A couple of profiles on the Obama operation.

The first, written by Dana Goldstein and Ezra Klein is one of the first to really get at the 'meat & potatoes' of what made it all click for Obama to win the nomination. Basically, Obama has terrific skills himself, but the inheritance of Daschle's DC team (which had already been primed for an '04 race), and the rise of Dean's 50-State Strategy of grassroots and netroots organizing, laid the table for the newcomer to go to the front of the pack. They have excelled at every stage of the campaign, except closing the deal.

The second, on the WaPost, by Jose Antonio Vargas, profiles the Obama web team. It profiles the operation that Joe Rospars has built around YouTube, Social Networking, and Text-Messaging. A nice piece of work in gathering up the most prominent pieces of strategy that the Obama campaign is executing in their online strategy. It doesn't get into their fundraising efforts, their online advertising, or their one-to-one recruitment, but instead focuses on the new media tactics.

Rospars has no peers when it comes to knowing how to write an effective fundraising email. He's done a terrific job at the things set out in the profile and more, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out why he hasn't pursued a blog outreach strategy to date. I'm not talking about a constituency relationship or blogads, but a strategic message one. One that recognizes the blogs as being more powerful in concert with what the campaign is trying to do in opposition to McCain, and coordinating the execution of that strategic message. I'm sure that Josh Orton can speak more to the fault here, so hopefully he'll chime in somewhere with his commentary.

This isn't a ground-breaking idea I'm talking about, but a strategy that's been executed successfully many times over in winning contests over the past few years. Joe was a blogger with Ezra and Nico Pitney at 'Not Genius' back in 2002-03, and then with the Dean campaign, so its not like he doesn't get it. Even John McCain executes on the strategy. Joe ought to do some outreach himself to Peter Daou, who was in a similar situation in '04 with Kerry's campaign. Kerry had won the primary without any help at all from the blogs, and it wasn't until after the swiftboating explosion in August that the Kerry campaign realized they had a problem with controlling the message via the blogosphere. It was probably too late for Peter to do much, but he certainly dived in and worked well with the blogosphere in those last few months to develop an opposition message strategy against Bush.

Now, of course, a number of things have changed, including two big things, which the Obama campaign has recognized. First, blogs have went mainstream, all the traditional media outlets have bloggers and they are 24/7 bloggers with access. They've effectively become the online outreach vehicles for the Obama campaign message push-- the Marc Ambinder, Ben Smith, and Jake Tapper world. Second, there's a world of social networking sites that have huge numbers of available for finding voters and for organizing supporters, and the Obama campaign has leveraged those like none other. But neither have replaced the partisan blogosphere, which has grown about 10X since 2004 in terms of bloggers and readership.

And without the outreach, partisan Democratic bloggers are left on their own to pursue a decentralized strategy which has largely wandered in the desert looking for an attack angle on McCain. Bloggers complain about there not being a consistent message from Obama against McCain because nothing is being coordinated from within the campaign for outreach purposes.

The Democrats have earned electoral votes from Nebraska once in the last 70 years. Could this be the year to change that trend?

I have noted the possibility before. In short, Nebraska is one of two states that allows its electoral votes to be split up according to the winner of of individual congressional districts, and at the least the anecdotal evidence to this point has suggested that Barack Obama has a chance at making a play for one or even two of the state's five electoral votes. Now, polling out of one of those two congressional districts underscores this reality of this possibility.

According to a new survey from Democratic pollster Anzalone Liszt out of Nebraska's second congressional district (7/27-8/2, likely voters), Obama is down just four points -- 46 percent to 42 percent -- behind John McCain. For reference, George W. Bush pulled in somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 percent of the vote in NE-2 back in 2004, so McCain is significantly underperforming in the Omaha-based district. Considering that campaigns often advertise in the Omaha media market in order to reach into Western Iowa, which is in play on the presidential level this year, we may just need to keep an eye on Nebraska for the first time in a long time.

Well this is just great news. Keith over at DKos:

Rachel Gets Her Own MSNBC Show
by Keith Olbermann
Tue Aug 19, 2008 at 02:05:19 PM PDT

Happy Now?
The network will be formally announcing this tomorrow, but I am pleased to inform you in this fully authorized leak, that as of Monday, September 8, our mutual friend Ms. Maddow will become host of her own show, on MSNBC, at 9 PM Eastern Time.

In the last four years, not everything in progressive media has gone well. Air America continues to die a slow death by dumping progressive talent and replacing it with milquetoast offerings. The strong netroots-establishment message coordination from the days of the Social Security fight doesn't exist during this election cycle at the Presidential level.

However, the rise of Keith Olbermann and now Rachel Maddow are true bright spots. Rachel is one of the smartest people I know, a great broadcaster, and an all-around cool person. So she'll certainly bring light to important stories otherwise ignored by everyone else in cable news. But Rachel will also draw an audience not necessarily predisposed to liberalism. With Rachel on the air, viewers will get the opportunity to watch real news instead of bluster - and I bet a sizable number will jump at the chance.

(Rachel says hello during a photo shoot at Air America in early 2005)

Congrats Rachel!

Today was primary day in Washington State. Polls closed at 8pm PDT and voters went to the polls to vote in a wacky primary that narrowed the fields of all statewide elections down to the two top vote getters for the November general. So what that means is that we're going to see mini-general proxy election results in both WA-08 between Rep. Dave Reichert and Darcy Burner and in the gubernatorial race between sitting Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi.

If you haven't been following Matt Stoller's on the ground coverage over at Open Left you should. Tonight, he's liveblogging results.

You can find them streaming at the WA Secretary of State website HERE.

So far, as of 8:42pm, after Reichert's home county of Pierce County reported, Reichert is ahead of Darcy by just 3 points.

Dave Reichert 47.27
Darcy Burner 44.27

Notably, Reichert can't break 50%, and only barely did so in his home county. The sitting congressman in a low turnout election where the Republicans are the ones motivated to GOTV to avenge Gregoire's narrow win over Rossi can't break 50%. This I think speaks to the enthusiasm gap that Darcy has over Reichert, her excellent GOTV program as well as the fact that she's the only one on the air in the district.

But the numbers can still move as absentee ballots, of which there are many in Washington State, still have yet to be counted. I'll update as results continue to come in.

Update [2008-8-20 0:8:26 by Todd Beeton]:One thing that seems to bode well for Darcy: while the candidates are not listed by party affiliation, they are listed by what party they "prefer" and so far tonight, the "prefers Democratic Party" candidates have a slight majority with 50.03%.

I had to make a prediction, so there it is now.

We know Obama likes Daschle, we know Daschle was vetted, and we know he has a speaker slot on Wed. We even know he's floated as a potential CoS in the WH. It makes sense too, of the whole VP process we've been watching unfold for Obama.

What do you think of an Obama/Daschle ticket?

What Daschle has said this week about the VP slot:

Update [2008-8-19 23:55:14 by Jerome Armstrong]: I missed this at the end of last week, but Markos also is picking Daschle. He points back to a Trapper John prediction of it on July 30th. Now, Trapper John couldn't have been more wrong, given the last three weeks of McCain gains, in his summation of where Obama's candidacy stands against McCain, but his logic for why Daschle is still sound.

What's up tonight?

Video: "Hey guys, I'm not the guy. See ya."

I'll take him at his word. He goes golfing...

Obama supporter BTD on TL:

Haha, jeralyn had her graphic ready:

I'd agree with her assessment of how its going to happen:

Phillip Butler, one of the men John McCain served with and was a POW with in Vietnam (although McCain got there 2 years later than Butler and so endured 2 fewer years of torture), has written a scathing editorial titled "Why I Will Not Vote For John McCain." I agree with Matt Stoller:

Put this POW in an ad

Butler begins:

As some of you might know, John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I will not vote for him for President of the United States.

As for the reasons Butler won't vote for John McCain, the following four paragraphs lay them out, the first of which will sound familiar.

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60's and 70's. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John's age (73) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for 4 or more years.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush's war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country.

While the Obama campaign should at the very least encourage this guy to speak out against John McCain if not actually put him in an ad, one wonders how quickly Obama will distance himself from Butler, if Obama's treatment of Wes Clark's somewhat similar comments were any indication. The beauty of this attack on McCain, as well as Clark's, is that it goes directly to his strengths. In the meantime, all year Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton took every opportunity to reinforce McCain's strengths ("I honor his service" blah blah blah) instead of undermining them.

Nate Silver puts this traditional reluctance of Democrats to go after Republicans' strengths in frustrating context.

But it's worth remembering that McCain won the Republican primaries in large part because the other candidates were so deferential to him. Rudy Giuliani praised McCain incessantly during the debates of last summer, at which point McCain's campaign was in tatters and didn't seem like much of a threat. But guess where Rudy's supporters went once McCain won New Hampshire?

The Republicans, of course, have no such inhibitions when it comes to Democrats, which is why they went right at Al Gore's strengths, and right at John Kerry's strengths, and are going right at Barack Obama's strengths -- and, importantly, did so early in those respective campaigns. It's one of the big reasons that they win elections.

Indeed.