Schumer Chimes In

I thought this would be a worthy companion to the back-and-forth Greg and I had about campaign strategy and “armchair quarterbacking.” My take is here, Greg’s response is here. And now Chuck Schumer chimes in. I’ll present it without comment only because it fits with the theme of a discussion we’ve been having, but feel free to agree, disagree, or think Schumer should keep his trap shut:

“They’re trying to say, ‘He’s not one of us,’” Schumer said.

“I would answer back hard. What do you mean he’s not one of us? It’s John McCain who wears $500 shoes, has six houses, and comes from one of the richest families in his state,” Schumer said. “It’s Barack Obama who climbed up the hard way, and that’s why he wants middle-class tax cuts and better schools for our kids.”

The strategy has produced some questions in Democratic circles as to whether Obama shouldn’t be hitting back more personally – but Obama’s aides argue that the perception that McCain is running a traditional, negative campaign is damaging McCain’s reputation for high-minded independence.

Schumer didn’t directly criticize Obama’s strategy, but he argued for a higher-velocity response.

“When they say,’He’s not one of us,’ you don’t say, ‘Here’s our plan on health care,’” he said.

UPDATE: I lied about the no comment. Crazy theory: is Schumer taking one for the team? He’s basically giving advice to Obama to say “It’s John McCain who wears $500 shoes, has six houses, and comes from one of the richest families in his state,” and in doing so he is saying…”It’s John McCain who wears $500 shoes, has six houses, and comes from one of the richest families in his state!”

Am I crazy? Is he putting this out there as a surrogate in the form of advice?

McCain Camp Reviewing Bundler’s Donations

The plot thickens:

John McCain’s campaign says it will review donations brought in by a prominent Florida businessman following disclosures that his business partner, a foreign national, also may have engaged in fundraising.

A McCain spokesman says the campaign is looking into hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to make sure that they are appropriate.

The campaign is sending a letter spelling out legal requirements to all donors who sent their contributions through Harry Sargeant III, the finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party.

Talkingpoints memo has been all over this story, and the Washington Post and New York Times have done good work exposing what is going on.

So, what happens next? It seems to me that McCain realizes this is becoming a major headache. His shady actions in fund raising have been well documented, including securing a loan by pledging to go into public financing for the primaries, and then reversing course. With more and more of these questionable characters being exposed to the light of day, it seems to me only a matter of time before this blows up into a full on scandal. Ben Smith over at Politico notes that Chuck Todd is betting that McCain returns the money by the end of the week. Smart move, but it really doesn’t address the issue of McCain using any and every questionable source to fill up his campaign account. Now, the question is if the media will hold him to account. We shall see.

Update: McCain is returning 50K in donations.

Irony, Thy Name is Halperin

From Mark Halperin’s list of things he’d like banned from the campaign:

The focus on the trivial and superficial while the nation remains at war and teeters on the edge of an economic recession.

Benefit of the doubt

Sorry, Dan, but I’m completely with Obama on this one. One of the things I hated most about the past two Democratic campaigns was the constant drumbeat of stories quoting “Democratic strategists” telling the campaign what it should be doing. It’s not that they were wrong — both campaigns were horribly run — but that this type of “management by anonymous committee” only served to reinforce just how inept the campaigns were. And when the candidates did finally take the advice, it felt like they had been pushed into it. Remember Gore’s second debate performance, or his public agonizing over whether to allow Clinton to campaign for him? I know crowdsourcing is all the rage these days, but when applied to a campaign it makes everything seem rote and telegraphed.

For the most part, we’ve seen a welcome reversal of roles this year. The papers have been full of anonymous Republican sniping over McCain’s strategy, while the Dems have largely remained silent. I hope it stays that way.

NYT raises more questions about McCain’s fundraising

The McCain story of McCain’s questionable fundraising continues to get more interesting. For those of you not familiar with the questions raised so far, a fundraiser named Harry Sargeant has been bringing in maxed out donations to McCain from questionable sources, including an auto mechanic and other unregistered voters. Senator McCain also received a donation of over $60,000 (between his campaign and the RNC) from a Hess office manager and an Amtrak foreman living in Flushing, Queens who still drive a 1993 sedan. If you’d like to read up on the story you can do so here.

The NYT has a piece out today that raises more questions about the contributions that McCain has raised from Harry Sargeant, particularly the contributions raised from one family, the Abdullahs.

From the NYT:.

Campaign finance records show Mr. McCain collected a little more than $50,000 in March from members of a single extended family, the Abdullahs, in California and several of their friends.

Amid a sea of contributions to the McCain campaign, the Abdullahs stand out. The checks come not from the usual exclusive coastal addresses, but from relatively hardscrabble inland towns like Downey and Colton. The donations are also startling because of their size: several donors initially wrote checks of $9,200, exceeding the $2,300 limit for an individual gift.

Obama Needs To Hit McCain HARD Today!

McCain’s going to go around Ohio today, lying to the people in Ohio about how he feels their pain on the DHL job losses. Guess what? He was a big player behind the loss of 8,000 jobs for Ohioans in the DHL-Airborne Express merger!

McCain on Thursday was to discuss DHL’s plans with local officials and others affected by the potential job losses. The economy and job losses are important issues in Ohio, a critical swing state that gave President Bush the electoral votes needed for re-election in 2004.

McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers said Wednesday that Davis had not worked with DHL since 2005, long before DHL announced plans to move its work out of Wilmington. The companies merged in 2003.

“At the time of the merger, no one anticipated an impact on jobs in Wilmington,” Rogers said.

McCain, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, had a role in the deal too. He urged then-Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens to abandon proposed legislation that would have prohibited foreign-owned carriers from flying U.S. military equipment or troops, which Airborne Express said was aimed at torpedoing its merger with DHL.

We’re Not the Only Ones Who Worry

This morning’s Washington Post has a revealing article about how so many Democratic strategists worry that Obama’s camp hasn’t been hitting McCain hard enough:

“Democrats are worried,” said Tad Devine, a top strategist for Kerry who thinks Obama must stay on the high road. “We’ve been through two very tough elections at the national level, and it’s very easy to lose confidence.”

Obama’s latest ad may be his toughest yet, using words and images to link McCain to President Bush and concluding: “The original maverick? Or just more of the same?”

But Democratic strategists said that it is nothing like the character attacks by McCain, and that the response could be far nastier, perhaps raising McCain’s ethical scrape in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal, mocking his family wealth and designer shoes, or highlighting his age. After McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm suggested that the United States has become “a nation of whiners,” Democratic strategists said Obama should have immediately started an ad blitz. (emphasis mine)

On creating a story out of “thin” air

Paul Campos had a great piece today in the Rocky Mountain News that’s a must read for anyone seeking to understand how “journalism” is often practiced these days. The piece he’s addressing is the infamous Amy Chozick “Skinny Obama” story from the Wall Street Journal.

Here’s the method she employed to determine whether Obama’s skinny physique might be a problem for him in the presidential race. She posted the following message on a Yahoo Internet message board: “Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his ‘no excess body fat’? Please let me know. Thanks!”

And here are the results she gleaned from this intrepid bit of journalism: a total of one purportedly substantive response from what Chozick characterizes as a Clinton supporter but which reads like someone yanking Chozick’s chain. Nevertheless, Chozick quoted this source – somebody going by the name “onlinebeerbellygirl” – to confirm the thesis of her story: “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.”

One unmoderated comment on a Yahoo message board = front page of the Wall Street Journal. And yes, it gets worse.