Norm Coleman's campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, gives one of of the most painful avails I've ever seen to the polite, but persistent, Minnesota Capitol press, who force him to give the same non-answer over and over to the question of who's paid for Coleman's suits.
"Is there a reason the senator wont say whether or not someone else bought some suits for him?" asks one reporter.
UPDATE: Initially posted without the video. Sorry about that.
The Obama campaign is coming out against McCain's new plan to buy up Americans' mortgages, my colleague Carrie Budoff Brown reports.
The campaign is citing the burden it would place on taxpayers -- the issue that has made the overall bailout unpopular in the polls.
UPDATE: Here's the statement from the campaign's economic policy director, Jason Furman.
Senator McCain’s first response to this economic crisis was to say that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Since then, he’s acknowledged that there is a crisis and offered multiple plans, sometimes conflicting. Last night, in his latest attempt to get it right, he threw out a proposal that appeared to give the Treasury authority it already has to re-structure troubled mortgages. But now that he’s finally released the details of his plan, it turns out it’s even more costly and out-of-touch than we ever imagined. John McCain wants the government to massively overpay for mortgages in a plan that would guarantee taxpayers lose money, and put them at risk of losing even more if home values don’t recover. The biggest beneficiaries of this plan will be the same financial institutions that got us into this mess, some of whom even committed fraud.
Since this beginning of this crisis, Barack Obama has demanded that any rescue plan must protect taxpayers and ensure that they share in any profit once the economy recovers, and he worked to include that principle in the plan that passed Congress. John McCain’s plan to overpay for bad mortgages by handing taxpayer dollars over to big financial institutions is erratic policy-making at its worst, and it’s not the change we need to strengthen our economy, create new jobs, and keep Americans in their homes.
Amie Parnes reports from a McCain speech in Pennsylvania that Cindy McCain again went after Obama directly today, and accuses him, more or less, of endangering her son's life.
“The day that Sen. Obama cast a vote to not to fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body let me tell you,” she said. “I would suggest Sen. Obama change shoes with me for just one day. I suggest he take a day and go watch our men and women deploying.”
My colleague Amie Parnes reports that Bill Platt, GOP chair of Lehigh County, just warmed up the crowd and referred to Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama" twice, a use the campaign had to disown in Florida last week.
UPDATE: That Florida sheriff, incidentally, is in some trouble not for his words, but for participating in a Palin event in uniform.
UPDATE: "We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric which distracts from the real questions of judgment, character, and experience that voters will base their decisions on this November," says McCain -Palin spokesman Paul Lindsay.
An amused RNC spokesman sends around this clip from a Joe Biden rally in Tampa, at which he was s introduced as "the next Vice President of the United States, Joe McCain."
My colleague Victoria McGrane, late of our Capitol Hill bureau, emails with the most lucid explanation I've seen of what McCain did last night. The crucial shift from a recent congressional housing bill to McCain's more dramatic plan, she writes, was a move away from concern about moral hazard:
Details provided to reporters by senior adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin Wednesday morning make one thing clear: Taxpayers would directly pick up the tab for the difference in cost between a homeowner’s old, too-expensive mortgage and the cheaper one provided by the government.
This is something that congressional lawmakers, led by House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) specifically avoided when they crafted their own landmark housing bill, which became law July 31 and took effect Oct. 1.
Congress’ bill – which Holtz-Eakin says provides at least part of the authority McCain would need to carry out his plan – provided a $300 billion program to help distressed borrowers refinance into cheaper Federal Housing Authority mortgages. But to participate, lenders and mortgage investors would have to reduce the mortgage principal, thus taking a loss on the loan.
Lawmakers argued that the “haircut” would protect taxpayers and mitigate against so-called “moral hazard” that government intervention would encourage lenders to believe they’ll always be rescued from their bad business decisions. To make sure homeowners didn’t get off scott free either, the law requires them to share any future profits from the resale of their homes with the government.
“Clearly we face the trade off that we would in fact be taking the negative equity position and putting it on the taxpayers books instead of putting it on the private lenders books or the homeowners books,” Holtz-Eakin told Politico. “We think the balance of risk has shifted to the point where this is the way to go.”
Some nice details on the geography of ad spending from the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which reports that McCain's buy in the week leading up to Oct. 4 was virtually all negative; Obama's was about a third negative.
The project also reports on the independent spending; Vets for Freedom had, that week, by far the largest buy, up near a million dollars.
Here's the most interesting table, showing that Obama is outspending McCain in all states but two: Iowa and Minnesota, though Obama did — a Republican official said last night — recently start buying ads in the Minneapolis market:
The Takeaway talks to the woman who asked last night's final question, which Tom Brokaw referred to as "Zenlike": "What don't you know, and how will you learn it?"
In classic form, she turns out to be a bit of a professional quetioner, from New Hampshire (where else?), and had asked McCain the same question in 2000.
The fractious Michigan Republicans may not be doing McCain-Palin any favors by keeping the story that he's abandoned the state alive. They're now petitioning for a Palin visit.
The Democrats have answered with a petition to bring Tina Fey to Michigan.
I asked Mitt Romney, a native Michigander, about the state last night. He said he didn't question the McCain camp's decision, and added that he was headed to Michigan after the debate, and would campaign for McCain there if asked, but hadn't been asked.
He's the son of a Democratic state legislator from Tennessee, and turned himself in to the feds today.
The Smokin Gun has the indictment. The 20-year-old college student accessed her account "by researching and correctly answering a series of personal security questions."
A harsh, "vet to vet" ad accuses McCain of putting his "rich friends ahead of vets like me" for skipping a vote on helping veterans pay for school. (To be fair, both candidates have missed a lot of vote.)
The group Vote Vets, one of the few independent groups that seems to have a bit of money to spend, says it's putting $350,000 behind the ad in Virginia, and $40,000 more behind a radio ad on veterans' health care in New Mexico.
In other outside spending news today, they've also got a big direct mail push, and AFSCME is dropping some swing-state mail.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club is up with a radio spot in Ohio hitting McCain on jobs and the environment.
ALSO: A healthcare coalition goes after McCain and a series of congressional Republicans in key states on healthcare, amplifying Obama's message.
UPDATE: RNC Spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson emails: “Instead of lying about John McCain’s record, Barack Obama and his supporters should explain how Obama will pay for nearly a trillion dollars in new proposed government spending during an economic crisis and why he has proposed putting healthcare under Washington’s control – not American patients’.”
First Read has a clue as to how Obama can be outspending McCain so heavily, a fact to which, as we reported this morning, both sides are now resigned:
Interviewed on MSNBC, Obama strategist David Axelrod revealed that 4 million individuals have now donated to the Obama camp. That’s up from 2.5 million last month, meaning -- if our math is correct -- that 1.5 million new people gave money to Obama. So how big will Obama’s September fundraising haul be? It looks like it might be BIG. Will it top the 100-million mark? (1.5 million new donors at 100 a pop… Well, you get the math.) This all perhaps explains how Obama outspent McCain by a nearly 3-to-1 margin last week.
UPDATE: An Obama aide says Axelrod misspoke, and Obama has fewer than 4 millon donors.
Again, economic news dominates the day, and both candidates urge action beyond the Fed's rate cut.
McCain:
I applaud the move by the Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve and other national monetary authorities to reduce interest rates to address the financial crisis spreading across the globe. It is imperative at this moment that government be responsive to the needs of Americans, restore confidence in our financial system, provide assistance to struggling homeowners, and implement pro-growth policies that will create jobs and provide a foundation for a more prosperous future. That is why last night, I called for an American Homeownership Resurgence Plan -- a plan to use taxpayer money not just to bail out Wall Street, but instead to keep families in their homes and to stabilize financial markets from the bottom up. I am committed to protecting the American worker in this crisis. I am dedicated to reforming the corruption in Washington and on Wall Street that is the root of the financial system meltdown. I will get the economy back on track .
Obama:
I’ve said before that this is a global crisis that requires a global solution, and so I support the action of the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world to cut interests rates and ease the mounting pressure on global credit markets. I hope this response continues as leaders of major financial institutions and representatives from nations around the world gather in Washington. But it is clear that more urgent and vigorous action is necessary to stem this crisis, which is making it impossible for businesses large and small to get loans and may have already cost Americans nearly $2 trillion from their retirement accounts. The Treasury Department must move quickly to implement a plan based on the rescue package we passed last week and use the authority they already have to purchase troubled assets, including mortgages. It is also critical that Treasury, in coordination with other government agencies, move as vigorously as possible to help homeowners stay in their homes. And I call on Congress to immediately pass a rescue plan for our middle-class that will save one millions jobs and provide relief to struggling families, small businesses, and Americans who are losing their homes.
Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama left here with the presidential campaign unavoidably shifted to the topic of economic crisis and onto the electoral terrain of traditionally conservative states. McCain’s decision to use Tuesday’s debate to roll out a dramatic new housing plan – and to downplay an extended weekend of personal attacks on Obama – appeared to mark a recognition that, after two consecutive days of the Dow plummeting and financial hemorrhaging abroad, the market meltdown is not likely to move from the center of the campaign. After days of attempts to persuade voters that Obama’s ties to ‘60s radical Bill Ayers are a crucial character issue, McCain didn’t mention Ayers’ name during the 90 minutes of Tuesday’s forum. His top aides suggested afterward that, going forward, the candidate wouldn’t focus on the former domestic terrorist nor invoke the name of Obama’s controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
John McCain came here Tuesday hoping the second presidential debate would help him jar loose a campaign that for the past three weeks has been about the economy, the economy and the economy.
He didn't get his wish.
Energized in his demeanor, McCain took his case to Barack Obama at Belmont University with waspish intensity, and he came with at least one big new idea on how the country can weather this financial storm. But the transcendent threat of the nation's economic crisis utterly dominated the evening — another night when millions of Americans did not hear a crisp counterargument from McCain about why the Democrats can't blame the meltdown on eight years of Republican White House rule.
By night's end, while McCain knocked Obama back on his heels at times, Democrats felt their nominee had made no misstep and that a playing field utterly focused on economic issues still strongly favors the Illinois senator.
The most memorable line of the night belonged to John McCain. McCain pointed out that “That One” vote for the 05 energy bill. Look for Republicans to note in coming days that “That One” also voted for higher taxes at least 94 times; “That One” has associations with unrepentant terrorists, etc…
