This is my friend Pat Caddell’s take on the upcoming election. What do you think?

Caddell on the Midterm Elections
National Review Online – September 2

In Jimmy Carter’s White House, Patrick Caddell was, in the words of Teddy White, the “house Cassandra” — an all-too-candid pollster whose prophecies spooked the president’s other advisors. Three decades later, Caddell again is warning his fellow Democrats about electoral doom. As he sips an iced tea over lunch in midtown Manhattan, Caddell sighs and tells me that the lessons of the Carter years appear to be all but forgotten by the current crop of Democrats in Washington.

“President Obama’s undoing may be his disingenuousness,” Caddell says. After campaigning for post-partisanship, Obama, he observes, has lurched without pause to the left. “You can’t get this far from what you promised,” Caddell says, “especially when people invest in hope — you must understand that obligation. The killer in American politics is disappointment. When you are elected on expectations, and you fail to meet them, your decline steepens.”

In 1979, as Carter’s poll numbers slid south amidst a sagging economy, Caddell drafted a memo to the president urging him to recognize that the nation was “deep in crisis.” Gazing upon today’s electoral landscape, Caddell paints an even bleaker picture. “We may be at a pre-revolutionary moment,” he says, unsmiling. “Everything is in motion.” This November, he predicts, “will be more of a national referendum than any [midterm election] since Watergate.”

The polling data show how restless the country is. “A Rasmussen poll from earlier this year showed just 21 percent of voters believing that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed — an astounding figure,” Caddell says. “Then a CNN poll showed that 56 percent of Americans worried that the federal government poses a direct threat to their freedom.”

“Democrats are aware of this,” Caddell continues. “They know that the general outcome is baked.” As the fall campaign kicks into gear, “the question now becomes whether Obama can mitigate their losses. You see them trying to localize their campaigns and pretending that they don’t know Nancy Pelosi. It’s all rather amusing.”

Unlike President Reagan at his first-term midpoint, in 1982, “Obama is not able to go out there and say, ‘Stay the course.’ That’s just not possible. The Democrats’ hope with health care was that ‘people will like it after we pass it.’ Well, they hate it, and you don’t see any effort to promote it. The Democrats had a chance to do this right — most people supported aspects of reform — but because of the way it was passed, as a crime against democracy, the country has simply not accepted it. The lies, the browbeating, the ‘deem and pass’ — all of it was a suicide mission.”

On Monday, Gallup released a new weekly poll showing Republicans leading Democrats by an unprecedented ten-point margin, 51 to 41 percent, in congressional voting preferences — the largest gap in Gallup’s history of tracking the midterm generic ballot. “I have never seen numbers like this,” Caddell says, shaking his head. “Unless Republicans can find some way to screw it up, they will win big, even though nobody really likes them, either.”

Indeed, rather than a ringing endorsement of either major party, Caddell sees November as a broader referendum on the political class — the class, he says, to which Obama, and his political fate, are irrevocably tied.

“Democrats used to be the voice of the common man in America, not his dictator,” Caddell laments. “Now, with Wall Street, their mantra is, ‘We’ll take your money, but we won’t kiss.’ The people who own the party — George Soros, the Center for American Progress, the public-employee union bosses, rich folks flying private jets to ‘ideas festivals’ in Aspen — they’re Obama’s base.”

Though Obama is bruised, Caddell is quick to note that he is far from finished — a point, he says, that Republicans prefer to whisper in the backroom. He points to Obama’s summer strategy — a serious-minded speech on Iraq, a trip to New Orleans to address the rebuilding efforts — as evidence that the president is “attempting to be presidential, which is the best thing he can do politically.” Carter, he observes, took a similar approach in 1978 — focusing on the Camp David Accords and beefing up his foreign-policy portfolio. As Caddell recalls, he advised the president that it was important not simply to govern, but to lead. By October 1978, the Georgian’s approval numbers had begun to tick up, and the Democrats lost only a handful of seats in the House and Senate.

“With Carter, I would argue that his failures were not of the heart or of intent, but, perhaps, of execution,” Caddell says. “He was never inconsistent with what he originally envisioned. I can’t say the same for Obama.” Successful presidents, Caddell argues, “realize that it is not about them — that the country is bigger than their presidency. With Obama, it is always about him. It’s a terrible thing to have to say, but I think that it has become obvious.”

Can Obama soften the blow at the eleventh hour? Caddell says it will be tough. Any efforts by Obama to right his ship, he says, will still face an electorate largely uninterested in new West Wing talking points or presidential maneuvers. Caddell believes that 2010 will be a louder, more raucous moment than 1978 in American politics. “The discontent is much larger than the turnout at Glenn Beck rallies,” he says. “A sea of anger is churning — the tea parties are but the tip of the iceberg. People say they want to take their country back, and, to the Democrats’ chagrin, they’re very serious about it.”

As we part, Caddell, once the dashing young star of Democratic presidential politics as an advisor to George McGovern, Carter, and Gary Hart, acknowledges that his criticisms may ruffle some feathers or simply be shrugged off by Democratic leaders. Still, he says, it is important to sound the alarm.

After all these years, Caddell laughs, “I know my role. I’m like Toto in the Wizard of Oz. My job is to pull back the curtain to reveal the little man with the microphone.”

With the release of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (also on Facebook and Twitter) next month, will Oliver Stone yet again capture the pulse of the country?

(spoiler alert – if you are one of the few who haven’t seen the film Wall Street, watch it before reading this post)

When Oliver Stone’s Wall Street came out in 1987, he completely captured a decade of greed and excess in just 2 hours. In fact the era it represented can be summed up in just one line from the film’s instantly iconic villain, Gordon Gekko: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

It was the driving principle at a time when trickle down economics still seemed like a good idea and Wall Street bankers like Gordon Gekko were role models for the legions of Ivy League educated youth looking to make themselves into millionaires overnight.

If you think times have changed since then, Stone’s sequel – Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps – might make you think again.

In Money Never Sleeps, he pits Gekko (Michael Douglas) – fresh out of a stint in jail for insider trading and fraud – against a rising Wall Street star (Shia LaBeouf), who is set to marry his estranged daughter. If you think you’re in for a heartwarming tale about a reformed Wall Street tycoon who sees the error of his ways, think again. Neither character gives you the feeling that there has been some kind of ethical epiphany on Wall Street since the collapse. Sure, there may have been a change in some of the rules, but the game is still largely the same, and so are the players. And thankfully for Stone, they are players we all still love to hate.

Over the years since the release of Wall Street, when the “greed is good” line entered our collective cultural consciousness, pundits and the media have regularly asked whether Gekko’s guiding principle is still going strong. In 1990, the cover of Newsweek asked “Is Greed Dead?” We know now that answer was of course “No” – despite the high profile insider trading scandals that were rocking the headlines at the time.

And in 2005, the cover of Fortune featured a portrait of Gordon Gekko with the question “Is Greed Still Good?” and the answer: “The hedge funds still think so.”

In 2010 what will our answer be?

I’d argue that the jury is still out. On the one hand, despite the current political rhetoric pitting Main Street against Wall Street, bankers still aren’t hated as much as you might expect. A Rasmussen poll earlier this month showed them with a 47% favorable rating. Compare that to just 23% for Congress, who keep touting their credentials for “standing up to Wall Street” as reasons they should be re-elected.

Then again, many of America’s wealthiest individuals seem to be having a change of heart about the value of greed. Dozens of billionaires – including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, T Boone Pickens, and George Lucas – have signed onto the Giving Pledge, committing to giving the majority of their wealth to the philanthropic causes and charitable organizations.

Whether that vocal minority will have an influence over the culture of greed that drove the financial markets off a cliff remains to be seen. But in the meantime, watching Wall Street bankers like Gekko battle it out over billions on the silver screen is still great entertainment.

The Florida Senate race is a microcosm of what is occurring in our politics nationally and it offers a glimpse of where we might be headed in 2012.

Marco Rubio won the Republican nomination with strong and early support from Tea Party activists. He also drove a much more moderate Republican, current Governor Charlie Crist out of the Party forcing him to run as an independent rather than face the conservative elements of the GOP. Kendrick Meek also cemented his position as the Democrat in the race with his victory in the Democratic Primary last night.

Looking at the electoral map for 2012, it appears to me that President Obama will need Florida in his column to win re-election. That makes the U.S. Senate race in the Sunshine State perhaps the most important contest in the country in 2010 as well as the most unique.

Now come the questions: The first question is how well will Charlie Crist do with Democratic voters in November? Can he pull enough Democratic votes away from Meek to sneak past Republican Marco Rubio and win election to the Senate as an independent? Or will Democrat Kendrick Meek not only hold on to his base – but succeed in pulling enough independents away from Crist to score a surprise victory in November? And finally there’s this one: how hard will Barack Obama work for a Meek victory?

The White House would clearly prefer a Meek or Crist victory in November. A win by either man could give the president a boost in his re-election bid a little over two years from now. A win by Rubio would not help the White House and could hurt the president in 2012. But the White House cannot sit on the sidelines. The president and Democrats all over the country are going to have to put everything on the line for Kendrick Meek to win in November.

It looks to me to like a zero sum game. Building up Meek tears down Crist. If Democrats fail to take enough votes away from Crist supporters to secure
a Meek victory they risk wounding Crist in a way that offers Rubio a path to victory.

If Rubio wins Florida’s Senate seat it means 2010 will be a big year for the GOP. Not only that but then makes it that much harder for President Obama to win the state in 2012.

And here’s one more reason to pay attention to the Florida Senate race from now until November: A Crist victory as an independent candidate would suggest that both parties
are in bigger trouble than they think and might even spur an independent candidacy for president by a serious contender in 2012.

If Meek, the Democrat, wins in November it will be considered an upset but also a critical win Obama needs to help secure his own victory in Florida in 2012.

I would not bet against Meek and the White House. But Crist has the right message – and voters do not like either party right now. There’s just one major stumbling block. Will they believe his switch from Republican to independent is genuine? Stay tuned.

This item is cross-posted at Fox News.

Twitter just launched a new section of their site called Twitter Tales, where they’ll highlight the many creative ways that people and businesses have used their service. Here’s more from the Official Twitter Blog:

Today we’re launching Twitter Tales – a growing set of articles that highlights creative individuals and businesses from all corners of the world that help make Twitter awesome. The examples of great Twitter use will also likely inspire others to use the service in innovative and interesting ways.

For the next several weeks, we’ll add a new story to the Twitter Tales homepage that you can access by clicking on the Twitter Tales icon on the sidebar of the Twitter Blog.

Do you have a tale to tell? Tell us who you are and share more information by emailing tales@twitter.com.

What do you think of the concept? Will you submit your Twitter tales?

A few weeks ago, I blogged about YouTube’s venture with Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald, the Life in a Day project, which aims to document one day — July 24 — through user-generated video from around the world. In all, the project received 80,000 entries from 197 countries.

The completed film will premier at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where contributors whose footage makes the cut will be credited as co-directors. But we’ll be able to get a sneak peak in early September when all of the entries go live on YouTube.

With that much footage to sift through, there any number of directions the final film could go. Check out this interview with Ridley Scott, then share in the comments – did you submit any videos to the project?

According to a new Nielsen study released today, Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (a 43 percent increase). That’s definitely dramatic, but here’s another interesting fact from the study:

Online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used activity behind social networks – accounting for 10 percent of all U.S. Internet time. Email dropped from 11.5 percent of time to 8.3 percent.

What does this shift mean about the way in which people communicate online? Are their broader implications? Interestingly enough, though, email continues to dominate mobile internet activity, with an increase from 37.4 percent to 41.6 percent of U.S. mobile Internet time. Nielsen analyst Dave Martin shared some insight on why PC and mobile internet usage remain so different:

“Although we see similar characteristics amongst pc and mobile internet use, the way their activity is allocated is still pretty contrasting, added Martin. While convergence will continue, the unique characteristics of computers and mobiles, both in their features and when and where they are used mean that mobile Internet behavior mirroring its PC counterpart is still some way off.”

Just wanted you to see this great Kos diary from radio host and political commentator David Sirota, on the implications of the new Denver Post poll showing Andrew Romanoff pulling ahead of Michael Bennet in the Colorado Senate Democratic primary. Here’s an excerpt:

The Washington Post recently called the Colorado Senate Democratic primary one of the most important in the nation, and a new Denver Post/9News poll’s results are stunning: Former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff has now taken the lead over appointed Sen. Michael Bennet. I say this is stunning because Romanoff’s progressive-themed campaign has closed a 17-point gap despite being outspent by about 8-to-1. Romanoff will be on my AM760 morning show Monday (8/2) at 8:30am Colorado time to discuss the state of the race. Tune in here. (Note: We are also inviting Sen. Bennet on as well as we always do – but he has most often refused to come on the show and remains unconfirmed for Monday’s show at this time).

A question I keep being asked right now is: How should progressives look at this race? [...]

Bennet has run one of the most D.C.-directed, top-down, Big Money campaigns I’ve ever seen run in any state I’ve ever lived in. He is one of the biggest recipients of corporate campaign cash in the entire U.S. Senate and has relied almost exclusively on the support of the Democratic Party Establishment. That kind of campaign comports not only with some terrible votes he’s cast, but also with a career that has been the antithesis of anything you might call “grassroots” (he went from son of an ambassador to D.C. insider in the Clinton administration to corporate takeover executive for right-wing billionaire Phil Anschutz to appointee as Denver Public Schools chief to appointed senator).

Romanoff, by contrast, has run an almost purely grassroots campaign, has not taken corporate PAC money in this race, has taken concretely progressive positions and has made concrete pledges to cast progressive votes on specific issues. In short, his campaign has been all that any progressive could ask for in terms of structure, issue positions and funding – and the Denver Post/9News poll shows that his campaign is being specifically supported by the progressive base.

Read the rest of Sirota’s post here.

Full Disclosure: I am currently the media consultant and adviser to the Romanoff for Colorado campaign.

Incredible news today: Andrew Romanoff has come from 17 points behind and is now leading the sitting Senator — and Wall Street favorite — Michael Bennet.

Romanoff and Bennet are about even — 48 percent to 45 percent, respectively — in the poll of 536 Democrats who have voted or are likely to vote in the Aug. 10 primary. The question has a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points.

The results show a surge for the former state House speaker since June, when he was 17 points behind, and are likely a reflection of a well-organized and passionate ground game, analysts say. Romanoff recently sold his house and cashed in savings to loan his campaign $325,000.

Romanoff’s movement is “dramatic,” according to pollster Jay Leve of Survey USA, the firm that conducted the poll.

Andrew Romanoff will stand up for ordinary Coloradans, not the special interests — he’s the only candidate in the race that won’t take a dime of special interest money. Senator Bennet takes over a million dollars from big banks, big oil, and other special interests.

The momentum is clearly on Andrew’s side, but Michael Bennet still has millions in the bank. With the primary just over a week away, chip in and help Andrew overcome Bennet’s corporate cash. Donate here.

Full Disclosure: I am currently the media consultant and adviser to the Romanoff for Colorado campaign.

Well a new survey of nearly 2,000 people found that zero percent of them would pay to use Twitter or a similar service. Mashable.com has more:

This finding is just one unearthed by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s 2010 Digital Future Study, a study that’s been tracking online and social media behavior for the past nine years.

“Such an extreme finding that produced a zero response underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free,” says Jeffrey I. Cole, the Annenberg School’s director of the Center for the Digital Future.

So what do you think? Is this bad news for social media startups, or will they just have to get more creative to turn a profit?

You’ve probably seen Old Spice’s wildly successful YouTube campaign featuring the “Old Spice guy” and his video responses to Twitter messages. Well today, Mashable reported that not only were the videos successful, but Old Spice’s sales doubled as a result of the campaign. Here’s more from Mashable:

We already published stats from video analytics company Visible Measures that made it clear that the Old Spice guy was a hugely successful initiative from marketing firm Wieden + Kennedy, achieving millions of viral video views quicker than past hits like Susan Boyle and U.S. President Barack Obama’s election victory speech.

The statistic of the 107% sales increase over the past month comes from Nielsen, which also revealed that sales increased 55% over the past three months. Individual products that were slipping in sales saw spikes after actor Isaiah Mustafa showed them off in the TV and Internet video ads. Those numbers were cited in an article at BrandWeek.

The campaign began with simple TV ads, which then went viral on YouTube. The follow-up program in which Mustafa recorded funny videos in response to fans, bloggers and Twitter influencers hit it out of the park. Adweek quotes Visible Measures’ Matt Cutler saying that the total web views for all Old Spice brand videos have reached 110 million, “surpassing the reach of traditional broadcast.”