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Condi’s Whole Life, in Three Volumes, Worth Slightly More than David Plouffe’s Two-Year Campaign

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As Lisa is reporting, Condi just signed herself a $2.5 million deal for three books on her life and her tenure as Bush’s foreign policy flunky. She will write one book on her time in the Bush Administration, a memoir of her life, and a kids version of the memoir.

That’s great news for Condi, as others in the Bush Administration are having less success getting book deals. Consider Alberto Gonzales, who doesn’t yet have a publisher for his book, which purportedly sets the record straight on his role in the crimes of the Bush Administration. Laura Bush got a book deal–at a quarter of the price that Hillary got for her First Lady story. Karl Rove, who smartly got an early start on the bidding, had to settle for $1.5 million for his book deal; experts had thought he’d get $3 million. And Bush himself has been advised to wait, as the market for anything he has to say looks like the rest of the economy: non-existent and getting worse.

But the market for books is not all bad. Just by way of perspective, consider David Plouffe’s book deal for the story of managing Obama’s historic campaign. Plouffe got $1.5 to $2 million for his advance.

So in case you were wondering, the market now values Plouffe’s role in Obama’s two-year campaign to have the same value as Karl Rove’s entire life work, Laura Bush’s tenure as First Lady, (for the moment at least) George Bush’s two term Administration, and two out of Condi’s three-volume life.

I think the market’s invisible hand just slapped the Bush Administration upside their head.

Wanted: An Ask for Phone Calls

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I just got this email:

Marcy —

President Obama recorded a video to speak directly to you about his economic recovery plan.

America is facing an urgent and unprecedented challenge. The economic crisis requires bold and immediate action.

Watch President Obama’s video and share it with your friends and family:http://my.barackobama.com/recoveryvideo

And I’ve also gotten friends inviting me in the last week to watch some other Obama videos together–that is, I’ve been invited to House Parties to discuss this. That means people are doing just as Obama (or David Plouffe) asks in their email alerts.

But I still haven’t been invited to call my Senators or Congressman (all of whom, granted, have voted for stimulus, but Debbie Stabenow voted for a stupid Tom Coburn amendment forbidding any stimulus money being used for musems and parks–I do plan on chatting with her about that and if you’re a Michigander, you should too!). Nor have I been invited by Barack Obama to call Sanctimonious Joe’s latest gang–Joe, Haggis, the Bad Nelson, and Susan Collins–to ask why they’re opposed to funds that will help states avoid cutting back necessary services, or why they’re opposed to constructing schools.

Mobilizing the millions of people on Obama’s email list is great. But isn’t it better to mobilize them to do the same thing the wingnuts are mobilizing their people to do–talk to members of Congress? Wouldn’t it be better to use that list to press for a more progressive (and effective) stimulus package?

Obama Campaign’s Take: We’re Doing What We Need To

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I’m listening to an Obama campaign conference call on the state of the race. Some of the eye-popping details:

Sporadic and First-Time Voters Are Voting Early

I’ve been focusing on the early voting numbers, though the McCain team has questioned whether or not the high Democratic turnout really just amounts to voters who would have voted anyway coming out early.

No.

The Obama campaign is quite confident that at least one fifth of these early voters are either first-time or sporadic Democratic voters–basically, the kind of voters that push outcomes into Gallup’s more Obama-friendly turnout model.

That optimism was particularly true of Florida, where David Plouffe thinks that a quarter of sporadic Democratic voters–people who didn’t vote in 2004–have already voted. He also noted that Florida has one of the largest pools of sporadic voters.

Hmm, I guess that’s another reason to bring Clinton and Gore to the sunshine state.

Arizona

Not surprisingly, there were a number of questions about Arizona.

Plouffe didn’t commit to going to Arizona (sorry bmaz)–when referring to Saturday’s trip out west, he said only that they were going "back out west" with no details about locations (though the campaign has already released the schedule showing a Henderson, NV event followed by a Pueblo, CO event). He also said that, with the big map Obama has, it’s really tough getting every place they need to go. If they had "a few more days," he suggested, he might have made a visit to Arizona. 

He attributed the closing race in Arizona–indeed, Obama’s strength in the west more generally–to two things: western Latinos supporting Obama in large numbers, and suburban independents leaning towards Obama. (Note, he said of CO’s almost equally split early voting margins that he thought many of the Independents had voted Obama.) He also said, specifically, that a lot of sporadic voters in Maricopa (Phoenix metro area) are voting Obama. 

He emphasized the closing polls are real and that they might be able to pull this off.

Finally, Plouffe was very careful to note that the campaign’s new advertising in Arizona is all positive; I guess he’s heard McCain yell "get off my lawn" enough time he doesn’t want to infuriate him. 

Georgia and North Dakota

It was pretty funny. Plouffe also got asked about Georgia a lot. Every time he answered about these late-breaking states, Plouffe was careful to mention North Dakota, in addition to Arizona and Georgia (no one mentioned Louisiana, which had a poll yesterday showing a close race as well). Read more →