The Democrat Thread

[HuskyCaucasian]

[lostfan]

Damn that ad was harsh.

 

Edit: was that actually an Obama ad?

Edited September 20, 2008 by lostfan

[HuskyCaucasian]

Damn that ad was harsh.

 

Edit: was that actually an Obama ad?

Independent group.

[HuskyCaucasian]

McCain’s Camp Tests Fund-Raising Limits

 

Senator John McCain toiled for years to push a campaign finance overhaul through Congress. After the measure finally passed, Trevor Potter, a lawyer and vigorous advocate for reforming the system, was instrumental in defending the law from challenges and pressing for strict enforcement.

 

Now, as Mr. McCain makes his final sprint for the White House, Mr. Potter is again helping Mr. McCain, but this time by maneuvering to wring the maximum out of campaign finance laws in ways that some contend are at odds with the spirit of the reforms they championed.

[lostfan]

Not sure where exactly to post this, but if anybody was wondering where the stereotypes of Republicans being racist comes from, this partially explains it:

Notice that the Republican part of the chart is always ahead on everything negative, and behind on everything positive. Does this mean that the Republican party is racist? Of course not. But there are many more Republicans than anyone else who hold negative views of blacks as a whole.

[Steve9347]

That ad really says it all... I wish that could just play 24/7. It's amazing that someone who supported Bush so fervently could consider himself an agent for change. It's appalling that his only way to stay in the game was to completely adopt Barack Obama's slogan.

Edited September 20, 2008 by Steve9347

[Balta1701]

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

John McCain in the September/October issue of "Contingencies" magazine.

[Balta1701]

Independent group.

Actually it's listed as being made by a "private citizen" at the end if you read the disclaimer.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Thanks John! McCain's Palin pick pushes FL undecideds to... OBAMA!

Five weeks ago, the St. Petersburg Times convened a group of Tampa Bay voters who were undecided about the presidential election. Their strong distrust of Barack Obama suggested it was a group ripe for John McCain to win over.

 

Not anymore. The group has swung dramatically, if unenthusiastically, toward Democrat Obama. Most of them this week cited the same reason: Sarah Palin.

 

"I'm truly offended by Palin,'' said Republican Philinia Lehr, 37, of Largo, a full-time mother with a nursing degree who voted for George Bush in 2004.

 

Of the 11 undecided voters participating in the discussion one recent evening at the Times — four Republicans, five Democrats, and two registered to no party — only two Republican men applauded the selection of Palin.

 

Nobody had finalized a choice, but seven of the panelists said that McCain's running mate selection had made them more likely to vote for Obama, and in several cases much more likely.

[Steve9347]

11 people. What a gargantuan sample size.

[BigSqwert]

11 people. What a gargantuan sample size.

[Rex Kickass]

Has anyone seen the fake Sarah Palin blog? Kinda hilarious.

 

http://sarahpalin.typepad.com/my_weblog/

[CanOfCorn]

Anyone see 60 Minutes last night? I thought McCain looked completely off-balance. seemed odd. Obama was Obama. Nothing new really. But, they showed him speechifying in Nevada and he delivered this nugget:

 

"John McCain actually said that if he's president, he'll take on and I quote, the ol’ boys network in Washington. I am not making this up. This is someone who's been in Congress for 26 years The ol’ boy network? In the McCain campaign, that's called a staff meeting. Come on."

 

ZING!

[BigSqwert]

Another example of Obama being an elitist and McCain being like one of us.

[Steve9347]

Another example of Obama being an elitist and McCain being like one of us.

The McCains also own three 2000 NEV Gem electric vehicles, which are bubble-shaped cars popular in retirement communities.

W likes them too...

 

 

[longshot7]

love that pic.

[Steve9347]

Ok, now I'm a bit peeved. I visit The Drudge Report daily... and normally it's rather fair (though you can tell Drudge himself leans Republican and is behind McCain.)

 

This morning the most obvious defense of McCain was too prevalent to go unnoticed... I'll do a screen capture because these headlines change constantly.

 

 

Now, I get it, Obama has a plane. Are we supposed to believe that McCain does not have a jet of his own? Now why don't we go to the relevancy of that photo (and those he links to...)

 

That photo is dated in late August. Surely a Website that makes its money off of banner ads and traffic knows that having out-dated material is bad business. However, when it benefits McCain like this, it's fine.

 

I'll keep going there, so I guess joke's on me, but for a site that claims to be independent... that's very obviously not the case.

Edited September 22, 2008 by Steve9347

[HuskyCaucasian]

Article

 

[HuskyCaucasian]

NYT - Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

 

John McCain - Shoot The Messenger

On a conference call with reporters today, Davis said only that he was involved in an effort to promote the cause of home-ownership -- but that he wasn't actually a lobbyist. "I never lobbied a single day," Davis said -- a claim that seems at odds with a Fannie exec's claim to the paper that they were giving Davis huge amounts of money on the chance that McCain might become president.

 

Then Steve Schmidt, the campaign's chief operating officer, aggressively took on the Times.

 

"Whatever the New York Times once was, it is not today by any standard a journalistic organization," Schmidt said. "It is a pro-Obama organization that every day attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator

[BigSqwert]

Opening For A Maverick

 

by digby

 

 

Ed Kilgore over at the Democratic Strategist has posted an interesting take on the politics of this bailout. He points to a post yesterday by Patrick Ruffinni that outlines a probable McCain strategy for dealing with this:

Republican incumbent

s

in clo

s

e race

s

have the ea

s

ie

s

t vote of their live

s

coming up thi

s

wee

k

: No on the Bu

s

h-Pelo

s

i Wall

S

treet bailout.

 

God Him

s

elf couldn't have given ran

k

-and-file Republican

s

a better opportunity to create political

s

pace between them

s

elve

s

and the Admini

s

tration.

That'

s

why I want to

s

ee 40 Republican No vote

s

in the

S

enate, and 150+ in the Hou

s

e. If a bailout i

s

to pa

s

s

, let it be with Democratic vote

s

. Let thi

s

be the political e

s

tabli

s

hment (Bu

s

h Republican

s

in the White Hou

s

e + Democrat

s

in Congre

s

s

)

s

addling the taxpayer

s

with hundred

s

of billion

s

in debt (more than the Iraq War, conjured up in a

s

ingle wee

k

end, and enabled by Pelo

s

i, btw), while principled Republican

s

s

ay "No" and go to the country with a

s

tinging indictment of the majority in Congre

s

s

....

 

In an ideal world, McCain oppo

s

e

s

thi

s

becau

s

e of all the Democratic add-on

s

and

s

how

s

up to vote Nay while Obama punt

s

.

 

Hi

s

tory ha

s

s

hown u

s

that "inevitable" "emergency" legi

s

lation li

k

e the Patriot Act or

S

arbane

s

-Oxley i

s

never more popular than on the day it i

s

pa

s

s

ed -- and thi

s

i

s

n't all that popular to begin with. All the up

s

ide come

s

with voting again

s

t it.

Note the framing of the "Bush-Pelosi" bailout plan. Very crafty.

 

Kilgore says:

For McCain and other Republican

s

, voting "no" on Paul

s

on without accepting the con

s

equence

s

of that vote i

s

the political equivalent of a bottomle

s

s

crac

k

pipe: it will plea

s

e the con

s

ervative "ba

s

e," di

s

tance them from both Bu

s

h and "Wa

s

hington," and let them indulge in both anti-government and anti-corporate demagoguery, even a

s

Democrat

s

bail out their Wall

S

treet friend

s

and big inve

s

tor

s

generally. You

s

imply can't imagine a better way for McCain to deci

s

ively reinforce hi

s

s

imultaneou

s

effort

s

to pander to the "ba

s

e" while po

s

ing a

s

a "maveric

k

."

He's right. If they go this way, McCain gets to distance himself from Bush by standing on the sidelines wielding a phony pitchfork while Obama, as the head of the Democratic party and thus the leader of the congress, gets splashed in all this muck. It's quite ingenious and a very possible scenario in my opinion.

 

We will see the rebirth of the phony fiscal conservative image before our very eyes as our brave POW hero, John McCain, takes on the great malefactors of wealth while the soft, liberal elites behave like toadies to the rich. It's a neat trick for a man who owns seven houses and thirteen cars, but in America, you can be a multimillionaire and still be a man of the people as long as you drink a beer the right way.

 

Kilgore concludes that the Democrats must demand Republican votes in congress including John McCain's. But I don't see the mechanism for doing that. After the campaign he's run, I don't think we can rely on his "honor." So, the Dems can ask, but the Republicans will find a reason to do what they think will benefit them politically. And that, it seems to me, is to sufficiently separate themselves from Bush and the congress that they can realistically be perceived as the real change agents.

 

This is a very delicate and dicey political moment for both campaigns. The polls are tied and we are facing a crisis. In a world that made sense, it wouldn't even be contemplated that McCain could benefit from this situation. And it's still seems highly unlikely that he will --- he's still old and saddled with an unprepared running mate in case he dies. And he's still a Republican. But this crisis could give him the space he's long needed to truly separate himself from the failures of the Bush administration. It's risky, but he's a thrill seeking flyboy and he may very well do it.

 

Let's hope the Democrats are thinking a few moves ahead on this and don't allow themselves to be trapped into being "responsible" while McCain runs around like some avenging angel and demagogues his way into a victory.

[BigSqwert]

[Steve9347]

Um... guys... um, you're on the same team?

 

Biden says ad mocking McCain is 'terrible'

 

Sep 23, 2:56 AM (ET)

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama's running mate says a campaign ad that mocked Republican presidential candidate John McCain as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate was "terrible" and would not have been done had he known about it.

 

Obama, McCain's Democratic rival, launched the ad earlier this month, part of an aggressive push to slow McCain's rise in the polls after he chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. It included unflattering footage of Sen. McCain at a hearing in the early '80s, wearing giant glasses and an out-of-style suit, interspersed with shots of a disco ball, a clunky phone, an outdated computer and a Rubik's Cube.

 

"He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail, still doesn't understand the economy, and favors $200 billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class," the ad says.

 

Asked about the negative tone of the campaign, and this ad in particular, during an interview broadcast Monday by the "CBS Evening News," Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, said he disapproved of it.

 

"I thought that was terrible, by the way," Biden said.

 

Asked why it was done, he said: "I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we'd have never done it."

 

Late Monday, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton issued a statement from Biden. In it, Biden said he "was asked about an ad I'd never seen" and was "reacting merely to press reports."

 

Biden said that, as he said in the interview, there was nothing "intentionally personal" in the criticism of McCain's views.

 

"Having now reviewed the ad, it is even more clear to me that given the disgraceful tenor of Sen. McCain's ads and their persistent falsehoods, his campaign is in no position to criticize, especially when they continue to distort Barack's votes on an issue as personal as keeping kids safe from sexual predators," Biden said.

 

Biden was referring to a McCain ad that said Obama supported sex education for kindergartners, based on a bill he voted for as an Illinois state senator. Obama's campaign said the ad was a "shameful" distortion of his record because the bill's language meant young children would have been taught about sexual predators and concepts such as "good touch and bad touch."

[southsider2k5]

Um... guys... um, you're on the same team?

 

Joltin Joe did the samething on the bailout.

 

Seriously, why isn't this guy getting the same level of scurtiny that Palin has? The guy is out there saying something stupid on a regular basis.

[Steve9347]

Joltin Joe did the samething on the bailout.

 

Seriously, why isn't this guy getting the same level of scurtiny that Palin has? The guy is out there saying something stupid on a regular basis.

It's like he doesn't want to win.

[Rex Kickass]

Joltin Joe did the samething on the bailout.

 

Seriously, why isn't this guy getting the same level of scurtiny that Palin has? The guy is out there saying something stupid on a regular basis.

 

When you say stupid things every day for the last 35 years, people stop noticing as much. Palin's comments don't get the 100 point headline on Drudge though.

 

Honestly and seriously though, I think there may be a perception difference between the tickets that might account for that. Biden is the experience guy here, and the line from the Obama campaign has always been that Obama wanted a substantive running mate who can have respectful disagreements with. Palin is seen as the Stepford candidate, and when your campaign is using phrases like "learning at the foot of the master," to describe her - it makes her comments seem a bit more outrageous.

 

And the other reason why I think the media has turned on McCain/Palin? And I think they have by the way, has to do with access. Outside of those carefully planned and detailed few interviews Palin has given, she has not had one single media avail, and has not taken one reporter's question on the campaign trail. McCain hasn't taken a single question from any non-local reporter in over five weeks either. If you don't acknowledge or talk to the press, I'd wager they are less likely to give you the benefit of the doubt.