M in America

 



October 16, 2008

My new best friends

For the best two months I've been recieving emails, almost daily, from my two new best friends Barack and Joe (no not the plumber). They've written to tell me about their days and the fun they've been having out on the road, even inviting me to join them sometimes. They've also asked for money, on quite a regular basis, which seems a bit presumptuous for friends I've known for only a short time.

Even so, I'm going to miss them on November 6th, when they stop writing as surely as new pen friends do after a few months. There'll be no more emails urging me to go speak to my neighbours, no more emails asking me to get in strangers cars and drive to Virginia, no more cheeky requests for cash... Hmmm maybe, I won't miss them that much...

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October 15, 2008

20 days to go

It's the final debate tonight.  Last week's was almost unwatchable - it was bitter and tense and unpleasant without there being anything new or different being said.

The emerging consensus here is that it's going to be an Obama victory, and the question seems to be whether it'll be by a hair or a landslide.  Being a veteran of British elections, which are 4-6 weeks at most, none of this 18 month/2 year nonsense, polls three and a half week out mean nothing.  Much like Toby in the West Wing I'm currently making people turn around three times and spit if they even hint at an Obama presidency (I'm looking at you).

Laurie and I spent the weekend touring all the presidential monuments in DC.  Something every president should be required to do -  if you're not doing enough to get a  *giant* monument built to you, you need to be doing much, much more.

Why it may not all be over on November 4th: Politico
Will Sarah Palin go on SNL?: MSNBC
Partying with Barack Obama

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October 7, 2008

It's getting nasty

Tonight's debate is just under an hour away and the modd ahead of this one is very different from last week's VP debate.  There's no eager anticipation of gaffs, or shocks, or hillarious incidents.  Tonight it's much more serious.  Almost as soon as the VP debate finished the Republicans want on the attack.  After Sarah Palin was praised for her stringing of words together into actual sentences, she used her new found skill to start accusing Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" and "not seeing America like you and I see America".  And she's been repeating these at campaign rallies ever since.  There's an interesting article here from the AP about the visciousness of the attacks, and the racial undertones.

A poll today puts Obama 9 points ahead, causing many of us to worry that he has peaked too early.  It's strange, but after two split down the middle elections where the balance swung the wrong way, that Obama is pulling ahead is almost more worrying than if he were behind.  We're exactly four weeks out and 2000 and 2004 warn us that a democrat poll lead at this point can decrease much more easily than it can increase.

Boy and I went to see Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater story over the weekend.  Karl Rove was Lee Atwater's protege.  He masterminded Bush Snr's defeat of Michael Dukakis in 1988.  It's both quite a revealing and chilling tale, and if they win in November it'll be because him.

Somethings to cheer you up after this rather glass half empty post:
SNL's take on the VP debate
The Daily Show on the VP debate
Latest Gallup Poll: 9 points up

 

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October 3, 2008

Last night's debate

The one problem with having a debate party is that you then have a tendency to talk over the candidates, much more interested in what the person said across the room and the consumption of peanut butter M&Ms.  However some thoughts from last night.  Bidden first - he was great, he was coherent, he was on message, he was gaff free, he wasn't condescending, he gave a spirited defense of Obama's policies and attacked McCain vigorously, whilst being ever so respectful of Sarah Palin, calling her Governor.

Palin did fine.  She was gaff free apart from the odd mispronunciation (calling Joe Bidden Senator Obidden at one point).  But, and this was telling, she refused to answer the questions she was asked.  She stuck to her talking points throughout, whether they related to the question or not.  At one point, when Joe Bidden pulled her up on not answering the question, she replied "I may not answer the questions the way you or the moderator want to hear, but I'm going to talk to the American people."  Not sure what you do with that in a debate where the main point is to answer the questions you were asked.

As evidence of just how low the expectations on Sarah Palin were going into the debate this week, a commentator on CNN this morning actually said, in all seriousness:  "She used complete sentences, she hit a home run".  Not sure what you do with that either.

Palin did enough to shore up, for now, her apparent downward pull on the McCain ticket and possibly stopped the rot of the McCain downward spiral in the polls.  She didn't convince independents or democrats to vote for her, but she probably reassured the republican base that she was what they are looking for.  Bidden proved himself a very able running mate and a positive force for Obama.

If I had to trust either of them with the nuclear codes, I'd trust Bidden and snap polls after suggested a majority of viewers felt the same. 

In UK news:
Peter Mandelson is back in the Cabinet!  Mandelson who had to resign twice before because of "errors in judgment".  David Blunkett, who has also resigned from the Cabinet twice before, welcomed Mandelson's return...  It's all part of the Labour Party's green credentials: a new department for energy and climate change and recycling cabinet ministers.

Today I am mostly:
Enjoying the sunny October weather
Eating cake
Too busy to think of a third thing due to the cake eating


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October 2, 2008

Ingrediants for a VP debate party

3 large packets of M&Ms (almond, peanut butter and peanut), 1 giant bag of pretzels, 1 box of popcorn, 3 packets of crips inluding tortialla chips, 1 bag of pita chips, carrots, peppers, celery, tomatos, humous, salsa, guacamole, two bottles of wine (rose and red), twelve bottles of beer, half a bottle of gin, some tonic, a large TV showing CNN and mix in 3 -10 Washington DC political geeks.

About to play: the VP debate drinking game
Have been playing: The Sarah Palin game
Take me out: to the ball game

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October 1, 2008

Pre-game excitment

CNN have just been playng with thier electoral map, turning red states into blue with the touch of a finger in response to today's polls.  With Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania turning blue and Virginia, Nevada and Missouri now in play it's sometimes hard not to get excited.  If the election was tomorrow, Obama would win.  If the election had been two and half weeks ago, McCain would have won, probably. 

What the candidats have for breakfast
What I saw in New York
Who I saw at the weekend

 

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September 30, 2008

35 days to go...

...And my updates have been sporadic so I hope you're getting your US election news from somewhere else.

Although the big campaign event was the debate on Friday (more of which later) there have been a few other highlights over the past two weeks:

John McCain got very confused - may have mistaken Spain for Mexico, may have thought the Spanish Prime Minister was a Mexican rebel, or may really have meant to say that if elected he wouldn't meet with his Spanish counterpart and NATO ally. 

We were all obsessed by the Sarah Palin baby name generator until the much more fun Sarah Palin quote generator came along.  In other news, she continued to struggle with answering questions in interviews, and Tina Fey continued to play her on Saturday Night Live (apparently she's a huge Hillary fan, Tina Fey that is, not Sarah Palin).

Joe Bidden, the Democrat Vice Presidential nominee, who you'll be forgiven for not being able to name, continued his gaff prone ways (think more Boris Johnson than Sarah Palin), describing in one interview how FDR had gone on TV after the Wall Street Crash to reassure the nation (the Wall Street Crash happened in 1929, Herbert Hoover was President, and TVs weren't commonplace in American homes for at least another decade).  Fortunately A-Level History is not a pre-requisite for being VP, although maybe we should look into the possibility that it should be...

The first presidential debate was on Friday.  John McCain almost didn't show, having "suspended" his campaign until the economic crisis was resolved.  A calculated move that could have shown him to be a decisive leader, but one which is now widely viewed as a rather serious miscalculation, looking like political posturing, and showing John McCain as a troublesome meddler rather than a reassuring leader.

The press called the debate a score draw, the public in the polls seem to have declared an Obama victory.  John McCain needed a decisive win over Obama, foreign policy is meant to be McCain's strength, but Obama held his own, and was stronger on the economy.  Also, McCain refused to look at Obama all the way through the debate, which really wasn't very friendly of him.

Coming up this week: Sarah Palin and Joe Bidden will square off to see who can most mangle the English language in the Vice Presidential debate

Current polls: Obama 49%, McCain 43%

And now for something completely different
Tony Blair on the Daily Show
George Clooney will cameo in the final season of ER
Heroes is back, and its very good

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September 18, 2008

Looking up?

I don't know how the "crisis on wall street" is playing out back home, but over here it has done one very useful thing for the Obama campaign: people have stopped talking about Sarah Palin, for the first time in two and a half weeks.  And the media is once again covering the candidates' position on the actual issues, even if both candidates have struggled to put out a clear message, other than: 'If I win, this won't happen again.  If the other guy wins you can be sure it will'.  Well they would say that, wouldn't they.  But after five days when Sarah Palin wasn't the top news item, Obama is once again leading in the polls, if only by a hair's breadth.

Other interesting things:
John McCain's campaign has received at least $11.4m from the "struggling investment sector", Obama's at least $8.9m.
The campaigns are increasingly focusing their campaign advertising on women, by placing more ads during Oprah than any other show (bar the news).
Sarah Palin's personal email account, which she was rather naughtily using to conduct official business, apparently, has been hacked


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September 16, 2008

News vacuum

With most of the attention focused on Wall Street and the dramatic events over the weekend, there's little time to follow the echo chamber that is the campaign race at the moment.  Tina Fey's turn as Sarah Palin on Saturday night was still making the news last night, and it looks like the next big news won't be until the first debate between Obama and McCain next week.  Today there are scattered campaign stories, with no consensus on what's important.  So as, much like John McCain, I don't understand the economy as well as I should, have these amusing bon mots instead:

1.  Bands try to stop the Republicans using their music
2.  Sarah Palin may or may not have been to Iraq as previously claimed
3.  Much like Al Gore invented the internet, John McCain apparently invented the BlackBerry


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September 14, 2008

This week...

Nothing happened, absolutely nothing.  Well that's not quite true.  Sarah Palin continued to use her 'thanks but no thanks on the bridge to nowehere' and 'put the plane on ebay' stories in her stump speech, days after the media showed without doubt that these stories really weren't, you know, accurate.  And unlike the British media, who would frankly have destoryed her by this point,  the American news's main story on Tuesday was that she was continuing to use these stories, but by Wednesday they were carrying the same stump speech, with the same 'inaccuracies' live for at least the second day in a row...

The big news on Wednesday was that Obama had called Sarah Palin a pig.  Although he hadn't, not at all, not in anyway.  Apparently over here there's a fairly common expression that 'you can put a lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig', to describe John McCain's economic plan but because he used the magic word 'lipstick' he was clearly calling Sarah Palin a pig, obviously.

Elsewhere the Republican campaign continued to spread other stories that weren't, you know, accurate.  Prompting the media to ask, have the campaigns 'lied too much' this year. I wonder when they crossed the line from an acceptable amount of lying to an unacceptable point of lying? 

In other news Sarah Palin gave her first interview to the press, two weeks after being put on the presidential ticket and a week after the Republican's claimed that she wouldn't be doing interviews.  General consensus - she did ok, meh.  But she did give this rather wonderful answer to way she was contnuing to talk about 'the bridge to no where' and the 'plane on ebay' in her stump speech.


Watch: Tina Fey as Sarah Palin
Obama on David Letterman
The Daily Show, just because

 

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