Can this guy get any more like George Bush?
Here he is threatening to use the veto power every time he times he turns around, especially on legislation put forth by Democrats (oh great), and on every beer that comes across his desk.
Take a nap, Gramps.
Let the games begin, I suppose. The Republican National Committee has launched MeetBarackObama.com, a site with such features as:
Visit if you must but it’s a bit of a snoozer. If this is the best they can do, our team should have a pretty easy time of it this fall.
Dan Balz of the Washington Post reports the Obama campaign believes it will need to hold every state won by John Kerry in ’04 and then pick off a few states that have voted Republican in the past two elections in order to capture the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
Balz writes, “The Kerry map gives Obama 252 electoral votes. To pick up the next 18 electoral votes, Obama will target Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. His list also includes Ohio, where he lost the primary to [Hillary] Clinton but which, in the 2006 midterms, shifted dramatically toward the Democrats.”
Not so fast — The McCain campaign believes the Arizona senator’s potential appeal to independents and some Democrats will shine the way to 270. If everything holds, Republicans and Democrats will set their sights clearly on the other’s terrain, writes Balz. “McCain and Obama offer a rare combination of nominees able to poach on the other party’s turf. Both have proven appeal to independents. McCain will target disgruntled Clinton supporters; Obama will target disaffected Republicans. Women, Latinos and, especially, white working-class voters will find themselves courted intensely by the two campaigns.
The advantage on the latter point goes to Obama, despite the fact that a new CBS poll found that 22 percent of Clinton supporters say they will vote for McCain instead of Obama. But as memories fade of the often vicious attacks on Clinton by Obama supporters — and the reality of a third Bush term under McCain sinks in — Clinton supporters will “come home” to the Democratic Party.
The presidential race now is all about winning 270 votes in the Electoral College this November, and, as in 2000 and 2004, the battleground for that contest will likely come down to either Ohio or Florida. A recent poll of Ohio voters reveals general unhappiness with the status quo, which could help the campaign of Barack Obama:
McCain’s straight talk in Michigan — that the jobs lost there are not coming back — was not well received in Ohio.
Most political analysts agree that the candidate who wants to win the state’s critical 20 electoral votes must convince voters he has the best answers to reverse an alarming trend that has seen the Ohio lose nearly 200,000 jobs since President Bush took office in 2001.
McCain and Obama face separate challenges in convincing voters they can fix the economy. Neither can afford to write off the state. No Republican has been elected president without carrying Ohio and only two Democrats in the 20th century lost Ohio and won the White House — Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 and John F. Kennedy in 1960.
McCain’s reputation as a free trader may raise eyebrows among voters who blame trade for job losses.
“One thing John McCain is going to have to do is persuade the people of Ohio that he can be a free trader and… that is going to be a benefit for working class folks in Ohio,” said Christopher Duncan, chairman of the political science department at the University of Dayton.
It’s also not clear that McCain’s message to autoworkers in Michigan, where he lost the GOP primary to Mitt Romney, will play any better in Ohio. McCain’s straight talk in Michigan — that the jobs lost there are not coming back — was not well received, said Jennifer Duffy, a political analyst with the Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C.
Obama, who lost the Ohio primary to Hillary Clinton by more than 200,000 votes, stumbled in Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and other states relating to the working and middle-class voters hurt most by the bad economy.
Here are the numbers:
Barack Obama has been the Democratic nominee since Tuesday (Saturday if you count waiting for Clinton’s concession speech), and the pressure from the press and pundits is intense to pick his running mate. Talk has been of little else.
John McCain has been the Republican nominee since early February, and there seems to be no hurry on his part or the medias’ for him to select a vice presidential candidate. McCain even invited the contenders to his wife’s Arizona ranch Memorial Day weekend, presumably to winnow his choices. Yet there’s been no follow-up by the press, no curiosity as to what decision he reached.
Pressure on Obama seems to be the hallmark of this campaign.
The day after Obama wrapped up the delegate count McCain challenged him to a series of town hall debates. McCain said the contests could begin immediately and take place each week until the Democratic convention.
“I suggest we agree to participate in at least 10 town halls once a week with the first on June 11 or 12 in New York City at Federal Hall until the week before the Democratic Convention begins at locations to be determined by our campaigns,” McCain said in an open letter to his Democratic rival.
Come again? McCain wants Obama to spend his time, now that he is finally free of Democratic competition for the nomination, not making his case to voters and establishing himself without distractions but sharing the spotlight with John McCain. The benefits for McCain are several.
…the bottom line is that he is begging to be rescued from the big problem his campaign has encountered: which is that the only thing their candidate is good at is town-hall meetings.
This was driven home Tuesday night when the Republicans decided to try to insert a McCain speech into the Democrats’ final primary night. They were hoping to steal thunder from the moment when Obama clinched the nomination. The actual effect was to offer viewers a chance to compare the skills of the greatest orator in modern American politics with a guy who has never really learned how to read a teleprompter.
It would also be a cheap way for McCain to gain exposure he would not otherwise, because of the lackluster fund raising support given his campaign.
McCain also suggested that he and his rival travel together to the first debate as a symbolic gesture.
He joked that his campaign would appreciate the budget savings. “Given our expenses, I know my campaign would agree to it,” McCain said to laughter from the crowd.
Obama has raised tens of millions of dollars more than McCain for his White House run.
Regular debates could help McCain compensate for Obama’s fundraising success by providing him with regular free media exposure.
But what, besides more exhaustion, does Obama get out of it? Hey, I have an idea. How about if, each night during the Republican convention, McCain and Obama have a town hall debate? Works for me.
If I were Barack Obama, I would be brain-dead by now. Just thinking about how he must feel makes me tired. That he obviously isn’t should go a long way toward reassuring those who said he couldn’t take the pressure of the type of campaign Republicans would wage against him.
But still, can the guy just get a little break? That’s all I’m asking.
According to Congressional Quarterly, John McCain voted with George Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007, and has voted with him 100 percent so far this year. There are a few caveats, however:
As of last week, John McCain has voted in support of President Bush’s policies 100 percent of the time this year!
Of course, that’s based on only six votes.
That’s the result of CQ’s latest tally of the future nominees’ voting records in the Senate this year, which includes all of the votes that have taken place through the end of last week. It covers all the times they have sided with Bush — the measure Obama prefers to use — and all the times they have broken with the party line, the measure McCain prefers.
Obama has made an issue of McCain’s support of Bush, for obvious reasons (Bush is a bit radioactive with the public right now). In his speech Tuesday night, Obama noted that McCain voted with Bush 95 percent of the time last year.
But McCain missed more than half of the votes last year, and the ones where he sided with Bush don’t always mean what they seem to mean — since many of them were on immigration, an issue where most Democrats actually agreed with Bush and McCain.
This year is no different. McCain has only made 26 percent of the votes this year, and Obama has only made 44 percent. So their scores aren’t based on a huge number of roll calls. (Through last week, the Senate had taken 140 votes, and only 28 of them were based on issues where Bush took a public position.)
It’s Friday and time to grow mellow and since I always enjoy Jeanne Moss, what better way to end the week than with her take on the Obama fist bump?
Warning: This video contains scenes of graphic hetereosexuality. If you prefer not to have displays of this type put all up in your face, don’t watch.
P.S. Baby got back. Who knew?
The recent news out of Kentucky was just awful,
They found the senator unconscious and horizontal.
And since his hospitalization,
There’s been little news about his condition,
But now everybody’s having a 20-minute conversation with Mitch McConnell.
