Polls Show Obama Gaining Among Bush Voters

By JIM RUTENBERG and MARJORIE CONNELLY

Published: October 23, 2008

Senator Barack Obama is showing surprising strength among portions of the political coalition that returned George W. Bush to the White House four years ago, a cross section of support that, if it continues through Election Day, would exceed that of Bill Clinton in 1992, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News polls.

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Underscoring his increasing strength in the final phase of the campaign, Mr. Obama led Mr. McCain among groups that voted for President Bush four years ago: those with incomes greater than $50,000 a year; married women; suburbanites and white Catholics. He is also competitive among white men, a group that has not voted for a Democrat over a Republican since 1972, when pollsters began surveying people after they voted.

Of potential concern for Mr. Obama’s strategists, however, a third of voters surveyed say they know someone who does not support Mr. Obama because he is black.

Voters were also closely divided about Mr. Obama’s ability to handle a crisis, a finding that came as Republicans seized on remarks by his running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, that foreign leaders were likely to test him in the first months of his term if he is elected.

Over all, however, the poll found that Mr. Obama would defeat Mr. McCain if the election were held now, with 52 percent of those identified as probable voters saying they would vote for Mr. Obama and 39 percent saying they would vote for Mr. McCain.

Among registered voters in the latest poll, the spread is almost identical, with 51 percent saying they would vote for Mr. Obama and 38 percent saying they would vote for Mr. McCain. A New York Times/CBS News poll taken a week ago showed a similar margin of victory for Mr. Obama.

The latest nationwide telephone poll was conducted Sunday through Wednesday with 1,152 adults, of whom 1,046 said they were registered to vote. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

To measure support for the candidates among specific voting blocs, The Times combined data from the latest poll with one conducted last week because some of the subgroups were too small to be statistically reliable when extracted from a single survey.

Despite Mr. McCain’s continued questioning of Mr. Obama’s readiness, the number of voters surveyed who say Mr. Obama has prepared himself well enough for the presidency was at its highest yet in the newest poll, 56 percent.

When The Times and CBS News first asked the question, more voters said they believed Mr. Obama was not ready, 49 percent, than believed he was, 44 percent. Mr. McCain still holds an advantage on that front, with 64 percent saying they believe he is prepared for the presidency.

There was also fresh evidence that Mr. McCain’s attacks on Mr. Obama’s character and qualifications in commercials, mailings, speeches and automated telephone calls were, if anything, harming Mr. McCain. The percentage of people who view Mr. McCain unfavorably was at its highest level since The Times and CBS began asking the question in 1999. Forty-six percent said they held unfavorable views of him, with 39 percent saying they viewed him favorably. Mr. Obama was viewed favorably by 52 percent of those surveyed, and unfavorably by 31 percent.

Voters were almost evenly split over Mr. Obama’s ability to handle a crisis wisely: 49 percent said they were confident he could and 47 percent said they would be uneasy. Respondents showed less ease with Mr. McCain: 51 percent said they would be uneasy with his approach and 46 percent expressed confidence.

Mr. Obama fared better than Mr. McCain on economic matters: 65 percent said they were somewhat confident or very confident in Mr. Obama’s ability to handle the economy; 47 percent said the same thing about Mr. McCain.

In spite of Mr. McCain’s sustained attack on Mr. Obama’s proposal to raise income taxes on households and businesses that earn more than $250,000 a year, Mr. Obama’s plan received significant support in the new poll. When voters were asked whether they supported the tax increase to help provide health insurance for those who are not covered, 62 percent said it was a “good idea” and 33 percent said it was a “bad idea.”

Voters were evenly divided over Mr. McCain’s plan to make permanent Mr. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts.

In another area where Mr. McCain could take heart, the last two polls offered fresh evidence that his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate had helped to excite two traditional bases of support for Republican presidential candidates. White voters who say they attend church every week preferred Mr. McCain over Mr. Obama by 61 percent to 29 percent, and voters who live in the South preferred him over Mr. Obama by 51 percent to 40 percent.

But, over all, the percentage of those who view Ms. Palin unfavorably, 40 percent, was higher than those who view her favorably, 31 percent

Conservatives for Change

Click above or paste this link in....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBLnwMbYmUw

Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama

The son of William F. Buckley has decided—shock!—to vote for a Democrat.

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.

Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr. to Address Democratic Convention,” but it’ll have to do.

Dear Pup once said to me, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.”

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.

As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:

I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column...”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.

A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

Read about Chris Buckley’s parting of ways with The National Review over his endorsement of Obama.

Christophers for Obama: Buckley and Hitchens

The Nation -- This is how bad it has gotten for John McCain.

Even the defenders of the Iraq War are deserting the Republican nominee who once thought he might "surge" into the Oval Office.

Yes, he has lost the Christophers.

In recent days, he has lost both Christopher Buckley and, now, Christopher Hitchens. Both have announced their plans to vote for man who opposed launching the Iraq War: Democrat Barack Obama.

First, Buckley, the apple-did-not-fall-from-the-tree son of William F., writes a column titled, "Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama," in which he writes:

I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times--I'm beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, "As I warned the world in my last column..." -- a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don't--still--doubt that McCain's instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were "jerks" (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam--his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, "The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor." Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.

A year ago, when everyone, including the man I'm about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no--bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don't see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was--sigh--then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, "We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us." This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget "by the end of my first term." Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

Then, Christopher Hitchens, erstwhile former Nation columnist turned Iraq warrior, writes a column headlined: "Vote for Obama: McCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is simply a disgrace."

Like Buckley, Hitchens is embarrassed by McCain as a candidate and as the man who has attempted to put Sarah Palin one heartbeat away from the presidency:

Hitch argues deliciously that:

McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.

I suppose it could be said, as Michael Gerson has alleged, that the Obama campaign's choice of the word erratic to describe McCain is also an insinuation. But really, it's only a euphemism. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear had to feel sorry for the old lion on his last outing and wish that he could be taken somewhere soothing and restful before the night was out. The train-wreck sentences, the whistlings in the pipes, the alarming and bewildered handhold phrases--"My friends"--to get him through the next 10 seconds. I haven't felt such pity for anyone since the late Adm. James Stockdale humiliated himself as Ross Perot's running mate. And I am sorry to have to say it, but Stockdale had also distinguished himself in America's most disastrous and shameful war, and it didn't qualify him then and it doesn't qualify McCain now.

The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her--her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations--were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

These are important statements, especially as expressions of concern about McCain's dwindling capacity and their dismissals of Palin.

They form the intellectual underpinnings for a rational rejection of the Republican ticket by mainstream Republicans and independents--and with it the prospect (though not the certainty) of an Obama victory sufficient to allow him to actually govern.

Buckley actually provides the language for those who may not ever be Obama enthusiasts, but who may be Obama voters:

"Obama has in him -- I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy "We are the people we have been waiting for" silly rhetoric -- the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

"So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I'll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America."

McCain's mortgage proposal

Brad DeLong studies McCain's mortgage proposal:

The McCain plan is:

Take $300 billion.

Pay double current market value to banks that have troubled mortgages on their books, thus:
- Give a present of $100 billion to the bankers who made the loans.
- Acquire and regularize the mortgages of only two-thirds as many homeowners as could have been accomplished if the $300 billion were invested wisely.

There's a big difference here: Democrats want to prevent depression and support the financial markets by investing taxpayer money in banks with troubled assets. Republicans want to give taxpayers money away to the shareholders and managers of banks with troubled assets.

I would say that this is unbelievable, but I do believe it.

Palin pick an insult to real Republicans

For those Dads who refuse to consider the Palin factor:

1. The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain's medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds increase considerably. The combination of actuarial statistics and American history to date (odds of vice president's becoming presidents) raises a Vice President Palin’s chance to be president some day to about 50 percent.

2. Does any true Republican think Palin would be a good president? If so, why? The fact that she does not favor the ban of AK-47s or wants creationism taught in schools?

3. Most importantly, how can it not insult Republicans to have the party pick her? If I was a fiscally conservative, socially moderate person (like many dads) it would infuriate me to no end that McCain (another formerly fiscally conservative, socially moderate person) picked a born-again Christian zealot that up until last year had never left the United States. McCain's pick was too political and it's insulting to genuine Republicans concerned about the welfare of the country.

Free Trade responses

Please check out the comments for a few free trade ideas from intelligent friends of Convince My Dad...

What dads care about

I've gotten some feedback from a few people about what "dads" seem to care about most.

1. The number one "dad issue" is, surprise, taxes. Which, of course, is the hardest position to defend cuz lots of dads are rich and will lose money under Obama. So anyone who has anything tax related please post it.

2. Another key issue is Obama's supposed opposition to free trade. Anyone got anything positive about Obama's position on free trade please post it.

And feel free to comment on the issues your dad values most. Thanks.

If McCain's elected will Palin be the prez one day?

From the LA Times:

The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Needless to say, the Reaper's scything only grows more insistent thereafter. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain's medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds probably increase considerably that this bright-eyed Alaskan will become the most powerful woman in history.

Also:

The combination of actuarial statistics and American history to date raises a Vice President Palin’s chance to be president some day to about 50 percent. That should not be of concern unless you fear that a person who does not favor the ban of AK-47s and who wants creationism taught in schools might succeed to the presidency.

Politicians Lie, Numbers Don't

(click above to link to the whole article and its wonderful graphs)

From Slate.com

And the numbers show that Democrats are better for the economy than Republicans

By Michael Kinsley

Posted Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008, at 1:49 PM ET

If you're wondering why a formerly honorable man like John McCain would build his presidential campaign around issues that are simultaneously beside-the-point, trivial, and dishonest (sex education for kindergartners, lipstick on pigs), the numbers presented here may help to solve that mystery. Since the conventions ended, McCain has mired the presidential race in dishonest trivia because he doesn't want it to focus on what voters say is the most important issue this year: the economy.

There is no secret about any of this. The figures below are all from the annual Economic Report of the President, and the analysis is primitive. Nevertheless, what these numbers show almost beyond doubt is that Democrats are better at virtually every economic task that is important to Republicans.

In other words, there are no figures here about income inequality, or percentage of the population with health insurance, or anything like that. This exercise implicitly assumes that lower taxes are always good and higher government spending is always bad. There is nothing here about how clean the air is or how many children are growing up in poverty. The only point is that if you find the Republican mantra of lower taxes and smaller government appealing, and if you care only about how fast the economy is growing, not how that growth is shared, you should vote Democratic. Of course, if you do care about things like economic inequality and children's health, you should vote Democratic as well.