Michigan, the bluest of blue states (two Democratic Senators, a Democratic Governor and a Democratic-controlled state House of Representatives), is a swing state this presidential election cycle. Polling shows the race to be neck-and-neck. This piece has one answer: the impact of the indicted and disgraced Detroit Mayor Kwane Kilpatrick. This explanation goes like this:
I was struck by the number of Democratic operatives in Detroit who suspected that the mayor’s problems didn’t just put his mother’s re-election in jeopardy, but threatened to tarnish the Democratic brand throughout Michigan. And that includes Barack Obama’s campaign in the Wolverine State. One consultant, who worked for one of Kilpatrick’s primary rivals, put it bluntly. “This goes beyond their behavior in Detroit. The behavior pattern of the Kilpatricks threatens to undermine Obama’s candidacy in Michigan,” Detroit political consultant Sam Riddle told me. “Their behavior feeds into how white mainstream voters think of black politicians.”
But there may be much more at work. Michigan is suffering from a depressed economy and lagging job growth. The solution of the Democratic Governor and Democrats in the state legislature (along with a few misguided Republicans): raise taxes in an economic downturn. It turns out that didn’t do the trick. The unemployment rate there is now 8.5%. Governor Granholm has an approval rating of 20%.
So along comes a Democratic presidential candidate promising to raise taxes. Does that sell? Not so much, I would expect. And McCain may be the type of quirky Republican who appeals to the voters of Macomb County, the original home of the Reagan Democrats. (He won the 2000 primary in Michigan but lost to sort-of home-state son Mitt Romney in this year’s primary.)
So if Virginia is an inviting Red state target for Barack Obama, Michigan (with its 17 electoral votes) may be the best chance for a McCain Blue state pick up. Indeed, there may be no better place to argue that a Democratic-dominated government and tax increases are the wrong sort of change.
Obama’s kids are just too good. That is the problem. Obama never had a bad kid. You do not leave a bad seed like that alone for the weekend. They will have a party, trash the house and get busted by the neighbors calling the cops. Everytime.
Nancy Pelosi is a bad kid.
Let’s demand that Obama release his medical records, or at least his prescription list. One simple explanation is that he is on valium. I’m surprised that the stimulus bill doesn’t include lifetime prescriptions of the same for everyone in America — let’s get America stoned again, eh.
When Dowd and Chris Mathews are questiong The One, you know he’s on some shaky ground.
The man is said to have wanted to be in the White House since he was in kindergarten. He apparently forgot to think about what he would do when he got there.
I never got the appeal of Obama’s calm demeanor. To me, it always made me think of what one of my high school English teachers called the ‘boiled codfish look.’
It’s the look of someone who has no idea what to do or say, but has learned from experience that remaining silent and pretending to be in deep thought sometimes fools people.
How much you want to bet that 1) Obama gets his stimulus package through the Senate by tomorrow, and 2) Republicans agree to a package that’s more expensive than the one they first rejected?
Obama’s going to get exactly what he wants, and Republicans will look like spineless hyprocrites they are.
Chris Matthews says “You knew Kennedy … wanted civil rights.”
I suppose in the most literal sense of the words, that is a true statement.
But it is also true that “civil rights” was *never* at the top of Kennedy’s agenda, rarely was it even close to the top, and he went to great lengths to insure that his own civil-rights position was never more than one millimeter apart from whatever appeared to be the national consensus of non-Southern whites, at any particular moment in time.
Are chet and winnie IVF rejects? Inquiring minds….
Well, the Left decided that when Bush was making decisions that he didn’t like that that was an example of “failed leadership”. However, what they missed was that Bush was making decisions. Obama, on the other hand, has never had to make any hard decisions other than deciding to go from the State Senate to the Senate to becoming President.
2 weeks shouldn’t be that hard.
Keep in mind, Obama has never had executive experience – I think he said he ran his campaign-but that’s not great experience for the Presidency.
Jesse Jackson said it, “Barack never ran anything but his mouth.” That’s what he appears to be doing now.
Face it, folks. Obama is going to be a mediocre President.
First, he is actually a clueless dolt on economics. (The GOP blew it when they nominated McCain. He doesnt understand economics either. We needed a economic fixit man like Romney in the race. We had the evil of two lessers.) This is the largest, worst, most embarrassingly bad big-deficit-spending bill ever rammed through Congress. It will tag the Democrats, appropriately, as tax-and-borrow-and-spend-like-drunken-sailors who are unfit to govern.
If the Democrats keep it up 2010 will be 1994 redux.
Second, he is the second coming of Jimmy Carter on foreign policy, and a vortex of bad cr*p will his the fan because of it. The Iran interchange where they spurned his grovelling open hand is a bad, bad sign. It’s always better to be respected than liked, and Obama is getting NO respect in his naive attempts to be liked.
Third, the ‘new politics’ is the old politics. Tax cheat running the IRS, Democrat governor selling one senate seat, while the pork and low ethics from Rangel to the rest of the crooks and liars go on.
Oh, and what about a partisan for chief of staff, a clueless press secretary that makes scott mclellan look good in comparison(!?!), and the Daschle Dunkirk.
I dont know if the obama koolaid drinkers are having the hangover yet or not, but as for me, it will be a miserable four years. I told my Obama-supporting family members that i fully expected Obama to be worse than Carter. To my chagrin, the early sign indicate I will be right.