POLITICAL INACTION: Morning Whiskey

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Morning Whiskey - 09/24/2008

1. Polls Polls Polls:

WaPo - Obama 52 McCain 43

This thing is setting up, if Obama knocks his debate performance out of the park, to be a devastating 2 weeks for McCain. Most people support Obama with reluctance. If he proves at all competent on Friday, That support will solidify.
2. CNN's Campbell Brown calls out the McCain campaign and how they're hiding Sarah Palin....
3. McCain's campaign manager was paid $15,000 a month up until last month by Freddie Mac. The only reason he got the money was because he was close to McCain and the commerce committee.

4. LA Times finds that 48%, which I find low, believe Obama would better handle the economy to McCain's 35%
5. Obama scales back his 50 state strategy
6. Democrats to let the offshore drilling ban expire......Republicans get their "Drill! Drill! Drill!"
7. Obama is ramping up overall spending on ads and now putting his financial advantage over McCain in play.
8. The RNC is starting to advertise in Indiana, a place Obama is heavily organizing in and running like it is competitive.
9. David Frum, conservative Republican, says the Dodd bailout plan is pretty good.
10. MUST READ: The White House is hiding a 'grim' report on Afghanistan
11. The internets strikes McCain again......this time showing he is 100% a deregulator and hates government oversight
12. MUST READ: The FBI is investigating all of the firms on Wall Street....26 in total
13. Cheney couldn't sway the House GOP to support the bailout......I think this is all political posturing so they can leave Democrats holding the bag and say the Democrats are spending all your money and bailing out the fat cats on Wall Street.
14. McCain plays dumb while getting asked about one of his advisors getting a $42 Million golden parachute while the company laid off 20,000 people.
15. Biden is in southern Ohio and Indiana; McCain and Palin are in New York; Obama is in Florida prepping for the debate
16. 538.com says Nevada is about to flip blue. The oddest thing to me is that the support for Palin, a western governor, is not apparent in the West. She didn't help McCain in New Mexico, Nevada, or Colorado, which are 3 states Bush won and McCain needs to keep. If Obama wins all three, 22 electoral votes and he is the next POTUS.
17. Obama's 4 bailout conditions
18. Did Maureen Dowd just say Sarah Palin has shapely gams?
19. Thomas Friedman plays Bush
20. Playbook is out early this morning
21. Obama advisor, Billionaire Warren Buffet, buys $5 Billion of Goldman Sachs. Basically, he bought ownership in the last profitable trading house, which is about to turn itself into a bank.
22. Obama yesterday.....6 minutes:

Labels: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Bush Economy, CNN, Economic Meltdown, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, John McCain, Sarah Palin

10 Comments:

megan said...: The polls are really striking--I thought the WaPo numbers were just for the economy at first!

Stephanopolous said that anyone in the poll position Obama is in--this late in the game--has never lost since the 1948 or something like that.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope this shit on Rick Davis permeates the entire electorate. What a slimy shadeball. He's got some serious coke-snorting nostrils too.

Wonder how long it will be until Campbell Brown is demoted like Matthews and Olbermann?

I understand the desire by Dems to know how McCain is going to vote. They DO NOT want to be seen as the party bailing out Wall Street. BUT, I think this plan has potential to backfire, especially if it looks like they are holding things up for purely political purposes. They should keep fighting it as long as possible in my opinion. Let's see if Rick Davis makes a lobbying appearance to make sure his buddies get their huge severance packages.

And BF, I'm leaving today for Spain. Could you try to post the debate in it's entirety as soon as possible?? This is the first place I am going to come to try and see it! Thanks a lot.; 8:38 AM
brian francis said...: No doubt, I'll have that thing up as soon as possible. Have fun in Spain. Take political inaction global.

As for the bailout, the government is going to MAKE money by doing this. Upwards of $200 billion or a 29% profit. I don't find the bailout to be a big deal at all. I just think it needs to be structured so the tax payers are protected and get said profits, which is exactly what Obama said yesterday. And if by chance, we don't make money, we get paid back. Those are the details needed right now. It actually is an amazing investment, and can only be made because the tax payers are the only ones with the money.

Ben Stein, said last night on Glenn Beck(Don't ask...there was nothing else on and I was stuck on a treadmill), that the amount of money owed from the Credit Default Swaps, which I wrote an article on yesterday, is 10 TIMES the amount from the actual defaults on subprime mortgages. He didn't give figures, but if it is $250 Billion in defaults on mortgages, then this credit default swap russian roulette caused $2.5 trillion of the problem; 8:48 AM
Anonymous said...: these polls ar so confussing, can someone explain how obama can be up 9 points in 1 and down 2 points in another?; 9:04 AM
brian francis said...: Depends on the pollster. They all use different 'sample sizes' and voter breakdowns. So, they each call 1000 voters, let's say.

Rasmussen will say the breakdown is 40% Republican, 40% Democrat, and 20% Independent.

Gallup will say 35% Republican, 35% Democrat, and 30% Independent.

Fox News will say 45% Republican, 35% Democrat, and 20% Independent.

It skews things greatly as the higher the percentage of your party, the better your candidate does.

Now throw in race and the percentages there. Then throw in gender and the percentages there. Now throw in AGE, the biggest fault line in politics. If the pollster buys Obama's stated goal of increasing young voter turnout, or minority turnout, Obama does better. If they don't, they say only old white people are going to vote, Obama does worse. Each pollster does something different.

You really can't compare pollster to pollster, but you can compare trends and each successive poll by a pollster.
I said 1000 above, sometimes it is as little as 400.

That is why you have to look at the crosstabs, to get these breakdowns. Some of these polls show Obama only getting 80% of the black vote, when he is really going to get 95%.

They all should be taken with a grain of salt, but they're all telling us one thing....in the last 10 days Obama has surged and McCain has faltered. Obama is ahead right now nationally, and the longer he stays there, his lead solidifies and seeps down into the state polling.

The housing crisis, because of its impact on older voters' retirement accounts and the foreclosures that hit the state hard, has really helped Obama in Florida. It stopped people from saying "He doesn't have the experience and he isn't like me" and has them saying "Look at the mismanagement of the last 8 years."

The McCain campaign for 2 months has distracted everyone. The economic turmoil has refocused the campaign on things that matter, which is always bad for the Republicans.; 9:16 AM
rikyrah said...: The FREE SARAH PALIN Protest sign was friggin' hilarious.

Another interesting Dailykos Diary:

NYTimes, "Uppity Nig**rs" and the destruction of Black Wall Street; 9:37 AM
rikyrah said...: The oddest thing to me is that the support for Palin, a western governor, is not apparent in the West. She didn't help McCain in New Mexico, Nevada, or Colorado, which are 3 states Bush won and McCain needs to keep. If Obama wins all three, 22 electoral votes and he is the next POTUS.

That's because a lot of their Republicanism is based in Libertarianism, not cultural conservatism. That she's a right wing religious fanatic is seeping through out there.; 9:49 AM
Brian Francis said...: I agree, which makes me worried about the Ron Paul effect in the West. It seems to me that Nader and Paul are banning together to defeat Obama. They said as much 3 weeks ago. But new polling shows Nader is pull votes from McCain. So who knows.

If Paul starts campaigning out there, against Obama, it might have a major effect.

The good reverend makes his debut in Michigan. Some fringe group is running Rev. Wright ads.; 9:56 AM
Jeff Rivers said...: i think it would've been political suicide to just ram rod the bailout legislation though. Even if a lawmakers knew it was the right thing to do, they don't want to be viewed back home as too eager to just bailout these Wall Street high rollers.; 12:56 PM
Jeff Rivers said...: cont...without taking the time to do some public questioning.; 12:57 PM
Brian Francis said...: Jeff,
That legislation was way flawed though. 3 pages. no plan, just 700 billion, 1 man, and a disclaimer that says no one can question his decisions in a court of law.

That smells like nonsense and was so out there that it called the whole bailout into question. It just shows how bad the White House is.

And with Bush coming on tonight to talk about the bailout, READ: pressure congress to ram it through, it is just going to make people even more suspicious; 2:23 PM