All things Obama

Victor and I have been entertaining our friend Mikey this weekend. He and his mom were in town for a week celebrating their birthdays and visiting Mikey's aunt. Besides the usual club- and barhopping, we had a fun day at the Red Rock pool and a nice group dinner at Bleu Gourmet.

So I've been a little too busy to do much blogging, but I've seen a few Obama items from the past few days that I wanted to pass on.

A NEW NEVADA POLL finds Obama and McCain in a statistical dead heat, raising the likelihood that we'll be a battleground state with significant attention from both campaigns. Some key findings:

Voters age 18 to 34 preferred Obama by a wide margin, 55 percent to 31 percent. Among voters age 35 to 49, the two candidates were tied at 43 percent each. But McCain was preferred by voters 50 to 64, 48 percent to 39 percent, and by voters 65 and older, 50 percent to 34 percent.

"Obama winning the youth vote is not surprising, but he's got to keep them motivated, because they tend to turn out in lower numbers," said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter in Washington, D.C.

"They're tied in that middle tier, and that could be where it's decided."

Duffy said it was somewhat surprising to see McCain winning older voters by such a healthy margin. In national surveys, she said, the 71-year-old McCain has sometimes faced an age issue with "those older voters who don't think they could do it."

In another crucial demographic, Obama, 46, prevails among Hispanic voters, with 53 percent, but nearly one-fifth are undecided and McCain still draws 28 percent.

Also of note, Democrats continue to lead Republicans in terms of the number of voters registered statewide. And I've seen people from Obama's Vote for Change voter registration campaign and the Young Democrats of Nevada around Las Vegas in the last couple of weeks.

ON SATURDAY, OBAMA VOLUNTEERED to do some sandbagging in Quincy, Illinois, ahead of rising flood waters.

(Video link.)

AND ON FATHER'S DAY, Obama spoke at a Chicago church about the importance of the family and the tragedy of fathers who are absent:

Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation. They are teachers and coaches. They are mentors and role models. They are examples of success and the men who constantly push us toward it.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing – missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it....

But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child – it’s the courage to raise one.

We need to help all the mothers out there who are raising these kids by themselves; the mothers who drop them off at school, go to work, pick up them up in the afternoon, work another shift, get dinner, make lunches, pay the bills, fix the house, and all the other things it takes both parents to do. So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support. They need another parent. Their children need another parent. That’s what keeps their foundation strong. It’s what keeps the foundation of our country strong.

It's a great speech, and if you don't have time to watch the whole thing, fast forward to 14:00 and watch for a couple minutes. He brings the crowd to its feet with his call for parents to raise their expectations of what their children can accomplish.

(Video link.)

FINALLY, I KNEW THAT OBAMA LOVES BASKETBALL but didn't realize that he had played on the team that won the Hawaii state high school basketball championship in 1979. No wonder he jokes about replacing the White House bowling alley with a basketball court. :-)