This is the Presidential Campaign Thread.

Barack Obama Vs. John McCain.

Edited November 6, 200817 yr by Toups

I saw clips and I think Tina Fey was the funniest of them all. Amy Poehler doing the rap was so so to me and maybe Palin will find her inner comedienne but she was okay.

And I know somewhere earlier I read something about how Colin Powell's endorsement was going to be viewed so here we go:

Limbaugh, George Will: Powell Endorsed Obama Based on Race

Sam Stein October 19, 2008

^^After reading that article that mentioned Rush Limbaugh and George Will, it really goes to show you just how desperate the Republicans have become. Anything to take the focus off of the real issues facing our country right now.

UPDATE: Notre Dame Professor Darren Davis, who specializes in the intersection of race and politics, writes in with his take on the Powell endorsement and the conservative reaction.

"There is nothing racially obvious about Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama. I have read Colin Powell's comments and he did not at anytime allude to race being a factor in his endorsement. I think what we are seeing is a sense of racial stereotyping of two ostensibly racially transcendent political figures. There has always been a stereotype that all black people will stick together. It seems that this is somewhat in play here, given that they only factor connecting Colin Powell and Barack Obama is race."

It's sad that, rather than focus on how to save our sagging economy, that the Republican bigwigs would rather set around and complain that the well-respected and admired Colin Powell only endorsed Obama because he was black. It's good to see that holes are being poked in that theory.

But then again what do you expect from the same party that made an issue of a person Obama first met at age 8, attempted to portray him as a terrorist loving Muslim whose middle name is eerily similar to Osama, called him a socialist, whined that Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin was sexist, and looked the other way when Sarah Palin worked up a crowd to hate Obama so much that they shouted "Kill him!"

Meanwhile, the war in Iraq and especially Afghanistan is in trouble, the economy is faltering, gas prices remain high, and the rest of the world hates us.

So Joe the Plumber is really named Sam, he is not a plumber and he doesn't make anywhere near $250,000. McCain's response, take him out on the campaign trail and pretend everything Sam the non-plumber has pretended to be is true. That is nuts!

You forgot the fact that he also has some explaining to do to the IRS, since it seems he has some unpaid taxes.

Almost nothing shocks me when it comes to politicians and I harbor no illusions about any of them. They're almost all the same people to me unless they're way out there like Michelle Bachman. Here's the transcript:

Thanks for catching that....I don't know why Ricky Martin came to mind but I got carried away. It was just Daddy Yankee.

Here's a link to an Obama slide show to make you fall back in love with him.....people in St Louis were bored yesterday and so this happened:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/18/o...d_n_135826.html

We weren't bored!

We just didn't have anything to do.

What's happening in early voting? I wonder if its higher or lower than previous years.

From AOL:

In Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina and Ohio, Democrats — or at least those living in heavily Democratic areas — are requesting and submitting ballots in large numbers. In Florida, Republicans hold an edge, while in Indiana, absentee voting has been split among Republican and Democratic areas.

Full story

Democrats Bank Early Votes in Key States

Can anyone tell me about early voting? I never heard of it. I understand about the absentee ballot but I saw people lined up (for hours) to go to polls to vote. Why can they do this and is it only in a few certain states?

The best part of what Colin Powell said today was this.

ITA. I also think it's so bogus to say he picked Obama because of race. I thought he did an excellent job of explaining why he is voting for Obama and not McCain, including ones that other high-standing white Republicans have also stated why they would be voting for Obama and not McCain, and the same can be said for newspapers that have traditionally endorsed Republicans. I suppose all these racist critics of Powell think all the newspaper editors are Black too and that is why they chose Obama.

Amy Poehler doing the rap was so so to me

I thought she did really good - especially considering she is seemingly 10 months pregnant!

^^After reading that article that mentioned Rush Limbaugh and George Will, it really goes to show you just how desperate the Republicans have become. Anything to take the focus off of the real issues facing our country right now.

If that is what those two think, so be it.

CP owes no one an explanation of why he chose who he chose. And, as bad of a campaign as JM has run, if they want to think he picked Obama because of race, fine.

I just would ask them one question.........

Are they McCain supporters because of his race?

As far as Palin on SNL...eh I was disappointed. She didn't do much at all. I thought it was funny when she was dancing along with Amy's rap. But I think the opening skit was a big let down. They should've had some interaction between Tina and Sarah.

Can anyone tell me about early voting? I never heard of it. I understand about the absentee ballot but I saw people lined up (for hours) to go to polls to vote. Why can they do this and is it only in a few certain states?

Do all states not have early voting? I know we can only do it at a federal courthouse or something.

Just a way for people to vote at a more convienient time than having just one day to do it. Even though employers are supposed to allow workers to do it, the reality isn't always as nice. And people have busy lives. I think it makes voting much more convienient. I'm a little surprised that people would wait for hours to early vote, because once it starts, you have every day until election day to do it.

Catching up from last night. I always wonder if I should reply to each post individually or in one big gagger, like I've done here. I guess it doesn't matter......

OK, you've lost me :lol: Which is it, there is no tightening in the polls, or is Joe the Plumber causing a surge in the polls??

I think the race is tightening nationally because I think a lot of the undecided now will break toward McCain, or they will stay at home. I feel that voters who were for Obama locked up early. I think a lot of folks are looking for a reason to vote for McCain and now I think they will just hold their noses and do it. I think Joe the Plumber is a bust. It could have worked, but now it just seems desperate. McCain has been all over the place. First he linked Obama to Paris Hilton, then it was he's not like the rest of us, then it was he's inexperienced, then it was he's a terrorist, then it was he's trying to steal the election, and now it's he's a socialist. It's just too much hopping around.

JM has run a horrible campaign. Aren't most campaigns successful when they pick a message early on and stick with it? Like Obama's "Change"? The problems JM is having is similar to Kerry in 04. He kept changing his tag line and didn't give anything a chance to resonate with voters.

On to the polls tightening/not tightening thing from last night. Sorry for appearing to be contradicting myself. I rarely do that except for when the voices in my head get really loud! Anyway....

Regarding the race not being so close is strictly my opinion. It is not based on anything I've seen on TV or other media, just my thoughts about how things are shaping up and what I've seen around my community (and travels).

As far as the Joe the Plumber statement about polls tightening, I saw that on several news sites - MSNBC, CNN - last evening and was merely stating that the MSM are claiming Joe gave the McCain campaign a boost (Obama was down to a 3 point advantage in the daily tracking poll Sunday). However, that "boost" seems to have dissipated, because this morning the MSM is claiming Obama now has a 6 point advantage. So that's what I was alluding to.

And I know somewhere earlier I read something about how Colin Powell's endorsement was going to be viewed so here we go:

Limbaugh, George Will: Powell Endorsed Obama Based on Race

Whatever. I can't say that I'm the least bit surprised about Rush. I mean, honestly, does anything that comes out of this man's mouth make sense to everyday people? He's an idiot. The only people that are going to care about his and Will's asinine statements are the far right-wingers, and there was never a chance they'd vote for Obama to begin with.

That being said, the statement itself pisses me off. When Liberman endorsed McCain, was it because he was white? Liberman caucuses with the Dems on every major issue, which is generally against McCain. So....the only explanation is that he endorsed McCain soley because of the pigmentation of his skin.

However, if Powell would have endorsed McCain, he would be hailed by these same people as a war hero and former Sec. of State with a "stellar record". Now he's been cast to the wolves because heaven forbid that he could make a case for his choice for president on any basis other than race.

It's sad that, rather than focus on how to save our sagging economy, that the Republican bigwigs would rather set around and complain that the well-respected and admired Colin Powell only endorsed Obama because he was black. It's good to see that holes are being poked in that theory.

But then again what do you expect from the same party that made an issue of a person Obama first met at age 8, attempted to portray him as a terrorist loving Muslim whose middle name is eerily similar to Osama, called him a socialist, whined that Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin was sexist, and looked the other way when Sarah Palin worked up a crowd to hate Obama so much that they shouted "Kill him!"

Meanwhile, the war in Iraq and especially Afghanistan is in trouble, the economy is faltering, gas prices remain high, and the rest of the world hates us.

I was watching Fox News for a few minutes the other day, and they had someone from Milwaukee (I believe that's where the first "kill him" statement was made) saying that no one ever said that statement. She said they contacted "everyone" that attended the rally and asked if they knew whom or from where "kill him" was yelled. "Everyone" said they never heard that. But of course no one is going to admit to saying it or hearing it after all the attention it's gotten in the press. But Fox is still trying to debunk it.

If that is what those two think, so be it.

CP owes no one an explanation of why he chose who he chose. And, as bad of a campaign as JM has run, if they want to think he picked Obama because of race, fine.

I just would ask them one question.........

Are they McCain supporters because of his race?

Yes, there are people supporting McCain primarily because of his race. Definitely so. Let me just say that not everyone supporting McCain does so because of race. Some are swayed by his "experience" or tax policies or "values". And there are some people that could never vote for a black man, so they are going with McCain.

Do all states not have early voting? I know we can only do it at a federal courthouse or something.

Just a way for people to vote at a more convienient time than having just one day to do it. Even though employers are supposed to allow workers to do it, the reality isn't always as nice. And people have busy lives. I think it makes voting much more convienient. I'm a little surprised that people would wait for hours to early vote, because once it starts, you have every day until election day to do it.

Florida early voting started today. We can go to any library to cast our ballots. The media is really promoting this option, especially for those (like me) who have made up their minds and are firmly behind thier candidate. I've always liked going to the polls on election day, though. I don't mind standing in line and waiting to vote cuz it makes me feel like part of the community...

I'm done now with my gagger post.

Nice to see you in here Scotty. I couldn't have said it any better

Thanks for catching that....I don't know why Ricky Martin came to mind but I got carried away. It was just Daddy Yankee.

Here's a link to an Obama slide show to make you fall back in love with him.....people in St Louis were bored yesterday and so this happened:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/18/o...d_n_135826.html

Wow. Thanks for that, Wales! How inspirational! 100K turning out for Obama in Missouri?!?! That's incredible.

I would love to go to this ass's house and dance in his yard after the 4th.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/19/r...g_n_135971.html

This is about twenty minutes from me.

How pathetic. So he has the balls to hang something like this in his yard, but won't go on camera and take ownership of it because of his job? He should have thought about that before he did it. To be so unrepentant about being a racist is just unbelievable.

His comment about "White Christians" are only allowed to be POTUS just shows how much of a close-minded bigot he is. If I lived near him, cct, I would go to his house and take it down myself.

Palin and McCain disagree on federal gay marriage ban

Posted: 09:35 AM ET

From CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby

Palin and McCain disagree on a federal gay marriage ban.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) — Add one more policy item to the list of things John McCain and Sarah Palin disagree on.

Palin told CBN’s David Brody over the weekend that she supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a proposal John McCain voted against in 2004. McCain believes the matter should be left to the states.

Brody asked Palin if she supports “something like” an amendment banning gay marriage.

“I am,” Palin said. “In my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage.

“I'm not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do, should and should not do,” she said. “But I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that's casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it's the foundation of our society is that strong family and that's based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.”

McCain and Palin disagree on a number of issues, including stem cell research, whether or not global warming is man-made, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

In the past, McCain has joked away any policy differences between the two running mates.

“By the way, you may figure out from time to time, Sarah and I don’t agree on every issue,” McCain said at a joint town hall last month in Michigan. “What do you expect of two mavericks, to agree on everything? Eh?”

^ ^ ^ That is going to do nothing to enhance the Republican platform for independents. She is just pandering to the base and they already have their support locked-up.

The author hits on some of the more pathetic attempts by the right to sway voters to McCain.

The Republicans have lifted the lid off their rightwing id

Now McCain's supporters are casting Obama as anti-American. This may well scare voters, but not the way they mean to.

A year or two ago, if you'd told me that Barack Obama would be leading John McCain by a seemingly comfortable margin with two weeks to go and asked me what, in their desperation, the Republicans would be talking about to try and scare my fellow Americans into voting against him, I'd have said race. After all, Republicans have race-baited in one form or other in most of our presidential contests since Richard Nixon's time, so it would have seemed impossible to me that they'd miss the chance to do so at a time when Democrats had actually gone to the trouble of nominating an African-American candidate.

It's true that we're hearing racial-code talk here and there. But the main fear tactic being employed now is something else. It's that Obama and his associates - and for that matter his supporters and even the regions of the country that he's destined to carry - are anti-American.'

Last Friday, in North Carolina, Sarah Palin told a rally that she was proud to be "with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation". She means here of course that there are anti-American areas of America, and they are where the liberals live, and the people there are voting for Mr Anti-America.

This was especially interesting coming from a woman whose husband, Todd Palin, was until just six years ago an enrolled member of a rightwing fringe political party that wanted the state of Alaska to secede from the US. But if you understand rightwing logic, then you'd know that Mr Palin had no choice but to join the Alaska Independence party in 1995, because by that time the America he thought he knew and loved had been brought to ruin by the liberals and socialists and America-haters. See?

Likewise, earlier this month, Joe McCain, the brother of John, said that Alexandria and Arlington, the two major cities in the northern Virginia suburbs that lie just across the Potomac River from Washington, were "communist country" as far as he was concerned. His brother lives in Arlington when in the nation's capital for work, and his brother's campaign is headquartered there as well, but never mind. A McCain spokeswoman offered a wan apology at the time, but lo and behold, just last Saturday a different McCain spokes-woman said on television that while Obama would perform well in northern Virginia, "the rest of the state - real Virginia if you will - I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain's message". This did not seem a planned one-liner. The spokeswoman made the fatal error of saying what she actually thinks. Republican Virginia equals real Virginia. Democratic Virginia is alien and impure.

Do you folks do this sort of thing in Britain? I know there's something about the chap on the Clapham omnibus who's supposed to represent some kind of middling everyman. And I know you've got your xenophobes just like we do. But trust me. You don't have a right wing that's anything like our right wing.

This point was proved most dramatically by a woman named Michele Bachmann, a member of Congress from Minnesota. In an interview last Friday on Hardball, a leading US cable talk show, host Chris Matthews asked Bachmann whether Obama worried her. "Absolutely. I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views," she said. He asked her what she thought distinguished liberal from hard left from anti-American. If she maintains such distinctions in her mind, she refused to acknowledge them. Then, finally, Matthews - who deftly fed her the rope to hang herself - asked her how many members of the US Congress held, in her view, anti-American views.

It's been almost a two-year campaign. There have been moments we've thought of as memorable, only to see the tide of events erase their mark from the sand. Bachmann's answer, however, will live imperishably: "What I would say - what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating exposé and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an exposé like that."

Before we go any further - who is this Bachmann? She's a first-term backbencher from exurban Minneapolis who says the Lord told her to run for Congress. She declared herself "a fool for Christ" in 2006 when she announced her candidacy. By all accounts she's down with the whole rightwing Christian package: immigrants bring disease and pestilence, homosexuals want to indoctrinate straight children, and so on. Republican leadership undoubtedly pushed her out on to television because she is, as you Brits say, a looker - at least by the standards of Congress.

The call for an investigation into the beliefs of every federal lawmaker, and an exposé of those found wanting in their patriotism, certainly takes us into deeply creepy territory. I would not call Bachmann herself a fascist. Odd as it sounds, to do so would be to grant her far too much credit. For one to embrace an -ism, even a repugnant one, one needs to have read a certain amount of history and political philosophy. Bachmann is just an idiot. She wouldn't know Edmund Burke from Billie Burke (she played the good witch in the Wizard of Oz), and she obviously has no idea that, in her rejection of the two bedrock American principles of separation of church and state and freedom of thought, she is the one who is as anti-American as they come.

But friends, all is not darkness. Bachmann's appearance caused a national uproar. Colin Powell, in endorsing Obama yesterday, said of Bachmann's comments that "we have got to stop this kind of nonsense and pull ourselves together". Her Democratic opponent raised nearly half a million dollars from around the country in just 24 hours, and he now has a chance of beating her.

That would be nice. But let's go back to the big contest. With Bachmann, the lid came off the rightwing id. It will happen many more times over these next two weeks. McCain, now openly using the word "socialist" to describe Obama's proposals (the week after his friend George W Bush took federal control of nine major banks!), and especially Palin have shown every sign of encouraging it. Their goal is to scare Americans about Obama, but moderate, independent voters might well decide that Obama looks a lot less scary than they do.

Here's a column about Crist (our governor) and his take on what's going on with him and McCain. He makes some good points. Of course, it's the author's speculation....

Wales and Jess might find this particularly interesting cuz we were discussing the Crist/McCain split sometime last week.

Crist knows that Obama will beat McCain

Palin and McCain disagree on federal gay marriage ban

Posted: 09:35 AM ET

“I'm not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do, should and should not do,” she said. “But I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that's casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it's the foundation of our society is that strong family and that's based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.”

OH, boy. I wish Casey or Brian were on here so that they could explain how this statement is possibly rational. My liberal eyes can't see it. How can you be against gay marriage, but you're not sitting in a seat of judgement telling what they can and can't do? And will someone finally tell me how allowing gay marriage destroys the fabric of "traditional" marriage? As it is, half of all marriages end in divorce. That statistic alone destroys the notion of "traditional" marriage? Sigh...