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The FULLY FOCUSED 2008 Election Thread

mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
edited September 2008 in Strut Central
We need to reboot and wash that crazy veep out of our hair and stay I>fully focused mang[/i].b,121b,121This shit, from the 538 folks had me AMPED:b,121b,121a href="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/on-road-battleground-states-of-america.html" target="_blank"1http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/on-road-battleground-states-of-america.html/a1b,121b,121Give not to despair!
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  • barjesusbarjesus 872 Posts
  • SaracenusSaracenus 671 Posts
    Obama gets back on track and hits back on Grandpa, comparing him to brick cell phones, vinyl turntables and b,121b,121embed src="http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1185304443" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=1789003018&playerId=1185304443&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://console.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&domain=embed&autoStart=false&;" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"1/embed1b,121b,121And on a more positive tip...b,121b,121embed src="http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1185304443" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=1788949433&playerId=1185304443&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://console.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&domain=embed&autoStart=false&;" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"1/embed1b,121b,121b,121Not a Princess Caribou reference to be found in either vid...b,121b,121
  • CosmoCosmo 9,768 Posts
    Why don't you leave her name out of it and just make it the OFFICIAL ELECTION THREAD?b,121b,121Hallelujah.
  • erewhonerewhon 1,123 Posts
    How long before someone here identifies the record on the turntable in the obama ad?
  • UnherdUnherd 1,880 Posts
    Those little pie charts on 538 have me real antsy. Think I'm heading to PA next weekend to volunteer. This shit is fuskin stress right now....
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121Why don't you leave her name out of it and just make it the OFFICIAL ELECTION THREAD?b,121b,121Hallelujah. b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121b,121b,121Good point. Done and done.
  • CosmoCosmo 9,768 Posts
    Hahah no doubt! Let's get it...
  • Young_PhonicsYoung_Phonics 8,039 Posts
    538 ain't looking good right now man
  • CosmoCosmo 9,768 Posts
    Ban Moist from all election threads.
  • Young_PhonicsYoung_Phonics 8,039 Posts
    hhahahahahab,121b,121my manb,121b,121you trying to sabbadabba me!
  • CousinLarryCousinLarry 4,618 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121Ban Moist from all election threads. b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121Moistnin the Bed Mon
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    POLLS ARE FOR PUNKSb,121b,121Pretty interesting (and encouraging) Time Magazine article about the behind the scenes gains the Obama campaign is making, much of won't map onto polling data. b,121
  • luckluck 4,077 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121POLLS ARE FOR PUNKSb,121b,121Pretty interesting (and encouraging) Time Magazine article about the behind the scenes gains the Obama campaign is making, much of won't map onto polling data. b,121 b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121s1Sorry, but this link is inactive./s1b,121b,121b,121...and anyone notice that Bush's approval rating is slowly edging up?b,121b,121My country continually scares me. Hell, that ABC interview is scary. I was actually hearing conservative pundits calling out Gibson (or all people) for being "too tough" for his leading, if not lobbed-softball questions towards Palin. i1She's next in line to be the goddamn President. She'd better be getting some tough questions[/i].
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    Link fixed.b,121b,121The conservative base is just cool-aid drunk. They've already picked out the storyline they're sticking with: the big bad liberal media is picking on Palin. They're going to try to ride that one out, no matter how silly it is. b,121b,121More shit for chicken littles to remember: b,121b,121"One of the truisms of political reporting is that it is exceptionally results-oriented. When a campaign wins, essentially every aspect of that campaign is deemed to be praiseworthy, and when a campaign loses, almost every aspect of the campaign is deemed to be a failure.b,121b,121Think how much different the conventional wisdom would be if Al Gore had won 300 more votes in Florida. Bush's strategy of rallying to the evangelical base would have been considered a failure, as would the Rovian politics of personal destruction. But instead, because of what was essentially a mathematical coin-flip -- the vote count was so close in Florida that nobody really knows who won -- these things are considered to be standard operating practice in any competent campaign.b,121b,121In the absence of actual results, what opinion-makers look toward instead is polls. And presently, with John McCain holding a 1-2 point lead in most national polls, essentially every aspect of Barack Obama's campaign has come under intense scrutiny, whereas Steve Schmidt is regarded as some kind of savant. This is even worse than being results-oriented, because we don't yet know the ultimate effect of the choices the McCain campaign has made on November's results. Certain of their choices, such as their intensely negative campaign against Barack Obama and perhaps even their selection of Sarah Palin, may be short-term winners but long-term losers."b,121b,121a href="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/media-has-been-thrown-off-its-game.html" target="_blank"1http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/media-has-been-thrown-off-its-game.html
  • luckluck 4,077 Posts
    a href="http://thepage.time.com/obama-camp-memo-on-the-straight-talk-express/" target="_blank"1Talking points for your talking points. b,121b,121b,121I'm not currently a Chicken Little, although I certainly have been in the past. But the 538 and RCP averages both show John McCain with a +2.4 advantage and as much as a i1290/i1 in the Electoral College. Those numbers are not plateauing as per the 538 post-RNC projection - they're dropping precipitously away from the Obama camp. There are still seven and a half weeks until the vote, so I'm not too concerned about the numbers right now. But I underline the lesson of the 2004 election: the majority of my countrymen, even though they will appoint a majority-Democratic Congress, are too right-leaning that they will not elect a Democrat as President.b,121b,121Other countries are probably reading coverage of our election and asking: "What the FUKK is going on in the USA?"
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    Luck: As recent as a week ago, Obama was up over 300 in the EC according to 538. He had something like a 70% win percentage. That things could reverse so hard in a week means...that polling is more reactive than predictive. b,121 civil liberties (which is not a hard argument to make for many) and it's not hard to see how Bush managed to get re-elected as an incumbent president, especially when the economy wasn't that bad in 2004. b,121b,121is Obama in threat of losing? Absolutely but the more I look at this election, the more convinced I am that the idea he'd walk all over McCain was blind naivete by his more fervent fans and not convincing when you look at the fundamentals of what each candidate brings to the plate. I have no love for McCain but even if his voting record indicates otherwise, he just doesn't LOOK like Bush to voters. His appeal isn't the same, even to people who went GOP in 04 and will do the same this year. Meanwhile, you have Obama, a junior senator with a limited political, public record, who has tremendous charisma and "history-in-the-making" backstory but aside from that, he's kind of a blank slate and not in a Palin-blank-slate-can-be-good way.
  • luckluck 4,077 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121Luck: As recent as a week ago, Obama was up over 300 in the EC according to 538. He had something like a 70% win percentage. That things could reverse so hard in a week means...that polling is more reactive than predictive.b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121That's exactly why I said thatb,121b,121/font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121I'm not too concerned about the numbers right now.b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121 b,121/font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121And this "majority of my countrymen" is the wrong way to look at it, especially given that less than 70% of eligible Americans actually vote.b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121Not for this election. It'll be closer to 55-60%. There have been record voter-registration numbers in most states. Either way, I was referring to the majority of Americans who actually [i]do/i1 vote.b,121b,121/font1
    Quote:/font1h,121 civil liberties (which is not a hard argument to make for many) and it's not hard to see how Bush managed to get re-elected as an incumbent president, especially when the economy wasn't that bad in 2004.b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121Hey, you don't have to convince me of the history and hypotheticals. I know that the chronology of events should lead a sane American to currently stay away from the GOP. But since the same "reactive" people who comprise vast poll fluctuations are the self-same folks that pull voting levers in November, I'm not so sure that the "Palin effect" won't float until October 2nd and then be buoyed by a style-over-substance, one-liners-to-the-moon debate with Joe Biden.b,121b,121Either way: the popular vote has little to do with the outcome of this election. Heck, Barack Obama is far more likely than John McCain to lose the popular vote while winning the College than vice-versa.b,121b,121/font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121Is Obama in threat of losing? Absolutely but the more I look at this election, the more convinced I am that the idea he'd walk all over McCain was blind naivete by his more fervent fans and not convincing when you look at the fundamentals of what each candidate brings to the plate. I have no love for McCain but even if his voting record indicates otherwise, he just doesn't LOOK like Bush to voters. His appeal isn't the same, even to people who went GOP in 04 and will do the same this year. Meanwhile, you have Obama, a junior senator with a limited political, public record, who has tremendous charisma and "history-in-the-making" backstory but aside from that, he's kind of a blank slate and not in a Palin-blank-slate-can-be-good way. b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121This is one of those IOIYAR situations. Gov. Palin is just as much of a blank slate as Sen. Obama, but the Senator at least has a stated i1plan/i1 that doesn't look bad on paper, and the country has known i1of/i1 him since at least 2004. John McCain simply offers a more concentrated version of the same trickle-down bullshit that is i1exactly/i1 why our country is in serious financial straits. The GOP has been trying to spin Palin as some antidisestablishmentarian, and according to her record, she's clearly not. Her lack of "old boy" entrenchment means little when her actual policies are fundamentally the same as Bush's. Barack Obama is not nearly as "different" politically as he'd like the country to believe, but he'd still be a drastically positive reversal from the Bush years. The elect-a-Republican-to-wash-the-nasty-Republican-taste-out-of-your-mouth concept is beyond ridiculous, but it's currently working. IOIYAR.b,121b,121As an aside, I've never understood the whole elect-a-President-that's-totally-like-you mentality. Hell, I want a President to be i1much/i1 smarter and capable than me. Why settle for a i1personable/i1 President or VP when you can have a i1competant/i1 one? Why are "elite" Presidents i1bad/i1 for the country?
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    Luck:b,121b,121I agree with your points all around. My post - despite appearances otherwise - was inspired by your post but then ran off into my own tangents.b,121b,121As for this: b,121"As an aside, I've never understood the whole elect-a-President-that's-totally-like-you mentality. Hell, I want a President to be much smarter and capable than me. Why settle for a personable President or VP when you can have a competant one? Why are "elite" Presidents bad for the country?"b,121b,121I think there are any number of ways to think about this, beginning with a general streak of anti-intellectualism that's run through large segments of the American public for ages, especially in more recent decades. The reason why you want a leader smarter than you is because, on a basic level, you value intelligence but that, as you can probably surmise, is hardly a universally held value. For others, it's about "character" (notice the scare quotes). Frankly, I don't how Bush won on that either but hey, I guess for enough Americans, he seemed to have enough of it. The rhetoric around him, implicit in the "I'd drink a beer with him," is a mix of both parochialism and some perverted twist on "trust" insofar as you adopt the us vs. them theme that comes hidden with that. Smart and intelligent people, by virtue of being smarter, are inherently "them" and thus, not as trustworthy and certainly not someone you feel like is in your social circle. b,121b,121Someone with a better knowledge of political history can explain how this dynamic developed because I don't imagine it's been part of American presidential history since the beginning. I'm assuming it came with Reagan and was further perpetuated by Clinton (the latter being a ridiculously smart person who never made you feel like he was, a touch that Kerry and Gore were poor at and Obama is better but not enough yet).
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    $66,000,000 batches.
  • luckluck 4,077 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121Someone with a better knowledge of political history can explain how this dynamic developed because I don't imagine it's been part of American presidential history since the beginning. I'm assuming it came with Reagan and was further perpetuated by Clinton (the latter being a ridiculously smart person who never made you feel like he was, a touch that Kerry and Gore were poor at and Obama is better but not enough yet). b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121Well, Jimmy Carter was a guy that fit that bill, but he didn't back it up with a necessary [i]gravitas/i1. Kennedy was to a degree, if only because of his age and vig-ahh. Reagan really rammed the [i]feelings/i1 through, but he still had policy to match. In fact, prior to the Palin pick, the Republican voters over the past century, to their credit, usually tended to pick policy they agreed with (Bush included) over a ??wow! factor. With Palin, they think that they've got both, plus - for the first time ever - GOP women are "allowed" to act on a secretly innate Feminist impulse. But the [i]leadership/i1 factor? Nada, and they've [i]got/i1 to know that on a deep level.b,121b,121And then, there's this guy named John McCain.b,121b,121I think that it's a comment on the poor state of education in this country (or, generally, the jealousness of those that are under-educated) when an educated man or woman is ever a [i]drawback/i1 in an electoral process.
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121b,121I think that it's a comment on the poor state of education in this country (or, generally, the jealousness of those that are under-educated) when an educated man or woman is ever a drawback in an electoral process. b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121I wholly agree with you though it's not so much the education that's the issue but rather the stereotype that the more educated people become, the more "not of the people" they become. And as noted, I don't think this should be a priority in electing a president but clearly, I'm in the minority on that.
  • SaracenusSaracenus 671 Posts
    Obama kicks McCain in the jimmys:b,121b,121embed src="http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1185304443" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=1786848892&playerId=1185304443&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://console.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&domain=embed&autoStart=false&;" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"1/embed1b,121b,121What did Carl "Turd Blossom" Rove say? You never attack an opponent's weakness, you attack their strength... hello honor!b,121b,121Speaking of the turd...b,121b,121object width="425" height="344"1param name="movie" value=""1param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"1embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"1/embed1/object1b,121b,121How much do you want to bet that makes it into an ad...b,121b,121 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ohmyer1.gif" alt="" 21
  • SaracenusSaracenus 671 Posts
    Well, they finally took Biden off leash and here is a taste of him laying down the smack on McSame:b,121b,121Eight years ago, a man ran for President who claimed he was different, not a typical Republican. He called himself a reformer. He admitted that his Party, the Republican Party, had been wrong about things from time to time. He promised to work with Democrats and said he'd been doing that for a long time.b,121b,121That candidate was George W. Bush. Remember that? Remember the promise to reach across the aisle? To change the tone? To restore honor and dignity to the White House? ...b,121b,121Eight years later, we have another Republican nominee who's telling us the exact same thing:b,121b,121This time it will be different, it really will. This time he's going to put country before party, to change the tone, reach across the aisle, change the Republican Party, change the way Washington works.b,121b,121We've seen this movie before, folks. But as everyone knows, the sequel is always worse than the original.b,121b,121 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bbb.gif" alt="" 21 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/oj.gif" alt="" 21
  • DB_CooperDB_Cooper Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121We've seen this movie before, folks. But as everyone knows, the sequel is always worse than the original.b,121 b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^b,121HAS NEVER SEEN THE GODFATHER PT.II
  • SaracenusSaracenus 671 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121/font1Quote:/font1h,121b,121We've seen this movie before, folks. But ares everyone knows, the sequel is always worse than the original.b,121 b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^b,121HAS NEVER SEEN THE GODFATHER PT.II b,121b,121h,121font class="post"1b,121b,121Are you kiddin' me? Aside from the fact you are indirectly comparing the Bush years to Godfather Part I, you know that for every Godfather Part II Hollywood drops turds like 2 Fast 2 Furious like an elephant on Exlax.b,121b, 21As for movie metaphors, the McSame/Palid campaign is more like The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift which only a deal with the Devil prevented from being released directly to DVD.b,121b,121img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/talib-doodoo.gif" alt="" 21 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/game.gif" alt="" 21
  • DB_CooperDB_Cooper Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121/font1Quote:/font1h,121b,121/font1Quote:/font1h,121b,121We've seen this movie before, folks. But ares everyone knows, the sequel is always worse than the original.b,121 b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^b,121HAS NEVER SEEN THE GODFATHER PT.II b,121b,121h,121font class="post"1b,121b,121Are you kiddin' me? Aside from the fact you are indirectly comparing the Bush years to Godfather Part I, you know that for every Godfather Part II Hollywood drops turds like 2 Fast 2 Furious like an elephant on Exlax.b,121b, 21As for movie metaphors, the McSame/Palid campaign is more like The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift which only a deal with the Devil prevented from being released directly to DVD.b,121b,121img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/talib-doodoo.gif" alt="" 21 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/game.gif" alt="" 21 b,121b,121h,121font class="post"1b,121b,121HAHAHAHAHAHA! Well played.
  • DjArcadianDjArcadian 3,633 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121/font1Quote:/font1h,121b,121/font1Quote:/font1h,121b,121We've seen this movie before, folks. But ares everyone knows, the sequel is always worse than the original.b,121 b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^b,121HAS NEVER SEEN THE GODFATHER PT.II b,121b,121h,121font class="post"1b,121b,121Are you kiddin' me? Aside from the fact you are indirectly comparing the Bush years to Godfather Part I, you know that for every Godfather Part II Hollywood drops turds like 2 Fast 2 Furious like an elephant on Exlax.b,121b, 21As for movie metaphors, the McSame/Palid campaign is more like The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift which only a deal with the Devil prevented from being released directly to DVD.b,121b,121img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/talib-doodoo.gif" alt="" 21 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/game.gif" alt="" 21 b,121b,121h,121font class="post"1b,121b,121You excited for the new a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013752/" target="_blank"1Fast and Furious coming out? It's the all hybrids sequel.b,121b,121object width="425" height="344"1param name="movie" value=""1/param1param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"1/param1embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"1/embed1/object1
  • phongonephongone 1,652 Posts
    /font1
    Quote:/font1h,121b,121/font1Quote:/font1h,121b,121We've seen this movie before, folks. But as everyone knows, the sequel is always worse than the original.b,121 b,121b,121h,121
    font class="post"1b,121b,121^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^b,121HAS NEVER SEEN THE GODFATHER PT.II b,121b,121h,121font class="post"1b,121b,121b,121PWND! lulz.
  • billbradleybillbradley You want BBQ sauce? Get the fuck out of my house. 2,914 Posts
    McCain's Campaign tactic: Manufactured Outrageb,121b,121 a href="http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1841131,00.html" target="_blank"1link to the article/a1
  • dayday 9,611 Posts
    Palin met by 1400 + in support of Obama in Alaskab,121b,121object width="425" height="344"1param name="movie" value=""1/param1param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"1/param1embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"1/embed1/object1b,121b,121wonk waaaah - hopefully this is just the beginning.
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