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

To: American Spirit who wrote (78536)	10/30/2008 12:27:00 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

The Party Of Rove And The Collapse Of McCain andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com Andrew Sullivan / Atlantic Online / Oct 24, 2008 Ross is disturbed by McCain's dearth of policy proposals: <<..One of the many fascinating things about Robert Draper's Times Magazine story on the McCain campaign is what isn't included in its account of the attempts to brand (and rebrand, and rebrand) John McCain's candidacy: Namely, any real discussion of policy. From Draper's account, the McCain campaign staff has gone around and around trying to figure out how to sell their candidate - as a fighter! as an experienced leader! as a maverick! etc. - but hardly ever seemed to have spent much time thinking about how these narratives would mesh with or be reinforced by the actual policy agenda the campaign was advancing...>> But this is, sadly, the core of what has happened to Republicanism under Rove. We've been told over and over again that the Bush administration always put politics before policy - and then made Karl Rove its policy czar! This is how they approached something as grave as war. We will see a serious conservatism again when Bill Kristol and Karl Rove are banished from the Republican party and from the conservative media. The Republican implosion is primarily their doing, their achievement, their legacy. It was when McCain ceded his campaign to Schmidt and Palin (creatures of Rove and Kristol respectively) that he threw it all away. As long as they are given any credence, Republicanism will not recover...

To: American Spirit who wrote (78536)	10/30/2008 5:25:16 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Counterpoint: 8 reasons Obama will win _______________________________________________________________ By Eric Zorn October 30, 2008 In Tuesday's column, I offered '08 reasons John McCain might still pull off an upset in next week's '08 presidential election. Today I offer '08 reasons Barack Obama will nevertheless win handily: 1. Obama's supporters are more energized. Obama draws enormous crowds wherever he goes and has energized young and first-time voters in a way that will surprise pollsters relying on traditional turnout models. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found 74 percent of Obama voters saying they are more enthusiastic about voting this time than in previous elections. Only 48 percent of McCain voters said the same. These jazzed Obama supporters don't see their vote as the weary, defensive choice of the lesser of two evils, but as an exciting chance to create a brighter future. 2. Obama has a superior ground game. In part because Sen. Hillary Clinton challenged him deep into the primary season, Obama is better organized at the neighborhood level than any Democratic presidential candidate in history. His campaign is also making landmark use of technology—using e-mail, text messages and social-networking sites to keep in touch with supporters and urge them to the polls. 3. Obama has a superior air game. Obama is so flush with cash that he's able to saturate TV and radio in key markets at the end of the campaign with ads that counter McCain's criticisms of him and launch attacks on McCain. It's not just the money but the determination to respond rapidly and vehemently inside the space of a single news cycle. 4. McCain has lost his brand. Yes, he's a volatile man running in sensitive times under the banner of troubled party. But he started off with the image of a bipartisan straight-shooter with a clear, selfless sense of proportion. Yet he's campaigned like a crank. His scattershot, over-the-top assaults on Obama's character (or, rather, the character of Obama's associates) have seemed like an effort to change the subject from important issues. And now that McCain's finally settled on conservative tax policy as his theme down the stretch, his campaign is so desperate for traction that it's going schoolyard—channeling Joe McCarthy and calling Obama a socialist, a Marxist and even a communist. 5. Sarah Palin is turning out to be the disasta' from Alaska. I'm confident historians will rank McCain's decision to choose a rookie governor from a low-population state to be his running mate as his biggest miscalculation. Palin's youth, spunkiness and conservative bona fides fired up the Republican base, sure. But her ignorance, on display in early TV interviews, mortified the rest of us, and polls now show her as a distinct drag on the ticket. McCain's appalling judgment in selecting Palin has been cited by Colin Powell, several high-profile conservative intellectuals and scores of newspaper editorial boards as a reason to support Obama. 6. Obama hasn't lost his cool. Historians will also note the textbook discipline of the Obama campaign, which stuck to a set of fairly simple "change" messages while the McCain campaign kept trying out new themes. This steadiness has been mirrored by Obama's own equanimity, particularly during the debates in which he looked and sounded far more presidential than the twitchy, simpering McCain. The more people saw of Obama, the less he seemed like the frightening, radical, terrorist sympathizer in McCain's cartoonish rhetoric. 7. McCain hasn't been able to fight the Bush head winds. No matter how many times McCain said "maverick," he still couldn't create enough distance from the deeply unpopular president to make the sale to voters hungering for new leadership. 8. Obama has been lucky. Things have been relatively quiet all year on the terror and national security fronts—McCain's strengths. And the major crisis of the campaign season—the economic meltdown—not only played into one of Obama's perceived strong suits, it also caused McCain to appear impulsive and indecisive in the face of a sudden challenge. This is not a taunt or a guarantee, but I expect that luck to hold at least through Tuesday night. Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune chicagotribune.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (78536)	10/30/2008 12:04:32 PM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 89467

the bad part about that post is that you idiots actually care what steven colbert thinks..... and OBAMMA IS A MARXIST!

To: American Spirit who wrote (78536)	10/30/2008 2:25:20 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 89467

Obama's aunt lives in a slum and he won't take care or her, but he wants to tax people to death. Why won't the cheap bastard help his aunt? he's a POS

To: American Spirit who wrote (78536)	10/31/2008 11:39:43 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

McCain's Mountain of a Problem fivethirtyeight.com Our model does not make any specific adjustments for early voting, but it is presenting a major problem for John McCain in three states in the Mountain West region, where Barack Obama has a huge fraction of his vote locked in. In the wee hours of this morning, Public Policy Polling released data from Colorado and New Mexico. The toplines are strong for Obama, giving him leads of 10 and 17 points, respectively in those states. What's worse for McCain, however, is that PPP estimates that nearly two-thirds of Coloradans have already cast their ballots, as have 55-60 percent of New Mexicans, with large majorities of those votes going to Barack Obama. This is backed up to some extent by Michael McDonald's turnout statistics. In Colorado, the state had already processed approximately 1.3 million ballots as of Thursday, around 60 percent of the total 2004 turnout. In Bernalillo County (Albuquerque), New Mexico (statewide figures are not available), 145,000 ballots had been cast as of Wednesday, equaling 55 percent of 2004's total. Should New Mexico and Colorado become safe Obama states, McCain's only realistic path to victory runs through Pennsylvania. Even if McCain were to win the Keystone, however -- say that Philadelphia remains in a collective stupor from the Phillies' win and that there is some sort of Bradley Effect in the Alleghanies -- Obama has a pretty decent firewall in the form of Virginia and Nevada, which had already achieved 53 percent of its 2004 voting totals as of Wednesday, and where Democrats have a 23-point edge in ballots cast so far in Las Vegas's Clark County (and perhaps more impressively, a 15-point advantage in Reno's Washoe County, a traditionally Republican area). The Kerry states less Pennsylvania, but plus Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Iowa and Virginia, total 270 electoral votes: an ugly, nail-biter of a win for Obama, but still one that would get him to 1600 Pennsylvania all the same. -- Nate Silver at 9:34 AM

To: American Spirit who wrote (78536)	11/2/2008 1:02:23 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Who’s the Question Mark? _______________________________________________________________ By MAUREEN DOWD Op-Ed Columnist The New York Times November 2, 2008 In the final moments of the most gripping campaign in modern history, John McCain is still trying to costume Barack Obama as a dangerous enigma. But, in an odd and remarkable reversal, it is McCain who is the enigma, even though he entered the race with one of the best brands in American politics. And it is Obama, who sashayed onto the trail two years ago as an aloof and exotic mystery man with a slim record and a strange name, now coming across as the steadier brand. The McCain campaign specializes in erratica, while the Obama campaign continues to avoid any dramatica. McCain pals around with Joe the Plumber and leaves Tito the Builder to Sarah Palin, exactly the kind of inane campaign silliness that the McCain formerly known as Maverick would have mocked mercilessly. He’s getting a little traction on taxes, as he latches on to every possible scary image about Obama — except the suggestion that the Democrat’s gray Hart Schaffner Marx suits are red. Before he was bubbled by Bushies, McCain was one of the most known and knowable quantities in American politics. For most of his long public career, he prided himself on his openness with the press — he even allowed some reporters to watch the results of January’s New Hampshire primary in his hotel suite in Nashua. He relished spending all day being challenged by voters and reporters. Last summer, tapped out and unable to afford a paid staff of political professionals, he talked freely, telling reporters he would have a White House that would be the polar opposite of the secretive and dismissive Bush-Cheney operation. He imagined weekly press conferences and talked of subjecting himself to a version of British question time in Congress. While acknowledging he was a tech tyro, he promised to try “a Google,” as he called searching the Web, to put government spending online so citizens could bird-dog it. He even went so far as to spin a dream of a West Wing in which he would cut back on his Secret Service so he wouldn’t feel so constrained. In the end, “The Bullet,” or “Sarge,” as McCain calls his replacement campaign manager Steve Schmidt, was the one who did the shackling, turning the vibrant and respected McCain into a shell of his former self. Schmidt abruptly cut off the oxygen supply to McCain’s brain. No more of the oldest established, permanent floating crap game of press confabs. No more audiences that weren’t vetted for friendliness. No more of McCain’s trademark insouciant mocking the process even as he participated in it. Whether it was the five years he spent in a hole in Hanoi or just his gregarious makeup, McCain seemed to feed off of the company of people who interested him, be it reporters, voters or the pols in his posse, like Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. Unlike Obama, He Who Walks Alone, McCain always rejected the solitary in favor of the social. But ever since Sergeant Schmidt put Captain McCain into a sterile brig on the trail, the candidate has become a question mark. Why would he repeat that oblivious line about the fundamentals of the economy being strong, saying it once in August and again in September? Why would he threaten to not show up for a debate (after denouncing Obama for not rising to the challenge of joint town halls) so that he could go to Washington and play the shining knight if he had no plan and no prospect for success? Why did he allow his campaign to become a host body for a Bush virus looking for someplace to infect? After working so hard to erase the image of what Senate aides called “the Bush hug,” McCain inexplicably hugged Bushies, surrounding himself with mercenaries trained in the same Rovian tactics that tore up his family — and tore apart his campaign — in 2000. Why did a politician who once knew how to play the game so well, who was once so beloved by people of very different political stripes, allow his campaign to get whiny, angry, vengeful and bitter? Why Palin? (Her latest instant classics came Friday, when she entered a rally in York, Pa., to the tune of “Thriller” and when a conservative radio station broadcast an interview in which she accused reporters of threatening her First Amendment rights by attacking her for negative campaigning that she feels justifiably calls out Obama “on his associations.”) Why did he allow his staff to put Palin on a couture catwalk in a tin-cup economy and then, when the price tags were exposed, trash her as a “diva” and “whack job,” thus becoming the rare Republican campaign devoured by Democratic-style vicious infighting? The ultimate riddle is this: Why doesn’t McCain question why he has become a question mark?

To: American Spirit who wrote (78536)	11/2/2008 10:58:55 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Ohio...Obama keeps lead 52-46. dispatchpolitics.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (78536)	11/2/2008 7:21:57 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Obama seven points ahead in CNN's final poll politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com (CNN) — Two and seven: With two days left until election day, a new national poll suggests that Barack Obama holds a seven-point lead over John McCain in the race for the White House. In the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, released Sunday morning, 53 percent of likely voters say they are backing Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois, for president, while 46 percent support McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona. Over the last month, Obama's lead has remained quite steady, ranging from five to nine points in the CNN Poll of Polls, which is an average of the national surveys. But CNN Polling Director Keating Holland cautions against assuming the election is over. "Keep in mind that this is not a prediction of the final outcome," Holland said. "That's not an easy task with two full days of campaigning to go in a country in which roughly one in ten voters tend to make up their minds in the last few days." There are three major third-party candidates that are on the ballot in some states across the nation. They are Independent Ralph Nader, Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney. When they are factored into the poll, Obama's lead increases by one percentage point, to eight points — 51 percent to 43 percent, with Nader, Barr and McKinney combining for four points. The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted Thursday through Saturday, with 1,017 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The surveys' sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Obama also holds a commanding lead in CNN's Electoral Map. CNN estimates that if the election were held today, Obama would win states worth 291 electoral votes — more than enough to capture the White House. McCain would take states worth 157 electoral votes, while states worth a combined total of 90 electoral votes would still be up for grabs. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win.