I was hoping he'd choose Joe the Diplomat.

I'm pretty sure Al Qaeda has never said anything that wasn't completely outrageous.

Or they must still be really bitter about the McCain loss! :D

Well, when he ran against Hillery on a platform of "change", I didn't think it was change back to the Clinton administration. Judging from the amount of heat he is getting, I do not think I am alone.

In the big picture, it is no better or worse then anyone else. I just feel gullible that I thought he might be different. It still might, but it sure does not look like it.

Who else is he going to pick for his starting Cabinet? For 20 of the past 28 yeasr, there has been a Republican in the White House. The only ones to pick from right now are ex-Clinton White House folks. There is usually a high rate of turnover for Cabinet members, so it is not really surprising that he's picking these Clinton ex-es to start with.

I'm confused about the criticism. Who should Obama be picking for Secretary of State? I was joking about Joe the Diplomat, but is that what people want? Someone who has no Washington experience as SoS?

Just a side question, but are you intentionally misspelling her name?

That was indeed an amusing interview, particularly "You think I'm going to tell you that? When you've already shown yourself to be the enemy?" It's like ripping an exchange between a professional interviewer and someone who takes his cues on dialog and etiquette from the Something Awful boards.

SI

The Republican Party is fucked if this is even close to accurate.

"Since the potential for additional Republican gains among married white Christians appears to be limited, Republican leaders will need to find ways to reduce the Democratic advantage among voters who are not married white Christians in order to maintain the party's competitive position. However, given the generally liberal views of this group, this will not be easy. In 2006, according to data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 57 percent of these voters supported a woman's right to choose an abortion under any circumstances, 66 percent opposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage, and 71 percent favored a single-payer health care system. Any attempt by Republican leaders to significantly increase their party's support among voters who are not married white Christians would therefore require changes in some of the party's longstanding policy commitments -- changes that would clearly upset a large segment of the current Republican base."

When I read that response, I thought he was interviewing Jon in Middle GA.

This is how I saw this. I saw it as a "change" from Washington politics. I don't mind having a few experience people in cabinet. However, it seems like he's just plucking everyone from the Clinton cabinet. Why not just elect Hillary if this the case? I want new, fresh ideas and management. Not just a re-hash of Clinton ideas and management.

Then don't run on a platform of being an outsider and changing the culture if you're just going to bring lots of lobbyists and former insiders onto your staff? Of course this is the same candidate who went back on his pledge to run a publically financed campaign the instant it became apparent he could out-fundraise McCain, so what did everyone expect?

Hey Vic - I am pretty sure I could cherry pick ten dumbfuck conservatives and get an equally hilarious video.

I don't know what happened to you, but it isn't good.

I don't think you even try to go after these groups if you're the GOP. You just start chipping away at the middle and try to move it back towards you. You don't try to go make a grab from pretty far to the left- that's just fool's gold.

SI

Why not go with Richardson over Clinton?

Looks like Kerry is going to have a lot influence on Obama's foreign policy, taking over for Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Kerry expected to get top foreign affairs panel post - 2008 Presidential Campaign Blog - Political Intelligence - Boston.com

Are there any polls on this? What kind of weights are they using?

Would they lose more of their base than they would gain? I vote R more often than not, but I support a woman's right to choose in most circumstances, oppose a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage and favor a single-payer health care system (if I understand what that means properly). I think this move might solidify some who are not solid members of either party. And what would happen to the religious right portion of the Republican party? They aren't going to vote Democrat. They might stay home on election day, but that isn't necessarily a loss. If Rs steal enough votes from Ds to lower the D votes sufficiently, that would be another path to victory.

You shouldn't have to worry about losing your base if you more accurately represent the will of the majority of people.

With that being said, the Republican party may have to somehow shed its image as a party only for white conservatives. When the population trends are suggesting that white people will only make up 50% of the population by 2050, it could be a losing proposition long-term for the Republicans to continue to define its focus so narrowly.

Agreed- I had a line about catering hard to Hispanics but then took it out as it didn't fit with the rest of my paragraph. You want to build a nice coalition for your party for the future, figure out how to get a huge % of their voting block without alienating a huge chunk of your base.

SI

LOL
No, I was not.
I suck at spelling in general and was not paying attention.
(in other words, the spell checker did not catch it.)

It is the classic, classic bait and switch.

Personally, I think I'll wait until we see what the policy changes are going to be before playing this card. I agree with you that "change" is more of a campaign slogan than anything else, but I think it's a little early for the inevitable disappointment.

OK. :) Some people do such things as an intentional slight, so I wanted to differentiate.

Yeah, if it was an intentional slight, it would be "Hellary Klinton" or something like that.

Speaking of which, I remember back in the 90s that a lot of the anti-Clinton Identity/militia fringe always referred to the Clintons as the "Klintons". I always assumed that it was a KKK reference or something. But then, many of the writers in that movement were white supremacists themselves, so the KKK wouldn't be considered a bad thing by that crowd.

So, what's the deal with the "Klinton", anyway?

Hmm... If they want to continue on the "social conservatism" track in the short-term, perhaps the Republicans can try to exploit some of the "family values" issues that seems to have resonance with minority voters (many of who voted for Obama)...

To go off on a slight tangent, I have always considered intentionally misspellings to be one of the more immature forms of mockery. It is probably a quick way to express your distaste for someone, but it just seems childish to me. Not that anyone asked...

And I think it's the type of thing that adds to the shallow understanding of politics documented above. Things like nicknames and tag lines become a short hand, and then they become the entire content being passed along. Soon you get to the point of having people who know about Fey's SNL Palin routines, or know about Obama "the socialist" bbut that's the entirety of their knowledge. They might wink knowingly at some intentional misspelling, and be part of the club, but haven't done the homework that's supposed to back up that shorthand.

Now that Missouri has been officially called for McCain, I have a question for MBBF (if he is still reading this thread).

Are you happy that your state went for your guy, or upset that Missouri's reputation as THE bellweather state has suffered a blow? Or both? Or neither?

They actually talked about it last night on the local news. I think most people are irritated that the bellweather state reputation took a hit. It was still ridiculously close, but I'm sure we'll recover. :D

Who knew that fililng in bubbles could be so hard?

MPR: Challenged ballots: You be the judge

I can't imagine this surprises any election official anywhere. Really doesn't surprise me a whole lot either.

Maybe it's close enough to "Klingon" to persuade devout Trekkies to vote against the Clintons.

Hmm, at my precinct which also uses optical scan, the guy who voted ahead of me had his ballot rejected by the scanner because he filled in too many bubbles. The poll worker simply made him go back and fill out a new ballot. The problematic ballot got rejected right off the bat, and the voter still got to fix his mistake.

Maybe a lot of these challenges would not have to happen if questionable ballots were caught early and not accepted in the first place.

Does anyone give McCain a serious shot at taking Pennsylvania? That seems to be the lynchpin of his strategy. Seems like a big risk to me.

Damn that Ralph Nader!

Uber timestamp bug?

A time-warp bubble would be my guess.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) cruises to a 59-41 lead with 90% of precincts reporting (including most of the large metro ones) to retain his seat.

Turnout tells the tale. Give or take, roughly half as many votes were cast today as on Nov 4. Chambliss retained roughly 60% of his original vote total, Martin managed only 44% of his (plus whatever votes are still outstanding for both).

edit to add: Early voting statistics made this outcome pretty predictable.
In Nov, there were just under 2.1 million early votes cast in person or by mail, 34.5% were from black voters.
In the runoff, there were about 533,000 early votes cast, only 21.8% were from black voters.

Yeah, no surprise. There wasn't much of a shot Martin could win a run-off. Those first-timers weren't going back, but the old school Republicans were sure to.

In other news, we elected a stone-cold hotty to the court of apeals.

:: Vote Sara Doyle ::

Shitty deal for Sheffield though, poor guy literally can't seem to win for losing.

Those words, I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

I guess it is small comfort that one party did not get 60 seats in the Senate.

Does stone-cold hotty mean lesbian?

Man, I hate Saxby.

As do I, but I hate 60 Democrats in the Senate more (and the Coleman-Franken race is still up in the air).

Interesting to see another Obama campaign talking point go away due to market forces. He won't be implementing the 'windfall tax on oil profits' because there's no huge revenues to tax anymore. I won't complain about the cheap gas.

While studying our county's votes, I saw something amazing. We have 300,000 registered voters in our county. 275,000 voted for a 91+% turnout. All three camps (R, D and I) had larger turnouts than in previous elections. Was it like this in other counties?

That's great and all, but let's get to the serious business: Will Obama make good on his campaign pledge* to force the NCAA to adopt a football playoff system?

*OK, not actually a campaign pledge.

With this troubled economy we can't take the risks that would come with such drastic changes to the bowl system.