Want McCain to lose?

[bigmick22]

(strocube @ Sep. 07 2008,10:43) It seems to me that this contest is more about who can sell the more convincing narrative to the most people. Sadly, it looks more like a popularity contest than a presidential election.

sadly, that's how it's been for a long time

the american system is setup that way - it basically becomes a beauty contest between 2 individuals

[Lefty]

(bigmick22 @ Sep. 08 2008,03:32)

(strocube @ Sep. 07 2008,10:43) It seems to me that this contest is more about who can sell the more convincing narrative to the most people. Sadly, it looks more like a popularity contest than a presidential election.

sadly, that's how it's been for a long time

the american system is setup that way - it basically becomes a beauty contest between 2 individuals

Unfortunately, the majority of voters are not mentally capable of making the best decision. It comes down to style over substance too, as well as whom the voter feels he can best relate to, not who is going to do him the most good.

[bigmick22]

yes - worked for Reagan and worked for Bush

Oh well

[Road Runner]

(bigmick22 @ Sep. 07 2008,19:32) it basically becomes a beauty contest between 2 individuals

Unfortunately elections in the UK are becoming a straight copy of the US  -  only thing is we throw in a third candidate who is only ever going to come third.

I think Strocube's post nailed the situation pretty well.
Obama should win as he is easily the better candidate  -  at least in my opinion  -  I thought the same of Al Gore!
But as Strocube says the Republicans seem to have the knack of taping into the fears of the electorate  -  it's almost like the Democrats are the 'Reds under the bed!'

I really don't think the world needs  (or wants) another 4 years of the Republican party  -  unfortunately I'm starting to suspect that is what we will get.

I really hope I'm wrong.

RR.

[bigmick22]

Republicans do seem to be better organised and better at getting their voters out. Aways seems like a struggle for the Democrats to get their voters to turn up and vote. When voter turnout is high, Democrats tend to do well.

Maybe they could ask the Thai Rak Thai guys to hang around a few US polling stations and give out free beer and 500 baht to prospective Democrat voters.

[alan1chef]

Not a bad idea. Republicans religiously go to the polls every election and Democrats tend to be less diligent in that regard. Just look at the states won by Republicans in the last two elections and that tells the whole story. The Democrats need to win some of those states in the middle of the country or they will lose this election just like they lost the last two. Obama needs to stick to his message of change and focus on the ecomony. Plus, Biden is clearly the better VP choice and if he takes on Palin...and hammers away at her lack of experience and his wealth of experience, it may be enough to sway those conservative independent voters in some of the smaller states and swing enough electoral votes to give Obama the victory.

[katoeylover]

John McCain moves ahead of Barack Obama in US presidential election polls

Telegraph UK.

John McCain has surged ahead of Barack Obama in opinion polls after a powerful boost from the Republican convention and his surprise choice of Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, as vice-presidential running mate.

Full story here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news....ls.html

Pollsters, however are divided over whether this is a decisive shift in the White House race or just a temporary boost provided by last week's successful Republican convention.

A USA Today/Gallup conducted on Friday, the last day of the convention, and over the weekend gave Mr McCain, who until very recently had been trailing narrowly in all polls, a staggering 10-point lead among likely voters.

Gallup's daily tracking poll put the Republican up by three, Rasmussen tracking had him up one while three other polls recorded a tie. Tracking polls, which take a new sample of voters each day and compile a picture of the three most recent days, are notoriously volatile.

"The burden is on Obama right now to show if he can be a credible agent for change," said John Zogby, whose Zogby International poll on Saturday gave Mr McCain a three-point advantage. "At this point, it looks as if Obama's more on the ropes than McCain."

But Mr Zogby cautioned that the McCain lead might turn out to be based on the enthusiasm generated by last week's Republican convention and therefore temporary. Most of the Monday polls reflected samples taken on Friday, the best possible day for Mr McCain because of televised coverage of his Thursday night speech, which was watched by nearly 40 million people.

In 1984, Walter Mondale, the Democratic nominee running against President Ronald Reagan, experienced an opinion poll "dead cat bounce" - a term borrowed from the stock market to describe a sharp decline in the price of a stock followed by a rise and a resumption of a downward shift. Mr Mondale's bounce was 16 points but he went on to lose in a landslide.

Advisers to Mr Obama caution that many pollsters underestimate the Illinois senator's support because they often do not contact the about 14 per cent of people who have only mobile phones. They are usually young and therefore much more likely to be Obama supporters.

But Evans Witt, president of the National Council on Public Polls, said: "The real question is whether the young people you can't reach on the cellphones fundamentally differ in political terms from those you can reach on the landlines and we don't know the answer to that yet."

Nate Silver of the polling website FiveThirtyEight.com blogged that newly-enthused McCain supporters might now be emerging. "I am also reminded of something called the Shy Tory Factor, a phenomenon observed in the early 1990s in British elections in which Conservative voters [Tories] had tended to be under-represented in pre-election polling, perhaps owing to response bias.

"It seems plausible to me that some segment of conservative Republican voters had effectively been in hiding from the pollsters, either embarrassed by the performance of George W. Bush (and therefore disengaged from politics), or embarrassed to disclose to pollsters that they support him.

"Suddenly, with the selection of Palin, there has been a jolt of energy within this group, a release of pent-up frustrations, and they are coming out of the woodwork."

Mr Witt said in the 2004 election the polls accurately predicted a very close race and that 2008 was likely to be the same. "The foundations of polling are a very strong mathematical science. But there's a substantial art in writing questions and in interpreting results.

"The amazing thing this year is the number of times there's been a story that says McCain leads Obama or Obama leads McCain and when you get down to the bottom you find that the difference is within the sampling error. That means that nobody's ahead, it's a tie, it's close."

[katoeylover]

Its beginning to get interesting...

[pacman]

I see that the great spoiler, the independent who drives a wedge into the Democrat vote, Ralph Nader is coming back to feed his desperate ego again.

Way past his use-by-date, this totally irrelevant idiot feels it more important to re-live his 15 minutes of fame again, regardless of the damage he inflicts on the real candidates who have the only hope of winning.

American elections are looked upon in disbelief by most of the world. How a country of over 300 million people has consistently been so short-changed by the quality of candidates is breath-taking.

[geezer]

(pacman @ Sep. 09 2008,17:07) How a country of over 300 million people has consistently been so short-changed by the quality of candidates is breath-taking.

To be fair I don't think America has a monpoly on that situation.

Someone once said that you know your country is in serious trouble if your best and brightest feel they need to go into politics.

[smuttleydfs]

(katoeylover @ Sep. 09 2008,03:49) Its beginning to get interesting...  

Right now McSame is benefitting from a major surge from the convention and Palin Mania.....will it last??? Yeah probably until the two self proclaimed mavericks get in front of the TV cameras and the microphones for the debates. Here Palin will do "all right" against Biden but McSame will get blown away by Obama

[katoeylover]

i dont know why you think that Smutt. i feel McCain will hold his own.

It will go to the wire

[smuttleydfs]

(katoeylover @ Sep. 09 2008,18:54) i dont know why you think that Smutt. i feel McCain will hold his own.

It will go to the wire

Don't get me wrong I respect the hell out of McSame....just really feel he is just a carbon copy of the past 8 years. As far as the debates go McSame is not on the same playing field as Obama. He barely survived the GOP debates whereas Obama and Hillary were clearly head and shoulders above the competition both with the issues and intellectually. Sorry I have heard enough of McSame's speeches that I don't think he can carry Obama's jock in a debate.

[smuttleydfs]

A little tidbit I came across that the left will agree with and the right will whine about........


WE'RE CONFUSED!
>
> We're a little confused. Let us see if we have this straight...
>
> If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
> Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers and skinning and gutting moose, a quintessential American story.
>
> If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
> Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
>
> Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
> Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well-grounded.
>
> If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, became the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, became chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 2 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environmental and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

>
> If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

>
> If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

> If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your broken and disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

>
> If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

> If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

>
> If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

> If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DUI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

>
> OK, much clearer now.
>
>

Kind of says it all doesn't it

[alan1chef]

Excellent points...all of them, however look who we've elected President since 1980. Jimmy Carter is a smart guy...however...no charisma...wears cardigans...no wonder he lost to Reagan in a landslide. Fast forward to 1992; George Bush...head of the CIA, UN Ambassador...smart guy...loses to good-ole-boy Bill Clinton...who plays sax on Saturday Night Live, jogs, and womanizes anything in a skirt with big boobs. Ok, now let,s look at 2000...Al Gore...smart guy, intellectual type...loses in a very close race to a rich Texan who owed a baseball team.

Smart guys are hard to elect because they usually lack charisma of any kind. Americans are fasinated with the unusual. Palin....hockey mom vs Biden...smart guy... and then McCain...POW...Marlboro man vs Obama...very smart guy with very smart wife...now who do you think most Americans like? Now, when you throw in the fact that Reagan and Clinton were two of the better Presidents to come around in a while...it adds even more to this election.

Obama is best when he sheds his smart guy mode and talks down-to-earth. The more he can do that, the better chance he had to get elected in November. Apple pie still sells in American politics.