Out of ideas. Out of touch. Out of time.

[Xyun]

New Obama Ad on point - http://link.brightcove.com/services/lin ... 1840831890


And as for my prediction:




The polls and the nation are starting to congeal:

fivethirtyeight.com -



Electoral-vote.com -



Realclearpolitics.com -




hmmm...

[Animalor]

out of bandwidth...

[Ashur]

Blue Ohio? Now who's out of touch? Now, call me batshit insane, but I don't see that prediction coming from any of the Ohio-based posters on this board.

P.S. Are you going to start a new thread for each ad left this campaign?

[Boogahz]

P.S. Are you going to start a new thread for each ad left this campaign?

No shit. This is the annoying part. Xyun is coming across as a religious wackjob.

[Spang]

It'll all be over soon.

[laneela]

Ash, I don't really know many people from Ohio but a lot of pundits are giving Ohio to Obama. I also don't see that prediction coming from many Ohio-based posters on here but I'm taking into consideration that some/most of those posters are pretty far off to the right, which means that the likelihood of them surrounding themselves with people who share political stances are pretty high. I'm pretty much a left-liberal. Not-coincidentaly, I only personally know of exactly ONE person voting McCain (my dad). I'm not foolish enough to think that that ratio is symbolic of how my state will vote though.

[Canelek]

Well, I wouldn't give Ohio to Obama quite yet. The latest CNN polls had him slightly ahead there. I found that quite shocking that it was close. Considering I know like 7 people in Ohio, and they are all Republican, I figured that ratio was about right.

[Fairweather Pure]

It's hard to find Republicans in Michigan. They're pretty easy to spot once a political conversation starts because they hang their head and sulk. I don't blame them. It takes a special person to contribut to a political conversation when you're outnumbered 10 to 1.

[Traz-KOE]

I'd like to see Xyun's map realized, but I'm not quite optimistic enough to see Indiana flipping just yet. I would predict between 329-364 depending on how Ohio and/or North Carolina flip.

[Ashur]

The one thing going for Obama this election is the changes to the voting process. I could go vote today if I wanted. I imagine the get-out-the-vote Dem groups are driving around in buses and taking people from homeless shelters and poor neighborhoods over to Veteran's Memorial Auditorium with Democratic Party Sample Ballots. This change does get more people voting who would not have in the past, which I'm not against. Every citizen deserves the right to vote. That said I wonder if there are any abuses going on.

I wouldn't rule it out entirely, but I don't believe it's the left-wing slam dunk you think it is. Outside of the greater Cleveland area and completely urban counties, Ohio is very conservative, which is why it has traditionally been a swing state.

[Sylvus]

It's hard to find Republicans in Michigan. They're pretty easy to spot once a political conversation starts because they hang their head and sulk. I don't blame them. It takes a special person to contribut to a political conversation when you're outnumbered 10 to 1.

I disagree with that. My family has traditionally been Republican (though I think everyone is voting Obama this year) and my girlfriend is a Republican. I think it's more to do with the current administration than anything else. Hell, in 2000 and 2004 it was still pretty close. This year I don't think it will be, but only because of how poorly the Republicans have done over the last 8 years.

[Leonaerd]

It's hard to find Republicans in Michigan. They're pretty easy to spot once a political conversation starts because they hang their head and sulk. I don't blame them. It takes a special person to contribut to a political conversation when you're outnumbered 10 to 1.

Over in the Rochester / Bloomfield / Royal Oak sector of the suburbs of Detroit where I'm from, it's difficult to find Democrats. It seems everybody is a Jesus fearing McCain lover. And they're not the sulky type. They're the "how dare you not believe in the one true Christ??" type of condescending asshole.

[Fairweather Pure]

Sylvus and Leonaerd, I am using the Funkmaster theory of "everything I see is the way it is everywhere else". So fuck off and die, you are stupid retards, and if I ever see you IRL I will spit on you.

[Canelek]

Everyone in the northern-middle US wears green sweatshrits, cheese hats, says "oh ya, you betcha" all the time and has to coat the bottoms of their Durangos with sealant because of all the FUCKING SALT on the roads.

AMIRITE?

[Xyun]

I'll admit I don't know much about the Ohio electorate, but I can tell you from what I've seen in Florida that things do not look good for McCain at all. There are so many things working against the Republicans this year that they would need an enormous outside event to change the trajectory of the election. Voting here in Florida begins Oct. 20th and I already have a few people who I will be taking to the polls for early voting. When Palin came to Florida she went to the most heavily blood red conservative areas for her rallies. The McCain campaign seems to be ignoring swing voters and independents, which I think they will need to win. There are even significant portions of the Republican base that are apathetic towards McCain. Obama doesn't need Ohio nor Florida. If he simply manages to keep all of Kerry's states and picks up Iowa (12 point lead) and Virginia (10 point lead) and he's won. But as I mentioned in my blog, Obama is a political phenomenon the likes of which we have not seen in at least decades. Consider that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama has a double digit lead nationally against an American war hero. Man I love this country.

[Canelek]

Actually, he has a chance in Virginia...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/09/ ... topstories

Regardless of the outcome, I am proud that many voters are shrugging off the status quo and voting for something (someone) new.

Buncha mavericks, we USAdians, dontcha know?

[Xyun]

Please watch this -

http://www.opinionazi.com/Opinionazi/Bl ... tions.html

[Spang]

Unfortunately, our choices for president during the last eight years have been rather shitty. I don't think Gore would have done well during 9/11. Bush was the right man for that catastrophe, but he became exponentially worse as his presidency moved forward.

[Sylvus]

I don't think Gore would have done well during 9/11. Bush was the right man for that catastrophe, but he became exponentially worse as his presidency moved forward.

What exactly did Bush do that you don't think Gore would have been capable of?

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

Keep the econonmy afloat for as long as he did. Enact unpopular safety precautions to ensure no other attacks occurred on US soil for 8 years.

[miir]

Enact unpopular safety precautions to ensure no other attacks occurred on US soil for 8 years.

Aren't US embassies considered US soil?

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

They would be considered US territory, but last I checked they were not sitting inside of the US borders. Do you always feel the need to be a fuckwit or is it only when you have nothing useful to enlighten us with?

[Canelek]

I think Gore would have royally fucked things up. Bush did a great job after the attacks, up until Iraq and Homeland Security.

[Spang]

I don't think Gore would have done well during 9/11. Bush was the right man for that catastrophe, but he became exponentially worse as his presidency moved forward.

What exactly did Bush do that you don't think Gore would have been capable of?

I have no idea. I was kind of hoping no one would ask.

[Bubba Grizz]

Just driving down the road here in Green Bay I can see republican signs lining the lawns but very few democratic signs. Our state is mainly listed as democratic but I believe that is because of the two biggest cities, Madison and Milwaukee. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.

[Nick]

http://www.slate.com/id/2202163/

I used to nod wisely when people said: "Let's discuss issues rather than personalities." It seemed so obvious that in politics an issue was an issue and a personality was a personality, and that the more one could separate the two, the more serious one was. After all, in a debate on serious issues, any mention of the opponent's personality would be ad hominem at best and at worst would stoop as low as ad feminam.

At my old English boarding school, we had a sporting saying that one should "tackle the ball and not the man." I carried on echoing this sort of unexamined nonsense for quite some time—in fact, until the New Hampshire primary of 1992, when it hit me very forcibly that the "personality" of one of the candidates was itself an "issue." In later years, I had little cause to revise my view that Bill Clinton's abysmal character was such as to be a "game changer" in itself, at least as important as his claim to be a "new Democrat." To summarize what little I learned from all this: A candidate may well change his or her position on, say, universal health care or Bosnia. But he or she cannot change the fact—if it happens to be a fact—that he or she is a pathological liar, or a dimwit, or a proud ignoramus. And even in the short run, this must and will tell.

On "the issues" in these closing weeks, there really isn't a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their "debates" have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.

I suppose it could be said, as Michael Gerson has alleged, that the Obama campaign's choice of the word erratic to describe McCain is also an insinuation. But really, it's only a euphemism. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear had to feel sorry for the old lion on his last outing and wish that he could be taken somewhere soothing and restful before the night was out. The train-wreck sentences, the whistlings in the pipes, the alarming and bewildered handhold phrases—"My friends"—to get him through the next 10 seconds. I haven't felt such pity for anyone since the late Adm. James Stockdale humiliated himself as Ross Perot's running mate. And I am sorry to have to say it, but Stockdale had also distinguished himself in America's most disastrous and shameful war, and it didn't qualify him then and it doesn't qualify McCain now.

The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.

A fairly accurate and deservedly disgusted take on the current McCain joke of a campaign.

[Drolgin Steingrinder]

I can't stand Christopher Hitchens. He's the smuggest bastard ever, regardless of how many of his views I may sympathize with.

[Nick]

I completely agree with you. He's still right though.

[Zaelath]

Keep the econonmy afloat for as long as he did. Enact unpopular safety precautions to ensure no other attacks occurred on US soil for 8 years.

Ahahaha, still selling the elephant repellant.

[Kwonryu DragonFist]

Pity there weren't a green (Ordos) faction going for presidency as well.

Then the regions would look more interesting!