I whole-heartedly agree with Guinastasia. I’ve read your posts over the last couple of years, but for the last 10 months or so you have been on your game, man.
Not actually all that significant – we are not only the town that booed Santa, we’re proud of being the town that booed Santa.
I think Liberal is one of those folks that gets your goat until they happen to be on your team, and then you reconsider their unique talents and disposition.
I’ve also enjoyed the Liberal wit applied in service of a candidate I favor. But I’m sure we’ll disagree on something soon. 
Hey-speak for yourself, Grampa! 
That seems to be the case. I, for one, see no reason to cast aside my six years of experience with Liberal simply because he plans to vote for the same presidential candidate as I do.
While I do have some limited curiousity as to why he does not plan to vote for Bob Barr, it’s not very much curiousity.
Liberal runs hot and cold with me-sometimes I want to strangle him-sometimes he’s pretty cool. Who knows? Maybe he’s the real “maverick?”
runs and hides
I’ve been watching TV most of the day (football, on three networks). I’ve seen several Obama ads, but not one single McCain ad. It’s probably silly to make something of this, but it makes me wonder if he’s giving up on Iowa like he did Michigan, or if he’s running low on money.
The last map I saw (Friday) showed Iowa as leaning toward Obama, but it’s not in the bag.
Now just wait. I’m switching over to AMC now and there’ll probably be six McCain ads.
Nate Silver has Obama as a 99% favorite to win Iowa at this point. If that is not “in the bag”, I do not know what is.
I’ve been confused about the money stuff. Putting together the Presidential campaign money along with money given to the RNC but under Team McCain control McCain started off September at least with more money than Team Obama. Most of it was in RNC coffers but it was there.
Yet clearly Obama is outspending McCain. It doesn’t seem to add up.
AFAIK the problem is that suddenly even more representative and senatorial races are competitive now. (like Al Franken suddenly being ahead of Coleman in Minnesota)
It could be that, while there is no official word, the RNC is spending less that it should in the presidential race because it is now trying to prevent something that could be horrible for a would be McCain administration: a Democratic congress with veto proof majorities.
This BTW is one item that causes me to be less scared of the future if by any chance McCain manages to squeak in.
I don’t think McCain, nor the RNC, will have to worry about this for much longer.
There will be no squeaking.
Actually, with the numbers from electoral-vote.com and fivethirtyeight.com (ignoring Texas’ +21 McCain, because only ARG thinks he has that much of a lead, everyone else says +9 or so), if Obama wins every state in which he currently trails by less than 10, he gets 446 votes, (AR is currently +10 McCain, but that doesn’t reflect the recent rally with Sen. Clinton and Gov. Beebe on Friday), losing AK, AL, ID, KS, KY, LA, ND, NE as a whole and CD-03, OK, SC, SD, TN, and UT. Not that that has a chance in hell of happening, but he can get comfortably over 400 without an 11+ point swing in any state.
Doing the same thing for McCain, you get… 280, losing every state northeast of OH/WV/VA but Maine’s north district (!), DC, WA, OR, CA, MI, WI, MN (the latter two only just barely), IA, and HI. Ouchie.
Using Fivethirtyeight.com numbers, a ten point shift would give Obama 410, because they have Louisiana and Arkansas within 10 points. I see you’re giving him TX and AZ, but that is still premature. Point is not to get our hopes up for a 400 EV blowout. I’ll take anything over 270.
Oh my lord, every time I start feeling flickers of optimism that Obama might actually win, I do what I can to stomp the shit out of them, and start reeling off the dozens of perfectly reasonable reasons why Obama hasn’t a chance in hell. Deeply mistrusting polls tops my list, but dear me, when I click on the links to these places (such as electoral-vote.com and fivethirtyeight.com) my heart flutters.
And then too, I read things like this, regarding Joshua Trevino’s blog. Trevino is a co-founder of RedState, the kind of place that would feature a sleezy article such as “Did Bill Ayers “Ghostwrite” Barack Obama’s First Memoir?”.
Trevino writes:
Be still my beating heart!
I think we’d have to have one more major swing of sentiment in Obama’s direction for him to exceed 381 EVs. To get to 381, Obama would have to sweep the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific states (treating Alaska as Rockies, not Pacific), pick up CO, NM, and NV and Omaha in the Rockies and Plains states, and win VA, WV, NC, and FL in the Southeast.
After that, it’s a long way to his next-best pickup opportunities, which I would guess to be Montana and Georgia.
If Obama wins the popular vote by <10%, I’d say 381 EVs is his max.
Or perhaps they’re spending less in the presidential campaign because they’re effectively giving up on McCain and are now trying to ensure they retain enough votes in the Senate to be able to filibuster against the worst* results of a Democratic White House & Congress.**
*By their lights of course
**This probably isn’t what’s happening, but a man can dream, can’t he?
I am such a wreck, that I wonder if the Dow coming back is good or bad for Obama.
And…did everybody hear the sound bites from the Clintons (appearing with Biden) in Pennsylvania yesterday? Bill said: Hillary’s worked soooo hard for Obama, she’s just wonderful.
Hillary said: she hadn’t worked in the “trenches” for 35 years on truth, justice and the American way just to see some Republican squander it all.
Mentions of Obama were few and far between. These people are really pissing me off.
How many here are willing to wager that if Obama doesn’t win with at least 300 EVs, the Republicans will spin it as a weak victory with no mandate?
ETA: I meant 350, not 300
That’s difficult, but I think quite possible.
I said he wouldn’t win LA, and I explained why I counted AR. I know winning TX and AZ is premature, but that was the point of the exercise: the theoretical maximum, not the most likely outcome. I’ll be okay-ish with 270, but I wants as many votes as possible.
McCain’s campaign has released parts of McCain’s big campaign re-launch speech.
Apparently, with his negative campaign faltering and a new plan required, McCain’s bold new direction for phoenix-like resurrection is…
…a fully negative speech bitching about how much Obama sucks. :dubious: