WaPo: Unemployment Going Up Among Washington Republicans
The Washington Post reports that Republican political appointees are now facing unemployment in the middle of a tough job market, and with K Street preferring Democrats. Said former George H.W. Bush advisor Ron Kaufman: "You have lots of folks in the House and Senate on the streets and 3,000 administration appointees on the streets at a time when the job market is shrinking anyways. It's just not a fun time."

Barack And Michelle Obama To Attend Community Service Lunch
Barack and Michelle Obama are attending a lunch today with community service volunteers in Washington, as part of Obama's "Renew America Together" initiative, calling for more people to volunteer.

Obama To Honor Powell, McCain, Biden
Barack Obama will be attending three dinners tonight to honor three different political figures from across the spectrum. First up is a dinner honoring Colin Powell, beginning at 5 p.m. ET, then a dinner honoring John McCain, also beginning at 5 p.m. ET, and finally a dinner at 6:30 p.m. ET to honor Joe Biden.

Michelle Obama, Jill Biden Hosting Concert For Military Families
Michelle Obama and Jill Biden will be attending the Kids' Inaugural, a concert honoring military families and for which free tickets were distributed by the Presidential Inauguration Committee and the Department of Defense. The event begins at 7 p.m. ET, featuring acts such as Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.

Sullenberger Gets Inauguration Ticket
Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who successfully landed his damaged passenger plane into the Hudson River with no deaths or serious injuries, has been given free tickets to Barack Obama's inauguration tomorrow, for both himself and his family.

NYT: Obama Reaching Out To McCain
The New York Times reports that Barack Obama has been consulting closely with John McCain on his appointments and other areas of foreign policy, seeking to build a consensus on how to pursue his own policy goals. "He said that he understands that we had differences but he wanted to let us know that he also understands that we have got to be responsible in how we leave Iraq," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Poll: Nearly 7 In 10 Blacks Believe King's Dream Is Fulfilled
A new CNN poll finds that 69% of African-Americans believe Martin Luther King's dream has been fulfilled, to 30% who say it has not. This number is actually higher than it is among whites, only 46% of whom say it has been fulfilled, to 52% who say it has not.

Obama To Deliver "Closing Argument" Speech
Barack Obama is rolling out his "closing argument" speech today, with the rhetorical points he will stress for the remainder of the campaign. There won't be any great substantive change, but this line from the prepared remarks, condemning Republican culture-war politics, jumps out in the way it hearkens back to his 2004 convention speech: "In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope."

Obama In Ohio And Pennsylvania; Biden In North Carolina And Florida
Barack Obama is holding a 12:30 p.m. ET rally in Canton, Ohio, at which he will roll out his "closing argument" stump speech, followed by a 3 p.m. ET rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Joe Biden is holding a 10 a.m. ET rally in Greenville, North Carolina, a 2:15 p.m. ET rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, and a 7:30 p.m. ET rally in New Port Richey, Florida.

Michelle Obama On The Tonight Show, And Rallying In Nevada
Michelle Obama is taping an appearance for tonight on The Tonight Show, and will then be holding a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, beginning at at 9:15 p.m. local time (that is, a quarter after midnight ET).

McCain In Ohio And Pennsylvania; Palin In Virginia
John McCain is holding a 2:30 p.m. ET rally in Dayton, Ohio, and a 6:30 p.m. ET rally in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Sarah Palin is touring through Virginia today, with a 10 a.m. ET rally in Leesburg, a 1 p.m. ET rally in Fredericksburg, and a 6:45 p.m. ET rally in Salem.

GOP Sen. Kyl: Unfortunately, McCain Will Probably Lose
Sen. Jon Kyl, John McCain's fellow Republican Senator from Arizona, is openly voicing pessimism about McCain's chances next Tuesday. "Unfortunately, I think John McCain might be added to that long list of Arizonans who ran for president but were never elected," Kyl told the Arizona Daily Star.

Poll: Obama Ahead By Eight In Virginia
A new Washington Post poll gives Barack Obama a 52%-44% lead in Virginia, up from a 49%-46% lead a month ago. There now seems to be a strong consensus in the polls that Obama has a solid lead in a state that hasn't voted Democratic since the 1964 LBJ landslide.

Palin: The Clothes Are Like The Stage And Lighting
At a rally yesterday in Tampa, Sarah Palin explained that the story about her expensive campaign wardrobe was "ridiculous," saying the clothes are not her property and are like the stage and the lighting -- after the rally is over, it all goes back to the RNC to dispose of. This does invite an interesting question: How much else about Palin is just so much stagecraft?

The McCain campaign is now broadening their attack on Obama's past association with William Ayers to include Michelle Obama -- even though McCain has repeatedly said spouses should be off limits during the campaign.

The attack? Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers' wife and fellow former Weatherman, went to work in 1984 for the major Chicago-based national law firm of Sidley & Austin, and three years later, Michelle joined the mega-firm as well.

That's the entire attack. We wish we were joking. But we aren't.

In launching this latest, McCain is ditching yet another formerly-claimed principle as he faces the growing likelihood of defeat. In a statement back in June, the McCain campaign said: "Senator McCain agrees with Senator Obama that spouses should not be an issue in this campaign, and he has stated that position frequently."

The attack on Michelle came on a McCain conference call with reporters this afternoon featuring John Murtagh, who has been hitting Obama over the Weather Underground's attack on his family's home back in 1970. Murtagh noted that Dohrn and Michelle Obama had both worked at the firm starting in the late 1980s.

The firm's Chicago office currently employs more than 500 lawyers.

Read more »

Vanity Fair tallied up the cost of Cindy McCain's outfit on her night at the GOP convention:

Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000

Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500

Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000

Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000-$25,000

Shoes, designer unknown: $600

Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

Vanity Fair knows about these things, so we trust 'em. Of course, when it comes to measuring elitism, what's a $300,000 outfit compared to ... whatever it is that's supposed to be elitist about the Obamas?

And besides, POW POW POW.

( Via HuffPo.)

Michelle Obama, who just wrapped up her speech, throws a big sop to Hillary and her supporters, and makes a broad-based pitch for female support, quoting a line directly from Hillary's concession speech in which Hillary alluded to the 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling her candidacy created.

"I stand here today at the crosscurrents of that history -- knowing that my piece of the American Dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me," Michelle said, adding...

People like Hillary Clinton, who put those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, so that our daughters -- and sons -- can dream a little bigger and aim a little higher.

Michelle humbled herself before Hillary here, casting her own presence on the stage as the result of the work of pioneers like Hillary before her -- even though they faced off against each other in bitterly adversarial camps only weeks ago.

The speech overall was a clear success. It was perfect in tone -- she came across as modest and self-effacing but simultaneously driven and unabashedly bullish on her husband's chances and talents. Full script here.

Late Update: More of our take on her speech here.

The Michelle rollout continues with this new video, just blasted out to supporters by the Obama campaign, of Michelle prepping backstage for her big speech and giving her little girls tongue-in-cheek advice to come out and praise her performance. . .

The vid underscores two of Michelle's goals here tonight: To soften her and make her a more mainstream figure, and to deflect attacks on the Obamas as intoxicated with their "celebrity." The "celeb" sneer ads, and the criticism of Michelle's claim that she's proud of her country for the first time, are both all about painting the Obamas as too puffed up for their own good, and here Michelle's nervousness and mock advice to her kids shows her modest and reserved side.

As for the need to soften Michelle, earlier tonight Rev. Eugene Rivers was on Hardball with Chris Matthews and really drove home that imperative. "They're the Huxtables!" he told Matthews, "What could be more American than the Huxtables?"

In my memory, Claire Huxtable wasn't the softest of characters. Still, softening is clearly the goal here, as is evidenced by Michelle's cuddling with her children and effeminately describing the stage as "full of color and light."

Some advance excerpts of Michelle Obama's convention speech have just been sent out by the campaign, and her mission tonight will clearly be to demystify the Obamas' background, biography, and heritage, and to deflect attacks on Obama's supposed "celeb" self-regard.

In the speech, Michelle offers a nod to the fact that the Obama's don't come from the central casting that has produced past presidential couples, as the Obama camp has put it in the past. "Each of us also comes here tonight by way of our own improbable journey," she says.

Michelle will seek to make Americans more comfortable with the Obamas by talking about the values that both Obamas were raised with, and are raising their own children with, as well as discussing the Obamas' shared experience of childbirth. Notably, Michelle will say that Obama hasn't changed since she first met him, an apparent effort to deflect attacks on Obama as intoxicated by his own "celebrity."

From the speech:

"And in the end, after all that's happened these past 19 months, the Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 years ago. He's the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital ten years ago this summer, inching along at a snail's pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he'd struggled so hard for himself, determined to give her what he never had: the affirming embrace of a father's love."

We'll be blogging the convention right here, so stay with us. More Michelle speech excerpts after the jump.

Read more »

The Obama campaign announces that Michelle Obama will hold a round-table discussion with military spouses on Wednesday.

The campaign is also launching "Blue Star Families for Obama," which it's billing as "a national military families council" that will keep the Obamas up to speed on issues facing military families and coordinate campaign events with them around the country.

It's a sign of a concerted push-back against the McCain campaign's efforts to "create a narrative" (still our favorite reigning euphemism) of Obama as indifferent to and insufficiently respectful of the military.

Obama: Dems Wouldn't Attack Spouses Like Fox Does With Michelle
In an interview with Glamour magazine, Barack Obama went after Fox News and other right-wing media outlets for attacks on Michelle Obama, saying they "went fairly deliberately at her in a pretty systematic way." Obama added that they "treated her as the candidate in a way that you just rarely see the Democrats try to do against Republicans."

The Obamas In Washington State
Barack Obama will be in Washington state today, an area that he is expected to win this fall. Also, Michelle Obama will be holding a fundraiser for Gov. Christine Gregoire, who is facing a close re-election fight this Fall.

McCain In Missouri Today
John McCain is in Kansas City, Missouri, today, seeking votes in a Democratic area within a pivotal swing state. Missouri has voted for the winner in every election but one over the last 100 years, and the recent polls have been mixed on who is ahead.

Obama Camp, DNC Set Up Funding Agreements With State Parties
The Obama campaign and the DNC have set up a joint fundraising program with 18 state parties -- the same 18 where his ads have been running thus far -- to funnel money specifically for those states for the presidential race as well as down-ticket contests. Take this as further evidence of the degree to which the Obama campaign is seeking to expand the map for this year, instead of letting the race come down to one or two swing states.

House Republicans Not Shelling Out Cash For McCain
The Hill reports this morning that John McCain has had a hard time raising money from House Republicans, with only 32 members donating any money from their own campaign or PAC coffers since McCain became the presumptive nominee. House Republicans say that the campaign hasn't put much effort into soliciting their money, even though there'd probably be plenty to spare from Congressmen holding safe seats.

Solis Doyle: Hillary Was Okay With Me Working For Obama
In an interview with the Associated Press, former Hillary Clinton campaign manager said she had "complicated emotions" about her move to the Obama camp -- and she made sure to check with Hillary in order to make sure her old boss was okay with it. "And she was," Solis Doyle said.

Poll: Americans Conflicted On Gay Marriage
A new Quinnipiac poll finds that only 36% of Americans support gay marriage, with 55% opposed. On the other hand, only 45% say they support a law in their state to ban it, with a 49% plurality opposed to such a law, and they also oppose a constitutional amendment to ban it by a 56%-38% margin.

Michelle Obama is set to keynote her first fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, another sign that the Obama camp and DNC are joining forces in preparation for a general election contest against a still-formidable Republican fundraising machine.

DNC spokesperson Stacie Paxton confirms to me that she'll headline the event, which is likely to be a high-profile affair and is set for Thursday night at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

The event is also a sign that Michelle is emerging as a key fundraising draw and a key promoter of party unity in the wake of the primary. Michelle has already done events designed to win over potentially disaffected Hillary supporters.

Others expected to speak at the dinner: New York First Lady Michelle Paterson and Providence Mayor David Cicilline. It's Michelle's first event with DNC chair Howard Dean, who will also speak and will introduce Michelle.

Keep an eye out for this one, because it's a none-too-subtle GOP smear we'll be hearing a lot of before long.

Here is GOP strategist Alex Castellanos -- the same worthy fellow who made that 1990 Jesse Helms ad showing white hands crumpling up a resume -- on CNN yesterday evening, discussing Michelle Obama's appearance on The View...

CASTELLANOS: For example, on "The View" today, she said, look, I didn't want my husband to be -- get involved in politics. It's too mean. And he's such a sweet and either -- and empathetic guy.

(CROSSTALK)

CASTELLANOS: She has often made him sound like the softer side of that relationship, and that she is the strength of it. It's important to know in that case. Hey, a lot of relationships are like that.

It's "important" to know that Barack is "softer" than Michelle if it's true, eh? Why is that?

This trick of feminizing Dems is hardly confined to the GOP, of course. Some pundits -- in particular, certain high-profile female columnists -- love to help the GOP do this on a regular basis, as we've already seen.

Here, though, it's a kind of double-smear, hitting both Michelle and Barack in one shot.

Late Update: Here's video...

If Michelle Obama is indeed edging into a more public role in the campaign, as The New York Times asserted today, she starts with an advantage over her Republican counterpart:

Forty-eight percent of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll see Obama favorably, vs. 39 percent for McCain, a 9-point Obama advantage. Slightly more, though, also view Obama unfavorably -- 29 percent vs. McCain's 25 percent.

Substantially more, 36 percent, haven't yet formed an opinion of McCain, vs. 23 percent in Obama's case. For both, those are sizable numbers who've yet to make a judgment.

Via The Page. The poll's internals also have some interesting numbers, showing that more non-feminists and more white women view Michelle favorably.

Given that a fictitious video tape of Michelle supposedly saying bad things about white people got at least as much attention as Cindy's initial refusal to disclose her income, that's not a bad starting place.