McCain to concede around 11pm EST
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/4/185520/135/920/653021
It's 10:59 PM EST, FoxNews has it live on their channel that Obama has 297 electoral votes.
It's over.
=//Turnquest
Showing posts with label john mccain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john mccain. Show all posts
2008/11/04
2008/10/19
Powell on Obama
Colin Powell delivers his endorsement of Barack Obama with such eloquence, it almost makes up for the fact that he helped to start the war in Iraq. Almost. BONUS: He defends Islam too!!!
=//Turnquest
=//Turnquest
2008/10/14
Barack Media
You'd think with just three weeks to go till THE BIG DAY I'd have a lot more posts. Well, I'm a bastard. Anyway, I haven't been entirely silent; check out some unabashedly partisan and hit-baiting posts over on DailyKos:
http://turnquest.dailykos.com/
and look at this photo:
and watch this video:
=//Turnquest
http://turnquest.dailykos.com/
and look at this photo:
and watch this video:
=//Turnquest
2008/09/12
Sharper Tone
Sen. Barack Obama & Sen. John McCain hug following a National Service conference at Columbia University in New York City, Sept. 11, 2008.No reason to 'fret.' This kind of American-made cesspool politics always rears its head as we get closer to the big day (less than two months...) The key statements are by David Plouffe and David Axelrod, Obama's mastermind campaign managers who sound as cool and under control as ever. And why should we doubt the men who beat the most formidable political family in politics and their predestined nominee (the Clintons)?
Hold it down folks...McCain is no Hillary. Obama will win.
Obama Plans Sharper Tone as Party Frets
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/us/politics/12obama.htmlSenator Barack Obama will intensify his assault against Senator John McCain, with new television advertisements and more forceful attacks by the candidate and surrogates beginning Friday morning, as he confronts an invigorated Republican presidential ticket and increasing nervousness in the Democratic ranks.
Mr. McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate and the resulting jolt of energy among Republican voters appear to have caught Mr. Obama and his advisers by surprise and added to concern among some Democrats that the Obama campaign was not pushing back hard enough against Republican attacks in a critical phase of the race.
Some Democrats said Mr. Obama needed to move to seize control of the campaign and to block Mr. McCain from snatching away from him the message that he was the best hope to bring change to Washington.
After back-to-back attack ads by Mr. McCain, including one that misleadingly accused Mr. Obama of endorsing sex education for kindergarten students, the Obama campaign is planning to sharpen attacks on Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin in an effort to counter Mr. McCain’s attempt to present himself as the candidate of change with his choice of Ms. Palin.
The new tone is to be presented in a speech by Mr. Obama in New Hampshire and in television interviews with local stations in five swing states, backed up by new advertisements and appearances across the country by supporters.
In addition, advertising themes will be pay equity for women, an issue that has particular resonance as the campaigns battle for female voters, and a more pointed linking of Mr. McCain to President Bush and Republicans in Washington.
But Mr. Obama’s aides said they were confident with the course of the campaign. They said that, other than making some shifts around the edges, particularly in response to Mr. McCain’s effort to seize the change issue from Mr. Obama, they were not planning any major deviation from a strategy that called for a steady escalation of attacks on Mr. McCain as the race heads toward the debates.
That response is characteristic for a campaign that has presented itself as disciplined and unflappable and is reminiscent of the way Mr. Obama’s campaign reacted a year ago when it came under fire from allies who said it was not being tough enough in going after Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“We’re sensitive to the fluid dynamics of the campaign, but we have a game plan and a strategy,” said Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe. “We’re familiar with this. And I’m sure between now and Nov. 4 there will be another period of hand-wringing and bed-wetting. It comes with the territory.”
Still, Democrats outside the campaign suggested Mr. Obama should be urgently working to regain control of the message.
“The Obama message has been disrupted in the last week,” said Representative Artur Davis, Democrat of Alabama. “It’s a time for Democrats to focus on what the fundamentals are in this election.”
Phil Singer, who was a press secretary for Mrs. Clinton in her primary campaign against Mr. Obama, said, “The Obama people need to reboot and figure out ways to make the McCain-Bush argument newsworthy again.”
The uneasiness among Democrats is the result of a confluence of factors in the week since Mr. McCain accepted his party’s nomination in St. Paul. The selection of Ms. Palin became the defining event of Mr. McCain’s convention, revving up the conservative base and drawing the spotlight away from Mr. Obama.
Mr. McCain’s increasingly aggressive campaign has sought to put Mr. Obama on the defensive in each news cycle, using any development at hand, like Mr. Obama’s colloquial comment this week about putting “lipstick on a pig,” to keep attention away from Democratic messages about the economy and the similarities between Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush.
And a series of quick polls taken after the Republican convention have suggested that Mr. Obama has lost support among white women and independent voters. Polls taken so close to major political events are notoriously unreliable, but Democrats remember what happened in 2004, when Republicans used the period right after Senator John Kerry’s nomination to undercut him with a series of attacks.
By every indication, Mr. Obama’s aides underestimated the impact that Mr. McCain’s choice of Ms. Palin would have on the race. Mr. Obama and his campaign have seemed flummoxed in trying to figure out how to deal with her. His aides said they were looking to the news media to debunk the image of her as a blue-collar reformer, even as they argued that her power to help Mr. McCain was overstated.
“Everyone was astonished that she drew 9,000 people to Lancaster the other night,” said Mr. Obama’s senior strategist, David Axelrod. “But we drew 10,000 people there last week.”
“They got a transient boost from the sort of imagery surrounding her selection,” Mr. Axelrod said. “But I think things will settle in. She will be a candidate and not just a symbol.”
Beyond that, Mr. Obama’s aides said they had been taken aback by the newfound aggressiveness of the McCain campaign under Steve Schmidt, who has played an increasingly powerful role since last summer. Even as the aides have denounced the tactics as unsavory, they acknowledge that Mr. McCain is running a more effective campaign than he was a month ago.
“They had big problems in their campaign, and they made adjustments,” Mr. Axelrod said.
To a large extent, the perception that Mr. Obama is struggling is based on national polls taken in the days after the convention. But Mr. Obama’s campaign views such measures as irrelevant and focuses on what is going on in the 18 or so swing states.
Mr. Plouffe argued that the attention being paid by national news media outlets to events like Mr. Obama’s lipstick comment was not mirrored in local news coverage. What is more, the Obama campaign has filled the airwaves in some states with advertisements that link Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush.
And for all the concern voiced by Democrats to Mr. Obama’s aides that the candidate has not hit Mr. McCain hard enough, he has increasingly assailed Mr. McCain in recent days, mocking his attempt to present himself as an agent of change and denouncing his campaign style as a break from the promise he had made to practice a new kind of politics. Yet, at least on television, Mr. Obama’s critique did not break through the lipstick debate.
Inside the campaign headquarters in Chicago, aides said, there have been no emergency conference calls or special strategy sessions to deal with the new dynamic in the race.
Still, interviews with advisers and supporters suggested a concern not seen in the Obama campaign since its most competitive days in the long primary fight with Mrs. Clinton.
“You can’t be so stubborn that you don’t react or adjust to events,” Mr. Plouffe said. “We have been given up for dead any number of times in this process, so it does stiffen your spine a little bit.”
One adjustment for the Obama campaign comes as Mr. McCain is seeking to claim the Democrats’ theme of change by pointing to Ms. Palin. For months, advisers to Mr. Obama had assumed that Mr. McCain would play up his experience; Mr. Plouffe said he welcomed what he argued would be a campaign fought out on the issue of change.
“This is a very major development,” Mr. Plouffe said. “John McCain jettisoned his message and his strategy. It is now about change. We’re going to lean into that very, very hard.”
In the midst of all this, Mr. Obama had a private lunch on Thursday with someone he battled with for much of the year but who knows how to put the Republicans on the defensive: former President Bill Clinton. Discussion topics, aides said, included how Mr. Obama might handle Ms. Palin in the days ahead.
=//Turnquest
2008/08/03
Obama's Last Hundred Days
It's always the same with our culture. Some fad or person or cultural artifact becomes disgustingly popular way too fast. He or she or it is on everyone's tongues, their name is repeated relentlessly on television until it's drilled in to our heads. Inevitably, this mass popularity translates into profit and consumerism, either by way of a tell-all book, a made-for-TV movie or of course, the T-shirt.
Just as inevitably as the snowballing rise of popularity of these fads, there comes the backlash. One moment, The Matrix is the biggest, coolest, most must-see movie ever. The next, you have eight year-olds scoring points with their friends by doing Neo or Agent Smith impressions. "What good is a...phone call if you are .... unable ... to speak?" For the media, as well as for our own sick voyeuristic pleasures, nothing's better than the rise of something new than that new thing's tragic fall. See Britney Spears.
In any case, to get to the forever delayed subject of this article, I turn to the number one celebrity in the world, the all-but-crowned Democratic Presidential candidate and junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. Mr. Obama has, through his natural charms, his team of brilliant strategists and his sheer political wits, delayed a backlash against his volcanic rise to international prominence.
A mere seven months prior, Mr. Obama was a long shot for the Iowa primaries. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York (remember her?) had been pencilled in by the elites and the experts as the front-runner for President for years. He was a nobody, a guy who had made one good speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston amd who had been on Oprah a few times touting his books and who was sort of liked by the few political observers who knew of him.
Jump ahead to last week where this very American politician managed to attract a throng of 200,000 people to a speech...in Germany. Mr. Obama's tour of Europe and the Middle East involved one-on-one meetings with the most powerful men and one woman (Ms. Merkel) in the world. These supposed world leaders, from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Jordanian Monarch King Abdullah, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, amongst others, all seemed to jump at the chance to shake the hands of 'the One,' as Mr. Obama's opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, privately refers to him.
The world tour was the peak of fame for a man who would save America and restore it to its rightful place as former President Reagan's proverbial 'shining city on a hill.' And so, as with all things from Icarus to a frisbee flung by a child, what goes up, must come down.
Over the next three months, Mr. Obama faces his toughest challenge on the path to succeeding George W. Bush. How can he translate his vast media presence and his fevered grip on the imaginations of millions into political victory? It's one thing for doe-eyed reporters and twenty-something college students to love the man and wear t-shirts of his face. It's entirely another to score a victory on Election Day, November 4, 2008.
Chief amongst Mr. Obama's obstacles is to maintain his aura as Great American Hero and delay the backlash against his persona. Already, there has begun a steady patter of arrows being launched towards his direction. Accusations of elitism, of being a weak-kneed Liberal are being spoken by Obama's natural opponents, the Republican Party.
However, we're still in the stage where a lot of the accusations are still far-fetched, or just flat-out wrong. Die-hard Hillary supporters fault him for being a man. Daily followers of he news cycles have begun tagging him with the dreaded 'flip-flopper' pejorative, a term which eventually helped to do in Mr. Obama's predecessor, the Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry. Cynics chastise him for being too 'perfect', too clean-cut and popular for his own good. Religious fundamentalists think he's really a Muslim (God forbid) in disguise. Closet racists of course, we know why they're not going to cast their ballot for him.
The question becomes, how to dispel all these potential threats when Mr. Obama has less than a hundred days left until the big day?
The answer is multi-faceted. Mr. Obama must, above all else, ensure his priority over the coming weeks is to assure the American housewife. This statement is yes, a little simplistic, but what I mean is that the vast centre of the American political spectrum is comprised of working-class Americans. It is these Americans who spend their time taking care of their families, their savings accounts, paying their bills and working endlessly who always have the last say in Presidental elections. Modern day observers like to ponder how an incompetent dreg like W won two elections for himself and secured the Presidency for eight years, but the answer is really as simple as W managed to appeal to the average American. He made the housewife feel secure. Setting aside his differences with the current Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Obama ought to take some lessons from W and learn how to appear as just a regular guy and not as he still portrayed; an exotic usurper with mysterious intentions and a sometimes off-putting personality cult.
If anything, Americans are not as dumb as we like to make them out to be. Furthermore, they are generally suspicious of anyone who can summon the kinds of hyperbolic praise that Mr. Obama has done. He knows he has the young left, the Democrats and the true believers in his pocket. The real trick for the Senator is going to be how to destroy his 'messianic' media image while still calling upon the very talent and charisma that built this image to attract regular voters.
Can a Harvard-educated Constitutional Law professor come off as a barbeque-eating, beer-drinking average Joe? No. He doesn't have to. What he does have to do is to convince those who do subscribe to this stereotype that he is going to to be President just as much for them than for the marijuana-smoking liberal arts college student.
Secondly, Mr. Obama has to make a mistake. Something as simple as making a public error, and then recovering from it, would go a long way towards convincing people that the man is human. His previous problems with Reverend Wright, Hillary Clinton and Tony Rezko all involved the mistakes of others. Now he himself must learn the brittle art of fucking up on a national scale and then apologizing for it. Nothing reinforces a relationship like a little bit of make-up sex, if I may make use of such a crude metaphor.
Finally, Mr. Obama has to make the case that his opponent is not a feeble, out-of-touch old man with nary a chance of winning. Americans love underdogs and so does the press. If Mr. Obama continues to come across as the Heir Apparent before a single ballot has been cast, Americans will have yet another reason to resent him as being haughty, arrogant and presumptuous. Again, it's a tricky balance of making Mr. McCain (who doesn't have a shot in hell to win by the way) appear as if he could win and that such a possibility would spell disaster for the already beleaguered union, all the while continuing to promote his own strengths.
This election cannot remain simply a question of whether Mr. Obama is worthy of the Oval Office or not. It's got to become what elections were originally supposed to be - a contest between two individuals to decide who will be the better person for the job. If Mr. Obama and his skilled team of strategists can refocus the fickle media's attention on making a comparison between the two men rather than just on him, then there will be no contest.
A hundred days is a long time to predict a final outcome. Anything can happen in that time. On November 4th, we'll know what the next four years for the American people, and by extension, the world, will hold. Until then, go play GTA4.
=//Turnquest
Just as inevitably as the snowballing rise of popularity of these fads, there comes the backlash. One moment, The Matrix is the biggest, coolest, most must-see movie ever. The next, you have eight year-olds scoring points with their friends by doing Neo or Agent Smith impressions. "What good is a...phone call if you are .... unable ... to speak?" For the media, as well as for our own sick voyeuristic pleasures, nothing's better than the rise of something new than that new thing's tragic fall. See Britney Spears.
In any case, to get to the forever delayed subject of this article, I turn to the number one celebrity in the world, the all-but-crowned Democratic Presidential candidate and junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. Mr. Obama has, through his natural charms, his team of brilliant strategists and his sheer political wits, delayed a backlash against his volcanic rise to international prominence.
A mere seven months prior, Mr. Obama was a long shot for the Iowa primaries. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York (remember her?) had been pencilled in by the elites and the experts as the front-runner for President for years. He was a nobody, a guy who had made one good speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston amd who had been on Oprah a few times touting his books and who was sort of liked by the few political observers who knew of him.
Jump ahead to last week where this very American politician managed to attract a throng of 200,000 people to a speech...in Germany. Mr. Obama's tour of Europe and the Middle East involved one-on-one meetings with the most powerful men and one woman (Ms. Merkel) in the world. These supposed world leaders, from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Jordanian Monarch King Abdullah, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, amongst others, all seemed to jump at the chance to shake the hands of 'the One,' as Mr. Obama's opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, privately refers to him.
The world tour was the peak of fame for a man who would save America and restore it to its rightful place as former President Reagan's proverbial 'shining city on a hill.' And so, as with all things from Icarus to a frisbee flung by a child, what goes up, must come down.
Over the next three months, Mr. Obama faces his toughest challenge on the path to succeeding George W. Bush. How can he translate his vast media presence and his fevered grip on the imaginations of millions into political victory? It's one thing for doe-eyed reporters and twenty-something college students to love the man and wear t-shirts of his face. It's entirely another to score a victory on Election Day, November 4, 2008.
Chief amongst Mr. Obama's obstacles is to maintain his aura as Great American Hero and delay the backlash against his persona. Already, there has begun a steady patter of arrows being launched towards his direction. Accusations of elitism, of being a weak-kneed Liberal are being spoken by Obama's natural opponents, the Republican Party.
However, we're still in the stage where a lot of the accusations are still far-fetched, or just flat-out wrong. Die-hard Hillary supporters fault him for being a man. Daily followers of he news cycles have begun tagging him with the dreaded 'flip-flopper' pejorative, a term which eventually helped to do in Mr. Obama's predecessor, the Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry. Cynics chastise him for being too 'perfect', too clean-cut and popular for his own good. Religious fundamentalists think he's really a Muslim (God forbid) in disguise. Closet racists of course, we know why they're not going to cast their ballot for him.
The question becomes, how to dispel all these potential threats when Mr. Obama has less than a hundred days left until the big day?
The answer is multi-faceted. Mr. Obama must, above all else, ensure his priority over the coming weeks is to assure the American housewife. This statement is yes, a little simplistic, but what I mean is that the vast centre of the American political spectrum is comprised of working-class Americans. It is these Americans who spend their time taking care of their families, their savings accounts, paying their bills and working endlessly who always have the last say in Presidental elections. Modern day observers like to ponder how an incompetent dreg like W won two elections for himself and secured the Presidency for eight years, but the answer is really as simple as W managed to appeal to the average American. He made the housewife feel secure. Setting aside his differences with the current Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Obama ought to take some lessons from W and learn how to appear as just a regular guy and not as he still portrayed; an exotic usurper with mysterious intentions and a sometimes off-putting personality cult.
If anything, Americans are not as dumb as we like to make them out to be. Furthermore, they are generally suspicious of anyone who can summon the kinds of hyperbolic praise that Mr. Obama has done. He knows he has the young left, the Democrats and the true believers in his pocket. The real trick for the Senator is going to be how to destroy his 'messianic' media image while still calling upon the very talent and charisma that built this image to attract regular voters.
Can a Harvard-educated Constitutional Law professor come off as a barbeque-eating, beer-drinking average Joe? No. He doesn't have to. What he does have to do is to convince those who do subscribe to this stereotype that he is going to to be President just as much for them than for the marijuana-smoking liberal arts college student.
Secondly, Mr. Obama has to make a mistake. Something as simple as making a public error, and then recovering from it, would go a long way towards convincing people that the man is human. His previous problems with Reverend Wright, Hillary Clinton and Tony Rezko all involved the mistakes of others. Now he himself must learn the brittle art of fucking up on a national scale and then apologizing for it. Nothing reinforces a relationship like a little bit of make-up sex, if I may make use of such a crude metaphor.
Finally, Mr. Obama has to make the case that his opponent is not a feeble, out-of-touch old man with nary a chance of winning. Americans love underdogs and so does the press. If Mr. Obama continues to come across as the Heir Apparent before a single ballot has been cast, Americans will have yet another reason to resent him as being haughty, arrogant and presumptuous. Again, it's a tricky balance of making Mr. McCain (who doesn't have a shot in hell to win by the way) appear as if he could win and that such a possibility would spell disaster for the already beleaguered union, all the while continuing to promote his own strengths.
This election cannot remain simply a question of whether Mr. Obama is worthy of the Oval Office or not. It's got to become what elections were originally supposed to be - a contest between two individuals to decide who will be the better person for the job. If Mr. Obama and his skilled team of strategists can refocus the fickle media's attention on making a comparison between the two men rather than just on him, then there will be no contest.
A hundred days is a long time to predict a final outcome. Anything can happen in that time. On November 4th, we'll know what the next four years for the American people, and by extension, the world, will hold. Until then, go play GTA4.
=//Turnquest
2007/10/10
GOP Debate Pics
Following up on the last column, I ask the question:
Do you want any of these men as your President?
Jeez. Okay, Mitt's not so hideous, but like, he really is just a handsome face. No darling readers, this is what a real President ought to look like:
=//Turnquest
Do you want any of these men as your President?
Jeez. Okay, Mitt's not so hideous, but like, he really is just a handsome face. No darling readers, this is what a real President ought to look like:
=//Turnquest
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
