The last push is the hard one

Posted on October 22nd, 2008 in Politics by Robert Miller

The daily tracking poll by Reuters/C-span/ Zogby shows Obama leading McCain comfortably, but not by the double digit margins that have been reported in other polls. But, as one of the more critical polling factors, the weathervane poll of Catholic voters, Obama does have a comfortable double digit lead, and this magntidue of lead among Catholics has been highly predictive about election outcomes in national elections. But in the last two weeks of the campaign, McCain and the Republican Party are pulling out all the stops to attack Obama where they hope to land an inflicting wound. Two issues that are prominent in the Republican game book, include the question 1) are you comfortable with a black man as president? and 2) Obama has a background with Bill Ayers which suggests he might have terrorist tendencies.

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The McCain boost from voter fraud/intimidation

Posted on October 17th, 2008 in Politics by Robert Miller

In the 2004 Presidential election, John Kerry was the winner based on exit polling data. But GW Bush won the electoral college election, with Ohio turning out to be the critical state that finally went for Bush by a margin of a little over 100,00 votes; with that, we got four more years of the downward spiral we have been in since 9/11. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a voting rights lawyer, analyzed the Ohio election and claimed that Republicans prevented more than 350,000 votes from being cast for Kerry, enough to give him the presidency. Voter fraud by the Republicans has become a mainstream tactic for them and has been accelerated to an unprecedented level for this year’s election. Kennedy and BBC journalist Greg Palast have written in Rolling Stone and the Huffington Post about the this year’s intense efforts, especially in the swing states like Colorado and Ohio, to implement voter intimidation, illegal removal of voters who are going through foreclosure, and the insistence of proof of registration, such as a photo ID which many poor people lack. The claim is that as many as 10 million voters could be removed from participating in this year’s election, either by being removed from the voter rolls, or through intimidation and misinformation. Kennedy and Palast believe that if Obama is going to win, he will need enough votes to compensate for the immense voter fraud that will take place in this election. They have opened up a website stealbackyourvote.org where, for a small donation, you can download a comic book (or order reprints–after making your donation, you get an email linking to the download site) that explains the ways in which voter fraud/suppression have been elevated to a high art form. A distinction is made between voter fraud, the act of fraudulently voting or removing a ballot and voter suppression, which is turning away eligible voters by intimidation and misinformation. By far the latter mechanism wins hands down as the method of choice, since no paper trail is left from that exercise. Poor, uneducated voters are more likely to react to these methods of intimidation and misinformation.

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Republican racism through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Posted on October 12th, 2008 in Economy,General,Politics by Robert Miller

Beginning with McCain, Republicans up and down the line are all suggesting that the subprime lending fiasco that triggered our present financial crisis, can be laid at the doorstep of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You no doubt have heard McCain talk about this during the debates. The standard line goes, that since these government backed institutions were supposed to help lower income people get into homes, the fiscal crisis we are in has been created by bad loans to poor people and minorities, who accepted loans they couldn’t afford, through a government program that went haywire. This criticism is making the rounds on talk shows, congressional committees and of course it is McCain’s favorite claim that he heroically warned about the coming crisis that was fulminating in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is their new brand of racism–criticizing poor people and minorities for bringing the entire financial institution to its knees. It fits neatly into the Republican mantra of putting the blame on a government sponsored program rather than the free market institutions themselves. With this emphasis, the Republicans seem to be giving power to the poor that they never thought they had. Better not let them hear about it more directly or they might do it again someday.

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