I have more on swing state polling here and here. It certainly looks -- looking at the Gallup and WSJ polling in particular -- as if McCain's national numbers are being buoyed by disproportionate gains in the South. Running up the score in Mississippi and Alabama might feel good, but it won't get him the White House -- and it's a strategy that could translate into a close Obama popular vote victory that is a wide electoral vote landslide.

Watch John McCain tie the Minnesota bridge collapse and our failing infrastructure to, you guessed it, the Bridge to Nowhere!

Hat tip to Rumproast, one of my favorite blogs for a good laugh, along with Betty Cracker.

McCain's new ad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVLQhRiEXZs

No need to be modest, Al... you know a lot.  The nervous Nellie's on the left have the potential to do more harm to the Obama campaign than the thugs on the right.  Screenwriter William Goldman's famous axiom that 'no one in Hollywood knows anything' also applies to politics... witness the thin-skinned insanity that appears on the Huffington Post, Salon, etc.  It comes from people who have never run a presidential campaign or worked on one from the inside.  I have... on winning and losing campaigns, dealing directly with either the presidential candidate himself or his top strategist.  Mondale, Dukakis, Gore & Kerry all wimped out and listened to their critics and outside voices and kept changing their personnas from jump.  Clinton was a streetfighter and stuck to his guns throughout. Obama knows how to throw elbows above and below the waist... and like Clinton, doesn't lose his focus, knows how to get under his opponent's skin and knows when they've over-played their hand (like with the cries of sexism.)  That's a winning formula... something many on the left wouldn't recognize if it elbowed them in the face.

Is it just me, or is the McCain campaign going about this the wrong wrong wrong way? Why bring up something that can be used as a cudgel so far out from the election?

They did the same thing with Ayers. Running the ads in Ohio and bringing up Rezko. The election is still 7 weeks away. Why use this stuff now?

The only thing they're holding on to is Wright, but I don't think they can use that now that the Republican ticket has its own nutty pastor with the potential to turn off Jewish voters in South Florida and flip the state.

Everyone attacked Clinton for crying sexism in 2007. By the end of the campaign, there was a very real feeling among women (myself included, though I supported Obama) that she had been the victim of unfair coverage. But you hold that until the last possible second, so the emotional reaction is still fresh when they step into the voting booth.

Now? People will forget this in a week or so, and by then, the McCain campaign will have used sexism so many times that it won't have any currency at all.

That'll be a problem for feminism in the long run, though we all know how much McCain feels about real feminism.

If I was McCain, I would be more offended by being compared to a rotting old fish that even being wrapped in new paper can't hide the stench of. But they completely let that pass in order to manufacture outrage over the "lipstick on a pig" part.

I'm almost as amused watching the Great Mentioners like Halperin, Tapper, Ambinder and company finally wake up and do their jobs on this one. It makes up for those who are still managing to be Chicken Littles even about this ("he shouldn't mock McCain, he should be more presidential", and when he was doing that they complained he wasn't hitting back).

What a crazy evening this has proved to be!

Hi Al, a quick note about that NC poll. Initially my heart sunk when I had read the news this afternoon, and I fell into a deep despair assuming the Republican overlords would retain their grip of Washington forever. Then I noticed this post over at Dailykos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/9/18192/04144/290/592615.  Armed with this newfound revelation, I wandered over the SurveyUSA's website to peek at their crosstabs (found here:http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=9d3db8ba-996f-414f-b9d0-5bc16f50d34d).
Initially, I noticed a few peculiarities. Oddly, Obama lost the youth vote (18-34 by 3 points to McCain?!), and SurveyUSA had vastly underrepresented blacks (26% of the electorate, yet only 20% of this sample) and hispanics were barely represented at all (1% in the sample, compared to 6.5% of the electorate), wheras whites were overrepresented by 6 points to 76%. How odd, I thought, until I noticed the strangest statistic of all: Party representation was Independent 16%, Democrat 40%, Republican 41%. How odd, I thought, considering this (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/773/fewer-voters-identify-as-republicans) Pew Research article from earlier this year cites Party ID in NC as Independent 35, Democrat 39%, Republican 26%. If weighted against these numbers the poll becomes: 43% Obama 53% McCain. Now, that's a bounce from the convention, but it's not some insane 16 point swing. Even supposing that some of thos Independents were phantom Republicans ashamed to admit their party, would Sarah Palin and that milqtoast convention really bring about a 18 point swing in party ID? Seems pretty far fetched to me, not to mention how far removed from the story on the ground.

Very interesting comment, Al re: the McCain/GOP internal polls saying one thing (ie not good for McCain) and the big media polls saying another (close race). Especially in light of the news today about several of the big media polls being heavily weighted toward Republicans, that would seem to bolster one part of your argument. So have you just heard thru the grapevine that the internals are loking lousy or has there been anything said on the record? I'm intrigued :-)

Thank you Al!

I had a similar feeling earlier when Biden brought up stem cell research. He had to know that would bring them into a tizzy. If it did--what would the subject end up being? Stem Cell research---something that Independents support, I think. No?

I'm glad McCain's campaign manager said that this campaign would not be about issues because it makes it easier to see what buttons they are pushing and easier to call them on their bullshit. The McCain strategy is to lie and make wild and crazy accusations in order to distract the voters and the media from the indefensible record of the last eight years. Since the Republicans have proven that they are willing to do anything and say anything to win elections we will have to send them a message through the ballot box. As it stands now, this election is close enough that registration and GOTV will make the difference between winning and losing.  

and LOVE IT -- when you play coy with news like this.

 

I take it from your post that the GOP internals info is not something you're inferring from the McCain campaign's actions, but from things you're hearing from sources?

Al,

My last comment on the previous thread is related to your statement about the GOP's own internal polls.  Yea! I see where Kos is going to have his own polling done starting tomorrow.  Now that's some POLLS you can believe in!

This whole "dustup" today reminds me of sitting at the kitchen table as a young farm girl with my Dad and brothers listening to the Chicago stockyard reports on the radio. I remember being mystified with the MANY names for pigs as they were reported on the radio (being sold as sows, feeders, gilts, barrows, etc.) so I love the fact that Obama is bringing it all down home for those voters who might still need some convincing. 

Now in the city, I frequently hear (and use) the "lipstick on a pig" expression and it is so perfect when used in the right context because of the visual it immediately creates. How interesting that McCain thinks it's Palin who was the target.  What does that say about him, I wonder?

Oh, and where the HELL did you get that picture?  Hilarious!!

Exact figures not out yet, but according to WaPo, in response to that NYTimes assertion that the Obama camp is struggling to meet its fundraising goals, the campaign has let it be known that the August total exceeds the previous record haul of $55 million.

Newsweek has a story out concerning Palin being warned repeatedly, by a divorce judge, that her badmouthing of her sister's husband, was tantamount to child abuse.

 

Check it out:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/158140

 

 

That video cannot be real --it's too good to be true.  He COMPLETELY and DIRECTLY compares the two bridges, and seriously criticizes his own Congress AND Palin and the crowd agrees so much they are clapping.  (The crowd not realizing both bridges are tied to two Republican governors?  Of course not, why would the Republican nominee be criticizing his own to that degree?!) Oh and if that's not enough, the video showcases what a godawful speaker he is. 

Yes, his throat-clearing tic and the crying baby make for a strange ambience, don't they?

I followed a link from Rumproast to the original source, the Minnesota Independent article:

McCain connected 35W bridge collapse to Palin’s pork

 

“Maybe if we had done it right, maybe some of that money would have gone to inspect those bridges and other bridges around the country,” McCain said at a campaign stop in Ankeny, Iowa on Aug. 4, 2007. “Maybe the 200,000 people who cross that bridge every day would have been safer than spending $233 million of your tax dollars on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it.”

One month after McCain’s critical comments Palin changed her position on the bridge, citing the project’s high cost to Alaskans, while continuing to defend the project.

 

 

Digg the original story.

If anyone is knowledgable about polling practices, I would be interested in your take on my question at the end of the previous thread on Party ID breakdowns.

 

Thanks for your thoughts, Al.  Part of what I've been trying to get my head around in this election is why states like MT, NC and ND would be in play but there hasn't been a big change in OH and FL, for example.  My logic earlier in the year was that if Obama could put red states in play, then surely he would have NO trouble at all with the purple states.   But that hasn't been the case.  Still trying to figure that out.

 

I am hoping the ongoing "vetting" of Sarah Palin starts to get through people's heads.  Crazy how so many folks have totally embraced her even through we know so little about her - and what we do know ain't flattering.

Perhaps we need to digg this site up and spread it far and wide:

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/An_Interactive_Guide_to_McCain_s_Dozen...

The last time the Chicken Littles took flight over fundraising, Obama announced $20 million more than they had been claiming. The cynic in me suspects that some slighted Clinton fundraisers are causing mischief again.

In other news, two of my formerly apathetic friends spent part of today gathering links with information about Obama's tax plan to use on another friend. It is sort of like Christi's Republican friends. "As long as I've got mine, forget everybody else". Naturally, I was shopping around that New York Times link I gave Christi and giving them other information. All in all, a good day.

States like MT, NC and ND may have come into play while OH and FL are

still close for the similar reasons to why those states went for

Obama in the primaries and OH and FL did not.

I'm loving that analysis.

 

http://gerrycanavan.blogspot.com/2008/09/running-up-score-in-mississippi...

 

Obama has a solid lead in all regions except for the South, where he is getting spanked.  Fine.  Can't win the EC that way.   Of course, Obama also needs NH and those numbers certainly aren't going to show up in the East breakout.

 

I like your blog - my first visit.

It is too good to be true. Seriously, you can't make this shit up. Pure. Comedy. Gold. As Jon Stewart said once, ' I have a team of writers. These guys making this too easy for us'. Me thinks the video is going viral tomorrow. Big time!

Survey USA consistenly screws up polling in the south.

Al, the way to spot an NC poll outlier any that claim:

RALEIGH going McCain by 9 points. To borrow Clinton's phrase, no way, no how, no McCain-Palin.

18-34 demographic favoring McCain and by 7 points, no less!?!?! Obama won 18-34 huge in primary.

AA less than 92% in favor of Obama. They were leading pollster claiming Clinton closed to within single digits in NC in final day, claiming only 84% AA for Obama. In this new poll, they have him at  86%.

Survey USA consistently underestimates Obama's AA and youth vote strength in the south. That's why they were so far out in VA, too, where Obama won by 30.

Finally, any poll that claims Independents less than 25% in NC.

on McCain, the 35W bridge collapse, and the Bridge to Nowhere on Daily Kos.  I'd love to see the story get wider exposure, so if you could tip and rec it, that would be greatly appreciated.

When I first read the "lipstick on a pig" comment I thought: uh-oh, this is going to get ugly. But then I realized Obama knows exactly what he is doing and probably calculated exactly what to say and when to say it. Hell, he probably practiced the inflection for perfect delivery.

I've stopped getting worried about the daily poll or gaffe and just put faith in the fact that Obama and his staff can out-think McCain any day. There is no way the guy who beat Hillary for her own party's nomination doesn't have an ace up his sleeve for republicans. Maybe even a royal flush. I suspect there is a plan to unravel McCain's campaign, and it will all become clear soon.

WaPo's article was a tease (just like Al's here).

Any idea on the acutal number ? 60 mil and above would be great.

amk

I wish that every single American would ask themselves this question:

If Sarah Palin was a man, how would the media be covering this story and how would the public be reacting to it?

I hate that I have to give this disclaimer but I will anyway... I am a woman and a feminist.

But really, what man could get away with being named the vice presidential candidate and then hide from the public and not come out until he is "ready?"

We all know they are training her right now. We all know that she isn't qualified for the office that she seeks. So why is her candidacy even being take seriously?

If she were a man she would be called out on this crap. If she were a progressive woman she would  be called out on this crap. The only reason this is allowed is because she is a conservative republican woman. A woman who has managed to avoid the press and the public for 2 weeks. A woman who could become the president.

What the hell is wrong with our media? Seriously??

 

Thanks, saw you on the list!

I am confident that it's $60M + and maybe then some.  We know he took in about $11M just in the day following Palin's hatefest at St. Paul.  Many of us money-bombed him on his birthday early August, and think how many donated during the convention and after the Denver speech.

Your argument assumes that all red states have similar political cultures and will respond in the same way. But Montana is a very different place from Ohio, and Florida (where Obama may be gaining) is different still. There are particular red states where Democrats have been gaining in recent years and where Obama is particularly appealing, such as Colorado, Montana, and Virginia, and he has been exploiting that to the fullest. Al has argued persuasively how this "Western Strategy" is Obama's best path to 270, not trying to hold on to Ohio. And thank goodness for this! I think it is much better for the Democratic party and for the future to be able to appeal to Western moderates and independents than to keep trying to win back the Reagan Democrats, which is basically what winning Ohio is about.

In order to construct a "if Obama can win this state, he can win Ohio" scenario, you need to find another state similar to Ohio. That argument turned the other way suggests that if Obama can't win Michigan, he is very unlikely to win Ohio because the two states are similar but Michigan is bluer. So we can say that if Obama wins Ohio, he will very likely also have won Michigan. A question some Field Hands have been discussing in various places is whether Indiana is a "if he can't win Ohio, he can't win Indiana" state (or, to put it the other way, "if he's winning Indiana, he's won Ohio") or if there is something special going on in Indiana. I do not know enough about Indiana or the situation on the ground there to say anything about this but Obama's strong performance in the Indiana primary despite Operation Chaos compared to his poor showing in the Ohio primary suggests that Indiana may be special.

BTW, Allan, I recced your diary. You may want to consider re-posting it at a time when more people are around to see it. Edit: Never mind! I see it is now on the reclist. Congratulations!

For some reason, I've been on the general GOP contact list. I've gotten two emails from John McCain in the last two days... first at 10-something am Tuesday, and another one a little after 1am Wednesday.

My settings for emails is to not show images unless I ask, so I just loaded em up...  First email was text only, the 1am one is styled with an image that is, ..... wait for it..... an Obama copycat. Blue background. Image looking at McCain from below (my heeeeero! Let me fall at your feet, Oh Exalted One!) . And a big, red, donate button. Sheesh.

Yikes, they're going bigl $50 in September. That's for the RNC.

 

I urgently need you to redouble your commitment to our cause by making a secure online contribution of $2,000, $1,000, $500, $250, $100, $50 or $25 to provide RNC Victory 2008 the backing it needs as we begin the General Election campaign in earnest.

 

From the email trenches,

Susan

p.s. awesome, Allan, re: Lipstick on a Bridge

Lets drop "its more of the same"
McCain has sold his honor on the cheap.

Its the high time the Obama team made Ads ending with

"After eight years of lies and incompetence, Americans are saying, ENOUGH!"

Then again, national media only contract out to pollsters willing to play the game and make it seem like a neck-and-neck contest even when it might not be. That's how to sell newspapers and boost ratings and prove their own relevance, after all.

Al, I think you're absolutely right on this one. Apparently most major pollsters have been tinkering with party ID by including a bigger share of Republicans in their polls than reality would require. Everyone should read this diary at Daily Kos; it's superbly researched (and distressing). That would also explain why the Republcans' internals are showing less of a bounce. Incredibly, G.O.P. partisan polling is now more reliable than supposedly "independent" pollsters like Gallup!

I must admit to being amused at the thought of Obama, Axelrod etc sitting around a table thinking of insults with just the right amount of plausible sexist deniability. Anyway, if anything, Palin would be the lipstick and the GOP would be the pig.

About the fundraising, is there a danger of people switching off when these rumours start and are proven false again and again? Do we need the general public to chicken little slightly so they give more time/money?

I don't really get all the fuss. I mean, sure, you can't put a lipstick on a pig, but you can put pearls and pantyhose on Rudy Giuliani, which is pretty close.

I still see no cause to weight anything as more than a standard convention bounce. I said all along we'd have to get past the politicized 9/11 before a realistic poll reading resumes. Around the 17th, when there's exactly 7 wks left, that's when the silly season ends and the serious messaging dominates.

I never considered NC reachable this time around, but VA, CO, NM, IA, NV, OR, MT will force McCain to fight hard to hold OH, MO, FL while trying to add MI, NH and PA.

And so far, out of all 13 of those states, McCain holds a substantive advantage in just two.

The media narrative looks just as you say. But I'd add that Team McCain is floating lots of false attacks to keep progressive bloggers unfocused, so we won't bear down on the issues. It also generates controversy and a ton of free publicity. Important because he can't match Obama's fundraising and match the airtime any other way.

Let's talk about the Misery Index. Let's talk about $1.35/gas which Bush tripled. Let's talk about healthcare and tuition costs. Let's talk about the 95% of American families who'll get a tax break with Obama. Let's talk about McCain privatizing Social Security that will give our retirement plans the same sound footing that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders enjoy.

Team McCain has defined the message du jour for a month now, with only the DNC as an exception. That's what has folks nervous. The QB needs to be on the field more to let the defense rest. And I've been saying 'he's coming' long enough. Can he compel the media to make his message the du jour dominater?

Yes. He. Can.

 

No doubt the Survey USA poll showing a 20 point McCain lead is an outlier, but it must represent a bounce. Elizabeth Dole is sweating bricks, even falling behind in some polls of her Senate race against a determined but unexceptional challenger, Kay Hagen. I do think NC is one of those states that has seen phenomenal registration gains for the Dems, and the enthusiasm gap is huge. Good news: Obama is still on the air here (saw an ad last night); bad news, it was the bio ad he'd been running a lot last month, making me wonder if he's having to re-introduce himself. It will be close here, and I suspect if the national race edges towards electoral landslide territory, he could well win. But given that Elizabeth Dole is one of our Senators, our low info whites and many military families do like their prettified, vacuous women candidates, and Palin fits the bill there.

Thanks for the analysis on the numbers.  We're working hard here in Virginia on Obama's behalf.

Re: the lipstick thing, I have to laugh.  Palin's already likened herself to a female dog on national tv.  And the roar from the crowd was impressive.  And we got lipstick and lip curls galore.

The McCain campaign appears to have forgotten that women aren't the only humans living in this country ... I say this as a women, not as a pitfull or a pig.  You can only take this PC gender BS so far and then the USA snaps out of it and says, Enough!

There are also plenty of men out there who've gone through the agony of nasty child custody battles in which everyone's reputation gets trashed.  The Wooten effect?

I expect the dummies on tv will give us a week of pigs and fish so it's back to making some phone calls for me.

 

 

...when we should be talking about pork.

Time to stop watching cable.

That "lipstick on a pig" non-issue made me turn off the teevee completely...as has the new McYuck-Pale-in "here come the Mavericks" commercial.

BTW:  Good ol' Huck sure doesn't remember he works for Faux News now, does he?  He keeps being, uh, *rational* a lot of times!

I think I'll start a petition to move Buchanan out and put Huck-boy in at MSNBC. Of course if he keeps giving the O-man "some slack", he'll be fired from Faux anyway...

Although Rachel smacked him down last night, having Pat on her show as the Republican *foil* almost made me turn the whole show off...had to mute...

 

waterprise2 AKA Pam

Liberal with a Capital L!

 

I hope the O-man keeps putting up those commercials that remind people that this is about issues, not stupid stuff like lipstick...

 

waterprise2 AKA Pam

Liberal with a Capital L!

 

on your recc'd diary!  It's a great one so I hope it stays there all day!

Dugg It!

 

waterprise2 AKA Pam

Liberal with a Capital L!

 

It makes sense. Really, what the GOP has done is wrenched the "more of the same" narrative back, co-opted some of Obama's change platform as their own, and put lipstick on it in the form of a pretty woman. The pig is the whole party. Obama is calling it like it is, and hopefully through provoking outrage, he'll get the media to draw attention back to the main point, which is... when he defends "we're talking about McCain," people will associate McCain with the same old pig. .....I think I'm also starting to get it on a cosmic, philosophical level. Everyone I know has felt a confidence drop, thinking "I can't believe they might get away with this again." It feels like a punch in the gut. I even hear some fatalism and plans to leave the country. I cannot listen to NPR anymore b/c it is upsetting, so my morning has been much more contemplative. I feel somewhat more calm if I get some perspective and think about the long haul. That's what Obama's Yes We Can speech was about. Realize, we had slavery 150 years ago. There HAVE been major changes in America. It is possible. But it is NOT a cakewalk. And sometimes it is gradual and incremental. And it may not be an instant gratification win on Nov 4th, sadly. His early speeches always made me cry b/c he reignited such hope and courage and recommitment to this whole process. I think this is all about doing what we can and keeping on keeping on even if we don't make it in the next 2 months.

That poll has got some seriously wacky internals that make no sense. In other words, par for the course when Survey USA polls the south. Their sample has more registered Republicans than Democrats! That's simply not credible.

PPP, who are based in NC, still show a 4-pt. race. Link: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_NC_910.pdf

It's not going to be the tipping point state for Obama, since I think if he pulls out a win in NC it means he's winning VA by a larger margin -- but it keeps McCain pinned down there. And would the McCain campaign be stepping up advertising in a state that they were really leading by 20%?

This level of "discourse" in the US body politic, screaming ad nauseum - much ado about NOTHING - demonstrates complete impoverishment of the public information space. If they tolerate such an affair, listen to any of this bizarre talk about lipstick on dogs or pigs, "sexism" and give it more than zero weight in their decision-making process, the American Public will indeed get what it deserves. As they have been getting for the last 30 years.

New PPP poll for NC has McCain 48 Obama 44.  That's a little more like it!

Haven't seen any detail to this yet, but TPM now has a new NC poll from SurveyUSA today that has Obama within 4%.  Yesterday, SUSA had one that said McInsane up 20% in NC.  Odd.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/ncpres/

Allan made the rec list at Kos-Congratulations! Slinkerwink is definitely the star chicken little there, I can not believe her diaries telling Obama what to do keep making the rec list ;-| She obviously didn't get anything Al said the other day. Whatever-

Laura-Thanks for that link again, sorry you are having to use it more than we would want.

I got my 'Taking on the System' book, looking forward to reading it this weekend. Al, I hope you write a book someday soon.

This is the most ardent attempt by the McCain/Palin ticket to deviate from issues.  I've never followed politics until last year, and I had to do research on all the terminology that everyone does on the blogs, the issues, the candidates, electoral college and all other things.  I had heard of the Willie Horton add referred to several times since the primary season in April.  I really was not ready to entertain it at that moment, but then it was mentioned again this week and I watched it last night.  Very disturbing and very disheartening about the state that this country is in.

I was never under the impression that this race would be easy for Obama, but when we historically get to a great place in our country, it should be admonished, not consistently hammered as a negative. The vipers that inhabit camp McCain have just about teed my emotions to why I never entertained politics before and others probably have my sentiments as well, but it will not deter my faith and hope in a future with Barack.

I had to question within my heart what his appeal was for me.  I had to open up my mind to why Obama and not McCain?  I had to finally question what is best for this country and for this world.  First, temperment.  You cannot trust nor follow someone who lashes out irratically.  First impressions are important.  Second, you must have a critical, level-headed, open-to-compromise and dilligent worker to lead.  Third, you need someone you can count on.  Fourth, you need someone who honestly cares and this is best seen with ones interactions with their family and with friends.  Fifth, you need an honest individual that has a record of leading by example.  Lastly, you need someone who may not be perfect all the time, but is willing to acknowledge if they made a mistake.

This is a personal race for me as well, since I am an African-American woman.  What is best for our country, on issues that matter the most to Americans: jobs, infrastructure, education, health, taxes and social security.  The bottom line is that most people want an honest job that pays the bills, a few treats--manicure, shoes, whatever your little extras are--and a good retirement plan.  It's not about making the most money for frankly the majority of people, it's about happiness and peace.

What is all this stuff about celebrity, hockey, hunting, houses (many houses) and now lipstick.  It makes the common voter very pessamistic.  It is not only inaccuate and should not be highlighted in a race for president, it is downright filthy to be discussing such issues when people are losing their jobs, people are struggling to buy groceries, people are having to choose between gas and prescription drugs, people are wondering if they will be able to afford college, etc.  The list goes on and on.  This is becoming a more and more disgraceful campaign.

Issues..policies..How are you gonna make my life better as my President?  This is the only thing that should be on the minds of voters. Not, a contest on who can smear the other the best and most effectively.

It has become a circus in camp McCain.  They cannot find anything and this is what I am left with after going to bed last night..Lipstick..

MSNBC has an interactive poll in an article titled "Obama attacked for lip stick on a pig quip."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26633775/

Results to the question did Obama cross a line with the comment when I voted were:

38% - Yes, He crossed a line

61% - No, This is just rough & tumble of politics

1.4% - I don't know