Thursday Thoughts

• RACE IN REVERSE --- A friend of mine who I went to journalism school with called me today to tell me he's "taking a chance, and voting for Barack Obama." The reason this was striking to me, is because this guy is a traditional conservative Republican. He's a sports anchor who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he put it this way: "He looks like the winner. Do I really want to tell my kids I voted against our first black president? I'm giving him a 4-year trial." Will the bandwagon affect boost Obama? And could his race be a plus with those "rational" Republican voters out there?
• COY CLAIRE --- It's bizarre to me the level of news coverage that Sen. Claire McCaskill gained after saying she ruled out a potential Cabinet post in an Obama administration. Sure, Claire loves being a Senator. Nobody doubts that, but hypotheticals are much different than a President-elect Obama approaching her pleading, "Claire, I really need you to be Attorney General." Who turns that down? Seriously. Remember that McCaskill originally said she wasn't interested in the United States Senate either. We all know how that turned out. I've learned that politicians know they aren't punished when they play coy about their next political move. The public doesn't hold them to these so-called "promises." It's fair for us in the media to ask about them, but we should be careful how serious we take them.
• CROWD CONTROVERSY COMETH --- Here's a prediction. On Saturday, Barack Obama's crowd size will be under a microscope. The Democratic nominee will draw about 20,000 people, or so the campaign will say. Republicans will quickly jump on that number, and declare the crowd size was overblown. They will then go on to say the "liberal" media downplayed Sarah Palin's crowd size, but overplayed Barack Obama's. The aggressive Obama campaign will push back hard with their own number . . . and the media will be left in the middle. Damned either way. And oh, that "Fire Marshal," somebody is going to dig up whether he's a Republican or Democrat.