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Dec. 2nd is the date for the runoff election and as Sean at 538 laid it out today it is all about turnout.

The race saw incumbent Chamblis get 49.8% to Martin's 47% and 3% for a Libertarian 3rd party leaving this up to a runoff since no one got over 50%.

Most importantly each candidate significantly underperformed their ticket's Presidential nominee. McCain won GA by 205,000 votes vs. W's 600K+ in 2004:

• Chambliss - (-182,000)
• Martin - (- 86,000)

Clearly Chambliss was not as popular as one would think with the state's white voters who did not vote for him, possibly due to the despicable ads he ran against Max Cleland, the triple amputee Viet Nam vet, labelliing him soft on terrorism.

John McCain was here in Atlanta today at a small rally for the devoted for Saxby Chambliss, who has been running negative ads on Jim Martin for the last week. Of course McCain denounced this ad in 2002but now once again is putting his moral compass aside for politics:

"I'd never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield - it's worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible," McCain said at the time.

Other than that the Chambliss team is counting on every Republican headliner from Romney to Giuliani and maybe Mooselini visiting and their state organization to get out their vote in what will likely be a turnout of 30-35% of registered voters vs. the 75% we saw for the general election.

There was almost ZERO GOTV work here in Atlanta as McCain had no staff or office here other than the local party offices so we have a real advantage now. Celebrtities coming won't help Chambliss much and a new poll shows that in spades.

Our Obama team's from the general are all still together and were nearly all volunteer driven as only 20 or so mostly less experienced field organizers were left here after most were moved to FL, VA and OH.

In our area we had tons of volunteers join us, many from the neighborhood and all over Atlanta and they are all being contacted tonite. Our 3 GOTV HQ's were kept ready to reopen which the main one did today as well.

The good news is that over 100 battle hardened Obama field organizers and directors are back now headed up by Alex Lofton who had organized the state last spring and summer including having 135 organizers and 250 Obama organizing fellows. He is an "A" player and the team that was here is excellent as well.

I attended an orgainizing meeting Tues. PM and as everyone went around the room many were back here to finish the job they had left in GA in trying to get Barack his 60th Senator and they are fired up and at least half were here before and know their areas and the volunteer groups they built. The teams we had are now being expanded and integrated with our reinforcements and a good mgmt. structure set up to GOTV. Literally as  the meeting progressed people were walking in the doors constantly having driven in from OH, Fl, MI et al and were ready to go.

Phone banking started tonite and canvassing this weekend as we get focused on early voting which is the 24th-26th. 50% of the General election vote was early and that was without the large Obama paid staff that NC and FL had. If we had had them here we would have won the state for Obama.

In a week the Martin folks had gotten nearly 1100 emails volunteering from GA and all over the nation wanting to come help.

Veteran's groups are particularly fired up to take Chambliss down, one from NJ says they have 10,000 vets ready to help and 2 of my friends are the GA co-chairs for Vets for Obama, now Martin, and their statewide groups, and retired general and flag officers  from around the nation are engaged to help via their perosnal networks as well.

The DSCC is back with a big 5 day ad buy as well starting today.

It is going to be a tough fight but now that we have the cavlary here we will have a huge on the ground advantage and amazing enthusiasm and work being done.

IF President Elect Obama came to help I believe we would win the election, but he cannot put his political capital on the line as a loss would be embarassing. This ad is running already though:

If Hillary, Bubba or other notables would come it would help so we will see.

This will be very close and the ground game will tell the story and we will have the best one by far with a passion from the Vet community for payback on Chambliss. We'll keep you updated but it will be an intense 2 1/2 weeks.

Links:

WSJ on GA Race

TPM Video

God Bless Jack Cafferty for that quote..

We have all read the stories on the poor McCain ground game but now the facts come out.

Quotes abounded as to how many calls they were making etc and my suspicions were that these included robo calls and were in all likelihood mostly robo calls. God knows that is all we got and we got several a day last week here in GA.

From Marc Ambinder:

At the National Press Club on Wednesday, RNC chairman Mike Duncan crowed about how the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign had contacted 30 million individual voters directly.  (This figure includes those robocalls.)

Impressive.

But the Obama campaign / Democratic National Committee turnout program contacted more than double that amount -- about 68 million, according to a Democratic officials.

Now I have managed sales people all my life and this strikes me like the difference in the ones that failed vs. the ones that succeeded. it is pretty simple and a good analogy here.

The failures would count sales calls as those where they left messages or left behind a brochure and could never understand why they failed. Their sales pipelines would include things that were wishes and hopes not hard and fast facts they got from their customers.

Those that succeeded actually were relentless in directly talking to prospects and following up until they did. Messages did not count. Their pipelines tended to be smaller but had facts to back up their inclusion on a report.

Most of the Obama calls were in person and tracked in detail as to whether messages were left, direct contact, number of contacts etc.. I know as I made a lot of them online and in our office. Sounds like a really well managed sales organization.

Meanwhile we see this latest where the RNC guy "crowed" over their results and heard Rick Davis bragging about how they mad 3-4X more "voter contacts: in Ohio the week before the election than Bush did in 2004.

Hmmm, who won? I do not even think they realize that their methodology, tracking and metrics were wrong and all along they were kidding themselves, their supporters and the media that touching people with recorded hate messages was productive.

I'll bet Rove and Bush actually counted things differently too...and they won as well.

Now that the election is over we need to make a few final comments on the unresolved issue of Trig Palin's parentage.

I still believe that Mooeselini is not the mother but what we learned from her during the campaign certainly opens another explanation to some credibility.

In August we assumed Palin was a normal politician and we learned she is an ignorant, incurious, inexperienced, small town mayor whose appeal and image are all about looks and being like a bitchy high school girl. The findings from the Legislatures 268 page ethics report confirm all the behavioral issues in spades and recent reports on her ignorance of the most basic civics, the role of the VP et al tell the rest of the story.

Clearly Palin is a ruthlessly ambitious narcissist who continues to focus on herself and not people who helped her or her family. Her rogue behavior the last few weeks with the McCain campaign shows her real stripes which we learned she displayed in throwing every person in AK who ever helped her or got in her way.

Obviously the trip to TX at 8 months pregnant was totally politically motivated for both the VP job she was lobbying for and had hired a publicist to help her with. Alll the attendees were governors that were on the VP list and the meeting was with oil/gas execs and was very secretive. Clearly her pipeline agenda was furthered here as well.

To her the trip and her behavior in flying home was clearly worth the risk and we have seen now in her past behavior around her ex brother in law Wooten, Walt Monegan and a number of questionable ethics issues like expenses, office renovations et al that everything is all about her.

As such the conclusion that Palin putting her unborn, downs diagnosed child at risk was either purposeful or simply driven by her ego and narcissism is at least a plausible option. Her intellectual ignorance probably did not help here either.

2 months ago I refused to believe any adult would purposely behave as she did and endanger an unborn baby. Now it is at least an option that fits with the narcissistic, self centered, overly ambitious woman we have learned a lot about.

I am not ready to say she endangered Trig's life on purpose, she probably assumed that God would protect them or her witch doctor preacher would....or not.

I doubt we will ever know for sure but it is clear that Palin is capable of anything as long as it helps her further her own blind ambition.

Bill Mauldin's Famous JFK Assassination Cartoon - 1963

Fulton County found another 55,000 votes yesterday:

• 2008 – Registration – 554,682 (+108,592, 24.2% increase)
• 2008 – Vote – 401,662 (+65,000, +19.6% increase)
  • A 24% increase in registration over 2004
• % 2008 –72.3% (-3.2%)

Fulton still underperforms the state average but this makes a little more sense.

You all know that I had predicted an Obama upset in GA which did not happen. Bob Barr was a non factor, Barack hit his non-white number of 30+% but only got 23-24% of the white vote.

However we have some major discrepancies in vote totals in our largest county, Fulton, which is most of the city of Atlanta.

This was my email today to the local reporter on the issues I determined in Fulton County, the largest in GA. Something is clearly wrong here:

Cameron, you mention the larger registration in Fulton County and the high turnout in 2004. Why are the votes counted so far off that then?

I’ve created a spreadsheet (attached) from the Secy. Of State’s data by county and something in the state’s largest county, Fulton, is clearly wrong:

• 2004 – Registration – 446,094
• 2004 – Vote – 336,741
• % 2004 – 75.4%

• 2008 – Registration – 554,682 (+108,592, 24.2% increase)
• 2008 – Vote – 346,223 (+9518, +2.7% increase)
• % 2008 – 62.5% (-12.9%) – 2nd to lowest % in the state

• 2004 Early Vote – 17,603
• 2008 Early Vote – 107,938 (+90,335, +530%)

Simply hitting the same % as 2004 would show 77,000+ votes more and Fulton likely would

have exceeded the state average of 74.9%. Cobb was 79%, Dekalb 77.3%, Chatham 78.4%.

Ten largest counties average is 76.5% which adds another 8644 to the total for an 85,000+ gap.

It is inconceivable that Fulton would underperform the state or the large metro, heavily African American counties so where are the votes?

If Fulton is wrong what else is??

John Nail

404-862-6039

Well it appears we were all right, Palin is clueless. According to Carl Cameron, McCain aides were horrified to discover that Palin was utterly clueless about the most basic facts like which nations were in NAFTA and even more embarrassingly thought Africa was a country, not a continent of nations.

My 6 year old knows Africa is a continent and can name a bunch of countries for God sake.

NC is called by the News Observer:

Democrat Barack Obama is the unofficial winner in North Carolina, but the victory over Sen. John McCain won't be sealed until provisional ballots are counted and certified next month. Unofficial returns show Obama ahead by 13,746 votes. Trends over the last 14 years point to Obama having a wider lead after the provisionals are counted, said Gary Bartlett, executive director of the State Board of Elections. "It widens the lead for the winner, no matter who that may be," Bartlett said.

The South is rising again as the face of the new America...Yes We Did!!

Ralph Nader always struck me as an irrelevant loon and calling Barack Obama a potential Uncle Tom is so offensive that I will simply let you watch it. Shepherd Smith is dumb founded by it:

HUGE NEWS FROM GA:

UPDATE - 9 AM - I looked at the major counties Dekalb and Fulton and something is definitely wrong in these voting numbers. These are GA's largest counties in metro Atlanta.

 In 2004 Fulton is reporting the same number of voters (onl +3K)as they show for 2004. NO WAY! Dekalb is showing a 10% increase over 2004....ODD??

Early voting in Fulton was 168K and Dekalb 178K....

We'll track this all day until it is concluded.

BIG NEWS OUT OF GEORGIA?

3:39 AM ... More to be said on Georgia maybe. People have been asking us all night why Georgia hasn't been called on our results map. The results map is keyed to the Associated Press results. So we actually don't have direct control on when states get colored in. But we've been wondering the same thing ourselves. Why no call from the AP? All evening we've been hearing sporadic reports that many if not all of the early votes simply hadn't been counted yet. There were a lot of them. And I believe they were supposed to be disproportionately African-Americ