Sunday, October 5, 2008
Popular political wisdom says the economy favors Democrats in General Elections and 2008 is proving this to be true.
The turmoil on Wall Street and the weakening economy are changing the contours of the presidential campaign map, giving new force to Barack Obama’s ambitious strategy to make incursions into Republican territory, while forcing John McCain to scale back his efforts to capture Democratic states.
In a visible sign of the breadth of Obama’s aspirations, he is using North Carolina — a state that George W. Bush won by 13 percentage points in 2004, and where Obama is now spending heavily on advertisements, as his base to prepare this weekend for the debate on Tuesday.
Obama now has a solid lead in states that account for 189 electoral votes and he is well positioned in states representing 71 more electoral votes for a total of 260, according to a tally by The New York Times.
It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
From the Left 
he needs to tighten up on his economic game some more for me
I have been saying for some time that we are working hard to turn NC blue this year. Lets just hope that we can make it actually happen. We have registered nearly 650,000 new voters with over 50% of them as Democrats and lots of Independents. By gosh we just may git er done.
the next four weeks are going to the nastiest four weeks in american political history — what the shit fly from mccain’s minion, including the c-word he has a running mate – and it get racially charged
desperate times call for desperate measures from the one of the most disgusting politicians of our time… yes mccain –
Obama and the Democrats will win in a landslide (barring a surge in the Bradley Effect, a measurement of racism unseen by polling).
They’ll inherit an unwinnable war begun by Clinton and Bush that Obama is determined to win. He plans to stay in Iraq, ramp up the killing in Afghanistan and invade an unsettled nuclear power, Pakistan, that has a humiliated military with an itchy trigger finger. Obama’s war policies will lead to disaster.
The Democrats will inherit an economy in deep failure mode because of the deregulation by Carter, Reagan, the Bushes and most of all by Clinton, who championed NAFTA and repealing the regulations passed in the aftermath of the Depression.
The Democrats are now totally identified with the $700 billion dollar theft of our future, with war budgets of $500-600 billions per year, with the AIG, GM, Ford, Chrysler loans of $110 billion and the $2 trillion dollar plus take over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By the end of the year the national debt will have climbed from $8.2 trillion to about $15 trillion.
The bone crushing weight of that will impose austerity on working people who’ve had a net loss in income for the last twenty five years and an end to social programs. The level of authoritarianism will rise as opposition to the draconian new cuts in our standard of living escalates.
The parties who supported the grand theft of trillions to cover the losses of the incompetents who own the country are extinct. The Republicans will realize that on November 5th, and the Democrats as they face the triple whammy of war, economic chaos and the mounting rage of working people. They’re just too dumb to know it yet. They’re still celebrating in their bunker.
A month to go and I’m cautiously optimistic about November 4th.
I think the nation is so rattled by the past 8 years of Bush/Cheney that even conservatives aren’t so enthusiastic to hand McCain the keys to White House and what would amount to a 3rd Bush term.
It’s a new era and the marbles are all going to Obama and Biden now.
Hey Chris,
Have you heard that the RNC wants to audit all of Obama’s contributions to see if any foreign nationals contributed?
Deedlelee
BTW- likes the blog!
Wikipedia and electoral-vote.com both have Obama well over 300 votes, but they include where the close states are leaning. It looks like there will be a landslide for Obama.
He needs to do some heavy work here in PA. I’m so sick of McCain – Palin signs that I could just puke. I might just go on a paint ball binge very soon…
Stupid Fuckers. They need their asses kicked.
Saw a clip of Palin at a rally saying Obama associates with domestic terrorists.
McCain is desperate now so the gloves are off….
Word to the Wise– check to make sure your voter registration is current & that you have not been purged off the registered voters list- before the registration deadline.
Christopher: I have a more upbeat view of Obama than Torrance does, but I agree with Torrance’s point. I’m not in favor of the bailout package, but I liked seeing Obama show his skills as a Democratic Party whip. I think his having spent so much time studying the package in order to be able peel off enough CBC and CPC votes to get it through was a good exercise intellectually as well as instrumentally for him.
It’s obviously a little simplistic for my tastes, but the 4-point economic plan he set forth in his debate is a nice vehicle for him to add and subtract concepts as he gets more fluent. He’s not Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich on economics. We all knew that, but he’s an extremely quick study in terms of making the scholarship work with the politics.
I saw the same site that Libhomo did which just now had it Obama 329 McCain 194 and a 15 ev tie in North Carolina. He’s a big favorite in the betting and the futures: 3/1 favorite cash and 75p-in-the-pound futures which impound a 75% probability of winning. It’s only going up from here because he’s campaigning super and McCain and Palin are really booting it. I also agree that it’s a high volatility situation for Obama because he’ll be handed a terrible situation do deal with. If he can’t improve things and win a 2nd term, he’ll go down among the best. If he can’t do much, he’ll be gone in 2012. A lot of that depends on congress.
Glad to see that you’re active in gay rights. Very important in the US because it’s one of those professional politician no-win kind of issues so it demands lots of organizing. In the US, I lived in Manhattan, West LA, Las Vegas and New England so being straight there was nothing unsettling in the slightest to me about hanging out with gay and lesbian friends. It just wasn’t an issue other than I was a pretty big contributor to ACT-UP in the 80s.
Also, among Jews and High Church Protestants in America, it’s all pretty mellow anyway. Not like a shame or disgrace on a family. But I’ve heard some awful stories from gay friends in New York about growing up in the suburbs or rural areas. Sounds hideous.
Obviously, it was just as mixed when I lived in London and Spain and for all the bullshit you hear about machismo this and that, South America is a very gay-friendly environment. Not in the interior, of course, but in all the cities.
Panama has pretty strict anti-discrimination law which covers more or less any situation in which bigotry causes material effects of any kind. And Panama’s real laid back about race and sexual orientation.
I never checked on the marriage thing because I’m not going to marry a woman or a guy. The civil union policy was never in doubt. Always carried the full force of law since Clinton finalized Carter-O. Torrijos in 1999 during the Center-left Perez-Balladares administration. But when the Center-right Moscoso won the next time, nothing changed and it’s possible that Administrative gay marriage is now legal under Martin Torrijos.
Also, the Catholic Church is ultra mellow here, no hassles whatsoever about what anyone “is.” Same with the synaagogues and mosques. There are no Evangelicals. Religion completely separate from politics here. And all houses of worship welcome gay men and women in the flock. I really don’t understand why being anti-gay and anti-abortion are such essential issues to the US Catholic Church, while down here where 70% of the population is Catholic, the church doesn’t express an opinion on either issue.
The US has to get more modern about race, gay rights and liberties, drug policy and issues of crime and punishment. First by law, then with any luck for all Americans, by cultural norms.
If the US could unfreeze a little bit in those areas, I think that there would be a lot of knock-on positive effects in other areas of public life.
DEEDLELEE is right about that. And it’s why I never have given any money to any causes I liked since I got here. Panama is on the US blacklist. I had to stop my contributions whether to non-profit anti-racism, pro-gay, drug reform, or criminal justice reform causes, because the problems they have from getting wires or checks from Panama would be worse than the value of my contribution.
Same for my other cause — the non-profit NEW PRESS, which publishes mostly public affairs books from a left-wing or left-libertarian stance.
I also noticed you had a post on Bush buying land in Paraguay and increasing US military presence there. Thankfully, that’s all off-the-table with the April 2008 election and August 2008 swearing in of Fernando Lugo over Ovelar de Duarte ending a 60-year rule (dictatorship) by the Partido Colorado.
Lugo used to be an active Catholic bishop but I think the pope excommunicated him for his social-democratic views. Bush sold his property and Lugo is in the process of kicking out the US military. Would have been silly for him to move there even if Sra Ovelar de Duarte had won because the people despise Bush and favor Obama like 98-2.
They say Democrats do better on the economy and God only knows, our economy is in the toilet but this bailout was approved and the markets fell. As I understand it and I’m not an economist, the bad debt mortgages will still be plaguing the banks and S&Ls, leaving them unable to lend money. Until the housing market recovers, the economy will not get better.
The bailout approved Friday did nothing to help the economies of the world. Today, the Asian and EU markets opened lower and Wall Street is preparing for another lower Monday. The only good news in this mess is oil is cheaper and gas prices in my area are down .25 cents from a week ago. This will help everyone. I wish Barack Obama had voted against the bailout but I understand why didn’t. They would have tarred and feathered him if he voted no.