I think McCain just became the frontrunner

[erniebanks]

What are you talking about? You talk about other people being crazy and all this, fox news is the only news that is not biased, and that also deliver positive news also, not just another newscast like: well 2 more people died in Iraq, this building got blown up there, the economy sucks. Fox is actually positive for a lot of the time.

You have to know, Fox News critics either have never watched it or are so biased in their thinking, any non MSNBC story is considered biased.

[ganjagolfer]

sly like a Fox
news

[st0wgolf08]

You have to know, Fox News critics either have never watched it or are so biased in their thinking, any non MSNBC story is considered biased.

<-------- completely agrees.

[Awsi Dooger]

McCain was never the legitimate frontrunner. Situational factors dominate in American politics. You can basically ignore polls and rely on the foundational situational variables and identify the winner months/years ahead of time.

But kudos to those hilarious early September polls which allowed McCain a phony lead and shoved Intrade down to 47 on Obama contracts. I can't believe I was able to play him at 47, 48, 50 and 53, essentially even money averaged, when he was always a significant favorite in real world terms.

An open race for the presidency after 8 years of one party holding the White House is normally a coin flip scenario, with slight advantage to the out party. But Bush's remarkable sustained ineptitude in the post-Katrina period and 30ish approval ratings always applied a 2-3 point fundamental edge to the Democrats. It would have remained in that range other than the economic collapse, McCain's brilliant strong fundamentals comment, and concerns about Palin. My Excel models still make it closer than the polling, in the 4-5 range, so I suspect McCain will tighten the gap but not threaten to get over the top.

Comebacks are for fools. That's the bottom line in politics. Like minded people can avalanche in one direction late in a primary. But in general elections the long term advantage is much more significant than the media wants to pretend, always desperate for a horse race. Give me the lead on October 1 and I'll take my chances.

In 2004, Bush was in the most favorable scenario imaginable, an incumbent with his party in power only one term. That's the landslide situation, with 9 of 10 victories (Carter 1980) in the past century. It was laughable when Democrats thought Bush was a certain goner in 2004. Similarly, if Obama wins in two weeks, he will inherit that identical scenario in 2012. This is more or less a 2-for-1 for Obama. Unless Obama collapses like Carter, any top flight Republican who challenges him in 2012 will be a world class fool. Far better to wait for 2016. Besides, it will be incredibly difficult for Obama to look bad compared to the office holder of the last 8 years.

Democrats have incredible advantages right now. The netroots is energized and pumping tens of millions on cue. Many key states have ongoing and significant demographic shifts in place, namely Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire and Nevada. This is hardly a one-time advantage. The fewer percentage of the electorate is held by white voters, the more the GOP suffers. That percentage has been steadily declining. I'm sure the results in that regard will be interesting to pollsters this year. Republicans thrive on married white voters. The percentage of married voters is on the decline along with the percentage of white voters. That's not a friendly combo.

However, 2010 figures to be a pro-GOP midterm. The Democrats are defending a huge number of senate seats, and many currently held governorships are by Democrats in red states like Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wyoming and Arizona. In 2010 the Democratic incumbents will be gone so many if not all of those states figure naturally to return to GOP governors. Plus, assuming Obama wins, the out party normally gains in House seats in a midterm.

But young voters are avalanching toward Democrats. That's the underlying trump card variable that the press refuses to fully emphasize. Bush repulsed 8 years of young voters. Now Obama appears to have big chance to win 4 or 8 years of young voters. That cannot be understated. It's pure mythology that voting tendencies change with age. Pollster.com destroyed that theory a couple of years ago, with charts going back 8 decades. Your partisanship and loyalty is cemented in youth, the vast majority of the time. Bush may have won the controversial race in 2000, but the residue of that could doom Republicans for generations. It allowed the youth vote to shift dramatically to Democrats. Once they are voting regularly in middle age a 16 year block can overcome all but landslide conditions favoring the other side. Currently, the GOP is boosted by voters who came of age in the Reagan '80s. Those voters are solidly Republican and now in prime voting age.

Sorry for the marathon post. This is my first time visiting this particular section of The Sand Trap. I prefer political posting on political sites, not political forums of sports sites, but I thought I'd exhaust some rambling ideas here.

[Chilli Dipper]

Sorry for the marathon post. This is my first time visiting this particular section of The Sand Trap. I prefer political posting on political sites, not political forums of sports sites, but I thought I'd exhaust some rambling ideas here.

Actually, I've found that too many political sites have become so inundated with delusional conspiracy theorists that it's impossible to have a thoughtful discussion.

[iacas]

Actually, I've found that too many political sites have become so inundated with delusional conspiracy theorists that it's impossible to have a thoughtful discussion.

Yesterday I

read this article . Interesting take on things.

[Billiam]

In reponse to the person who said Fox News is unbiased: sorry to burst your bubble, but you must be incredibly stupid. How they pass off anything they show as unbiased news baffles me to no end.

[Stuart]

Go Obama. The fact that McCain could base his campaign around attempting to tie Obama to a terrorist is ridiculous and completely destroys any respect I HAD for him. Is it not patently obvious that if Obama did in fact have ties to a terrorist, that it would have come out long before this? Do you not imagine that the Secret Service or the FBI or CIA would have had an inkling of this long ago? It makes me sick that this is the best he can come up with. Have fun in the gutter John.

[iacas]

Go Obama. The fact that McCain could base his campaign around attempting to tie Obama to a terrorist is ridiculous and completely destroys any respect I HAD for him. Is it not patently obvious that if Obama did in fact have ties to a terrorist, that it would have come out long before this? Do you not imagine that the Secret Service or the FBI or CIA would have had an inkling of this long ago? It makes me sick that this is the best he can come up with. Have fun in the gutter John.

He did have ties. It did come out quite awhile ago (I suppose depending on your definition of "recent").

How strong those ties were remains up for debate, I suppose, but pretending he had no ties at all is somewhat silly. Read the article I linked to a few posts up. I don't support it - I view it as some far-right crap that helps balance some far-left crap - but it speaks to these "associates" of Obama.

[immts007]

I don't think Obama's Association with Ayer's amounts to anything more than what we have seen, they live in the same neighborhood, their social circles may have some points of intersection and they served on a educational board together. Big deal. I don't care. The Reverend Wright thing? Also a huge non-issue, I've listened to his sermons, including the ones in question and they are NOT racist. They may be fiery and political but no more so than than the fundie mega-pastors that do things like proclaim natural disasters are God's punishment on America's sins. As for Tony Rezko... can any explain the deal here? He helped Obama get a good deal on a house? So what? Counterpoint: Charles Keating.

What should we make of the fact that McCain has a long and close relationship with a man who is a convicted felon and plotted assasinations of American citizens on American soil? Me, I don't make much of it at all.

While we are posting interesting articles, here is an excellent recent one from the Wall Street Journal on what has been the GOP strategy for the past few decades. I also think that some of what it discusses applys to the rhetoric employed by Neil Boortz in the article Erik linked to.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122463199532056477.html

[DDBowdoin]

In reponse to the person who said Fox News is unbiased: sorry to burst your bubble, but you must be incredibly stupid. How they pass off anything they show as unbiased news baffles me to no end.

they are as biased as MSNBC is for liberally biased news...

[pjsnyc]

they are as biased as MSNBC is for liberally biased news...

True, and so is CBS! Don't mess with Terrible Terry Tate!

[immts007]

they are as biased as MSNBC is for liberally biased news...

I'll agree somewhat with this. Not entirely though. Although I've never watched MSNBC, I know who Keith Olberman is and have seen enough youtube clips to know their offerings.

My comcast basic cable doesn't carry it At least MSNBC tries to offer a little balance with Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews. And don't tell me Alan Colmes is the FOX counterpoint. That guy is just there for Sean Hannity to beat up on. I'd love to see a "Maddow & Hannity" show, I don't think he'd get so many punches in with her

[DDBowdoin]

so we have...

FOX vs.....

MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, LA TIME, THE BOSTON GLOBE

hmm, yeah... but Fox is terrible

[pjsnyc]

so we have...

They're all as terrible as Terry Tate.

[immts007]

I said I agreed with FOX & MSNBC, but I certainly don't agree with the ABC, NBC, CBS additions. If you are going to throw newspapers in, which are increasingly irrelevant, there is plenty of right-wing counterpoint including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and the New York Post.

[immts007]

They're all as terrible as Terry Tate.

Who the heck is Terry Tate?

EDIT: hahahahha I just watched the video. Where have I seen that shtick before? Was it an SNL thing?

[erwintrace08]

Crazy that this is like the longest running thread. Just shows how important it is. Ya, it is hard to find a credible source for unbiased news. When it comes down to it, all of these new sources are a business headed by conservatives or liberals.

I just try to turn on CNN as they claim to have an unbiased show. I just saw this thread for the first time and was caught by the subject and noticed how old the first post was.

I guess it's still up in the air on who will win because how accurate are the polls, right? Do they sample an even amount of Dems/GOP and doesn't it depend on who is doing the polling?

e