• Follow our Instagram!
  • Curious about what we're currently doing about bots? Check out the latest updates from staff in this thread.

Election 2008, United States

Who would you vote for if the presidential race is held now?

  • Barack Obama

    Votes: 415 72.4%
  • John McCain

    Votes: 130 22.7%
  • Other (Please specify)

    Votes: 28 4.9%

  • Total voters
    573
McCain is evil. Absolute evil. Misogynist, homophobe, war-monger.
Ban on late-term abortion, ban on abortion except for rape, incest and the death of the mother, voted against funding for contraceptive programs - because abstinence only works SO WELL! - voted against extending hate crime and discrimination legislation to include sexual orientation, voted yes on prohibiting same-sex marriage, voted yes on informing a minor's parents should they have an out-of-state abortion, pro-death penalty.. urrgh. and his foreign policy? "Naive to exclude nukes; naive to exclude attacking Pakistan."

he scares the shit out of me.
 
I am most likely voting third party because my liberal vote does not count in Texas anyway, and I kind of like the libertarian candidate.

Texas might count for more this year. Barack Obama is consistently polling fewer than 10 percentage points behind John McCain, and considering many of the Clinton Democrats say that they'll never vote for him (they eventually will, though), that's a pretty good showing. Texas is already a minority-majority state, and most of its growth is from Hispanics (blacks displaced by Hurricane Katrina might also have a significant effect), which Barack Obama actually does pretty well with. For May, Gallup reports that Obama polls 66% among Hispanics, while John McCain gets 29%. It's not impossible that this year Obama might be able to win Texas, or at least force McCain to spend money there.

]
Whenever you think of voting Blue, just remember that if you have aren't on public assistance and have a mortgage, spouse, car, job, and children, "the wealthy" is always YOU. I come from a lower-middle class family and both my parents owned their own businesses at one point (My father's went defunct because independent retail packaging and shipping has gone the way of the dinosaur as a business model). Bush's tax cuts helped out their small businesses.

And for the people who don't own businesses...?

Democrat health care policies are meaningless to "us" if "us" is defined as "reasonably healthy people under the age of 30."

Reasonably healthy people under the age of 30 make up a minority of the population.

Healthy young people do not need huge comprehensive one-size-fits-all health plans paid for by government (e.g. the taxpayer), the most wasteful, innefficient provider possible. What Barack's universal health care plan will do is ensure that all of your money will be transferred to a government slush fund that never goes to where it is needed. See: Social Security, which is already insolvent. When I retire, they will be sending me a bill in the mail instead of a check.

Social Security is still a very popular government program.

Just yesterday he Baracktracked on his remarks at AIPAC because he got a dissaproving letter from Palestine supporters. His entire rolodex is full of racists (Wright, Pfleger), fraudsters(Rezko), and terrorists (Ayers and Dohrn). Regarding his "spiritual advisor" he initially said "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," then more recently he said "this is not the Jeremiah Wright I knew." He did the same thing after Rezko, his Chicago money bundler, got convicted on 16 counts of fraud. "This is not the Tony Rezko I knew," quoth Obama. Does Obama know anyone he associates with for 2 decades?

"This is not the Scott McClellan we knew." Does the White House staff know anyone they worked intimately with for about 3 years? (In knowing people 3 years is probably as sufficient as 20.)

Seriously, I didn't vote for McCain as Republican nominee, but the thought of an Obama presidency in comparison is just too horrible to imagine. Obama assosiates with crooks and haters to advance his political career and then turns on them after 20 year relationships as soon as they become a political liability, he's got a dreamland domestic and foreign policy (assuming you can pin him down on one), and his entire political house is built on a sandbar of "New Politics," "Hope," and "Change" when all he's offering is 1930's appeasement and 1960's social policy. He's the perfect combination of Neville Chamberlain and Jimmy Carter.

McCain hired some of the biggest lobbyists in Washington to be on his campaign. His top lobbyist had the nerve to say, "The American people won't care about this." To that I quote John McCain himself: THAT's not change we can believe in!

I ask this as a serious question to everyone voting Blue this year: Aren't you tired of nominating joke candidates for the presidency yet? Even Bill Clinton only won with a pluralilty. I don't think a Democrat has won the presidential office with a majority since Jimmy Carter. To be fair, that's probably because the last Democrat elected by a majority of the population was Jimmy Carter.

George W. Bush was not elected by a majority of the population. You can try to stack the cards, but I assure you I have more cards than you.
 
I'd vote nader myself because frankly the libertarian party guy is a dumbass (BANNING GAY MARRIAGE != LIBERTARIAN IDEAL amirite?) and both of the mainstream candidates are just cocksuckers trying to appeal to everyone with lies instead of having a consistent message. Obama is a raging socialist and America is already having economic issues, we don't need more fucking entitlements kthnx.

McCain will probably win though, if Obama does win I'll guarantee you it's because he's black, but that's great because black people can NEVER pull the race card ever again if he gets elected. White man's keeping us down doesn't have the same ring when you've got a black man running the most powerful office in the country. I honestly don't care at this point because Obama has lost his only appeal to me a few days back when he shot down any chance for his negotiation of a lasting peace in the middle east. McCain had no appeal to me in the first place.

Oh yeah, I do like McCain more than Obama at this point. The reason is because Democrats always anally rape our wallets with huge taxes. You know, Bush's tax cuts didn't only benefit the rich no matter what the pundits tell you, if they aren't renewed most middle class families would see an increase of $1,500-$3,000 in taxes and most of the poor would also see an increase. Social Programs aim to make everyone poor because they only help the poor, the rich have plenty of money to pay taxes, it's the middle class who the democrats/fiscal liberals (which include a lot of republicans nowadays) hurt the most. People need to realize that.

Just an ending note, just because something is popular doesn't mean it's healthy for America or its economy. Most people are absolutely clueless when it comes to even the basic principles of economy. Deficit spending works well for awhile, America can get away with it for a longer time because of the huge bulk of our economy, but it simply can not last forever. We don't need to reallocate money from war to entitlements, we need to spend less money, period.
 
I'd vote nader myself because frankly the libertarian party guy is a dumbass (BANNING GAY MARRIAGE != LIBERTARIAN IDEAL amirite?)

Did Barr explicitly say "ban gay marriage" or "leave it up to the states"? btw, Nader > Obama in terms of the raging socialist metric. The best candidate in this race is/was Ron Paul (not sure he's running independent). I might vote for Barr even though he's a reformed GOPer; at least he's for ending the drug war and pulling out from Iraq.
 
So he's evil because he's not liberal?

Wow okay.

I used to think people on the left were farily reasonable.

he's evil because he is presuming to have control over my body [or would do if I lived in the states]. my contraception fails and I'm stuck with a baby in a society where the primary burden of care is placed exclusively on the mother? and believe me, contraception fails.

evil because he condones the death penalty and hate crime yet being 'pro-life'? [I never understood how ANYONE held that position.] economically I think he is entirely wrong as well, but that's something else.

seriously. moderate right in america is so far right here you wouldn't believe. you don't hear anyone here espousing such policies other than the BNP.
 
he's evil because he is presuming to have control over my body [or would do if I lived in the states].

*sigh*

is it that hard to understand?

the issue is not your body - the issue is the genetically unique human being who happens to be residing within your body.

my contraception fails and I'm stuck with a baby in a society where the primary burden of care is placed exclusively on the mother? and believe me, contraception fails

If you're so worried about it, don't have sex. I'm not anti-sex, but people are not entitled to have sex without having to accept the responsibility of possibly taking care of a child - certainly not at the expense of said child.


evil because he condones the death penalty and hate crime yet being 'pro-life'? [I never understood how ANYONE held that position.]

Within the state apparatus, being convicted of a crime means you forfeit certain rights. Remember the other part of the 14th Amendment - "without due process of law".

and how do you place killing a person who killed others on the same moral equivalancy with killing a person who cannot possibly have done anything wrong?
 
As a somewhat conservative Republican myself, I do go out of my way at times to vote for a Democrat, but what I don't like is when extreme liberals such as Barbra Streisand urge everybody to vote Democrat and to rid of all Republicans which to me sounds like even if the devil were a candidate to in fact vote for it. If "The Devil" such as a David Duke like person were a candidate I certainly would not vote for him.
 
I wouldn't ever give a fetus the moral status of a person. And what the hell about the rights of the woman? Why on earth doesn't she come first? Someone who's on death row is still a person, no matter what they've done. And what happens when you execute people that didn't do it?
Actual person over potential person. I want to become a college/uni lecturer when I grow up - but that doesn't mean I'm allowed to lecture an undergrad class.
 
I'd like to steer this discussion a bit towards the actual election, so here's an analysis of what I consider to be swing states (they are listed in no particular order):

Ohio-Even with Obama's new states, Ohio is still the mother of all swing states (not Missouri), and is still arguably the most important single state. 2004 was "I swear I'm not running for governor of Ohio, really!". 2008 might be a little different with Obama's new states, but expect a lot of campaigning in Ohio anyways. Currently Obama has the slightest of edges over McCain, but it is within the margin of error.

Florida-Florida is the largest of the swing states, but it seems to be leaning Republican this year. The Jewish voting bloc, which is quite significant in Florida, doesn't seem to trust Obama too much, and McCain currently has a 10% advantage there.

Pennsylvania-For the last 4 elections, Pennsylvania has gone to the Democrats, and it seems to be heading that way this year too. While Obama might struggle to get the Reagan Democrat vote in the eastern industrial corridor and Pittsburgh, huge black turnout in Philadelphia may balance that out. Obama currently polls around 5% ahead.

Michigan-Rounding out the four very large swing states is the smallest one, Michigan. McCain currently has a statistically insignificant advantage over Obama, but that may be because Obama hasn't campaigned there too much. The SurveyUSA poll taken shows that 26% of blacks would vote for McCain, a number that will certainly go down.

Virginia-Virginia is one of the new states that Obama is bringing in, and he currently ties in polling with McCain. The rapidly growing D.C. metropolitan area will probably go towards Obama, as well as much more of the eastern section of Virginia. However, he needs to improve his performance in the Shenandoah region to win the state.

Missouri-Obama and McCain are essentially tied in this microcosm of the United States, with liberal shores of Kansas City and St. Louis, and a conservative center. Even its number of electoral votes, 11, is average. This will be a major battleground.

Wisconsin-Although Wisconsin has gone Democratic in the last 4 presidential elections, it went by 0.4% to John Kerry in 2004, the thinnest margin in the entire election. However, Obama has proven electoral appeal in the upper Midwest, so at this point, Wisconsin leans Democratic.

Colorado-Obama's candidacy also brings Colorado into play; he also has electoral appeal in the West and has consistently polled ahead of McCain in Colorado. Given that Denver has rapidly grown and confirmation from the Senate race there, Colorado may go Democratic this year.

Iowa-Obama has consistently polled ahead of McCain in all 9 non-partisan polls taken so far, so Iowa is probably as safe for Obama as a former Bush state can be.

New Mexico-New Mexico has been nearly tied between McCain and Obama. However, Tom Udall's popularity in the Senate race might give Obama a leg up.

Nevada-Nevada is much like Colorado: it has one booming city, Las Vegas, that might tilt towards Obama, and the rest of it is pretty conservative. It will be very competitive.

New Hampshire-It is the smallest state that I consider swing, and it truly is a swing state this time around. On one hand, New Hampshire has historically liked McCain's maverick stances, but on the other hand, McCain has swung towards the hard right while campaigning, and New Hampshire has a demonstrated distaste for the Iraq War, as shown by the facts that insurgent anti-war candidate Carol Shea-Porter won one of its districts in 2006 and that Jeanne Shaheen is polling consistently ahead of John Sununu in the Senate race.
 
Mostly I look at the election on a Macro level.

What does Obama bring that Kerry didn't? If Obama can't deliver more than what Kerry did, he will lose.

Democrats already take the 90% Black Vote support for granted. Barack's ability to eek out maybe 1 percentage point more of the black vote than a white Democrat is likely insignificant. Barack's black factor comes down to total turnout impact. If 90% of every single non-convict black 18 or older voted for Obama that in itself should be worth about 25 million votes. The question becomes electoral college. If Barack attracts enough blacks to turn a red state blue, McCain will have a tough time beating him.

If he just brings out every black in a guarenteed Blue state, it's rather pointless electorally.

That being said, Barack's utter shadyness to any white male voter paying attention is a huge turnoff. Nobody cares about being called racist since they've already played that card over and over again in the primaries. It's already lost its magic and if anything pushing it further is going to backfire. Whether Democrats want to admit it, mist voters don't care about the novelty of a candidate, especially if novelty is their only selling point.

With a wafer thin resume, a nasty habit of backtracking on every issue except universal health care (a general election loser), shady asssociates around every corner, and a general lack of anything except vacuous campaign slogans, basically any coherent voter will ask "where's the beef?" and find it lacking.

I honestly don't think it is mathematically possible for Obama to beat McCain. The Dem primary has fractured their party to the point where feminists are pissed off that the nomination was "stolen" from Hillary, and trust me, feminists never get over their own egos. A lot of Dems are angry at him and either won't vote at all or will pull the lever for McCain.

In short, Hillary basically did what I thought she would do: drag Barack down to the depths of hell if he even thought about messing up her presidential nomination. Essentially its a matter of whether Barack can make up for what Hillary (and his own incompetence) cost him.

And again, as much as the base doesn't like McCain, faced between him and the walking disaster zone that is Obama, it's likely they'll hold their noses. I know I will. I can't even figure out Obama's policy because he keeps changing it every single week. What I do know is he fully intends to cut our defense, build massive entitlement programs, and engage in paper rabbit/harshly worded complaint strength foreign policy. (e.g. : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnTaWTfwsFU " I will not weaponize space(wtf?), I will slow our development of future combat systems").

Just an aside, please tell me when McCain swung hard right? I must have missed it, cause he's still a centrist from here, his only "hard right-wing" stance so far is foreign policy that isn't appeasement writ large. He really needs help with economics (Obama isn't any better), and his social policy is mostly conservative although he's been more of a cheerleader than an activist. His global warming crap is aggravating and don't get me started on amnesty.

But again, the alternative is the bleeding moron in the above youtube link, who is either so ignorant, so naive, or so arrogant as to believe if the US unilaterally disarms ourselves and cripples our military capability with a huge unneccesary bureacracy our enemies will follow our lead.
 
Hmm, let's look at what McCain did:
1. He voted to make permanent the Bush tax cuts that he previously disagreed with.
2. In 2000, he said he didn't support overturning Roe v. Wade. Now he does.
3. He wrote a campaign finance reform bill a few years ago, and now he refuses to vote for it.
4. He was against torture before he was for it.
5. He's always been at war with Eastasia.

For your sake, it would also help to remember what happened when Curious George implied that Obama is an appeaser.

And for the people who say that Obama is too inexperienced to be president, there is absolutely no correlation between experience and presidential greatness.
 
The Dem primary has fractured their party to the point where feminists are pissed off that the nomination was "stolen" from Hillary, and trust me, feminists never get over their own egos. A lot of Dems are angry at him and either won't vote at all or will pull the lever for McCain.
Oh yeah, blame the feminists. Because what the hell are these women doing out of the kitchen? God damn, why did anyone give them the vote in the first place?

I am extremely feminist [as anyone who's ever had the misfortune of getting me involved in a polemic on the subject will know] and I would have voted Obama, not Hillary. Feminism isn't about being so in favour of women that you'll vote them whether you agree with their policies or not. It's about equality. Get a fucking grip, seriously.

Feminists never get over their own egos? You're the one with the ego problem, love.
 
What I do know is he fully intends to cut our defense, build massive entitlement programs, and engage in paper rabbit/harshly worded complaint strength foreign policy. (e.g. : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnTaWTfwsFU " I will not weaponize space(wtf?), I will slow our development of future combat systems").

"Weaponize space" refers to building satellite weapons in outer space, something which both Reagan and the most recent Bush looked into.

Maybe this is a new idea to you, but most democrats do, in fact, want America to spend less on weaponization and military in general. Seriously, who is going to attack us? And if we get hit with an actual attack (i.e. a situation where we actually declare war) we would have allies behind us anyway. US weapons are already so far ahead of those of any country which would possibly attack us that I don't see how the current rate of spending is even close to necessary. In addition, the US economy is so important to every developed country that there's no way any of them would ever attack us.

Terrorism obviously shouldn't be overlooked, but that's an issue for Homeland Security, not the military, and the technology required is completely different than what we call "defense" (based on detection instead of destruction).

Ultimately, most conflict worldwide will be solved by negotiation, not military action. Now that most of the world is involved in a global economy, there is almost zero chance of a serious military threat. We have economic might to back up our threats; we do not need to spend gobs of money on military if the only reasons are terrorists and negotiation.

Furthermore, I don't think that I am going out on a limb by saying that most Americans don't like going to war.

Barack Obama previously stated that he would be willing to talk to Iran. McCain immediately chastised him for it. I think I know who I'm voting for.
 
As a somewhat conservative Republican myself, I do go out of my way at times to vote for a Democrat, but what I don't like is when extreme liberals such as Barbra Streisand urge everybody to vote Democrat and to rid of all Republicans which to me sounds like even if the devil were a candidate to in fact vote for it. If "The Devil" such as a David Duke like person were a candidate I certainly would not vote for him.

Thought experiment: it's very easy to replace the partisan terms and names in this post with their opposites. Fact is, there are ridiculous fringe conservatives who would love to eliminate every Democrat (except Joe Lieberman) from power. I try to ignore these idiots and stick to the moderate voices on both sides.

I want to make a key point - pretty much all nonpartisan analysts agree that the difference between Obama and McCain's positions on Iran are largely philosophical and not practical; even George Bush has engaged in low-level contacts with Iran to try and get them to the table, and I'm sure Obama and McCain would continue that path. Second, high-level talks are not in the cards as long as Ahmadinejad is in power; and, if a moderate successor appeared in 2009, a meeting would take place no matter who wins in 2008 (whether one candidate or the other winning improves Ahmadinejad's chances is up for debate). Third, both candidates would probably prefer military action to letting Iran get the bomb; the risks are too great. The only question here is how quickly we move in that direction, if necessary (at the rate things are going, Israel may make this decision for us anyway).
 
Great Sage, there is no way PA is a swing state, lol. I don't care what the polls say, Obama will be taking PA by at least 8% points. Philadelphia was the bluest of any city in 2004. That city CARRIES PA. I'm not worried about PA at all.

It'll hang on Ohio and Florida. If they're smart, Obama wins. If they're dumb, McCain wins.
 
Nearly every commentator and pollster considers Pennsylvania a swing state, though it has leaned towards the Democrats quite significantly lately. I've never personally thought of it as too much of a swing state, but apparently a lot of other people do.

This election doesn't hinge as much on Florida and Ohio as you state. Assuming Obama keeps all of the states Kerry won in 2004, if he gets Iowa, Nevada or New Mexico, and Colorado, he wins. If he only gets one of the 4 states, he still wins if he wins Virginia.
 
thanks to the idiocy of Bush I can easily see Obama taking states that blues normally don't - Virginia for one (Virginia will be heavily contested for years to come starting this year - the state is becoming more and more like Maryland/DC demographically (ethnic minorities + high level of affluence = liberalism). They could also take some of those southern states as well.

The Republicans will lose major ground with the Hispanic vote because they're seen as anti-immigrant even though the most rabid anti-immigration guy is a liberal (note: I fucking hate Lou Dobbs because he takes the whole "THEY TOOK UR JOBS!" thing seriously and his economics are just terrible)

Black turnout will be historic, of course. I mihht very well be the one black person in the country who WON'T vote for Obama.

If Hillary is the running mate female turnout will be historic (remember, she'll be the first female VP so yeah).

And to top it all off McCain is going to have his Ralph Nader in Bob Barr (who's actually a decent candidate despite the grease-fire that is the LP) and Ron Paul if he decides to run independent could chip away at his base as well.

I don't think McCain can win this one. 8 years of Bush have made conservatism look absolutely awful and unfortunately, awful president = disaster for the party in power. Not that the Democrats have changed anything of course. But everything in this race is stacked against McCain.

EDIT: Of those 4 states, Nevada and Colorado is going to have Paul/Barr take a lot of votes from McCain; Paul polled well in both states IIRC. I think New Mexico will swing Democratic outright. Iowa I don't see him winning. And I can't see Obama blowing any of the Kerry states at all.
 
there's no way obama picks hillary as his running mate. it's as close to "not happening" as you can get.

personally, I'm rooting for Bill Richardson (hey there, hispanic vote). I haven't heard many people throwing his name around though, so I don't really know what to expect.
 
Hillary Clinton will only be the second female vice presidential candidate. The first female vice presidential candidate was Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, who ran with Walter Mondale against Reagan.

I think that Obama should pick a white male for vice president unless he picks Hillary; the electorate's patience can only be stretched so far.

Here's some fun with the veeps.
 
Choosing a VP should be quite interesting as I could possibly see the following scenario:

Democrats: Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton
Republicans: John McCain & Condoleezza Rice
 
Back
Top