2008 USP(G)ET pt. II: counting the days to 2012 primary thread 1

? he could have picked almost anything

private health insurance: the final frontier

wtf John why not just say you stayed at a Holiday Inn?

mccain was on the phone with npr this morning about the senate bill. he sounded REALLY tired and was super rambly. plus he called it a 'fiscal' crisis again and not a financial one, one of his gaffes from the debate that would never be permitted a democrat.

does McCain NOT UNDERSTAND that he HAS taxpayer backed health care?

of course he understands that. he had it as a veteran and continues to have it as a public official. what he's saying, though, is that just because he's never had private health insurance, he can understand the struggles of regular Americans who do.

just like he understands the stresses of being outside of the earth's atmosphere, despite not being an astronaut.

yeah.

Pew: Obama 49-42
R2000: Obama 51-41
Rasmussen: 51-45
WaPo/ABC: 50-46

and, as per pinefox' link, Quinnipiac thinks he's up 8 points (!) in Florida and Ohio

i kinda want it to be closer to feel like i didn't waste my money, lol. not that i didn't think he'd basically won in march.

I mean, I think he was getting at this:

"You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables."

but (i) why on earth would you pick something incredible that a tiny, tiny fraction of the population will ever do rather than, y'know, carpentry (ii) YOU DO NOT GET TO BE AN ARMCHAIR CRITIC WHEN YOU ARE PRESIDENT.

lol confusing armchair critic metaphor there. I should have said peanut gallery.

Why did Gabbneb think that Obama had won in March? He hasn't even won in October.

yes he has

i thought he had it won when he was on oprah before he declared

^^^ kinda!

http://thepage.time.com/why-mccains-party-is-terrified/

Oh man, someone on Team O better grab a baton and RUN with this shit:

http://www.youtube.com/v/i7Hcf7Q1Q9A&border=0&rel=0

― jane hussein lane (suzy), Wednesday, October 1, 2008 7:06 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is not something he should run with
ugh if this campaign was kerry bush all over again

And I have never been an astronaut, but I think I know the challenges of space. Is that a pizza place? You know that song, right? Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran.

plus he called it a 'fiscal' crisis again and not a financial one

I'm not trying to sound like a McCain spinmeister here but the financial crisis could soon become fiscal pending approval of the bailout. I think the idea of the bailout has intertwined the private sector and the federal gov to the point where the words could be used interchangably and it wouldn't be totally incorrect.

Sarah Palin Interview Generator: http://interviewpalin.com/

o sure "I'm not trying to sound like a McCain spinmeister" except im admittedly john mccain's illegitimate black child

conflict of interest much?

what is the basis for the claim that Obama has won the election, in October or earlier?

because mccain cannot win

because obama is awesome and mccain sux obv!

also the fundamentals of the campaign were tilting so far democrat before it even began obama had a ridiculous head start

More Wright-Ayers ads comin'up.

total desperation flailing - if they thought wright/ayers was actually a good idea they wouldve done it before now

Yeah, but the McCain campaign is stupid.

troo

my feeling is the wright thing has played itself out and ayers never had any traction to begin with

Obama chose as an associate a man who helped to bomb the Pentagon and said he "didn't do enough."

oh nicely done with the ambiguous wording assholes.

He did not choose Ayers for a thing.

what is the basis for the claim that Obama has won the election, in October or earlier?

270 electoral votes are required to win. using 538's historical polling averages, McCain has led by an average of about 3 points-plus in states with 189 electoral votes. Obama has led by the same margin in states with 269 electoral votes (enough for a tie he would likely win), including Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado.

Obama has also led at least marginally in New Hampshire and Virginia, which would give him 286 electoral votes, the same number Bush won in 2004. McCain has historically led marginally in Florida and Ohio, but as the polls you linked earlier show, Obama may now be leading in both. That would give him 333 electoral votes. McCain has also led marginally in Nevada, where polling may not reflect a significant Democratic registration advantage this year. If Obama wins due to that advantage (or if the polls show a move in his favor, which one recent forecast might imply), he would win another 5 electoral votes. Obama needs to win only one of these five states - in at least two of which he is leading - to win the election. McCain needs to win them all - a straight - and then he's still only at a tie.

(And, though it is unlikely, Obama can go farther than 338. It is within the realm of possibility for him to win Indiana, his neighboring state, where McCain has led by fewer than three points and Obama has led one of two recent polls, or North Carolina or even Missouri, in which McCain's ~4-point polling lead might be overcome by strong turnout operations in combination with large African-American populations. Obama has also led two of three recent polls in North Carolina. if Obama could pull off these states' 37 electoral votes, he would equal Bill Clinton's electoral college strength.)

McCain has led by an average of about 3 points-plus in states with 189 electoral votes

actually, that should be 200 - I'm giving him Indiana, which is technically within 3 points. if I take it away from McCain, I should maybe also take Colorado away from Obama, giving him 260 to begin with.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/yet_another_gruesome_palin_int.php

McCain dismissed Republicans who questioned Palin's experience as "Georgetown cocktail party" people who call themselves conservatives.

Oh the Schadenfreude of watching a once-lockstep party unravel until there's nothing left but the batshit base.

Gallup: 48-44
Diageo: 47-42

Two commenters in the TPM story peanut gallery raised the following:

Remember 4 years ago how the Republicans forced CBS to sacrifice Dan Rather and the credibility of their news division? I wonder what professional linkages, if any, there are between the producers of these interviews and the producers of the Bush National Guard stories?

A very interesting question, which I have not seen raised until now.

Hmmmmmmm.

Possibly related, totally bullshit:

But today, the day before (Gwen) Ifill is to moderate the vice-presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, a conservative Web site made an issue of the book, which quickly ricocheted onto the Drudge Report. "VP Debate Moderator Ifill Releasing Pro-Obama Book," said the headline on World Net Daily picked up by Drudge.

http://www.slate.com/id/2201318

palins accent is Wasillan

Ladies and gentlemen, the Sarah Palin flute video has arrived.

Oh, that OTHER time at band camp

oh grampa

Has this one been posted yet?

hilarious

LOVE the old woman swatting her husband's hand down re: voting for McCain. AWESOME

what van halen song is that (xxxxxp)

lol, she even sucks at the flute

Yeah, gabbneb. That's exactly what I was thinking about as I watched all of that clip.

Nothing else whatsoever.

Katie Couric: Do you consider yourself a feminist?

Sarah Palin: I do. I believe that women certainly today have every opportunity that a man has to succeed.

uh

The Ifill Attack

01 Oct 2008 01:30 pm

It's straight out of Rove. Attack the debate moderator. The best that can happen from the Rove-Schmidt point of view is that Ifill softens her questions to Palin out of fear of being smeared by the McCain camp, as they have tried to smear me and any other journalist doing their job. The worst is that Ifill does not get intimidated, asks tough questions, and then gets the post-debate spin by the GOP focused on her, not Palin. It helps too that Ifill is black: it shores up the racist vote McCain needs to win.

Why not ask Couric instead? Or Campbell Brown? It should be a woman. And removing Ifill will only help black turnout. But I really miss Tim Russert right now, don't you?

Permalink :: Trackback (0) :: Sphere It!

Debategate

Like Andrew Sullivan, I think that the Obama campaign has little to lose and everything to gain by encouraging the CPD to have Gwen Ifill to pull out of moderating the VP debate.

It's not that the right's critique isn't utterly transparent, but media backlash was one of the principal dynamics in motivating the Palin bounce in the first place.

But there's another factor here too. In preparing for a debate, you are often preparing nearly as much for the "judge" or moderator as for the opponent. Both campaigns probably have a pretty good idea of what types of questions she is likely to ask, how he is likely to ask them. Palin and Biden have undoubtedly watched videotapes of Ifill moderating the 2004 debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney.

By changing the moderator, you're throwing everyone a curveball, and catering to the candidate who is better able to adapt on the fly. Which, most likely, is not going to be Sarah Palin.

There's More...

ADVERTISEMENT

Contract Post

-- Nate Silver at 1:20 PM 23 Comments...

first post was by sullivan btw