Barack Obama or John McCain

[David G. Healy]

Hi,

It appears to me that McCain had limited options in respect of choosing a VP and considering he was pretty much running ‘neck and neck’ with Obama on his own steam, he figured this was a good way to reduce the so called ‘bounce’ that was inevitable from the Democratic convention.

Personally no matter what develops over the next few weeks, it should at least theoretically give some of the disgruntled ‘Hillary voters’ some ‘food for thought’ before they just sign up on the Obama/Biden ticket. With limited options regarding his VP pick and knowing that the media would help ‘plug’ the inevitable Dem ‘bounce’ I think it is – at least initially – a smart move in respect of doing the best you can with what is available (putting your finger in the dam until help arrives?)

Now of course that is the way I view it, but to be honest, I do not think McCain can win in November. However, he has managed to thus far cling to the coat tails of Obama in the polls and whilst he is doing that he will always have a chance.

I remember when ‘New Labour’ beat the conservatives in the UK, they did not just beat them but they trounced them and this completely changed the momentum from the conservatives being the previously (generally perceived) dominant party in favour of the Labour party – the effect of which the conservatives have still not fully recovered. So it is quite possible that whatever McCain’s plans are, from the point of view of the GOP this may be something they wish to avoid at all costs (a trouncing that is) and hence the pick.

Having said that, what do I know...

Steve

Edit: added 'do' to the line ' what do I know'.

perhaps we're finding a new definition as to what running 'neck and neck' means?

Now, Lindsay Graham Republican Senator (one of McCain's stalwart supporters, from So. Carolina has that far out look, as in *a deer caught in headlights*. He's stunned with this decesion.

We're hearing McCain met the lady for a short period of time at a Governors conference few months back, talked with her on the phone this past Sunday then made his decision...

The following defines the GOP situation (a real short read)...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/12997

[William Kelly]

What impact do you think McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as Republican vice-presidential nominee? It seems it is an attempt to win over those Democratic women voters who were disappointed by the defeat of Clinton by Obama. However, she is a very different woman candidate being a fiscal and social conservative who opposes abortion. (I suppose it will cnvince Tim Gratz to vote for McCain) It is probably significant that her husband Todd works in the oil industry in Alaska.

You could call it the strangest vice-president decision since George Bush Sr, selected Dan Quayle in 1988.

Palin is also under investigation in Alaska by state lawmakers. She sacked a public safety commissioner and the allegation is that she removed him because he had not fired a state trooper who is Mrs Palin's former brother-in-law, and who is in a custody battle with her sister.

Gezze,

I have a bottle of Kelly's wine to anyone's case of lager that Palin isn't on the ballot in November.

If John Simkin knows that much about her former brother-in-law's shennagans, there's certainly more to come; and she's only been in politics for three years, then she hasn't been properly vetted, or maybe she has and Carl Rove is throwing her to the wolves like a trial balloon to see if she flys.

Just like Bush nominating his personal attorney to the Supreme Court, it was almost a joke, even though he wasn't kidding.

This time they're kidding, right?

Remember Eagleton?

Let the vetting begin.

BK

you may be right Bill.... rumor has it, Romney is livid, as is Joe Libermann! While John McCain is concerned about the Hilary's 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, the floor is crumbling beneath them. He does have a thing for beauty queens though....

The GOP has more than enough problems going into their convention, shooting themselves in the foot at this juncture is a mark of desperation and a failed campaign

McCain looks like a tired old man. The comment "only a heart-beat away" has special meaning in this case.

Other points about Palin is that she is opposed to environmental restrictions on drilling in Alaska (her husband works for BP), supports the death-penalty and the teaching of creationism in schools. She is also against restrictions placed on gun-owners.

Palin not only opposes abortion but refused to have one just over a year ago when it was discovered that she was pregnant with a Down's syndrome child. One of her son's is just about to be deployed to Iraq. She is the darling of the far right.

McCain in clearly appealing to the Religious Right and to those men like himself who have a thing about beauty queens. If McCain is elected, I would feel very vulnerable to an assassination attempt from a communist patsy. This is the only way they could get such an extremist right-winger in the White House.

Obama's acceptance speech Thursday evening garnered 38 million US viewers. McCain is desperate. His announcement of Palin as his choice for Veep, Friday was quite successful. Successful as in; getting Obama of the front pages, quickly. Palin is gonna fall on her sword for the GOP (Grand Old Party -- the Republicans) this time around, but it will cost the GOP later. Palin will be back when the GOP finishes its newly found makeover. 4-8 years down the road. Ms. Palin has Ms. Hillary Clinton to thank for her stardom...

...and photos like this.

Jack

Holly cow! I was going to say she's not qualified to be Vice President, but boy, that proves me wrong.

She's still not qualified to be POTUS, which will come out quickly, and the nomination will be recinded and the real, serious candidate, waiting in the wings, will be named.

Also, Castro endorses Obama:

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/25364...CFQuwGgodRSjGQA

And arrests Punk Rocker for "dangerousness":

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainme...936141820080829

BK

Edited August 31, 2008 by William Kelly

[William Kelly]

What impact do you think McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as Republican vice-presidential nominee? It seems it is an attempt to win over those Democratic women voters who were disappointed by the defeat of Clinton by Obama. However, she is a very different woman candidate being a fiscal and social conservative who opposes abortion. (I suppose it will cnvince Tim Gratz to vote for McCain) It is probably significant that her husband Todd works in the oil industry in Alaska.

You could call it the strangest vice-president decision since George Bush Sr, selected Dan Quayle in 1988.

Palin is also under investigation in Alaska by state lawmakers. She sacked a public safety commissioner and the allegation is that she removed him because he had not fired a state trooper who is Mrs Palin's former brother-in-law, and who is in a custody battle with her sister.

Gezze,

I have a bottle of Kelly's wine to anyone's case of lager that Palin isn't on the ballot in November.

If John Simkin knows that much about her former brother-in-law's shennagans, there's certainly more to come; and she's only been in politics for three years, then she hasn't been properly vetted, or maybe she has and Carl Rove is throwing her to the wolves like a trial balloon to see if she flys.

Just like Bush nominating his personal attorney to the Supreme Court, it was almost a joke, even though he wasn't kidding.

This time they're kidding, right?

Remember Eagleton?

Let the vetting begin.

BK

Bookies get in line behind my call:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080902...rg/azjwbcginwsg

McCain More Likely to Drop Palin, Bookmakers Say Mark Deen

Tue Sep 2, 1:04 PM ET

Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The smart money thinks there's a better chance today than yesterday that John McCain will dump Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Before the Republican senator's presidential campaign disclosed the pregnancy of Palin's 17-year-old daughter, bookmakers in Britain and Ireland were offering 20-1 odds or higher on a bet that she would be forced off the ticket, meaning a 1 pound ($1.78) bet would pay 20 pounds. Now that same bet will pay no more than 8 pounds.

``While it is rare that a VP candidate gets dropped, it's not completely impossible,'' said Ken Robertson, political betting analyst at Paddy Power Plc, a Dublin-based gambling company. ``Lots of our punters are betting `Shocking' Sarah's days are numbered,'' he added, using a nickname he came up with for the first-term Alaska governor.

The odds, based on wagers made online with Paddy Power and William Hill Plc and in their betting shops, also suggest that McCain is less likely to win the White House because of his vice-presidential running-mate choice, announced Aug. 29. Both gambling houses, along with rival Ladbrokes Plc, place Democrat Barack Obama, 47, as the favorite to triumph in the contest.

``Ever since he appointed her, people have stopped betting on McCain,'' said David Williams of Ladbrokes in London. ``He went down like a sack of potatoes as far as the punters are concerned.''

Odds for Palin

Today, William Hill cut the odds that Palin, 44, would be sacked to 8-1 from 20-1. Paddy Power now puts the odds of Palin leaving the ticket at 14-1, compared to 28-1 before yesterday's disclosure about Bristol Palin, the daughter. The Paddy Power betting house is also offering 33-1 odds that she will go by the end of this week. Ladbrokes is offering 10-1 odds that Palin will quit the race.

Intrade, a Dublin-based peer-to-peer betting Web site, opened a contract on Palin to be withdrawn as the Republican vice presidential nominee. The latest price was 12 cents, up 9 cents today. Each contract at that price will pay 88 cents per contract if Palin leaves the ticket.

Political betting on financial markets outperforms polling as an elections predictor, according to a University of North Carolina study and figures from the Iowa Electronic Markets. Only twice in the century through 2004 -- the 1916 election and the 2000 contest between Bush and Democrat Al Gore -- did the betting markets get it wrong on the popular vote.

Eagleton's Demise

The last time a vice presidential candidate was dropped from the ticket was in 1972, when George McGovern's pick for the job, Tom Eagleton, left the Democratic campaign after disclosures he had undergone treatment for depression. McGovern went on to lose the election to Republican Richard Nixon.

``It would be disastrous for his campaign were McCain to sack Palin, but it is not impossible that she could stand down should party chiefs feel that she is too controversial a choice who might end up costing McCain votes,'' said William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe.

The betting houses also say punters are shifting toward an eventual Obama victory in November. Paddy Power said Obama is now favored 4-9 compared with 1-2 before the Palin appointment. William Hill said Obama's odds shifted last week to 4-9, where they now remain, from 4-11 on Aug. 21 and 2-5 before that.

Ladbrokes also puts Obama as the 4-9 favorite.

Odds on victory for McCain, who is 72, are 13-8, according to both Paddy Power and William Hill. Ladbrokes gives McCain a slightly better chance of winning, offering 6 pounds for every four bet on that outcome.

McCain advisers Stephen Schmidt and Mark Salter told reporters in St. Paul, Minnesota, yesterday that the campaign learned of Bristol's pregnancy when the mother was vetted.

Obama, campaigning in Monroe, Michigan, said yesterday Palin's children should be ``off limits'' and cited his own mother, who gave birth to Obama when she was 18. Obama named Senator Joe Biden as his running mate last month.

[Don Jeffries]

I think that McCain made a startlingly astute choice in Palin. I had never even heard of her before, and know little or nothing of her politics. I assume she's acceptable to the powers-that-be, or she wouldn't have been chosen. That being said, I was very impressed with what little I heard her say. I readily admit my impression might easily have been skewered by her good looks. Never underestimate the power of a pretty face. She seemed unusually sincere to me. Maybe she's just a great actor.

I also admire her decision to have a Downs Syndrome baby at age 44. Many pro-lifers talk the talk, but Palin proved rather demonstrably that she also walks the walk. I have a close family member with Downs Syndrome, so perhaps I'm not looking at this impartially. As for her daughter's pregnancy, again she is walking the walk by encouraging her to have the baby. Right or wrong, that's the thing you'd expect a right-to-lifer to do. I suspect that many who are pro-life in public secretly would urge their daughter to have an abortion in such a situation. Most 17 year olds are having sex, so this is no surprise. Getting pregnant as a result is also quite common. I admire Obama's reaction to the news, especially the reminder that his own mother was that age when she gave birth to him. That was the kind of reaction that the average politician wouldn't have, and he scored some points with me because of it.

It would still be almost impossible for me to vote for McCainiac, but I think he made about the best VP choice he could (outside of pleasing those like me by picking Ron Paul). Unlike those gamblers in Ireland, I would venture that she helps the ticket a lot more than hurts it. There are still a lot of Hillary supporters out there who are mad at Obama. I believe a good number of them will now vote for McCain because of Palin. She unquestionably will bring him more female voters. I think it's going to be another very close election.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

I think that McCain made a startlingly astute choice in Palin.

CAPTURED LIVE ON TAPE:

Listen to what REAL republicans are REALLY saying when they THINK it's OFF THE RECORD:

Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan and former John McCain adviser, Time columnist, and MSNBC contributor Mike Murphy were caught on tape disparaging John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate.

"It's over," Noonan said.

When Chuck Todd asked her if this was the most qualified woman the Republicans could nominate, Noonan responded, "The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullxxxx about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and that's not what they're good at, they blow it."

Murphy characterized the choices as "cynical" and "gimmicky."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/p...y_n_123647.html

[J. Raymond Carroll]

"It's over," Noonan said.

Peggy tries to talk her way out:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1220447537...days_columnists

[Craig Lamson]

What impact do you think McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as Republican vice-presidential nominee? It seems it is an attempt to win over those Democratic women voters who were disappointed by the defeat of Clinton by Obama. However, she is a very different woman candidate being a fiscal and social conservative who opposes abortion. (I suppose it will cnvince Tim Gratz to vote for McCain) It is probably significant that her husband Todd works in the oil industry in Alaska.

You could call it the strangest vice-president decision since George Bush Sr, selected Dan Quayle in 1988.

Palin is also under investigation in Alaska by state lawmakers. She sacked a public safety commissioner and the allegation is that she removed him because he had not fired a state trooper who is Mrs Palin's former brother-in-law, and who is in a custody battle with her sister.

Gezze,

I have a bottle of Kelly's wine to anyone's case of lager that Palin isn't on the ballot in November.

If John Simkin knows that much about her former brother-in-law's shennagans, there's certainly more to come; and she's only been in politics for three years, then she hasn't been properly vetted, or maybe she has and Carl Rove is throwing her to the wolves like a trial balloon to see if she flys.

Just like Bush nominating his personal attorney to the Supreme Court, it was almost a joke, even though he wasn't kidding.

This time they're kidding, right?

Remember Eagleton?

Let the vetting begin.

BK

Looking more like Biden might be asked to "retire" instead....

[J. Raymond Carroll]

CAPTURED LIVE ON CAMERA:

What MCCain REALLY THINKS (whenever he thinks) about Sara Palin

[Ron Ecker]

September 12, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Blizzard of Lies

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.

Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.

But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.

Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn’t say “no thanks” — she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”

Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn’t righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere.

So the whole story of Ms. Palin’s alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction.

Or take the story of Mr. Obama’s alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.

And then there’s the claim that Mr. Obama’s use of the ordinary metaphor “putting lipstick on a pig” was a sexist smear, and on and on.

Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.

They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”

Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that.

One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.

But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.

I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.

I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.

And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?

What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/...amp;oref=slogin

Edited September 12, 2008 by Ron Ecker

[John Simkin]

If Barack Obama wins he will be the first African-American as president. It has been suggested that if John McCain wins he will be the first Ancient American president.

[John Simkin]

It seems that Bush has come under tremendous pressure from the electorate when he decided to nationalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was thought that this action would destroy the Republicans in the November elections. This was why Bush refused to bail out Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank in the US. However, the new policy did not last too long and today the US Federal Reserve has announced an $85bn (£48bn) rescue package for AIG, the country's biggest insurance company, to save it from bankruptcy. AIG will get an $85bn loan, in return for an 80% public stake in the firm.

Bush had no option but to do this. If he hadn't there would have been totally meltdown on the markets. The reason is that AIG insures deals and investments across the globe. Were the company to fail, many banks and investment funds in the US and around the world would lose their insurance cover at a time when defaults on payments are likely to rise. If AIG went, so would other leading banks in the US.

How do you think these events will influence the American elections? Although deregulation continued under Clinton after it was started by Reagan, it is Bush who fully developed this policy. I believe McCain was also a great supporter of deregulation. What has Obama been saying about it over the last few years?

[David G. Healy]

It seems that Bush has come under tremendous pressure from the electorate when he decided to nationalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was thought that this action would destroy the Republicans in the November elections. This was why Bush refused to bail out Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank in the US. However, the new policy did not last too long and today the US Federal Reserve has announced an $85bn (£48bn) rescue package for AIG, the country's biggest insurance company, to save it from bankruptcy. AIG will get an $85bn loan, in return for an 80% public stake in the firm.

Bush had no option but to do this. If he hadn't there would have been totally meltdown on the markets. The reason is that AIG insures deals and investments across the globe. Were the company to fail, many banks and investment funds in the US and around the world would lose their insurance cover at a time when defaults on payments are likely to rise. If AIG went, so would other leading banks in the US.

How do you think these events will influence the American elections? Although deregulation continued under Clinton after it was started by Reagan, it is Bush who fully developed this policy. I believe McCain was also a great supporter of deregulation. What has Obama been saying about it over the last few years?

A few "leading" banks in the UK, too.... McCain will have his plate full tomorrow, according to an aide it seems John McCain invented the Blackberry, fancy that.... (perhaps that little gem will distract the press long enough while the economic meltdown presses forward. Palin's popularity dropped 10% during the past few days.... It's rumored as Governor she cut the Alaskan State Special Olympics budget by 50% (not bad for the person who said she'll be the advocate for Special Needs Children, eh?)

and the beat goes on...... You simply can't make this stuff up... one wonders why they have to lie? Because they can, I guess!

Edited September 17, 2008 by David G. Healy

[John Simkin]

Interesting article by Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian today. I am interested in what people think about his comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...eet.barackobama

Meanwhile, there are fewer than 1,200 hours till general election day. So put to one side, for a moment, the economics of fear; the immediate question is how the politics of fear play into the election contest.

If people vote with their heads, "the economy, stupid" should help Obama to victory. For all the external causes in the world beyond America's shores, this financial and economic hurricane has blown up on George W Bush's watch, and at least partly because of things his administration has done (for instance, overspent) or failed to do (under- or misregulated the financial sector).

McCain's economic policies are not so different, nor is he very convincing in presenting them. He wobbled in his first response to Meltdown Monday, before flip-flopping on Tuesday. As for Palin: in a world increasingly shaped by Wikinomics, the last thing the US needs is Wasillanomics.

Moreover, there may be a larger pattern involved here. The American columnist Michael Kinsley has a characteristically ingenious article at Slate.com which compares a number of economic indicators, including GDP per capita, inflation, unemployment, federal taxes, spending and budget deficit, over Republican and Democrat presidencies since 1959.

The Democrats score better on everything except lower taxes. Above all, the historical evidence suggests that Republican administrations spend more and increase the budget deficit. It's not just Kinsley's figures that point this way. In the past, I have heard one of the US's most celebrated libertarian economists quietly observe that if you really believe in small government, you should vote Democrat.

Now economists could no doubt argue about every one of these figures till the pigs come home (with or without lipstick), but the political conclusion seems to me to be clear. If you think the economy is the most important issue in this election - which nearly two-thirds of those asked say they do, while less than a quarter name Iraq - and if you are a rational punter, then your rational choice would be to give the Democrats a chance of doing better than the Bush administration has done.

If people vote with their heads, that is. But people often vote with other parts of their anatomy (heart, gut - choose your organ). And there's a deeper politics of fear that runs against Obama. This is not about facts and policies, but about perceptions, characters, stories, dreams - about feelings that men and women only half-recognise and rarely confess. Yes, that includes race. In a CBS-New York Times poll in July, only 5% of white voters acknowledged that they would not vote for a black candidate, but 24% said America wasn't ready to elect a black president. But it also involves the whole otherness, newness, complexity of him.

Obama, a child of the world as it is, offers a dream of the world as it might be. (That's why so much of the world thrills to him, and will be devastated if he loses.) McCain, Vietnam hero, and Palin, hockey mom, offer a dream of the US as it once was. Rational this may not be, but voters who are fearful, defensive, and unhappy with the way the world is going, may just prefer to hunker down with the reassuring familiarity of that vision of America. "Got hope?" challenges the Obama bumper sticker. At the moment, America has got fear. And the temerity of fear may yet defeat the audacity of hope.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Interesting article by Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian today. I am interested in what people think about his comments:

"Got hope?" challenges the Obama bumper sticker. At the moment, America has got fear. And the temerity of fear may yet defeat the audacity of hope.[/color]

U.S. elections traditionally have low voter turnout compared to elections in other developed countries. That means that the candidates have to MOTIVATE people to take time out of their busy lives just when the weather is becoming wintry, and it is so much cosier to stay indoors.

Is fear a greater motivator than hope?

I guess the election will answer that question, but I see this as a struggle between YOUTH & AGE and I have never seen such enthusiasm among young people although Bill Clinton really brought voters out in droves in 1992, a year that had an unusually high voter turnout. I will be very surprised if the final tallies this year do not show a HUGE increase in voter turnout by young people, and of course regular Democrats are really sick and embarrased by Bush and can't wait for the polls to open.

It is the Republicans who have to worry about apathy among their own species, and Sarah Palin is supposed to be the antidote. Somehow I hae me doots about Sarah, and I'm not sure how many Republican old folks -- people who chose W over McCain back when McCain was in his prime -- will bother making the effort for this pair of jokers.

My next -door neighbor is a die-hard Republican and he starts cussin' whenever Sarah's name is mentioned. He feels insulted by McCain, and so do many others.

So I got hope.

[Mark Stapleton]

Interesting article by Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian today. I am interested in what people think about his comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...eet.barackobama

Meanwhile, there are fewer than 1,200 hours till general election day. So put to one side, for a moment, the economics of fear; the immediate question is how the politics of fear play into the election contest.

If people vote with their heads, "the economy, stupid" should help Obama to victory. For all the external causes in the world beyond America's shores, this financial and economic hurricane has blown up on George W Bush's watch, and at least partly because of things his administration has done (for instance, overspent) or failed to do (under- or misregulated the financial sector).

McCain's economic policies are not so different, nor is he very convincing in presenting them. He wobbled in his first response to Meltdown Monday, before flip-flopping on Tuesday. As for Palin: in a world increasingly shaped by Wikinomics, the last thing the US needs is Wasillanomics.

Moreover, there may be a larger pattern involved here. The American columnist Michael Kinsley has a characteristically ingenious article at Slate.com which compares a number of economic indicators, including GDP per capita, inflation, unemployment, federal taxes, spending and budget deficit, over Republican and Democrat presidencies since 1959.

The Democrats score better on everything except lower taxes. Above all, the historical evidence suggests that Republican administrations spend more and increase the budget deficit. It's not just Kinsley's figures that point this way. In the past, I have heard one of the US's most celebrated libertarian economists quietly observe that if you really believe in small government, you should vote Democrat.

Now economists could no doubt argue about every one of these figures till the pigs come home (with or without lipstick), but the political conclusion seems to me to be clear. If you think the economy is the most important issue in this election - which nearly two-thirds of those asked say they do, while less than a quarter name Iraq - and if you are a rational punter, then your rational choice would be to give the Democrats a chance of doing better than the Bush administration has done.

If people vote with their heads, that is. But people often vote with other parts of their anatomy (heart, gut - choose your organ). And there's a deeper politics of fear that runs against Obama. This is not about facts and policies, but about perceptions, characters, stories, dreams - about feelings that men and women only half-recognise and rarely confess. Yes, that includes race. In a CBS-New York Times poll in July, only 5% of white voters acknowledged that they would not vote for a black candidate, but 24% said America wasn't ready to elect a black president. But it also involves the whole otherness, newness, complexity of him.

Obama, a child of the world as it is, offers a dream of the world as it might be. (That's why so much of the world thrills to him, and will be devastated if he loses.) McCain, Vietnam hero, and Palin, hockey mom, offer a dream of the US as it once was. Rational this may not be, but voters who are fearful, defensive, and unhappy with the way the world is going, may just prefer to hunker down with the reassuring familiarity of that vision of America. "Got hope?" challenges the Obama bumper sticker. At the moment, America has got fear. And the temerity of fear may yet defeat the audacity of hope.

It's no contest. If they elect McCain they deserve the consequences. They can't be that stupid.