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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 ...]

Yesterday The Hill reported:

Democratic leaders are discussing a major reshuffling of Senate committee chairmanships, according to multiple sources, and the proposed changes include ousting Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) from his coveted chairmanship.

It would certainly feel good to do so:

Lieberman spokesman Marshall Witmann dismissed the speculation, saying Lieberman “is focused on doing all he can to elect John McCain as president rather than post-election Washington politics.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Um, that's sort of the point Marshall "Bull Spit" Wittman. But I think it would be a silly thing to do. Lieberman can do no harm on the Homeland Security Committee and he basically is a marginalized character already. Why give the Media some trumped up nonsense on Lieberman? Just ignore him. He's irrelevant now.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

This is tragic:

A newlywed killed by police after he stepped outside his home to confront suspected burglars was shot in a case of mistaken identity, police said. Julian Alexander died after being shot twice in the chest by a police officer who was chasing four burglary suspects early Tuesday morning. Police Chief John Welter said the officer ran into Alexander, mistook him for one of the four juvenile suspects and shot him. ...

"He was a good kid, trying to protect his house," said Alexander's mother-in-law Michelle Mooney. "And the police, instead of asking questions, they just shot first. Somebody has to be held responsible for this." ... Alexander got married last weekend and his 19-year-old wife is expecting a baby in December.

More here.

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?

The winner of CNN's first iReport Film Festival Grand Jury Award has been announced. You can watch it above or in wider format here.

This documentary short follows a 90 year old great-great grandmother on her trek to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 Pennsylvania Primary. Having voted all her life, this is the first time she's had the opportunity to vote for a Black man for the office of President of the United States.

A new ethics complaint has been filed with the Alaska State Personnel Board against Gov. Sarah Palin over her charging the state for non-government related travel expenses of her children. The complaint is here (pdf).

When Palin returns to Alaska next week, hopefully for good, she may face different approval ratings than when she began her most non-excellent VP adventure.

I personally have had good exchanges with conservative legal commenter Ed Whelan of the National Review so I was a bit surprised at his dustup with Glenn Greenwald. But this is a funny quote from Whelan about Greenwald - "I’m not familiar with this guy. Is he always so unhinged?" - when you consider what he writes today at NRO:

[T]he survival of the historic American experiment in representative government will be in serious jeopardy if Barack Obama is our next president….

Um, a bit unhinged wouldn't you say?

By Big TentDemocrat, speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias writes:

Every time I read Ezra Klein pooh-pooing Barack Obama’s domestic agenda, I feel a bit baffled. . . . Is it as left-wing as what John Edwards ran on in the primaries in 2008? No. But it’s much more robustly progressive than what John Kerry offered in 2004, what Al Gore offered in 2000, or what Bill Clinton offered in 1996, and somewhat more ambitious than the Clinton ‘92 program. Presumably, that entire agenda won’t actually be enacted. . . [O]ne key element in the struggle to prevent [the Obama agenda] from happening, will be the effort to argue, if Obama wins, that, eh, he didn’t really run on a bold progressive agenda. Under the circumstances, I think it’s important to argue that, yes, he in fact did run on strong progressive agenda . .

It also happens to be true that Obama ran a progressive general election campaign. It is one of the ironies of this election season that Obama flipped the usual formula - run to the Left in the primaries and run to the Center in the GE. Obama has done the opposite. He ran to the Center (really he ran to nothing - he ran to the Post Partisan Unity Schtick) during the primaries and to the Left during the general election.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

It appears that the McCain campaign's argument this week for why it still has a chance is that turnout will be like 2004. There would have been a time where I might have bought into this type of thinking as a possibility. But after watching the record turnout in state afte state during the Democratic primaries, knowing that McCain is hardly someone who enthuses the conservative base and understanding the conditions in the country, I just do not see it. Andrew Kohut, whose Pew poll is spitting out some outrageous numbers, is however, correct when he says:

[T]he poll shows that roughly 12 percent of the electorate this year is black, up from 2004, with a similar increase among younger voters. Kohut defended this approach, saying there are historically high levels of interest in this contest among both demographic groups. At the same time, he added, "we've consistently shown less enthusiasm and engagement among Republicans than is typical, and the composition of the electorate shows that."

In any event, the WaPo pollsters, who show Obama with a 7 point lead, are not even using an expanded turnout projection:

Republicans are coming home to the GOP candidate. As a result the spread between Obama and McCain is smaller. The differences in the polls seems easy to explain - some pollsters are sticking to a tight likely voter screen - others are not. Among those hewing to a tight screen are Ras, which now shows a 3 point Obama lead, 50-47, Battleground, which also shows a 3 point Obama lead, and IBD/TIPP, which shows Obama with a 4 point lead, 48-44.

The pollsters with an expanded voter screen show Obama with a more comfortable lead. Among these are Hotline, which has Obama by 7, 49-42, DKos/R200, which has Obama by 6, 50-44, and ABC/WaPo, which has Obama by 7, 52-45. The tight vs expanded effect is well illustrated by Gallup, which has a foot in each camp. Its traditional LV screen garners a 2 point Obama lead, 49-47 while its expanded LV screen shows Obama by 7, 51-44.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only