This is a totally acceptable sentiment from liberals - the exact same thing from the other side you'd consider close-mindedness.

You're not tolerant, you're close-minded, you're set in your ways, and that's NO different from a Republican that doesn't want gays to get married and is set on that.

You can't even see it because you're SO set in your ways.

It goes back to the majority of this thread. Obama = 100% correct, any dissenting idea = stupid. Nobody can have the slightest fleeting thought that maybe, just MAYBE, they don't have all the answers, and that maybe there's people who have alternate opinions that are actually worth listening to. If it's not identical to your view, you think it's stupid. That's a liberal. Ya, that some conservatives, but look at this thread. The very small minority who aren't 100% devoted maniacs for Obama aren't 100% all over McCain. They actually think for themselves and have different ideas. Even JIMGA, probably the biggest Obama-hater here, is pretty quick to criticize McCain. The Obama disciples are simply NOT capable of that. They can't criticize the savior, on ANYTHING. It makes their opinions completely meaningless because it's 100% predictable how they feel about anything.

It's decided now. The Redskins lost, Obama wins. The rest is just formality.

Hey, Obama wants an NCAA football playoff so that is a plus in my eyes.

Actually, that's not a liberal thing at all. I've seen people from both sides be very certain that their choice is the only choice and will call the other side ignorant and stubborn.

For me, Obama has some things right, McCain has some things right, and they both have some things wrong. It's definitely not 100% either way, and never has been since I've been following elections.

Then again, I haven't put my hat into the ring to run the country, so what I think is 100% may be totally wrong and would take the country to ruin faster than anything.

actually you're wrong, but thanks for generalizing.

my opposition to domestic oil drilling as a means of solving our current energy problems is WELL documented in this thread, and that's whether Obama brought it up or McCain/Palin brought it up. Domestic oil drilling is snake-oil - it's fools gold. It won't do anything material to solve our problems. Unfortunately I also believe that domestic-drilling likely has bipartisan support and so it will end up happening.

On an issue like that - I hope they don't compromise. Compromise for compromise's sake is stupid. On an issue like say...gun control laws...I hope they do compromise (as long as it's not something that makes it okay for schoolkids to have semi-automatic rifles or something). Compromise for compromise's sake is stupid.

Nobody should sign onto a bill that they don't believe in just in the spirit of compromise.

And I definitely dislike it when conservatives are like that as well.

Here though, liberals are far more guilty of it. (And it's just more infuriating from them, because they're supposed to be the party of tolerance).

More stereotypical bullshit. Yes, liberals are very excited for Obama, but it's not true that they're 100% behind him. I've said negative thigns about him in the past. I was originally a Hillary supporter. I hit him really hard when IS and I switched sides. I criticized the investigator of the troopergate report for his apparent bias.


Or maybe it's because McCain isn't the candidate that alot of the GOP base wanted, whereas Obama is? I think it's wrong to automatically conclude that someone who is a strong supporter of Obama isn't thinking for themselves. Maybe they are, and he happens to align with their views?


So now you're just directly insulting a large portion of the posters in this thread. Wonderful.

and you're magically qualified to make sweeping generalizations such as this why??

I'll criticize obama plenty - I just haven't seen anything WORTHY of criticism yet. That's where different people having different standards comes in. You may think say, the Ayers thing is worthy of criticizing him over - I think it's tenuous, grasping at straws, and a whole lot of nothing. That doesn't mean that if it wasn't I wouldn't be right there to criticize Obama on it.

and as for your opinion that I'm a sheep - well that's your opinion. I reject the characterization of me as an uneducated sheep, as would anyone else who has ever met me. but obviously you haven't had that experience so i can't expect you to (trying very hard to be civil here and not get angry).

One could also argue that liberals are less likely to criticize the liberal Obama since his stated positions more or less coincide with their liberal world-views. Conservatives are more likely to criticize McCain, since he is perceived as being slightly to the left of the conservative mainstream. There is a reasonably significant faction of conservatives who remain suspicious of McCain, and whether he is in fact a "true" conservative.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

How about:

Ask a liberal why we should not be in Iraq and the answer you will receive is some version of "because war is wrong."

I'd rather not get involved in this too much, but making a blanket statement like the one you just made regarding gay marriage lacks any level of actual truth. There are plenty of Democrats that are fully willing to drill for oil and I'd argue that the majority of conservatives are moderate enough to not care too much whether gays want to get married.

Also, please pardon the fact that I included the phrase 'drilling for oil' and 'gay marriage' in the same sentence.

You're excused (since I didn't even notice it at first).

Obviously we must encounter different liberals.

I run into more here (Georgia, not FOFC) who couldn't spell "drill" nor find Alaska on the map.

Case in point was the charming lady in line with my wife & I that we patiently helped understand how "all this voting stuff" worked; i.e.
"No, you're not required to vote for every office if you don't want to",
"Yes, you're allowed to vote only for President",
"This? It's called a sample ballot, it just shows you what you're going to see when you get inside"

And no, I didn't make any of those up.

There isn't a poster in this thread that is more predictable than you when you start rambling about liberals. To believe every liberal agrees with Obama 100% of the time is either moronic or delusional.

right, never criticized.

Drilling for oil and gay marriage was golden MBBF.

I will say this that while McCain has run one of the worst Campaigns Ive ever witnessed and I thought Obama ran a terrific campaign, it is certainly possible that because they are in the SAME campaign season that their contrast of eachother makes the judgment more pronounced.

While it is funny to see how ill-informed some voters are, I'm still glad that they bothered to take the time to vote. Some of these people that don't vote and then bitch about the politicians just drive me up a wall.

I had just the opposite reaction, although I have to admit I was as much bemused by it as anything, as there really wasn't anything shocking or even surprising to me about it. My wife on the other hand was downright apoplectic afterwards. Bless her heart, she can sometimes be a bit naive about the state of the world around her.

I disagree. There's only one way for her to learn how it goes and that's to be involved in the process.

If she hadn't bothered to learn by the age of 50 or so, she doesn't have as much business voting as my 10 year old ... nor any more than my cats for that matter.

This voting line is 10x longer and 10x worse than any dmv one i've been in. Stupid lack of voter disenfranchisement.

On a side note, I was pondering earlier whether a loss by Huckaby or Romney might have been better for the R's overall than the impending loss by McCain.

If you run with the general assumption that "they couldn't win with only the base so they had to go with McCain" to have a chance, then it seems possible they might have been better off losing 65-35 while getting their core motivated in order to help the down ballot races than losing 55-45 (just picking a number, not a prediction) with an unmotivated & demoralized base.

good point jon

With the selection of Palin as a running mate and the complete pandering to the far right, they might as well have gone with Huckaby. I had considered voting for McCain for a while shortly after it appeared that he would be getting the nomination. His nomination to me was a sign that perhaps the GOP candidate would be one that would be closer to what I would like to see in the White House. Everything afterwards however has shown the opposite to be true.

Thanks, although I have to admit I'm not entirely convinced of it myself quite yet.

To go down that road requires me to buy into a stipulation that I'm not sold on (i.e. "it had to be McCain") but if you work from that premise it seems to be you're suggesting that those influenced votes are about the person not the party. Well, we see how well that's going. Meanwhile you've got the least motivated & unhappiest group of voting R's in over 20 years, some number of which are almost certainly staying home having given this up for dead. If you're a down ballot R, that's a problem, and in theory you should get roughly the same number of votes from the "for the man, not the party" types regardless. Seems if I were an R who lost in the 1% range tonight I'd be pretty pissed about how things (beyond your control) worked out at the top of the ticket. Makes me wonder if there won't be some internal backlash over that situation two & then four years down the road.

And for our D's, I'm not suggesting this is an entirely unique situation by any means. I'm sure demotivated D's stayed home in the past, the difference being that I don't think it was so much because of the dissatisfaction with your nominee at the time.

Why does this kind of stupid crap always happen on election day in Philly? Had the same things happen in 2004 and 2006.

http://townhall.com/blog/g/cf47766b-...7-ce60631bcadc

FWIW.....I'm sure this is only the start of the stupid stuff that's bound to occur today.

Wasn't it Einstein who said something to the effect that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over & over and expecting different results?

Jon, in your opinion, had McCain chosen a running-mate with moderate leanings instead of Palin, would the republican base be enthusiastic about voting for republican candidate? I'm in the group that thinks that if McCain hadn't chosen Palin, this would be a much tighter race.

Last night, I started seeing Rev Wright ads again here in Virginia. Way to make the closing argument there with some subtle racism.

SI

If he hadn't chosen Palin, he'd be losing by 15+ rather than the 2-3 points he'll likely lose by today. Palin is the sole reason this election is still close.

If there's anyone that can finalize an argument about racism, it's Reverend Wright.

Lord no. She's been the only source of (positive) enthusiasm I've seen during the entire campaign (since the nomination was determined). That's a case where just because it didn't work on me personally I can't say it didn't work at all.

Purely anecdotal but I think within the base she actually had at least as much impact on motivating women as she did on the religious right, possibly even moreso. I was quite surprised to hear the strong reactions when Palin was announced from the conservative women I knew, specifically those who aren't really RR types. And while it faded a little, the decrease in excitement was slight, no more than you would expect once any candidate loses that new car smell. Even more surprising to me was that these were women I knew to be only lukewarm about, say, Elizabeth Dole but were over the moon about Palin. I can't explain what chord she struck with them -- age, look, backstory, whatever -- but she definitely made a positive impact.

Sentence #2 went a little something like this so I stopped reading. Like the attackes on door knockers, probably happens to both if it happens at all.

According to which polls?

Oddly enough, I saw them for the very first time last night myself. But they were national spots (i.e. network cable) not local.

We had manual scantron ballots at my polling place after years of electronic voting machines. At first I was kind of irritated, but upon reflection (particularly after having watched "Hacking Democracy" a few weeks ago) I feel a little more confident that my vote will be properly tabulated. They actually ran my ballot through the vote counter before I could leave.

Of course, with the proper motivation, this system is probably just as flawed as e-voting.

Poll margin minus Bradley Effect I would imagine.

FWIW, I personally think the final margin will be somewhere between the two points, with the effect reduced by increased black turnout & a lower than expected likely-GOP-voter turnout in states where the race is already lost, but I believe the math works out about right to get things to around 3% give or take.

I've consistently stated that I believe the race will end in a 2-3 point margin and that the 6-7 point margin predicted by most of the polls is statistically incorrect due to poll weighting. You've been in this thread most of the time. I'd think you'd remember that has been my belief all along.

And if you're of a different belief, well, you'll get your answer one way or another in less than 24 hours.

I believe he's probably taking into account the ~6-8% lead by Obama and adding in a potential Bradley Effect.

Just for the heck of it, want to trade batches for a few years?

Fixed. While the far right bitches more loudly than their moderate cohorts, they are just a portion of the party. But it's easier to paint either party in the color of their extremist brethern to polarize the issue than to address the issue that many on both sides are annoyed by the extremists in their party.

Just for the record, I don't believe in the Bradley effect. I just believe that a lot of the polling methodology in this election has been flawed. We'll see soon enough.

Say, never saw your prediction over in the predictions thread...

SI

Fixed again. It's election 101. The liberals toss the religious red-meat out to their supporters, while the conservatives toss the socialist red-meat out to their supporters. Nothing has changed lately. This has been going on for decades.

I honestly don't know much about the local races, so I don't know how well I would even do. I'll try to put something together if I have time to dig into that stuff.

No, but there was bound to be a candidate like that, much like Obama was a nod to the extreme left on the Democrat ticket. If it wasn't Palin, it would have been Romney or Huckabee. Same old stuff. The moderate portion of the party had McCain. Just because one part of the ticket has some basis in moral value politics does not mean that the majority of the party supporters hold those beliefs. Most Republicans are not moral Republicans, much like most liberals are not socialistic in nature.

not really a liberal, but from what I've heard, the answer isn't "because war is wrong", it's "this war was unnecessary". Big difference.

I don't enjoy picking on you so much, but damn dude, try and post something in this thread that's not completely and totally false once in a while...

Forty-six percent of likely voters now say having Palin on the ticket makes them less likely to support McCain -- up 14 points in just the past month and more than double what it was in early September. And among those who call the candidates' age an important factor in their vote, more, 61 percent, say Palin makes them less likely to back McCain.

That's ridiculous. Obama went through the primary process. He wasn't placed on the ticket.

MBBF, the social conservatives drive the bus of the Republican Party to a greater extent than you're willing to admit IMO. They're the cause of McCain picking a VP candidate he'd barely met and his awkward lurch towards the right on policy over the past two years.

Obama a nod to the extreme left of Democrats :lol: :lol: If the far left ran the Dems we'd have nominated Kucinich.

just want molson to know - as a thoughtful voter, i did actually vote for a republican, and i didn't just look down the ballot and see "red/blue"

honestly, I would have possibly voted for more, but all of the incumbents running unopposed were democrats (there were only a couple contested races), so that kind of tied my hand.

I said 'extreme left', not 'nutball wacko left'.