Rachel:  I’m sure you were delighted to see the latest New York Times/ CBS Poll that puts your candidate up by 14 points.  I do not want to rain on the parade, but, Truman made up that same deficit in 1948 at one point in the 19080 election even Reagan was that far behind.  Does John McCain still have a legitimate shot at winning the election, or do you think that polling is better and more accurate and a 14 point lead today is now more predictive than it might have been 30 or 60 years ago?

Dan Pfeiffer:  This thing is certainly not done.  There’s no question about it.  We’re very happy about where we are right now, but we were up by a near similar margin in New Hampshire back in January before that ended up in Senator Clinton’s column.   So, Senator Obama is going to keep working I think we’ve gotten to this place in large part by outworking John McCain all across the country doing 2 to 3 events every day to his one, and we’re going to keep doing that.  

R: Do you think that there is an inclination – a self-serving inclination – in the media to portray the race as if it is closer than it is as in order to sort of keep the drama high?

D:  Oh absolutely, I suspect that some of these national poll numbers in The New York Times is one, is probably a good example, are probably a little inflated, certainly there’s no way that in a closely divided country like this one  that Barrack Obama is going to win a national election by 14 points.  It would be a landslide of historic proportion.  So they’re naturally going to close and as soon as they close the cable T.V. pundits are going to get in a lather and start trying to write the story of another John McCain comeback.  And so our goal is to not get distracted by that when the inevitable happens.  

R:  I’m looking forward to being in that lather myself because I enjoy the emotional highs and lows here.  I will say that from the big picture perspective of what your campaign seems like from the outside, is that it seems like you guys are not reading the papers in a sense of coming up with your message of the day.  In fact, it’s less of a message of the day than a message of the week, message of the month, message of the campaign that you’re trying to keep your eyes on the horizon and not react in obvious or dramatic ways to short-term developments.  That’s what it looks like from the outside.  Is that what the ethos is inside?  

D:  I think that’s essentially right.  I think if you were to read the speech Barrack Obama gave on February 10, 2007 in Springfield when he announced his candidacy and the speech he gave in Ohio and Virginia in recent days you’d find that they’re very, very, similar.  Obviously we account for some dramatic changes in our economy and how we discuss it but the basic idea that we need change in Washington, that American people want to be brought together to take on the special interests and lobbyists is still the same.  So we look at each one of these things, our goal is to do everything we do to be within that core message because we believe that that’s where the American people are and I think that at least to the extent that you believe polls that’s sort of bearing itself out over the long-run.  

R:  Tonight of course is the final Presidential debate and John McCain essentially said on the radio in St. Louis yesterday, that he will finally say to Senator Obama’s face what McCain and Governor Palin and the McCain-Palin surrogates have been saying for weeks now – which is that Barrack Obama “pals around with terrorists” using this Bill Ayers attack.  Why did you guys essentially goad John McCain into bringing it up tonight?  Because I do think both Senator Biden and Senator Obama essentially dared him to bring it up now he says he will.  

D:  There are a couple of things here.  I don’t know whether John McCain will bring it up.  On a day-by-day or minute-by-minute basis I don’t know what the John McCain campaign is going to do, and I’m not sure the John McCain campaign knows that either.  Is the John McCain that shows up tonight going to be the one that Joe Lieberman – John McCain’s closest friend – said should stop all of the character attacks and go positive?   Is it the John McCain campaign that Sarah Palin suggests should go for the jugular tonight?  Is it the John McCain campaign that John McCain’s own brother suggests needs to be completely changed?  So we’ll see.   I think one of the reasons we sort of dared John McCain on this – there are actually two reasons – One, is that if John McCain thinks this issue is so important – and perhaps even more important than the economy - he should bring it up in a national T.V. audience and make that point.  And secondly, frankly I think if you look at some of these polls and you look at the reaction of voters as we travel across the country, people do not want to be distracted from the big issues.  And that’s what this false, debunked, Bill Ayers attacked is.  And frankly if John McCain wants to use some of the precious minutes he’ll have before a national T.V. audience talking about something no one cares about, more power to him.

R: I get the strategy and I appreciate positively the aggressiveness that it represents.  I do think that you’re playing with fire a little bit here strategically, and that is, as evidenced by the New York Times/CBS poll that is out today.  It can happen that a candidate gets in trouble for being seen as too negative and I think part of John McCain’s problem in the polls right now is that he is seen as kind of campaigning like a jerk and running a campaign in which there isn’t’ much to be proud of.  So making him own his campaign does potentially have benefits for you guys, and they know that.  And the reason they’re still going negative is because negative tends to work even if it does sort of make you look bad while you’re doing it.  Isn’t there a chance that these allegations will seem new and newsworthy to people if they here them in the debate tonight?

D:  There’s a chance for anything in politics obviously.  This has been poured over by every news source in America in great detail over the last 14 days or so since the McCain campaign announced this new strategy so ham-handedly through the press.  But if he’s going to bring it up we also welcome the opportunity to have Senator Obama rebut it and correct the record and deal with it in front of that same national T.V. audience. 

R:  Are we going to hear anything new tonight from Senator Obama in terms of policy? 

D:  If there is an ace up our sleeve I’m not going to necessarily reveal it now…

R:  Damn!  I didn’t fool him!  [laughs]

D:  [laughs] – maybe next time – but I think that what he’s been doing in these debates  has been working and it’s because he has a real sense of the American people – their concerns, what they care about – and he’s been addressing those.  John McCain has been talking about a different America, one where Bill Ayers or ACORN, or some of these other issues are more important than the economy.  I think it’s the America that watches FOX news that he’s addressing, but, we’ll continue to do what’s been working and be ready for whatever John McCain shows up tonight. 
R:  Let me ask you another question essentially about whether or not you’re going to win.  I spoke with Princeton professor Melissa [Harris-Lacewell?]  a couple of times in the last week about the Bradley Effect – about the phenomenon of voters telling pollsters they will vote for an African American candidate but then not doing it.  Do you as a campaign believe that the Bradley Effect is real? 

D:  We do not.  We have seen no evidence of it in the primaries.  And I was interested to see that Tom Bradley’s own pollster the other day told the press that he did not see the Bradley Effect in their own internal polling.  If you look at every state that we have had an election in in the primary – in every single one of them, except for one – Barrack Obama out-polled his number in the aggregate of public polling going in.  In Ohio we were right around 43 headed into March 4 and we ended up getting right about that amount.  At no point there was an inflated number out there.  New Hampshire is the one exception which I actually think had to do with a lot of factors, including a very late surge by Senator Clinton.  Is race a factor in the race?  Absolutely.  Is it as big a factor as many in the mainstream media think it is?  We have no evidence to suggest that.

R:  It may be – and this is just my observation, my interpretation – that you guys don’t believe in the Bradley Effect but the McCain campaign does, hence, if you wanted to campaign on the idea that the Bradley Effect might help you win an election – that a white candidate could outperform the polls by virtue of the fact that that white candidate was campaigning against a black candidate – what you would do is you would play to not just the prejudice, but the suspicions that underlie those voting and polling patterns.  And the way you do that is by saying if you elect the black candidate, the black candidate will shift resources and money and the public goods that we share as a country to his own community.  We will shift them away from white people and toward black people.  And therefore you would campaign on things like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac causing the financial crisis by giving the mortgages to black people.  You would campaign on Jeremiah White.  You would campaign on ACORN stealing the election – this black organization – stealing the election for a black candidate.  I see a trend in the McCain campaign strategy to try to stoke exactly the fears and suspicions you’d want to stoke in order to play to this effect, do you agree?  

D:  I would be very cautious and always hesitant to ascribe that sort of motive to anyone’s actions.  I think you’d have to really know for 100% certain before you head out and make that set of accusations.  Now what I will say is two fold:  Whether the McCain campaign believes in the Bradley Effect or not I don’t know.  I imagine given the state of their campaign right now if someone said the Easter Bunny could deliver a victory they’d probably believe in the Easter Bunny too.  And Second, I think that there is no question that they have a strategy to attempt to make Barrack Obama seem like the risky choice.  They basically declared that - it seems to be their only path.  I think it’s a strategy that has not worked.  Throughout their various responses to the economic crisis it was Barrack Obama that showed that he was the steady choice he was the one who was not erratically zigzagging across America and across the economic landscape on a near-hourly basis.  We know that that’s what their strategy is.  What happens deep in their heart – that’s for others to ascribe.  The strategy they’re using is one that’s typical for candidates who are new on the scene, like Senator Obama.  

R:  Last question Dan, and I really appreciate you taking the time to join us on what I am sure is a very busy day for you.  Why are you guys advertising in video games to remind people about early voting?  What was that staff meeting like?  [laughs]

D:  [laughs] Well, I don’t get invited to the videogame staff meetings.  It’s something I probably ought to work on.  This is sort of the hallmark of our campaign.  We want to bring a lot of new people into the process.  Senator Obama has an appeal - young people who have been cynical towards politics their whole life - have them get involved.  This was an opportunity that someone had to communicate to people to in a place where they might not normally be communicating – and break through some of the clutter of the millions of dollars being spent on T.V., on the radio and in the mail.  We took advantage of it and I think it certainly worked in terms of helping young people to understand the early voting process and get them to the polls early so they can help volunteer for us on Election Day.  

R:  And because I’m a politics dork the news of about you guys advertising in Burn Out made me want to go play Burn Out.  

D:  Then it works for everyone!

R:  [laughs] Exactly!  Dan Pfeiffer, thank you for taking the time, I really appreciate it.   Dan Pfeiffer is Communications Director for the Obama*Biden ’08.