US News
US candidates make final push; Chicago braces for 1 million (Roundup)
Nov 3, 2008, 16:28 GMT
Chicago/Washington - US presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain planned one final race across the country on Monday as state officials braced for record turnout in Tuesday's general election.
As Chicago prepared for a throng of 1 million people at a public park in anticipation of Democrat Obama's victory Tuesday, Republicans were wishing them bad weather and a surprise electoral victory for the underdog McCain.
'I hope the million or so people who are planning to gather in Chicago have a long, cold night,' quipped Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who lost his Republican bid for the presidential nomination to Senator McCain.
Obama was to hold his election night rally at Grant Park along windy Lake Michigan, normally an ice box at this time of year. But weather forecasters expected record highs of up to 22 to 24 degrees Celsius - a good omen for the outcome for Obama fans.
Although election results are expected to start coming in about 0100 GMT Wednesday, western states could play a big role this year, with results expected to filter in well after 0300 GMT.
With massive voter turnout of as much as 90 per cent possible in some precincts, and new equipment in many states, it could be a long night before the winner is declared.
Election officials in Chicago said they expected about 80 per cent of eligible voters to come out Tuesday, which would be higher than any time since 1972.
'People suddenly are engaged in this election, engaged in the candidates. It's almost like a movement, a renewed interest in the electoral process,' said Langdon Neal, chairman of the Chicago election board.
McCain and Obama were storming through a combined 10 states on Monday to shore up narrow margins and get out the vote in swing states. Between them and their key surrogates, they were set to cover a total of 22 states.
'We can't afford to slow down, or sit back, or let up, not one minute, not one hour, not one second,' Obama told a cheering crowd in Jacksonville, Florida.
The two candidates touted tried-and-true themes on the final day: McCain hammered Obama as a traditional tax-and-spend liberal politician and Obama continued to tie McCain to the policies of an unpopular President George W Bush.
Obama, who would be the first African American president in US history, was the strong favourite heading into Tuesday's vote. An aggregate of major national polls compiled by realclearpolitics.com gave Obama 51.2 per cent to McCain's 44.2 per cent on Monday.
McCain remained hopeful and derided pundits who were already predicting victory for Obama. 'They may not know it, but the Mac is back and we're going to win this election,' he told supporters in Blountville, Tennessee.
Nationwide numbers are less important than capturing states with big electoral votes in the US' indirect election method. Battleground states include Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia - which hasn't voted Democratic since 1964 but is leaning toward Obama.
Obama was set to hold his final rally of the 21-month election campaign in Manassas, Virginia on Monday evening. McCain planned a final midnight event in Phoenix, Arizona - a state he has represented in Congress since 1982, the last stop in a seven-state tour Monday.
In Chicago, volunteers from across the city were spending the campaign's final hours rallying the vote for fellow Chicagoan Obama, who represents their state of Illinois in the Senate.
The campaign had attracted help ranging from high school students to grandmothers to those who knew Obama as a young man working as a community organizer in the city's poor neighbourhoods.
Seventeen-year-old volunteer Robert Stuart III said he knows his efforts at a Chicago phone bank are part of a crucial last-minute drive to get out the vote. 'If I wasn't hopeful, I wouldn't be here,' he said.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
'JACK SMITH - WORKING CLASS'
If Obama gets in you will be 'JACK SMITH - UNEMPLOYED'
Congratulations.
You are about to elect a President who will give you a bigger government and more spending. Your new President will give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, drastically increase the number of H-1B visas, and eliminate E-verify at a time when millions of American Citizens are out of work. Your new Commander in Chief will keep American soldiers in Iraq against your will. Your new Chief Executive will borrow, spend, give away, and waste billions of dollars when the national debt is passing $12 trillion. Against your wishes your new President helped Bush give $1 trillion to the banks as his parting gift. No matter how much you object, he will not listen and will continue to implement his own agenda. It doesn't matter if it's McCain or Obama.
ewebsmith.com/Finance/notlistening.html
This isn't over. Don't let them tell you it is over. Please vote for some checks and balances on a government that will be left of Carter and Johnson...
Remember What Happened to Obama in the NH Democratic Primary?
Here's a look at what the leading polls said heading into the New Hampshire Democratic primary:
Zogby:
Obama 42
Clinton 29
USA Today:
Obama 41
Clinton 28
CNN/WMUR:
Obama 39
Clinon 29
Rasmussen:
Obama 37
Clinton 30
ACTUAL RESULTS:
Clinton 39
Obama 36
And Obama also underperformed his poll numbers in the Democratic primary in key battleground states Ohio and Pennsylvania.
A Perfect Storm... The least qualified candidate in American history — at one of the most dangerous points in history.
Some elections are routine, some are important, and some are historic. If Senator John McCain wins this election, it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Senator Barack Obama wins, it is more likely to be historic — and catastrophic.
Once the election is over, the glittering generalities of rhetoric and style will mean nothing. Everything will depend on performance in facing huge challenges, domestic and foreign.
Performance is where Barack Obama has nothing to show for his political career, either in Illinois or in Washington.
Policies that he proposes under the banner of “change” are almost all policies that have been tried repeatedly in other countries — and failed repeatedly in other countries.
Politicians telling businesses how to operate? That’s been tried in countries around the world, especially during the second half of the 20th century. It has failed so often and so badly that even socialist and communist governments were freeing up their markets by the end of the century.
The economies of China and India began their take-off into high rates of growth when they got rid of precisely the kinds of policies that Obama is advocating for the United States under the magic mantra of “change.”
Putting restrictions on international trade in order to save jobs at home? That was tried here with the Hawley-Smoot tariff during the Great Depression.
Unemployment was 9 percent when that tariff was passed to save jobs, but unemployment went up instead of down, and reached 25 percent before the decade was over.
Higher taxes to “spread the wealth around,” as Obama puts it? The idea of redistributing wealth has turned into the reality of redistributing poverty, in countries where wealth has fled and the production of new wealth has been stifled by a lack of incentives.
Economic disasters, however, may pale by comparison with the catastrophe of Iran with nuclear weapons. Glib rhetoric about Iran being “a small country,” as Obama called it, will be a bitter irony for Americans who will have to live in the shadow of a nuclear threat that cannot be deterred, as that of the Soviet Union could be, by the threat of a nuclear counter-attack.
Suicidal fanatics cannot be deterred. If they are willing to die and we are not, then we are at their mercy — and they have no mercy. Moreover, once they get nuclear weapons, that is a situation which cannot be reversed, either in this generation or in generations to come.
Is this the legacy we wish to leave our children and grandchildren, by voting on the basis of style and symbolism, rather than substance?
If Barack Obama thinks that such a catastrophe can be avoided by sitting down and talking with the leaders of Iran, then he is repeating a fallacy that helped bring on World War II.
In a nuclear age, one country does not have to send troops to occupy another country in order to conquer it. A country is conquered if another country can dictate who rules it, as the Mongols once did with Russia, and as Osama bin Laden tried to do when he threatened retaliation against places in the United States that voted for George W. Bush. But he didn’t have nuclear weapons to back up that threat — yet.
America has never been a conquered country, so it may be very hard for most Americans even to conceive what that can mean. After France was conquered in 1940, it was reduced to turning over some of its own innocent citizens to the Nazis to kill, just because those citizens were Jewish.
Do you think our leaders wouldn’t do that? Not even if the alternative was to see New York and Los Angeles go up in mushroom clouds? If I were Jewish, I wouldn’t bet my life on that.
What the Middle East fanatics want is not just our resources or even our lives, but our humiliation first, in whatever sadistic ways they can think of. Their lust for humiliation has already been repeatedly demonstrated in their videotaped beheadings that find such an eager market in the Middle East.
None of this can be prevented by glib talk, but only by character, courage and decisive actions — none of which Barack Obama has ever demonstrated.
The U.S. will disappear in a cloud of smoke if Obama is elected, after we've all lost our jobs and money, or so the Republicans would have us believe...LOL
page: 1
jacksmithNov 3rd, 2008 - 19:07:28
I see you all have not lost your fight :
GOOD! Because we have a lot to do. You! (the American people) are going to have to take back control of your elected government at every level, and set your government back on the right path of service to you, and the greater good of the World.
Barack Obama and the democrats are your best hope of doing that now. Tell your family, friends, and everyone you know to support them as best they can. Because the Bush McCain vote fraud, vote cheating, vote buying, vote manipulation machine is already hard at work to cheat you again. And we all know what a disaster that has been the past 8 years of Bush McCain.
Barack Obama and the democrats will need all the power you can give them at every level of government (Federal, State, County, and local City elected governments). Obama and the democrats will have an enormous mess to fix for the American people, and the rest of the World. A mess caused by the corrupt Bush McCain administration.
You see, starting back in 2000, and before 911, it was mostly the Republican governors, Republican legislatures, and county elected Republican officials that conspired with the corrupt Bush McCain administration to raise college, and university tuitions by the fastest, and highest rate increases in American history. Some state tuitions went up by as much as a WHOPPING! 30% in one year.
The reason the Bush McCain administration did this was to force struggling working class kids into the military to pay for the sudden jump in tuition. Which was forced on them by the corrupt Bush McCain administration, and their corrupt Republican Governors, and republican controlled state legislatures.
See, Bush McCain had plans to get us into all these immoral, foolish, criminal, and unnecessary wars from the start. So they could use these wars to seize power, and later to get reelected. But, for their evil plan to work they needed more volunteer soldiers struggling to pay for an education whose blood they could spill to help them seize more power. Remember Bush McCain's 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!' theatrics.
The exploitation, and lost lives of these finest Americans is despicable, disgusting, immoral, corrupt and criminal. And it makes me SICK, and ANGRY!
You will have to vote for Obama, and the democrats in overwhelming numbers to overcome the Bush McCain vote fraud machine. Vote early if you can. Then help your fellow Americans cast their votes on through election day. Vote for Obama, and the democrats like your life, and the lives of your loved ones depends on it. Because it does. You will not survive 4 more years of 'Let Them Eat Cake' Bush McCain, and their republican allies.
Just look at the mess we have now.
You can fix this mess with your votes for Obama, and the democrats. But you must continue to surge forward for Barack Obama, and the democrats, and for your-selves most of all. The children, and the World are counting on us.
It's in your hands now. And I know you will get it done.
God bless all of you.
JACK SMITH - WORKING CLASS... :-)
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