From the Athens news...Athens, Greece...
http://www.athensnews.gr/athweb/nathens.prnt_article?e=C&f=13310&t=01&m=A99&aa=6For McCain to decide one fine day to suspend his campaign and return to Washington in order to resolve the financial crisis and then leave the capital after two days of inactivity to return to the campaign trail is a behaviour perfectly reflected in the debates where he looked permanently angry,disconnected, befuddled and always deeply hurting for some reason. The conclusion is obvious: the man cannot be trusted to keep his head in a crisis
MARK DRAGOUMIS
Sam the Non-Plumber: The man who became a fictional figure in the hands of McCain's campaign in its bid to scare away conservative voters from Democratic presidential candidate Obama
URGED by some of his followers to "kill" his "Arab" opponent, John McCain simply promised to whip his "you-know-what" at their forthcoming third and last debate. Unable, as usual, to tell his own "you-know-what" from his elbow, McCain made once again a fool of himself at this debate. "The winner of the debate," he declared next day, "was Joe the Plumber," a man who had publicly attacked Obama for planning to tax him as an owner of a plumbing business that made $250,000 a year. Joe the Plumber was mentioned twenty-four times by McCain during the 90-minute debate. The fact that - as was soon revealed - the man called Sam (not Joe) Wurzelbacker from Ohio has no professional plumbing certification and is making no more than $40,000 a year, made not the slightest difference to McCain. He is convinced that Americans, no matter how poor, never stop dreaming of riches to come and hate being deprived of even a cent of them through tax. According to this folksy Republican logic, Obama's redistributive policies are resented even by the American poor who are supposedly not so much concerned with their present poverty as with keeping every cent of their hypothetical future wealth.
This columnist, having followed all the debates and much of the TV coverage of the electoral battle, wonders how can any real (as distinguished from fictional) American, any Sam the Non-Plumber ever hope to strike it rich with an erratic McCain in the White House. The Republican candidate for the presidency looks permanently snippy and ill-tempered, continuously on edge and always worried. The man does not just appear stiff, nervous and insecure but also supremely contemptuous of "that one" as he called Obama. The troubling thing is that his body language and general demeanour correspond fairly accurately to his erratic sorties into the financial mess the country is in. To decide one fine day to suspend his campaign and return to Washington in order to resolve the financial crisis and then leave the capital after two days of inactivity to return to the campaign trail is a behaviour perfectly reflected in the debates where he looked permanently angry, disconnected, befuddled and always deeply hurting for some reason. The conclusion is obvious: the man cannot be trusted to keep his head in a crisis.
This is particularly serious because after eight long years of 'Bushism' the Americans will not be voting so much for or against an ideology as on a record of staggering, almost picturesque government incompetence. For McCain and Palin to promise to put things right, while believing that Americans are a nation of gun-toting, government-hating, Bible-clutching, gas-guzzling rightwingers makes no sense.
Obama on the other hand has promoted vigorously his policy of Change as "a tune the electorate can whistle", according to Enoch Powell's formula. He has proved remarkably restrained in facing personal attacks on his character, never losing his smile and grace, always relaxed, good-humoured and polite. According to the Times/CBS poll, published on October 14, voters who said that their opinion of Obama had changed in recent weeks were twice as likely to say that it had gotten better as to say it had gotten worse. On the other hand, voters who said that their opinion of McCain had changed were three times more likely to say that it had gotten worse than better.
There is more in that vein. Republicans have managed to alienate the highly educated regions of the US - Silicon Valley, northern Virginia, the suburbs of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Raleigh Dunham. The West Coast and the Northeast are mostly gone too. The Republicans have also alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-1 rates. With doctors it is 2:1; with tech executives it is 5:1. As a result, the Obama campaign has been flooded with money as none other ever before. Accusations that he lacks experience have lost all meaning as Obama's learning curve during the electoral period has been shown to have been impressive while he surrounded himself with economic advisors of the calibre of Warren Buffet and George Soros. While Joe Biden makes Mrs Palin appear almost a cartoon character, the boost given to Obama by Colin Powel's endorsement made McCain speak on TV of his happy future life as an ordinary senator and a blessed family man.
However, Obama's victory is still not in the bag. The stupid raise the question of his race asking: "How can Obama enter a White House?" Those slightly more sophisticated insist on Obama's 'otherness'. Political scientists, however, mention the so-called Bradley effect. This refers to a gubernatorial candidate for California in 1982 who was predicted in the exit polls to have won by a double-digit margin, only to lose the election by 50,000 votes. Many respondents, it seemed, had refused to admit to the pollsters that they had voted against the "black guy". However, evidence shows that the country has now become much more racially tolerant while the hard-core rednecks that do remain have no qualms in shouting their prejudices from the rooftops if need be. So today's polls can be considered more reliable.
On Thursday 16 October McCain faced an audience declaring: "I come here tonight knowing I am the underdog." For once he is absolutely right in his assessment of the situation.
:patriot:
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