Washoe County, Nev. (Flickr: Ken Lund)

RENO, Nev.—Three hours after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, held a campaign rally down the street, the Washoe County GOP chairwoman Heidi Smith was puzzled as she looked over early-voting numbers. Democrats were turning out in droves.

Four hours east of San Francisco, Washoe County is the leading swing county of Nevada, a battleground state. Sen. John McCain needs a win here to keep his flickering presidential hopes alive.

For decades, Washoe County was considered a lock for Republicans. The last time a Democratic presidential nominee won Washoe County was Lyndon B. Johnson in his landslide of 1964. But last week, county registrar Dan Burk released stunning news: registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 1,284 voters.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

“How did this happen?” Smith said as she shuffled through papers on her desk and eight volunteers in the strip-mall office manned the phones and occasionally handed out McCain-Palin signs.  “This was a strong Republican county. And all of a sudden — it is Democrat.”

The Democratic takeover of Washoe County has Republicans across the state reeling because it opens the door for Sen. Barack Obama to win Nevada’s five electoral votes on Nov. 4.  Smith and other top GOP officials are considering a law suit to challenge the validity of new voter registrations that has turned a 17,500-voter registration advantage for Republicans in August 2007 into a 1,300-registration advantage for Democrats.

Traditionally, Nevada’s electorate has been divided between the Democratic stronghold of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and its suburbs, and the GOP-dominated rural areas. The GOP could usually count on places like Washoe County, which includes Reno, to tip statewide elections in its favor. Until now.

“No one thought [a Democratic takeover] would happen this fast with this kind of numbers in Washoe County,” said Chuck Muth, a GOP strategist from Carson City, Nev. “Washoe County had a large Republican registration four years ago, when [George W.] Bush barely carried the state.”

Polls show that the presidential race in Nevada continues to be a tossup. But Obama’s grass-roots-driven campaign is steadily attracting support for the Illinois senator, and Democrats are turning out to vote.  “The early numbers are encouraging, to say the least,” said Jeff Giertz, an Obama campaign spokesman.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Democrats were ready to hit the polls on Oct. 18, the first day of early voting which continues through Oct. 31. “[It] was like a tailgate party for Obama,” said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at University of Nevada, Reno, and a registered Republican. To stoke the fires, Obama held campaign rallies before large crowds Saturday in Las Vegas and Reno.

Meanwhile, McCain’s fortunes in the state seem to be fading. He failed to lock down Nevada’s independents and reassure nervous conservative Republicans. Add to that a faltering economy and Obama’s 4 to 1 spending advantage.

“This thing is crumbling before their eyes,” said Jon Ralston, a Las Vegas Sun political columnist.

Nevada unions have played a major role in registering voters, particularly Latino voters — expected for the first time to play a significant, perhaps pivotal, role in the election here. About half the Culinary Union’s 60,000 members in Nevada are Latino and there has been a strong push by the union to register members. “There is a a lot of coalescing around Sen. Obama,” said Chris Bohner, a Culinary Union spokesman. “His support is very high among Latinos.”

The union does not give out voter registration totals by ethnicity, Bohner said, but “there are thousands of new voters in our union” and he expects turnout is “going to be very high in the Latino community.”

Latinos, unofficially, make up about 11 percent of the registered voters in Nevada, and are roughly 24 percent of the population. The Nevada secretary of state does not track voter registration by ethnicity, but Latino organizing groups report registering more than 53,000 Latinos in Nevada over the last year, led by The We Are America Alliance, which conducted a national Latino voter registration drive.

Political scientist and Latino voting expert Matt Barreto of the University of Washington predicts a nationwide turnout of more than 9 million Latinos in 2008, compared with 7.6 million in 2004.

“They are energized to vote,” said Xio Rodriquez, a Latina Democratic Party volunteer in Reno. “They know some of the issues, they know the candidates and they know Obama and what he stands for.”

Giertz, the Obama campaign spokesman, said the Latino voter “certainly can make a difference in the election.”

Political analysts here say that Obama’s caucus win last January was a turning point in reshaping Nevada’s political map. Working outside Democratic Party powerbrokers, Obama managed to create a network of supporters at the precinct level who carried him past Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Since then, the Obama campaign, with the help of the state Democratic Party, has continued to organize at the precinct level, according to David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Now you are going to see what a community organization does,” Damore said.

Washoe County, Nev. (Wikimedia)

Obama’s grass-roots network, which in the past year has grown to more than 4,500 volunteers, has registered tens of thousands of Democratic voters. Its success is evident here in Washoe County.

“We haven’t had Democrats in the lead in Washoe County in 30 years,” said Herzik.

“It was something we thought we would never see happen,” said Paul Kincaid, spokesman for the Nevada state Democratic Party.

Herzik said it’s too early to tell whether the Democratic registration advantage is more than a short-term phenomenon, inspired by Obama. But there are indications that Democrats are digging in for the long haul.

Amy Curtis-Weber, executive director of the Washoe County Democratic Party, said more than 8,000 new voters were registered on the day of the Democratic caucus.  That was the beginning of the big surge in Democratic registrations that pushed the party’s edge in the state to more than 110,000, according to the Nevada secretary of state. A year ago, the margin was 4,200 voters. When President George W. Bush carried Nevada by 20,000 votes in 2004, registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 4,000.

While Obama’s campaign is taking it to the streets in Nevada, McCain’s campaign seems a virtual no show other than Palin’s Oct. 21 appearance, which drew about 3,000 supporters, about half the size of her audience in September. “The other day, I saw three different groups of Obama supporters walking through my neighborhood,” said Muth, the GOP strategist.  “I have yet to see one McCain person.”

That pretty much dooms McCain in Nevada, contends Paul Davis, a veteran Republican activist and political science professor at Truckee Meadows Community College and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He partly based his prediction on the overwhelming support for Obama by his students, many of whom have already voted. “I believe that as far as Washoe County is concerned, not only is Obama going to win — he’s going to win big,” Davis said.

There’s more troubling news for McCain. About one-third of Davis’ Republican colleagues tell him they are planning to vote for Obama because of the country’s financial crisis. “They want something passed to stop the bleeding in the stock market,” Davis said. “They are afraid if McCain gets elected, it will be gridlock all over again.” Davis said he already “gladly” cast his vote for Obama.

McCain hasn’t been to Nevada since Aug. 9, and his absence has further hurt his standing with the conservative Republican base here. “Being a maverick doesn’t really help him,” said Herzick. “They wanted a true fiscal conservative.”

McCain’s vote for the $700-billion Wall Street bailout package also alienated a segment of Nevada’s conservative voters, who may turn to Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate. That vote undermines McCain’s attempt to paint Obama as a “socialist”, said Muth. “You can’t make that argument with moral authority when you just supported the government bailout and nationalization of the banks,” he said. “That just makes you a hypocrite.”

Last Wednesday, a steady stream of voters turned out at the downtown Reno public library, a designated voting site. Bryant Broxson, 46, and his wife, Lani, 38, voted for McCain. “If [Obama] becomes president, America will change and will never recover and never be the same again,” Lani Broxson said.

Mario Lopez, 39, a court clerk, said he voted for Obama because the “Republicans are responsible for the condition of the economy.”

Six other voters all said they favored Obama, citing his positions on health care and the economy, his poise and the greater likelihood that he would restore America’s international standing. “It’s been a miserable eight years,” said Amber Armstrong, 29, a registered independent.

About 273,800 votes have been cast in Clark County in early voting through Tuesday. Democrats have a commanding 66,600-vote advantage — 147,600 Democrats have cast ballots, compared with 81,000 Republicans and 45,700 independents and other parties.

At 54 percent, Democratic early voting turnout in the county far exceeds that of four years ago, when it was 46 percent. Democratic Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee won Clark County, 52 percent to 47 percent. But Bush won the state by carrying Nevada’s rural counties along with Washoe County.

This year, however, there are clear indications that McCain cannot rely on Washoe County to tip Nevada into his corner. In Washoe County, 68,250 early ballots cast have been cast through through Tuesday, and Democrats have widened their lead to 7,300 voters. Democrats cast 31,900 votes, while Republicans cast 24,560.

“This is by far the largest number of early voters that we have ever seen,” said Burk, the Washoe County registrar. “Nothing else comes close.”

The strong Democratic turnout has Republicans mulling possible legal challenges. “We question whether these are valid registrations,” said Smith, the Washoe County GOP chairwoman.

While talking to Smith, she was interrupted by a cell phone call, which she inadvertently put on the speakerphone. It was the state GOP executive director Zachery Moyle, and the two discussed what could be done about the tsunami of Democratic Party registrations.

“I’m looking for people to sign on to a lawsuit,” Moyle said to Smith, who fumbled with the phone while turning off the speaker. “You didn’t hear that,” she said glancing in my direction.

When asked later that day about the potential for a lawsuit, Moyle said there was no “definitive plan” to go to court. “There’s been obviously concern with voter fraud across the country,” he said.

Democratic Party leaders said the only evidence of voter fraud so far in Nevada was a series of phone calls made to Democratic Latino voters telling them they could vote by phone and didn’t have to go to the polls. “The Republicans who are complaining about voter fraud are doing it simply to scare people,” contended Kincaid, the Democratic Party spokesman.

Moyle said he was still confident that Republican voters would turn out in big numbers for early voting and on Election Day, and that McCain would win Nevada.

“Yes, we are losing the early voting now,” Moyle said. “But in order for the Democrats to win and for us to be scared, we have to see [Democrats] to continue to turn out the vote.”

Overall, Sen. Barack Obama outspent Sen. John McCain and the Republican National Committee,  $17.5 million to a combined $11 million. The Democratic nominee more than tripled McCain’s spending in the key swing states of Florida and Virginia.

A few comments on noteworthy data points:

*McCain’s third-highest state spending total ($1.25 million) was in Michigan, from which he pulled out last week. For a campaign that’s been strapped for cash, it’s clear in retrospect that the McCain folks blew a colossal amount of money in Michigan.

*The study notes that McCain devoted a higher proportion of his spending (60.2 percent to 46.5 percent for Obama) to the “Midwest battleground states” of Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Yet most of these states can’t really be considered battlegrounds at this point. According to fivethirtyeight.com, the latest polls show Obama leading McCain by 16 points in Iowa, 18 in Minnesota, 15 in Pennsylvania and 8 in Wisconsin. That leaves just Indiana and Ohio as true battlegrounds.

*Obama’s spending indicates that he’s not simply trying to win the presidency but also to redraw the electoral map and possibly to carry statewide candidates on his coattails. The largest proportional spending differential between the candidates came in North Carolina, where Obama spent $1,236,000, to McCain’s $148,000. Now, it’s extremely unlikely that Obama will win North Carolina without also winning Virginia (the two states have voted the same way all but once in the past 150 years, and North Carolina has consistently polled better for McCain), and it’s unlikely that he’ll win Virginia and lose the election. It is therefore almost inconceivable that North Carolina will tip the election — and McCain seems to realize this. But a victory in North Carolina would turn the state blue for the first time since 1976 — with potentially powerful implications for the future — and could help lift Democratic Senate candidate Kay Hagan, who’s in a very tight race with incumbent Elizabeth Dole.

Overall, the spending numbers show two important things. First, Obama is obviously spending more money in more places. Second, and perhaps more tellingly, Obama’s spending pattern reveals an underlying optimism, in contrast to McCain’s defensive pragmatism.

On another note, over the course of the entire campaign, 73 percent of McCain’s ads have been “negative,” compared to 61 percent of Obama’s. Yet last week, “nearly 100 percent” of McCain’s ads were negative, to just 34 percent for Obama.

More evidence that the Obama campaign is feeling confident, while the McCain camp is getting anxious.

On Friday, Barack Obama, Joe Biden & Jill Biden will hold women’s rallies in battleground states and over the weekend women leaders will be joining with Obama supporters to hold Women for the Change We Need events in all 50 states. There’s a reason why 53 percent of women voters believe that Obama-Biden better understands the issues and concerns important to women, compared to 35 percent for McCain-Palin, according to a September poll for Emily’s List

The Obama campaign argues that this issue domination is largely built on the domestic front, based on choice, health care, equal pay and the economy. Iraq also helps, the memo notes, with “68 percent of women” opposing McCain’s Iraq plan, (according to an Economist poll).

To hammer these advantages, the Obama camp is taking to the soaps. A new ad campaign targeting women will:

…run during programming with large female audiences, including morning shows, soap operas, daytime TV, cable channels like Lifetime, Oxygen, E!, HGTV, and Bravo and during the fall premieres of several prime time shows. There will be a companion radio spot that goes up on Tuesday that will be in similar markets and a Web ad appearing on sites that women frequent such as iVillage and magazine sites.

Never underestimate the iVillage vote. Seriously, the site gets six million visits a month.

Assessing this issue juggernaut, however, a critic might say that if people actually voted on the issues, Republicans would not have won the last two elections. Another critic might add that Republicans lost the popular vote in one of them.

Women may be from Venus but, like men, a lot of them vote like they’re from Kansas.

Two extensive international polls show the Democratic nominee with far more popular support than Sen. John McCain in a wide array of countries around the world.

One poll, released by the BBC on Tuesday, has Obama with strong leads in all 22 countries surveyed. Kenyans, not surprisingly, are the most supportive of their native son — preferring him to McCain by an 87-5 margin.

Indians are least enthusiastic about Obama; just 24 percent support him, compared to 15 percent for McCain.

Here are the numbers in some of the countries polled:

France: Obama, 69 percent; McCain, 6 percent
Italy: Obama, 72 percent; McCain, 12 percent
Russia: Obama, 18 percent; McCain, 7 percent (no preference, 75 percent)
Brazil: Obama, 51 percent; McCain, 8 percent
China: Obama, 35 percent; McCain, 15 percent
Mexico: Obama, 54 percent; McCain, 16 percent
Indonesia: Obama, 46 percent; McCain, 11 percent
Egypt: Obama, 36 percent; McCain, 13 percent

A strong majority of respondents in most countries say that U.S. relations with the world would improve more under a President Obama than under a President McCain. The one exception is Turkey — where 11 percent anticipate an improvement under Obama, compared to 15 percent under McCain.

Responses vary on whether the election of an African-American would fundamentally change the international perception of the United States. Kenyans say that Obama’s election would achieve this by an 86-11 margin. Poland falls on the opposite extreme — with 60 percent expecting little to no change.

A second poll, conducted in 12 European countries by the German Marshall Fund and released yesterday, finds strikingly similar results. Overall, 69 percent of Europeans support Obama, compared to 26 percent who back McCain.

Many people outside the United States have proposed, not entirely in jest, that because U.S. foreign policy has dramatic effects on the international economic and diplomatic scene, the worldwide populace should get a few electoral votes in the U.S. presidential election.

Unfortunately for Obama, that won’t be happening anytime soon.

(Flickr: Esther17)

SIERRA VISTA, Ariz.–Did Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee dodge a bullet when Rep. Rick Renzi, (R-Ariz.) was indicted in February on charges of wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and conspiracy in connection with the misuse of campaign funds and the sale of a business associate’s land?

The 35-count indictment against the three-term congressman did not include charges during a crucial time period in 2003, when Renzi was working with McCain to move a controversial amendment through Congress. They were trying to keep Fort Huachuca, a large Army base in southeast Arizona, from closing.

If prosecutors had focused on Renzi’s submission of what might be false congressional financial disclosure statements, then McCain might have been drawn deeper into the Renzi case. The FBI has already interviewed at least one member of McCain’s Senate staff and requested that his Senate office turn over documents possibly related to the case.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Public records show that Renzi might have filed false congressional financial disclosure statements from 2001 through 2003, because he did not disclose his 50-percent ownership in Fountain Realty & Development, Inc. While submitting false congressional financial disclosure statements in this time period is not one of the counts against Renzi, the indictment states that Fountain Realty had more than $1 million in transactions with Renzi’s former business partner, and co-defendant, James W. Sandlin.

In contrast, the Justice Dept.’s seven-count felony indictment against Sen. Ted Stevens accuses the Alaska Republican senator of submitting false financial disclosure statements to Congress by concealing $250,000 in gifts from an oil industry supply company.

Did prosecutors avoid filing similar charges against Renzi to shield McCain from questions about his ties to the congressman? Or did they decide to focus on the more serious charges of wire and insurance fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and extortion?

Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) (U.S. Congress)

What’s clear is that the absence of the charges has spared McCain having to answer questions about his relationship with the then first-term congressman in 2003, when they were working together to pass the controversial Fort Huachuca Preservation amendment. As a result, we may never know if McCain was aware that Renzi and Sandlin were business partners, and that Sandlin stood to gain financially from keeping Fort Huachuca open because he owned property in an area near the base that was rapidly growing. That property, a 480-acre alfalfa field, later played a central role in the criminal charges filed against Sandlin and Renzi.

When asked why prosecutors didn’t include charges against Renzi for possibly filing false congressional disclosure forms, several former federal prosecutors told me that the government typically files its strongest charges in a case. Weaker charges can always be added later, or offered in a plea bargain. Renzi’s possibly false congressional financial statements, while potential felonies, are relatively minor compared to the indictment’s more serious charges.

“Most federal prosecutors will spend considerable time thinking about–and then charging–their ‘best’ counts,” said David Schindler, a former federal prosecutor who won a fraud conviction against former Arizona Gov. J. Fife Symington III in 1997. “Even if a prosecutor has evidence of other crimes, [he or she] may choose to proceed on a narrower universe because the evidence is strongest as to those counts.”

Map of Arizona

The Renzi indictment is the first high-profile case for former McCain aide and newly appointed U.S. attorney in Arizona, Diane Humetewa. A member of the Hopi Tribe, Humetewa, who was sworn in in December, is the nation’s first Native American woman to serve in the job. She was McCain’s legal counsel on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee from 1993 to 1996.

McCain called her in early 2007 and asked if she wanted to be a U.S. attorney. “Frankly, I was pretty taken aback and surprised and flattered,” Humetewa was quoted as saying in a June 2008 story in Indian Country Today. “I felt I certainly couldn’t say no.”

Renzi’s trial in Tucson is set to begin March 24. He announced in August 2007 that he would not seek a fourth term.

Fort Huachuca Amendment

The Renzi-sponsored amendment was attached to a 2003 defense appropriations bill and aimed to protect the fort from being downsized or shuttered in the scheduled 2005 round of military base closures. Congressional watchdog groups sharply criticized Renzi for pushing the amendment because the fort wasn’t in his congressional district and because his father, the late Maj. Gen. Eugene Renzi, was an executive at ManTech International, a defense intelligence contractor, which had more than $1.5 billion in contracts at the military base.

As the ranking Republican, McCain shepherded the measure through a House-Senate Armed Services conference committee in November 2003. He backed it despite the criticism that Renzi’s sponsorship of it created a potential conflict of interest and despite his own 2001 admonition to fellow senators that they should refrain from injecting local politics into decisions regarding military bases.

McCain’s embrace of Renzi’s amendment, which was supported by the Army, was noticeable because he had done nothing publicly a year earlier when a similar measure, introduced by 12-term Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), whose district included Fort Huachuca, passed the House but was never introduced in the Senate.

In May 2002, Sandlin entered into negotiations to sell the 480-acre, water-intensive alfalfa field he purchased in early 2000 for $960,000 to Fort Huachuca, as part of a water conservation program to save the nearby San Pedro River, threatened by extensive groundwater pumping. The talks ended in 2004, when Sandlin rejected the Army’s offer as too low.

Protecting the San Pedro River was important to McCain and to the Army. The river’s deteriorating ecology had made Fort Huachuca vulnerable to downsizing or closing because the Army base was fueling rapid growth in the ground-water-dependent area. Both were trying to find ways to reduce depletion of the river, and the sale of Sandlin’s alfalfa field, less than a half-mile west of the river, would have helped. Sandlin’s parcel was the largest agricultural groundwater pumping use in the San Pedro River watershed, and acquiring it was a top priority for the Army, according to base officials.

While the Army was negotiating to buy Sandlin’s land, in the summer and fall of 2003, it was also lobbying McCain to back Renzi’s amendment. It is not known if McCain knew about the Army’s interest in the property. But linking Sandlin to Renzi could have been as easy as doing a Google search on Sandlin. He was among the first contributors to Renzi’s 2002 campaign.

Investigation of Renzi

The Renzi case, according to watchdog groups, has been impeded by political interference. Former Arizona U.S. Atty. Paul Charlton was pressing for the Renzi investigation in the fall of 2006. He was fired Dec. 7, 2006, a month after Renzi won reelection to his third term. Charlton was one of eight U.S. attorneys fired by former U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales. The dismissals led to congressional investigations that eventually forced Gonzales’ resignation. Charlton declined to comment about the Renzi case and his firing.

Justice Dept. officials in Washington, a source familiar with the case said, delayed the criminal investigation into Renzi’s activities for more than a year after investigators sought permission to go forward in 2005. “They did not want to indict this guy,” the source, who requested anonymity, said. “They didn’t want to put a wire on him, and they didn’t want to do a search warrant.”

The criminal investigation got back on track in April 2007, when the FBI raided Renzi’s wife’s insurance business in Sonoita, Ariz. Ten months later, a federal grand jury in Tucson returned the indictment against the congressman.

Prosecutors allege that Renzi used his congressional seat in 2005 to demand that a private investment group purchase Sandlin’s land in exchange for Renzi assisting the group with passage of federal land exchange bill. The investment group, which included former Interior Sec. Bruce Babbitt, ultimately bought Sandlin’s land for $4.5 million, yielding Sandlin a $3.5 million profit. Sandlin, according to the indictment, then funneled $770,000 to Renzi, which Renzi never reported on his 2005 congressional financial disclosure report.

Less Than Full Disclosure

In between allegedly embezzling funds from a family insurance company and pressuring investors to buy Sandlin’s land, Renzi filed three congressional financial disclosure reports where he never disclosed his partnership with Sandlin in Fountain Realty & Development.

Sandlin and Renzi’s business relationship began in August 2001, when Sandlin became a partner in Renzi Investments Inc., according to Arizona Corporation Commission records. The two men changed the company name to Fountain Realty & Development Inc. Renzi did not disclose any of this on his 2001 congressional financial disclosure statement. Instead, he reported receiving a dividend from Renzi Investments worth between $1 million and $5 million.

Nor did Renzi reveal his partnership with Sandlin in Fountain Realty & Development in his 2002 congressional disclosure forms. Renzi filed the statement on July 11, 2003– while he was seeking McCain’s support for his amendment.

Renzi also did not mention the company in his 2003 financial disclosure report. Nor did not he report the June 2003 sale of the balance of Fountain Realty to Sandlin for $200,000 cash and a $800,000 promissory note. Instead, Renzi reported a $1 million to $5 million gain from a company with a similar name, Fountain Hills Realty and Development Inc. That company, however, had ceased to exist in January 2002, when Renzi changed its name to Renzi Vino, Inc., according to Arizona Corporation Commission records.

McCain appeared unfazed by news of Renzi’s indictment and the 16-month criminal investigation that led up to it. When the indictment was unsealed Feb.22, Renzi was listed as one of 24 co-campaign chairmen for McCain’s Arizona presidential campaign, though the FBI’s criminal probe had been known since October 2006.

When asked by reporters four days after the indictment was made public whether Renzi was still on his campaign team, McCain said, “I don’t think so. It doesn’t matter.” Two months after Renzi’s indictment, McCain told a reporter that Renzi was a “good friend” and that the two “have a good relationship.”

Fox’s tight and symbiotic ties with the G.O.P. are well documented, but that does not rule out a Democratic detente, since it is still owned by Rupert Murdoch, a pragmatic mogul who has famously made peace with liberal politicians here and abroad.

Fox’s Republican role is out in force on Friday, however, as the RNC began an offensive against Obama based entirely on Bill O’Reilly’s framing from The Factor. A new RNC attack file contends Obama offered “conflicting threat assessments on Iran” based on “his interview with Bill O’Reilly.”

Some Democrats were also concerned about the Obama-O’Reilly exchange on Iraq. “Instead of presenting a clear definition of how he will realize the promise of change after eight failed years of George Bush, [Obama] blurred the distinction between himself and John McCain on Iraq,” lamented a former aide to Chris Dodd, who thrilled liberal Fox critics in a more combative exchange with O’Reilly during the Democratic primary last year.

“He gave up his greatest strength – opposition to the Iraq War – on O’Reilly’s show,” the operative continued. “If Obama’s lucky, he gained enough new Fox-watching supporters to make up for the Democrats he just alienated.”

The Obama campaign had no comment on the appearance or reaction from Democrats.

Robert Greenwald, the director of the documentary, “OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” emailed a new video to supporters today. In it, he criticized Fox’s unbalanced treatment of Democratic politicians:

O’Reilly needled and interrupted Obama, trying to get him to simplify many of his answers — a far cry from the softballs O’Reilly lobbed at many prominent Republicans like Rudy Giuliani in the past.

In a separate interview with TWI, Greenwald said his new video shows how Fox News is using the same playbook this year that it effectively deployed against Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004.

“Those who don’t learn from history are forced to relive it,” Greenwald wrote in an email. “Here is proof positive of the Fox propaganda machine using the same language, the same tools the same attacks word for word against BO as they did against Kerry.” Raw Story, an alternative news site favored by the netroots, also criticized O’Reilly for a slanted, hectoring performance.

About 10 million Americans experience cancer during their lifetimes, and the medical costs alone topped $78 billion last year, according to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

The NIH. (Photo Credit: Culhanen)

“Under the Bush administration, federal cancer research funding has remained basically flat as inflation and medical costs increased,” said Sen. John Kerry, speaking about the plan on a media call with Jill Biden and campaign policy director Neera Tanden. Kerry, who noted that he, Obama and Sen. John McCain had all faced family battles with cancer, criticized McCain for voting “against NIH funding” and lamented that the Republican nominee said the NIH was “not effective.”

Asked by a reporter how an Obama-Biden administration would pay for its plan, Kerry said Obama’s broader health care initiative would be funded by rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy. Then he proactively raised Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s nomination speech, saying it was riddled with inaccuracies, and slammed it as “blatantly false.”

On Friday night, an Obama campaign video will be broadcast during the “Stand Up To Cancer Telethon.” Obama’s aides argue that his record demonstrates a longstanding commitment to funding cancer research and treatment:

Obama has spent his career fighting to improve prevention and treatment of cancer. As an Illinois state senator, Obama passed laws to mandate insurance coverage of colorectal cancer examinations, ensure Medicaid coverage for treatment of breast and cervical cancers [and] promote early detection of prostate and testicular cancers,… As U.S. senator, he has fought for increased funding for cancer research, and championed genomics and personalized medicine to identify new and better treatments for cancer and other diseases.

While the Obama campaign tapped major surrogates and senior policy staff to unveil the cancer plan, interest among the traditional media appeared anemic. Only one reporter asked a question during the call — an AP journalist who said he joined late — and the only other question came from a self-described doctor. (It was not clear how he joined the media call or if he was affiliated with the campaign.)

Fighting cancer is not a hot political story, but it’s another task where, as Obama thundered in his nomination speech, Democrats want to use the government to serve the public and Republicans say “you’re on your own.”

Gov. Sarah Palin speaking at the Republican National Convention. (Flickr: Tom LeGro, NewsHour)

The idea floating around is that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is popular and exciting because she is something so new. Yes, she is the first woman to run as a Republican vice presidential candidate — and a gun-toting hockey mom to boot.

But her real appeal is the opposite. She is a throwback, conjuring with her every word the man who remains the hero to his party: Ronald Wilson Reagan, the morning-again-in-America guy. He made people feel good again about their country after the long, dark hangover from Vietnam and Watergate, and then the hostage crisis in Iran.

Reagan banished the ghosts of My Lai, wiped away any lingering humiliation over those hostages. America, he said, in his very posture and in every speech, is the beacon of hope and freedom, period, end of discussion. Always had been, always would be. Forget all those nattering nabobs of negativism, all the trendy postmodernironists, the David Lettermans with their smirks. This was the land of patriots and he was the No.1 Patriot — precisely how Palin (and for that matter, everyone else who has spoken at the Republican National Convention) has characterized herself and her running mate, Sen. John McCain.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

That’s why Palin’s acceptance speech for the GOP vice presidential nomination played so well in that hall — and why she resonates so strongly with the rank-and-file. She is all about nostalgia. Palin is tapping into exactly what Reagan tapped into: a bone-deep longing to turn the clock back, to be part of an earlier America when things were simpler, sweeter, decidedly less complex — or at least seemed that way.

“I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town,” she said. Not just any small town, but a small town in the wild and natural state of Alaska, arguably the country’s last frontier. Everything she says conjures an earlier America where men — and women — slaughtered and skinned their own meat, read their Bibles and raised their kids (home schooling) with scant meddling from the government.

The good old days, when most Americans lived in small towns — which most of them haven’t lived in for almost 90 years. It’s exactly what Reagan embodied — or skillfullyharkened back to: his heartland roots. It was epitomized by his evocative campaign slogan: It’s Morning Again in America.

That’s what Palin is striving to invoke — that feeling of nostalgia, that feeling that it can be a new dawn. It’s appealing, that sense that we can rewind the reel, return to a simpler time, when the country was flush with a sense of optimism and a sense of conquering dominance. Alaska, wilder and freer than all the other states, it seems, is still flush with some of that optimistic swagger and sense of freedom or license. This land is your land, this land is my land; we have a God-given right to drill on it –Palin is a daughter of Alaska to the bone.

She represents a kind of “Little House on the Prairie” feminism. That’s another reason why she has been confounding to some women, to many commentators. They haven’t known where to place her on the feminine/feminist continuum.

Maybe that’s because Palin isn’t feminist, or postfeminist even — the labels we customarily use. She is actually pre-feminist feminist. The fiercely confident pioneer gal who can raise a family and run a town, who can shoot a caribou or send a poison-arrow dart through a political opponent — as she did time and again last night, under cover of a sweet smile.

Palin is every bit as tough as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her toughness just comes in a far different retro-packaging, which makes it harder to classify. She doesn’t have Clinton’s sometimes uneasy mix of soft and hard, that observable internal tension that can sometimes give way to tears, sometimes to a testy quip. To a lot of women — and men — out there,Palin seems of a self-confident piece.

She doesn’t quite have Reagan’s charm or his “aw shucks” sophistication. Her small-town roots show a little more; her barbs were a little sharper, shall we say, less affably cloaked. But she’s got the rest of him down — certainly his message. Whether that message will play in today’s world — and whether it will play beyond the obvious conservative base — is hard to say. Some might say doubtful.

In her appeal to nostalgia, there was little mention of the country’s current problems. No mortgage mess, no talk of subprime loans or the need for financial regulations or health care. None of those currently vexing problems. No, no need to bring all that stuff up. It would be off script, messy. She was after a feeling. That’s what Reagan was such a genius at — the “B” script ham actor played like a charm in the political arena.

And that feeling is: America is the greatest. There is no mention of our current place in the world, how we are regarded or not. Not because she is a foreign-policy neophyte, but because it is off-message again. That’s why there was no mention of a newly reinvigorated Russia or a intimidatingly robust China. Just a brush through Iraq where, of course, we are the good guys. My son, she said, is being deployed on 9/11 — the symbolism lost on none of us — and I am so proud.

Proud, proud, proud. That’s the heart and soul of the nostalgia message. I am proud of my country.

It plays because Americans love that feeling of pride. We were all raised on it. In our children’s history books, we were told of the genius of the Founding Fathers, reminded that America was the planet’s great experiment — the shining city on the hill.

At a time when there is a definite sense that, in fact, we are no longer invincible — that this, unlike the last, will not be the American Century — what better thing to do than take a page out of theGipper’s playbook and gaze backward not forward.

The DNC launched a new YouTube video, “90% Bush,” arguing that McCain is just like Bush:

“Straightforward images illustrate what 90 percent really means, showing how John McCain is just more of the same,” promises a statement from the “More of the Same Media War Room.” Seriously.

The Democrats also kicked off a new anti-McCain twitter program, twitter.com/MoreoftheSame, and a new blog, justmoreofthesame.com. You can’t even talk about this strategy without saying “more of the same” five times.

If that weren’t bad enough on its own, the Federal Reserve came out today with a report showing that, by almost all measures, the economy is slowing.

Conservatives are criticizing the Democrats for painting what they consider to be a too depressing picture of the economy. Tonight, and for the next few days, Republicans will take their turn at touching on economic issues. With the auto sector in free fall, bankruptcies on the rise and a credit squeeze claiming more companies and jobs, it will be interesting to see how they spin all this.