<p>LAX-Actually, the quote was not from last night but from what he said months ago. His pledge was to go with public financing, but it was qualified by the agreement with the Republican nominee. I don’t think you’ll find anywhere that he said he go with public finance regardless of what his opponent chooses to do, Tim Russert’s asertion notwithstanding. </p>
<p>LAX- the actual paper, Midwest Democracy Network, that Russert was holding up where Obama “checked the box YES” said the following:</p>
<p>Question I-B:
“If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election competition, will you participate in the Presidential Public Finance system?”</p>
<p>^^^ That’s right and McCain has already said that he would forgo private funding, but now Obama is trying to weasel-word his way around the fact that he had made this commitment.</p>
<p>“the few commentaries and reports I’ve read about make me wonder if some of Hillary’s attacks (especially the Farrakhan one) led people to react by making a donation toward Obama.”</p>
<p>I donated again after the debate because I was happy with the way Obama calmly answered tough questions including on Farrakhan and how he responded with humor to Hillary’s satire about his message of hope. His responses helped me continue to believe that he can unify our country.</p>
<p>“We are one nation. We are one people from coast to coast from sea to shining sea. Yes we can.”</p>
<p>Actually, McCain is now trying to get out of his commitment- which actually provided him with a loan to bolster his campaign as well as enabling him to get on the Ohio ballot (when his campaign was broke)without having to go through the regular procedures of getting the hundreds of signatures that the other candidates had to obtain at considerable time and expense. He profited from signing on to this agreement, got his loan collateral and his name on all states ballots, but now wants out. </p>
<p>I say Obama should wait until the primary is over and he knows whether or not he is a candidate before he sits down with his opponent (whom we all assume is McCain, but who knows, maybe Romney will resurface…one can hope) and agrees to anything. Obama’s pledge was conditional to his general election opponent’s agreement. The more people try to make this out as some big going back on his word issue, the more slimy McCain will look as they discover the details of his arrangement.</p>
<p>ASAP - you are confusing two different things. The FEC differentiates the two seasons of politics. McCain is not trying to get out of his commitment to use public funding for the general election. This is the “season” that Obama had pledged to use public money and McCain is also planning to use federal funds for it.</p>
<p>Actually, McCain is now trying to get out of his (primary) commitment- which actually provided him with a loan to bolster his campaign as well as enabling him to get on the Ohio ballot (when his campaign was broke)without having to go through the regular procedures of getting the hundreds of signatures that the other candidates had to obtain at considerable time and expense. He profited from signing on to this agreement, got his loan collateral and his name on all states ballots, but now wants out. </p>
<p>I say Obama should wait until the primary is over and he knows whether or not he is a candidate before he sits down with his opponent (in the general) whom we all assume is McCain, but who knows, maybe Romney will resurface…one can hope-and agrees to anything. Obama’s pledge was conditional to his general election opponent’s agreement. The more people try to make this out as some big going back on his word issue, the more slimy McCain will look as they discover the details of his own arrangement (during the primary).</p>
<p>Barrons, it all depends on what source you use (or in your case, how well you do not understand what a difference within the ‘margin of error’ means in statistics :)). </p>
<p>TheStar.com | USElection | Obama would defeat McCain: Poll</p>
<p>Obama would defeat McCain: Poll
VIDEO: McCain embraces conservative causes Email story
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Feb 12, 2008 04:30 AM
WASHINGTON–Democrat Barack Obama would narrowly defeat Republican John McCain if they were matched today in the presidential election, while McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton are running about even, according to a new survey.</p>
<p>Obama outpaces Clinton against McCain among men, minorities and moderates in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released yesterday. And she does no better than Obama when pitted against McCain among two groups that have supported her in primaries so far: women and whites.</p>
<p>Recent primaries and Mitt Romney’s departure from the Republican race have made McCain the heavy favourite to win the GOP nomination. Democrats Clinton and Obama are locked in a battle likely to last weeks or months.</p>
<p>Against McCain in a general election matchup, she gets 46 per cent to his 45 per cent, a tie, according to the poll, while Obama edges McCain 48 per cent to 42.</p>
<p>The Feb. 7-10 poll of 1,029 adults included 520 Democrats and 357 Republicans. Its overall margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.</p>
<p>I feel the opposite. If he was stupid enough to “unilaterally disarm” and participate in the public financing system while not ensuring that his opponent did the same, I’d doubt a little bit his sense to be commander-in-chief or negotiating agreements with other countries. One can call those lawyerly weasel words; to me, they represent good sense. His public statements have referred to working within a bilaterally agreed upon system of restraint, not a unilateral, naive laying down of arms.</p>
<p>As I see it, the ball is in McCain’s court on this one. First, he can come clean about the fact that he has weaseled around the FEC regulations using public funds to secure a private line of credit. He is after all running on the platform of his past – of supposed clean government and limiting private access to the political system. Then he can forthrightly say he’ll agree for the general campaign to whatever reasonable spending limits/public financing he and Obama can agree on so long as he has assurances they are enforceable agreements.</p>
<p>The folks complaining about Obama’s “going back on a promise” – itself a pundit-created fiction – don’t really care about the public vs. private financing system principles at all. All they are trying to do is tear down Obama. It’s weak, especially when McCain is so pathetically vulnerable on the issue.</p>
<p>Folks, in this campaign, let’s hope we can move beyond some of this claptrap to also discuss:</p>
<p>1) A war that is bankrupting our country, killing our soldiers, for little gain in terms of security for the US.
2) An economy faltering because both the service and manufacturing sectors are being/have been hollowed out and our middle class is disappearing.
3) A healthcare system with suboptimal performance that costs a lot of money and covers few.
etc.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Obama’s promise was about the general campaign and specifically says so. McCain used the public financing system to bolster his private fundraising for his nomination campaign. He may want to hold Obama to public fundraising because he himself has made a strategic/ethical goof. He may have unwittingly unilaterally disarmed for the primary campaign. Not Obama’s problem. Not Obama’s lapse of ethics or sense: McCain’s.</p>
<p>Actually this whole “public financing” broohaha is classic Rovian tactics. McCain is incredibly vulnerable from both ethical and strategic standpoints. He did something really stupid. So, probably when his campaign realized it, what they started to do was try to deflect attention by raising Obama’s supposed broken promises on the issue. And people like FF dutifully carry water for his party’s spinmeister’s on this kind of thing. </p>
<p>Look how brilliant Rove was in a different forum: Bush/Cheney were respectively a son of privilege style draft dodger and a “I had different priorities at the time” graduate school-based draft dodger in the Vietnam War. But who got swift-boated and whose patriotism was called into question: John Kerry who volunteered to go to Vietnam.</p>
<p>There are 3 million widows, 5.5 million orphans, 2.4 million internally displaced people, and 60% unemployment in Iraq; 2.2 million people ethnically cleansed to surrounding nations, including more than a quarter of them by General Betrayus in the last 8 months. You want a future breeding ground for terrorists? Under Betrayus’ watchful eye, tens of millions of dollars in U.S. weapons “went missing”, while Halliburton cleaned up. </p>
<p>What does Obama propose? $2 billion. Pocket change. What does Hillary propose? A donors’ meeting (and not of her donors, either :rolleyes:). What does McCain propose? 100-year War. </p>
<p>Who gives a rats-patooey about how they finance their campaigns?</p>
<p>I don’t owe widows anything, I don’t owe orphans anything, and I sure as hell don’t owe the Iraqi people anything :). The only people I owe anything to are myself and those who are close to me, and that’s who I look out for. I guess that’s why I’m a conservative…</p>
<p>I’m sure they feel the same thing about you when they turn U.S. weapons (obtained through General Betrayus’ malfeasance) upon American soldiers. </p>
<p>(I seem to remember it was called “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. :rolleyes:)</p>
<p>“What does Obama propose? $2 billion. Pocket change. What does Hillary propose? A donors’ meeting (and not of her donors, either ). What does McCain propose? 100-year War.”</p>
<p>I think we will be in perpetual war. McCain is just honest.</p>
<p>LaxAttack – Maybe that is the very reason why the Democrats are overwhelming the Republicans in turn-out…many places two to one. It could also be why the Democrats are signing up new voters at an amazing rate of speed. The whole 'I got mine…who cares about you" mentality is the conservative mindset in a nutshell. And, look around, the Bush Administration has killed conservativism. They had everything they needed to make it work (3 branches and a compliant media) and it failed. Say goodbye…we shall not see their like again (Good!)</p>
<p>No, it’s I earned mine, go earn yours. In a nutshell. And I do understand margin of error and prefer to be on the plus side of it than the negative.</p>
<p>barrons says: “McCain now leads either Dem. Who’d have thunk it?”</p>
<p>gee some us READ the article and your headline, well, is a bit not quite accurate is it</p>
<p>“Just 35 percent of U.S. voters approve of the job Bush is doing as president, with only 16 percent strongly approving; 46 percent say they disapprove strongly. Three-fifths of voters say the situation in Iraq wasn’t worth going to war over.”</p>