
recent study (PDF), by the health system consultant HSI, argued that McCain’s plan would in
fact reduce the number of uninsured people by 20 million. And a Tax
Policy Center report (PDF) lands in the middle, agreeing that McCain’s proposal
would cause 20 million to lose or leave their employer-sponsored program but
saying also that overall the proposal would decrease the number of uninsured by
one million as 21 million bought non-employer-sponsored plans, including some
of those who lost their employer-sponsored plans.
Factcheck.org
has examined McCain’s proposal and found a consensus among health care experts
that McCain’s proposal would most likely cause employers to reduce the coverage
offered. Their report also stated that while some would benefit from the
adjustment of incentives, the old and unhealthy would probably get the short
end of the stick, as Jane Bryant Quinn argued in Newsweek.
Swift Boat Rating:
Several studies state that around 20 million people could
lose their employer-sponsored coverage, though the ad doesn’t mention that many
would likely get non-employer plans. That being said, many health care experts agree
with the assertion that McCain’s plan would make it harder for people like the woman
portrayed in the ad to secure health insurance.
Background: Health
Care for America Now is a coalition of non-profits and public officials. Obama
has signed their statement of
principles.
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See all Swift Boat Watch entries here.
Who They Are: Service Employees International Union
Purpose: To promote the interests and values of laborers. In this election, they support Barack Obama.
President: Andy Stern
Funding: According to FEC reports, a lot of funding comes from group employees themselves, including Anna Burger and Andy Stern, who each contribute around $300 a month. Other funding comes from the union's two million members.
Cost of the Ad: $1 million
Where It Ran: Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Oct. 6 through Oct. 10, 2008.
Related Groups: To see SEIU connections, check out this graphic from the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Claims: John McCain's health care plan will raise taxes and deny coverage for pre-existing conditions such as cancer. McCain will also tax health benefits.
Accuracy: The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that McCain's health plan would not raise taxes for most families and that it would most negatively affect high-income earners. McCain's Web site states that those with pre-existing conditions will "get the high-quality coverage they need." But it doesn't say how that will happen. The McCain plan will encourage people to buy health insurance plans from private companies instead of through their employer, and these private companies would all have different rules about pre-existing conditions. McCain proposes a family tax credit of $5,000; the average cost of health care for a family of four was $12,100 in 2007. If an employee does not purchase an employer-sponsored health care plan, employers could opt to pay the health benefits—an average of $8,800—to the employee as wages. Families could use this extra income to make up the difference between the tax credit and insurance premium. But McCain would remove the tax exemption from this amount, which would then be taxed as income.
Background: SEIU has historically been one of the most active groups in presidential elections, and spent $12 million in 2004. According to the FEC, SEIU has spent nearly $20 million to support Obama and almost $2 million to oppose McCain as of Oct. 9.
Swift Boat Rating:
It's fair to say that McCain will tax health benefits, but the other two claims are a bit off. McCain's plan does not regulate private companies' stances on covering pre-existing conditions—it would leave that up to each individual company. Nor would his plan raise taxes for middle-class families—the $5,000 tax credit would be enough to subsidize the majority of health care plans.
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Did Obama miss the best pitch he's going to see in this debate? The second question, from a man named Oliver Clark, asked the candidates: "Well, senators, through this economic crisis, most of the people that I know have had a difficult time. And through this bailout package, I was wondering what it is that's going to actually help those people out."
McCain responded first, giving an airy answer about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—institutions, he suggested, the questioner "may never even have heard of ... before this crisis"—and taking a snipe at Obama for his contributions from those institutions. At this point, the moment felt eerily analogous to the most famous question from the 1992 town hall debate below, in which a young woman asked the three candidates how the national debt had personally affected them. (She probably meant the recession.) George H.W. Bush's response (about 20 seconds into the video) was muddled and aloof, and Bill Clinton pounced on the opportunity to give a personal, compassionate-sounding response (2:30 in the video). The exchange was instant presidential-debate lore.
As Jack Shafer wrote in Slate today, Clinton's '92 playbook has more than a few valuable pages in it, and Obama's answer hardly lived up. After a mini economics lesson about frozen credit markets and their effect on business, he flipped the question into an attack on McCain's support for deregulation. The man-of-the-people card may not be Obama's strong point, but one can't help feel that he missed an essential opportunity to connect with voters.
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See all Swift Boat Watch entries here.
Who They Are: WakeUpWalMart.com
Purpose: To change Wal-Mart's business strategy and the way the corporation treats employees. In this election, they oppose John McCain.
Campaign Director: Meghan Scott
Funding: United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
Where It Ran: Aired three times during the vice-presidential debate on CNN and MSNBC in Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
Related Groups: UFCW
Claims: 1.6 million women are charging Wal-Mart with pay discrimination. When equal-pay legislation came to the Senate, McCain "helped defeat it."
Accuracy: In the largest class action suit to date, 1.6 million women sued Wal-Mart for discrimination regarding pay and promotions in 2004. McCain opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in April that would have made it easier for people to sue their employees on the basis of discrimination. McCain did not vote on the bill but voiced his opposition on the campaign trail.
Background: UFCW created the group in 2005 to directly challenge Wal-Mart. Although the group has aired one previous ad attacking McCain's economic plan, it has focused almost exclusively on Wal-Mart in the past. According to the Federal Election Commission, UFCW has spent $596,570 in support of Obama so far this election cycle.
Swift Boat Rating: 0 boats
The facts in the ad are all correct: 1.6 million women sued Wal-Mart, and McCain opposed the bill that would have made it easier for women to sue employers on the basis of discrimination.
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See all Swift Boat Watch entries here.
Who They Are: Citizens for Open and Responsive Government
Purpose: To combat what they see as unfair attacks on candidates or unacceptable campaign activity. The group has opposed state-level Republican candidates in the past, but in this presidential election they support McCain.
Director: Carlton Saffa
Funding: Small individual donations.
Cost of the Ad: Prefer not to release.
Where It Ran: Colorado, Sept. 22-26
Related Groups: None
Claims: John McCain cannot use a keyboard or computer because of war injuries sustained in Vietnam. This is in response to the Obama campaign’s "Still" ad, which mocks McCain’s inability to use a computer or send an e-mail. The spot also quotes Joe Biden calling the initial Obama ad “terrible.”
Accuracy: The claim that McCain cannot use a computer because of his war injuries isn’t entirely true. In an interview with the New York Times, McCain said he is learning how to use a computer, which suggests he can use one, at least to a limited extent. (Plus, many people physically worse-off than McCain manage to use computers.) Biden did call the ad “terrible,” but later issued a follow-up statement saying that he had been reacting to press accounts without actually seeing the ad.
Background: Saffa says CORG decided to film the ad because it felt the issue was being ignored by the mainstream media. Lt. Col. Mike Fairhead, the veteran in the video, was also injured in the Vietnam War.
Swift Boat Rating: 
Using a veteran who also sustained war injuries is a bit melodramatic. Does he even know McCain? Obama’s ad did mock John McCain’s inability to use a computer, but it didn’t mock his disabilities. The ad was using his computer illiteracy, along with other examples, to argue that McCain is out of touch with Americans.
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Click here for the first installment of Swift Boat Watch.
Who They Are: Brave New PAC
Purpose: Brave New Films, which produces the PAC’s ads, is a 501(c)4 nonprofit. In the 2008 presidential election, it opposes John McCain.
President: Robert Greenwald
Funding: Democracy for America paid for half of the ad.
Cost of the Ad: $50,000, according to the group and an FEC report (PDF) listing expenditures by both Brave New PAC and Democracy for America.
Where It Ran: Nationally on MSNBC and CNN, for three days.
Related Groups: Brave New Films, Democracy for America
Claims: A former POW and colleague of McCain’s states that being a prisoner of war is “not a good prerequisite for a president.” He then talks about McCain’s “volatile” temper. McCain “is not somebody I’d want to see with his finger near the red button,” he says.
Accuracy: The ad is mostly opinion, so there isn’t a whole lot of fact-checking to be done. Butler wrote an opinion piece for the military back in March in which he explains his relationship with McCain at the Naval Academy and at the Hanoi Hilton and why he won’t be voting for him come November. But McCain’s temper has made more than a few appearances in the media during his campaigns. (See here, here, and here.)
Background: This ad began as a four-minute video but was trimmed down to a palatable 30-second spot for TV. The group mostly relies on viral videos, rather than big TV buys, to get publicity .
Swift Boat Rating:
It’s reminiscent of the Swift Boat ad four years ago that challenged candidate John Kerry’s war record. The statements made in the anti-Kerry ad, however, were found to be false or exaggerated. It’s hard to fact-check one guy’s opinion.
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Several blogs and publications have recently attempted to calculate the odds that John McCain will live another four or eight years, bringing an actuary’s dispassion to the delicate subject of the Republican nominee’s age. Based on the Social Security Administration’s life expectancy tables, the Times Online concluded that McCain will live another 13 years, while a Daily Kos diarist calculated that McCain’s odds of dying naturally during his first term were 15 percent. His odds of not surviving two terms were nearly 1-in-3. Politico arrived at similar figures.
Actuaries get rightfully nervous when journalists get their hands on these tables. The odds that a 72-year-old male will die in the next year are calculated from large data sets and apply rather poorly to individuals. To get a better picture of how both McCain and Barack Obama fare, an actuarial firm in Atlanta called Bragg Associates made a series of calculations tailored to the health records that both candidates made public. Rather than estimating life expectancy, Bragg specializes in “health expectancy,” the ability to function lucidly and without assistance—the kind of qualities one hopes for in a president. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, Bragg originally concluded that McCain has 8.4 years of good health ahead of him while Barack Obama has 21.9.
At Slate’s request, Bragg fleshed out those predictions into a series of probabilities that the two candidates will remain healthy in office year by year. Their findings are below. (Mouse over a data point to see the percentage value.)
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Stand outside any campaign event and you'll see profiteers hocking their wares. Bumper stickers, playing cards, pins, posters, T-shirts, even pet-wear—if it's got Obama's face on it, chances are someone will pay for it. But will this merchandise be worth anything after Election Day?
If the recent past is any indication, no. Representatives from Sotheby's and Christie's I spoke with couldn't recall auctioning off contemporary campaign memorabilia recently. In 1991, Sotheby's did offer up a collection of 20,000 election mementos that had been estimated to sell for $2.5 million to $3.5 million. Nobody made a single bid.
But this election could be different. Daryle Lambert of Illinois, an antiques and collectibles dealer for the past 45 years and author of the book 31 Steps to your Millions in Antiques & Collectibles, believes items collected during this campaign season will yield sky-high returns because of the historic significance of the candidates. "This election by far has more appeal to the collector than any in my lifetime," said the 67-year-old collector, who offers advice on collecting items on his blog. Lambert said that if he were attending the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, he would take home memorabilia by the truckload. But if space is limited, the savvy collector should look for the following items.
1. Autographs: Anything signed by the candidates will start to appreciate immediately, Lambert says. He just bought a signed photo of Ronald Reagan for $300 and estimates its worth to be closer to $800; and his company is currently selling a land grant signed by Patrick Henry in the 18th century for an asking price of $4,850. So if you find a cancelled check signed by Obama or McCain's high-school yearbook, hold on to it.
2. Artwork: A standard-issue campaign button doesn't command much in the current marketplace. (Bids on eBay start at 99 cents.) But a hand-crafted pin could be valuable. Massachusetts-based artist Brian Campbell paints campaign pins with pop-culture allusions to the candidates and their spouses, such as a Beatles-themed Michelle Obama pin, an Indiana Jones-themed McCain one titled "Arizona John," and the Barack Obama one shown above. Some of these sell on eBay with starting bids around $60. A Hillary Clinton pin based on Eugène Delacroix's 19th-century painting Liberty Leading the People sold at auction for $1,149 through political memorabilia dealer Anderson Auction.
3. Personal items: If you see McCain drop a handkerchief or Obama lose a flag lapel pin, snag it like it's a home-run ball at the World Series. "The closer it is to the source, the quicker the value will appreciate," said Lambert.
4. Scandal souvenirs: "The things that become collectible are the things that destroy campaigns," Lambert said, citing as examples anything connected to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who threw a wrench in John Kerry's 2004 campaign; or former candidate John Edwards, in light of the recent revelation of his affair with Rielle Hunter. So if something goes horribly wrong in Denver or St. Paul, Minn., try to get some physical remembrance of the wreckage.
Keep in mind, though, that the majority of campaign memorabilia on eBay starts at $20 or less. So collecting election merchandise for the purpose of reselling it might not be the best use of your time. Those willing to pay large sums of money for presidential memorabilia tend to prefer that of presidents like Lincoln, Jefferson, and Washington, according to Christie's. Plus, there's no telling how much something will be worth. Sure, this fall's campaign junk could eventually sell for thousands at an auction—or for pennies at your next yard sale.
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When Slate launched the "Choose Your Own Running Mate" game two weeks ago, we invited readers to nominate their favorite candidates and write a few sentences about why they felt their pick would be an ideal campaign-trail companion for John McCain or Barack Obama.
Below, the thousand-plus reader comments are arranged as tag clouds, with the size of the word proportional to the frequency with which readers used them to describe their ideal running mate.
While words like experience and American cropped up frequently in both Democratic and Republican nominations, readers tended to focus their choices on people with qualities complementary to Obama and McCain.
Words that derive from the same stem—economic and economy, for example—are combined here. In the case of white, the word was referencing the White House in 25 of the 89 uses for Obama's recommended running mate and seven of the 14 uses for McCain's.
Barack Obama's Running Mate
John McCain's Running Mate
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Results from the last several Republican primaries force one to occasionally stop for a fact-check: Mike Huckebee did drop out of the race, right? Like, almost three months ago?
Or more to the point: Is anyone in the McCain camp worried that an opponent who called it off on March 4 is still winning 10 percent of the vote? Or that their guy is only winning about three-quarters of the vote, largely against defunct candidates?
With 100 percent of precincts reporting in Kentucky, McCain won 72.3 percent of the vote. Huckabee raked in 8.2 percent, and Ron Paul, who’s actually still in the race, won 6.8 percent. All told, non-McCain candidates won nearly 28 percent of the vote in the Republican contest. By contrast, Barack Obama won 30 percent in the Democratic contest.
Two weeks ago, Huckabee won 10 percent in Indiana and 12.1 percent in North Carolina.
To be fair, the presumptive nominee doesn’t always receive overwhelming margins of the vote after the contest is functionally over. In May of 2004, John Edwards won 13.4 percent in West Virginia and 11.2 percent in Indiana, well after John Kerry had it wrapped up. Perhaps this is the voters’ way of notching their choice for a running mate?
And look how well that turned out for those two.
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For those Democrats who worry that the protracted primary battle is exposing deep divides in the party’s base, Republican-style winner-take-all primaries are looking more attractive. For at least one Republican, the opposite is true: A Democratic-style primary that awards delegates proportially is looking pretty good right now. His name is Mitt Romney.
Several commentators have pointed out that, if the Democrats played by Republican rules, Hillary Clinton would hold a commanding lead in pledged delegates. (Democratic primaries mete out pledged delegates proportionally based on total votes, while most Republican primaries heap all their delegates on the winner.) Less attention has been given to the opposite question: What if the Republicans awarded their delegates like Democrats do?
To answer that question, Trailhead crunched the numbers from the earlier Republican primaries, back when Romney and Mike Huckabee were still in the race. We assumed that delegates are awarded in rough proportion to the candidates’ overall performance in the state. In reality, this is usually done on a district-by-district basis, but as we have noted on our Delegate Calculator, estimating delegates based on statewide results has a margin of error of only 3 percent.
Between Iowa and Super Tuesday, there were 17 Republican primaries that operated under winner-take-all rules (or something similar). In those states, John McCain won 649 delegates, while Huckabee won 110 and Romney won 105. Note that McCain averaged 36 percent of the popular vote, while Romney averaged 34 percent. The lopsidedness in delegates comes from the fact that McCain won big states like New York and California.
If we postulate a Democratic-style proportional system, McCain would have come out of Feb. 5 with an estimated 336 delegates to Romney’s 291 and Huckabee’s 164.
In the 12 caucuses during that same period, Romney considerably outperformed McCain, netting 188 delegates to McCain’s 55 and Huckabee’s 97.
So here’s the score through Feb. 5—two days before Romney threw in the towel:
|
McCain |
Romney |
Huckabee |
| Reality |
704 |
293 |
207 |
| Proportional |
391 |
479 |
261 |
If I were Romney, I’d be particularly bitter about California. He won 35 percent of the vote there to McCain’s 42 percent but got only 12 delegates to McCain’s 158. (The winner-take-all system is still done by district, so it appears Romney won at least a plurality in a small number of districts there.)
As the New York Times’ David Brooks wrote yesterday, the Democratic primary has exposed a deep divide in the party between urban, affluent liberals and more rural, working-class Democrats. It’s worth remembering that, just a few months ago, one of the guiding narratives in this election was how deeply divided the Republican party’s various factions were over who to support for their nominee. If the Republicans had a Democratic-style election process, those divides would be bitterly evident. It’s a strong testament to the role of election rules that we are now so focused on the other party’s identity crisis.
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With nearly half of precincts reporting, Trailhead is prepared to cautiously call the Republican primary for John McCain, who currently leads the state with 72 percent of the vote against one man who dropped out 49 days ago and another who rarely tops 6 percent in national polls.
Former candidate Mike Huckabee, who still appeared on the ballot even though he dropped out after McCain clinched a majority of delegates after the March 4 primaries, is pulling down 12 percent of the vote, while libertarian-minded candidate Ron Paul is drawing about 16 percent. For a few sweet moments, it appeared that Armstrong County would come through for Paul, whose small but ardent base has made him a significant presence on the Internet, if not in the polls. But that light-pink blip on CNN’s county-by-county map quickly evaporated as more results registered.
Candidates like McCain with no mathematical chance of losing the election are naturally less likely to draw hordes of supporters to the ballot booth, while Paul’s supporters are a determined bunch who seem indefatigable. The one in eight people who still showed up to vote for Huckabee are more puzzling and perhaps do not bode well for McCain’s odds in Pennsylvania in the general election. Then again, Pennsylvania, while not overwhelmingly blue, hasn’t elected a Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988.
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Sure, exit polls are notoriously unreliable and they don’t matter, but they’re all the data we have for a while. So, let’s delve into the juicy stats from the surprisingly close GOP race in Virginia:
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At
least one poll leading up to today's event showed McCain making strides among Evangelicals, but it looks like those numbers were very exaggerated. Half of the state’s voters were born-again Christians or evangelicals, and they favored Huckabee over McCain by 40 points.
- Sixty-one percent of voters said McCain was most qualified to be commander in chief, but 30 percent of that bloc still voted for Mike Huckabee anyway.
- Sixty-six percent of voters consider themselves conservatives (rather than moderates). Conservatives favored Huckabee over McCain by 23 points.
- Ninety-three percent of the Republican electorate was white. Sixty-one percent of Democratic voters were white.
- Sixty percent of Republicans said they listen to conservative talk radio. Huckabee led among those voters by 12 points.
- Pro-life Republicans are still favoring Huckabee over McCain (56 percent to 35 percent), while pro-choicers continue to ally themselves with McCain (64 percent to 24 percent).
We offer our usual disclaimer that these numbers can change. All stats taken from CNN’s stats.