My thoughts on last night’s debate? I of course preferred Obama’s approach and thought he presented himself as thoughtful, intelligent, cool and unruffled but strong and I thought McCain stuttered and at times needed a roadmap to keep up with his train of thought. He also looked again like a condescending boob on several occasions.
From my point of view, Obama was clearly the winner of this debate, on many fronts - the presentation of facts, outlining of future plans, personality, ability to relate to the common man. However, I think if you are a John McCain supporter, you probably think he won. He came out strong in the first half an hour or so (although he lost steam and floundered after that). He had that zinger about “If you wanted to run against George Bush, you should have run four years ago…” He did try to nail Obama on the Bill Ayers issue and on his association with ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).
If you support John McCain, you probably think he’s right on all of these issues, and so you ignored Obama’s equally strong rebuttal to McCain’s insistence that he is not George Bush (essentially saying, “sorry for the confusion, but your positions are so similar you can certainly see where I might confuse you with Dubya”). And you most certainly ignored again (as McCain has been doing for weeks) Obama’s clear explanation of what relationship he had with Bill Ayers in the past and the fact that many prominent Republicans had just as close an association. Oh and ACORN? Yeah, he helped them on a legal case years ago in which they fought to allow voter registration along with vehicle registration at the DMV (the so-called Motor Voter Act)…working alongside Obama on this case? The U.S.Dept. of Justice.
It was apparent that John McCain listened to all of those supporters who insisted he “go there” and confront Obama in person over the Ayers and ACORN issues…you know, rather than bringing them up at campaign rallies and in ads, but not having the guts to bring them up to the man’s face.
I hope you noticed his subtle way of still trying to distance himself from these sorts of attacks, even while using them to his advantage. This is not the first time he has used the verbiage: “I don’t care about this one little terrorist,” in relation to Ayers. “But Obama has yet to fully explain his association with this man…”
Of course he has. He has explained, ad nauseum.
But my point is - if you don’t care, Senator, why do you and Sarah Palin keep bringing the man up?
It’s just the worst kind of hypocrisy to me – to pretend you are some how above the fray; that you do not want to soil yourself by bringing up what you know to be outrageous accusations, based on the flimsiest of details, and feed them to your constituents like chum for sharks…but you’ll let your running mate do so; you’ll let your campaign workers and vocal supporters do so; you’ll allow ads on the television which do so.
And to try and equate Obama’s ads which attack your health care plan to your ads which not so subtlely tie him to terrorism and question his loyalty to his country is ludicrous. Ads which point out the differences in your positions on issues are ads based by definition on issues. Obama has every right to confront you on the issues, as you do he.
During the exchange about the tone of the campaign in recent weeks, McCain said it's "not true" that he's running 100% negative ads. In fact, the Wisconsin Advertising Project recently found that his ads were 100% negative
McCain claimed that he's “repudiated” every "out of bounds" remark by a Republican about Obama. However, just a few days ago McCain demurred when asked if he would repudiate remarks made by the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party who compared Obama to bin Laden. Also, never once has he or Sarah Palin said anything about the nut jobs who are at their rallies yelling things like “Terrorist!” and even “Kill him!” Their silence in the face of these outbursts speaks volumes.
Apparently, McCain thinks that taking the microphone out of one person’s hand (which he did recently, when a woman at his campaign rally said Obama scared her because he’s “an Arab”) equates to “repudiating every out of bounds remark” made against Barack Obama.
(Because he was defending Obama, I guess we’re supposed to ignore the inherent racism that lingered over that entire exchange…the woman is afraid of Obama because she thinks he’s “an Arab”. McCain defends Obama by saying he’s not an Arab, he’s a “decent family man” who should not be feared. You know – unlike the millions of people of middle eastern decent walking the earth right now…)
I was especially disgusted by McCain’s attempts to manipulate Obama’s words in to an attack on the people at his rallies. Obama rightfully brought up the fact that some people are yelling extremely outrageous and even threatening and dangerous things about Obama at McCain rallies and yet we have yet to hear McCain or Palin “repudiate” any of them. McCain’s response? “I'm proud of the people who come to our rallies." He went on and on about how hard the people who support him are working to get him elected and how insulting Obama is to them.
After McCain abruptly changed gears (obviously not liking where this conversation was headed), he declared that: "My campaign is about getting this economy back on track." Obama laughed. I think we all did. I understand why Obama did not go after Sarah Palin’s ignorance and complete lack of preparedness to be Vice President of this country, even when given the perfect opportunity to do so. I think I agree with his tactic. Sarah Palin is obviously her own worst enemy at this point (her approval ratings on both sides of the fence have steadily deteriorated after her brief burst of post-Convention popularity. The more we get to know her, the more we seem to dislike her. Go figger.). There is nothing to gain by pointing out her many shortcomings, but if Obama really went after her there are many who would come to her defense and scream sexism, just like they were doing after her few television interviews made her appear to be dumb as dirt. I won’t point out that lowering your expectations of her just because she is a woman is the height of sexism). Obama has a distinct lead in the polls at this point. There was no need for him to take that sort of risk. Besides, we all know that Sarah Palin is ignorant and a liar with questionable ethics. If you’re still going to vote for her, there really is nothing Obama is going to say which would change your mind at this point. Once again, issues surrounding the environment were only minimally discussed and were condensed in to one issue: dependence on foreign oil. And once again, McCain spouted his inane theory that the viability of nuclear-powered naval vessels demonstrates the viability of safely storing nuclear waste. We do not, of course, actually store the waste on the ships. The two things have nothing to do with each other. McCain also said that if we start drilling offshore now it will lower the price of a barrel of oil. Really? Cuz his top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, admitted in June that "new offshore drilling would have no immediate effect on supplies or prices." The Energy Information Administration says the same thing. McCain decided at one point to take on Obama over his desire to renegotiate NAFTA. Again, if you agree with McCain on this issue, you probably think he won points here. However, a lot of us happen to think that NAFTA should be renegotiated. Obama is arguing for better labor standards in trade agreements. It should be noted that aside from the fact that this is the right thing to do on a humanitarian level, Christian Weller has found that the United States can improve its trade deficit, which has been at or above 5% of gross domestic product since the middle of 2004, by calling for improved labor standards from America's trading partners." McCain said the escalating costs of health care are inflicting pain on "working class families." Ironically, McCain's plan to shift Americans from the employer-based system into the individual health insurance market would increase their out-of-pocket health expenses. McCain says we should have "physical fitness and nutrition programs" in our schools to reduce the number of overweight children. That’s a great idea, but I’m not quite sure how he is going to pay for such programs in light of his plan for an across-the-board spending freeze…in fact, he doesn’t seem to have any real plans at all. He just throws ideas out there that he thinks will sound good to the American public. Nowhere does he have an actual plan laid out and budgeted for, in detail. I must point out, incidentally, that when speaking about that spending freeze, McCain said: "I would fight for a line-item veto." Um…somebody should tell him that the line-item veto was signed into law years ago and ruled unconstitutional in 1998. McCain says he wouldn't have a litmus test for appointing judges to the bench, but he also recently told Pastor Rick Warren that he wouldn't have appointed any of the liberals and moderates on the Supreme Court: "Justice Ginsberg, Justice Breyer, Justice Souter, and Justice Stevens." And did he really just dismiss guaranteeing equal pay for equal work as a "trial lawyer's dream”???? Oh and also, according to McCain, concern for the health of a mother is now a position of the extreme "pro abortion movement." He actually used air/finger quotes when discussing "women's health" concerns. Please keep saying these things out loud, Senator McCain. This is why simply having a woman on your ticket is not going to win you the woman’s vote. Of course, if you were not such an ignorant, sexist pig you would have known that from the outset. So again – if you are a McCain supporter and you wanted your candidate to come out on the attack, you most likely think your candidate won last night’s debated. He certainly put Obama on the defensive for much of the exchange and as I noted after the first debate – the defensive position looks good on nobody. However, if you actually listen beneath all of that to the truth and the issues, there was no contest. It was the same story it’s been in the last three debates, except that McCain decided to be more pushy, more agitated, more aggressive. As noted by blogger Don Hazen: “The two of them could debate 50 times and the results would be the same: Grumpy old man losses to smart, calm, cool and collected every time.”
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