Americans See McCain as Negative Candidate
From Ambinder who reports on a CBS/NYT poll asking registered voters how they perceive the candidate spending their campaign time:
Meaning that McCain has been undermining his own pledges to run a positive and respectful campaign. The obvious question, though, is what do voters buy?
Also, Steve Benen looks at the last WP Poll internals and finds some interesting numbers:
As to which candidate is more honest and trustworthy — Obama 47% to McCain 36% As Steve notes, this is a complete reversal on these numbers (plus some gain for Obama) since the last poll that asked this.
As to who would do more to bring change to Washington — Obama 58% to McCain 33%
As to who better understands the economic problems people in this country are having — Obama 57% to McCain 33%
At to who would be the stronger leader — Obama 47% to McCain 46%. McCain used to own this question and Obama is narrowing the gap considerably.
Also an interesting bit of news from these internals — percent of voters for whom the race of the candidate is a very important factor has gone down from 23% in June to 16% now.
What this shows me is the underlying strength of the Obama campaign — according to this poll at least, he seems to have survived the non-stop attacks by the McCain camp and those attacks have quite damaged the Straight Talk Express. But it seems that letting McCain unwittingly reveal himself plus educating voters on McCain’s track record is making some headway. You could see alot of this in last night’s debate. Obama at the podium in a position of real strength, and McCain sneering, not looking at his opponent and taking every opportunity to attack Obama even with the lies that have already been debunked.
Tags: 2008 Presidential, John McCain
Yep. Opinions on the debate are being written now. The emerging narrative is that Obama won, and that he’s more likeable. McCain really hurt himself with his refusal to look Obama in the eye.
The funniest critique, on TPM, is that McCain is the submissive monkey. I think that his refusal to look at Obama is related to his anger problem. I figure that if he looked at Obama he was liable to lose his temper and that’s why he didn’t. Obama was clearly getting to him during parts of the debate.
Eugene Robinson mentioned after the debate last night that McCain has a history of taking things very personally…..
It’s difficult for him to keep his cool when he sees folks who disagree with him as a personal threat….
how presidential….
Hmmm, and then you have someone like Obama, who sees nothing wrong with just outright threatening those who disagree with him.
link?
How does mike w.’s comment help McCain? McCain is scared of Obama?
You might have to actually do some reading Pandora, but here are plenty of links to this story.
http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2008/09/25/obama-silencing-voice-of-gun-owners/
http://reason.com/news/show/128973.html
http://www.thebitchgirls.us/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/obama.pdf
http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/archives2/024910.php
Of course Obama has no standing to be threatening any media outlets in order to silence speech, even if the ad in question was untrue, which it’s not.
Here’s the letter from Obama’s legal counsel.
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM111_080925_obama_smith.html
The material contained in the ad is true, despite Obama and WaPo’s attempts to blantantly lie about it.
http://volokh.com/posts/1222201928.shtml
And then there’s this kind of thuggery going on in Obamas’ campaign. This is the kind of thing folks here and in the MSM would be going apeshit about if Bush or McCain were doing it.
http://www.kmov.com/video/index.html?nvid=285793&shu=1
Gee, standing up against smears is now thuggery.
Poor little victims.
btw – volokh, or whatever that name is, is not a legit source. Why don’t you just quote yourself? It would hold just as much credence.
Von – It helps to actually READ rather than dismiss things out of hand. And tell me again how truthful criticism counts as “smears?”
Oh, and even if they were smears that STILL wouldn’t justify the kind of thuggish censorship Obama is pushing.
For example Von, Obama says that this claim from the NRA is a lie.
Obama wants to “Mandate a Government-Issued License to Purchase a Firearm” – They base this on a Jan 15, 2008 interview where Obama is asked whether he supports licensing & registration and he replies,
“I don’t think we can get that done.”
Sorry but in the real world that answer implies support for licensing & registration. All he’s saying is he would if he could.