Economy Hurting McCain Nationally

[Eyelids]

538.com:

So I've spent the past couple of days at meetings of various kinds in New York, and there was certainly a sense of impeding doom among many Democrats here. The cute analogy that I've come up with are that Democrats are like Cubs fans -- they assume that something will go wrong until proven otherwise.

With that said, people have become decidely more optimistic in the past 24-48 hours as the economy has returned to the center of the national debate. Obama's never going to be a Clintonesque natural out there on the stump in responding to the economy -- he might have to repeat a message three times where with Clinton it would have sunken in the first one.

But McCain seems to be struggling to come up with anything coherent to say about the issue, and his "fundamentals of our economy are strong" statement was a capital-G gaffe. When I saw McCain and Palin give successive speeches on MSNBC on Monday morning, and McCain repeated his "fundmentals" line and then Palin repeated her "thanks, but no thanks" line on the Bridge to Nowhere, I got the sense that maybe Steve Schmidt isn't quite the messaging genius that he's been made out to be.

Gallup:

Keep in mind this works on a 3 day rolling average, meaning 1/3 of the participants were polled on Sunday before the big losses on Monday and today.



Might be thinking "big deal, it's all about the electoral college", but what we saw after McCain's convention bounce might help us model an impending bump in Obama's state polling numbers. Remember, Obama still led many electoral vote projections well after McCain had taken the lead nationally. A little bit after that however the state polls started swinging decidedly to McCain. If Obama takes leads nationally (which by all indications from the market today and the absence of Sunday's #'s from the tracking polls indicates) are we to expect a tightening of the race in Ohio to maybe a tie? Maybe Obama will pull clearly ahead in Virginia? Needless to say, McCain's best bet in getting voters, Sarah Palin, is all but absent from the news cycle because of the economy where McCain is admittedly weak.

Just remember how much stock some of you have been placing in polls lately, and get ready for them to start shifting over the course of the next week.

[ralph wiggum]

...So I've spent the past couple of days at meetings of various kinds in New York...

Obviously a bouncy story by the author. :D

[Eyelids]

Oh god please dont let it turn into one of those threads...

[LibraryLady]

Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs.

A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama.

Now remember, he's only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No. 2 spot ahead of John Kerry — decades in the Senate — and Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people and, as it turns out, some people who couldn't afford them.

Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington Democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions. The Clinton administration's White House Budget Director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected $50 million. Jamie Gorelick — Clinton Justice Department official — worked for Fannie and took home $26 million. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama's VP search committee, has hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae CEO job.

Obama looks dirty

[LogansPapa]

The economy has already let the pressure out of the Palin Gas Bag. This is why she refuses to hold press conferences.

Like a huge Spanish galleon of old, bristling with canon, McCain can’t turn fast enough and will be picked apart on this single subject, unless GWB can engineer a revitalisation of "The Fear Button", resurrecting OBL's threat in the next 54 days.

Obama may look dirty, but McCain looks like GWB the day Katrina hit New Orleans.

[LibraryLady]

You are a total ass on Katrina so I doubt you know what you are talking about on this either.

[LogansPapa]

You are a total ass on Katrina so I doubt you know what you are talking about on this either.

Hey - fair or not, the people blamed him for the shit that happened afterward, and saw GWB as "out of touch."

They will see McCain’s impotence on economics as the same thing. This isn't hurting just the Wall Streeters this time - it's hurting everyone, conscious of it or not.

[LibraryLady]

In 2005, Republican Mike Oxley, then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, brought up a reform bill (H.R. 1461), and Fannie and Freddie's lobbyists set out to weaken it. The bill was rendered so toothless that Card called Oxley the night before markup and promised to oppose it. Oxley pulled the bill instead.

During this period, Sen. Richard Shelby led a small group of legislators favoring reform, including fellow Republican Sens. John Sununu, Chuck Hagel and Elizabeth Dole. Meanwhile, Dodd -- who along with Democratic Sens. John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the top four recipients of Fannie and Freddie campaign contributions from 1988 to 2008 -- actively opposed such measures and further weakened existing regulation.

The story is certainly complicated, but much of the evidence suggested that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who opposed mortgage lending reforms and additional regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their opposition was linked directly to their support for "affordable housing" (a prominent civil rights/racial issue) and the lobbying dollars that they recieved from Fannie and Freddie. Money definitely talked, and it was Democrats who were listening.

Fannie Mae - whose fault is it anyway?

http://mikesnoise.typepad.com/noisep...-fault-is.html

[Eyelids]

LibraryLady, you aren't convincing anyone here. This thread isn't about who paid for who's campaign (McCain's largest donor I believe was Merrill Lynch), it's about the effect the economy is having on the election.

[LogansPapa]

Fannie Mae - whose fault is it anyway?

I don’t know.

How many campaign stops has the president done for McCain lately?

Perception is everything - remember, Obama is still a practicing Muslim. ;)