Election Prediction, No Personal Pick
I meant to get to this last week so here it is- To get it down in writing, I think Obama will win the election. I've been wrong before, notably when I predicted Hillary Clinton would be our next president, but that's only because I didn't imagine the Obama phenomenon reaching the heights it did. That same phenomenon is not going to get Obama elected and has probably cost him slightly in the general election. The groundswell of popular support certainly propelled the candidate of change above and beyond Hillary Clinton, but the same cult-like adoration has been off putting to some middle of the road voters. If Clinton had managed to win the Democratic nod, I think she would be even better positioned than Obama to win in November, but past is past.
Obama will win not because of anything he did or didn't do, but because like John Kerry and other losers before him, John McCain has failed to present a coherent campaign message and failed to reassure Americans about what a John McCain presidency would be. It just seems to me that the rhetoric coming from the McCain campaign since the financial crisis has been inconsistent, if not incoherent. All the talk of tax cuts and spending freezes seem hollow coming from a man who told us that we needed the 800 billion dollar bailout and who still tells us we need to bail out individual defaulting homeowners.
I really did want to come out and support Obama, at least in the same way I had leaned Bush in 2000 and 2004, but Obama's talking points the past month drifted far too much to the economic left for my likening, particularly coming from such an unknown quantity. I just can't do it. I just hope, hope, hope that he isn't as bad as his critics make him out to be.
Obama will win not because of anything he did or didn't do, but because like John Kerry and other losers before him, John McCain has failed to present a coherent campaign message and failed to reassure Americans about what a John McCain presidency would be. It just seems to me that the rhetoric coming from the McCain campaign since the financial crisis has been inconsistent, if not incoherent. All the talk of tax cuts and spending freezes seem hollow coming from a man who told us that we needed the 800 billion dollar bailout and who still tells us we need to bail out individual defaulting homeowners.
I really did want to come out and support Obama, at least in the same way I had leaned Bush in 2000 and 2004, but Obama's talking points the past month drifted far too much to the economic left for my likening, particularly coming from such an unknown quantity. I just can't do it. I just hope, hope, hope that he isn't as bad as his critics make him out to be.
posted by lonely libertarian at 11:49 AM
5 Comments:
While I've defended McCain, I always understood your issues with him. I get why you don't like him even if I disagree.
I'll never comprehend how you grasped at and at times almost contrived some of the flimsiest notions that Barack Obama would be a good president. The man has been an anti-capitalism leftist his entire freaking life until he reinvented himself into whatever the electorate favored in the dem primary and then reinvented himself again in the general election. To believe in Obama the moderate takes an unbelievable leap of faith and a complete ignorance of the time-tested fact that you are who you surround yourself with and that your actions speak louder than words(especially when the orator is among the most gifted in the world).
He failed spectacularly with the surge (possibly the most important foregin policy development since WW2), not simply by opposing it, but by refusing to acknowledge its success. I could go on and on about how his response to the invasion of Georgia (a country who fought w/ us in Iraq, who was invaded by a country who fought us at the UN leading up to the war) lets all our allies around the world know that you cannot trust an Obama administration to have your back.
As if Obama himself wouldn't be enough, he would be inheriting a congress dominated by pelosi, reid and frank.
Barack Obama is the man he was until he was 45 years old, not what he has presented magnificently in his last two years. Why do we judge the most gifted orator in the world on his words when he has a record, a lifetime, that so solidly defines what he is...a big government, big entitlement, anti-capitalism, blame america first, inexperienced LIBERAL.
I'm always a bit perplexed that the claim that Obama is a no-doubt-about-it left of Jimmy Carter-style liberal while at the same time being far too inexperienced to run the nation's foreign policy.
I just don't see much of a record on anything when it comes to Obama, certainly not one that would make me assume anything drastic about the man. If you want to make the case that he's run in intellectually liberal circles, that's fine, but so did Bill Clinton in his youth and he turned out to be a rather moderate leader.
Barack Obama's political career has always seemed to be me about personal ambition that ideology- He's like McCain in that record, but McCain at least has a long record for me to judge and reject him on.
I don't like a lot of what I hear from Obama, but the truth is, I have no idea what sort of president the man will be.
One thing I do know is that presidential administrations can often times defy logic on domestic policy. As I've noted before, that's why any number of massive government programs have come from Republican administrations, while notable free market, limited government moves have come from Democratic ones. In a way, it's that history that gives me the hope that an Obama administration won't be so bad.
Well, again, that's amazing to me, your view of Obama that is. You generally make a lot of sense and sometimes you provoke me to think about things differently, but in this case all I can say is I don't get it. Or I should say you don't get it. I don't really know what to make of it either. We'll see what happens.
“I don’t vote Republican or Democrat. Choosing is a sin so I always just write in the Lord’s name!” - Kenneth (30 Rock)
Actually that's Republican...we count those.
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