The Low Road Express
 

Obama's campaign has launched a new site called "The Low Road Express" that aims to document McCain's negative campaign tactics. Hell yeah.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

I have to say I've been really impressed with the way the Obama camp have (cliche alert) harnessed the web. That site (and previous ones) are exactly the right way to get the message out there, not only targetting younger supporters directly, but also the type of people who work in traditional media who will no doubt refer to its key retorts and counterarguments in their newspaper reports, columns and TV bulletins, enabling the message to spread even wider.

Obviously the whole concept of challenging assertions is one that will sit very well with many of us here. ;)

The nice up-to-date design and touches of humour don't go amiss either.

The contrast with the Republicans couldn't be greater - McCain confessing to being computer illiterate, having to rely on his wife for all of the assistance he can get. And he doesn't even do email.

It might sound unfair expecting a 71 year old of McCain's standing to be familiar with computers, but this isn't some pensioner down the road; this is a man running for President. Fairness is besides the point. It's about whether he wants to win the election.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

Precisely something I was going to say. McCain sounds like he's about to yell at the neighbor kids to get off his grass at any minute, or say something like "horseless carriage."

Who gives a shit if you actually know how to use "teh interweb" or not. No one expects YOU to be online. Hire some twenty-something webgeeks to create and administer a page for you. Once or twice a week, have your staff put something relevant or interesting on it. Otherwise, you're dead in the water among anyone under the age of 30.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

...and yet McCain is catching up in the polls. I really don't understand. Are the polls that inaccurate, or are people that ignorant that they're buying into the crap McCain is spewing? I mean, Obama's done his share of political exaggeration, but seriously, just take a quick trip over to factcheck.org and do a quick count of how many stories there are about McCain being untruthful compared to Obama. It's overwhelmingly filled with stories debunking claims and accusations made by McCain.

Go figure. :rolleyes:

Re: The Low Road Express
 

I really think, beyond all my powers of comprehension, that McCain scored some points with voters by bashing Obama's trip around the globe last week. My question, as is yours, I'm sure, is WHO ARE THE VOTERS WHO ARE BUYING THIS SHIT?!?!?!

Re: The Low Road Express
 

Also, if the polls are to be believed, I wonder if it goes back to something Cacophony said, about the public largely feeling rather than thinking. After all, Obama is about as far removed from Aw, Shucks as it's possible to be.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

Oh I wouldn't doubt it at all. Most people don't seem too interested in being informed, instead just accepting whatever rhetoric they happen to hear in the nightly news.

That's actually exposed a confusing and glaring contradiction to me, too. You keep hearing the assertion that "Obama is relatively unknown to voters" compared to McCain and other politicians, but the fact is, the majority of voters don't know crap about either because they don't bother to get themselves informed! Yeah Obama's unknown, but so is everyone else!

Re: The Low Road Express
 

So McCain will get to Scotland first, but will never again meet his true love on the banks of Loch Lomond.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

Exactly! I wouldn't want to overplay this, but race and (perception of closeness to a certain...) religion probably make Obama seem more of an unknown than McCain. Some people will continue to view him as "one of them" (or rather, "not one of us") despite having been told so much about him already. I wonder if "unknown" is just the diplomatic word for something else.

In addition to that, Obama hasn't been around as long as McCain so I guess there's that to factor into it too.

But really - in the 21st century, in the most developed country on the planet, with rolling news and internet, people have no excuse not to change that "unknown" to "known". I suspect some people just don't want to know.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

LOL at sarc!!:D:D mcCain is the most charistmaticless ( is there such a word?:o) polololitician evr! heh!

got to go now, i'm fuckin pissed!:p;):D:o:):confused::eek:

Re: The Low Road Express
 

work that fuckin lot of smilies out..... that = me

Re: The Low Road Express
 

Are you being smartass?

Whiskey's the ruler here tonight for me.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

Anyway.

Just a big WTF?!

Enough to make you cry.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

It boggles the mind. I don't trust polls any more at all. They can't possibly reflect reality in this case, can they? :confused:

On a side note, I thought John Kerry actually made a damn good joke at a fundraising event:

“I don’t know if you know this, John McCain is looking for someone for vice president who has more economic expertise than he does. So congratulations to all of you, you’re on the short list.”

Re: The Low Road Express
 

I'm not going to start a new thread just for this, but I thought it was kinda funny.

Speaking to reporters about the situation in Georgia, Sen. John McCain denounced the aggressive posture of Russia by claiming that:"in the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."

I know, an easy laugh, but sometimes they're the best.

(Btw, don't know about anyone else, but I'm holding off posting about Georgia while I try to cut through the propaganda and figure out what exactly is what... )

Re: The Low Road Express
 

That was a pretty impressive display, wasn't it? All I can imagine is that he forgot to say, "except us....sorry, I thought that was a given".

So glad to hear you say that. Yesterday, I read completely contrasting articles like this:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art..._terrible.html

and this:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7863e71a-6...nclick_check=1

I tend to think there's some truth to both stances, but I don't know what that truth might be yet....:confused:

Re: The Low Road Express
 

I just don't know either. There was a piece by Gorbachev in the Washington Post a few days ago. Sounded convincing to me, but then how can I take the word of a former president as unbiased?!

Anyway, back on topic, did anyone hear about these original memo's from the Clinton campaign being leaked to Atlantic.com recently? You can see the whole list here. Quite a scoop.

This one's particularly insightful, written by her chief strategist Mark Penn. Essentially it shows how it was an explicit part of Hillary's strategy to target the idea that Obama is basically a foreigner.

Course it's what we suspected all along, but useful to have it documented.

Another one by Penn from 2006 insists that Hillary must be "more Thatcher than anything else". Trust me, that's the last thing America (and the world) needs!

Re: The Low Road Express
 

What a disgusting approach to campaigning. Absolutely no respect for the "melting pot" ideals that this country was meant to be built upon. "Mighty woman" my ass.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

And incidentally, there's a new video starting to make the rounds that compiles some awkward moments regarding McCain's stance on the housing crisis we're going through in the US. Could be pretty effective.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

i honestly can't vote for the ultimate pander-bear politician.

he might as well say stuff like he is THE cure for cancer and has the ability to reverse global warming to go along with his bragging of winning wars and also be THE guy that will find and defeat Bin Laden.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

At the same time, let's not forget that Obama has done quite a bit to cultivate the impression that he's the second coming. I've yet to see any politician make a viable career out of idealism. If he wins the White House, he's still gotta walk the walk.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/20...a-go-negative/


Not that it would be hard. Simply focus on the opposing party as a whole.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

Back to those polls - so Obama's heading into the convention with a statistical dead heat (and a Zogby poll putting him 5 points behind McCain). Commentators seem to be lining up to portray any shock at this state of play as arrogance on the part of Obama supporters - we're simply not used to our 'Messiah' being challenged in this way, etc etc.

For me, it's just alarm that any Democractic candidate wouldn't be faring better at this stage of the campaign, given the almost historically low approval ratings for the Bush administration, given McCain's own (almost epic) struggle to win the nomination for his party (and their lukewarm approach to him), given what was thought to be a thirst for change, given a nose-diving economy, given the unpopularity of war in Iraq.... This should have been (should be - sorry, talking in past tense like i've given up hope!) the Dems' term. When you add in the qualities that many acknowledge Obama possesses - rousing, inspiring, relatively youthful and visibly different, with policy positions some of which should appeal to left and right - he should surely be doing considerably better than dead heating right now, shouldn't he?

What do you think about why the American population is responding this way? Is it down to the effectiveness of the Republicans' goin' negative? Is it down to the simplicity (or as Bush liked to say at the last election, the stark certainties) of their own messages?

e.g.1 - new offshore drilling.
McCain is for it. Simple. That's the message.
Obama is for it in some circumstances... but sceptical that it'll really work.

e.g.2 - responding to the question of "when does life begin?"
McCain immediately says: "At the moment of conception".
Obama first says that answering the question is "above my pay-grade", then says he's in favour of legal abortion "not because I'm pro-abortion but because, ultimately, I don't think women make these decisions casually. I think they wrestle with these things in profound ways."

Is this the sort of thing that's costing him? Are the successful US presidential candidates really only the ones who's policy positions fit onto a bumper sticker?

Or, going back to the polls, is this largely fallout from the wrath of Hillary Clinton's supporters? (a WSJ-NBC poll this week indicated that nearly half of her supporters have "yet to embrace Obama"... 21% favour McCain, 27% are undecided or say they'll vote for "someone else.'') I'm pretty sure had her campaign conducted themselves with less desperation and negativity, that Obama would be doing a fair bit better right now. That's not passing the buck or "blaming the woman", it's just a speculative judgment that seems entirely reasonable.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

Oh dear, I suspect this will only make those supporters even more mad....

Disclosure reports show Clinton still deeply in debt

(a) Wonder how much those glossy attack ads cost?
(b) She seems to have quite a few establishment "high profile backers". Surely they could muster together more than a combined $2 million between them?
(c) "The Times of London"? Who calls it that apart from Americans? :D (unlike the NYT etc, it really is simply called The Times - our country has the granddaddy of original titles, so don't forget it!!)

Re: The Low Road Express
 

I personally believe it's a combination of factors.

One, Obama has been an exciting, interesting candidate, but he's been forced to try to sustain that excitement for over a full year - longer than anyone's ever had to that I'm aware of. Hell, I'm extremely interested in this Presidential race, and I'm feeling a little worn out from it all, so I can only imagine how the more casual voter must feel.

Two, I don't believe the coverage of this race has been quite as clear-cut as either party would have you think. Obama does get more air-time, but the down side of that has been that a lot of it has been squarely focused on negative charges against him that many people are probably believing. McCain's negatives haven't been focused on nearly as much. Remember how long Reverend Wright was the top story? It was literally every day for like a month. Or the "bitter" and "clinging" comments? Weeks of front page coverage. But McCain can screw up about health care coverage of viagra versus birth control, and it's in the news for a day or two. He jokes about killing Iranians - twice - and it's the same thing. His top economic advisor calls Americans "whiners" who are only experiencing a "mental recession", and it lingers for a couple days, tops. And the Republicans pound away at Obama as "elitist" using nothing real as evidence and the press keeps repeating the charge, while when McCain actually forgets how many homes he owns, the "elitist" charge leveled at him only lasts a day. And also on the news subject, the coverage has been far more editorial in nature than factual. Like in his response to Obama regarding the instance of McCain forgetting how many houses he owns that I just mentioned, his campaign says "does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?" And yet on the news I watched, I didn't hear any discussion about how this is a blatantly misleading quote in regards to Rezko. They just kept repeating it and repeating it, effectively helping McCain spread his propaganda.

Third, the people who were worried that Hillary's dirty campaigning against Obama might have lingering effects were right, as in this clear example - http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1 . She didn't campaign against him as if he was a fellow Democrat - she campaigned against him as if he was a vile enemy that had to not just be beaten, but actually destroyed. In doing so, she set the Republican campaign up very nicely, sowing doubts about Obama in middle America that Karl Rove would be proud of, which he has yet to get past.

And lastly, let's not leave out why I believe so many in middle America have embraced the attacks against Obama from Hillary and McCain, which is because Obama is black. I really don't want to blame it all on race, but I'm certain that there's a large percentage of Americans who are simply still racist. I've been shocked time and time again, seeing it not just in rural "hick" towns in the south, but even here in ultra-liberal Los Angeles, and back where I grew up in liberal Massachussetts. The fact is, Obama has a huge hurdle to overcome with that, and even if all the other factors I mentioned were removed, that would still keep this race close in my opinion.

I'm glad someone else said it too. People were gushing about how clearly McCain supposedly "won" the Saddleback interview/debate thing, but that wasn't how I saw it at all. I saw one candidate with realistic, well thought out, nuanced positions, and another with rhetorical, ham-fisted, sound-bite oriented positions. To me, the candidate who seems most thoughtful and potentially effective as President is the winner, and that was Obama hands down. But like you said, McCain's answers wold fit well on a bumper sticker, or more importantly, in a sound bite on the evening news, so people ate it up. It tells us far more about the American public than it does about the candidates in my opinion.

I feel like Hillary supporters are having less affect than I initially feared they would. A small but vocal group is still clearly the biggest group of sore losers in history, but I just don't think there are that many of them. But maybe I'm just being optimistic. Certainly, the people who supported her strongly seemed to be ignorant to the point of delusion, buying into claims of experience that it was well documented she didn't have, claiming that Obama was a racist, or a Muslim despite the fact that in the same breath they'd decry him for not denouncing Reverend Wright, and even claiming that Hillary was running a perfectly clean campaign while it was Obama who was being nasty. So clearly, we're dealing with some truly ignorant nut-jobs here, but I just can't believe there are that many of them who are so over the top. Are there? :confused::(

Re: The Low Road Express
 

A good overall analysis there Sean.

I get very paranoid about sounding elitist when I talk about things like this, (not to mention anti-American when I talk about it regarding the US) - so I'm glad you also see where I'm coming from on it.

Re: The Low Road Express
 

From Snopes...

Claim: The Book of Revelation describes the anti-Christ as someone with characteristics matching those of Barack Obama.

Status: False

Wow. What would we do without Snopes? :rolleyes:


(EDIT: where's the colour formatting gone from this editor? I used to be able to do something like [color=#cc0000]--[/color] to get red ?)

Re: The Low Road Express
 

I heard about this a day or two ago on Countdown. Apparently, some GOP lady circulated an email claiming that Obama was the antichrist, and thankfully, she was fired after many Republicans protested.