Barack Obama Elected President!

[Roman]

So Brian, what you are saying is that blacks vote in one way and one way only. That blacks can't vote based on their conscious and what they believe.

Interesting. Didn't know that about black people.

Oh, and Casey, telling people that you use your brain to come up with these articles kinda sounds like you're calling others that don't agree with you stupid.

But, oh well. You know......I'm just saying.

[GoldenDogs]

Okay, I'm going to come out on this one and jump your case a bit, Casey...

NOT RELEVANT. Whether Wales in black, white, brown, or pink makes no difference. You don't have to be black to represent the interests of black people. Genuine, well-intentioned people of various ethnic backgrounds can definitely represent the interests of others if they understand their needs, their wants, and their interests. To do so requires respect and an open mind...

At the same time, that whole "you don't know if you're not black" argument is one I disagree with. Fine, I don't know... then TELL ME. MAKE me understand. If a person of color refused to talk to me and MAKE ME UNDERSTAND, then I can never get it... I can never help... you've cut me off at the knees. And that is a very close-minded, negative approach.

[GoldenDogs]

Once again, Roman, you attempt to distort the meaning of a post to suit your argument. I never said that and you know it. I stated that black people vote in blocks. Period. Then again, so do Jewish people, so do gay people, and Hispanics, etc. Please stop trying to make my statements seem racist.

[Wales2004]

I totally missed the post that you responded to with this but thanks a bunch Ryan. You are right on the money.

The only personal thing I've disclosed about myself outside of some sports chat and that I live in California is that I have a diverse family. This is pretty much the reason that I have touted as leaning me more towards the all encompassing Democrats instead of the Republicans. Being Independent gives me the ability to vote for whom I choose regardless of party. I've also said that I strongly believe that people should be loved no matter what, though I have difficulty with the application of that to pedophiles.

I don't really care if people assume I'm a man or a woman or black or white or whatever else. I don't think being any of those things will make me an expert on them nor does not being a specific thing negate my ability to have an opinion.

Jess posted a link to an article in which Gwen Ifill wondered whether her race was the reason she was being pursued. I based my response on that and the fact that this issue originated on Fox News which has the history of being racially insensitive. Anyone who had read my posts carefully would have seen that. The point Ifill was making was that people assumed that because she is black that her book is favorable to Obama.

Thanks again Ryan.

[George008]

I knew that would be the response I would get from that. I applaud you for having the courage to call me on it..

I just wanted my opinion to be out there, in that there is a hyper sensativity towards any critisism on a black figure..Any and all critisism of blacks is considered racist, no matter what the grounds of arguments are..From the prespective of a white person...this is very discouraging..

IMO African-Americans that do this are guilty of fueling the fire of race relations rather than finding equality...It goes against all that is seemingly attempting to be accomplished.

I think it is relevant if Wales is black or not because it leads to the point I was trying to make..But of course if this not something that would normally be relevant..

[Roman]

Editor's note: CNN contributor Hilary Rosen is the political director and Washington editor-at-large of HuffingtonPost.com, which describes itself as an Internet newspaper and focuses on politics from a liberal point of view. A longtime Democratic adviser, Rosen is a former CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America and supported Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Hilary Rosen says Sarah Palin showed she is a tough and aggressive politician.

Hilary Rosen says Sarah Palin showed she is a tough and aggressive politician.

(CNN) -- Thank God we are not talking about Sarah Palin being a "woman" today and dissecting whether Joe Biden acted appropriately toward her.

Both candidates were strong and confident on stage last night.

Remember that poised and impressive governor we saw on the stage at the Republican convention? The one who told jokes about hockey moms being as tough as pitbulls?

I missed her over the past few weeks. We didn't work this hard for equality for so many years to have a woman vice presidential candidate be treated differently or more gently because she is a woman.

For the last few days there was entirely too much talk about how to treat Palin during the debate. If Biden came on strong, he might be sexist. If he was too soft, patronizing. iReport.com: Who do you think came out on top?

Well, that predebate analysis quickly became moot. She threw some punches. He didn't punch back at all, but not because she seemed too soft. He didn't punch back because her punches didn't score any points, so why bother?

Don't Miss

* Biden, Palin face off

* Commentary: For Palin, a tie is a win

* In Depth: Commentaries

Gov. Palin is a tough, aggressive politician who showed the country last night that she was not going to hereafter be defined as the weak and vulnerable person we saw in interview clips all week. She wanted the discussion on her terms and the analysis to be about the McCain-Palin ticket.

Joe Biden is free to criticize Gov. Palin just like any other opponent. And pundits from now on are free again to simply give our views with worrying about her fragility.

So here goes. Palin's answers in this debate vacillated between disappointing and incoherent. On the most pressing issue facing Americans this week -- the economy -- she had surprisingly little to offer. She repeated the McCain tax cut plan and health care plan.

But since their tax cuts mostly go to the wealthy and their health insurance proposals offer little more than a potentially useless tax credit, that just wasn't enough. And when moderator Gwen Ifill asked about consumers who face debt or difficulties with their mortgages, she actually asked to change the subject and went back to another answer on energy exploration which had been fully covered minutes before.

On Iraq, she was just incoherent. She said something about the surge and Obama and fighting. But it didn't answer the question, which was: What is the right plan for Iraq?

Oh, the "pitbull" is back. And she and John McCain are still wrong for the country.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

[GoldenDogs]

That's what friends are for, Roman... I'm here for you, dude... Anytime you need facts set straight, I'm your man. Anytime I can educate you on how things really work, I'm your man. Anytime you need a hug, I'll promptly refer you to Casey...

[Roman]

McCain Retreats in Michigan, Shifting Resources (Update1)

By Hans Nichols and Kim Chipman

More Photos/Details

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- The country got smaller for John McCain yesterday.

His campaign said that it is effectively ceding Michigan and its 17 electoral votes to Barack Obama.

Michigan was one of the few states that went Democratic in the last four presidential elections that McCain thought he could take back.

Pennsylvania was another, and that state, too, is looking more challenging. ``More Clinton Democrats are moving to Obama, as are more independents and more women,'' said G. Terry Madonna, professor of public affairs and director of the Franklin & Marshall College poll that now shows Obama with a 7 percentage- point advantage. ``There is a fundamental shift in his favor.''

The race at this point is less of a national contest and more of a battle for individual states, prompting a shifting of resources and a redrawing of victory plans, analysts say.

``Operations will be scaled back'' in Michigan, McCain political director Mike DuHaime said on a conference call with reporters yesterday. While he said the campaign won't completely abandon the state, ``some staff and other resources will move'' to Maine, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Obama was in Michigan yesterday, where he campaigned for the second time in Grand Rapids, a Republican stronghold in a state that has gone for the Democratic candidate in the last four presidential elections.

Michigan Economy

The economy is a major issue in Michigan, the center of the U.S. auto industry and the state with the U.S.'s highest unemployment rate, 8.9 percent. In the past year, Michigan has lost 40,000 manufacturing jobs, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

``I'm running for president to make sure the cars of the future are made in the same place they've always been made, right here in Michigan,'' Obama said in Grand Rapids.

The auto industry, already hobbled by higher gasoline prices, has been hit by the credit crunch that has roiled financial markets. U.S. auto sales tumbled 27 percent in September, the steepest monthly slide since 1991.

Obama leads in Michigan with support from 49 percent of voters, compared with 44 percent for McCain, according to an analysis of the most-recent polls compiled by Pollster.com. All but one of those surveys were conducted before the first debate between Obama and McCain and the congressional negotiations over the financial-markets rescue plan.

Electoral Strategy

Duhaime said the McCain campaign isn't planning any more advertising in Michigan. They will monitor polls in the state and be ready to ``re-engage'' if the political climate changes.

McCain senior adviser Greg Strimple called Michigan the ``worst state of all the states that are in play'' for the Republican campaign. ``It's an obvious one from my perspective to come off the list,'' he said on the conference call.

Strimple said the Republican's campaign is in position to pick up the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House by making stands in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and holding on to traditionally Republican states.

Still, several Republican-friendly states, including Indiana, Virginia and Florida, have become battlegrounds, according to polls.

``The overall environment right now that we face is one of the worst environments for any Republican in probably 35 years,'' Duhaime said.

Economic turmoil may be moving voters into Obama's camp nationally. The Democrat has opened up a lead over McCain since their Sept. 26 debate, amid growing concerns about the economy, according to two polls released yesterday.

Obama led McCain 49 percent to 42 percent among registered voters surveyed by the Pew Research Center, and he was ahead 50 percent to 41 percent among likely voters in a CBS News poll.

[GoldenDogs]

DAMN!

It's great to be back here arguing with you people.

Unfortunately, at some point today, I'll disappear until around Tuesday or Wednesday as internet services are disconnected and reconnected here.

>>Brian begins drooling from withdrawal<<

I will miss Wales and Jess and Casey and Roman and Greg and The Scarecrow and Tinman, too!

[Roman]

Ex-Wash Times Editor:

White Flag Hoisted by McCain

Robert Stacey McCain, who used to work as an assistant national editor at the very conservative Washington Times, maintains a blog called The Other McCain, and it's an excellent barometer of rightwing thinking. If this McCain is saying it on his site, rest assured lots of other hard-right folks are of the same mindset.

What made me happy today from his blog is he writes about the nose-diving of the McCain/Palin ticket and how he's comforted in knowing the GOP contenders will not be measuring new drapes for the Oval Office. If he feels this way, before the VP debate tonight, I don't imagine his pessimism will abate after watching the show from St. Louis.

My favorite part from the entry is where McCain talks about an "Obama landslide." That should please the folks at the McCain/Palin headquarters in Virginia.

From The Other McCain blog:

They're surrendering Michigan. And Allah is right, Pennsylvania's next. It's over. Get used to saying, "President Obama."

Earlier today, I started to do a poll roundup, then got distracted and didn't finish it. Why bother now? Crazy Cousin John has already given up.

That's why he was so bitter and sarcastic in that Associated Press interview. Last week's idiotic gesture -- "Suspend the campaign! Cancel the debate! Pass the bailout!" -- blew up in his face and destroyed all rational hope that he can win on Nov. 4 . . .

Pathetic. Three weeks ago, McCain led by 3 points in the Real Clear Politics average (and one poll showed him +1 in Michigan). A week later, when the polls started to slip, he freaked out and tried to blame the mortgage meltdown on SEC Chairman Chris Cox. When that didn't work, and with his poll numbers slipping even further, he decided to take ownership of the unpopular $700 billion bailout . . .

The top folks at Maverick HQ -- who in early September were thinking about what their positions might be in the McCain administration's transition team -- are now on Travelocity, booking their Caribbean vacations for the second week in November . . .

Do not be deceived, then, by "here's-how-we-can-win" talk coming from Maverick HQ or the Republican talking heads you see on Fox News. Do not get your hopes up by letting Hugh Hewitt or Sean Hannity draw you into their miracle-comeback fantasy talk. Ain't gonna happen.

Alas, I am a sucker for miracle-comeback fantasies. So if, at any point in the next 32 days, it should appear that I'm being sucked into an optimism vortex, please remind me of this post, where I append this time-capsule note to my near-future self:

Hey, idiot, get a grip! That latest tiny bump in Maverick's poll numbers in Ohio and Colorado is a glitch, a statistical anomaly, and is insufficient cause to ignore every previous indicator of the impending Obama landslide. And why the heck should you care, anyway, since you swore a blood oath on Feb. 7 that you were going to vote Libertarian this year? Or did you forget that, too, you moron?

I feel better now. There is peace in pessimism.

[George008]

[Roman]

News Analysis

In Debate, G.O.P. Ticket Survives a Test

Article Tools Sponsored By

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: October 3, 2008

Gov. Sarah Palin made it through the vice-presidential debate on Thursday without doing any obvious damage to the Republican presidential ticket. By surviving her encounter with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and quelling some of the talk about her basic qualifications for high office, she may even have done Senator John McCain a bit of good, freeing him to focus on the other troubles shadowing his campaign.

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. at the debate. More Photos >

James Estrin/The New York Times

Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. amid family members after their debate ended. More Photos >

It was not a tipping point for the embattled Republican presidential ticket, the bad night that many Republicans had feared. But neither did it constitute the turning point the McCain campaign was looking for after a stretch of several weeks in which Senator Barack Obama seemed to be gaining the upper hand in the race. Even if he no longer has to be on the defensive about Ms. Palin, Mr. McCain still faces a tough environment with barely a month until the election, as he acknowledged hours before the debate by effectively pulling his campaign out of Michigan, a Democratic state where Mr. McCain’s advisers had once been optimistic of victory.

“This is going to help stop the bleeding,” said Todd Harris, a Republican consultant who worked for Mr. McCain in his first presidential campaign. “But this alone won’t change the trend line, particularly in some of the battleground states.”

Short of a complete bravura performance that would have been tough for even the most experienced national politician to turn in — or a devastating error by the mistake-prone Mr. Biden, who instead turned in an impressively sharp performance — there might have been little Ms. Palin could have done to help Mr. McCain.

The McCain campaign has grimly confronted a series of polls since the presidential debate last week showing Mr. Obama gaining a lead not only nationally, but in swing states. The significance of Mr. Obama’s huge financial advantage has become clear as he has forced Mr. McCain to fight in what should be Republican states, like Missouri, and thus make the kind of triage decisions like the one he made in Michigan.

The economic problems on Wall Street have posed a severe problem for Mr. McCain, moving the presidential debate to precisely the ground that favors Democrats, and Mr. Biden sought repeatedly during the debate to lay the problem at the doorstep of the Republican Party. And even if a financial rescue plan is approved by Congress, there is no reason to think that the bad economic news is going to stop: with reports of bleak unemployment numbers, more gyrations of the stock market, and the prospect of bad economic reports on everything from job losses to automobile sales.

“For more than a year, people assumed that if Obama was the Democratic nominee, the campaign would be a referendum on him,” Mr. Harris said. “The economic crisis changed that: the campaign is now a referendum on who can get us out of this mess. One of the challenges for the McCain campaign is going to be turn the race back into an up-or-down referendum on Obama.”

And through this period — easily the worst one Mr. McCain has faced since he was forced to lay off most of his campaign staff more than a year ago when he ran out of money — Mr. McCain has appeared off balance. He has been searching for a message and a way to make a case against Mr. Obama, and often publicly venting his frustration at the way the campaign is going, as he did this week in a contentious meeting with the editorial board of The Des Moines Register.

Ms. Palin can presumably claim two victories, though modest ones. She did not offer a reprise of the unsteady responses that marked her interviews with Katie Couric on CBS News, even if many of her answers were not always responsive to the question, particularly when contrasted with Mr. Biden. Her performance — feisty and spirited — also might have heartened conservatives, many of whom had gone from ecstasy to despair in the period from when she was named until this week.

“Her performance re-energizes the conservative base,” said Nelson Warfield, a conservative Republican consultant. “Palin pierced the media’s low expectations.”

Mr. McCain has had difficulty in recent weeks trying to make effective attacks on Mr. Obama.

A more conventional vice-presidential candidate could have used the platform of the debate on Thursday to go after Mr. Obama and turn this night into a referendum on Mr. Obama. And Ms. Palin certainly tried, attacking Mr. Obama repeatedly for his views on national security, and taxes, prompting equally passionate rebuttals from Mr. Biden.

But she had become such an outsized figure since her explosive introduction to the country by Mr. McCain that the story of this debate was always going to be about Ms. Palin, and not Mr. Obama. It seems fair to say that Americans who tuned in to this debate watched to get their impression of Ms. Palin, and not to hear what she had to say about Mr. Obama.

Election Day is now just a month away, and if this presidential race follows typical patterns, people are now making decisions — and, again if this election is true to form, they will be making their choice between the two people at the top of the ticket. Matthew Dowd, who was chief strategist for President Bush in 2004, recalled when he was working for Senator Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1988, when he — by every account — beat Dan Quayle in that vice-presidential debate.

“We were sitting in the audience, I was sitting between Al Gore and Dick Gephardt, and everyone was like ‘Oh that’s, great, great,’ ” Mr. Dowd said. “But it didn’t matter anymore. You’re 30 days or so out and people are starting to look at the presidential candidates. The race had formed.”

“You’re in a race right now that is beginning to solidify into a five- or six-point Barack Obama lead,” he said. “And each day forward with lead holding is not a good day for McCain. It doesn’t contribute to what they really need to do. They have just a little over 30 days to start to make up some serious ground, at a time when people are already starting to vote.”

That, Mr. Dowd said, was why an adequate performance from Ms. Palin Thursday night fell short of what Mr. McCain needed and will probably be forgotten before the presidential candidates meet for their second debate next Tuesday in Nashville.

[Wales2004]

I can't find a specific post to which to reply on the bloc voting issue.

I think what is tricky about that issue is the assumption that all people belonging to a certain group will vote this way because of that. It's probably frustrating for people of that group who don't vote that way because they have to deal with the reaction from people who have difficulty understanding that people with a group still have independent minds.

Minorities are probably most frustrated by this because of the fact that it is assumed that they lack the ability to think for themselves.

I don't even think that it's about people of one group voting in a bloc either, it's more that people are voting their interests. Democrats are associated with civil rights so it's most logical that if these are the types of issues that are important to most minorities (not all) then they would vote for a Democrat. Some of them might not feel welcome in the Republican party so less minorities gravitate to that party.

[Ryan]

I'm glad to know my family votes in a block. That even though we're all different religions, varying races and have different political beliefs, we will vote as a block because well, Barrack is black, and therefore we must support one of us.

As Roman and I have discussed via phone, there are those in the black community who do not support Obama. There have been reports though many blacks indeed supported Obama, MANY didn't because they felt he had no chance of winning. How many times did Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson run for President? They weren't serious contenders which is why they didn't get a lot of support from the black community. It's just now, with people seeing Obama has truly having a chance at becoming President, are they coming out to support him.

So who has a diverse racial make up, I could take offense as a black man (you know, because even though Obama is Mixed, he is black), that you would make such a blanket statement about blacks voting as a block. However I won't, instead encouraging you to not make such blanket statements.

Thank you

-Ryan

[George008]

Your statement could not be more true. I don't see anything racist in a comment that is factual.

The truth is hispanics, gays, Jewish, and AA all vote in blocks...No one can deny the fact that they vote in blocks. No one is saying that they share a brain..that is a misinterpretation.

I think you understand Brian that these minorities share interests rather than brains..