Check out this Post

I don’t know why – but I really like this post.  Obama just seems like a guy who is going to do a helluva job.  I am starting to understand the Kennedy comparisons.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=7510492&mesg_id=7510492

The Liberal Crab’s Poll of “Poll of Polls” – 18 October 2008

Popular Vote

Obama – 50.1% +6.0%

McCain – 44.1%

Electoral College

Obama – 361

McCain – 177

A few interesting notes from TLC’s Poll of “Poll of Polls” today.  Through the seven days I’ve done the poll, Obama’s support has remaind between 51.2% and 50.0%.  That is very stable.  McCain was as low as 43.6% and as high as 44.5%.  Again, very stable.  Overall, Obama has lost about 1% over the week.  There is a good chance we’ll see a little more tightening tomorrow.  Most of the national polls are three day rolling averages.  Obama will have Thursday’s strong polling rolling off.  McCain may stay even or drop slightly as his strong Thursday polling will also drop off.  It may be that McCain got a one day debate/Joe the Plumber bump as Obama’s drop and McCain’s gain stalled after that one day.

For Obama supporters, here is the good news.  Tomorrow, barring any other changes, will be the last day of seeing his rolling average drop.  His last two days have been relatively consistent.  For all the hype about the gap closing, McCain is within .5% of where was at the beginning of last week.  Over the last the last five days, he seems to have settled in between 44-44.5%.  In theory, Obama has fallen off his ceiling a little bit, which was to be expected.  Most of the pollsters think McCain’s ceiling is no higher than 46%.  The fact that he seems to be stabilizing at 44% and Obama at 50% is a great sign.  Assuming a 10% undecided and no 3rd party votes, my calculations show that McCain would have to win 63% of the undecideds to win the popular vote.  If the undecided number is lower (and in a lot of polls it is), than McCain would need to perform even better.

As for the Electoral College, no change since yesterday.  I would expect that we’d see some tightening here, as state polls lag the national polls.  Although, most polls are still showing Obama gaining some strength.  If, however, the electoral vote polls do tighten, expect a significant drop (maybe to 300-330 votes).  Many of the close states will end up going back to toss-up or trend to McCain.  States like North Carolina (15) and Ohio (20) wouldn’t take much to sway.

Overall, everyone expects tightening.  If we are seeing the floor, then I think the Obama camp would be very very happy.  Very few expected an eight point lead to last.  just two weeks ago a six point lead would have been fantastic.  Additionally, the tracking polls (not the poll of polls) appear to be going in different direcitions.  Pollster.com believe this may be because the polls reverting to center – as the outliers on both directions are heading toward 6%.  It’s known that different polls can show very contrasting performance throughout the race, but tend to come together toward the end of the election.

For those curious about poll accuracy, the Investor Business Daily poll was the most accurate on Election Day in 2004.  It is showed Obama up by +2 last Monday and +7 today. This, by the way, was the poll conservatives were pointing to last week to show how tight the race had gotten.

An Inside Look at the Right’s Genuine Hatred of Obama and Liberals

Please check out this link at Free Republic, read the comments and then come back to the post – if after what you read there doesn’t stun you enough to forget to come back to my site.

The link is an article posted at the conservative Free Republic web site and includes the absolutely stunning picture of 100,000 people at a Barack Obama rally in downtown St. Louis Today.  Here are some of the more vile comments:

“All hail the Obamafuhrer. Seig heil. Seig heil.”  and “Notice the outstretched arms in Nazi hand salute? ” (hole_n_one)

“It’s the Acorn voter fraud convention” (lawdoc)

“I’m becoming more and more convinced if this guy ain’t the Anti-C then he certainly made a deal with him.” (johnrick46)

“You sure read my mind. The first thing I thought of was the pilgrimige to the Haj” (johnny7)

“Remember, STL is a fairly big city and there are a lot of black folks there. Having 100k at a rally for him is not beyond belief.”  (spacejunkie01; madison10)

“Yes, it is a pit (talking about St. Louis) Last time my husband and I drove through there, we discussed how pathetic it was that people choose to live like that. It is a major slum.” (softballmominva)

“Yes sickening vomit” and “It’s Detroit light — pardon the pun. I had to change planes at their airport a few years back: yecchh. The terminal was a pig-stye, the people were worse. Like you said, major slum.” (kansas girl)

“Yes, and their results are ALWAYS the last to come in so they can manufacture the votes to put the Rat over the top.” (dawn531)

“I’m worried about that as well – I can easily see Rodney-King styled rioting in 25 or more major urban areas (talking about an Obama loss). Heck, even if he wins, they will probably set all sorts of bonfires in celebration – and those can get pretty ugly, pretty fast.” (tanknetter)

“They are the same kinds of people who showed up at Hugo Chavez rallies when he was running. He promised them many of the same types of things and they believed.” (normanbates)

This is only my review of the first 100 of over 300 comments.  This doesn’t include more of the less vile, but still hate filled comments.  The most amazing thing to me is nearly 1/3 of the posts are related to discussing how Obama’s campaign and the MSM ‘faked’ the photograph.  The folks at Free Republic are so loony, one guy actually blew up the picture and insists a repetitive pattern that, for the life of me I couldn’t see.

To any right wing trolls out there – I defy you to find me any article at Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Politico, The Nation, or any other left leaning website that has as many vile, condescending, racist, dismissive comments.  I’ve been reading all the liberal blogs for a long time and I would call out this type of hatred if it existed – it doesn’t.

I’m not quite sure why that, when you disagree with an individual, you need to demean him and put him beneath yourself.  Beyond that, the naivety of these folks to dismiss the beliefs and hopes of a significant portion of our population is astonishing.  Most liberals (and it’s part of our nature) believe in kindness, loving your neighbor, and respecting opposing views.  It’s part of the reason why the Democrats have so much trouble fighting the conservative hate machine.  We do not try and suppress the conservative’s point of view or state it’s not a valid position.  We fight and argue on merits.  Liberals truly have a hard time understanding the bitterness, anger, and resentment that most conservatives have towards the opposition.  Fortunately, Barack Obama – from the school of Chicago hard-knocks politics, does understand and is willing to take the fight back to them.  That’s why he is in a position to win and that’s why the anger and ire of the right has been exacerbated, they are not used to being challenged on their views.

I’ve already blogged about how scary this spiraling hate is within the Republican party.  One only hopes that this is only indicitive of the hyper-politically active portion of the conservative base and not across the whole spectrum of the right-wing ideology.  Unfortunately, I don’t know the real answer.  Many of the educated conservatives I know, truly have this same outlook.

What I do know, however, is that the party faithful take their lead from their candidate.  Run a campaign of respect and dignity for your opponent, and your supporters will do the same.  Call out your supporters when they yell ‘terrorist’ or ‘off with their heads’ and they won’t do it.  Don’t run a campaign of smears and lies, and your supporters won’t smear and would not have the lies you propagate.  Put non-issues off the table and rail against hate-groups and your supporters will follow.  It’s not a coincidence that there really is no attacks from the left on G. Gordon Liddy, Keating Five, McCain’s health, or anything else.  Obama refuses to make them an issue. Sure, they flare up a bit but quickly dissipate because our candidate refuses to give them creedence.  A perfect example from the McCain campaign is Reverend Wright.  McCain has made it off limits and very little is said, even on the conservative blogs and 527’s about Wright.  McCain and Palin are absolutely responsible for what occurs in their campaign.  A few nights of comedy on Letterman or a social dinner or Saturday Night Live does not change who they have decided to be – especially when they are persisting in slander, lies, and deception.

So again my challenge to any conservatives who read this post – show me anywhere on a left wing blog where the venemous hate and predjudice exist to a significant extent and I will post that same hatred here and call it out.  Comments about issues or complaints about how McCain is running his campaign do not count.