U.S. Elections 2008: General Elections -- Analysis and Commentary

[woad&fangs]

Newly registered voters aren't included in the POLLS?

Isn't that like 90% of Obama's supporters

[ICantSpellDawg]

Here is a new article by Camille Paglia. If you know anything about her, you will view this as an interesting and rather independent take.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Fresh blood for the vampire

A beady-eyed McCain gets a boost from the charismatic Sarah Palin, a powerful new feminist -- yes, feminist! -- force. Plus: Obama must embrace his dull side. By Camille Paglia
Sep. 10, 2008 | Rip tide! Is the Obama campaign shooting out to sea like a paper boat?





It's heavy weather for Obama fans, as momentum has suddenly shifted to John McCain -- that hoary, barnacle-encrusted tub that many Democrats like me had thought was full of holes and swirling to its doom in the inky depths of Republican incoherence and fratricide. Gee whilikers, the McCain vampire just won't die! Hit him with a hammer, and he explodes like a jellyfish into a hundred hungry pieces.
Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain's imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain's credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain's sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let's turn the damned page.
We need a new generation of leadership with fresh ideas and an expansive, cosmopolitan vision -- which is why I support Barack Obama and have contributed to his campaign. My baby-boom generation -- typified by the narcissistic Clintons -- peaked in the 1960s and is seriously past it. But McCain, born before Pearl Harbor, is even older than we are! Why would anyone believe that he holds the key to the future? And why would anyone swallow that preening passel of high-flown rhetoric about "country above all" coming from a seething, short-fused character whose rampant egotism, zigzagging principles, and currying of the gullible press were the distinguishing marks of his senatorial career?



Having said that, I must admit that McCain is currently eating Obama's lunch. McCain's weirdly disconnected persona (beady glowers flashing to frozen grins and back again) has started to look more testosterone-rich than Obama's easy, lanky, reflective candor. What in the world possessed the Obama campaign to let their guy wander like a dazed lamb into a snake pit of religious inquisition like Rick Warren's public forum last month at his Saddleback Church in California? That shambles of a performance -- where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness -- began his alarming slide.
As I said in my last column, I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama's efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin' his g's like there's no tomorrow. It's analogous to the way stodgy, portly Al Gore (evidently misadvised by the women in his family and their feminist pals) tried to zap himself up on the campaign trail into the happening buff dude that he was not. Both Gore and Obama would have been better advised to pursue a calm, steady, authoritative persona. Forget the jokes -- be boring! That, alas, is what reads as masculine in the U.S.


The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick -- there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly -- though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into "Star Wars" -- a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.


After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.
Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy -- one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama's triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football -- or one of the great light-saber duels in "Star Wars." (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in "The Phantom Menace.") This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.


Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.


In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation -- a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.


As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women's studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me -- and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).


Feinstein, with her deep knowledge of military matters, has true gravitas and knows how to shrewdly thrust and parry with pesky TV interviewers. But her style is reserved, discreet, mandarin. Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America's pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War -- long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did -- which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.


Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics -- which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama's campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don't see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.


One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones -- nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days. Ambitious professionals in those cities, if they want to preserve their social networks, are very vulnerable to received opinion. At receptions and parties (which I hate), they're sitting ducks. They have to go along to get along -- poor dears!


It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.


Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was another version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother's generation -- agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.


Here's one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, "Stop her!" as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, "Men!"


Now that's the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism -- a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.


Here's another example of the physical fortitude and indomitable spirit that Palin as an Alaskan sportswoman seems to represent right now. Last year, Toronto's Globe and Mail reprinted this remarkable obituary from 1905:

Abigail Becker Farmer and homemaker born in Frontenac County, Upper Canada, on March 14, 1830
A tall, handsome woman "who feared God greatly and the living or dead not at all," she married a widower with six children and settled in a trapper's cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie. On Nov. 23, 1854, with her husband away, she single-handedly rescued the crew of the schooner Conductor of Buffalo, which had run aground in a storm. The crew had clung to the frozen rigging all night, not daring to enter the raging surf. In the early morning, she waded chin-high into the water (she could not swim) and helped seven men reach shore. She was awarded medals for heroism and received $350 collected by the people of Buffalo, plus a handwritten letter from Queen Victoria that was accompanied by £50, all of which went toward buying a farm. She lost her husband to a storm, raised 17 children alone and died at Walsingham Centre, Ont.

Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today's pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.


But what of Palin's pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools? Book banning? Gay conversions? The Iraq war as God's plan? Zionism as a prelude to the apocalypse? We'll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don't believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media. To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.


The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.


Let's take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women's movement -- leading to feminists' McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton's support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women -- an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.


But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, "Sexual Personae,") has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.


Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship.
On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?



What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.
The gigantic, instantaneous coast-to-coast rage directed at Sarah Palin when she was identified as pro-life was, I submit, a psychological response by loyal liberals who on some level do not want to open themselves to deep questioning about abortion and its human consequences. I have written about the eerie silence that fell over campus audiences in the early 1990s when I raised this issue on my book tours. At such moments, everyone in the hall seemed to feel the uneasy conscience of feminism. Naomi Wolf later bravely tried to address this same subject but seems to have given up in the face of the resistance she encountered.



If Sarah Palin tries to intrude her conservative Christian values into secular government, then she must be opposed and stopped. But she has every right to express her views and to argue for society's acceptance of the high principle of the sanctity of human life. If McCain wins the White House and then drops dead, a President Palin would have the power to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, but she could not control their rulings.



It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism -- one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.
But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.


Camille Paglia's column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.

[Crazed Rabbit]

We got fed a bunch of "scandals" and went into a feeding frenzy.

Never stopping to question if there was any truth to any of the scandals. Hey, they said, there's been malicious whisper campaigns about Obama! So let's have an orgy of over-the-top shellacking of a woman based on a hundred different lies!

A bit from the article TSMF posted:

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

it's a fairly old and common idiom. it's also obvious that he was referring directly to mccain's newly adopted 'change' rhetoric.

HA! This is the Obama who oh-so-slyly flipped up his middle finger as he mentioned Hilary in one of his speeches, and smiled at the applause it got.

Anyway, all the hyperventilating leftists, so quick to leap to the defense of Obama, ought to take a long, hard look at this list of what is true and what is not true regarding rumors about Palin:
http://explorations.chasrmartin.com/.../palin-rumors/

There are some others who don't fall into that category who should look at that list as well.


CR

[CountArach]

Newly registered voters aren't included in the POLLS?

Isn't that like 90% of Obama's supporters

Some pollsters change the numbers to reflect the likely turnout at an election - I believe that some are increasing numbers of blacks and the young that are polled. Sasaki's article is why people should be wary about Gallup's likely voters model - they change their partisan identification numbers based on enthusiasm at that point in time, which means that recently they have interviewed more Republicans.

[JR-]

the "lipstick on a pig" comment was not aimed at Palin, it was just a phrase that happened to use a word Palin has made her own.

i don't like it when that kind of trash-talk is aimed at either of the parties.

[seireikhaan]

No, believe it or not, even fundamentalist Christians don’t have to believe every litle thing their pastor believes.

Hmm... I seem to recall some kind of stuff earlier this election cycle about a pastor of sorts...

BTW, CR, that was an EPIC dodge of admitting you're own frothiness.

[Crazed Rabbit]

My frothiness is between me and my closest friends.

Hmm... I seem to recall some kind of stuff earlier this election cycle about a pastor of sorts...

I don't think the dems want to go that route; Palin actually left her AoG Church several years ago.

Barack had a painful experience of dumping his crazy pastor (along with his grandmother I suppose) after 20 years. Quite amusing.

CR

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Never stopping to question if there was any truth to any of the scandals. Hey, they said, there's been malicious whisper campaigns about Obama! So let's have an orgy of over-the-top shellacking of a woman based on a hundred different lies!

You just posted an article about the lipstick on a pig comment

On the one side, you have some liberal blogs and pundits smearing palin. On the other side you have John McCain smearing obama (like I just posted).

HA! This is the Obama who oh-so-slyly flipped up his middle finger as he mentioned Hilary in one of his speeches, and smiled at the applause it got.

Seriously now? I can tell when I'm being partisan, usually as I'm typing the post. It's the game we all play. But I'm starting to worry that you can't...

[Crazed Rabbit]

You just posted an article about the lipstick on a pig comment

Yes, because I do think Obama meant that to refer to Palin. I've given my reasons.

Seriously now?

Yes. You didn't see the video? EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj1jn3Xr0hM
Or just search for "Obama flips off hilary"

And yes, I think McCain's ad probably crossed a line (though I haven't read the bill, it does seem like the attack takes things out of context).

CR

[Tribesman]

You just posted an article about the lipstick on a pig comment

Be quiet , its bollox like this that makes the campaign fun .

You know stuff like this...

I don't think the dems want to go that route; Palin actually left her AoG Church several years ago.

...when her new pastor also does funny sermons just like her old one , but of course you can't link Palin with what some preacher says , you can only do that with Obama
And as for

Yes. You didn't see the video? EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj1jn3Xr0hM
Or just search for "Obama flips off hilary"

how pathetic can people get ?
Hold on thats a silly question isn't it , after all this is a normal crazy US election topic .

[ICantSpellDawg]

I forgot that Barack and Michelle have their kids in a private school.

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.c...mom/index.html

They talk about making public schools better, but they don't even have a horse in that race. I'm actually suprised at this, but not really - I wasn't all that suprised that Michael Moore had his kids in private school either. Even Biden, the "working class hero" sends his kids to the Archmere Academy. These guys are hosing us and we drink it up.

Palin injects an average angle to this election - and she has tried very hard to do it, by cutting luxurious expenses in her admin, by not living in the mansion, by driving herself to work, by sending her kids to normal schools, by firing the chef, by giving herself a pay cut as mayor.

Hate her if you will for her policies, but she helps bring you, me and our families, with all of our concerns and frustrations a heartbeat away from the white house. One less reason to object in an almighty furor to the possibility that she will has a shot at the big white house?

[Strike For The South]

I forgot that Barack and Michelle have their kids in a private school.

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.c...mom/index.html

They talk about making public schools better, but they don't even have a horse in that race. I'm actually suprised at this, but not really - I wasn't all that suprised that Michael Moore had his kids in private school either. Even Biden, the "working class hero" sends his kids to the Archmere Academy. These guys are hosing us and we drink it up.

Palin injects an average angle to this election - and she has tried very hard to do it, by cutting luxurious expenses in her admin, by not living in the mansion, by driving herself to work, by sending her kids to normal schools, by firing the chef, by giving herself a pay cut as mayor.

Hate her if you will for her policies, but she helps bring you, me and our families, with all of our concerns and frustrations a heartbeat away from the white house. One less reason to object in an almighty furor to the possibility that she will has a shot at the big white house?

There kids are out of bounds

[Lemur]

Seconded. Leave the kids out of the campaign rhetoric, please. Let's have some limits to how low we want to stoop, mmkay?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Palin injects an average angle to this election - and she has tried very hard to do it, by cutting luxurious expenses in her admin, by not living in the mansion, by driving herself to work, by sending her kids to normal schools, by firing the chef, by giving herself a pay cut as mayor.

Hate her if you will for her policies, but she helps bring you, me and our families, with all of our concerns and frustrations a heartbeat away from the white house. One less reason to object in an almighty furor to the possibility that she will has a shot at the big white house?

How'd the "well he's someone I'd like to have a beer with" strategy work out for you guys last time? It's still about the economy and health care.

Besides:



Those are McCain's $520 "Salvatore Ferragamo 'pregiato' moccasins" with the silver-tone "Gancini" buckles

[ICantSpellDawg]

A parents decision about where they send their kids for their education is different than their kids decision to have sex too young. One is in bounds and the other isn't.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Besides:



Those are McCain's $520 "Salvatore Ferragamo 'pregiato' moccasins" with the silver-tone "Gancini" buckles

He needs all the dressin' up he can get. "You can put Ferragamo's on a pig...". I almost bought a pair of those when I sold watches. They last for quite some time.

[Strike For The South]

A parents decision about where they send their kids for their education is different than their kids decision to have sex too young. One is in bounds and the other isn't.

Maybe the schools in Chicago are crap. thats why he want to IMPROVE them.

Thats like saying "If Palin had taught her daughter how to use a condom she wouldnt've had a kid"

I guess the only in bounds ones are when hes batting for your side?

Communist

[ICantSpellDawg]

Maybe the schools in Chicago are crap. thats why he want to IMPROVE them.

Thats like saying "If Palin had taught her daughter how to use a condom she wouldnt've had a kid"

I guess the only in bounds ones are when hes batting for your side?

Communist

I don't think that they are the same. I'm not lambasting his kids. If he bought his kid an aston martin and was going around saying how important it was to buy american or help fix the automobile manufacturing sector, that would be one thing. If his kid bought herself an aston martin it would be irrelevant in discussion.

One involves the action of the adult in question, the other involves the action of the child not in question.

[Strike For The South]

I don't think that they are the same. I'm not lambasting his kids. If he bought his kid an aston martin and was going around saying how important it was to buy american or help fix the automobile manufacturing sector, that would be one thing. If his kid bought herself an aston martin it would be irrelevant in discussion.

One involves the action of the adult in question, the other involves the action of the child not in question.

Maybe the schools in Chicago are crap. thats why he want to IMPROVE them. Maybe he wants other children to have the same level of education as his kids and not have them pay for it! What a novel idea! Unlike Palin who seems to want to put social restrictions on people and not let them learn safe sex or inquire about banning books!

[Lemur]

One involves the action of the adult in question, the other involves the action of the child not in question.

You could just as easily make the argument that no teen girl gets knocked up without negligence and bad parenting, making all sorts of things relevant. But you know what's a better solution?

LEAVE THE KIDS OUT OF THE ARGUMENT.

Is that so very hard to do? Are you short of things to talk about unless you drag kids into the picture? Do you have trouble formulating an argument unless you can talk about a candidate's children? Is this election sufficiently issue-free that all you can think to bring into the arena are children?

In other words, what the hell is wrong with you?

[Ronin]

I forgot that Barack and Michelle have their kids in a private school.

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.c...mom/index.html

They talk about making public schools better, but they don't even have a horse in that race. I'm actually suprised at this, but not really - I wasn't all that suprised that Michael Moore had his kids in private school either. Even Biden, the "working class hero" sends his kids to the Archmere Academy. These guys are hosing us and we drink it up.

If they want to make schools better it´s because they think they´re not good enough right now.....they can send their kids to a better option so they do....seems to make sense...don´t see the logic error there....

if they were saying that the public schools were good and didn´t send their kids to them then I´d understand what you where comming from.

[Xiahou]

You could just as easily make the argument that no teen girl gets knocked up without negligence and bad parenting, making all sorts of things relevant. But you know what's a better solution?

LEAVE THE KIDS OUT OF THE ARGUMENT.

Is that so very hard to do? Are you short of things to talk about unless you drag kids into the picture? Do you have trouble formulating an argument unless you can talk about a candidate's children? Is this election sufficiently issue-free that all you can think to bring into the arena are children?

In other words, what the hell is wrong with you?

I think that you're right in that this certainly isn't the only issue- or even one of the best. However, I disagree that talking about a choice Obama made is dragging the kids into it either.

It's the difference between saying "Obama chose X" and saying "Obama chose X, and his kids are Y because of it." It's similar to saying "Palin believes in abstinence only programs*" vs saying "Palin supports abstinence only programs*, and her daughter is pregnant because of it." Let's not get irrational here.

If they want to make schools better it´s because they think they´re not good enough right now.....they can send their kids to a better option so they do....seems to make sense...don´t see the logic error there...

Could be. And that would be a possible defense Obama could use to charges similar to Tuff's. Personally, I'd say it makes the case for Obama supporting vouchers.


*Palin doesnt support abstinence only programs, but it's a charge that's been levied, so it made for a good example.

[Lemur]

It's the difference between saying "Obama chose X" and saying "Obama chose X, and his kids are Y because of it." It's similar to saying "Palin believes in abstinence only programs*" vs saying "Palin supports abstinence only programs*, and her daughter is pregnant because of it." Let's not get irrational here.

Well that's a lovely fine line you're dancing on, and I think it's far safer to apply a blanket rule of candidates' kids being off-limits. Do I need to point out that TuffStuff was also very vocal about discussing Palin's pregnant daughter?

You can make a legitimate argument that anything a kid does or is results from the parenting, making everything about a kid relevant to the race. That doesn't make it right or tasteful or appropriate.

Leave the kids alone. Is that so very hard to do?

-edit-

The dead walk and bullets talk in Pennsylvania? Man, finally I understand why that state is so messed up ...

[Xiahou]

Well that's a lovely fine line you're dancing on, and I think it's far safer to apply a blanket rule of candidates' kids being off-limits.

I don't think the line is that fine, but I also think it's not really worth arguing over.

The dead walk and bullets talk in Pennsylvania? Man, finally I understand why that state is so messed up ...

Have you seen how many dead people vote in our state?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Actually, it's a line I lifted from the sweet House of the Dead: Overkill trailer.

[Xiahou]

the "lipstick on a pig" comment was not aimed at Palin, it was just a phrase that happened to use a word Palin has made her own.

i don't like it when that kind of trash-talk is aimed at either of the parties.

Whether the comment was a deliberate reference to Palin or not, I think the McCain camp is making a huge mistake by trying to make hay with it. It makes them look oversensitive and petty.

[Lemur]

It's highly doubtful the quote means what they're suggesting it means, anyway:

“John McCain says he’s about change, too — except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics. That’s just calling the same thing something different.”

With a laugh, he added: “You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change; it’s still going to stink after eight years.”

Besides which, why try to place so much importance on such a common cliche?

[ICantSpellDawg]

It's highly doubtful the quote means what they're suggesting it means, anyway:

“John McCain says he’s about change, too — except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics. That’s just calling the same thing something different.”

With a laugh, he added: “You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change; it’s still going to stink after eight years.”

Besides which, why try to place so much importance on such a common cliche?

Both Biden and Obama have been using lipstick monikers more frequently and it may be an attempt to counter Palin's lipstick statement in public discourse. Is she the lipstick and McCain the pig? Is she the paper called change, he the old fish?

McCain has referred to himself as a pig before though, so I'm sure he wasn't offended.

[JR-]

Seconded. Leave the kids out of the campaign rhetoric, please. Let's have some limits to how low we want to stoop, mmkay?

agreed, but politicans in parties like UK Labour who are frequently found to be lauding the public sector schools and in favour of knackering selective/private schooling, whilst sending their children to private schools should be publicly ridiculed.

i don't know if that applies to the US Dems...........?

[Louis VI the Fat]

Some brief, assorted thoughts:

- I want Biden for president. I rather like him.

- Lipstickgate is ridiculous. I hope it will bounce back and hurt the Republicans.
It probably won't. In the end, all it does is solidify partisanship. In two weeks time, all that the Dems remember is that there was some sort of mudslinging, and all that the Reps will remember is that Obama made some sort of slur against Palin.

- The election seems to have entered a new phase since 'Palin'. More partisanship, more mudslinging, more divisiveness. Meh.
The 'two America's' have become more pronounced ever since her nomination. Or maybe the hard right, the religious right, was simply quiet up until now, until Palin energised them.

- Children, especially underage children, ought to be firmly off-limits for my liking. But deciding on a school is a parental decision. It only involves the children in a very indirect, impersonal manner.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Some brief, assorted thoughts:

- I want Biden for president. I rather like him.

I like him too. I like him better than Obama. I wouldn't mind him as VP that much at all, maybe even President.

- The election seems to have entered a new phase since 'Palin'. More partisanship, more mudslinging, more divisiveness. Meh.
The 'two America's' have become more pronounced ever since her nomination. Or maybe the hard right, the religious right, was simply quiet up until now, until Palin energised them.

Maybe, but I think that it is more likely that the right woke up and was energized with McCain's selection of Palin.

- Children, especially underage children, ought to be firmly off-limits for my liking. But deciding on a school is a parental decision. It only involves the children in a very indirect, impersonal manner.

I agree.