The ridiculous "forum on faith"

[dommyluc]

The usual useless drivel from the traditional media concerning last night's useless "forum". The media will trumpet this for the next 45 minutes as the GREATEST INDICATOR THAT THE AMURKIN PUBLIC IS MOVING TOWARD MCCAIN, totally ignoring some of the damage that his comments have made to his campaign.
1.) First, who watched this forum? It was on a Saturday night during the summer against the Olympics. RW fundies and a small number of political junkies.
2.) Many are freaking because they think that the 2004 election was won by the so-called "value voters". No, we lost the 2004 election because of worries about security and the Bush/Cheney bogus terrorist warnings. The value voters were estimated to be about 22% of the electorate in 2004, and 25% of them vote for Kerry, which means about 20M of them voted for Bush. The only way Obama could ever possibly win these hardcore fundies is if he denounced every Democratic tenet our party has held for the last 75 years, and that ain't gonna happen. Also, remember that in 2004, the war was still fairly popular, the economy was still (erroneously) thought to be in great shape, and Katrina hadn't happened yet to expose the utter incompetency of the Bush/Cheney cabal.
3.) There is no way in hell Obama could have turned down the invite to this forum, since the McCain campaign would have flogged him as a coward and irreligious. But there are two things that happened which are a bright spot for Obama:
A.) It makes it extremely hard to be smeared by the "Obama is a Muslim" fallacy, except by the extreme fundie nutcases who will believe this lie even if Jesus appears in their morning toast and disputes it, and
B.) It totally destroys John McCain's claim that he is a moderate. His hardline RW attitudes about abortion and the Supreme Court may solidify his fundie base - who would have to vote for him anyway - but it is going to lose him a major amount of votes from independents and moderate Republicans (yes, there are still a few of those around), especially Republican women who are pro-choice. Over 70% of the country believes in some type of legalized abortion, and McCain's extremist abortion views are not going to resonate. The RW thinks so, but anyone only has to remember one name to put their judgement into question: Terry Schiavo. You can't rally the base and then piss off 70-75% of the electorate at the same time and also win the election.
Remember, the traditional media said all of the same things during the 2006 midterms, trying to build up the Republican chances against a Democratic win, and they were wrong about nearly everything. They are still in their Karl Rove mode, still think he is the political genius of the last 100 years, not realizing that the only time Rove's tactics really work is during a time of fear and disaster. The only reason Bush stayed in office so long and remained popular was because nearly 3000 people died in NYC on 9/11/2001. Katrina destroyed that illusion. GOBAMA!

[BlooInBloo]

1. News flash! Rich white christians support McCain! OMG!!!!

I don't know how Obama can *possibly* win now!!!

[EV_Ares]

2. Very good. Agree completely. You have to take this as it is. First

as you say, Barack could not have turned this down. From the beginning. Advantage to Mccain on the venue, the audience and the reverend regarding his questions and how he let McCain dribble on.

Advantage to Barack regarding his defining himself as a Christian and where he stands on several social issues and basically handled the questions well, answering in more of a spiritual manner than McCain who pandered to an audience he probably already had anyone but lost moderates and independents who may not have made up their mind yet.

Obama, he did not lose any audience members sitting in that audience probably as you cannot lose something you did not have or was not going to get.

I think in the end, Barack was the winner on this forum that he had to do and it is now out of the way.

Also, your point on the audience, the olympics was on, Saturday night, many people gone for the weekend, preseason football, I imagine it was not that large.

Also, one other thing, saw some younger evangelicals interviewed who are going to college in NYC and I think from what they were saying Barack did better with them than McCain.

[janetblond]

3. I didn't watch. Ministry of Propagana Televsion Bull$#!T. Waste of time.

I didn't turn my TV on for ONE minute of that crap.
TV sucks!
Scarborough is THE WORST. CNN is runner-up.

[Breeze54]

4. I watched it because I wanted to see what they both said but

it wasn't on regular TV here (top 3 networks) and I don't get cable. It was on Day Star and it's an odd channel that my rabbit ears picks up occasionally but the signal came in loud and clear last night for some reason. I was going to watch it on C-Span but after flipping through the TV channels, I saw that Day Star channel. I'm glad I had a mute button handy too, so I didn't have to listen to their advertisements. I thought Obama was trying to be very careful in his wording of his answers to some of the lame questions and as far as McDim was concerned, all I did was groan all the way through his stump speeches. I think that Rev. was biased towards McDim but seemed to get back on track at the end of the McDim part. I think it was good that the audience applauded O. I wonder if some in the audience were NOT from that church or were secular. I don't think there was a win involved in this. Everyone already knows where the CR stands on issue's. If McDim had mentioned his experience in Vietnam or Russia vs Georgia one more time I was going to pull my hair out!! He's such an ass... I can see through him but I don't think the CR can or wants too at all.

[Warpy]

5. The oily buttkisser at the end was too much

calling McThuselah "decisive" when he'd obviously been prepped beforehand and barked out answers before the question had been fully asked, plus mugging at the $1000 per ticket audience and going for quick one liner cheap laughs. Obama was "as always, nuanced," the translation being that he's talking down to good honest Americans, typical liberal elitist, never mind he's a black guy from Chicago.

I agree that the audience for this was mercifully small, given the nature of the forum, the format, and the commentary at the end.

[stray cat]

6. I guess you don't watch any of the debates since the forum sadly was more substantive