If Obama wins

[carsoutback]

yes just like Blair, lots of nice rhetoric.

What exactly were you expecting other than rhetoric? Like Blair? Yeah right, we'll see. I guess you would criticize the early writings of Ghandi, Mandela and others, who had power in those words, as just rhetoric too.

The guy has been all over the shop on trade as just one example. Also deviated all over the place re Israel. Nor could he explain how he was going to pay for health care and balance the budget.

So you agree that he was heavily scrutinsed on these issues then? That was the point made. Yes he certainly did at times deviate on some issues - hardly an unusual occurrence for any candidate in any election. I mean, you don't need to "deviate" unless you are being pressured to explain in more detail, huh? More than 80% of all Jews voted for him, so perhaps his policies on Israel finally made sense to those who would view it as a key issue (at least more sense than the other guy's).

Howard was in govt at the time.

You are right. I was wrong on that. You obviously agree with the rest tho.

 

[bit_pattern]

It seems to escape you that so too are aboriginals.

SO basically anyone who isn´t from Africa is an immigrant? Sterling logic there, my man!

 

[KissStephanie]

McCain briefly enjoyed a narrow lead when he had a convention and Post-Palin bounce.

I disagree. It was more than just convention bounce because it had lasted too long for that, and the Democratic convention had not created the same bounce for Obama. At the time of the market crash, the Republican Party had definitely been reinvigorated.

That bounce was always likely to subside -- that's why they're called 'bounces'.

It wasn't bounce alone though, but of course Obama was going to surge again because he was spending twice as much money, and the media were campaigning for him. When the market crashed, it just reminded America of how bad Bush has been, and that changed the race for good. McCain stated that he was suspending his campaign. Dubya's head was on telly again when nobody wanted to see or hear from him ever again. People then flocked back to Obama.

The fact is that for all but two brief and narrow moments of McCain ascendancy, Obama has led the head-to-head contest with McCain for the last 11 months.

I'm not sure if it was only two brief moments in the past eleven months or not, but that doesn't change the fact and my point that McCain was leading, and the GOP were invigorated at the time of the Wall Street meltdown.

As for the length of McCain's bounce, on 538.com Nate Silver was predicting that McCain would enjoy a longer bounce than Obama because the GOP convention came after the Dem convention, ie by having their convention hot on the heels of the Dems the GOP could seize the media cycle, giving them an advantage the Dems didn't enjoy with their convention.

The very same Nate Silver also said that the candidate with the larger post-convention poll bounce invariably wins the national popular vote. Therefore, which is it then? Nothing more than a temporary bounce, or a true guide to the popular vote?

According to what you're saying, Silver said both in that case, but it had to be one or the other. McCain was receiving more than just post-convention bounce, and it took something else to change that, and then along came Dubya again to remind everyone what a Republican in the White House can do.

Silver predicted this long before the GOP convention and before the financial meltdown -- McCain's performance in the polls fell neatly within Silver's predictions.

Well in that case, Silver was wrong, unless of course he predicted the market crash as well. According to what you're saying here, you seem to think that McCain's rise and fall in the polls following the GOP convention was expected and typical and that the market crash had no effect on that. Is the correct? If so, then I completely disagree of course.

So it's a very dubious argument to say that McCain had a sustainable lead that was only reversed by the financial crisis. (If that is, in fact, what you're saying.)

I didn't say that McCain had a sustainable lead that was only reversed by a finacial crisis. I said that McCain was leading in the polls when the finacial crisis hit, and then his standing in the polls dramatically shifted. I also feel that without the finacial crisis, the general election would have been a lot closer.

I also said that Obama was sure to surge again anyway because of his spending, and the help he was receiving from the media. I think the polls on the morning of election day would have been much closer if the finacial crisis had not occurred is in fact all that I am saying.

McCain has had at least two fights with cancer and would've been the oldest president elected into office -- you don't think that this would make the identity and wherewithal of his running mate of extreme importance?

McCain was going to be a one-term president if he won, and the chances of his health being a major factor in that period of time are small. If people were thinking about his second term, then that would be more of a concern, but I didn't think that he would have won more than one-term because of the age he will be in 2012, and not so much about the age that he is now.

If McCain had won this election, the Democrats were always still going to keep control of Congress, so that if anything did happen to McCain in those first four years, then Palin would not have been able to do or change anything anyway. She would not have been given a centimetre of course.

FFS, according to Fox News, Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent and not a country. Given how little was known about her, given her evident lack of suitability, and given how little access the media were given to her, it's no wonder that scrutiny of her went through the roof.

Both the Republican VP candidate, and the Democratic Presidential candidate said some shockers this year regarding their lack of foreign policy experience and credentials, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Palin was in no way qualified to be president. She wasn't running for president though.

The McCain campaign did the right thing by giving her little access to the media. The Obama campaign also did the right thing by doing the same with 'gaffe-king' Joe Biden. Both running-mates had to be hidden and protected from the media because they both have made stupid comments, even though you have only mentioned one of them.

Obama will go into office as one of the most scrutinised candidates in history.

Yeah sure. Come on now. It's over, so you can stop with that rubbish now, unless of course you feel that underarm NERF balls is a sign of being highly scrutinised.

Just because most of the media didn't substitute guilt-by-association smears for thought, as you wish they had, doesn't mean that there wasn't scrutiny.

I didn't say that anybody was guilty by association. I said that some of the choices he had made regarding the people he chose to associate with were bone-headed choices. The media were quick to let them go because of Obama speeches that did not explain those choices. That is because approximately 80% of the media were going to vote for Obama according to Politico editors John F. Harris and Jim Vandehei.

 

[carsoutback]

KissStephanie - I think, at the final count, there were 147 separate polls being conducted throughout the election campaign. So it's kinda hard to argue "what the polls were saying" at any one point in time. Yes it would be accurate to say the financial meltdown gave Obama a bump at that time. But most commentators now believe a critical turning point in the election campaign was not the meltdown itself, but the obvious chaos in the McCain camp during those difficult days. The self-suspension of his campaign was such a misstep that McCain needed to quickly offer an apology and admit he got it wrong by doing that. He never recovered from it, the damage was done and the perception of the old-guard being out-of-touch was enhanced. Many Americans couldn't believe that the reaction of a future President to the greatest crisis in the country in 80 years would be to pull such an obvious political stunt. Obama, by any measure, acted with relative calm and and an evenhand. You simply can't ignore this fact, which you have done, when arguing the impact of the meltdown on this election.

Your comments about Palin virtually being nailed to Congress anyway, in the event of her assuming the Presidency (and therefore who really cares who the President is, I guess is what you are saying) defies belief. It certainly is a novel agrument, not one I've ever heard before, so you must get points for that. The statement during the campaign that McCain would only serve for one term just served to reinforce the issue of his age and previous ill-health. Ultimately, another word on the matter need not be ever uttered by the Obama camp (and wasn't from what I can recall). Another serious blunder from McCain.

 

[GuruJane]

KissStephanie - I think, at the final count, there were 147 separate polls being conducted throughout the election campaign. So it's kinda hard to argue "what the polls were saying" at any one point in time. Yes it would be accurate to say the financial meltdown gave Obama a bump at that time.

Kiss is right in that McCain was leading in the average of polls, but his leading average was already declining at the time of the financial meltdown, which she doesn't admit.

But most commentators now believe a critical turning point in the election campaign was not the meltdown itself, but the obvious chaos in the McCain camp during those difficult days. The self-suspension of his campaign was such a misstep that McCain needed to quickly offer an apology and admit he got it wrong by doing that. He never recovered from it, the damage was done and the perception of the old-guard being out-of-touch was enhanced.

Agree 100%. But it wasn't the suspension of the campaign that was most injurious, imo, but McCain's demand that the first debate be postponed. This was ridiculous. McCain should have said "I'm going to Washington to help sort this out, are you?" And then if Obama hadn't gone, McCain would have had the opportunity to nail him with this at the debate. It was an amazingly stupid political misstep at the time in my view.

However, in the event, McCain going to Washington only resulted in the House rejecting the bail-out passage, that was brilliantly orchestrated by Pelosi and Co to deny McCain a political win. McCain was gone from that point.

Your comments about Palin virtually being nailed to Congress anyway, in the event of her assuming the Presidency (and therefore who really cares who the President is, I guess is what you are saying) defies belief. It certainly is a novel agrument, not one I've ever heard before, so you must get points for that.

I don't agree with Kiss about this, because Palin is very, very politically smart.

However I would say that the question of Palin being a "heart beat" away from a 72 year old would have resonated strongly with the indies - and also the Repubs who stayed home and didn't vote - because of the financial meltdown, not because of her more general inexperience. And this added to McCain's complete stuff up.

The statement during the campaign that McCain would only serve for one term just served to reinforce the issue of his age and previous ill-health.

This is not so!! Quite the opposite, in fact. McCain specifically stated he was not running for one term only ... and Palin, when asked about her 2012 ambitions, used to say "campaigning with John McCain for his second term."

Ultimately, another word on the matter need not be ever uttered by the Obama camp (and wasn't from what I can recall). Another serious blunder from McCain.

Didn't happen!.

 

[Palmer Stoat]

Here's the chronology. Lehmann Bros collapsed on Sept 15. As the Pollster composite shows, McCain's support peaked on Sept 7 and Obama's support started rebounding on Sept 9. When you consider that there's a lag between polls being in the field and their results being registered (even daily tracking polls operate on a three-day rolling average), you can probably push those dates even earlier. But whatever the exact turning point was, it preceded the collapse of Lehmann Bros, which was the harbinger of the financial meltdown.

No doubt the financial meltdown helped the Democrats and Obama. But they had the upper hand all along. The reversal in McCain's and Obama's trendlines is due to the campaign regaining its equilibrium once the convention bounces had subsided. It's no coincidence that the brief spike in McCain's vote directly followed the GOP convention (and the Palin selection). It's called a convention bounce, and it was entirely expected. Indeed, some poll-watchers, such as Silver, were able to predict the strength and duration of the bounce with great accuracy.

 

[Palmer Stoat]

However, in the event, McCain going to Washington only resulted in the House rejecting the bail-out passage, that was brilliantly orchestrated by Pelosi and Co to deny McCain a political win. McCain was gone from that point.

The deal had been done until McCain's blundered into frame. McCain's blundering -- it was difficult, initially, to work out where he stood on the bailout -- gave impetus to Repubs who wanted to oppose it. To depict it as some kind of Machiavellian plot by Nancy Pelosi is laying it on a bit thick. McCain's demise was by his own hand.

I don't agree with Kiss about this, because Palin is very, very politically smart.

You have got to be shitting me? Now, even now, you persist with this fantasy about Palin's political shrewdness? On what basis? Please, enlighten me. What has Palin done to suggest that she's 'very, very politically smart'? She has the IQ of a ****ing pencil sharpener. Her campaigning was characterised by one misstep and blunder after another. She's rorted the GOP expense account to buy clothes (which I suppose you think is the height of political savviness), she flubbed the few interviews she was allowed to do, she was so manifestly out of her depth that she was shielded from the media, she became a figure of public ridicule the like of which we haven't seen since 'Spelling Bee with Dan Quayle', and her approval ratings plunged anvil-like over a nine-week period. Now we hear from Fox News that she didn't know Africa was a continent and not a country.

It's not just that she has the knowledge -- outside her own sliver of 'expertise' -- of a middling high-school student, it's that she doesn't appear to have the intellectual heft to correct her deficiencies. She just ain't smart, Jane. A half-smart politician would've been able to finesse his or her way around the kinda blunders she made, would've been able to disguise what they didn't know -- or better yet, would've known more to begin with.

This absurd Palin idolatry is bizarre.

However I would say that the question of Palin being a "heart beat" away from a 72 year old would have resonated strongly with the indies - and also the Repubs who stayed home and didn't vote - because of the financial meltdown, not because of her more general inexperience. And this added to McCain's complete stuff up.

It would've resonated because she was patently not up to the position she was campaigning for, let alone the position she might find herself in should McCain kick the bucket. Incompetence or indequacy remain incompetence and inadequacy whether there's a financial meltdown or not. Her lack of knowledge and intellect, not to mention the divisiveness of her campaigning, would've worried the hell out of a lot of voters on score of different levels -- and only some of them would've been related to the financial crisis.

 

[Palmer Stoat]

I disagree. It was more than just convention bounce because it had lasted too long for that, and the Democratic convention had not created the same bounce for Obama.

To the contrary, Obama experienced a very sharp post-Convention bounce. Just look at the graph: it's there for everyone to see.

 

[GuruJane]

Boring. It wasn't a "Machiavellian" plot of Pelosi's. It was politics 101.

 

[Palmer Stoat]

Boring. It wasn't a "Machiavellian" plot of Pelosi's. It was politics 101.

Oh, well, I stand corrected then.

 

[GuruJane]

Well honestly if Pelosi and Co hadn't made certain that the bill was defeated - in a very clever way, too - I would have been the first on here saying what dills they were

btw have never rated Pelosi as a dill. I think she's great. But then I thought that about Joe Biden, too, and he turned out to be a blithering idiot!