In marked contrast to other polls, the WaPo/ABC tracking poll has been incredibly consistent, Obama has led by 8 or 9 for a week now. Today he leads by 52-44.

The tale will be told on Election Day, but if this poll is accurate, you could argue that these last 2 weeks of campaigning have had no effect at all.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

May I present the new Joe Lieberman, Bob Kerrey:

By my lights, the primary threat to the success of a President Obama will come from some Democrats who, emboldened by the size of their congressional majority, may try to kill trade agreements, raise taxes in ways that will destroy jobs, repeal the Patriot Act and spend and regulate to high heaven.

This is where Obama's persona is invaluable. He can withstand the arguments and pressure of the liberal wing in the Democratic caucus if, once elected, he is guided by the best instincts he has displayed on the campaign trail.

Bob Kerrey, the new Joe Lieberman. What a loser.

By Big Tent democrat, speaking for me only

Greg Sargent reports:

Bill [Clinton] will be cheered by the speech Obama gave moments ago in Sarasota, Florida, where he basically said that a vote for him was a vote for a Bill Clinton economy. Here's what he said:

The average working family is $2,000 dollars poorer now than when George Bush took office. When Bill Clinton was president, the average wages and incomes went up $7,500 dollars. So I've got an economic plan that is similar to Bill Clinton's and Senator McCain's got an economic plan similar to George Bush's. Look and see what works and what doesn't.

True enough. Obama should have been saying this earlier though.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias writes:

When you listen to white people talk about Barack Obama, talk of “uniting the country” is almost universally taken to mean some kind of gesture toward bipartisanship or postpartisanship. . . . But when I’ve heard Obama’s black supporters, the ones from the grassroots like the man in the video rather than the “official” black political leadership, it always sounds to me like they’re hearing a very different message. Uniting the country means, to them, something more like bringing African-Americans into the mainstream of American politics. An Obama presidency would be a stark contrast to the rhetoric of the “real” America — which is basically defined as the part where everyone is white — versus the unreal America comprised of non-whites and the white people who deign to live near them. Of course to some extent any Democratic Party electoral coalition represents a rebuke to that way of thinking.

(Emphasis supplied.) More than "to some extent." The coming landslide for the Democratic Party coalition is indeed a rebuke of the racist notion of the "real" America. It is the manifestation of the Emerging Democratic Majority Texeira and Judis predicted 8 years ago. More . . .

The election is shaping up as a historic repudiation of Republicanism and extreme conservatism. But the Beltway Establishment does not like that. Here comes WaPo's Fred Hiatt with his plea for the post partisan Unity BS:

[W]e don't believe either party has a monopoly on policy wisdom. . . . We like to think, in other words, that a process in which both parties play a role can sometimes lead to better outcomes and not always to dead ends.

That's harder to imagine, though, as each party's moderate wing shrinks. A Democratic sweep might bring to Washington some relatively centrist freshmen who would provide a check on the most liberal wing of the party. But it might claim as victims some of the few remaining Republican moderates, such as Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, and some of the real workhorses who are more interested in legislating than grandstanding -- the capable New Hampshire senator John E. Sununu, for example. The defeat of such politicians would be a loss for the country, not just for their party.

[More...]

I voted this morning. The line was pretty long - it took an hour. I'll violate the sanctity of the secret ballot and tell you I voted straight Democratic. I tell you this story in the daily "Polls" post because in the DKos/R2000 daily tracking poll (which has Obama by 5, 50-45, with 1% undecided, Barr gets 1, Nader gets 1 and "Other" gets 2) John McCain is drawing 92% of the Republican vote while Obama gets 5% of the Republican vote. See how well the Post Partisan Unity Schtick worked? For comparison, John Kerry got 6% of the Republican vote (Bush got 93% of the GOP vote in 2004.) This same poll has Obama slightly outperforming Kerry in 2004 among Dems and Independents. The difference is there are many more Dems and Independents in the 2008 electorate.

Among the other polls, Ras has Obama by 5, 51-46. Battleground has, for the umpteenth straight day, Obama by 3, 49-46. ABC/WaPo has Obama by 8, 52-44. Hotline has Obama by 7, 49-42. Gallup Expanded has Obama by 7, 51-44.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Intellectual conservatives are scampering away from Bush-McCain-Palin as if the Republican party leaders were infected with a toxic contagion. George Will today brands Bush and McCain as "faux conservatives" and accuses them of carelessness, citing Iraq and the selection of Sarah Palin as examples.

Will begins by slicing and dicing Palin, starting with an amusing story designed to mock Palin's belief that the vice president is "in charge of the United States Senate."

She may have been tailoring her narrative to her audience of third-graders, who do not know that vice presidents have no constitutional function in the Senate other than to cast tie-breaking votes. But does she know that when Lyndon Johnson, transformed by the 1960 election from Senate majority leader into vice president, ventured to the Capitol to attend the Democratic senators' weekly policy luncheon, the new majority leader, Montana's Mike Mansfield, supported by his caucus, barred him because his presence would be a derogation of the Senate's autonomy?

[more ...]

Four women filed suit against computer retailer Dell Inc. in federal court today, alleging a widespread pattern of gender and age discrimination.

The former managers, Mildred Chapman, Angela Hopkins, Julia Mahaffey and Bethany Riches, accuse the company of paying men higher wages for equal work and failing to fairly promote women to higher positions. Dell denied the accusations.

The lawsuit noted that there are no women in the company's highest tier of executives. ... Chapman, 59, also accused the company of disproportionately laying off workers older than 40 after it began cutting 9,000 jobs last year.

The four plaintiffs will ask the court to permit the suit to proceed as a class action. [more ...]

Barack Obama's half hour advertisement/infomercial is starting now. This is your place to comment.

Maybe the Republican Party should run Joe the Plumber as its next presidential candidate. Not only is he touted as an authority on tax policy, he's started offering his wisdom as a foreign policy expert.

There was a “Joe the Plumber” bus tour yesterday in Ohio. Joe the Plumber (aka Joe Wurzelbacher) teamed up with Congressman Rob Portman (who was allegedly on McCain’s VP short list) and they went to five different towns in Ohio stumping for the Republican nominee. ...

On the first leg of the five-town “Joe the Plumber World Invasion” tour, Wurzelbacher ran into a supporter who asked Joe if he believed, “a vote for Barack Obama means death to Israel.” ... “I’ll go ahead and agree with you on that,” he said.

[more ...]

A new AP-GfK poll in 8 battleground states has Obama ahead or tied in all of them, including four states that Bush won in 2004.

The states are: Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The polling shows Obama leading in Ohio (7 percentage points), Nevada (12 points), Colorado (9) and Virginia (7), all red states won by Bush that collectively offer 47 electoral votes. Sweeping those four — or putting together the right combination of two or three — would almost certainly make Obama president.

Obama is winning by double-digits in PA and NH. Ohio has 20 electoral votes, PA has 21 and FL has 27. Nevada has 5, Colorado 9, NC 15 and Virginia 13.

On issues, Obama leads on almost every one from the economy to health care. He pulls even with McCain or leads on national security.[More...]

Sarah Palin hasn't learned the art of tailoring a political speech to the audience. This morning she spoke about energy independence.

Palin spoke after touring Xunlight Corp., one of a handful of solar technology startup companies in Toledo, a struggling industrial city in this swing state. The city's leaders are hoping that the solar companies will create jobs to replace some of those lost by downsizing in the auto industry.

But Palin made only a passing reference to solar power in her speech and instead renewed her call for more drilling in U.S. coastal waters. She repeated her signature anthem, "drill, baby, drill," which seemed to fall a bit flat on the audience at the plant even as it's become a popular chant at her rallies.

Did Palin really believe the audience at a solar plant in Toledo would be interested in hearing "drill, baby, drill" rather than "sun, baby, sun"? Is she planning to drill under Toledo's Chrysler plant that just laid off 825 workers?