Daily Tidbits: October 12, 2008

Since McFailin launched their “nuclear” attacks (10/4), Obama-Biden’s net favorability have held steady, while McFailin have slipped downward, and Palin (serving as chief pitbull) has seen her net ratings tank.

• Newsweek’s Isikoff: TrooperGate not over yet.  The McCain-Palin campaign had Palin file a complaint against herself so that a state personnel board under the governor’s authority would have jurisdiction over the TrooperGate scandal.  But the board hired an independent investigator who has a tough reputation and donated to Palin’s opponent in her 2006 campaign for governor.  Oops.  His report is due in a couple of weeks.
• London Times: McCain and Palin reportedly disagree over decision to launch nuclear strategy.
• Miami Herald.  Florida GOP getting very upset as state begins to slip away from them.  Governor Crist is suddenly too busy to campaign with McFailin in the critical last three weeks remaining.
• Haven’t had a chance to read the lengthy TrooperGate Report? Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings offers an excellent summary and analysis.
• BBC News:  Head of IMF says world’s financial system is teetering on “brink of systemic meltdown.”
• LA Times.  Obama’s consistent, rational and calm response to the economic crisis has been in stark contrast to McCain’s erratic flailing, and McCain is sinking in the polls as a result.
• Philly Inquirer.  Obama is running away with Pennsylvania.
• NY Times:  Nagourney and Busmiller get the inside scoop and learn that even the GOP finds McCain dangerously erratic.  Many are concerned that his impulsive and contradictory actions have him on an irrevocable path to defeat.
• McCain again forced to rebuke one of his hate rally surrogates for (in this case, religiously bigoted) remarks.
• NY Times:  Sarah Palin drops ceremonial puck on center ice at a Philadelphia Flyers home game Saturday night and gets “greeted by resounding (almost deafening) boos from the Flyers crowd.“  Wilmington News & Journal says she was greeted with an “avalanche of boos” and there’s no doubt the team’s management ordered up the volume of the arena’s music to drown out the boos.
• Daily Tracking Polls. Research 2000 poll has Obama hitting his highest point, +13, 53-40%.  Reuters/CSPAN/Zogby poll opens to its widest margin for Obama since new poll was launched last week , +6, 49-43% among likely voters, affirming trend seen in other tracking polls.  Rasmussen has Obama +6, 51-45%.  Gallup has Obama’s lead narrowing slightly, +7, 50-43%.
• Chris Buckley, son of William F. Buckley and writer for the National Review, endorses Obama for president, his first time pulling the lever for the Democratic candidate in his life.  Why?  Because McCain has gone off the deep-end and Obama is a first class intellect and temperament.
• Paul Harris/The Guardian (UK). Sarah Palin has been a drag on the ticket for several weeks, and the latest TrooperGate scandal’s report is a devastating final blow, undermining any case for her being a fresh reform-minded maverick. Instead, she’s just another a petty, power-hungry pol.

• WaPo:  Bill Clinton to campaign for Obama in rural Virginia.
• Poll: Obama’s popularity among Hispanic voters much higher than Kerry’s was, while McCain’s is much lower than Bush’s, in four critical swing states: Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.
• WaPo examines the candidates’ ground game, now getting deployed for GOTV.
• Frank Rich voices his disgust at the dangerously heated rhetoric employed by McCain and Palin on the trail directed at Obama.
• NY Times:  McCain’s penchant for “embracing opposites” might strike his ardent supporters as evidence of being a maverick, but others see an erratic opportunist.