Just saw this article on CNN.com:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/29/poll.wednesday/index.html
Look towards the end of the article - it shows that Nader is polling at 4% in Missouri! How in the hell is that possible? If Nader costs Obama this state, I'm moving. What can we do to switch these voters.
So far I've raised $1,500 for the Obama campaign via my "South Side for Obama" personal fundraising page, which includes all of the proceeds raised from the sales of more than 200 SS4O T-shirts. Thanks to everyone that bought one, and if you'd still like to donate, please click here!
Cheers,kopper
According to a poll taken over the weekend by Fox News and Rasmussen, Sen. Obama has now taken the lead in Missouri by 3% after trailing Sen. McCain for months.
Missouri 10/5, 1,000 LV 3% Obama 50, McCain 47, Barr 1, Nader 1, McKinney 0
CNN also shows Obama in the lead by 1% from a poll taken two days earlier. It will be interesting to see if there is impact from the debate last night and how this story will play out in Missouri - the only state to pick the president in every election for the past 80 years.
New "South Side for Obama" T-shirts will be available soon! Pre-orders yours today... Copy/paste this URL into your browser:
http://www.myspace.com/southside4obama
Just $12 plus $5 S/H. Sizes available: S, M, L, and XL. Visit the Myspace page above (add us while you're there!) and use the convenient PayPal button. You don't have to live in South St. Louis to wear one, but it wouldn't hurt! Thanks, and please spread the word...
According to a very interesting and well researched article by Seth Colter Walls the short answer is YES. Polling does not sample recently registered voters and typically the reach out to equal numbers of democrats and republicans causing data to be skewed because there are about eleven million more registered democrats in the United States.
Looks like Howard Dean is speaking at SLU on Sunday for anyone interested - good, we need to get the young people out voting!
http://media.www.unewsonline.com/media/storage/paper953/news/2008/09/04/News/Democratic.Leader.Brings.Campaign.To.Campus-3416024.shtml?reffeature=textemailedition
Between hurricanes in the gulf and Palin’s constant stream of new disclosures, most have missed that for the first time 50% of voters polled by Gallup are now saying they will vote for Obama.
PRINCETON, NJ — Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 30 through Sept. 1, finds Barack Obama leading the race for president with his highest share of support to date. Fully half of national registered voters now favor Obama for president, while 42% back John McCain.
It will be interesting to watch the impact of the GOP convention and all of the Palin news over the next few days to see if the positive trend for Obama is reversed. Clearly the initial Palin impact is not positive for the McCain ticket.
So after the USA has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on Iraq reconstruction and security, the Iraqi government just signed it's first oil deal with a foreign oil company - a Chinese company.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/08/30/iraq.china.oil.deal/index.html
Glad to see that the American taxpayers have funded the ability for the Chinese to begin trading with the Iraqis. Wonder when Americans might see some of that oil directed our way....
So I just volunteered to be the Team Leader for the Meramec township. I don't really know what that means, but there's a training session on Sunday, so I guess I'll find out. Anyone else out there who's doing a similar job, let me know how it's going - what's working for you, what's not, etc. I'm looking for any ideas I can get.
Hey everyone,
I'm the new campaign Field Organizer for Wards 12, 13, 14, 16, 23 and 24 in St. Louis City. Please contact me to get involved in the campaign!!
Linden
LWeiswerda@mocampaignforchange.org
The press is making much of the primary in Pennsylvania. But they are not telling us the whole truth. NPR reported today that over 130,000 Republicans crossed over to vote in the Democratic primary. Hmmmm. It has long been known that the Republicans consider Mrs. Clinton more beatable than Barack Obama. The polls show that there is good reason to believe this. Most polls show that Barack Obama can beat John McCain, but Hillary Clinton cannot. So how many of these cross-over saboteurs do you think voted for Mrs. Clinton? All of them!
With 98% of the Pennsylvania vote tallied at the time of this writing, Clinton had amassed 1,220,061 votes to Obama’s 1,006,264. But if we take away the Republican ninja vote, the picture changes dramatically. Clinton is left with 1,090,061 and the gap closes from 55% versus 45% to 52% versus 48%. There is no 10% win for Mrs. Clinton to be found anywhere in the state of Pennsylvania.
Will the press notice this? Probably not. This battle between Democratic titans sells newspapers and they surely do not want it to end. Furthermore, several major media organizations, especially Reuters, has a decided bias in favor of Mrs. Clinton and are putting her astonishing 6 delegate gain in Pennsylvania in the light of the second coming. But the fact of the matter is that the real outcome in Pennsylvania shows that Barack Obama closed a 12% lead down to just 4%. What was Clinton’s argument for staying in the race again?
It is important that Obamanites get the word out on the street about this statistical trickery. Indiana is next and everyone in this state needs to figure this out. The wave is still growing and we have two more favorable primaries coming up.
The work got done in Pennsylvania despite what the Billary machine would have everyone believe.
Despite the rising clamor for her to drop out of the race and serve the interest of her party, her constituents and the nation, Mrs. Clinton says she will ride it out. While her tenacity is commendable, possibly, her judgment certainly is not.
Even her own staff concedes that she has less than a 10% chance of obtaining the nomination and the national polls are showing her slipping off into statistical oblivion. As the great bus of change in America pulls away from the station, Mrs. Clinton is not on it. As her numbers erode, the talk of a "dream team" ticket begins to evaporate as she becomes more burden than bounty.
So what does she have in mind? Well, given that she is a Clinton, most likely it is herself. This is her one and only shot at the title and she is losing it, largely because she chose to punch below the belt and demonstrate what an ordinary politician she is in such an extraordinary time.
Or perhaps she feels that she can still wine, dine and pressure superdelegates to her side. This worked early on when she was considered a sure thing, but a very large number of superdelegates remain deeply committed to being uncommitted. Why? Well, that is what superdelegates do. Superdelegates are party leaders, congressmen and women, people in high places who need to bring home the bacon to their constituents. Nothing hampers that effort quite so much as backing the wrong candidate in a primary.
Many of those superdelegates who jumped to support Mrs. Clinton in January and February thought she had the nomination locked and are now sweating bullets of doubt that they jumped too soon. Politics is always a gamble, you know. Timing is everything. If you come in at the end, you may have supported the winner, but not when it was essential and you are not likely to be seated as close to the head of the table as someone who was in the fight from the first blow. Opportunists are easy to spot. They look like uncommitted superdelegates.
The Clinton strategy clearly revolves around the belief that even though Mr. Obama is likely to walk into the convention with the most earned delegates, the Bilary machine can work the backroom and pull out a nomination by cutting deals with the undecided. This is no secret. And it is no secret that it won't work. Half the party will abandon her and vote for McCain or not vote at all. She will be slaughtered in the biggest public spanking since her husband was impeached. But it is all ye need to know.
What kind of candidate puts her career before the interest of the people? Were all those speeches about service complete horsehockey? What kind of candidate hangs her hopes on backroom deals and greasy shadow-politics? Dick Cheney, I suppose. He is all about that and more. But isn’t that the very thing that has caused the ground swell of opposition to the current administration? Isn’t that the very thing that is has millions of first-time voters on the streets taking a stand to take back our government?
What will it take for her to get it? Must she divide this potentially massive majority and hand the election over to the party that has killed our children, stolen our money and bugged our telephones?
A woman who puts her ambition before the needs of her people proves her own unworthiness to lead - de facto. Driving the movement for change toward sharp division for a desperate chance to rig a nomination carves this unworthiness in stone. This act, alone, is all ye need to know.
History has forgotten how close the election of John F. Kennedy was. We remember him as a landslide, but he made it with only 120,000 votes out of 70 million. We forget that in his time, Martin Luther King was not the revered hero of black and white school children alike. He was not on a postage stamp then, but rather was a regular feature of the nightly news and seen by many as a trouble maker. Like all great leaders who stand in the face of the great and common evil of complacency and cynicism, Barack Obama faces an even more daunting challenge – he not only must rouse a nation that has been drunk on its own selfish affluenza, he has to compete with a false prophet.
John Kennedy won the 1960 presidential election by a mere .2% of the vote. He could have easily lost. Martin Luther King did not become the hero that he is today until after he was shot to death. What history tells us in this is that cultural messiahs always have an up-hill battle, rarely succeed and only make a difference when that extra .2% of the population get out of their BarcaLoungers and take a stand. The resurrecton of a this nation has always hung on the participation of the last few who choose to get off the fence.
These types of heroes are always around us and nearly always ground into paste by those invested in the status quo. David rarely beats Goliath and we only remember these people on the rare occasion that they win. We don’t remember any of the 1.2 million Tibetans, the majority of which were Buddhist clergy, who have already died taking a stand against China. We remember the Dalai Lama who survived and proceeded to love his enemies in spite of their efforts to kill him. We don’t remember the names of the many people who fought to stop the Vietnam War. But we remember the four who died at Kent State. Their movement was not completely popular at the time. It was resisted by the majority.
It is now or never for America. This is the most pivotal moment in the history of our nation since World War II. This moment will determine what type of nation we will have for the next fifty years at least. The question remains to be answered: will America rise to the occasion or will it let this moment pass and continue it descent into the pit of its own corruption, cynicism and divisiveness. Are we at the end of the day going to say “It was difficult, but we prevailed” or “I could have been a contender”?
Not every generation deserves a John F. Kennedy or a Martin Luther King or a Barack Obama. These gifts of history are only bestowed upon those who render themselves worthy by winning the fight. It is now or never.
There has been much debate about who would make the best President in the next 4 to 8 years. Some say McCain would be good. Some say Hillary Clinton would be the best. Some say Barack is the right choice. Would McCain make a good President? Well, if you want the same war in Iraq, the same tax cuts for the wealthy, the same money for Medicare and Medicaid being used to pay for the cost of the war…well, then, yes, McCain would make a good President. Then there’s Hillary. Would she make a good President? Most probably. When the Clinton Administration was in office, our economy was better than it has been in my lifetime. Good decisions were made, and the people were happy. Did President Clinton make a mistake by lying about the sex scandal? Sure. Everybody does makes mistakes, though. Did it affect his ability as President? Not really. He still made good decisions that were good for our nation. Has Hillary learned from her husband? Most assuredly. Would she make good decisions…well for the most part, I’d have to say yes. So would I vote for Hillary? I sure would…..EXCEPT that something better has come along. It’s not that Hillary would be a bad President. But Barack Obama would be an even better President than Hillary. Barack is a man with a love for his country, focusing on the needs and wants of the people, and he has come in to play. He is fighting from the bottom up. He doesn’t have a family with a lot of money. He has had to raise money for his campaign. He can’t contribute millions of dollars out of his own pocket to support his campaign. He doesn’t have the advantage of growing up in the political eye. His father was not a former President or Governor. His spouse was not a former President or Governor. But he does know what it means to need help and have no place to get it. He does know what it means to struggle to pay bills, to struggle for an education, to be raised in a single parent home. He knows those struggles. He understands the needs of the lower income, less privileged populace. He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He didn’t inherit large amounts of money from his father. So this election is not about Hillary being a BAD choice. It’s about Barack being a BETTER choice. It’s not about loyalty. Sure, the Clinton Administration did a lot for our country. Do we owe them gratitude for that? Sure we do! But, Barack will do more. Why do I say that? Because he has been THROUGH more! He knows what it’s like. We can support Hillary in her choices and in her decisions, but we shouldn’t support her for President based on her husband’s accomplishments. It’s not that she’s bad, or that choosing her would be bad for us. It would most certainly be better than what we’ve had for the past 8 years. And by choosing Barack, we are NOT betraying her. We are not negating what has been done for us before. We are simply making a BETTER choice. We are merely choosing what’s best for the country. It’s not about loyalty to anything or anyone EXCEPT our country. We owe nothing less than to make a decision based on those best choices for our future. It’s not about loyalty of the past. It’s about the obligation to provide what’s best for the future.
So, not all Obama supporters are “Hillary Haters.” Quite the contrary. Many of us respect what has been done for us in the past. We would have voted for her, if Barack hadn’t come along. But he did come along. And now, we are making a BETTER choice; something new; something different; something better. The nation is tired of the mud-slinging, the lies, and the half truths of campaigns of the past. We don’t want to hear the confusion of Babylon. We want open, honest truth. We don’t care what other people say or do. Their comments are irrelevant. We want to know what the Presidential Candidate will do, has done, and is doing!
The media has made huge obstacles to both Democratic candidates by bringing up what others have said. Those things do NOT matter! They are NOT the voice of the Candidate! I don’t care what John Doe in Timbuktu says now or has said in the past. I want to hear what’s coming out of the Candidate’s mouth! John Doe’s comments are nothing but self aggrandizement for attention. All I want to hear is what my Candidate has done, is doing, and is going to do for me! Anyone can make a statement that is out of line. The point is not what someone else says. The point is what the Candidate is saying. That’s all we need to know. That’s all we need the media to focus on.
Obama is saying the things I want to hear. He is doing the things I want done. He promises to do things that have never been done before. And it’s about time! The nation has waited long enough. Barack is our first hope for the future since I was a child. He is going to change things. How do I know? Because he already has! He IS different. And that’s what we need!
