seke2 wrote:

Mountainphan wrote:

seke2 wrote:yes, it's way better than the alterative

i hate bush, but i respect that he's generally surrounded himself with smart people. i don't agree with their policies, but i generally feel that they are at least intelligent.

with mccain, i don't even have faith that he'd be surrounded by smart people (based on the choices he has made as a candidate) or be intelligent enough to listen to those people (based on his often seeming to act brashly and irrationally as a candidate).

Based on which choices?

Mostly, selecting Sarah Palin, who I feel has proven that she is phenomenally unqualified to be 1 heartbeat away from the presidency.

Monkeyboy wrote:

Bakestar wrote:
Of course, I was the one in 2000 who was naive enough to think Bush and the Republicans would recognize the closeness of the election and the splits in Congress, and see the imperative in forming something akin to a coalition government. Whoopie-daisy me!

9/11 changed everything. EVERYTHING. Or that's what they keep telling us.

TenuredVulture wrote:

Woody wrote:Recently I've been reconsidering Ron Paul's thoughts on fiat currency

A big chunk of my portfolio is gold, and I'm not selling.

seke2 wrote:That's a really good point dajafi. The overriding "theme" for McCain's campaign basically seems to have been "Obama sucks, we're the alternative" ... which isn't necessarily a bad strategy, but Brooks is absolutely right that it's essentially lead to a failure for McCain to explain why we should be voting FOR him. He hasn't made it clear who he is and based on his campaign decisions that seem to be very politically motivated (like selecting Sarah Palin), that may be because he's whoever he needs to be on any particular day for political purposes and doesn't really have a fundamental ideology, like Reagan did.

jerseyhoya wrote:

Woody wrote:I watched some clips on CNN over lunch.

People are saying McCain stayed quiet during the whole meeting that he suspended his campaign to attend in order lead us out of this mess. And when he did speak, at the very end, he didn't really say anything to indicate to anyone in the room where he stood.

Assuming the above is true, what do the Republicans on the board think about that? I'm honestly asking, I'm not taking a shot at him. Obama very well may have done the same

jerseyhoya wrote:I think McCain is partially to blame, and not for showing up, but because he hasn't taken a position other than "we should all get together, negotiate, and pass something."

It is no small irony that after years of being at odds with the right wing of his own party, John McCain is staking his campaign for the presidency on it.

During the late afternoon meeting at the White House (a meeting which was McCain's idea), McCain sat silently at the table until nearly the end, according to a Hill source who was briefed on the meeting. At that point, I'm told, McCain vaguely brought up the proposal being pushed by the Republican Study Committee, the group of House conservatives that is bucking the GOP leadership. But McCain didn't offer any specifics and didn't necessarily advocate for the plan, according to the Hill source.

Responding to McCain, Treasury Secretary Paulson said that the RSC proposal was unworkable, my source says, at which point McCain didn't really advocate for it or state his own position. The meeting adjourned soon after, amid confusion over where negotiations could go next. Democrats were incensed. "It sounds like Sen. McCain has sided with the House Republicans who want to start with a completely different approach," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) told Reuters later, after being briefed on the meeting.

The McCain campaign this evening issued a statement denying he had torpedoed the negotiations, but it's not just McCain's behavior at the meeting that suggests he's sided with House conservatives.

As The Hill reports, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, presaged the day's events when he told reporters that he'd had breakfast with McCain's advisers on Wednesday morning and talked by phone with McCain Wednesday night:

"We would prefer a loan or supplying insurance," Bachus told reporters. "These are the ideas Sen. McCain tried to maximize. He feels strongly we have to design a program where taxpayers won't lose."
In fact, House conservatives did float a mortgage insurance proposal today, though it's exact outlines were apparently a mystery to Democrats and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson alike.

McCain also met during the day with Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), but I'm told that Boehner is ready to sign off on the plan negotiated by Paulson and the Democrats -- he simply doesn't have control over his caucus (although other reports place Boehner as aggressively leading the charge).

This evening on Fox, McCain spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer was surprisingly solicitous of the arguments put forward by House conservatives:

You kind of have the Administration talking to the Democrats in Congress but maybe not working as closely as they should have with the Republicans. ... I don't know why people are shocked that that's how it played out tonight. ...
The conservative Republicans have been very, very focused on taxpayer protections, and one thing that Sen. McCain has been clear on from the beginning is that that's absolutely essential. ...


So McCain's gambit to shake up the election by "suspending" his campaign and returning to Washington to hammer out a deal at a big White House meeting ends up killing at least for now the hastily negotiated bailout plan that Treasury and Congress had hammered out. Strangely, almost inexplicably -- or maybe just desperately -- McCain has thrown his lot in with the same conservatives who see him as the perfect example of what is wrong with their party. Strange days indeed.

VoxOrion wrote:Fiat backed currency!

Monkeyboy wrote:So I'm wondering about the polls. Everyone agrees that Obama has an advantage among young people who are more likely to use cell phones and are more likely to be unavailable on the weekends, even if they have a land line. I'm sure the polls must account for this somehow, just like they have to account for Obama's high vote registration, etc.

So my question is: How accurate are these polls, really? It seems like there are a lot of variables at play, more than usual, which must make it harder to predict the actual turnout and vote. And if they aren't accurate, which way do you think they're biased -- are they over or under estimating these factors, or are they not really considering them much at all?

Monkeyboy wrote:So I'm wondering about the polls. Everyone agrees that Obama has an advantage among young people who are more likely to use cell phones and are more likely to be unavailable on the weekends, even if they have a land line. I'm sure the polls must account for this somehow, just like they have to account for Obama's high vote registration, etc.

So my question is: How accurate are these polls, really? It seems like there are a lot of variables at play, more than usual, which must make it harder to predict the actual turnout and vote. And if they aren't accurate, which way do you think they're biased -- are they over or under estimating these factors, or are they not really considering them much at all?

Selzer thinks that a lot of pollsters may be undercounting the youth vote, and potentially also the black vote. Young voters are becoming harder and harder to reach. They are in the habit of screening their phone calls. More problematically still, a great number of them (roughly 50 percent of voters under 30) rely principally or exclusively on cellphones, which most pollsters (including Selzer) will not call.

Moreover, many of the pollsters that do weight by age group may be doing so -- to her mind -- in the wrong way. Specifically, they tend to use the 2004 election as a benchmark, when 17 percent were aged 18-29. Selzer uses census bureau data as her benchmark instead; among American adults aged 18 and up, about 22 percent age 18-29. This might not seem like a large difference, but given Obama's strong performance among young voters, it makes a difference of about 1.5 points in the net Obama-McCain margin.

Monkeyboy wrote:So I'm wondering about the polls. Everyone agrees that Obama has an advantage among young people who are more likely to use cell phones and are more likely to be unavailable on the weekends, even if they have a land line. I'm sure the polls must account for this somehow, just like they have to account for Obama's high vote registration, etc.

So my question is: How accurate are these polls, really? It seems like there are a lot of variables at play, more than usual, which must make it harder to predict the actual turnout and vote. And if they aren't accurate, which way do you think they're biased -- are they over or under estimating these factors, or are they not really considering them much at all?

VoxOrion wrote:IMO "the kids" aren't going to show up the way it's predicted they will every year since 1992. I'm not saying there won't be an increase over 2000 or 2004, but I don't expect some shocking outcome altering turnout.

I think the "Bradley" thing might factor, but at the same time, I think folks who are unwilling to vote for a black guy but would lie about it won't show up to the polls at all, as opposed to showing up and voting for McCain. I think this economy thing is going to erase the Hillary bitterness among her former supporters, but I think (despite the reflected opinions here) a Big Problem might hurt Obama re: inexperience.

Right now, things are so volitile with the economy and attacks, I think it's anyone's game with a lean toward Obama, and will be until election day.

TenuredVulture wrote:and well, who knows?

seke2 wrote:That's a really good point dajafi. The overriding "theme" for McCain's campaign basically seems to have been "Obama sucks, we're the alternative" ... which isn't necessarily a bad strategy, but Brooks is absolutely right that it's essentially lead to a failure for McCain to explain why we should be voting FOR him. He hasn't made it clear who he is and based on his campaign decisions that seem to be very politically motivated (like selecting Sarah Palin), that may be because he's whoever he needs to be on any particular day for political purposes and doesn't really have a fundamental ideology, like Reagan did.