US 08 Presidential Campaign General Discussion Thread #8

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i still don't think there's any equivocation to be made between the utterly false McCain ads on the "lipstick/pig" lie or the "comprehensive sex ed" lie.

McCain has disgraced himself and his campaign. he'll say and do anything to win. he thinks voters are stupid and he continuously insults his supporters.

It's just smart politics, even if it is assuming the worst about American society. He knows what will get on the front page of the rags, he knows what the media will discuss and debate ad nauseum.
If a lie is told on the news, the truth will only be discovered by those who do the research themselves. You can't expect even 10% of American voters to look up the facts. Maybe the independents who have yet to swing one way or the other, or the political diehards who will look up everything anyway. You have to deal what you're given.

I guarantee I'm going to get an "Obama hates women" or even "Obama hates pigs... cause he's a MUSLIM!" email forward sometime this week. The other side will use it as fodder to convince the undecided and anger the supporter. I can't tell you how many times I've had to reply to these emails with the quotes put into context to disprove the original "point."
 
Ouch.

Back in 2000, after John McCain lost his mostly honorable campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he went about apologizing to journalists--including me--for his most obvious mis-step: his support for keeping the confederate flag on the state house.

Now he is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I've ever seen in presidential politics, so sleazy that I won't abet its spread by linking to it, but here's the McClatchy fact check.

I just can't wait for the moment when John McCain--contrite and suddenly honorable again in victory or defeat--talks about how things got a little out of control in the passion of the moment. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.

Apology Not Accepted - Swampland - TIME
 
^ hence, John McCain has just failed a test of basic integrity.

i don't believe he is fit to be president.

But 90% of Americans won't care about this. The only people these ads can affect at this point are the independents. The right is going to
vote for him anyway, regardless of what he says or does. Same with Obama and the liberals.
There's no point in you saying you've lost your respect for him, or think he's fit to be president because you wouldn't vote for him regardless! Unless you plan on campaigning for Obama and can use this argument to sway others. :wink:
I think everyone in FYM has already decided who they are voting for anyway, which makes the debate more about fun than facts. Maybe this is where deep is coming from? :hmm:

I guess my point is that most people are stupid, but that would be just stating the obvious.
 
Meanwhile librul Business Week published this librul lie:

So where does the reality lie? According to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture between the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, two Washington think tanks, this round goes to Obama. The TPC took a look at the various tax proposals put forth by the two candidates and estimated that Obama's plan would lead to a boost in aftertax income for all but the highest earners, while taking a smaller bite out of government tax revenues than would McCain's plans.

...

"It's just flat wrong" to say people would do worse under Obama, says Burman. "Most lower- and middle-class people would pay less taxes under Obama than they would under the proposals being put forth by McCain."

Obama vs. McCain: Taxing and Spending
 
As an aside: Am I remembering this wrong or did John McCain say that there would not be negative attack ads coming from him? Or maybe it was something about negative attack ads not working. Someone around here might have the quote handy...
 
Meanwhile librul Business Week published this librul lie:



what communists! John McCain's very own ads have told me that if i made more than $42K a year then Obama will raise my taxes.

and John McCain is a Straight Talker. so it must be true.
 
Another day, another ridiculous ad.

What's with the Republican obsession with wolves?

If Obama is the big bad wolf, does that make Palin one of the three little pigs?

YouTube - Fact Check
 
As an aside: Am I remembering this wrong or did John McCain say that there would not be negative attack ads coming from him? Or maybe it was something about negative attack ads not working. Someone around here might have the quote handy...



i don't like posting the blog posts of others, but since this post has been linked to by several blogs, i'm going to post it here because it so perfectly puts what's happened since Palin in perspective. and this comes from gay catholic Tory and former neocon Bush-endorsing-in-2000 McCain fan Andrew Sullivan:


McCain's Integrity

10 Sep 2008 01:40 pm

For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?

So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.

And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil.

He capitulated and enshrined torture as the policy of the United States, by allowing the CIA to use techniques as bad as and worse than the torture inflicted on him in Vietnam. He gave the war criminals in the White House retroactive immunity against the prosecution they so richly deserve. The enormity of this moral betrayal, this betrayal of his country's honor, has yet to sink in. But for my part, it now makes much more sense. He is not the man I thought he was.

And when he had the chance to engage in a real and substantive debate against the most talented politician of the next generation in a fall campaign where vital issues are at stake, what did McCain do? He began his general campaign with a series of grotesque, trivial and absurd MTV-style attacks on Obama's virtues and implied disgusting things about his opponent's patriotism.

And then, because he could see he was going to lose, ten days ago, he threw caution to the wind and with no vetting whatsoever, picked a woman who, by her decision to endure her own eight-month pregnancy of a Down Syndrome child in public, that he was going to reignite the culture war as a last stand against Obama. That's all that is happening right now: a massive bump in the enthusiasm of the Christianist base. This is pure Rove.

Yes, McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country's national security would pick as his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has proved it.
 
As an aside: Am I remembering this wrong or did John McCain say that there would not be negative attack ads coming from him? Or maybe it was something about negative attack ads not working. Someone around here might have the quote handy...

I think maybe you mean this from his memoir?
Houston Chronicle, Aug. 30

"I responded by getting angry on the stump and running negative ads about my opponent that only raised the toxic level of the primary," McCain wrote in his memoir, Worth the Fighting For, co-authored with longtime aide Mark Salter. "We should have refuted the above-the-radar attacks in our own ads, challenged (Bush's) positions, and in my speeches stuck to the message of reform and patriotism."

ETA:

Or maybe this?
CNN, April 28 2008

I've pledged to conduct a respectful campaign and I've urged time after time various entities within the Republican Party to also do that.

Or this?
National Review, April 25

There are many differences between our parties and differences between myself and Senator Obama, and I want this race to be about those differences.

...I want the best kind of campaign and most positive kind of campaign.

The O'Reilly Factor, May 9

Well, look, I want to have a respectful campaign. That's what Americans really want.
 
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I could say this exact thing about Obama. It's politics. :shrug:
Unreal. Your candidate does this and suddenly it's politics?

Sometimes conservatives make me legitimately angry. This is one of those times.
show me any Obama ad that has the same level of dishonesty as the two ads released by McCain yesterday.

ask better of your candidate. he is degrading you as a supporter.

:waits:
 
Sarah Palin and the Republican party: what a bunch of complainers and whiners.

Whining about the biased media, whining about unfair attacks, whining about sexism. When Hillary Clinton I mean, Sarah Palin is talking to bad men like Robert Mugabe or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is she going to whine to the media about being treated unfairly by them?
 
I think maybe you mean this from his memoir?

:up:

I feel the same way about negative ads as I do about trashing your opponent personally on television: It's uncalled for and unclassy. Both sides do it and it drives me up the wall. Is there really not much to your platform and you have to resort to ad hominem attacks then perhaps you shouldn't be running for president.

Too bad the honor system sucks. :down:

I'm curious to see Obama's negative attack ads.
 
Here is the latest from GALLUP:



Gallup Daily: McCain 48%, Obama 43% Nine percent undecided in latest average

September 10, 2008

PRINCETON, NJ -- The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update finds John McCain continuing to lead Barack Obama, 48% to 43% among registered voters.

The Sept. 7-9 average -- spanning interviewing conducted Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday -- finds little substantive change in the shape of the race compared to earlier this week, although each of the two candidate's level of support has dropped a point compared to the Tuesday's reported average. Nine percent of registered voters say they are undecided, refuse to state their preference, say they will vote for neither McCain nor Obama, or indicate they are voting for another candidate.

Gallup Daily: McCain 48%, Obama 43%
 
Then there's Joe Biden, supposedly the common man, the every man -in touch with his voters.

At a rally he was tipped that a state senator was there, so Joe being Joe ask the senator to "stand up" trouble was the senator was confined to a wheel chair.

Way to go Joe, way to know your constituents.

YouTube - Joe Biden Tells Chuck Graham to Stand Up

<>
 
RealClearPolitics HorseRaceBlog

By Jay Cost
« Thoughts on McCain's Speech | HorseRaceBlog Home Page

September 10, 2008
Obama On His Heels
This campaign has taken a surprising turn since the Democratic convention. Everybody is still talking about the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

Who would have predicted this just two weeks ago?

When I say everybody is talking about Governor Palin, I mean everybody. It's not just that Palin has excited the Republican base and intrigued the press corps. She's also gotten the notice of Barack Obama. The Democratic nominee has singled Palin out for criticism on earmarks in general and the "Bridge To Nowhere" in particular.

This is peculiar. Typically, a presidential nominee does not criticize his opponent's veep. This becomes doubly peculiar when we consider that just a week ago the Obama campaign indicated plans to ignore Palin altogether:

The Obama campaign has no silver bullet to use against the Palin (sic). Instead, Obama has decided to largely avoid directly engaging her and will instead keep his focus largely on John McCain and on linking the Republican ticket to President George W. Bush. The Obama campaign will leave Palin to navigate the same cycle of celebrity that Obama has weathered, and the same peril that her nascent image will be defined by questions and contradictions from her Alaska past.

The reason for the change must be what the ABC News/Washington Post poll found - a huge swing toward McCain-Palin among white women. This is a very important voting bloc, as the following chart makes clear:


The GOP improved it's showing among white men by 17 points between 1996 and 2004. Among white women it improved by 16 points. This is how an 8.5-point Republican defeat transformed into a 2.4-point Republican victory.

The ABC News poll that set tongues wagging has McCain up 12 among white women - about the same margin as the final result in 2004. I had been inclined to write those results off, as I figured a post-convention poll like that is not indicative of where the race is heading. However, the course correction of the Obama campaign inclines me to believe that there might be something going on here. On September 4th, his campaign said that it was not planning to directly criticize Palin. On September 8th, it released an ad directly criticizing her. You don't do that kind of 180 unless something is up.

The Obama campaign's decision to attack is a risky one. Negative campaigns are always tricky, but this one is especially so. To some degree, Palin has been treated unfairly since her debut as McCain's vice-president. What the McCain campaign wants to do is tie all criticisms of Palin to the unfair ones, and ultimately remind people of how Hillary Clinton was treated. Team McCain is especially eager to do this for anything that comes out of Obama's mouth - hence the "lipstick on a pig" spot, which in turn induced a response from Obama.

We can assign winners and losers in this little skirmish; we can decide who has truth on his side and who does not. But that misses the point. Here we have yet another day when the focus is on the GOP's youthful, smiling, attractive, witty, female vice-presidential nominee. And for yet another day our ears are filled with the sounds of the Democratic nominee decrying how unfair the Republicans are - as if only one side hits below the belt.



Ultimately, I'm not a huge believer in the importance of "winning" news cycles. I do think, however, that the battle for the news cycle is an exhibition of a campaign's ability to move its message. And it has become clear that the McCain campaign is better at this. This "lipstick on a pig" incident will probably not affect a single vote - but it shows that the McCain campaign is ready and able to defend any real gains it might have made among white women. Once again, it's doing a better job getting its message across.

Nobody would have predicted this on June 3rd. That was the day Obama boldly stood in the Excel Energy Center and proclaimed an exciting new moment in American politics. Meanwhile McCain, sweating profusely, stood in front of a green screen and gave a rambling, disjointed speech. The contrast in messages was stark. Three months later, it's just as stark - but now it's Obama that's sweating and McCain that's exciting. What a turnaround.


RealClearPolitics - HorseRaceBlog - Obama On His Heels



There is still light out there for the Democrats. The first post convention poll still shows them with a three point lead in Colorado and with Iowa and New Mexico certain to go blue this year, unless the Republicans can keep Colorado red, they will need to pick up a blue state from 2004 in order to win. Republicans can be impressed with polls showing they are up 7 points in Ohio, only behind by 2 in Pennsylvania, behind by 1 in Michigan and behind by 3 in Wisconsin. Curiously, the latest SurveyUSA poll in Washington State has McCain only behind by 4 points. No new poll yet for Oregon which tends to be more conservative than Washington. A new poll for New Hampshire is also needed considering how close that race had become before the conventions.
 
Republicans can be impressed with polls showing they are up 7 points in Ohio, only behind by 2 in Pennsylvania, behind by 1 in Michigan and behind by 3 in Wisconsin.

Regarding Ohio, that depends on which poll you're looking at. Two polls were held there shortly after eachother. One showed a small lead for Obama, the other the lead for McCain. Taken together, they're slightly in favour of McCain, though within error margins.
And interestingly, a post-GOP convention poll shows a tie in Florida (changed from a small lead by McCain).
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
 
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yes, i think mac needs to focus on col, nev, new mex, fla and maybe new hampshire.

theres a lot of time let, w debates to go thru as well.

<>
 
Regarding Ohio, that depends on which poll you're looking at. Two polls were held there shortly after eachother. One showed a small lead for Obama, the other the lead for McCain. Taken together, they're slightly in favour of McCain, though within error margins.
And interestingly, a post-GOP convention poll shows a tie in Florida (changed from a small lead by McCain).
Electoral-vote.com: President, Senate, House Updated Daily

I think realclearpolitics has more recent updated polling:


RealClearPolitics - Electoral Map

Just click on the state for the polling data.
 
CNN, April 28 2008

I've pledged to conduct a respectful campaign and I've urged time after time various entities within the Republican Party to also do that.

It appears that John McCain's word

doesn't mean much.

I wonder what pledges he would renege on

If he were President?
 
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