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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: coug who wrote (78337)	9/24/2008 12:55:27 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Obama makes key gains in tight race politico.com By Mike Allen and Alexander Burns September 23, 2008 10:20 PM EST Riding a wave of worry about the nation's financial health, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has broken into a lead in a national poll and has made slight but notable progress in several crucial battleground states, including Florida and Virginia. Obama moved decisively ahead of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in a Washington Post-ABC News Poll. And a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll found that respondents thought Obama would do a better job handing the financial crisis than McCain, by 45 percent to 33 percent. Perhaps more worrisome for his campaign, however, was a wave of polls this week showing Obama making gains in Florida and Virginia, both of which had looked favorable for McCain. McCain is also having to sweat states that should be in his back pocket. He is adding staff in North Carolina, and Republicans are considering airing TV ads in Indiana. The electoral math still shows several opportunities for McCain, and the Republican ticket remains strong in traditional toss-ups like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and emerging battlegrounds like Minnesota. Since the conventions, Obama has also gained ground in the battlegrounds of Michigan, Colorado and New Mexico. McCain has his own bragging points: Obama has moved staff out of Georgia and North Dakota, and has not put away Wisconsin. The two campaigns disagree on whether or not Obama has clinched Iowa, with both claiming gains that are sticking. McCain has showed progress in Wisconsin; Minnesota, where Republicans held their convention; Alaska, the home state of running mate Sarah Palin; and North Dakota. McCain has also made gains in New Hampshire, according to two new polls by ARG and the University of New Hampshire, which showed McCain up by 3 points and 2 points, respectively, in the one state that flipped from red to blue between 2000 and 2004. Ohio and Pennsylvania remain super tight. Nationally, the Real Clear Politics polling average has Obama up 2.5 points in a race that had been tied, suggesting that the bounce from McCain’s selection of Palin has peaked. Republican uber-strategist Karl Rove, who keeps running state-by-state projections on Rove.com, wrote this week: “[I]f the movement toward Obama in national polls continues to percolate down to the states, we could see an Obama lead later this week.” Friday’s opening debate should shake up the race yet again, and both campaigns say the race is close and will remain close. But key strategists in both parties say the sudden focus on the economy, and McCain’s mixed messages following the implosion on Wall Street, have given Obama a solid footing just as many undecided voters begin to tune in. “The shift is significant but it’s not big,” said a top Obama official. “The more Barack Obama can convince voters that he has the strength to handle the economic concerns of the country, the better likelihood he’s going to have to get elected. And I think we’re winning that argument.” Obama has moved staff out of Georgia, although his campaign says the remaining staff of 53 is the most a Democratic presidential campaign has had in the state in at least 30 years. In Florida, Obama had a two-point lead in an NBC/Mason-Dixon poll released Tuesday – a statistical tie. Perhaps more significant than the top-line number, the poll showed Obama trailing McCain by just six points among Florida’s Latino population, which has tended to support the GOP in past elections. Other recent Florida polls also show McCain leading, but within the margin of error. A St. Petersburg Times poll released over the weekend gave McCain a 47-45 percent lead in the state, and a recent American Research Group survey had the two candidates tied at 46 percent. In Virginia, too, the Democratic nominee seems in a substantially stronger position than he was just weeks ago. An ABC News/Washington Post survey conducted from Sept. 18-21 placed Obama three points ahead of his opponent, leading 49-46 percent. A poll by SurveyUSA released Monday by WJLA ABC 7 and other news organizations gave Obama a wider, six-point lead. As in Florida, some polls have still shown McCain ahead – but every recent survey has shown Obama within very plausible reach in the Old Dominion, which has not supported a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. In Minnesota, which had previously looked out of reach for the Republican ticket, two new polls by Quinnipiac and ARG measured Obama’s edge at two points or less. In June, a Quinnipiac poll gave the Democrat a 17-point lead in the state. Through the swath of battlegrounds surrounding the Great Lakes, McCain is consistently within a few points of the Democratic nominee, and even slightly ahead in the state of Ohio, where a poll sponsored by several state newspapers showed McCain with a six-point lead over the weekend. But with states like Florida, Virginia and, in the mountain West, Colorado and Nevada looking increasingly favorable to Obama, McCain may not be able to reach 270 by picking off just one or two of these Midwestern swing states. If Obama’s upward trend continues, McCain would have to run the tables in these states, or win a big surprise victory elsewhere, in order to make up for it. © 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC

To: coug who wrote (78337)	10/1/2008 4:09:22 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Propelled by concerns over the financial crisis and a return of support from female voters, Barack Obama has opened a formidable 7-point lead over John McCain, reaching the 50% threshold among likely voters for the first time in the general campaign for President, according to a new TIME poll. Obama now leads McCain 50%-43% overall, up from 46%-41% before the parties' conventions a month ago. Obama's support is not just broader but sturdier; 23% of McCain supporters said they might change their mind, while only 15% of Obama's said they could be persuaded to switch. Among the poll's most dramatic findings: McCain is losing female voters faster than Sarah Palin attracted them after the Republican National Convention. Obama leads McCain by 17 points with women, 55%-38%. Before the conventions, women preferred Obama by a margin of 10 points, 49%-39%. After McCain picked Palin as his running mate, the gap narrowed to a virtual tie, with Obama holding a 1-point margin, 48%-47%. In a stark indication of just how much the political landscape has changed over the past four years, white women now favor Obama by three points, 48%-45%; in 2004, George W. Bush won the same demographic by 11 points against John Kerry. Where Bush carried married women by 15 points in that election, 57%-42%, Obama now leads by 6 points, 50%-44%, a 21-point shift. Non-college-educated white women split virtually evenly, 46%-45% for McCain. By contrast, Obama remains weak among white men. That group supports McCain 57%-36% overall, and non-college-educated white men back the Republican ticket by an even greater margin, 63%-27%. Bush himself fares terribly in the poll. His approval rating is 23%, the lowest number ever found by Abt/SRBI, the company that conducted the poll for TIME; 73% of respondents disapprove of his performance as President. Only 26% approve of his handling of the current financial crisis. The economy was a key driver behind all the new numbers. Sixty-five percent of respondents said their economic situation has worsened in the past year — and of those, 59% support Obama. Overall, voters give Obama a 45%-37% edge over McCain as the candidate who is better equipped to handle the economic crisis. The TIME poll shows that Obama gained some support after his performance at the presidential debate last Friday. Twenty-three percent of those who watched it said it made them more likely to vote for Obama, while 16% said they were more likely to vote for McCain. Of the 73% of likely voters who watched the debate, 41% thought Obama won, while 27% thought McCain did. For McCain, the most troubling sign may come not from the details of the poll, which are grim for Republicans, but from the historical context. No Democrat has crossed the 50% threshold in the general election since before Ronald Reagan was elected, let alone do so a month before the election... time.com

To: coug who wrote (78337)	10/7/2008 5:00:26 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Massive Obama gains in past five days by kos dailykos.com

To: coug who wrote (78337)	11/16/2008 9:49:58 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Obama on 60 minutes, can you believe we elected this guy? dailykos.com

To: coug who wrote (78337)	1/8/2009 5:15:46 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

Vision for A New Foreign Policy thenation.com

To: coug who wrote (78337)	1/10/2009 1:04:14 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

If Obama Is Serious: He should get tough with Israel. newsweek.com By Aaron David Miller NEWSWEEK Published Jan 3, 2009 Jews worry for a living; their tragic history compels them to do so. In the next few years, there will be plenty to worry about, particularly when it comes to Israel. The current operation in Gaza won't do much to ease these worries or to address Israel's longer-term security needs. The potential for a nuclear Iran, combined with the growing accuracy and lethality of Hamas and Hizbullah rockets, will create tremendous concern. Anxiety may also be provoked by something else: an Obama administration determined to repair America's image and credibility and to reach a deal in the Middle East. Don't get me wrong. Barack Obama—as every other U.S. president before him—will protect the special relationship with Israel. But the days of America's exclusive ties to Israel may be coming to an end. Despite efforts to sound reassuring during the campaign, the new administration will have to be tough, much tougher than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush were, if it's serious about Arab-Israeli peacemaking. The departure point for a viable peace deal—either with Syria or the Palestinians—must not be based purely on what the political traffic in Israel will bear, but on the requirements of all sides. The new president seems tougher and more focused than his predecessors; he's unlikely to become enthralled by either of Israel's two leading candidates for prime minister—centrist Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, or Likudnik Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, if it's the latter, he may well find himself (like Clinton) privately frustrated with Netanyahu's tough policies. Unlike Clinton, if Israeli behavior crosses the line, he should allow those frustrations to surface publicly in the service of American national interests. The issue at hand is to find the right balance in America's ties with Israel. Driven by shared values and based on America's 60-year commitment to Israel's security and well-being, the special relationship is rock solid. But for the past 16 years, the United States has allowed that special bond to become exclusive in ways that undermine America's, and Israel's, national interests. If Obama is serious about peacemaking he'll have to adjust that balance in two ways. First, whatever the transgressions of the Palestinians (and there are many, including terror, violence and incitement), he'll also have to deal with Israel's behavior on the ground. The Gaza crisis is a case in point. Israel has every reason to defend itself against Hamas. But does it make sense for America to support its policy of punishing Hamas by making life unbearable for 1.5 million Gazans by denying aid and economic development? The answer is no. Then there's the settlements issue. In 25 years of working on this issue for six secretaries of state, I can't recall one meeting where we had a serious discussion with an Israeli prime minister about the damage that settlement activity—including land confiscation, bypass roads and housing demolitions—does to the peacemaking process. There is a need to impose some accountability. And this can only come from the president. But Obama should make it clear that America will not lend its auspices to a peacemaking process in which the actions of either side willfully undermine the chances of an agreement America is trying to broker. No process at all would be better than a dishonest one that hurts America's credibility. Second, Obama will have to maintain his independence and tactical flexibility to play the mediator's role. This means not road testing everything with Israel first before previewing it to the other side, a practice we followed scrupulously during the Clinton and Bush 43 years. America must also not agree to every idea proposed by an Israeli prime minister. Our willingness to go along with Ehud Barak's make-or-break strategy at the Camp David summit proved very costly where more disciplined critical thinking on our part might have helped preempt the catastrophe that followed. Coordinating with Israel on matters relating to its security is one thing. Giving Israel a veto over American negotiating tactics and positions, particularly when it comes to bridging gaps between the two sides, is quite another. If the new president adjusts his thinking when it comes to Israel, and is prepared to be tough with the Arabs as well, the next several years could be fascinating and productive ones. I hope so, because the national interest demands it. The process of American mediation will be excruciatingly painful for Arabs, Israelis and Americans. But if done right, with toughness and fairness, it could produce the first real opportunity for a peace deal in many years. *Aaron David Miller, an adviser for Democratic and Republican administrations and author of “The Much Too Promised Land,” is at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

To: coug who wrote (78337)	2/6/2009 1:21:23 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

On the Edge _______________________________________________________________ By PAUL KRUGMAN Op-Ed Columnist The New York Times February 6, 2009 A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts. It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated. Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again. It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world. Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners. Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall. It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy ... the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.” Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap. We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken. As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on. And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time? Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive. So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next. It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge. nytimes.com