“During election season, I think, the rhetoric flies. And by the way, I’ve been guilty of that. It’s not just them,” President Obama told “60 Minutes,” referring to House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Part of my promise to the American people when I was elected was to maintain the kind of tone that says we can disagree without being disagreeable. And I think over the course of two years there have been times where I’ve slipped on that commitment.”
There certainly have been. And the comparison to Boehner and McConnell is hardly apt; they have been far more careful in their rhetoric against Obama and Democrats than Obama and Democrats have been against Republicans.
A skeptic will be tempted to assume that Obama’s words are tactical rather than heartfelt — part of his effort to rehabilitate (for political reasons) his shattered reputation for post-partisan, high-minded civility. Those more forgiving of Obama, or perhaps more naïve, will assume he’s learned his lesson and will change his ways.
All we know is what we know: for two years, the president has used hyper-partisan, deeply divisive rhetoric, language that was antithetical to his central campaign commitment. As for what lies ahead: we shall see. Another election season will roll around in 2012, this time with Obama on the ballot. There will be an enormous temptation for him and his lieutenants to dust off the Chicago Way one more time. That will be as good a time as any to judge just how serious Obama is about his newfound commitment to “disagree without being disagreeable.”
Here I suppose it’s worth bearing in mind a modern proverb: “Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me.”
Jennifer, I can remember the “forget it, it’s over mantra not too long ago: in 1996 with Dole/Clinton. The same political glum hung over the faithful.
Racist haters unite and re-elect Bush/McSame/VPMILF. You can do it. All fifteen of you who regularly read and post to this site. What a bunch of ignorant neocon morons.
Clean up on aisle 2!
There are some easy steps that could be taken by the proprietors of this blog that would greatly reduce the hit and run hate-spamming that occurs so routinely here. How about it, folks?
No one is asking your to give it up. We’re just telling you that you don’t have a prayer. You make it sound like McCain is only behind by a small margin. That’s not true. As you’ve written yourself, what counts is the electoral map, and Obama’s ahead by a couple of hundred electoral votes. Sure, only a portion of the electorate has voted so far, but a McCain win would be almost unprecedented. According to Gallup, only candidate who was trailing one week from election day gone on to win (reagan in 1980). If you want the mathematical odds of a McCain win, it’s about 3%, according to fivethirtyeight.com. So you don’t have “no chance” of winning; you have a 3% chance of winning. Remember that when you are standing in a five-hour line at the polls.
If Churchill had listened to the MSM in 1940, England would be a fascist country. Remember, it is not over until the fat lady sings.
Jennifer, It worked on Hillary, didn’t it? No, James23, I think the proprietors should let the hate-spammers post. This way we don’t have to go to Daily Kos or Dish to check out the opposition. Also, everytime I read one of them, I’m more determined than ever to stop them from achieving power. It’s called negative reinforcement.
“From day one, the MSM has attempted to wrestle control of the campaign from the hands of voters and the opponents of Obama.”
Jennifer: that started during the primaries when it was down to HRC & BO. How many times did the MSM declared the race over? How hard and how much did they press HRC to exit when she was actually winning all the primary states? It was absurd: at the end of the Democratic Primary season, this was the situation:
Popular Vote
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: 17,857,446, (48.04%)
Senator Barack Obama: 17,584,649 (47.31%)
Pledged delegates
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: 1,730.5 (39.17%)
Senator Barack Obama: 1,747.5 (39.55%)
Pelosi, Dean and Reid had other plans (they can control BO they could have not HRC) and the MSM in their utmost hate and obsession w/HRC aided and serviced like w—-s the trio do its dirty work.
So, that’s right. Why would the MSM stop now? Running over McCain is nothing compared to their
success running over HRC….
Forgot the link to my source for the data above:
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P08/D.phtml
I’m in the bluest of blue states. Still going to vote McCain-Palin. I just get a chill up my leg knowing it drives people like #2 crazy!
Can the comeback occur?? Several things have to happen:
The feeling among opinion makers (the people who are truly in the tank, as Michael Malone spotlighted so well in his column) that the election is a done deal. This will allow some of the more honest journalists to start revealing the dark secrets.
Said dark secrets begin to widely paint a picture of Obama as many of see him; a left-leaning Chicago pol whose comfort with Ayers, Wright, Rezko, and others portrays someone who knows better than you what is good for you.
The inability to close in the Dem primaries will repeat. Too many questions, and more questions arise daily as the truth seeps out.
In this day and age of YouTube and instant round-the-world verbal volleys, 6 days is a new lifetime. It isn’t over and probably will be decided in the courts.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/Polls.aspx?id=309983953253118
I love this breakdown. Look at the columns for Obama at or above 55%. That would be Northeastern, liberal, urban, Jewish, single-women, lowest income, no religion, not an investor, union household, and not displaying a flag.
I was wondering why Obama would not double-talk on his “spread the wealth” comment. Ah, those numbers. I see. You really can’t offend the base that much! I mean, we are electing the 1st Global, Fair President, aren’t we?
Its a long shot, made unnecessarilly longer by devoting resoures to states like Pennsylvania, Randell’s “concern” and Barry’s travel plans notwithstanding.
I suppose its possible with some effective advertising, a consisten message and accumulating evidence of Barry’s left wing radicalism that McCain could manuver himself into something like a popular vote tie. Even in that situation, Pennsulvania, Wisconsin and Iowa (Iowa?!?) would seem to be out of reach. Allocating resources there only diminishes the chances of winning Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Missouri and Colorado which may indeed go to McCain in a tie. Just as an example, sending hundred of lawyers to now hope Penn when they can be used to limite the fraud in Ohio and Missouri is particularly unwise.
That is handsome of John King to admit the MSM “could have done better” in exploring BO’s background. That’s all it takes to restore the trust as far as I’m concerned, and I’m sure I speak for everyone else who visits here.
“Resistance is futile” is such an overtly fascist trope that I can only infer that those using it get hard-ons whenever they watch old Nazi newsreels. It’s ironic that at the same time that Axelrod has impressively inverted Clauswitz, Team McCain seems determined to emulate assorted ad hoc insurgencies. But this is not 1996: Dole had no energy, just indignation and a magic-realist herald-in-chief, Clinton was a savvy triangulating incumbent (with Gingrich breathing down his neck), and the rest of us were not fighting for our economic futures against the party of Death.
Seth Halpern @ 14
Yes, and so McCain will loose by 2 or 3 rather than 8 or tie but loose the Electoral College because of misallocation of resources.
He has charisma, zealous support, almost total media deference — and Barack Obama’s up by less than ten nationally?
That’s a weak candidate with an astroturfed campaign.
Don H., you suggest an interesting possibility. If the MSM is so convinced that Obama will win, some reporters might feel they’re able to do some “vetting” of Obama, thus throwing out some damming facts about him that the majority of Americans know little about.
Of course, the Wright issue has been so baselessly shelved by John McCain himself.
cavalier, even if he loses, the closer McCain gets, the better, both for the GOP in general and to dentTeam Barry’s megalomania. As for allocation of resources, I’m in no position to judge. And it’s not as if Team Maverick hasn’t been getting an earful of advice.
According to Gallup’s “traditional” likely voter model, it’s now a 2-point national race. Gallup itself has admitted that there is no evidence to support the applicability of their “expanded” model. I don’t like to pare poll numbers down to the tenths of a percent, because doing so implies a level of opinion-polling rigor that can’t be justified by anyone who understands statistics. In other words, from Gallup’s own perspective and definitions, it wouldn’t be contradictory for them to re-run the identical poll with the same methods at the same times, and yield either a much wider gap or even a McCain lead (causing troll hearts to spasm across the intertubes). Still, showing the race closing to 49-47 strongly implies that their results from yesterday’s polling showed either a tie or a McCain lead among Likely Voters as traditionall defined.
If it’s as close as the Gallup ‘traditional’ model suggests, we should expect to find the same tightening, but on a delayed basis, in the battleground states, right?
#20, yes and no, I think. For whatever reasons (there’s disagreement among pollsters, poll aficionados, and pundits), state polls usually lag national polls. To make matters even foggier, the widely quoted RCP averages will lag new national numbers even more, since they look back further than the tracking polls, and are even more subject to the outlier effects from junk polls. As long as firms like SUSA and PPP, small college-based polls, and big name polls reflecting or based on Democrat wet dream turnout scenarios are polluting the pseudo-samples, who knows what the numbers will appear (or be made) to show? Still, even Rasmussen the Pollster is reporting tightening in PA today.
Obama was here in PA yesterday, here again today, and coming back later this week. Why? For the simple reason that the polls we’re seeing are bad at best, and rigged at worst. Obama knows that he’s slipping badly in PA and at serious risk of losing the state. From what I’ve been hearing, there is a lot of Democratic support for McCain here, and I’ll tell you that I rarely see an Obama sign in my travels around the western part of the state. I will not be at all surprised if McCain wins PA. Afterall, John Kerry only won the state by less than 1%, and Obama’s support among whites in PA has got to be far worse than Kerry’s was.