The Presidential Race 08

[Sir_Cliff]

I agree Obama's fluidity could be better off script, but at least when he gets going, he has solid well thought out responses that have clear answers (see the Oreilly vs. Obama transcript) and I believe he understands what he is saying. He was President of the Harvard law review ya know... Palin was asked questions and she avoided answering them or she gave a response that meandered into another topic.

I agree. Obama can be a little excruciating to listen to in all honesty and someone needs to tell him to watch the umming and ahhing... but at least he gives answers that indicate he knows what he's talking about. The O'Reilly interview is a good example. Palin clearly has no idea about foreign policy which is understandable as she probably had no reason to think too hard about it until McCain plucked her out of nowhere to be his VP nominee.

As for the McCain campaign, boy, they are stooping pretty low:

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The best line of the interview was when she said "you can actually see Russia from an island in Alaska...." Does that give her the proper national security cred to run a country??? Hillarious.

Ah yes, that was a good one!

[Dignan]

I must continue to give the governor credit here. She's been the VP nominee for, what, two weeks? Out of nowhere! Alaska..literally nowhere! Gibson is just grilling her about foreign policy, and rightly so, and she admits to having no experience without making excuses for it but offers an opinion, maybe a naive opinion, but a strong opinion for each of his questions. When he asked her three times if we have the right of preemptive strikes she answered in the affirmative all three times and he looked, to me, like an a--hole for repeating the question because he didn't hear Y-E-S. What politician answers yes or no to anything for God's sake! She did not come across as dumb and I'll give her credit for that. Whether she really is or not.. well some of the stuff I've read and heard from her past might make one wonder but we seem to have little interest in the intelligence of our leaders nowadays.

As to Ron Paul's comments; I looked at Obama's 40-something page issue statement, it's on his website, and was surprised at how far from conservative his thoughts are. Very pleasantly surprised. So why am I surprised? I may be missing something but he's always seemed to me, publicly, so middle-of-the-road. I guess he and McCain are very different after all. Dammit what the democrats need is a screaming, unabashed, "looney" liberal!

edit (the McCain ad): OMG he's scolding Barack Obama! hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

[Mortimer]

I must continue to give the governor credit here. She's been the VP nominee for, what, two weeks? Out of nowhere! Alaska..literally nowhere! Gibson is just grilling her about foreign policy, and rightly so, and she admits to having no experience without making excuses for it but offers an opinion, maybe a naive opinion, but a strong opinion for each of his questions.

Did we watch the same thing? She totally avoided his first foreign policy question and went onto this debate about oil and energy, something she has some experience with since oil flows beneath her feet. How exactly does knowing a little about pipelines teach you how to deal with leaders like Putin? I say that was a stretch. Her strong opinions to me seemed well rehearsed and programmed as if she didn't know what the heck she was talking about.

[Darkbeer]

Interesting comments in a news article from the UK...


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle4735295.ece

The essential problem coming to light is a profound disconnect between the Barack Obama of the candidate's speeches, and the Barack Obama who has actually been in politics for the past decade or so.

Speechmaker Obama has built his campaign on the promise of reform, the need to change the culture of American political life, to take on the special interests that undermine government's effectiveness and erode trust in the system itself,

Politician Obama rose through a Chicago machine that is notoriously the most corrupt in the country. As David Freddoso writes in a brilliantly cogent and measured book, The Case Against Barack Obama, the angel of deliverance from the old politics functioned like an old-time Democratic pol in Illinois. He refused repeatedly to side with those lonely voices that sought to challenge the old corrupt ways of the ruling party.

Speechmaker Obama talks about an era of bipartisanship, He speaks powerfully about the destructive politics of red and blue states.

Politician Obama has toed his party's line more reliably than almost any other Democrat in US politics. He has a near-perfect record of voting with his side. He has the most solidly left-wing voting history in the Senate. His one act of bipartisanship, a transparency bill co-sponsored with a Republican senator, was backed by everybody on both sides of the aisle. He has never challenged his party's line on any issue of substance.

Speechmaker Obama talks a lot about finding ways to move beyond the bloody battlegrounds of the “culture wars” in America; the urgent need to establish consensus on the emotive issue of abortion.

Politician Obama's support for abortion rights is the most extreme of any Democratic senator. In the Illinois legislature he refused to join Democrats and Republicans in supporting a Bill that would require doctors to provide medical care for babies who survived abortions. No one in the Senate - not the arch feminist Hillary Clinton nor the superliberal Edward Kennedy - opposed this same humane measure.

Here's the real problem with Mr Obama: the jarring gap between his promises of change and his status quo performance. There are just too many contradictions between the eloquent poetry of the man's stirring rhetoric and the dull, familiar prose of his political record.

[Mortimer]

Bottome line though. McCain = Bad, very bad. Obama= Good, very good.

[club33az]

Well, there's an open mind.

[Mortimer]

I like to keep it simple.

[club33az]

My heart completely goes out to Palin. She in for the raking of her life. I hope she's up to it.

And again, my question is: Given how unpopularity of W and the war in Iraq and McCains strong support for it, given how "everyone" has Obama fever, why is it even close???? McCain must be doing something right and just calling McCain a clone of W is not going to get the job done and we'll be looking at 4 more years of the White House being red. And once again, the Democrats will snatch up defeat, on the eve of what should be their greatest victory.

And props to MickeyMan for reminding us all that news is not only obtainable thru the mainstream.

[club33az]

I like to keep it simple.

I feel ya.......

[Sir_Cliff]

My heart completely goes out to Palin. She in for the raking of her life. I hope she's up to it.

And again, my question is: Given how unpopularity of W and the war in Iraq and McCains strong support for it, given how "everyone" has Obama fever, why is it even close???? McCain must be doing something right and just calling McCain a clone of W is not going to get the job done and we'll be looking at 4 more years of the White House being red. And once again, the Democrats will snatch up defeat, on the eve of what should be their greatest victory.

Obama always seemed to me like a riskier candidate than the media made him out to be. For one thing, he's an African American with Hussein for a middle name and that means not only will a lot of people automatically vote for the other guy but that he'll have a bunch of other African American leaders come out of the woodwork to embarrass him and alienate him further from the mainstream. His biography is also not really one that many people can relate to. He's quite young and has a fairly short resume while the world seems like a dangerous and unstable place right now. Again, this makes it easy to pray on voter fears along the lines of "is this guy ready?" Finally, he's not a very compelling debater or interviewee and has trouble articulating his case clearly outside of scripted speeches. Put all of this together and it's not hard to create enough public unease about him to at least have people willing to consider an option they otherwise wouldn't.

McCain is a safe if not ideal choice who people know and generally like on a personal level.

I think Hillary would have been a surer bet for the Dems, but who knows. When you get past all the image consultant crap, she is quite compelling when talking about policy specific and the issues whether it's in a speech or off the cuff. She is also a safe, known quantity.