General Wesley Clark, former Senators Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.), Max Cleland (D-Ga.), and Jon Stoltz, Chairman of VoteVets.org, held a conference call today on the state of veterans running in the elections. Stoltz said “with our races this cycle, not only do we feel that we’re going to defend all our incumbents, but we feel we have a great shot to pick up 5 or 6 seats.”
General Clark emphasized fully funding veterans health care and education, “particularly at a time when so few of us are paying any price in this war… and there’s a declining number of people who’ve have military experience in Congress.” Clark said, “we need to do a better job at bringing younger veterans into the political process, and especially giving them a chance to run as democrats.”
VoteVets.org has endorsed several candidates who are veterans, raising thousands of dollars for their candidates running for U.S. Congress. The group’s endorsed candidates are: John Boccieri, Ohio-16, Charlie Brown, California-4, Mike Lumpkin, California-52, Ashwin Madia, Minnesota-3 , Eric Massa, New York-29, Walt Minnick, Idaho-1, Jill Morgenthaler, Illinois-6, Gary Peters, Michigan-9, John Murtha, Pennsylviania-12, Steve Sarvi, Minnesota-2, Jim Martin, Georgia – U.S. Senate, and Rick Noriega, Texas – U.S. Senate, as well as incumbents Reps. Patrick Murphy, Joe Sestak, Chris Carney, and Tim Walz.

A discussion at the Brookings Institute focused on campaign effects of the money, ads and mobilization of the 2008 presidential election.
Both campaigns broke records and raised a combined total of $1 billion, said Anthony Corrado, a fellow at the Brookings Institute. While McCain’s campaign was well-funded, it was dwarfed by Obama’s campaign, which raised more money than John Kerry’s and George Bush’s 2004 presidential campaigns combined.
In order to compete with Obama, McCain had to rely heavily on the Republican party to run advertisements, said Corrado. Thus, McCain had less control over the messages of the ad. Overall the Republican ads took a negative tone and also attacked other Democrats running for office, making them appear more partisan than Obama’s ads.
The overall increase in campaign financing and the huge advantage that Barack Obama has isn’t troubling to political scientists, said Larry Bartels, director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. “To put [it] into historical comparison,” said Bartles, “if you go back to before the reforms 1970s, it was quite common for Republican presidential candidates to have two-to-one funding advantages over their Democratic opponents…to gauge the effect of that on the election outcomes, it looks like that contributed something like three percentage points to the average Republican vote margin.”

The Obama-Biden campaign today announced a very confident and committed position in the presidential election. With several million volunteers around the country. the Obama-Biden campaign manager, David Plouffe, said “we like what we’re seeing in all the states with the early vote.”
Today the campaign released two 30 second TV ads in Arizona, North Dakota and Georgia. Plouffe said that even though the McCain-Palin campaign has criticized the Obama-Biden campaign about heavy advertising, “the McCain spending levels this week have been quite high. In the Tampa market, they’re spending over 5,000 points of television, which may be the most amount of television ever bought in a political race.”
Through advertising, voter contact, and resources, Plouffe said he feels the Obama-Biden campaign is doing everything they need to do in the swing-states. Plouffe also said the campaign is organizing polling information at popular locations that youths hang out at in the swing states.
Plouffe said that in the tossup state of Nevada, 43% of democrats voting early are new or sporadic. In North Carolina, 19% of democrats voting early never voted in an election before. In Florida, 1/4 of sporadic voting democrats have voted early. Plouffe said the campaign is putting special focus on voters who recently committed to Obama, because they’re known as “sticky” and still vulnerable to vote for McCain. Even though the campaign feels confident in their state of the race, Plouffe said this does not take away from “the fierce urgency of trying to win Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Florida, and Ohio.”

The Advancement Project held a media briefing today concerning voting issues and victories around the country. Communications Director Sabrina E. Williams explained the need to remove obstacles for voters prior to election day because America has “over 13,000 separate systems and rules” based on states and counties that can confuse and distract voters. Judith A. Browne-Dianis is the Co-Director of the Advancement Project and stated that she was concerned about the “unprepared infrastructure” of the polling places because of the expected historical rates of turnout. She outlined the negative consequences of provisional ballots that are almost always not counted anyway, as well as the matching bills that show eligible voters as only those people whose registration form addresses match those of the Department of Motor Vehicles. In states like Michigan, foreclosure lists have become an issue where voters are being told that they are ineligible to vote because their house is in foreclosure. According to Browne-Dianis, in Virginia, Governor Tim Kaine has not requested help from the Department of Justice and the polling places and poll workers are not prepared for election day. In some polling places there are over 350 voters per machine, which will mean longer lines and that voters are more likely to leave without voting. Kaine has expressed that long lines should be expected, but the Advancement Project and its allies have asked for paper ballots and an extension of voting hours. The Republican National Committee has publicly stated that they oppose both of these measures.
Edward A. Hailes, Jr. is a senior attorney for the Advancement Project. He highlighted some of the victories in the past week for voters around the country. In Colorado, for example, thousands of registration forms were deemed incomplete because of an unchecked box. As election officials realized just how many voters were being unlisted, they realized it was because the applicants needed to give their social security number and check a box, but most people were just giving the number. Election officials have since sent letters to over 1,400 people telling them that they are still eligible to vote. Poll worker training was also examined by the Advancement Project and was found lacking. Instead, the Advancement Project has made “cheat sheets of information” that will be necessary for specific issues that may occur on election day.
Elizabeth Westfall is also a senior attorney for the Advancement Project and she discussed the legal battles that have been happening in battleground states like Ohio and Florida. The Secretary of State of Florida, specifically, has decided to enforce the “No Match Law” that requires accurate matches of address from the DMV and voter registration forms. This leaves more than 12,000 eligible voters without the ability to vote. However, since this law was passed, election officials in over five counties has “parted ways from the Secretary of State” and are allowing these disenfranchised voters to vote. Westfall called this an “encouraging step in the right direction.”

“We want a level playing field with a fair conversation,” said Burns Strider concerning the recent organization of the Democrats as a party that will be able to use their faith and religion like the Republicans have over the past twenty years. The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Religion and Ethics Newsweekly held a discussion about the role of religion in the 2008 election season and how it has differed from previous elections. Strider, a member of the panel, was the Director of Faith Outreach for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and has watched the Republicans lose their former comfortableness in speaking about their faith publicly. Now the Democrats have organized positions such as his, to help religion become a more talked about and present topic on the minds of candidates.
Julian Zelizer, another member of the panel, is a professor of history and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. Zelizer said that the “crisis of the Bush presidency has been equivalent to a crisis for religious groups.” He also compared the current shift of political strength from conservatives to liberals to Reagan’s usurpation of the religious discussion, only in reverse. Both men believed that the evangelical base is a cultural one and has thus been divided by this election. Also, unlike the usual dependence of values voters to support the conservative vote, the economy has taken center-stage as the issue at hand, and many people, conservatives and liberals, are voting Democratic.
Despite the ease that the Democrats have found, particularly Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama, when speaking about their faith, many evangelical Christians are still voting for Sen. McCain because issues like abortion and same-sex marriage are considered deal breakers.

“Nuclear energy is not just another way to boil water,” said Charles
Ferguson, Phillip D. Reed senior fellow for science and technology at
the Council on Foreign Relations. Ferguson was part of a panel at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace discussion addressing
concerns about the “Nuclear Renaissance” being “glamorized” in the
next administration.
Sharon Squassoni, a senior associate in the Nonproliferation Program,
said, “to reduce dependency on foreign oil, nuclear power is not the
way… Nuclear energy only produces electricity, for now. This
inherently limits its ability to substitute for oil. In the U.S., oil
is only used for about 1.6 percent of electricity generation. When you
look at oil producing nations in the Middle East, a lot more of their
electricity generation comes from oil—it’s about in the 30 percent
range.”
Squassoni argued that in order to pursue nuclear energy, we’ll have to
live with foreign dependence. Squassoni said this is due to “the
location of uranium and the structure of nuclear fuel supply. It’s not
just uranium mining and milling. Its conversion, fuel fabrication, and
enrichment, so the structure of the nuclear supply industry is very
much concentrated in a hand full of suppliers. ”
Dr. Alan Hanson, Executive Vice President of Technologies and Used
Fuel Management of AREVA NC Inc., believes we need to diversify our
fuel supply between countries around the world. When we build nuclear
plants in foreign countries, Hanson said we should “B.O.O.: Build,
Own, Operate,” meaning until we can train their workers adequately and
with environmentally friendly culture, we should maintain operation.
This cooperation would require global interdependence on nuclear
energy.
Hanson said since a large portion of the funding for nuclear energy
comes from financing, our economy might make it hard to accomplish
such measures. He said we won’t really know the cost, competitive or
not, until after they’re built. This requires a lot of confidence in
the next administration, whose leading candidates have somewhat
similar policies on the matter.
Ferguson explained that while Obama and McCain have rather similar
policies on the need for constructing and renewing more nuclear
reactors in the next couple of decades, McCain has more specific goals
of how many reactors and where. Ferguson said the main factor they
differ on is finding nuclear waste repositories. While McCain supports
the nuclear waste repository in the Yucca Mountain ridge, Obama does
not. Ferguson also said McCain supports a market based decision on
fuel supply, while Obama wants to put funding into diversifying fuel
sources.

Citizen advocacy organization Common Cause has identified a series of concerns surround the upcoming election.
“Probably the biggest problem we’ve seen this election is troubles with people’s voter registration, where they’ll be going to the polls thinking that they are registered and told ‘sorry, we don’t have your name on the list’,” said Derek Cressman, Regional Director of State Operations for Western States for Common Cause.
Cressman partially attributes this to new voter verification policies, such as Florida’s hardline policy which states that voter registration data must exactly match other state information.
According to Cressman, there have been some instances when voters have been wrongfully removed from registration lists.
“We’re also particularly worried that in the final days before the election we’ll see practices that are known as voter challenges, where there’ll be partisan operatives at polling places challenging a voter’s eligibility.”
Cressman said that the organization is convinced that there are thousands of legitimate voters that have been wrongfully denied the ability to vote.
President of Common Cause Bob Edgar says that the organization has mobilized against these threats by sending thousands to work for the cause of fair elections and establishing the hotline “866-OurVote”, where voters can ask questions and confirm their registration status.

John Danforth, former U.S. Senator and Co-Chair of the McCain-Palin Honest and Open Election Committee, described the conduct of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) as “particularly outrageous,” and offered recommendations for a fair election. These included having ACORN submit their database to election authorities, reporting canvassers who turned in false information, and having the Department of Justice send criminal lawyers along with the initially planned civil rights lawyers to battleground states.
“Some say ‘well, the presence of lawyers throughout the country is itself intimidation’. We don’t understand how it can be viewed as intimidation if lawyers from the criminal division show up, but not when lawyers from the civil division showed up,” said Danforth during a McCain-Palin conference call.
“These are not people who appear in windbreakers that say FBI on the back. These are simply attorneys who are making sure the process is working well.”
Danforth noted the seriousness of the allegations against ACORN.
“When the registration system is subverted to the tune of 400,000 applications submitted by one organization, that really undermines the whole process of conducting elections.”
According to Danforth, the McCain campaign has reached out to the Obama campaign to find a joint solution to voter fraud concerns, but have been essentially been “stiffed”.

The Heritage Foundation held a discussion about the post-Bush transition period in response to Senator and Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden’s remarks expecting a crisis to occur within the first six months of an Obama administration. Giving their expert opinions were Dr. James Carafano and Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation, and Clark Ervin of the Aspen Institute who was also the first Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security.
Carafano began the discussion by expressing that he “[doesn't] actually think the government is particularly vulnerable in this transition period.” The only continuity problems that may occur, he said, will be in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) if an Obama administration comes to power. He continued with the thought that DHS would be a difficultly for the Democrats because it was created since they were last in power, so “they haven’t been there” before.
Lisa Curtis is a Senior Research Fellow of the Asian Studies Center and contextualized the discussion by focusing on recent Afghan-Pakistan relations. She believes that lately the Taliban has been “emboldened” in the tribal areas of Pakistan where they have become de facto rulers and they are spreading into Afghanistan. The United States’ response to this, she said, must be an increase in troops to the region because America must gain support of the local populations there to have any sway over the Taliban.
Clark Ervin concluded the discussion with a direct dismissal of Carafano’s belief that the transition period is not a time of vulnerability. He called the transition a “heightened threat period” that needed to “close security gaps” that have been created since Sept. 11. Ervin said that another attack on American soil, particularly in regards to the current economic crisis, “would be even greater with a new attack”, especially since America is already burdened by two wars.
Despite their differences, all three panelists agreed that the Bush administration was preparing to turnover their work of the past eight years and Ervin expected “joint table topics of the outgoing Bush team and the new incoming team.”

“The wind is at our back” said Senator Charles Schumer concerning the 2008 senatorial races, but cautioned that it would be “hard” for the Democrats to win enough to get to 60 in the Senate. In a briefing today, Schumer claimed that he would still be excited if the Democrats reached 57 seats, saying, “We haven’t had 57 seats since 1979.”
He reacted to the McCain campaign’s recent claim that a Democrat president combined with a Democrat majority in both houses of Congress would be dangerous, by stating that the Republicans are using this argument because their foreign and domestic policies are not working. He further stated that if too many Republicans win their senatorial races, they will “block change” and “more gridlock” will ensue. Referring to the Democrats, Schumer added that “Nothing would make us happier than reducing the partisanship.”
Schumer attributed much of the success in both the Democratic presidential and senatorial campaigns to their “ground game.” He said that the Democrats have poured “significant resources” into their ground game, and that “We do not see evidence of a strong ground game” from the Republicans.
Referring to specific senatorial races, Schumer said the race in Kentucky between incumbent Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and challenger Bruce Lunsford (D) is tight as they expected “from the get-go.” In Georgia, the election between Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Jim Martin (D) is “razor tight” and in Minnesota, Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R-Minn.) decision to support President Bush’s economic policies is “hurting him” in his reelection campaign against Al Franken (D). Schumer also felt the battle in North Carolina between Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) and Kay Hagan (D) was close, but Hagan was ahead by more than the polls have shown. He also thought that the the calls for resignation of Ted Stevens by Republicans such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and McConnell will allow Mark Begich (D) to win the senatorial seat in Alaska.
If the Democrats reach 60 seats, Senator Schumer felt Congress would be better on “issue after issue.” He mentioned specific issues including the war in Iraq, energy, education, and health care that would be improved in that event. Although, he felt that even if they don’t reach 60, some “mainstream conservative” Republicans might “smell the coffee.”
Schumer said that, while he supports Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a Democratic Senate will not “rubber stamp” his policies if he is elected president. He concluded that the difference between Obama and other democrats is “not that great,” Obama “consults a lot.”