Tweet
Has the economy helped Obama cross "The Archie Bunker Divide?" Nate has been crunching recent numbers and says that Obama’s support is strengthening.
Is this backlash against McCain’s ragepalooza erratically teetering toward November? We cannot afford that in a President following the Bush/Cheney "yee haw" policymaking.
But is disgust with McCain – whose stylings have morphed into a crabbier version of the Dole campaign with an added violent tinge to his dwindling angrier mob – and McCain’s rising unfavorables, enough?
Does the economy explain why Obama’s support is rising while McCain’s is falling among the white middle class "Archie Bunker" voters? Is the "Bradley Effect" dead — or just subsumed by economic fear? George Packer may have an answer:
Recently, people in Ohio have told me that voters there have started to shift toward Obama. Gabe Kramer, of the S.E.I.U., said that, after the first Presidential debate and amid the financial crisis, union members seemed to find Obama’s ideas and manner more persuasive than before. But even if Obama wins he will still have to overcome the deep skepticism of struggling Americans. For Barbie Snodgrass, who has a modest amount of stock in a retirement plan, the meltdown has turned this election into a make-or-break one, tipping her away from McCain without convincing her that she can trust Obama….
The economy is the engine driving this change. You can feel it building, spending any time around working folks struggling to make ends meet. However, something else in the last few weeks has turned the tide against McCain — and, honestly, that something has been McCain himself. Obama has been closing the deal – recent ads and speeches are good examples, as was this Trumka speech to steelworkers.
But McCain’s own piss poor, erratic ranting has helped Obama close the Archie Bunker divide. Oh, the irony…
107 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About Firedoglake
Hi Christy, Happy Friday!
DOW down 471. People understand McCain=Bush.
Christy, I do hope that you are right. Kathleen Parker of National Review fame was on MSNBC and said that the McCain camp needs to stop the attacks.
Account must be taken of the Bradley Effect. FiveThirtyEight.com, especially, Nate Silver, has been examining that issue.
595
I wish Archie tell palin to stifle!
hi christy! now to read…
obama two biggest assets are mccain and the economic crisis. i’m very glad obama is ahead in the polls, but given the state our country and the world are in, i can not celebrate the reasons why this is so.
Ouch! Freefallin’
can you give a summary? i’m in the middle of tracking down the legislative history of the decision not to regulate swaps or i’d go read for myself. thanks.
Here’s the comment I left on Ari’s thread over at Oxdown.
I’m trying to understand McCain’ behavior from another standpoint:
He must know the election’s lost. It’s an inescapable conclusion now. In addition to the polls, Republican pundits, columnists and party leaders are bracing for it.
So how does McCain think he’ll survive in a Senate where his reputation is so irretrievably damaged? Does he really think he can work with a President Obama after this? There’s nothing for him beyond November 5th. Hell, even Lieberman may be forced to abandon McCain at that point as he cozies up to the Democratic majority.
Of course, being ostracized is nothing compared to being reviled forever if Obama is assassinated by a whackjob McCain/Palin supporter.
So, where does this go for McCain? Who’s really pulling the strings here? Does Rove really want to win this badly? Even Rove understands this election is just part of the battle, not the war.
Dow down 600 to 7978
604
I must be crazy.
The stock market crashing is giving me more “hope” (dare cynical I use that word?) than anything that’s happened in many years in my country.
It is the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
It is the end of the Republican brand.
The end of that smug, self-elevated, we-know-what’s-best costume worn by the pirates who’ve been plundering our nation’s wealth since St. Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.
This is how trickle-down economics dies.
Everything is going to be all right! We stop the stealing now, at long last. It’s not just the word “liberal” we say out loud and proud. Now we say:
Government! — and not only that, but Good Government!!
Regulation! — clean food, clean water, clean air — clean government!
The Hatch Act!
Down With Tyranny!!!
Tax the Rich! — there is plenty of money. The rich have just been sucking it out of the economy and hoarding it.
It’s the end of the world as we’ve known it — and I feel fine.
good point. I thought McCain jumped the shark of his political career when he called Chris Dodd a willing co-conspirator.
Senate comity, buh-bye.
Dow down 561 points Thank you Mr. President
At this ‘rate’ or something less, say 400 points a day, we have 20 busyness days ’til really NEGATIVE numbers are reached.
I’d say, “Heck of a job, there Dubya …” but he probabaly wouldn’t get the connection.
“Yee haw” policymaking? Were it so exuberant. This is “terrorist, kill him”, sans policy.
you beat me too it. down more than 40% for the year and 26% since oct 1st.
If the U.S. can’t grow up and accept the fact that a talented black man can be elected President then the country will get exactly what it deserves, more war, more poverty, more discrepancy in wealth, more alienation of allies, more crumbling infrastructure, more people with out health care……..If this is what Americans prefer over electing a black man then they are a trully a suicidal people. On the day that it finally collapses the world will breath a collective sigh of relief.
Waiting to exhale …
Go LIndaR Let the funeral begin.
All of the above. They’re hardly mutually exclusive and they’ve had one sick symbiotic relationship from day one.
Gops are scum. Desperate scum. When you’re on record saying you’ll lose if you talk about the issues and you have nothing to offer but fear itself, you’ve jumped every conceivable moral, ethical, patriotic and human shark.
There’s no where to go but down, but McCain’s not gonna be able to bail out of this one.
I don’t know, I was surprised at some of the people Hilary Clinton was able to work with after they had accused she and her husband of about every vile thing you can think of. On the other hand, I know what you are saying. My wife and I had a laugh last night that we were just beginning to understand why Republicans had detested McCain so much.
McCain will resign from the Senate, I’m convinced. His actions are going to make him a pariah……Hopefully he takes Sloppy Joe and South Carlolina’s most available bachelor with him.
-G
It’s time to redistribute the wealth. Hold the criminals in the Republican Party and on Wall Street accountable. Long prison sentences if not outright exile.
I concur with that. Nate Silver suggests that by and large the votes will be cast as stated in polls this time around, but there is some discounting worked in.
I propose a New Orlean’s style ‘wake’, with a band and dancin’ in the streets, Linda.
Really.
;~D
Really takes the glow off all that working across the aisle the campaign has been touting!
Go to Phil Gramm and the Financial Modernization Act. I think it was 2000 when it was decided that credit default swaps were not going to be regulated like futures contracts and not traded through a central clearing house.
As a Pa steeltown canvasser for Obama I can tell you it’s economy here. An element was voting racist beliefs, but now have been scared into coming to their senses.
People who said in polls they’d vote Tom Bradley for Calif. guv didn’t.
Many on the right have been outraged by McShames mortgage bailout plan. But then again he trots out a different plan every couple of hours. Ever see how a person who is drowning flails about
good to hear though the tone of McCain/Palin campaign has been frightening
Sorry…Commodity Futures Modernization Act – The act specifically banned regulation of credit default swaps. These unregulated instruments, insurance policies against default on risky investments like mortgage backed securities, necessitated the government bailout of insurer A.I.G. – from wiki
More or less? That is the question
To be or not to be, that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch[1] and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.[2]
Gee I miss Richard Burton.
which is why it is important to have as wide a margin as possible but that was also a different time. Two generations since then and us young uns don’t care about a person’s eligion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.
Like to see Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy thrown into the middle of a mob of retirees that have seen their retirement vanish into the pockets of Gramm’s rich Republican friends.
A couple of pertinent quotes on this subject:
We may also see the REVERSE Bradley effect – where ideologically- and culturally-bound voters will claim in public that they would NEVER vote for Obama, but when alone in the voting booth feel free to pull the lever for the better candidate.
Their irresponsibility is criminal in my mind. Breaking news that bricks were thrown through the Denver Obama Headquarters. If this is what McCains aiming at, I call it conspiracy.
gramm was definitely one of the culprits – but the reason i’m doing it is that blaming gramm is, i think, a comforting false myth we dems tell ourselves. true as far as it goes, but only a very, very small part of the story.
i won’t be able to make it as detailed as the fisa legislative history i did, but i’ll try to do a first pass and we can add on to it later.
Hi Christy,
The tide is turning, for all the reasons you’ve noted. Plus, the people who show up at McCain/Palin rallies represent the DUMBEST common denominator. There are a lot more low-information voters out there who are still bright enough to know when they are being played.
p.s. i’m going back to 1992 for this. that bill is only a small, very small part of the story.
Yeah, I’d like to see that too.
How the creepers can blame freddie mac etc instead of deregulation crooks is beyond me.
McSame is preachin to Joe SixPack meth head.
Some have averred that there’s not such thing as the Bradley effect, that it was really the outcome of some sort of age-old rivalry between northern and southern California voting blocs.
No he’s preaching to the inner Nazi that lies in the hearts of many.
i lay McCain’s supporters’ actions at their feet but i lay the blame of incitement at Mccain. If anything bad happens, it willbe McCain’s fault
the last month has gone a long way to teaching me that it’s just human nature. like how we dems have trouble blaming our own deregulation crooks.
Good One…A Luxury…amazing Racisin defiened as a luxury…it is an abomination. Is not a luxury… it is a burden.
Republics never accept responsibility for anything they do or say.
(hey LindaR! read this dkos diary and thought of you. fav part:
ha!)
Yeah, just who is John McCain and who is he associating with at these rallies?
I look forward to it. Derivatives have been a ticking timebomb for at least 20 years, but it was only with Bush and more specifically after 2004 that they went completely crazy.
As for Obama, if the economy was only doing poorly, a lot of white men (and women) would likely stick with the emptyheaded geriatric McCain, but with the economy in the tank, well as they say, looking down the barrel of a gun clarifies the mind wonderfully.
(Replying to selise)
Even so.
Down the street two blocks they wear their nazi helmets and park at the watering hole.
brown shirts
to selise @ 49
(zee ‘reply’ function is kaput from my end???)
Yeah, but they’ll never know he was complicit unless we tell them.
That’s why I’m grabbing the olive branch offered by my republican friends and breaking it over my knee while telling ‘em “fuck you we don’t need your help, we’re going for 60 in the senate. It’s our turn now.”
What is really scary to me is how many people he is going to take down with him. He really is a dangerous type of guy, like the boyfriend who won’t let anyone date his ex-girlfriend. If she can’t be his, she can’t be anybody else’s. He’s that vindictive.
Cool. Can’t wait to see it. Hope it something else to smack the “Free Marketeers” in the face with.
like a tree with most of it’s roots dug up before a storm. a disaster waiting to happen.
John McCain’s rally on Friday once again inspired furious reactions from his supporters, with one woman screaming “traitor!” as McCain criticized Barack Obama’s tax record.
“He promised higher taxes on electricity,” McCain charged at the event in La Crosse, Wisconsin. “He voted for the Democratic budget resolution that promised to raise taxes on people making just $42,000 a year.” At that point, the woman yelled “traitor,” and both McCain and his wife Cindy appeared to look in her direction.
Good for you. Rather than breaking the branch right now save it. You might need it later to figuratively pummel your Republican friends. Play the ole rope a dope. When they least expect it they’ll be blind sided by what the country has in store for the criminals in the Republican Party and their neo-fascist true believers.
Yes, the Net Capital Rule 2004. It allowed investment banks to become very highly levered.
T-
Can’t remember where I saw it but one poll has Obama ahead by several points in West Virginia! Can that be right?
yep.
Not to worry homeland security has video of the McInsane race rallies. Wonder what Joe Liarman thiks of this kind of political conduct that anti semetic and racist overtones.
“When first they came for the crimnals I did not speak: Then they began to take the Jews: When they fetched the people who were members of trade unions..”
McCain is an old version of Bush. He is spoiled and prone to tantrums. Bush is a Prince from a wealthy family. McCain is a Prince from a Navy family. With a father and grandfather who were both four-star admirals, McCain was treated very specially by the Navy from a very early age.
McCain might want to be careful about he implies is a traitor. Rather than Osama tape being released just before the election maybe Vietnam will release tapes of McCain squealling like a baby while he sells out America.
Scary times. Last night debate between Chambliss and Martin also created some tensions when Obama’s name came up.
Joe’s probably willing to look the other way because he has so much to gain if McCain wins.
Adolph’s victory rally
I saw it too! Christy? Anyone?
I think McCain, Rove et al. want to screw up the country so badly that it will be next to impossible for Obama to govern.
They’ve already done so financially. They’ve wrecked the internal Federal infrastructure [FEMA, DOJ, US Attys, EPA]. Now they want to drive enough people into a crazy, hating frenzy that there will be “opposition” to anything Obama and the Democrats try.
Also, by inciting this howling anger and anxiety, they drive their people further away from rational thought. There’s no “reasoning” with folks in the grip of their hatred & delusions.
It’s all “fouling the nest” before they [Bush, Cheney, Rove, McCain, Palin] fly away.
And he will lose EVERYTHING when McCain goes down in flames.
I remember archy saying even though he was an anti semite he wanted “a jew to be his doctor” for some rediculous reasons that translated into “they are the right man for the job”
same thing is going on here with mccain, they know he is the WRONG man for this job and their family is hurting, even bigots will usually put their familiy way ahead of their bigotry
good call christy, let’s hope they keep that sentiment straight into the voting booth
Now we know where John McCain got his trademark “My friends”. Why am I not surprised?
McSame is preachin to Joe SixPack meth head.
that expalins the crankiness.
I have Lawrence Olivier’s version which is memorable.
Rethuglican End Times, indeed….
referance please?
Amid The Gloom, You Have To Find Things to Laugh About
See 73 and follow the link.
aha, I can’t play that at work, could you write a few lines for me?
how often does hitler use the phrase?
Christy has the link to the polls in the comment about Obama widening his lead. You can click on individual states. pollster.com I think.
T – if you have any other bill/events you think should be on the timeline, i’d be grateful for your info (or anyone else who has any details to add). either by comment in this thread or via email at gmail dot com. thanks!
yes, that’s why we are in such scary times.
Looseheadprop up with a new post: “Provisional Ballots, the New “Hanging Chad”?”
William F. Buckley’s son Christopher has just endorsed Obama and cited the conservative writer Kathleen (Parker?) recent criticism and subsequent avalanche of rightwing hate mail.
Former Gov. of Michigan Milliken is unendorsing McCain saying “The man I endorsed isn’t the man who’s running”.
If this keeps up all of the electoral shenanigans won’t matter.
-G
It’s in German with English subtitles. He uses the phrase “my friends” when he refers to eradicating the “Marxist Party.” Play it at home. It’s much better in the original German than it McSames wheezing English.
We also know who won in Germany by blaming the Jews. The Fannie/Freddie stuff and the Acorn stuff is just a way for the helpless to blame somebody else and incite terror. The McCain’s campaign is racist!
I think McC should put the women and children in the lifeboats ’cause it’s sinking fast.
Maybe Kathleen Parker is learning that “first they came for the communists and I did nothing because I was not a communist, then they came for the trade unionists and I did nothing because I wasn’t a trade unionist,………For evil to triumph it only takes good men or women to do nothing.
Don’t foget the “liberals” who have been demonized since St. Reagan ruled. Don’t have to demonize the socialists since they were destroyed in the 40’s and 50’s.
McCain is putting on a dress as we read.
-G
Okay, those are the main ones I’m aware of at this moment.
Focus on Credit Default Swaps. That’s the flashover point.
Because they are unregulated, no one knows what the underlying assets are or who wrote how much them. All I know is the sheer magnitude of the market $50-$60 Trillion dwarfs pretty much everything else involved in the present disaster.
The settlement of Lehman today will tell us alot about what’s going to happen when corporate defaults start hitting faster and harder in 2009.
Godwin’s Law: “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
tee hee!!
thanks. i agree about the CDS… although i’d never heard of them until this year. as hugh wrote this morning:
the magnitude of this has only these last few weeks even begun to sink in for me.
Brown shirts do not like intellectuals…they burned the books…Palin banned books. Is their a connect?
Oh. I always thought it was “As Bush’s time spent in office grows longer…”
My bad.
North Carolina Governor Mike Easley pitched the “reverse Bradley-effect” on Rachel Maddow’s show this past Wednesday:
i think that’s going on here in SE Ohio.
Exit polls may not be accurate.
Archie and The Dingbat; perfect match!
Hi Christy and Pups.
Late AND EPU’d again. Earlier today we had several errands in public places (gasp!), so I thot this bright sunny fall day would be a perfect time to inaugurate my birthday present from one of our sons – a nice dignified but totally unambiguous “Obama for President” t-shirt.
In the doc’s office, a black lady busily updating records, glanced up as I passed her desk; eyes lingered; we shared wide smiles as we knocked fists and I assured her, “I think he’s got it.” On my way back out, a grinning, “Don’t forget to vote”/”Don’t you worry!!!”
On to the grocery store. A tired and worried looking older gentleman was bagging groceries, spotted the Obama logo and started a quiet rant to me, “They shouldn’t DO that. It’s WRONG!” Before I could stammer anything out, much less guess which side he was on, he said, “That McCain’s gonna RUIN this country! He has to STOP. I would NEVER vote for that man.”
In a waiting room later, responding to comments from some elderly ladies sitting nearby, I shared some beautiful pictures of nesting and wintering Bald Eagles in a copy of “Nature Conservancy” that I happened to be reading. As the ladies and their daughters “ooh”ed and “ahhh”ed over the birds, we talked about where the eagles live and how they travel widely as young adults, what they like to eat, how you can tell the young ones by their color. Some of the pictures were from Ketchikan R. in AK, prompting further questions and exclamations at the wonder of it all. No mention of my shirt, but all present clearly noticed its logo. We didn’t talk politics per se. We didn’t have to. Its implications permeated the space we shared.
Easiest fly-by compaigning I’ve ever done.
Even moments like these, folks. Powerful stuff. Just down the pike a short hop from Strongsville OH.
Yes, THAT Strongsville. The place where the odd, 2+1, McSames plus Palin threesome sank their own campaign earlier this week. That wasn’t a campaign rally; it was closer to a Jerry Springer-ish trash-talk event. Its impression blew away in the wind, after solidifying a whole lot of opinions in and beyond Strongsville.
Not-so-Wild predictions:
People WILL turn out in droves in OH this year.
Obama in a walk.
Great, previouslyTdash! You have the subject and skills to write a diary here. Please do so. Phill Gramm was McCain’s pick as probable future Secty Treasury until The Crash and Gramm’s principle part in causing it. Write, Man, write!