Barack Obama Elected President!

[George008]

Such as?

[ReddFoxx]

He voted for the Iraq war and he reversed his position on the Bush tax cuts among other things. He has an 88% record of voting the party line in Congress and that means he almost never went against the Bush Agenda.

[Roman]

http://arcanebliss.newsvine.com/_news/2008...he-time-in-2007

[George008]

Thanks for that. Now I can further prove my point. McCain's votes are right there in black and white. Where is the Bush agenda documented to created the 90% correlation?

[bandbfan]

Again, I think this is assuming that Bush is the definition of Republican in the sense of voting. And why would he not be.

[George008]

I found this from a link to factcheck.org on the website you provided.

(It should be noted, however, that McCain participated in only 48 percent of what CQ called party unity votes and only 39 percent of votes on which the president took a position)

[Roman]

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_i...voted_with.html

[bandbfan]

Does that not answer your own question? Of that 39%, McCain voted 90% of the time the way Bush wanted.

Obviously the mainstream public isn't going to know each and every law that Bush supports.

[Roman]

It looks like we'll be hearing an awful lot this week about how John McCain voted with President Bush 95 percent of the time last year. So it's time for a refresher course on what that statistic - which comes from CQ's annual vote studies - really means.

...As it turns out, though, last year is about the worst possible example the Democrats could use to make their point. Yes, technically, McCain did vote with Bush 95 percent of the time last year - when he showed up. But he only made 44 percent of those votes.

That's such a low percentage that CQ didn't even list McCain in the rankings of the senators who sided most often with Bush. (We only list senators who showed up for at least 50 percent of the votes.)

And because McCain was gone so much, most of the votes he cast were focused on just two issues: Iraq and immigration. Iraq is a legitimate subject for Democrats, since Bush and McCain both fought their efforts to end the war. But on immigration, Bush, McCain and the Democrats were on the same side.

His missed votes were so high that he wasn't even listed in the report.

[George008]

There is a lot left to be "assumed" from the statements coming out of Obama's campaign regarding the McCain/Bush connection. It sounds great to sum it up as McCain voting with Bush 90%, if only it were true.

[bandbfan]

I don't understand why you don't think it's true when the numbers are there.

And about votes, if Obama had missed that many votes, you can be sure the other side would be highlighting that. I believe they tried to go after Kerry for that in 2004.

[George008]

McCain has not been shy in admitting that he sides with the President on Iraq. So the 90% connection is that much more misleading.

I'm no math major, but the numbers are not there to support the statement. When you only focus on two issues your numbers will be inflated.

He actually missed more. They did go after that tonight at the RNC.

[bandbfan]

Well that's very pot and kettle.

[bandbfan]

The big numbers don't matter.

If McCain had only voted 10 times, and 9 out of those times, he had supported the war, then yes, that makes 90%. Obviously there should be footnotes attached, but what claim shouldn't have those. But the 9/10 is still 90%.

[George008]

True, however McCain has been in Senate for a couple of decades. He has had his fair share of participation. One can only expect both men to miss a number of votes while campaigning for President.

Obama missed a lot in the Illinois Senate as well. That's mainly what they stressed at the RNC. Obama focused and seeked higher office while in the US Senate and Illinois Senate more than he actually participated in either.