Will Barack Obama’s properties from 2008 (Twitter, Facebook friends, email list) impact the 2010 midterm race?

update: 4:18 FWIW …

FLOTUS apparently travels with a fashion
assistant, who was originally from Chicago. The assistant forgot the make
up case on the plane and had to run back and get it.

Update: 3:14

Media Watching: Sestak leads Toomey by +4 since 8am. Data is defined by combining and weighing blog, web, & other internet posts. #paelect We’ve been watching our alerts and research for 2 weeks steady. Up until today, the media listening stream has favored Pat Toomey (R).

Update: 2:51

I need to respond to Ben Smith’s story on Politico yesterday. He has a
picture of one campaign brochure that features Joe Sestak less
prominently than Dan Onorato. From this one campaign leaflet, he jumps
to the erroneous conclusion that Sestak is not loved by the Democratic
party.
As someone who has stopped by almost daily the Philadelphia office of
Organizing for America, Obama’s get the vote operation, I can tell you
that the Democratic Party is working v just as hard to elect Sestak to
the Senate as they are to elect Onorato as Governor. Every one of the
thousands phone calls made there every day mentions both candidates.
In addition, I have seen all types of configurations on the campaign
literature and some favor Sestak. Each is designed with a target
audience in mind.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1010/Also_Sestak.html?showall
–
Laura Goldman

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Update: 1:13 pm

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Publisher

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Stu Bykofsky wrote in the Daily News on Thursday that Governor Rendell said at a meeting of ward leaders that Democratic Party Chairman (and Congressman) Brady would resign as chairman if Philly voter turnout didn’t top 50%. Rendell and Brady have been the Batman and Robin of Philly politics for so long that I was surprised that Rendell would say such a thing in public. At the recent Obama-Biden rally in Germantown, Rendell did complain about the 17% turnout in the city, but did not mention Brady.

When I ran into Rendell, he was late for an event but said he was stopping because he wanted to refute what Bykofsky wrote. He said, “I never said that. Brady can have the job forever.” When asked
about the low 17% turnout in Philadelphia for the primaries, Rendell answered, “If Brady was responsible for that, I would hold him responsible, but he is not responsible.”

Who said what? If the Democratic Party Chairman is not responsible, who is – the cookie monster? I live in the same city building as my committee person, but have only gotten one form letter from him this important election cycle.

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20101028_Stu_Bykofsky__Have_happy_Dems_built_a_dike_against_GOP__wave__.html

Rendell this week joined the Obama administration in telling liberals to buck up before the midterm elections, and leave their malaise at the door.

“This isn’t about President Obama,” Rendell said late Monday on MSNBC. “It’s about whether the Democratic Party, not perfect, but certainly bent on trying to preserve theories in government and progressive practices, is going to be in charge of the Congress or the Republican Party. And it’s not the Republican Party of old. This is a scary Republican Party.”

To liberals dissatisfied with the president, Rendell had a simple message: “We ought to get over it.”

“If we’ve got some issues with President Obama,” he said, “save them for another day.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are making hay of the fact that Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-11) isn’t exactly engaging reporters and the larger public with gusto. Like many incumbents, he didn’t do much of the way in town hall meetings over the summer. Now, he’s got the press at arm’s length.

The first indication of this came from The Times-Tribune, which reported the other day that “efforts to interview the congressman this week about the [health care] law were unsuccessful because his re-election campaign declined to make him available. Campaign spokesman Ed Mitchell said allowing one reporter to interview Mr. Kanjorski weekly on issues would require the congressman to take time out of his busy schedule to grant other reporters’ requests to discuss issues.”

In other words, “if we talk to one of you, we’ve got to talk to all of you.”

It’s not exactly an attitude that will endear reporters to any elected official. Then we saw this article in Politico about the “year of the missing candidate.” In it, Kanjorski found enough time to talk with a reporter to say he’s avoiding town halls because he doesn’t want “nuts to hit me with a camera.”

“I’m not going to arm my opponent with a baseball bat,” he said.

And Republican Pat Meehan is playing up his anti-corruption credentials in a new Web video. The 7th District hopeful and former U.S. Attorney has made his days as a crime-fighter a cornerstone of his campaign against Democrat Democrat Bryan Lentz.

With that in mind, the three-and-a-half-minute video serves as something of a mini-documentary of Meehan’s past as a prosecutor, both as U.S. Attorney and Delaware County District Attorney.

The highlight of this, of course, is the corruption case Meehan’s office spearheaded against former state Senator Vince Fumo, now in prison. Meehan resigned as U.S. Attorney before the case went to trial because he was exploring a run for governor. But he got props for moving the case forward at the early stages.

Check out the video below.

During a Harrisburg news conference, Rendell said that Corbett should “should start running against [Democratic nominee] Dan Onorato—not me.” In remarks reported by The Patriot-News and The Tribune-Review, Rendell also questioned the accuracy of Corbett’s TV ads, some of which have already gotten heat from news organizations fact-checking them.

Rendell’s comments came after Corbett’s campaign hit the airwaves with its first ad directly trying Onorato to Rendell.

He said Onorato “has held the line on taxes better than any local government official in the state.”

Democrats recently abandoned efforts to address the matter before the midterm elections, despite widespread popular support for letting tax cuts for top earners lapse while extending them for the middle class.

“I think we were too scared,” Rendell said on Bloomberg TV. “And I think we also downgrade the public’s ability to make decisions based on somewhat intricate stuff.

“I think people wanted that and I think our guys were too afraid of the rhetoric and they assume that people will say, oh, you raised taxes,” Rendell added. “Well, sure we raised taxes, but we didn’t raise taxes on you, ma’am. In fact, the Obama stimulus plan cut your taxes. We raised taxes on people who can afford to pay taxes.”

The ongoing debate in Pennsylvania’s competitive Senate race was nothing if not diffused across the state Monday, with the two candidates missing a chance for a first meeting but the back-and-forth continuing nonetheless.

Hours before the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry hosted a debate between the two gubernatorial candidates, Toomey joined Koppel, the longtime newsman, for a one-on-one Q&A in Hershey. Sestak had been invited to attend, but cited a long-scheduled fundraiser with Kerry in Pittsburgh.

So Toomey and Koppel entertained each other. Koppel promised not to throw softballs—and he kept that promise, repeatedly pressing Toomey for specifics on how to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how and where to cut spending and how to address the country’s growing deficit. More often than not, Toomey dodged the calls for specifics, insisting that cutting taxes, decreasing regulation and removing what he described as a cloud of business uncertainty would lead to more investment—along with more jobs and the needed tax revenue.

“What are you going to raise taxes for if you don’t raise taxes for defense?” Koppel asked at one point.

“It’s counterproductive to go down this road, Ted,” Toomey replied. “I think our marginal tax rates are already higher than they ought to be to maximize economic growth. To raise them further is probably going to diminish economic growth, weaken our economy, and that’s not good for our military.”

Sestak called into PCN after Koppel and Toomey left the stage, and said he looked forward to at least two debates before Election Day. Sestak’s campaign, meanwhile, lambasted Toomey for telling Koppel that he stood up to the big spending during the Bush administration. Toomey did, as he said, spearhead a “makeshift filibuster” to fight against spending legislation. But as Sestak’s campaign noted, he voted for all the Bush budgets that passed while he was in office.

“Congressman Toomey’s claims tonight prove that he is not only out of touch with Pennsylvania but clearly out of touch with reality,” Sestak spokesman Jonathon Dworkin said. “These claims are a low point even for his campaign of falsehoods. The fact is that he led the biggest spending spree in American history and turned record budget surpluses into record deficits by voting for the reckless Bush budgets and against sensible Pay-as-you-Go legislation.”

And as he often does, Rendell briefly stole the spotlight. Shortly before Toomey’s appearance, Rendell told reporters he thought Sestak should have attended for a debate.

“I think it’s important for all of our candidates to participate in all of the different debates,” Rendell said. “And the Chamber certainly has had a history of debates. I attended the Chamber debate both times I ran for governor.”

“Actually, there are some people in Pennsylvania who would like me to lose all my weight and go away,” Rendell joked while appearing Thursday morning on MSNBC as part of a program to encourage healthy lifestyles.

“But they get their wish in four-and-a-half months,” he said.

More seriously, Rendell added: “Exercise makes a differnce, no question about it. Everyone should do it, doesn’t matter how old you are.”

See video below. Rendell appears five minutes and thirty seconds in.

Clinton will headline a rally on Monday for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. The rally is scheduled for 11 a.m. at 52nd and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia. Gov. Ed Rendell is also expected to attend.

The former president, his party’s go-to campaign surrogate this election cycle, headlined a fundraiser for Onorato Aug. 10.

A day after making those comments in Philadelphia, Rendell said they didn’t apply to gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett or Senate candidate Pat Toomey. This clarification came despite the fact that Rendell alluded to Corbett’s much-chronicled comments about unemployed Pennsylvanians as one of several examples that led up to his “wackos” comment.

“There are clearly elements of the Republican Party that are totally wacked out,” Rendell told The Patriot-News.  “By no means are all Republican candidates ‘wacked out’ or ‘fruit loops.’”

He called Toomey a “reasonable” person with whom he disagrees, and said that Corbett “hasn’t done enough wacko things to be classified as wacko.”

Joined by Gov. Ed Rendell and other party leaders and activists at the University of Pennsylvania here, Kaine used his early-afternoon speech to stitch together the political pitch that Democrats have already been making sporadically for months: We’ve started to fix this thing, let us continue the job before the other guys break it all over again.

“An economy that was shrinking in 2008 is growing,” Kaine said to a crowd of about 200, in a speech that was part-dissertation on the history of the Democratic Party, part-defense of its recent policies and part-campaign rally to energize supporters. “It’s not growing enough, we’ve got work to do, but it’s growing.”

Saying Republicans had offered nothing but filibusters and obstruction, Kaine added: “When Republicans had control of government… they promised responsible leadership, but they failed to provide it. And when the bill came due, when their policies failed spectacularly, they passed that bill onto us. The cost? Millions of jobs, an entire decade of opportunity—gone. Returning the Republicans to power today would be like giving the keys back to Herbert Hoover in the middle of the 1930s. We’d be nuts to do it.”

Kaine’s speech, accompanied by an all-day media blitz by party leaders, came with polls and political forecasters pointing toward cascading losses for Democrats in November. Even as conservative and independent economists increasingly credit the economic stimulus and other recovery measures with creating jobs and cushioning the blow of recession, Democrats have struggled to win the messaging war, and many are bracing for the possibility of a defeat on par with the so-called Republican Revolution of 1994.

Feeling the political winds at their collective back, Republicans were already responding to Kaine’s visit before he took the podium at Penn’s Houston Hall.

“Today, Tim Kaine will try to explain away the numerous ways that the Democratic Party has failed Pennsylvanians,” state GOP chairman Rob Gleason said in a statement. “Tim Kaine can make speeches until he’s blue in the face, but it doesn’t change the fact that his Party is 54 days away from being held accountable for their out-of-control behavior, including their support of government-run health care, the national energy tax known as cap-and-trade and a nearly $1-trillion stimulus package that has epically failed. The fact of the matter is that if Tim Kaine truly believes that our country is better off because of the Democrats’ tax-and-spend, big government agenda, he is in the minority.”

Warming up the crowd for Kaine, Rendell, a former DNC chairman himself, encouraged party faithful to ignore the polls and political prognostications of doom. “The enthusiasm gap is all the press talks about, its all the polls talk about,” Rendell said (click here for video). “And truth of the matter is, if we can bridge the enthusiasm gap, we’re going to win.”

He said Democratic candidates should not run away from the stimulus package because it has created jobs, ticking off a list of success stories from the Keystone State.

“We shouldn’t apologize for the first 20 months of the Obama presidency,” Rendell said. “We should revel in the things we’ve achieved.”

Taking jabs at House Minority Leader John Boehner as “that tan guy,” Rendell painted Republicans as unpatriotic. “They don’t want the conomy to get better,” he argued. “They want to use it as an election issue.”

And echoing an argument made increasingly by Democratic candidates, Rendell said that the GOP is “slowly but surely being taken over by wackos” and “fruit loops.”

Citing calls to repeal the 14th Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to those born in America, obsessions with Obama’s birth certificate and other Tea Party ralling cries, Rendell said: “They’re nuts. They’re flat-out crazy.”

See video of Kaine’s speech below.