John P. Avlon
AC360° Contributor

Today, Barack Obama will unveil his national security team – featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, and National Security Advisor Jim Jones.

This is something of a centrist dream team, the latest sign of a confident, pragmatic president-elect who is fulfilling promises to appoint a ‘Team of Rivals” while defying opposition campaign attempts to paint him as naïvely liberal.

Obama understands that Democrats have suffered from a deficit of confidence when it comes to national security and the economy. His cabinet appointments to date are designed to increase confidence on these fronts. Obama is showing himself to be cut from the same cloth as JFK: liberal on domestic policy, strong on foreign policy and the economy.

Hilary Clinton’s appointment will gain the most attention from the media. She is a political star in her own right, possessing a global brand that will instantly add to her credibility in this office. But of course she was also Obama’s most challenging rival in the 2008 campaign and his confidence in bringing her into his camp shows that he is the rare politician who is above petty interpersonal politics. Conservatives can take some comfort in this unlikely champion – because on most foreign policy issues she was decidedly to the right of the president-elect, especially when it came to Iraq and Iran.
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President-elect Obama notes in his latest weekly address that the Thanksgiving holiday was established by President Abraham Lincoln during a time of great division and turmoil in the country.

 
John Avlon
AC360 Contributor

Editor’s Note: John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics.

It’s bizarro world in America post-election-we feel hopeful about our politics and fearful about the markets.

It’s the opposite of what we’ve come accustomed to in recent years, times when if the economy’s grooving than all other factors fade away-even war itself-or as it was ten years ago, when the internet bubble happily distracted us from the Monica-mess.

But right now we’re enjoying a bit of bliss after a 22-month build-up, and President-elect Obama is basking in approval ratings well ahead of his final vote-total…

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John P. Avlon
Author, Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics

Today is President-elect Obama’s first press conference. In some ways, it’s the most consequential press conference of his administration, because as the old saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

President-elect Bill Clinton’s first press conference proved disastrous enough to derail the first years of his presidency. A planted question by a conservative reporter about gays in the military was framed as a litmus test on Clinton’s trustworthiness and willingness to fulfill campaign promises. Clinton couldn’t resist taking the bait and talked about it at length, giving it the appearence of a new administration priority.

As one of Clinton’s advisors later said, “It sent precisely the wrong message. I’m not saying he shouldn’t have taken that position, but as the first thing he did? It was exactly the sort of ‘liberal elitist’ issue that we’d been trying to submerge throughout the campaign. It sent a signal that he was going to govern differently from the way he campaigned – as an old Democrat.”

A similar risk exists for Barack Obama. He won largely because he inspired people to believe in a post-partisan approach to problem solving, as a rejection of the hyper-partisanship of the Bush era. Now is the time to add substance to that centrist style by reaffirming his pledge to appoint a bipartisan cabinet and prioritize policies that can unite the country around the administration like energy independence, rather than getting distracted by divisive liberal special interest issues like ‘card-check” or the so‑called “fairness doctrine.”

Obama’s first appointment of Congressman Rahm Emanuel to be Chief of Staff sends a message that he does not want to repeat the mistakes of the past. Emanuel was a veteran of Bill Clinton’s transition and has learned the lessons that led to the 1994 Republican revolution. Announcing the reappointment of Secretary of Defense Gates would be a good way to build that bridge to the center on the basis of a responsible transition to a new administration led by a president who understands the need to balance idealism with realism.

President-elect Barack Obama looks out into the crowd after his acceptance speech at Grant Park in Chicago

John P. Avlon
AC360° Contributor

First things first: Today is a great day for America. We have a new President of the United States. Behind that remarkable fact are the statistical trends and milestones that made Barack Obama’s election possible. So take a second to study the numbers so you can sound smarter in election-related conversation, or just get some perspective to further appreciate this moment.

By winning 52 percent of the popular vote, Barack Obama joined the ranks of FDR and LBJ in being the only Democratic presidents to get more than 51 percent of the popular vote in the past 100 years. Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton never cleared that hurdle. That’s an achievement in itself.

In many ways, last night was a step towards realignment. A few days ago I posted an analysis of six swing counties that could determine the election’s outcome. Barack Obama carried each and every one by a margin close to 10 points. Obama won the swing voters in the swing counties in the swing states that he needed to win this election. 
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John P. Avlon
AC360° Contributor

It means a new beginning for America, the restoration of the American Dream, the conquering of old divides between left and right and black and white.

John P. Avlon
AC360° contributor

We cover politics as a horse race, but at the end of the day politics is history in the present tense. Today is a pivotal point in our nation’s history. Here’s how to watch tonight’s election:

Early returns will tell us whether this is a blowout or tighter than expected. Three early states offer the best indication: Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida.

If Barack Obama wins all three there’s almost no scenario under which he could not be elected the 44th President of the United States. But if McCain flips Pennsylvania, get ready for a very long night.

Two other early states to watch are Indiana and North Carolina – if Obama is able to wrestle these states out of the conservative column for the first time in decades, it is a realigning landslide.

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John McCain holds a campaign rally in Ohio on Friday, part of a two-day bus tour through the crucial swing state.

John P. Avlon
AC360° contributor

“All elections are about how independent voters break,” attests Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. And with less than 4 days left in election ‘08, all eyes are on these swing voters in the swing states - they hold the key to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in their hands.

But where do they live - what are the swing counties in the swing states and how have those areas been trending? Armed with 20 years of presidential election data, I set out to nerd-ishly answer that question and found the top 6 swing counties in the top 6 swing states. Each of these states have multiple counties with close votes - I’ve chosen the swing county with the most votes. Think of it as an election night cheat sheet, moving from east to west, as the polls close and the next president gets elected.

Florida - Pinellas County:

With the scars of 2000 still fresh in Democrats’ minds, Florida remains the biggest swing state, with 2.3 million independent voters and 27 electoral votes - equal to Virginia, New Hampshire, Nevada and New Mexico combined.

There are 3 counties in the sunshine state where Bush and Kerry split the vote 49/49 - Monroe, Orange and Pinellas. But the largest of these is Pinellas, which split the vote 225,686 to 225,460 - giving a 226 vote edge to Kerry. By comparison, across Tampa Bay, CentCom’s home of Hillsborough County went 53 to 46 percent for Bush. Gore won Pinellas by 4% in 2000, and Clinton cleaned up with a 9-point lead in ‘96. But when Perot ran in 1992, he got 24%, leaving Bush 1 and Clinton almost tied at 37% each. It was a fall from grace for Poppy, who beat Dukakis by 14% just 4 years before. Pinellas has been represented by Republican Bill Young since 1970, making him the most senior GOP member of the House. The verdict: even with the aging population of St. Pete and its popular pragmatic conservative mayor Rick Baker, the county’s been moving away from the GOP tortoise-like for the past 20 years. With Florida housing prices in free-fall and the Tampa Bay Rays losing the World Series to the Phillies, there is little patience for the status quo in St. Pete: it’s advantage Obama.

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John P. Avlon
Author, Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics

This Halloween, you can buy Obama and McCain zombie masks showing the candidates bloodied and bruised, ghoulish and un-human – just the way their opponents like to imagine them.

In recent weeks, things have gotten ugly on the campaign trail. Desperate, angry and running out of time, partisans on the right and left have become increasingly bitter and polarized. They’re trying to scare you into voting against the other guy out of fear. After all, hate is a cheap and easy recruiting tool. But it’s going to make uniting the country that much more difficult for the next president.

On one side of the aisle it starts with the repeated claims on the stump that Obama is a “socialist” who “pals around with terrorists.” But this stokes unhinged anger among supporters both within and without the campaign.

So Virginia GOP Chairman Jeff Frederick tried to fire up volunteers by comparing Obama to Osama bin Laden, saying “both have friends that bombed the Pentagon.” The Chairwoman of Otero County Republican women’s group in New Mexico, Marcia Stirman, wrote a letter to the editor of a local paper in which she called Obama “a Muslim socialist” and then clarified “I believe Muslims are our enemies.”
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CNN's Candy Crowley reports the Obama campaign is pulling out the stops, including an infomercial, in the final days.

John P. Avlon
Author, Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics

Yes, Barack Obama broke his promise to take tax-payer matching funds. And he raised almost three times more in the month of September than McCain did in the entire primary campaign. The only thing that stops the disparity from being democracy-disturbing is that his average donation is less than $100 – at least that’s a grass-roots funding movement.

Last night, he put that money into a half-hour closing argument that was unprecedented not only in scope and cost, but in the way it straddled biography, detailed policy, and spoke to real people’s lives - culminating with a live campaign shot in Florida.

Opening with video of Kansas wheat fields and music that echoed the “John Adams” miniseries, the film weaved together all the key themes of his campaign. Most important was the return to the post-partisan, problem-solver tone by which he introduced himself to the American people. The testimonies were from centrist leaders of the Democratic Party – Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, Kansas Governor Katherine Sebelius and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. These are the leaders of the party he is going to need to depend on to stop Congressional democrats from defining his administration, if he should win on Tuesday.

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John Avlon
Author, Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics

Back when this presidential election began, John Edwards was criticized by many conservatives for using the slogan “Two Americas.” It was a vision of America divided between the haves and the have-nots – evidence, many said, of Democrats’ instincts toward divisive class warfare.

But recently Republican surrogates have begun using their own equally divisive framing device: “real America”.

A McCain adviser argued for their electoral edge in Virginia by saying their candidate would do well in “real Virginia” rather than northern parts of the state – unconsciously echoing former Virginia senator George Allen’s infamous “Macaca” moment captured on YouTube when he invited a dark-skinned volunteer for the Webb campaign to visit the “real world of Virginia.”

Then Sarah Palin got in the act: “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.” So if real America is pro-American, than there is an unreal America – by implication, the urban areas where most Americans now live – which is somehow inherently anti-American.

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