England for Obama

Thought you liked these two people before? Watch this:

Watch CBS Videos Online

Note 1: Don’t worry if you’re thinking, “I’d love to watch it, but I don’t have an hour”. The interview only takes up 40 minutes of the aforementioned 60.

Note 2: If you’re not distracted by the clock, the theme, erm, noise to 60 Minutes sounds spookily as if it’s about to burst into Zoo Station by U2.

Note 3: It’s a nice touch that the advert playing in the breaks is one helping people to stop smoking. What with that being Barack’s promise to Michelle, should he run for office.

Note 4: Isn’t it nice to see a First Couple who are bright, articulate, thoughtful, measured, compassionate, warm and grounded?

And I’m not going to list this as a ‘Note’, because it’s far too serious: but Barack’s re-commitment to closing Guantamo and ending torture was, for me, the most important thing he said in this interview, and was an utter relief to hear.

One in five Americans have already cast their vote. And here’s the report from TPM (my bolding):

“With early voting now coming to an end, a new CBS poll finds that Barack Obama has already banked a massive lead going into Election Day, which John McCain will have a tough job overcoming.

The numbers: Among the subset of early voters, Obama has built up a lead of 57%-38%. Among all likely voters, including both the early vote and those people who haven’t gone yet, it’s 54%-41%.

With the common estimate being that roughly one third of all ballots cast this year will be early votes, this means McCain would have to win the the remaining votes on Election Day by a margin of nearly ten points just to eke out a narrow win in the overall popular vote.

It’s possible for McCain to do this - and the internals show that the early voters are disproportionately self-identified Democrats - but it’s definitely a tough job.”

I heart early voting!

So, as you may recall, Barack Obama’s team have bought 30 minutes of airtime on The Shopping Channel prime time TV tonight.

Barack Obama: American Stories will air on CBS, NBC and Fox tonight.  And the New York Times has seen a one-minute preview:

“The trailer is heavy in strings, flags, presidential imagery…”

What? It’s the opening credits of The West Wing?

Oh, and Barack’s also on The Daily Show tonight. I do hope the American people aren’t getting sick of him. What with him about to become their president for the next eight years, an’ all.

Three instant polls by the major networks - CNN, CBS and Fox - all give the debate to Obama. In CBS’s case, by the largest majority yet: 53 to 22. Woo-hoo!

And now I’m off to bed…

In the words of Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor: good morning, good moooorning!

Compare and contrast. I do believe this is what Sarah Palin called ‘verbiage’:

Watch CBS Videos Online

I heart Joe Biden. And I think he’s going to do just fine tonight. I don’t think Sarah Palin’s going to have the monopoly on straight-talking, emotionally ‘connecting’ responses. In fact, I think Joe Biden does much better than her on that front - because while he has the intellect and knowledge to back it up (*coughs*), he’s also utterly charming and disarming.

He also breaks up his answers into actual sentences.

(Incidentally, that Jefferson quote about “underestimating the wisdom of the people”? He never said it.)

So, in fact, there’s nothing major to report this morning following yesterday’s bombshell from John McCain. Except that - as I wrote in my comment to P Grecco last night - it’s come out that the Republican camp want to push the presidential debate back to October 2, which is, surprise surprise!, the date that the vice presidential debate is due to take place. ie. they want to push that back too, to an unspecified date. Ideally, presumably, ‘never’.

Could this possibly be because they fear that Sarah Palin is at best unprepared for, or at worst unable to cope with, her debate with Joe Biden? Could this entire ‘rushing to Washington’ thing have been purposely constructed in order to push back - or even eliminate - as many debates as possible? I wouldn’t put it past the GOP.

For what it’s worth - and it actually is worth quite a lot - polls of American people on various news sites seem to show that the overwhelming majority think the debate this Friday should still go on (looks like McCain got the public opinion wrong on this one - oops); and the debate commission is also insisting, along with Obama, that it goes ahead.

In the meantime, both Barack Obama and John McCain are going to be in Washington today, at the invitation of George Bush - although apparently this invite was extended months ago - and there were some big TV moments yesterday.

Firstly, George Bush addressed the nation about the economic crisis and the proposed bailout plan. Here’s the MSNBC Nightly News team analysing what was, essentially, a sales pitch:

Secondly, The Late Show With David Letterman saw its host rip into John McCain, who was supposed to be appearing on it but pulled out at the last minute due to his rush to Washington (only it turns out he was in the studio next door):

And thirdly, video of Katie Couric’s Monday night interview with Sarah Palin appeared on YouTube (my jaw, which had been slowly moving towards the floor, actually hit it on Palin’s last line):