Obama Raised $66 million in August

Barack Obama had his best fundraising month ever and brought in $66 million in August, surpassing his previous best month, February, when he raised $55 million. John McCain raised $47 million in August. Obama has to keep raising money from here on out whereas McCain gets $84 million from the government now since he opted into the public financing system and Obama did not.

Commercial

Speaking of fundraising, donations to this Website are welcome. They will used to buy ads on blogs to increase traffic and on the Websites of college newspapers in swing states to motivate young voters. Ads are currently running on TPM, Politics1.com, Conservative Grapevine, and Conservative's Forum, among other blogs. Ads on college newspaper Websites will start when there is more money in the kitty.

Electoral-vote.com Scores Now Available by Text Messaging

The electoral-vote.com scores are now available for free by text messaging to your mobile phone through DOTGO. Just text "electoral-vote" to the phone number DOTCOM (368266) to receive the current electoral vote prediction. Or visit the electoral-vote.com SMS page to subscribe to a daily electoral vote message. (DOTGO services are offered free of charge, but your standard mobile carrier text messaging rates may apply.)

Wall Street in Turmoil

The financial industry is reeling. The venerable Lehman Brothers investment bank has filed for bankruptcy. Insurance giant A.I.G. is close to bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch only avoided bankruptcy by selling itself to Bank of America for $50 billion in BoA stock. Other financial firms are in the bullseye. This week has been the worst week for Wall St. since 1929.

For people who don't understand what is going on, here is the story in a nutshell. Decades ago, when you wanted to buy a house you went to local bank and applied for a mortgage. If the mortgage was less than three times your annual income and you had a good credit history, the bank would loan you the money and you would pay them interest and some principal every month for 30 years. Then Wall St. got a bright idea: buy up all the mortgages from the banks, collect a few thousand into a pool called a CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation) and sell shares in it. The owner of each share would get a pro-rata share of the incoming monthly mortgage payments, analogous to what a bond owner gets.

What happened? It sounded like a great idea and soon all mortgages were sold and repackaged into shares. It didn't take long before the banks realized that they could issue mortgages of five, six, even eight times the buyer's annual income or sell them to people with terrible credit histories. After all, the shaky mortgages would soon be somebody else's headache. That's what happened. Lehman, Merrill, and others bought billions of dollars of mortgages that the homeowners had no hope of ever repaying on schedule and nobody wanted to buy shares in these worthless CDOs, so the brokers got stuck holding the bag with billions in worthless loans.

What are the political consequences of this meltdown? It is a bit early, but here's the expected pattern. Republicans will say that bankruptcies, however unfortunate, are an absolutely essential part of free markets. When managers make stupid decisions, the market punishes them by driving them into bankruptcy. This warns other managers not to be so greedy. Democrats will say that millions of innocent homeowners and small investors are going to lose their homes and life savings due to misbehavior on the part of rapacious and unscrupulous bankers and that it is the job of the government to regulate the entire financial sector to protect ordinary people who don't know the difference between a CD and a CDO.

One thing that is crystal clear already is that reporters are going to be asking the candidates how they plan to deal with this. John McCain might call for more regulation and when other Republicans scream at him use this to prove his "maverick" credentials. Of course he will be accused of locking the barn door after the prize horse (with or without lipstick) has escaped since he has never been much of a fan of government regulation before. For Obama it will be easier to call for more government oversight. Democrats believe government is supposed to protect people.

Voting Eligibility

If you are eligible to vote and not registered, get moving and register. Time is running out. Declareyourself.com gives the requirements for all 50 states and D.C. Americans abroad vote in the state they last lived in. Voting requirements differ by state a little bit, but generally you have to be a U.S. citizen, at least 18 on election day, a resident of the state, not in jail, and not declared mentally incompetent by a court. If you are mentally incompetent but no court has noticed this yet, you can vote and you can even be elected to public office. You can probably think of some examples. The site gives links to to all the state voter information Websites. There is a lot more on voting on the Political Websites page.

New Rasmussen Weighting

Most pollsters force their polls into a specific model of the electorate. These models have a large effect on the reported results. Rasmussen has changed his parameters to force all polls to contain 38.7% Democrats, 33.6% Republicans, and 27.7% independents. The model will be updated every week based on the surveys done in the preceding 6 weeks. Rasmussen is very open about the process. Other pollsters are less open and have been criticized for using questionable parameters.

The World According to Intrade

Frank Solensky collected the prices of the state contracts at www.intrade.com again Saturday. Here they are. For example, you can buy 10 contracts on McCain winning Alabama for $97. If he wins, you get $100. If he loses, you get zero. By assigning the more expensive contract the state's electoral votes, we see how the market is betting state by state. Compared to a week ago, Obama has lost Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia, for a total of 38 electoral votes. Nevertheless, he is still on track for a narrow win. In the "Winner" column, Democratic states are positive and Republican states are negative so the sum of all the states is the net Democratic electoral vote tally.

Today's Polls

We have two presidential polls today, in Delaware and New Jersey. Obama continues to lead in both of them.

We also have a new Senate poll in Minnesota. It looks like Al Franken has come back from way behind and brought the race to a tie. This could be a very close race yet.

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