MyFoxPhilly

OFF TO DENVER

Fox 11 is hitting the road for Denver on Saturday… and we’ll blog and broadcast from Fox HQ just outside the Pepsi Center at Braun’s Bar and Grill – which might raise an eyebrow or two. But advance word has it the beer taps have been disconnected… and the kegs have been rolled out of there.

I am sure we’ll all get intoxicated by the rich political brew anyway. Reporter John Schwada and I have covered a lot of these conventions… and it’s always a heady experience of being on the floor during the height of the evening session.

Photographer/Editor Darryl Kim makes up the third member of our team. We start blogging and broadcasting from Denver on Saturday (the first night from our friends at KDVR Fox 31 in Denver)… and are due to wrap-up mid-morning Fri Aug 29.

John’s one of the great writers in the TV news business. His most recent blog recalling other convention moments – both memorable and forgettable – is wonderful reading.

Here’s a link to it on the myfoxla.com website.

THE VERY CLOSE RACE

So the conventions loom and the White House race has turned from Barack Obama holding a soft lead to a real tossup. John McCain has been surging and in most of the polls out this week he’d narrowed the contest to a statistical dead-heat, halving Barack Obama's opinion poll leads.

A CBS/New York Times poll found Senator McCain had punched deep into Obama's advantage in just two weeks, while an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey confirmed the finding, revealing the Illinois senator's lead had "nearly disappeared."

The latest national figures came with the media fixated over the vice presidential picks of each candidate and ahead of an intense two-and-a-half month sprint towards polling day in November. At this writing, Obama says he’s made a choice but hasn’t said yet who it is – and McCain appears ready to announce his running mate on Fri Apr 29 (in a well timed ploy to try and steal a bit of the Democrats’ thunder coming out of their convention). Time Magazine is out with a web prediction that it will be Indiana’s popular Evan Bayh. Others say Joe Biden has it. We’ll soon see who is right.

In both the CBS and NBC polls, Obama leads McCain 45 to 42 percent. The Democrat had led by six points last month. The NBC poll, however, found McCain's supporters to be much less enthusiastic than Obama's, and found widespread concern among voters about his age. McCain is 72 on Aug 29 (the very day that he's likely to reveal his choice for VP). Obama turned 47 on Aug 4.

Also this week, a new George Washington University survey found McCain led the accelerating race by a single point, suggesting his new robust strategy was paying off.

McCain appears to have closed the gap partly by stressing energy policy, as 40 percent of those polled by George Washington University said he was the best bet to peg back high gasoline prices compared to 37 percent who liked Obama.

In May, Obama had led on that question by 19 percent, but McCain's demands for an expansion of off-shore oil drilling appeared to be bearing fruit, despite Democratic claims it would do little to cut prices at the pump.

TURNING NASTY

The dueling campaigns certainly ratcheted up the negative this week. McCain – obviously enjoying his new momentum – chided Obama for, as McCain put it, getting "a little testy.” So Obama sharpened his rhetoric a bit further, saying of McCain: "I honor his service. I don't honor his policies. I don't honor his politics." Obama is taking on McCain with renewed vigor – just as some Democrats fret that their candidate has not been aggressive enough.

Both candidates also unveiled fresh attack ads ahead of their back-to-back national conventions. Trying anew to tie McCain to George W. Bush (now with a 29 percent approval rating in the latest Reuters/Zogby poll), Obama's TV commercial asks: "Can we really afford more of the same?" It slams McCain's tax plan as a giveaway for big corporations and oil companies.

McCain's radio ad claims: "Celebrities like to spend their millions. Barack Obama is no different. Only it's your money he wants to spend."

Democrats – both privately and publicly – now question whether Obama has a second act beyond his message of change and wonder whether he can throw an effective punch against a Republican Party willing to play hardball.

Obama was confronted by those concerns at a town hall meeting in
Virginia this week, when a woman told him McCain was running a lot of negative ads. Her question: "You think you can win by taking the higher ground? I worry about you." To that Obama insisted he's up for the fight. In his words: “I'm skinny but I'm tough. We will hit back with the truth. We intend to win this election."

Yet Republicans are emboldened by their improving poll numbers:
Even some ardent critics of the way McCain has run his campaign see a way he could win even though Bush's low popularity plus war and economic distress have created a dreadful political environment for the GOP.

HOUSING CRISIS?

On Thursday, we saw McCain create his own mini-housing crisis. When Politico.com asked him how many houses he and his multi-millionaire wife own, McCain fumbled the answer badly… saying he didn’t know. "I think — I'll have my staff get to you," he mumbled. The real answer – says the AP – is at least nine on seven properties. Ooops! The Democrats smelled blood in the water and Obama smartly seized the moment – with his team quickly producing a biting TV ad – and the candidate himself using a series of campaign stops to portray McCain as wealthy and out of touch. With the economy the top issue in the race, Obama is obviously trying to turn McCain's gaffe into one of those moments that stick in voters' minds.

Scratch the archives and out tumbles John Kerry sail boarding or the first President Bush wowed by a grocery store checkout scanner (and not having a clue about the price of a loaf of bread), John Edwards with his $400 haircut, Michael Dukakis riding in a tank or Gerald Ford eating a tamale with the husk still on. Yes, some campaign trail stumbles do take on a life of their own.

Think it might not be that big a deal-- that it will blow over by tomorrow? Well the broadcast networks did Obama a favor… either leading with the story Thursday night or playing it second. Plus, you can bet the McCain miscue is getting written into some of next week’s Democratic Convention speeches.

But the Republicans say McCain’s brand is too well established, that this won’t hurt him. And the GOP political machine did fight back fast, responding with a Web site highlighting Obama's ties to Chicago businessman Antonin "Tony" Rezko, a friend and contributor who was convicted in June on more than a dozen felonies in a corruption scandal.

Obama and his wife bought their home in Chicago in 2005 for $1.6 million after getting advice from Rezko. The corruption case had no connection to Obama, and Obama has said it was a mistake to work with Rezko on buying the house. But the Rezko business keeps coming back to bite him.

Back to packing all the stuff – paperwork, computers, extra hard drives, wires and more wires – that you have to take with you on a venture like this.

More from Denver over the weekend.

Bob_Tarlau

Bob_Tarlau's Blog

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