Eerie silence after the Democratic Convention

[Dirt McGirt]

Obama has ONLY been a US Senator for 3 years. He spent half of that time, looking for another job. So he has only really served half of his time as a Senator, with no major legislative record. He voted "present" at Senate hearings. How does that make him qualified to run the United States?

By the way, have you heard Palin speak? Have you seen her bio? Obama has less experience than anyone running for President including the VP's.

Do you trust a guy who is so glaringly unqualified to lead this country? I don't.

I think he's qualified to lead, as is McCain. But it's Obama's stances on ideoglogy and the major issues that appeal to me. I already know what McCain's going to do, nothing that much different than the last 8 years, just a bit more fiscally responsible, perhaps.

 

[clazona]

I think he's qualified to lead, as is McCain. But it's Obama's stances on ideoglogy and the major issues that appeal to me. I already know what McCain's going to do, nothing that much different than the last 8 years, just a bit more fiscally responsible, perhaps.

So what is McCain going to do with running things the same way as the last 8 years? Will he face 9-11 like, Katrina-like disasters? Did his insurgent in Iraq make things worse?

As for the major issues for Obama, what are they?

 

[Jon]

I think he's qualified to lead, as is McCain. But it's Obama's stances on ideoglogy and the major issues that appeal to me. I already know what McCain's going to do, nothing that much different than the last 8 years, just a bit more fiscally responsible, perhaps.

I disagree. McCain is not Bush v2.0. He's pandered the last eight years so he could get to the exact position he's in now: a position to change things from the way they were.

Do you realize that if McCain didn't pander to the right for the last eight years, Mike Huckabee would be the nominee now? Speaking as an Arkansas, I'd almost vote for Obama in that event.

 

[cristal]

If McCain were a Democrat and Palin his VP, all of you guys would be screaming about how her inexperience is relevant because of McCain's age and health problems. Sorry, but I'm not buying it. You guys are fooling yourselves that she's the best candidate available when you know deep down that she's unproven. In a couple of weeks, she'll stumble and all of you guys will jump off the McCain Conservative-Right-Now Bandwagon and knife him in the back because he didn't pick Romney or Ridge.

You know it is funny. Obama is the one who kept on talking about "change". Then he went and choose a "Washington insider/old politics" candidate - Biden.

John McCain who is suppose to be "old" and part of the "old politics", went with Obama's "change" theme and selected a young female. Obama got the boring candidate. And now he and his camp is angry.

I have no doubt that Palin can stand to to toe with Biden, during a VP debate. If she is "unproven", then the Obama camp should be happy, because that would almost ensure a victory for them, in November. Instead, his camp is disgruntled.

The question is why?

 

[Ninja]

The Democrats had a convention?

McCain completely befuddled and out-maneuvered Obama with his pick.

A negligible bounce after The Messiah's descent from heaven for His coronation - OUCH!

And while I think polls are BS - FWIW Zogby has McCain leading Obama.

 

[Caligirl]

All i hear is "four more years of Bush," but I do not see any evidence of Obama's so-called leadership in Washington. In the three years as a Senator, has he shaken things up in Washington. He said he "reached over the aisles." So since 2006, after Democrats taken control of Congress, what leadership has he brought in terms of passing major legislation.

THe job of the president is to pass legislation? I thought that was the job of the legislative branch.

If you look at how everyone is following Obama, not just the media but also Bush (on the Iraq pullout) and McCain (picking a female rock-star type as his running mate) and there are other recent examples, it's pretty obvious that he is being followed, i.e. he is a leader. He's even leading the other side!

Seriously, and much more importantly is that he surrounds himself with capable people. Look at the discipline and effectiveness of his campaign staff. He understand the importance of good staff. Bush set himself up for failure by selecting only yes-men for his cabinet, and that is despite having had executive experience. I trust Obama to surround himself with quality cabinet members, not yes men. That's his track record. You've seen it work very effectively during this campaign.

McCain's campaign is somewhere in the middle. I admire that he did as well as he did when he had no funds, and I like small town hall meetings. On the other hand there is regularly bickering, snide remarks, and negativity in his campaign, and McCain reportedly blows up and gets grumpy. His staff seems OK, but not great. The VP pick seems like a huge mis-reading to me. It actually reminds me of the Terry Schiavo thing where Bush/Frist thought the conservative base would love it if the government stepped in to keep people on life support, and the base got very upset very quickly, that the government would try to step in their personal lives like that. Total misreading. I could be wrong, but I feel like this is a Terry Schiavo type guess at what the electorate wants, and way off base.

 

[cristal]

The Democrats had a convention?

McCain completely befuddled and out-maneuvered Obama with his pick.

A negligible bounce after The Messiah's descent from heaven for His coronation - OUCH!

And while I think polls are BS - FWIW Zogby has McCain leading Obama.

....and the Republican Convention has not even started yet.

I think Obama has already gotten his "bounce". It is downhill from here on.

 

[Glori.B]

You know it is funny. Obama is the one who kept on talking about "change". Then he went and choose a "Washington insider/old politics" candidate - Biden.

John McCain who is suppose to be "old" and part of the "old politics", went with Obama's "change" theme and selected a young female. Obama got the boring candidate. And now he and his camp is angry.

I have no doubt that Palin can stand to to toe with Biden, during a VP debate. If she is "unproven", then the Obama camp should be happy, because that would almost ensure a victory for them, in November. Instead, his camp is disgruntled.

The question is why?

Let Palin Be Palin
Why the left is scared to death of McCain's running mate.
by William Kristol
09/08/2008, Volume 013, Issue 48

A spectre is haunting the liberal elites of New York and Washington--the spectre of a young, attractive, unapologetic conservatism, rising out of the American countryside, free of the taint (fair or unfair) of the Bush administration and the recent Republican Congress, able to invigorate a McCain administration and to govern beyond it.

That spectre has a name--Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old governor of Alaska chosen by John McCain on Friday to be his running mate. There she is: a working woman who's a proud wife and mother; a traditionalist in important matters who's broken through all kinds of barriers; a reformer who's a Republican; a challenger of a corrupt good-old-boy establishment who's a conservative; a successful woman whose life is unapologetically grounded in religious belief; a lady who's a leader.

So what we will see in the next days and weeks--what we have already seen in the hours after her nomination--is an effort by all the powers of the old liberalism, both in the Democratic party and the mainstream media, to exorcise this spectre. They will ridicule her and patronize her. They will distort her words and caricature her biography. They will appeal, sometimes explicitly, to anti-small town and anti-religious prejudice. All of this will be in the cause of trying to prevent the American people from arriving at their own judgment of Sarah Palin.

Let Palin Be Palin

 

[Dirt McGirt]

Fresh face, new ideas, able to reach across the aisle to get votes. She'll stay in the limelight for a while.

They said that about Rick Santorum as well.

But I don't think she's destined to fall that hard. Her stock definitely went up as the VP pick. I love her reformist, anti-corruption stance and her support of the 2nd Amendment. She's genuine and I like her way of reaching out to women without sounding like an angry feminist. But she's still a question mark and nothing but a superstar prospect in her own party. I doubt she could have raised a thousand dollars before the Republican primaries to try and run as the party's candidate.

 

[clazona]

THe job of the president is to pass legislation? I thought that was the job of the legislative branch.

Obama is part of the legislative branch. My question all along was, "what legislation has he led through Congress?" They talk about his leadership. If he has the traits, what kind of legislation has he passed in Congress? He's been in Washington since 2005. He has to have done something productive for the American people.

 

[Caligirl]

John McCain who is suppose to be "old" and part of the "old politics", went with Obama's "change" theme and selected a young female.

Yep, McCain folllowed Obama's strategy. He recognized Obama's good judgment.

 

[Caligirl]

Obama is part of the legislative branch. My question all along was, "what legislation has he led through Congress?" They talk about his leadership. If he has the traits, what kind of legislation has he passed in Congress? He's been in Washington since 2005. He has to have done something productive for the American people.

State legislation:

Charles Peters - Judge Him by His Laws - washingtonpost.com

National legislation:

He teamed with Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to study the dangers of nuclear proliferation and pass legislation meant to keep nuclear material from falling into the hands of terrorists.

Obama also joined with Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., after Hurricane Katrina to improve oversight of federal spending.

And he shared billing with a Republican presidential hopeful when he joined Arizona Sen. John McCain in sponsoring legislation that called for sharp, mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

What major legislation has Obama personally passed that have significantly changed America? - Yahoo! Answers

Those are the first two hits on a google search. The most complete info is at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama#Senate_career

 

[Dirt McGirt]

The Democrats had a convention?

McCain completely befuddled and out-maneuvered Obama with his pick.

A negligible bounce after The Messiah's descent from heaven for His coronation - OUCH!

And while I think polls are BS - FWIW Zogby has McCain leading Obama.

Yes he befuddled and out-maneuvered Obama with his pick, but he also befuddled and out-maneuvered Repubs with his pick too. After the novelty wears off, conservatives will start asking WTF was he thinking.

 

[cristal]

Yep, McCain folllowed Obama's strategy. He recognized Obama's good judgment.

...but that "good judgment", supposedly backfired on the Obama camp.

 

[Caligirl]

Yeah, I've seen polls all over the place on it. I am pretty sure my evangelical friends will be delighted with Palin, although some polls say that undecideds sway heavily for obama with the pick.

I am interested to hear her convention speech, a lot of this conversation is really thrashing over the same little tidbits of information that we have about her.

It still seems like a hail mary pass to me, when he could have picked Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee, Liebermann, ...

But sometimes hail mary passes get received.

 

[Jon]

Romney and Huckabee debated McCain in the primaries. Do you think he wanted a situation like Obama faces with Biden's remarks about his inexperience?

Lieberman is far too left to ever be on a Republican ticket.

Pawlenty was and still is my first choice, but Palin turns out to be a good second.

 

[Caligirl]

Romney and Huckabee debated McCain in the primaries. Do you think he wanted a situation like Obama faces with Biden's remarks about his inexperience?

Lieberman is far too left to ever be on a Republican ticket.

Pawlenty was and still is my first choice, but Palin turns out to be a good second.

I doubt Huckabee ever said anything that could be used against anyone, and everyone loves him, even me, even if he wants to rewrite the constitution. He's so affable.

Anyway, Liebermann would be good for centrists and hawks, and one might argue the right will turn out anyway.

 

[Avatar4321]

Palin is a novelty act. Had the tables been turned and Obama picked Jennifer Granholm as his running mate right after the RNC, the news would have had non-stop coverage for several days. The novelty WILL wear off and Obama-McCain will be the focus once again. A VP won't necessarily win you an election but it will help you lose one. If I were a Democrat, I'd certainly feel safer going into the VP debates with a proven guy like Biden than someone like Palin who's unproven in the national spotlight. That was not a great "strategic" pick, that was a great "now" pick. Strategy denotes long term and I'm not so sure you guys are getting a battle tested running mate, capable of looking Presidential.

You've never heard Biden speak have you? Cause honestly, Palin's going to wipe the floor with the guy. He is going to come off loquatious, arrogant, and mean. She will come off geniune, articulate, and strong.

I mean come one, we are talking about a guy who tried to win an argument by claiming he had a higher IQ than the other guy. The only reason you guys think he is such a great debater is because he kicked the crap out of Hillary and Obama in the primaries. Big whoop. None of them are strong debaters.

The left always proclaims their candidates these master debaters and then the second they go up against the Republicans they get their clock cleaned.

 

[Jon]

I doubt Huckabee ever said anything that could be used against anyone, and everyone loves him, even me, even if he wants to rewrite the constitution. He's so affable.

Hmmm...try losing half your college fund because the governor cuts out all the academic challenge scholarships.

 

[Avatar4321]

Yes he befuddled and out-maneuvered Obama with his pick, but he also befuddled and out-maneuvered Repubs with his pick too. After the novelty wears off, conservatives will start asking WTF was he thinking.

We understand what he is thinking quite alright right now. That's exactly why we are happy about it.