A bipartisan commission looks at the candidates "position papers" and finds:
While campaigns typically snow reporters with white papers and policy minutiae, many of the domestic policy plans of John McCain have been notably short on details.
Analysts caution that both McCain and Barack Obama have produced policy pronouncements that are just as much election documents as workable proposals; after all, that is what presidential candidates do. But when it comes to the metric of paper produced, McCain trails Obama in spelling out the nitty-gritty.
Read the article here. (Though if you've seen McCain actually try to discuss most of his policy proposals, you already
An article in today's Washington Post looks at some problems McCain has been having with defining his campaign:
...they are trying to walk this tightrope between creating distance from Bush and not angering the base," said a Michigan Republican operative who described himself as nervous about McCain's chances of victory in that swing state...Another Republican strategist, who worked for a rival GOP campaign during the primary and has ties to Bush's political team, said the McCain team has "not really figured out" how to present McCain to voters: as an experienced conservative leader or a reformer who wants change..."who John McCain is and what he stands for -- it's a little hard to connect all the dots."
It has indeed become difficult to understand what John McCain stands for:
- He fought the Bush administration on torture, and stated he wanted to close Guantanamo Bay, yet he voted AGAINST banning waterboarding, and called the recent Supreme Court decision establishing limited habeas corpus rights to detainess one of the worst decisions in the America's history (yes, worse than the ones that called slaves property, or that upheld segregation).
- He spoke out for years against the reckless Bush tax cuts, but now wholeheartedly endorses them as the bedrock of his economic plan.
- He was against offshore oil drilling before he was for it.
- He now states that he would not even vote for his own immigration plan, probably because he found that it was not supported by his conservative base.
- He speaks out against lobbyists and "pork" but has turned out to have a staff full of lobbyists. Just one recent instance: McCain had a large role in killing a wasteful government deal with Boeing to develop new planes for refueling. But it has recently been revealed that McCain is also being closely advised by lobbyists for the Boeing competitor that instead received the contract.
And perhaps most importantly, Frank Rich recalls some of McCain's biggest changes in judgment about Iraq:
Mr. McCain’s sorest Achilles’ heel, of course, is his role in facilitating the fiasco in the first place. Someone in his campaign has figured this out. Go to JohnMcCain.com and, hilariously enough, you’ll find a “McCain on Iraq Timeline” that conveniently begins in August 2003, months after “Mission Accomplished.” Vanished into the memory hole are such earlier examples of the McCain Iraq wisdom as “the end is very much in sight” (April 9, 2003) and “there’s not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shiites” (later that same month).
To finesse this embarrassing record, Mr. McCain asks us to believe that the only judgment that matters is who was “right” about the surge, not who was right about our reckless plunge into war. That’s like saying he deserves credit for tossing life preservers to the survivors after encouraging the captain of the Titanic to plow full speed ahead into the iceberg.
Anyhow these are just some flip-flops in what will likely be an ever expanding list. Or as this clip from MSNBC states "McCain Flip Flops on Everything": Keep Reading (if there's more)...
I'm not an expert on campaign finance reform, but I do understand the basics: the idea behind public funding of campaigns is to equalize the playing field so that donors with more money do not have outsized influence over campaigns.
Now Obama, despite having stated repeatedly he was considering public financing for his campaign has decided to forestall public financing and instead stay with his unprecedentedly successful fund raising, with over 1.5 million donors, most contributing less that $100 on the internet. His campaign claims having this many individual small donors is in itself a grassroots form of public financing. (Not to mention it allows him to raise money beyond public financing limits).
The McCain campaign has been harping on this in the hope they can use it to brand Obama as a candidate who will go back on his word, who "flip flops" based on the needs of the moment. This being unlike McCain - who's evolving positions on the Iraq War, offshore oil drilling, or George Bush's tax cuts (to just choose a few) - aren't position changes based on political expediency, they are principled leadership. They are "shocked, shocked!" that Obama is willing to do what is necessary to win.
Nice try. The decision may perhaps not be a pretty one, but it is a pragmatic one. And as Chuck Todd and MSNBC's "First Read" state:
...the decision was a no-brainer. As one very smart political observer told us yesterday, if Obama had stayed in the system -- bypassing the opportunity to raise about three times amount what the system offers -- then he’d question Obama’s judgment and ability to be president. Simply put, it would have been a dumb move.
"[I]...see no reason why public financing is somehow morally superior to hundreds of thousands of small donors. But if you want to see a Democrat prepared to take a short-term hit in order to score a real long-term advantage over his opponent, Obama's your man."
But to top it all off, harping on this issue cleverly obscures the fact that McCain himself is currently openly violating campaign LAW, after opting in to public financing to save his campaign, then spending beyond the agreed limits. Josh Marshall at TPM (tries to) explain "McCain Breaking the Law in Plain Sight":
People thing supporters of Obama are somehow going to be surprised to realize he's also a POLITICIAN. Well no shit. I think the these mindless zealots who believe he is some sort of messianic figure largely exists only in the minds of his detractors. (And to me, his FISA position is much more problematic than this one). The fact is he is liberal and a pragmatist, or as David Brooks states:
"This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside."
John McCain has been trying to put a lot of distance between himself and our ever-unpopular current president, while Democrats have been trying to proclaim that John McCain's election would mean Bush's third term. Well the New York Times takes a look today at where John is "McSame" and where he differs from Bush's policies. Take a look at their chart here.
One thing you might notice immediately: The "same" column is substantially longer than the "different column." And as I explored in an earlier post, some of the differences on foreign policy are quite troubling. The Times also has an accompanying article in which they state:
A look at Mr. McCain’s 25-year record in the House and Senate, his 2008 campaign positions and his major speeches over the last three months indicates that on big-ticket issues — the economy, support for continuing the Iraq war, health care — his stances are indeed similar to Mr. Bush’s brand of conservatism. Mr. McCain’s positions are nearly identical to the president’s on abortion and the types of judges he says he would appoint to the courts...while it would be hard to categorize him as a doctrinaire Republican or conservative, Mr. McCain appears to have ceded some of his carefully cultivated reputation as a maverick.
And regarding how McCain's contradictory energy policy strains to seem "different" than Bush, check out this clip (more on this later):
One of the few actual diplomatic achievements of the Bush administration was to negotiate a solution to the North Korea's nuclear weapon program. After an initial hard line stance, It was one of the only times they showed the willingness to engage, rather than saber rattle or threaten military action. (Yes, I just threw half a bone to the Bush administration).
John McCain wants to put a stop to that. Seriously. The one single time this administration actually had a diplomatic solution to a problem, and McCain doesn't like it, he thinks they're being soft.
Its just another aspect of McCain's perverse view of international relations, shaped as it by the scary neoconservative philosophy (which I explored in this earlier post). In fact, this and other policies serve to not only distance us from North Korea, but also threaten to push us away from more powerful players like China and Russia: McCain proposes a "League of Democracies" to bypass Russia and China's role in United Nations activities, alienating them and putting them in a much more adversarial relationship to us. He proposes expelling Russia from the G8 group of world powers, again, isolating them. His policies on nuclear deterrence could potentially lead to more nuclear build up in China and Russia, and to greater nuclear proliferation.
What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war...The neoconservative vision within the speech is essentially an affirmation of ideology. Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies. It proposes a League of Democracies, which would presumably play the role that the United Nations now does, except that all nondemocracies would be cast outside the pale. The approach lacks any strategic framework. What would be the gain from so alienating two great powers?
McCain's supposed strength is his foreign policy experience. But only a little investigation reveals his foreign policy as not only a continuation of some of the Bush administration's reckless policies, but even charting a more disastrous course. So I will dedicated several of these "Why Not McCain" entries to take a more extensive look at some of these foreign policy issues. This, the first, will focus on McCain's overall problematic foreign policy, as explored in several important articles.
Here's an overview from the "The Militarist" in the American Prospect:
Despite neoconservatism's close association in the public imagination with the Bush administration, and despite McCain's image as a moderate, a look at the record makes clear that McCain, not Bush, is the real neocon in the Republican Party. McCain was the neocons' candidate in 2000, McCain adhered to a truer version of the faith during the early years of hubris that followed September 11, and as president McCain would likely pursue policies that will make what we've seen from Bush look like a pale imitation of the real thing. McCain, after all, is the candidate of perpetual war in Iraq. The candidate who, despite his protestations in a March speech that he "hates war," not only stridently backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq but has spent years calling on the United States to depose every dictator in the world. He's the candidate of ratcheting-up action against North Korea and Iran, of new efforts to undermine the United Nations, and of new cold wars with Russia and China. Rather than hating war, he sees it as integral to the greatness of the nation, and military service as the highest calling imaginable. It is, in short, not Bush but McCain, who among practical politicians holds truest to the vision of a foreign policy dominated by militaristic unilateralism.
In an extensive profile in the New York Times Magazine, "The McCain Doctrines," Matt Bai comes to similar conclusions as he discusses with McCain potential military interventions in Burma or Zimbabwe.
McCain is known for being a gut thinker, averse to overarching doctrines or theory. But as we talked, I tried to draw out of him some template for knowing when military intervention made sense — an answer, essentially, to the question that has plagued policy makers confronting international crises for the last 20 years. McCain has said that the invasion of Iraq was justified, even absent the weapons of mass destruction he believed were there, because of Hussein’s affront to basic human values...Most American politicians, of course, would immediately dismiss the idea of sending the military into Zimbabwe or Myanmar as tangential to American interests and therefore impossible to justify. McCain didn’t make this argument. He seemed to start from a default position that moral reasons alone could justify the use of American force, and from there he considered the reasons it might not be feasible to do so. In other words, to paraphrase Robert Kennedy, while most politicians looked at injustice in a foreign land and asked, “Why intervene?” McCain seemed to look at that same injustice and ask himself, “Why not?”
...the enemy described in his speech is an undifferentiated "radical Islamic terrorism." It is less an entity than a metaphysical concept -- existing everywhere and without distinction. McCain draws no distinction between the puny Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. Interestingly, the U.S. military in Iraq does: it recently gave a briefing that described Al Qaeda in Iraq's foot soldiers as brainwashed twentysomethings rather than fanatical murderers. It should go without saying that an inability to even properly diagnose the enemy can only lead to counterproductive, astrategic overreaction.
Matt Yglesias, again from "The Militarist," sees a similar tendency:
While Bush has been criticized for advancing an unduly broad conception of the terrorism problem, allowing Iraq, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah to all be swept together with al-Qaeda, McCain sees a need to go even bigger. In a May 2007 speech to the Hoover Institution, McCain explained that the so-called war on terror is merely part of a "worldwide political, economic, and philosophical struggle between the future and the past, between progress and reaction, and between liberty and despotism." The despotism problem, in McCain's view, goes beyond the traditional axis of evil and requires us to not only "not put pressure on dictators in Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma, and other pariah states" but also to fret that Russia and China have joined forces to block such pressure. At a time when the Bush administration has to some extent backed away from rogue-state rollback, McCain has decided to double down, concluding that the rogue-state problem can't be resolved until all autocratic powers are brought down.
Many democrats and left or moderate independents still remember the John McCain of 2000, the irascible rebellious Republican who was not frightened to say what he thought, even if it went against his own party. I liked him too. Two things: 1) He doesn't exist anymore - John McCain got close to being the presidential nominee in 2000 and made some big personal and moral compromises in order to ensure he had republican support to become the nominee in 2008 and 2) Even then, he still was VERY conservative on many core principles, and has become even moreso since. You might think you like him, but you might not be fully aware of where he stands on things, because you have the memory of that "maverick." (okay i used it, once, never again I swear!).
Many say to me "Well, McCain wouldn't be that bad, he'd be better than Bush." Firstly, I think this is setting the bar pretty damn low. But additionally, we can't afford another Republican term with NO major change in direction from the failed policies of the last 8 years. So this will be the first in a series of posts looking at some of McCain's policies, beliefs, and history, to let you know why McCain WOULD be that bad, and why it is so important that the Democrats, and Barack Obama, win this election.
Reason #1: The Supreme Court. At least two justices could retire during the next president's term, with the possibility of tipping the balance of the court entirely to the conservative side - and McCain is for repealing Roe v. Wade. Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker takes a close look at the coded language in McCain's judiciary policy speech, and finds that he is using cloudy language to mask the bones he is throwing to the extreme right of his party.
The question, as always with McCain these days, is whether he means it. Might he really be a “maverick” when it comes to the Supreme Court? The answer, almost certainly, is no. The Senator has long touted his opposition to Roe, and has voted for every one of Bush’s judicial appointments; the rhetoric of his speech shows that he is getting his advice on the Court from the most extreme elements of the conservative movement...
And a reminder of what Bush's court has already wrought:
...in just three years the Roberts Court has crippled school-desegregation efforts (and hinted that affirmative action may be next); approved a federal law that bans a form of abortion; limited the reach of job-discrimination laws; and made it more difficult to challenge the mixing of church and state. It’s difficult to quarrel with Justice Stephen Breyer’s assessment of his new colleagues: “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.” And more change is likely to come. John Paul Stevens, the leader of the Court’s four embattled liberals, just celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday; Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seventy-five; David Souter is only sixty-eight but longs for his home in New Hampshire. For all the elisions in John McCain’s speech, one unmistakable truth emerged: that the stakes in the election, for the Supreme Court and all who live by its rulings, are very, very high.
Hey all, been a while since I've been posting - mostly because I felt as far as the primary goes I had reached who I was going to reach and done what I could do. But I'm thinking I will probably start back up, though probably a little less frequently, with more information, clips and articles about the general election and more specifically - John McCain.
Also, I'm posting because I wanted to share Steven Colbert's hilarious summary of the Michigan Florida situation (hopefully finally resolved this weekend):
A great Op-Ed in today's Washington Post, "Wright and Ridiculous" points out the contradictions between all the attacks narratives being thrown against Obama (thanks to my dad and Teresa for forwarding it!):
First Obama was accused of anti-religious elitism. Then he was accused of identifying with the underclass anger of his spiritual mentor. Excuse me, but which is it? Am I supposed to believe that Obama is a supercilious elitist or a menacing ghetto radical? Is he contemptuous of religion or too close to a religious leader? Obama's critics don't bother to say. Meanwhile, real character issues go relatively unheeded.
And questions whether these issues honestly reflect a leader's character:
The real character issue, in this campaign as in others, comes down to one thing: Does a candidate have the guts to espouse positions that are not politically expedient? Here there are serious questions about Obama, who pledges to pull out of Iraq no matter what, and who promises both to increase spending and not to raise taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year, ensuring the perpetuation of crippling federal deficits. For that matter, there are serious questions about Hillary Clinton, who proposes an irresponsible gas-tax holiday, and about John McCain, who couples gas pandering with a flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts, which he once (correctly) viewed as unaffordable. But these genuine character issues have been shunted aside by the spectacle of Obama's falling-out with his preacher.
Are the Democrats on the path to giving us a McCain administration? Noam Schreiber of the New Republic explores (and looks at parallels to the 1980 Democratic race):
The problem is that each day Clinton and Obama spend consumed with the other is a day that moves John McCain closer to the White House. McCain's biggest asset is his political brand, which evokes a straight-talking, party-bucking reformer. Among his biggest liabilities is the suspicion he inspires among conservatives thanks to these same attributes. McCain apparently plans to spend the next few months making nice with his base. But anything he accomplishes on this front clearly diminishes his swing-voter appeal and, therefore, his chances in November.
Ideally, the Democrats would be exploiting this tension like mad. They would highlight the anti-Catholic, anti-gay ravings of John Hagee, the evangelical minister whose endorsement McCain recently accepted. They would ridicule his chumminess with supply-side Neanderthals like Jack Kemp and his flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts. They'd dwell on McCain's less-noticed association with crony-capitalists during his tenure as Commerce Committee chairman.
Instead, something close to the opposite is happening. McCain's courtship of the lunatic right and his ties to K Street have largely been hidden from view, while the Democrats' dirty laundry has been aired for swing voters. The upshot for Democrats has not been good. In late February, a Gallup poll showed Obama leading McCain among independents by 15 points. By March 6, a Newsweek poll put McCain up ten points among this group--and that was before Jeremiah Wright weighed in. Hillary went from down five to down 15 among independents during the same time.
In the interest of debunking the bogus Clinton campaign's "Big State" talking point, the first in a continuing look at some general election "big state" polls:
In Florida, both Clinton and Obama right now would lose to McCain, Obama by less: FL-Pres Mar 16 Rasmussen McCain (R) 47%, Clinton (D) 40% FL-Pres Mar 16 Rasmussen McCain (R) 47%, Obama (D) 43%
In NY, both Obama and Clinton would win, though interestingly Obama would outperform Clinton (a wee bit) in her home state. NY-Pres Mar 16 Rasmussen Clinton (D) 50%, McCain (R) 38% NY-Pres Mar 16 Rasmussen Obama (D) 51%, McCain (R) 38%
In CA, both Obama and Clinton would win, Obama by more. CA-Pres Mar 14 Rasmussen Obama (D) 53%, McCain (R) 38% CA-Pres Mar 14 Rasmussen Clinton (D) 46%, McCain (R) 39%
In OH, both would lose to McCain by the same amount. OH-Pres Mar 14 Rasmussen McCain (R) 46%, Obama (D) 40% OH-Pres Mar 14 Rasmussen McCain (R) 46%, Clinton (D) 40%
In PA, both lose to McCain right now - Obama though is almost even PA-Pres Mar 13 Rasmussen McCain (R) 46%, Clinton (D) 44% PA-Pres Mar 13 Rasmussen McCain (R) 44%, Obama (D) 43%
All the talk of "post-9/11" world, and how the Republicans will attack on national security: the Clinton campaign seems to think their role is to act like Republicans? Rush Limbaugh sure thinks they'll do a better job on it then his guys will.
Obama and Hillary, Hillary and Obama. There's still a Republican they're destroying their party competing to run against (ok one of them is doing most of the destroying). And that Republican is John McCain. And there's some new stories that take a hard look at him.
Salon brings up Hillary's "3 AM" experience gambit and points out John McCain wins on this argument. But should he?
In interviews with Salon this week, several experienced military officers said McCain draws mixed reviews among military leaders, and they expressed serious doubts about whether McCain has the right temperament to be the next president and commander in chief. Some expressed more confidence in Obama, citing his temperament as an asset.
It is not difficult in Washington to find high-level military officials who have had close encounters with John McCain's temper, and who find it worrisome. Politicians sometimes scream for effect, but the concern is that McCain has, at times, come across as out of control..."I like McCain. I respect McCain. But I am a little worried by his knee-jerk response factor," said retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004 and is now campaigning for Clinton. "I think it is a little scary. I think this guy's first reactions are not necessarily the best reactions. I believe that he acts on impulse."
"I studied leadership for a long time during 32 years in the military," said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, a one-time Republican who is supporting Obama. "It is all about character. Who can motivate willing followers? Who has the vision? Who can inspire people?" Gration asked. "I have tremendous respect for John McCain, but I would not follow him."
And Matt Yglesias looks at McCain's education policy and determines:
Strolling through John McCain's policy proposals is a fascinating experience . . . lurking behind every link is a nearly-astounding level of vacuity
I read this before I was blogging, but Nicholas Kristof had a great column dissecting the role "experience" actually plays in presidential successes, and in terms of Obama and Clinton. Read the whole thing!
It might seem obvious that long service in Washington is the best preparation for the White House, but on the contrary, one lesson of American history is that length of experience in national politics is an extremely poor predictor of presidential success.
Looking at the 19 presidents since 1900, three of the greatest were among those with the fewest years in electoral politics. Teddy Roosevelt had been a governor for two years and vice president for six months; Woodrow Wilson, a governor for just two years; and Franklin Roosevelt, a governor for four years. None ever served in Congress....
...The Democrats with the greatest Washington expertise — Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson — have already been driven from the race. And the presidential candidate left standing with the greatest experience by far is Mr. McCain; if Mrs. Clinton believes that’s the criterion for selecting the next president, she might consider backing him.
To put it another way, think which politician is most experienced today in the classic sense, and thus — according to the “experience” camp — best qualified to become the next president.
Hillary said this yesterday, and its caused some hubbub:
I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know that Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.
Besides being unfair to Obama's actual record, the problem is that here is that she has just given John McCain a bite he can use in every ad he might have to run against Obama showing he doesn't have support of his own party. Its one thing to attack, its another thing to be willing to throw your party's potential candidate under the bus.
But it also hinges on the "experience" issue which Hillary has banked so much on, and which I have repeatedly discussed and dissected on this page. (Not to mention that if she goes into a general election against McCain with experience as her argument - he wins!)
But someone's found a classic Hillary clip that shows how that experience doesn't necessarily lead to good decision making.
Ok, so the NY Times publishes an iffy article implying and unproven affair between McCain and a lobbyist. Not sure about that one, but it has spurred some other reporting, including "The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists" detailing how many of McCain's top campaign staff are lobbyists, including one who conducts their business directly on the "Straight Talk Express."
McCain has at least 59 federal lobbyists raising money for his campaign, compared with 33 working for Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani and 19 working for Democrat Clinton.
Joe Klein at Time has an interesting take (that I've also seen separately mention at Andrew Sullivan's blog) on the experience issue: pointing out that with all three remaining candidates being senators without any actual executive experience, we should take a look at how they have run their campaigns.
If nothing else, a presidential campaign tests a candidate's ability to think strategically and tactically and to manage a very complex organization. We have three plausible candidates remaining--Obama, Clinton and John McCain--and Obama has proved himself the best executive by far. Both the Clinton and the McCain campaigns have gone broke at crucial moments. So much for fiscal responsibility. McCain has been effective only when he runs as a guerrilla; in both 2000 and '08, he was hapless at building a coherent campaign apparatus. Clinton's sins are different: arrogance and the inability to see past loyalty to hire the best people for the job and to fire those who prove inadequate. "If nothing else, we've learned that Obama probably has the ability to put together a smooth-running Administration," said a Clinton super-delegate. "That's pretty important."
ADDITIONALLY: Illuminating read: check "Inside the Clinton Shake Up" by Josh Greene at the Atlantic about how loyalty has determined who Clinton has running her campaign, in a frightening echo of how Bush has run things. (actually that article is really good -gonna explore more in its own post later)
Keep Reading (if there's more)...
McCain already caused controversy last week by voting AGAINST banning waterboarding, after being one of the most outspoken critics of the current administration's policy of torture. This is an interesting little article from The New Republic amusingly titleed "Maverick vs. Iceman" discussing why we maybe shouldn't be that surprised:
The prevalent view of McCain is that he is a generally conservative figure with a few maverick stances and an unwavering authenticity. Nearly every liberal editorial board that has made a Republican endorsement has chosen McCain, and nearly all have offered variations on the same theme. "Voters may disagree with his policies, but few doubt his sincerity," editorialized The Boston Globe. "The Arizona senator's conservatism is, if not always to our liking, at least genuine," concluded the Los Angeles Times. This is the consensus: McCain's basically a right-winger, but at least you know where he stands.
Actually, this assessment gets McCain almost totally backward. He has diverged wildly and repeatedly from conservative orthodoxy, but he has also reinvented himself so completely that it has become nearly impossible to figure out what he really believes.
Obama's totally indie, moreso than McCain, or even Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. An interesting item of note from the Virginia primary on Tuesday:
Virginia Democratic primary voters who did not identify themselves as Democrats were more likely to back Barack Obama, according to exit polls...One out of every five Democratic primary voters were independent — and those voters chose Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, 67 to 32 percent. Seven percent of the voters in that contest were Republican voters who decided not to vote in their own party’s primary – they chose Obama by an even larger margin, 71 to 25 percent over Clinton. Self-identified Democrats also chose Obama, 59 to 20 percent.
I've found myself emailing a lot of articles I've found on my internet travels around recently, especially as the elections are upon us. I'm pretty pro-Obama, made more so by some of the divisive political hijinks the Clinton team have been up to the last couple of weeks, which have really angered me. If you're up in the air, or find yourself asking "what hijinks is he referring to," or are unconvinced by Obama (as I was until recently), please check back here to at least read (or watch) some of these links. I hope to be a good source of info for someone who doesn't have the time or energy to look up stuff themselves.
