On Thursday, May 29, The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder offered some detailed thoughts on how Senator McCain could improve his likelihood of prevailing in November’s general election in “John McCain… Predicament.” Here are my thoughts on some of Ambinder’s ideas:

The solution: appoint Tom Ridge to the ticket…

Don’t panic. McCain’s not in a predicament. Barack Obama faces a tough electoral college map…

A game-changer. Pledge to serve for only one term. Appoint your veep pick early. Do something creative with public financing. Propose some new policy that takes your allies and your opponents by surprise. Challenge Obama to weekly debates.

I had some assorted and sundry thoughts on a couple of Marc’s ideas:

1) Tom Ridge as a VP pick.

As with all VPs, there is an upside and a downside. The upside would be a presumed marginal improvement of McCain’s odds of winning in Pennsylvania, a state which Obama must probably carry to win nationally - its 21 electoral votes would be difficult to replace.

The downside would be that Ridge’s selection would violate three different principles of traditional selection -

a) distancing from unpopular members of your own party;

b) DC insider/DC outsider,

c) young/old.

1) Although Ridge is a wildly popular, former two-term governor of Pennsylvania, he is most commonly associated (at the national level) with his service as the first Homeland Security Secretary - and thus a link to George W. Bush, from whom McCain must distance himself as much as possible.

2) Ridge is a heroic, decorated Vietnam veteran who served in Congress and in DC for a good while - just like McCain.

Like McCain, he was also a member of the House - McCain had two terms there before being elected to the Senate in 1986.) Ridge hasn’t been in Congress since 1994, but his stint as Homeland Security chief makes him look like another DC, security-credentialed type - something that McCain, who has been in Congress for a quarter-of-a-century, would prefer not to reinforce.

3) There’s also the age issue. Ridge is 62 years old and will turn 63, ironically, on August 27, right before the GOP convention (h/t Wikipedia) in Minnesota. Although still nearly a decade younger than McCain, a 63-year-old VP candidate might not send the right message, as it would give Jay Leno’s writers some more material.

But let’s look at the pluses:

Ridge would be young enough to serve as president if McCain were incapacitated, but has sufficiently strong gravitas and ability to serve as a great safety choice, if he were to enter the Oval Office. It would dispel many concerns about McCain’s health, if he had a solid backup like Ridge.

Moreover, he would be younger than McCain - but not SO much younger, as to make McCain look really old in comparison.

In terms of tipping Pennsylvania-

Ridge’s presence certainly couldn’t hurt. Moreover, Ridge’s old House district is based in and around Erie, a Democratic city but one which backed him by a huge margin when he ran for governor twice in the 1990s. Having a veep who could help in Great Lakes, Rust Belt cities such as Erie. It’s not likely that Northwest Pennsylvania could provide enough of a margin to tip the state overall, though.

Rewarding Ridge for loyalty would also be a strong message that McCain remembers his friends and allies. Ridge served as honorary national co-chair for McCain and stuck with him during the nadir of the campaign’s implosion and collapse in the summer and fall of 2007.

He’s also conducted himself on the national stage for a very long time, and is thus unlikely to commit the sort of gaffe(s) that might blow the campaign off-message, a la Dan Quayle.

Looking at some of Marc’s other ideas in Options 5 and 6:

I agree on Marc’s advice: “Don’t panic.” There are still 159 days to go. (The time to panic, if there was one, was back in the fall and summer of last year.) It doesn’t mean that the McCain team shouldn’t be concerned with the national climate for any Republican running (one look at those House elections makes that very clear). Or about Obama’s huge edge in money AND organization, due to the campaign’s own prodigious fundraising.

As for some of the risky strategies in Option 6:

Obviously, “doing something creative with public financing” could apply to a wide variety of ideas. Certainly, the best thing that McCain could do, would be to try to hold Obama to the public-money pledge he made last year.

Pledging to serve only one term is dicier. I don’t think it would make sense, unless McCain has already privately determined to do precisely that (in other words, if he only wants to serve one term, anyhow, he might as well take political credit for a “Cincinnatus-at-the-plow” strategy of voluntarily renouncing power.)

Appointing the Veep early - I don’t know about this, as the veepstakes speculation does give McCain some free media that he can use, particularly so due to the Democratic endgame that has taken so long to resolve (and remains unresolved).

Challenging Obama to weekly debates would be a great idea, which I think carries NO downside and tons of upside. Obama’s huge money advantage could be offset somewhat, by the bonanza of free media that weekly debates could provide. Also, McCain loves doing unscripted, risky stuff. He gets burned on this, occasionally, such as the now-infamous 100-years-in-Iraq quote), but it plays very much to his strengths.

Thoughts are welcome.

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According to The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, in “A Second McCain Aide Resigns”:

Doug Davenport, the only one with close ties to campaign manager Rick Davis, resigned on May 11, due to revelations that he had lobbied on behalf of Myanmar’s repressive and odious regime.  Davenport had been one of the ten regional campaign managers, whose territory included the Chesapeake/Potomac area (Maryland, Virginia, DC).

Ambinder’s full post:

Doug Davenport, the regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic states, founded the DCI Group’s lobbying practice and oversaw the contract with Myanmar in 2002.

“Doug has tendered his resignation and we have accepted it,” Jill Hazelbaker, McCain’s communications director, wrote in a e-mail.

He joins former DCI Group CEO Doug Goodyear, who resigned yesterday from the post of convention CEO after Newsweek reported that DCI was paid more than $300,000 to represent Myanmar’s ruling junta.

Goodyear and Davenport were recruited by McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, who has been accused by some current and former McCain advisers of take insufficient care of McCain’s reformer brand by appointing lobbyists to key positions. Ironically, as Newsweek reported, Goodyear was asked to become convention CEO after Davis’s lobbying firm partner, Paul Manafort, was nixed because of his own close ties to foreign governments and controversial companies.

Davenport did not respond to an e-mail seeking his comment last night.

On April 15, when Ambinder analyzed the McCain campaign structure, he noted the following:

Davis did not pack this elite roundtable only with his allies. Only one regional campaign manager can reliably be considered a longtime Davis ally — Doug Davenport, the RCM for the mid-Atlantic region.

Davenport’s departure creates a vacancy among the ten RCMs.  With the nomination of Senator Obama all but assured, historically Republican - but trending Democratic - Virginia will be a genuine swing state for the first time in decades.  No Democratic presidential candidate has carried it since 1964, but Obama is polling well there and has enormous strength in the DC suburbs in the northern part of the Commonwealth.  So keeping Virginia in the Republican column will undoubtedly be the central goal for Davenport’s successor as RCM for the mid-Atlantic/Chesapeake states.

Thoughts are welcome.

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The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder is always closely attuned to the inner workings of campaigns.  On Saturday, April 19, he added the final piece to the puzzle: namely, the last of the ten regional managers for Senator McCain’s campaign.  Here’s his post, titled “Another Giuliani Vet Is Tapped For McCain Service”:

The final McCain-VEEP ‘08 regional campaign manager is in place: Jennifer Hallowell has been tapped to head the campaign’s operations in Michigan and Wisconsin, two Republicans said last night. Hallowell worked with McCain strategist Mike DuHaime on Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign and served as the executive director of the Indiana Republican Party before that.

Eventually, we will have a post detailing all ten of the regional managers.

Thoughts are welcome.

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The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder always seems to have a new angle on the inner workings of campaigns.  And even on a day that was dominated by the fallout from the abrupt recession of pollster/strategist Mark Penn’s role in the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ambinder has some analysis of Senator McCain’s fundraising.  Here’s the post, titled “McCain Raises $15M In March”:

07 Apr 2008 02:22 pm

Sen. John McCain’s fundraising is picking up, relatively speaking.

In March, officials said he raised about $15M, his best month since early 2007 and well above his $2M-per-month pace in late 2007. The final number is still being tallied.

$11m came from a spurt in the campaign’s high-dollar fundraising. $4m was raised through direct mail and Internet efforts.

A campaign spokesperson did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

The campaign is on track to meet its internal budget goal of about $57M through the start of the Republican convention and an additional $20M for a legal compliance fund.

McCain’s fundraising team has also been tasked with raising about $100m into the Republican National Committee’s Victory Fund, which will be spent in the fall. The campaign itself has stopped raising money for the general election and intends to accept the $85m from the federal government.

The campaign expects a fundraising boost in may from the efforts of ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney, who has pledged to raise at least $15m for McCain by encouraging his donors to contribute.

Tomorrow night, the campaign expects to raise more than $400,000 from a high-dollar fundraiser at the Willard Hotel in downtown DC.

Obviously, McCain’s fundraising is lagging far behind those of the Democratic campaigns, especially Senator Barack Obama’s. The remarkable small-donor base that is fueling Obama’s machine, is going to be very difficult for the McCain campaign to overcome.

However, I think that Ambinder’s point is well taken, which is that by McCain standards (or even by pre-2008 cycle standards), $15 million was a great month.

Some of you may remember that back in the crowded-field days of the first quarter of 2007, McCain was heavily criticized for raising “only” $13 million in a quarter - an average of “only” $4.33 million per month. It’s hard to believe how much changes in a year in politics.   Take a look at the New York Times article, from nearly a year ago, April 19, 2007, on McCain’s fundraising:

The lead quote, which was absolutely true at the time:

A report of $13.1 million in campaign receipts in the first quarter of the election cycle is the stuff dreams are made of for most of the 2008 presidential contenders.

Yet for Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who reported that total, the fundraising figures for the first three months were widely reported as a setback. Even McCain pronounced himself disappointed with his early fundraising results.

Thoughts are welcome.

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Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic has one of the finest political blogs around, especially on the inner workings of campaigns.  On Tuesday, March 11, he described the innovative, regionalized structure that Senator McCain and campaign manager Rick Davis have outlined for the general election battle.  Here’s the post, titled “McCain Plans Decentralized Campaign”:

Sen. John McCain’s election planners are preparing to unveil a radically decentralized campaign structure over the next few months.

Instead of funneling authority through a few central figures at campaign headquarters in Arlington, VA, plans call for it to be dispersed to up to ten “regional campaign managers” –spread at satellite campaign offices throughout the country, according to two Republicans briefed on the plans.

“We don’t discuss campaign structure or strategy,” said Jill Hazelbaker, McCain’s communications director.

The 10 different campaign offices will run, in essence, 10 different campaigns, region-specific and constituent-specific, tailorable to fit around McCain’s unique coalition.

The campaign’s staff – less than 100 in total – gathered in Arlington this weekend and was briefed on the plan.

Campaign chief Rick Davis invited staff members to submit resumes and passed around an organization chart. There is no political director – normally, the senior staff member directly in charge of designing and implementing the campaign’s field program, according to someone who has seen the chart.

When he was the campaign’s CEO during McCain 1.0 – when John Weaver was chief strategist and Terry Nelson was manager, Davis signed leases for campaign offices in New York and Los Angeles, anticipating that early budget projections would allow for a version of a regional campaign.

The regional managers would have the authority to hire and fire, to adapt field programs to fit the needs of the states in their region. Unlike regional political directors, they would be part of the senior staff table at the campaign’s Arlington headquarters. Message and media, for the most part, would still be run through Arlington.

Since he wrapped up the nomination in mid-February, McCain’s campaign has received thousands of resumes from job-seeking Republicans. But campaign has kept a lid on the hiring process and has resisted calls from Republicans that they begin to hire more quickly. Quietly, Republican state parties have begun to hire aides to staff their general election “Victory committees” – more of than not, they have pedigrees from the Mitt Romney operation.

Eventually, the regional campaign managers will oversee campaign-chosen state directors and the Republican National Committee’s regional political directors, slowing assuming the more traditional structure associated with general election campaigns.

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Among our friends at Race42008.com, LJ has always been the most stalwart supporter of Senator McCain’s candidacy.  Yesterday, LJ put up a great post about the informal barbecue McCain hosted for his press corps in Arizona… Take a look at ”Grillin’ McCain“… 

While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are battling it out in Texas and Ohio, the de facto Republican nominee decided to take the weekend off the campaign trail to spend with a selected group of supporters (Pawlenty, Huntsman, Lieberman, Martinez, Graham, Gramm, Lott, etc. [Crist had to cancel at the last minute, apparently]) , aides, and reporters. It sounds like a really fun time. McCain’s ribs sound absolutely amazing too. It’s too bad that video or pictures were the only thing banned from the event, I would’ve like to see McCain “sporting jeans and a sleeveless denim jacket over a sweatshirt with a silkscreened family picture.” I just can’t picture that for the life of me.

So far, 7 of the reporters have stories up about today’s festivities, read them all:

by LJ @ 12:34 am. Filed under 2008 Misc., John McCain, Media Coverage

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One of the many fine posters, among those at Race42008.com, is Sean Oxendine.  His post on polling - On Error Margins - explains the margin-of-error concept in lay terms for those of us who enjoy the horse-race aspects of politics, and so it’s worthwhile to post it here:

In comments on DaveG’s analysis of McCain leading Obama by a point in the Franklin & Marshall Poll, long-time favorite commenter of mine Caroline writes:

With a MoE of +/-3.9% McCain does not “lead”.

This is pretty much true. But this raises an important post for those of you who come here for the horse race analysis. If you *really* want to be technical, with a sample size of 640, we *can* be 20% certain that McCain is leading based on the F&M poll. Now that is to say, we’d be much better off relying on a coin flip rather than this poll in choosing the correct leader, but nonetheless, there are conclusions we can draw about who is leading based on the F&M poll. Just not very useful conclusions.

And this is just a point that I want to make going forward, and it is a very important one to remember with error margins. Pointing to error margins is one of those things in the blogosphere that is often used to show up people who have no idea what they are talking about. Most people who always say “the polls were wrong” or “the polls are all over the place” or “YAY CANDIDATE A IS WINNING YOU REPUBLICLONE THUGS ARE GOING TO LOSE” (And in fairness, you’re just as likely to find a similar all-cap post about “al-qaeda-loving DhimmocRATS” going down), can quickly be shown up with a reference to error margins (btw Caroline, I’m no longer pointing fingers at you, you were 100% correct in the criticism of DaveG as I quoted it; I just used your post as a jumping-off point).

At a simple level, one thing most people don’t understand is that the error margins apply per data point. Not per spread. In other words, in every Obama/McCain poll, there is an error margin for Obama, and an error margin for McCain. With a 3.5% error margin, then, a poll showing the two tied could mean that McCain is ahead by 7 points or behind by seven. A poll showing Obama up four is still within the error margin. A poll showing McCain up by 7 could mean the two are tied, or it could mean that McCain is up by 14.

Most people get this, or pick up on it quickly.

But I am still being imprecise, and this is an important nuance that very few people get. My paternal grandfather… of overwhelming common sense, has said when talking about my hobby “how is it possible to say anything with certainty about how millions of people will vote based on what 500 people say in a poll?” (actually there’s usually a lot more adjectives thrown in, but we won’t go there).

And it is an important point. The answer is that you can never say with 100% certainty, based on a poll, that X or Y is ahead. It is possible that, in a state with 5,000,000, of which 4,999,749 are going to vote for Obama, you could get a poll that includes all of the 251 McCain voters, and end up with a poll predicting a McCain win. It just ain’t very likely.

But this is the important thing about horserace analysis. Most declarations based on a poll that “X” or “Y” is ahead will drop an important caveat: With “x%” certainty.

Pollsters use 95% confidence as an “industry standard,” which they do for some very specific, technical reasons I won’t go into here. So with a sample size of, let’s say, 500, it is correct to say that you can be 95% certain that the “true” outcome is within 4.4% either way of your polling outcome. So if Obama comes in at 50%, and McCain comes in at 42%, you can’t be 95% certain that Obama is leading..

But 95% confidence isn’t the be-all, end-all. Like I said, it is the industry standard that is selected for specific reasons, that may or may not always apply to your needs. Sometimes, for example, you may have an extremely important survey to make. Let’s say you’re thinking of going to intrade and plunking down your life’s savings on Obama to win. At that point, you may decide that you need to be 99% confident in your given range. Other times, you might want to be less sure.

What if, for your purposes, you only wanted to be 90% certain Obama was leading? Your error margin shrinks to 3.68%. In other words, in the preceding example, we *can* be 90% certain Obama is leading. And 90% certain is pretty darned good!

But what if you wanted to be REALLY certain, like 99% certain. With a 500 voter sample, we’d have to have a spread of 11% before we can be THAT certain.

Now you’ll notice something here. The error margin for 90% is +/-3.68%. The error margin for 95% is +/-4.38%. And the error margin for 99% is +/-5.76.

The relationship is not linear here. To go from 90% certainty to 95% certainty, your error margin goes up .7%. To go from 95% to 99%, your error margin goes up 1.4% (with sample sizes of 500).

In other words, if you are willing to accept a lower degree of certainty, you can often draw inferences even