'Meet the Press' transcript for Oct. 26, 2008

MR. BROKAW:  We're back; and live from Waterloo, Iowa, once again our political roundtable this morning in a very intimate setting here, Charlie Cook, Chuck Todd and Kelly O'Donnell.

Welcome to all of you.  We've got a lot to talk about this morning.  Let's talk about some of these states that are kind of surprises.

Chuck, in the South, we had been looking earlier at Georgia.

MR. CHUCK TODD:  Right.

MR. BROKAW:  Because of African-American registration, Democrats thinking they may have a chance there.  Let's share with our viewers what the latest NBC News Mason-Dixon poll is in Georgia.  McCain still has a 6 point lead, but that's within reach for Senator Obama.  Is it possible that Senator Obama could take Georgia?

MR. TODD:  You know, you look at these early voting numbers.  Georgia's one of these states, along with North Carolina and Florida, that we're seeing early voting, and because they're states that have to keep track of these statistics, we know exactly how many African-American ballots are being turned in, how many Dem--and it is through the roof.  There are--turnout among African-Americans might actually be somewhere between 95 and 100 percent in some of these places, in some of these states.  And, in fact, we're seeing this shrinkage of a lead in Georgia for Senator McCain.  It's actually got some folks wondering is South Carolina now in single digits?  What's going on in Mississippi that this prediction of big African-American turnout that everybody thought might happen, we're seeing play out so far in some of these early voting states.  And when you look at Georgia and compare, which is a lean McCain state, compare where McCain is here in Iowa, a lean Obama state, and that just shows you the battlefield here right now, the battleground, where it is shifted--even the lean McCain states are--Obama has a better shot at right now than McCain does in these lean Obama states.

MR. BROKAW:  All right, let's take up Missouri.  Missouri's a real bellwether state...

MR. TODD:  It is.

MR. BROKAW:  ...for the Republicans, and it's effectively a dead heat at the moment.

MR. TODD:  It is, and it's the longest streak of, of the state getting it right.  You know, we always like to look at that one state.  But it usually is a trailing indicator of where the national polls are, and it is a--still a Republican state.  It is, you know, a pinky on the scale for the Republicans, not a big, not a big thing.  But if you see a surge for Obama of 5 or 6 points nationally, then he's probably tied or maybe even a little bit ahead in Missouri.

MR. BROKAW:  Kelly, we hear a lot about the Obama organization in getting out the vote, which is the great strength of President Bush four years ago.  What about the McCain get out the vote operation?

MS. KELLY O'DONNELL:  Well, one of the big differences, Tom, is money.  The enormous imbalance of money is a real concern for the McCain team.  That's something they simply cannot match.  On ground game they say they have a lot of volunteers, they say that they are in a great degree energized by Sarah Palin.  Looking back on your conversation with Senator McCain, when he talks about her popularity, that's part of what they're getting at.

One of the things that's interesting, I find, in talking to advisers, is with that enormous advantage in polling, in money, in everything that has been sort of the cultural experience of Barack Obama, that he has become almost like an incumbent when you consider the typical power of an incumbent in a race.  And that's really a very different dynamic and a real challenge for the McCain team to try to overcome that.  They're hoping that some of the voters who have not decided yet will break their way.  They're hoping that the ground game, although it does not have the size and scope of the Obama team, can still be effective sometimes in part because there may be Republicans concerned about the--sort of the depth of the Republican crisis, and that that may energize them to knock on doors and to make the phone calls.

MR. BROKAW:  Charlie, we're going to get to the electoral map here in a moment, but voters often in the closing days of a campaign size up everything. And if they see this thing moving too swiftly in one direction, aren't there going to be some voters out there in the middle who are going to say, "I don't want that to happen.  I'm going to be," if you will, "an anchor to windward"?

MR. CHARLIE COOK:  Sometimes that happens, although this is an election where, you know, back over the summer Obama was averaging like a 3-point lead, and at that point every little thing was important.  But then September hit, mid-September hit, the markets hit, and now I think you can Monday morning quarterback a lot of these people.  You could say--you know, you could say, "Well, if they'd--if McCain had just done this or that.  If he had picked Palin--or not picked Palin, if he'd done this." You know, after September little things didn't matter anymore.  This thing got just so incrementally harder that it could be that people pull back a little.  But we're not seeing any metrics, the things that Chuck was talking about.  We're not seeing any that show, in this thing, sliding backwards.

MR. BROKAW:  All right, let's take a look at the electoral map.  Here's where it was a week ago.  And here's...(unintelligible)...of the key number, it seems to me.  We had likely or lean Obama, a total of 264 electoral votes. You need to get to 270.  Those states that are in yellow, as you can see, like Nevada and Colorado and Ohio and Virginia, and some new ones in Florida, those are the states to keep your eye on.  Now, a week later, Chuck Todd, and our experts have done an analysis and likely lean Obama, 286.  And what we've done there is moved Virginia and Colorado to a different category, Chuck.

MR. TODD:  We have.  We, we've shifted them to lean Obama.  Now, our map we do not base it solely on polls.  We base it a lot of things--advertising, organization on the ground, what's going on.  And it is clear that now Obama has an advantage.  Does this mean we think he's a lock to win Colorado, Virginia, even some of these other states that have been--no.  It means if we were Las Vegas oddsmakers, we'd say he's the favorite.  You know, he's got a--he's a 4 or 5-point favorite in some of these places, maybe even 6 or 7 in places like Iowa.  But this is a shift.  Now, why is it important?  If he does lock in Colorado and Virginia, first of all, what's not in his column right now?  Florida and Ohio, the last two states.  Throw in Nevada.  I mean, this, this Hispanic--one of the things we--underreported story of the cycle is how Hispanics have just turned on the Republican Party, hurting John McCain. Frankly...

MR. BROKAW:  Who is a friend of theirs.

MR. TODD:  Who is a friend of theirs.

MR. BROKAW:  Right.

MR. TODD:  You know, this is a Shakespearean--you know, the S...

MR. BROKAW:  Right.

MR. TODD:  ...in John McCain is going to stand for Shakespeare, I think, when this campaign's over.  And if you move Nevada now to, to 290, and then you get to 291, that gives Obama the luxury of actually losing Pennsylvania and still staying at 270, if everything locks in.  So he has developed a path to 270 without Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.  That's--that really makes it tough for McCain.

MR. BROKAW:  Charlie, as you look at this electoral map and you're in the Obama camp, what would make you nervous about that map and this point?

MR. COOK:  Everything seems too good.  That, that, that it's like, "No, no. There's no way things are going this, this well.  What's going to go wrong?" I mean, that's, that's what would terrify me.

MR. BROKAW:  All right.  And in the McCain campaign, Kelly, where you spend a lot of time, obviously, late at night in the bar, what makes them nervous?

MS. O'DONNELL:  Well, I think they are most concerned about the fact that they believe they have made an argument that John McCain has the life experience, the willingness to work across the aisle, and that has not caught on.  That has been, I think, a very difficult thing for them.  They argue frequently that they don't feel that they have had the same fairness of treatment in the media.  They believe that that has hurt them.  They also understand the money difference.  They're often very critical of Senator Obama for not taking the public financing.

When they look at the map, they often say New Hampshire.  Against the polling, they say John McCain has had a long personal history there, great affection for that state that they believe that that could go his way.  That's four votes.  And they are looking at Pennsylvania.  They see Pennsylvania differently than the pollsters and the Democrats, and they are really looking in places where Hillary Clinton was strong, believing they can make up some ground there.

They are realistic.  They know what this map is, they're listening to all these conversations.  The thing I am struck by is they have seen this candidate in previous times come back from the dead, do the impossible.  And I think staffers have embraced that idea.  There's realism, they understand where they're at.  But they are not as disheartened as you might expect because he says, "I'm going to put one foot in front of the other, there's a few days left to go," and they really push on.  So there is not a sense of, of overwhelming defeat.  In fact, there is a sense of, "We're going to show them." So that's I think one of the things I've been surprised by.

MR. BROKAW:  Still a warrior.

MS. O'DONNELL:  Very much so.  And that, that really kind of bleeds into the whole staff.  You don't see much, you know, long faces.

MR. BROKAW:  Yeah.  One of the things that they're fighting against, frankly, is that from within their own party and people who are identified with their party are now beginning to be very critical how the campaign has been run.

MS. O'DONNELL:  Very much so.

MR. BROKAW:  Bill Kristol in The New York Times said fire the campaign staff.

MS. O'DONNELL:  Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW:  And here's what David Frum, who is a speech writer to President Bush, former speech writer writes today in The Washington Post, "McCain's awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot.  I spoke a little while ago to a senior Republican House member.  `There is not a safe Republican seat in the country,' he warned.  `I don't mean we're going to lose all of them.  But we could lose any of them.'" That's got to be terrifying to them, Charlie.

MR. COOK:  Yeah.  The, the, the pessimism up there--and the thing is that's so, so amazing to this is that we've seen parties get hit with train wrecks, but it's so rare to have a party hit with two train wrecks in a row:  2006, where they lost 30 House seats and six Senate seats; and now this time.  And last time it was on Iraq and scandals, and this time it's the stock market and the economy.  I--we--we've never, this is like, it's a hundred-year flood, these two elections together, and if it were any worse, it'd be biblical.  I mean, we're looking at, I mean, a Senate incumbent, a Republican incumbent in trouble in Georgia?  Astonishing.  House seats in places where Republicans--Democrats don't even fly over are in trouble.  This is, I've never seen anything like that.

MR. BROKAW:  And the big number to keep your eye on, we have to remind our viewers, is 60 Senate seats because then it makes it filibuster proof.  Here's what you wrote in your political report, Charlie, "The open GOP seats in Virginia and New Mexico are lost causes for the party, while the open seat in Colorado leans toward Democrats, which would put the Democrats at 54 seats.

"That leaves six seats in the Toss Up column.  All are held by Republicans. ...  Three incumbents (Sununu, Dole and Smith) are failing in their challenges, two more are running slightly ahead (Chambliss in Georgia, Wicker) and one is in a statistical dead heat (Coleman in Minnesota).  One thing we do know is that the races in the Toss Up column never split down the middle; one party tends to win a majority of them." You're on the spot.  Are they going to get the 60?

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