A colleague of mine, a student of politics, said, that Obama would win clearly vs. McCain when they both run for the presidentship. I am not so sure, especcially because I think, they won't vote for a (more or less) coulored man. And McCain is a war hero (Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart) - what do you think?

i think he is right because McCain is very "democratic" for a man out of the Republican party. and the republicans also are tired of the war in iraque that McCain doesnt want to bring to an end as soon as Obama.
However many republicans say if they will have to make a choice between "two democrats" they will vot for the candidate of the democratic party. Thats what they said on NBC during the super tuesday commentation.

Lets see will be interesting anyway.

Manassee

Let's not quite write off Hillary Clinton yet. The super-delegates will probably overrule the people and nominate her even if Obama gets more votes.

But if it's Obama against McCain, then it will be interesting to see what American's value more. Charisma or experience. While Obama is a very good speaker and can energize people, he is seen as not very knowledgable about the issues. McCain is as boring as a door knob, but is very intelligent and knows how to find good solutions. Being that McCain is a moderate (pro-environment, pro-choice, and pro-civil liberties), he will win. Obama's strong religious conviction might win some ultra-conservatives, but that and the black vote is not enough.

I actually caught an interview of Republican strategists who were hoping that Obama would be nominated because Mexicans won't vote for a black even if he is a Democrat. That's how Hillary won every state so far with a large Mexican population.

Well now, in every poll so far Obama has beaten McCain. McCain can beat Hillary as Hillary is a really polarizing figure. She brings out the protest votes. She unites the Republicans, as they would rather have John McCain (even though many Republicans despise him) than Hillary in the White House. Independent voters (or Centrist voters as we call them in every other country) also would rather go for a "moderate" like John McCain than someone as partisan as Hillary Clinton. However in an Obama, McCain race, the independents tend to side with Obama, and he doesn't bring out the protest votes that Hillary does. All Democrats are also happy with Obama so none of them will stay at home. Obama is not as unknowledgable or as unexperienced as you might think. He has been a Senator for longer than Hillary, as he was first elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1997 (Hillary has been a Senator since 2000). Since then he has been a Senator. In his two short years as a US Senator he has also Sponsored or Co-Sponsored more than 2160 bills and pieces of legislation, many of them Bi-Partisan. To get Bi-Partisan bills passed, you really have to know your stuff! They have to have broad appeal and be acceptable to both sides, especially on issues like immigration. He very obviously has huge ammounts of issue knowledge.
McCain is also not Pro-Choice, he is very much Pro-Life, just not as vehemently Pro-Life as some other Republicans.

As far as records, I'm not sure where you're getting data from. According to govtrack.us: Barack Obama missed 185 of 1098 votes (17%) since Jan 6, 2005 (Extremely Poor relative to peers). Obama has sponsored 129 bills since Jan 4, 2005, of which 120 haven't made it out of committee (Poor) and 1 were successfully enacted (Average, relative to peers). Obama has co-sponsored 545 bills during the same time period (Average, relative to peers).

His record in the Illinois Senate is worse. There he commonly said he hit the wrong button when voting to appease both sides of controversial issues and had one of the highest abstention/not-present rates.

But what troubles me more than anything is that Ann Coulter endorsed him. For those that don't know she is one of the most radical conservatives in America who looks like this: She says thing like "we should invade Islamic countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." and "Congress could pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic countries leave." So when I see Coulter supporting him, I'm worried that Obama is just as much as a Christian fundamentalist as Bush.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a McCain supporter, and Hillary is no better. I'm a moderate centrist who has a problem with all the hype over Obama and I encourage people to look through his utopian propaganda and investigate deeper into who he is. I've found quite troubling things about him after doing that.

This is what it feels like to vote in America:

Oh well I can understand you. In representative democracies persons get elected, not contents. See our Miss Merkel - not at one single day in all the decades of her political career she ever uttered only one single political idea - besides of conservating the bad status quo! It seems to be the formula for winning elections: never be concrete and only represent an attitude. Also she always lets the ministers make suggestions or enforce political aims, and never comments on that.

"We are the middle, and where the middle is, are we."

With this sentence she obviously tried to impress intellectual electors

But what do I expect? She smiled all over her face when Bush (!) called her intelligent. That seemed to be a great honour for her

This post was last modified: 15.02.2008 22:53 by Malone.

I got my figures form Fantasy Congress.com and his Wikipedia Article. Also missing 17% of votes, that's an 83% attendance rate which I know as a matter of fact is actually very good, and most of those missed would have been due to campaigning. He has a very undeserved reputation as not being detailed in his policy positions, but he lays out policy at least as specifically as Hillary, and he was a Univertsity of Chicago Professor of Constitutional Law, so he obviously has a HUGE issue knowledge. It's just because he delivers great speeches, and great speeches aren't ones where you tell every little nitty-gritty policy detail (that's what debates are for). Great speeches are broadstroke, inspirational, and give goals and dreams not numbers. I would also take the Ann Coulter "endorsement" with a truck-load of salt. First off, I saw that she actually said she would rather vote for Hillary than John McCain, which was what Rush Limbaugh said as well, Coulter said Hillary was more conservative than McCain. You shouldn't worry about him being a religious conservative either. He has Moderate and Liberal stances on all social issues (well, moderate and liberal in the American sense). To run for US President you have to be religious, or at least make people think you are. That's just the way it is over there, people don't like Atheists and they don't like voting for them. They want people who share their Morals and Values and that means they want people who are religious. You could get nowhere in Washington if you weren't a regular Church-goer and it also helps for a Democrat to be very religious as it can help their standings with Republicans and also help the resurgence of the religious left to counter-act the strangle hold that those Bible-Bashing, Evangelical, Right-Wing, Nutjobs have in your Government.

Owning the purple Heart didn't help John Kerry

Race isn't that important of a factor, otherwise Obama wouldn't have made it as far as he did. I personally am voting for Obama, and I expect him to win (I'm a republican too).

Didn't Kerry have three purple hearts? :L