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.

Taking on the System is a book that I have been waiting on for a long time -- and not just because I have been hearing about it from it from its more nascent stages here in Berkeley from kos, who gets full billing as Markos Moulitsas Zúniga on the book's cover.

Ever since I began devoting several hours a day to blogging about politics more than four years ago, and especially since I started writing professionally for MyDD nearly three years ago, I have been looking for a clear and concise way to explain to my family and friends just what I have been devoting so much of my time and effort to. Whenever I have been asked by a reporter or a Democrat of another generation or even a professor interested in politics about my ideology, or if I am some kind of crazy blogger insistent on a far left political orthodoxy, I have kindly explained that, no, my focus is more on electoral outcomes and bringing effective change than allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, all the while hoping that someone would write the tome laying out this pragmatic vision of direct action within the age of the Internet.

This is just that book.

In the 288 highly readable and very engaging pages of Taking on the System, which is released tomorrow, Markos lays out his eight rules for achieving progressive change within today's digital world. Far from just being a book for a bloggers, about bloggers, by a blogger, this is a book that is relevant far beyond the Netroots, or even the expressly political realm. It is a book that folks who don't spend hours a day on sites like MyDD or Talking Points Memo or Daily Kos can read, understand and thoroughly enjoy. Markos goes to great lengths to relate developments within society -- for instance the new open source ways in which new albums are reaching consumers, overturning some of the notions of unchecked and uncheckable powers of the gatekeepers in the music industry -- to changes within the political system that likewise have the capacity to make the country more democratic.

I know that I will be ordering a few copies of the book to give away to assorted friends and family, and I will also personally recommend it to a handful of professors to incorporate into their coursework this fall. But even if you're not at the place where you're looking to purchase multiple copies of a book you have not yet read to give to friends, I would nevertheless highly recommend you get a copy for yourself to see what it's all about. Whether you're someone relatively new to the Netroots, becoming more involved during this year's primaries or even more recently than that, or you're someone who remembers the flame wars on Daily Kos during the last Democratic primaries (or even points further ago in the past than that) -- or even if you just stumbled on this site because you were looking for the latest poll or political news but are not an out and out political junkie -- Taking on the System is a book you should buy and delight in reading.

Today certainly is a day for interesting and surprising Senate polling. I noted earlier the numbers showing Andrew Rice down by just a single-digit margin against Jim Inhofe in Oklahoma. Now comes new polling from
Rasmussen Reports pegging Jim Martin within 5 points of Saxby Chambliss in Georgia -- the second straight survey to show results in that neighborhood.

Jim Martin, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate after defeating Vernon Jones in a run-off primary election earlier this month, is now trailing incumbent Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss by just six percentage points. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the Peach State finds the incumbent ahead of his challenger 48% to 43%.

When "leaners" are included, Chambliss leads 50% to 44%.

Though the latest numbers could represent a temporary primary "glow" for Martin, the poll marks the lowest level of support for the incumbent since tracking of this year's election began. Last month, Chambliss had a 51% to 40% lead over the Democrat.

A poll released last week by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee showed Martin down 6 points, suggesting that Rasmussen's numbers here aren't likely too far off the mark. Now getting from 43 percent or 44 percent to closer to 50 percent will be no easy task for Martin; then-incumbent Democratic Senator Max Cleland received just 46 percent of the vote in 2002 in a race that was assumed to be much closer than that. Nevertheless, it does appear that the support given to Martin in the primary by Chuck Schumer and the folks over at the DSCC is paying off, if not in a race that's necessarily likely to flip at this juncture but at the least one that the Republicans are genuinely going to have to play defense in.

Color me surprised. I have had my eye on the Oklahoma Senate race for a while but haven't written too much about it given that although I believe GOP incumbent Jim Inhofe to be vulnerable and his Democratic challenger Andrew Rice to be credible, Oklahoma is an incredibly red state and the last time it held a Senate election concurrent to a Presidential election, back in 2004, a very able Democratic candidate (Congressman Brad Carson) lost to an underwhelming GOP candidate (now-Senator Tom Coburn). But maybe this contest isn't as out of reach as I had once thought.

Oklahoma Democratic Senate candidate Andrew Rice has narrowed Republican Senator Jim Inhofe's lead from twenty points two months ago to nine points today, according to a new poll conducted for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Rice campaign. Inhofe now leads Rice only 50% to 41%, down from a 53% to 33% lead in June. Only 46% of Oklahomans say Inhofe is doing an excellent or good job, with 47% saying he is doing only a fair or poor job.

[...]

The poll of 600 likely voters was taken August 12 to 14 by the Benenson Strategy Group and has a 4% margin of error.

This is going to be a tough race for Rice to win, no doubt. As alluded to above, back in 2004 the trend for Carson looked great with the Democrat leading by a 44 percent to 39 percent margin in late September, and it appeared as though the Democrats had a legitimate shot at picking up Oklahoma's other Senate seat. In the end, however, Coburn pulled out a relatively comfortable 53 percent to 41 percent victory over Carson.

That all said, that Rice, who coming into the race was much less of a proven commodity in Oklahoma than Carson, is already pulling in the same amount of support in mid-August that Carson was able to garner in November 2004 is a good sign. What's more, with the Republicans on the defensive around the country, and environmental groups particularly aiming at Inhofe (in a way not too dissimilar to the efforts waged against the similarly anti-environment Richard Pombo in 2006), this could the type of race that flies under the radar only to come together as a real contest in the end. For now, chalk it up as yet another contest we need to be keeping our eye one.

Below the fold... an ad from the Rice campaign.

Leave it up to John McCain. Just when you thought that he had done enough damage to his own campaign by exposing the extent to which he is out of touch with the American people, he goes out and says something like this:

The rich may be different for John McCain and Barack Obama.

On almost every issue, the two presidential candidates have staked out opposing positions. Their contrasting views on wealth surfaced during their back-to-back appearances in Southern California on Saturday night when each was asked to define "rich."

Obama didn't hesitate. "I would argue that if you are making more than $250,000, then you are in the top 3, 4 percent of this country," he said. "You are doing well."

McCain took a far more discursive approach to answering the question but ultimately settled on a dramatically higher figure: "I think if you're just talking about income, how about $5 million?"

The Arizona Republican quickly added that he was "sure that comment will be distorted," and his campaign said Sunday that he was joking.

It may be that to someone worth $100 million, who owns 10 houses, who flies around in a $12.6 million corporate jet, and who walks around in $520 Italian loafers, $5 million a year in income is the cutoff for the wealthy -- that those making $500,000 a year, or $1 million a year, or even $4 million a year are not "rich" -- but to most American people that's just an absurd statement. Indeed, not only is it absurd to say even jokingly (and it's not clear what the joke would be, or if it really was intended to be a joke, despite what the McCain spinmeisters say) that the cutoff point for being rich is $5 million per year, it's almost unfathomable that anyone could believe that to be the case.

At a time when so many hardworking Americans are struggling to make ends meet in an economy shepherded in the wrong direction by George W. Bush and the Republican Party, voters aren't going to take too well to a candidate this out of touch. It's good, then, to see the Obama campaign continuing to hit McCain on this angle.

The latest polling out of Alaska, courtesy of Ivan Moore, sure doesn't look good for Republicans.

Alaska Senate: General Election

Ted Stevens (R): 38.5 percent
Mark Begich (D): 55.5 percent

Alaska At-Large House District: General Election

Don Young (R): 40.6 percent
Ethan Berkowitz (D): 51.3 percent

With Ted Stevens seemingly cruising towards re-nomination, even considering his indictment and upcoming trial -- he leads his nearest GOP challenger by a 62.7 percent to 20.4 percent margin -- the Republicans' hopes of holding onto this Senate seat are increasingly in doubt. About the only good news out of this polling is the fact that House incumbent Don Young, who is also under an ethics cloud and also trails in a general election matchup, is only barely ahead in his reelection bid, leading his strongest primary challenger by a 45.9 percent to 40.4 percent margin, with a third Republican pulling in 7.4 percent of the vote. Overall, there could be a real sea change out in the Last Frontier state this November, one that reaches from the top of the ballot all the way down to the bottom.

The McCain campaign's strategy with regards to ads appears to be simple: Above all else, try to get advertisements (particularly those that are only aired a few times as paid spots) repeated as many times as possible on the cable networks for free. The Obama campaign takes a decidedly different tack. Here's MSNBC's First Read:

*** Obama's stealth ad campaign: Over the past week, we've gotten our hands on a number of negative TV ads Obama's been running against McCain in key states like Ohio and Michigan. This is in addition to the tough spot, uncovered by Politico, that Obama's airing in Indiana. Clearly, the Obama campaign isn't interested in telling the media about every single McCain attack ad they're running. Perhaps this is because Obama's brand can't afford to be tarnished too much if he's seen as constantly running negative TV ads. So the campaign simply puts them on the air in key markets, doesn't tell the press about them, and layers those ads with positive ones being run nationally during the Olympics. Also, by not releasing to the media, it forces the McCain camp to wait a day or two before they see the ad. McCain's camp is much more comfortable unveiling their negative ads, perhaps because they want the free press that comes with them. But make no mistake, Obama's running plenty of negative TV ads, particularly in the industrial Midwestern states. In fact, one of Obama's biggest candidate strengths -- which doesn't get the attention it deserves -- is that he plays political hardball as well as his opponents; he just sometimes does it under the radar.

Here's an example of another such ad, one running locally in Ohio:

As you can see, Barack Obama is not afraid to hit John McCain where it counts, having his campaign run compelling and emotive ads exposing McCain's weaknesses on key local issues. We've seen it in Indiana, we've seen it in Nevada, we're seeing it in Ohio, and no doubt it's occurring elsewhere. So while it may seem to some that Obama is not running a sufficiently aggressive effort to pin McCain down for his out of touch positions, the fact of the matter is that just because Obama isn't running a Beltway-focused campaign targeted more at the establishment press than actual voters doesn't mean that Obama isn't holding McCain to account -- because in fact Obama is running tough, hard-hitting ads around the country.

MSNBC's First Read has the details.

The McCain campaign announced it raised a campaign record $27 million in July, campaign manager Rick Davis said on a conference call with reporters. While the figure is a campaign record, it is less than half of Obama's biggest one-month haul -- $55 million in February of this year, which helped finance his primary battle with Hillary Clinton.

In June, Obama raised $52 million. But Obama has had to raise more, in part, because the Democratic National Committee had been far outraised by the Republican National Committee.

[...]

The RNC raised an $26 million in July and has has $75 million cash on hand for a combined $96.4 million cash on hand, Davis said.

Through the end of June, Obama had $71.7 million cash on hand, and the DNC reported just $4.5 million on hand for a combined $76.2 million, according to federal campaign finance data.

Let me note that First Read's numbers with regards to the DNC are a bit off -- they miss the campaign finance filings of the DNC's joint fundraising committees, which bring the overall cash-on-hand as of the end of June to roughly $20.3 million. Put in combination with the roughly $72 million the Obama campaign itself had in the bank as of last month's filing deadline, and the Democrats' presidential effort had about $94 million on-hand -- or just four to five million dollars less than the McCain campaign and the RNC combined to hold this month. So unless the Obama campaign and the DNC had historically terrible fundraising months or spent several tens of millions of dollars that we didn't notice during the month of July, it appears to be close to a foregone conclusion that the Democrats will continue to maintain a significant cash advantage over the Republicans (a rather remarkable occurrence given the historic financial advantage of the GOP).

So as you can see, regardless of how Republicans try to spin these numbers -- that they represent a record haul for the McCain campaign, that they reflect confidence in McCain's chances -- the fact of the matter is that the Republicans' fundraising numbers are relatively unimpressive. The McCain campaign and the RNC (which can raise money in chunks more than 10 times as large as presidential campaigns) combined to bring in about the same amount in July as the Obama campaign alone brought in during June. The Republicans' combined haul was close to $20 million less than the Democrats' combined haul in June. While we do not yet have the Democrats' numbers for July, these initial reports don't sound particularly great.

Finally, it's worth underscoring that the Republicans banked close to no money in July. Coming into the month, the McCain campaign and the RNC had a combined $95 million on-hand; at the end of the month, they apparently had $96.4 million, meaning that they burnt through nearly all of the money they raised. While it's understandable that the McCain campaign is spending its money at a rapid pace -- it must blow through all of its money before the end of the first week in September, when the Republican National Convention ends -- the RNC has no excuses, and should be doing much better at storing up money for the fall.