Hank Kalet

Aggressive action? Yeah, right.

I think it is pretty clear that when President Bush says he plans aggressive action to aid financial markets that he is talking about financial markets and not about the people affected by the ‘s clear from his actions (taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, offering support to big corporations, but only grudgingly providing the smallest of help to individuals).

“The American people can be sure we will continue to act to strengthen and stabilize our financial markets and improve investor confidence,” Bush said in two minutes of remarks delivered outside the Oval Office.

He did not specify what actions would be taken. The president was to meet with economic advisers over much of the day, and was seeing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson at the White House later today.

“Our financial markets continue to deal with serious challenges,” he said. “As our recent actions demonstrate, my administration is focused on meeting these challenges.”

My question is this: How does that help my neighbor with his credit card debt or medical bills?

Bad policy equals bad politics

Democrats, fearing voter anger over gas prices, have cooked up a political response that may end up hurting them in the long run.

As The Washington Independent reports, party leaders in the House of Representatives pushed a bill “expanding offshore oil exploration.”

The legislation, which partly eliminates a decades-old moratorium on new drilling, marks a sharp departure from earlier Democratic vows to keep the ban in place. The reversal was a political one: Public opinion polls show that voters increasingly support new oil exploration, despite evidence that the change would have little effect on fuel prices for more than two decades. Fearing political fallout in November’s elections, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a long-time critic of new drilling, included provisions to expand the practice.

I think Rachel Maddow had it right last night on her show when she said that Democrats only look weak when they pander like this.

The bubble deflates

It’s been nearly two weeks since John McCain accepted the Republican nomination and a full two weeks since Sarah Palin was officially made his running mate and it appears that the polls are starting to stabilize.

Consider the poll released today by The New York Times:

Polls taken after the Republican convention suggested that Mr. McCain had enjoyed a surge of support — particularly among white women after his selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate — but the latest poll indicates “the Palin effect” was, at least so far, a limited burst of interest. The contest appeared to be roughly where it was before the two conventions and before the vice-presidential selections: Mr. Obama had the support of 48 percent of registered voters, compared with 43 percent for Mr. McCain, a difference within the poll’s margin of sampling error, and statistically unchanged from the tally in the last New York Times/CBS News Poll in mid-August.

Other polls show a similar shift. Gallup, Hotline and Reuters/Zogby show Barack Obama with a narrow lead after a couple of weeks when McCain was leading. Rasmussen still shows a narrow McCain lead.

I am not a huge believer in polls — it is too easy to game them and so much depends on the sample, the questions and the sequence of the questions. Plus, as Les Payne and Brooke Gladstone pointed out on Bill Moyers’ Journal last week, the polls tend to oversimplify the electorate.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Right. Well, and, you know, there’s always going to be a number of, a large section of the public that feels that way. But as you know, if we want to talk about something that’s happening in this campaign that bears heavily on the media, it’s the role of polls. And the fact of the matter is because every poll asks the question “Who would you vote for if the election were today?” instead of “Who are you going to vote for in November?” the number of genuine undecideds is hugely reduced.

Because if there were 30 percent undecided as there may well be even in the electorate today, nobody would be interested in the polls. So they ask this other question, forcing them to present their slight lean as a decision, so, therefore, the undecideds go into the single digits because the question is “Who would you vote for now?” instead of “Who will you be voting for in November?”

There are a lot of people out there that can be affected by this information.

LES PAYNE:I think that media, and I use that term advisedly, too often go to ask the polling question as opposed to doing the reporting. We have to inform our readers first, as opposed to asking them what they think about something we have not told them about. So, to the question of if the election was held today, I mean, the answer is, ‘I would be very surprised because I thought it was in November.’

I would add that I have some questions about how the samples are developed: Are the pollsters taking into account the huge influx of newly registered Democrats? Are they balancing the two parties in their samples?

Thurman Hart, on Blue Jersey, offers some interesting insight into the polling process by putting into black and white numbers that indicate that early polling downplays the extent to which the New Jersey electorate breaks for Democrats. In nearly every statewide election since 2004, the 3-4 percent lead held by the poll leader became a 7-9 point win for the Democrats. That’s a remarkable number that, I think, pretty much encapsulates the flaws with polling.

Hoover-McCain 2008?

Herbert Hoover and John McCain — the historical parallel.

McCain’s problem

If the Obama camp can remember the Clinton mantra — “It’s the economy, stupid” — and find a way to connect on it, John McCain is going to have some problems.

To date, however, Obama has been difficulty getting through to the people who need to be gotten through to.

McCain, though, is doing its best to help the Illinois Democrat a helping hand:

With economic conditions worsening over the course of this year and voter anxiety on the rise, Mr. McCain has had to labor to get past the impression — fostered by his own admissions as recently as last year that the subject is not his strongest suit — that he lacks the experience and understanding to address the nation’s economic woes.

Wait, there’s more:

For much of this year, Mr. McCain has seemed to struggle to strike a balance between conveying the optimism that many voters want in their leaders, and the I-feel-your-pain empathy that they crave during hard times. His task is complicated by the tension between his plans to continue many of the economic policies of the unpopular incumbent Republican president he hopes to succeed, and his pledges to improve the American economy and shake up Washington.