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PRESIDENTIAL WATCH
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(caricatures by
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Weekend Report, Sept. 6-7, 2008
GENERAL NEWS HEADLINES with excerpts
Sunday talk shows:
ABC's "This Week" -- Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
CBS' "Face the Nation" -- Republican presidential nominee John McCain.
NBC's "Meet the Press" -- Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden.
"Fox News Sunday" -- Obama chief strategist David Axelrod and McCain campaign manager Rick Davis.
GOP convention most watched
convention on TV... ever
This
week's ratings, with an average of 34.5 million viewers watching the
GOP convention over three days, proved people are becoming more
interested in what the Republicans have to say. The Democrats had an
average audience of 30.2 million over four days, Nielsen said.
"No one really thought they had it in them in terms of pulling off this amazing convention," said Jay Wallace, vice president for news and editorial at Fox News Channel. But Hurricane Gustav pulled people into the news networks over the weekend, he said. People were also intensely curious about McCain's pick of Palin as a running mate, he said.
Rasmussen:
Palin more popular than
Obama,
McCain, Biden!
Now, following a Vice Presidential acceptance speech viewed live by more than 40 million people, Palin is viewed favorably by 58% of American voters. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 37% hold an unfavorable view of the self-described hockey mom.
The figures include 40% with a Very Favorable opinion of Palin and 18% with a Very Unfavorable view...
... The new data also sh
ows significant increases in the number who
say McCain made the right choice and the number who say Palin is ready
to be President. Generally, John McCain’s choice of Palin earns
slightly better reviews than Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden.
... most stunning is the fact that Palin’s favorable ratings are now a point higher than either man at the top of the Presidential tickets this year. As of Friday morning, Obama and McCain are each viewed favorably by 57% of voters. Biden is viewed favorably by 48%.
Palin-mania
sweeping nation - a
lmost
anything with her name on selling like hotcakes
... Palin is, of course, no longer "Sarah Who?" and, a week after her stunning naming to the Republican ticket, Palin items have become hot properties.
From t-shirts to th
ong
underwear, from the flattering to the not-so-flattering, sa
les
of just about everything related to the McCain-Palin ticket have been
flying off shelves, at the just-concluded GOP convention in St. Paul,
Minn., on the Internet, and other settings...
Hillary
Clinton has no intention of becoming
a Sarah Palin attack dog
“She’s not the answer when it comes to winning conservative women — she never was — and we’re not going to be anybody’s attack dog against Sarah Palin,” said a Clinton insider. “To be fair to Obama’s people, they haven’t asked us to do that.”
Oprah Winfrey: "At the beginning of this Presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates. I agree that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic interview, and I would love to have her on after the campaign is over."
Matt Drudge: "Oprah Winfrey may have introduced Democrat Barack Obama to the women of America -- but the talkshow queen is not rushing to embrace the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket!"
"She's being two-faced," said Dr. Cindy Grossman-Green, a pediatrician and Oprah fan from outside Philadelphia. "She initially had Obama on her show, but now that she's decided [to support him], she won't have any other political candidates on."
Grossman-Green is referring to the two times Obama appeared on Winfrey's show prior to announcing his plans to run for the presidency, once in January 2005 and, more recently, in October 2006.
The presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain is now even
at 42 percent, according to a new CBS News poll conducted
Monday-Wednesday of this week. Twelve percent are undecided according
to the poll, and one percent said they wouldn't vote.
This is in contrast to a poll conducted last weekend, where the
Obama-Biden ticket led McCain-Palin by eight points, 48 percent to 40
percent.
see also: Race tightens after Palin speech
GOP Convention coverage:
McCain's ratings for speech
beat Obama's!
The preliminary Nielsen ratings indicate that 26% more people watched McCain's speech than Obama's.
ABC's Jake Tapper on Palin
ratings:
"These are numbers that will scare
and unnerve Democrats"
"More than 37.2 million people tuned in for coverage of the third night of the 2008 Republican National Convention ... just 1.1 million fewer viewers than Barack Obama’s record-breaking speech on day four of the Democratic convention."
This included a big female audience of 19.5 million women — 5.2 million more women than tuned in for Sen. Hillary Clinton's, D-N.Y., speech of day two of the Democratic convention and 6.9 million more than watched Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., accept the Democrats’ vice presidential nomination.
These are numbers that will scare and unnerve Democrats.
THE CANDIDATES:
John McCain & Sarah Palin... today's headlines with excerpts
Crowds turn out for McCain, Palin in Wisconsin and Michigan
...
it was Palin who many, especially women, in both crowds
were thrilled to see up close just days after she
exploded onto the national political scene.
Clutching signs with messages such as “Girl Power” and “Sarah Is My American Idol,” moms and their daughters lined the barricades just outside The Chocolate Shop in Cedarburg, Wisconsin that served as the backdrop for the rally.
The women said they had come to see both members of the new Republican ticket, but couldn’t fake it when asked who they were more excited to lay eyes on.
McCain camp to leave Convention with $200 million
With an increase in fundraising following McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, Republicans say they are no longer in danger of being swamped by Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign cash.
``The money game is essentially off the table now,'' said Eddie Mahe, a former deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Barack Obama & Joe Biden... today's headlines with excerpts'
Obama at Bon Jovi event: we won't be bullied
Bon Jovi and his wife, Dorothea, hosted
more than 100 people for dinner on their mansion lawn by
the Navesink River in Middletown, N.J. The price was
$30,800 a person, to be divided between the Obama
campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Obama spoke for about eight minutes before greeting
guests individually. He vowed to fight Republican
attacks on his character and background more fiercely
than John Kerry did in his losing campaign four years
ago.
"We're not going to be bullied, we're not going to be
smeare
, we're not going to be lied about," Obama said. "I don't believe in coming in second."
Obama's Palin strategy: sit and wait
As Sarah Palin transforms herself from
obscure Alaska governor to
the Republican Party's newest rising star and most
effective attack dog, Barack Obama's campaign will
largely sit back, watch her rise and hope she falls.
Mr. O’Reilly then demanded that his guest admit that he was wrong to oppose the military surge. Mr. Obama didn’t give in; he repeated previous qualifications but did go farther, and less equivocally, than before in acknowledging that the surge had worked. “It’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,” he said. Mr. Obama is known for the subtlety and nuance of his answers; Mr. O’Reilly has no patience for either. And accordingly, they had a bracing exchange, in what was the first of four segments to be spread over four days.
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