The 2008 US Election thread

[J70]

Record turnout! Polls close at 8. Watching this hateful so and so Lou Dobbs He seems to want Bloomberg to run which may well happen.

why do you think that carmen? watched him on cnn the last few days and thought he was very good, refused to rule hillary out when most had her dead. got up at 7am this morning to check the results! i love politics! delighted that clinton won its going to be a fascinating few weeks. obama sure gives a good speech imo...

Illegal immigration is Dobbs' pet issue.

I have no idea if that is part of Carmen Stateside's issue with him.

[magickingdom]

Record turnout! Polls close at 8. Watching this hateful so and so Lou Dobbs He seems to want Bloomberg to run which may well happen.

why do you think that carmen? watched him on cnn the last few days and thought he was very good, refused to rule hillary out when most had her dead. got up at 7am this morning to check the results! i love politics! delighted that clinton won its going to be a fascinating few weeks. obama sure gives a good speech imo...

Illegal immigration is Dobbs' pet issue.

I have no idea if that is part of Carmen Stateside's issue with him.

didnt know that j70 and that might explain it, just got cnn lately here. btw cnn in europe need to get their act together, they spend 80% of their time doing any news but US news. the best US election coverage is on sky..

[Carmen Stateside]

Didn

Record turnout! Polls close at 8. Watching this hateful so and so Lou Dobbs He seems to want Bloomberg to run which may well happen.

why do you think that carmen? watched him on cnn the last few days and thought he was very good, refused to rule hillary out when most had her dead. got up at 7am this morning to check the results! i love politics! delighted that clinton won its going to be a fascinating few weeks. obama sure gives a good speech imo...

Illegal immigration is Dobbs' pet issue.

I have no idea if that is part of Carmen Stateside's issue with him.

Didnt think it would have been that hard to guess!  This last few weeks his show has been concentrated mostly on the election, but he still gets his 5 mins in on immigration.  He seems to think that his opinion is always the right one and that anyone else thinking different are total fools! Arrogant twat

[heganboy]

Dobbs is an odd cat, right wing on immigration, donor to bush cheney, yet pro choice, pro gay rights, anti 2 party system. If bloomberg ran on a bipartisan ticket lou dobbs would be his loudest cheerleader

[Carmen Stateside]

Dobbs is an odd cat, right wing on immigration, donor to bush cheney, yet pro choice, pro gay rights, anti 2 party system. If bloomberg ran on a bipartisan ticket lou dobbs would be his loudest cheerleader

Without doubt, he has mentioned him several times this last few weeks as the best choice! Seen somewhere that he had a big fallout with his bosses over his lack of airtime during the election program, which he refused to take part in!

[stephenite]

How did the polls get it so wrong - politics.ie are running this thread but not too much substance behind it to be honest, is there any stories regarding voter fraud circulating in the American press?

http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?t=30217

[MW]

How did the polls get it so wrong - politics.ie are running this thread but not too much substance behind it to be honest, is there any stories regarding voter fraud circulating in the American press?

http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?t=30217

Heard one pollster on last night saying they expected turnout similar to 2004 levels when in fact it increased significantly. Not sure how this impacted on their assessment of the relative strengths of the Clinton and Obama votes mind you.

[Hardy]

I don't think the rigged voting machines theory stands up when you look at two things:

1. The exit polls were pretty much spot-on. They gave Clinton 38.7% and Obama36.6%. The result was 39.0% to 36.4%.

2. The overall figures show that Clinton got about 40% of machine-counted votes and 34.7% of hand-counted votes and that this apparent discrepancy was largely at the expense of Obama, whose figures were 35.8% machine and 38.8% hand. This would seem to suggest that the machines had been rigged in favour of Clinton. However, when the machine vs. hand results are broken down (here*) by town size, we see a different picture. In small and medium-sized towns, Clinton is favoured by machine results and Obama disadvantaged, by roughly similar percentages as in the overall figures. However, in large towns, the opposite is the case: Clinton scores 40.2% by machine, but 44.2% by hand, while Obama scores 36.1% by machine and 31.6% by hand. If they were rigging the machines, they screwed it up in the large towns (accounting for 64% of the electorate).
* http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS

It looks more like evidence of the inaccuracy of the Diebold machines than a vote rigging conspiracy. However, coming across this** in my prowling around Stephenite's link was amazing. I had never seen it before and it would make you happy that Martin Cullen's machines will never see the light of day again.
** http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?t=30217 (the YouTube clip in the first post).

[Declan]

t looks more like evidence of the inaccuracy of the Diebold machines than a vote rigging conspiracy. However, coming across this** in my prowling around Stephenite's link was amazing. I had never seen it before and it would make you happy that Martin Cullen's machines will never see the light of day again.

Frightening stuff alright. Have to admit the US election stuff is gripping and this letter in todays times is pretty much my thinking as well

Madam, - I note with interest that the US primary campaigns have ignited much excitement even among our own citizenry.

However, it continues to astound me that the vast majority of our populace favour the return of a Democrat to the Oval Office, even though many of the prevailing majority positions held in this country would appear to fit more naturally with those espoused by the Republican Party.

Admittedly, the calamitous failings of the Bush administration, perhaps coupled with a blarney-tinted remembrance of the presidencies of Kennedy and Clinton, have contributed to this. Nevertheless, on many key issues such as abortion, gay rights, fiscal policy, church involvement in education and the increasing role of private-sector enterprise in public services such as healthcare, the opinions of the Irish electorate appear to be more in concord with US Republican voters, who are so often categorised by many in this country as an unsophisticated assemblage.

As a steadfast social liberal I can only hope that our nation's affection for the Democratic Party may translate into a loosening of the conservative grip which continues to ensnare our own country. - Yours, etc,

[Hardy]

The point is, though, that characterising the Democrat/Republican divergence as a left/right split is a bit like  arguing over whether Bob Dylan or Neil Young is the better opera singer. In creating political systems where the main divide is between two essentially right-leaning parties (for want of a better description), both ourselves and the US are rare enough in largely sparing ourselves the more extreme lunacies of leftists, Marxists, socialists, or call-them-what-you-will in power. (Ruairi Quinn nothwithstanding  ).

[Billys Boots]

both ourselves and the US are rare enough in largely sparing ourselves the more extreme lunacies of leftists, Marxists, socialists, or call-them-what-you-will in power

Yes Hardy, but, at the same time, is Joe Higgins not very,very sorely missed (by all not in Government) in the Dáil?

[Hardy]

Billy - I presume you're referring to his witty contributions, rather than his, er, policies. I think Joe is a bit over-lionised in the media, to be honest. He came out with the odd good one OK, but you have to say he hadn't much opposition. When you stand beside a pygmy, you look very tall indeed.

[AZOffaly]

I think most people in Ireland would favour a change of party in the White House, largely because of foreign policy. Whatever about the historical pull of Democrats on the Irish psyche, I think the general antipathy towards the GOP is based on the whole image of the Republicans being completely OTT in their in-your-face Americanism, their Hawkish tendencies towards the Middle East, and the perception that they are totally in hock to Big Business and corporate America and therefore unable/unwilling to take them on on things like the Environment.

Most Irish people I know wouldn't be that pushed about internal US politics and policies on gay rights, healthcare etc. What worries them is the interaction the US has with the rest of the world, and because of it's huge power, it's huge power to do the wrong thing.

[Billys Boots]

I presume you're referring to his witty contributions, rather than his, er, policies.

True, I'd be no Trotskyist, and no fan of the Irish Trade Union 'movement', but I have to say I enjoyed Higgin's talent for spotting (and highlighting) cosy and hypocritical standards in Irish politics and Irish life.  As you say Hardy, it mightn't have been such a huge talent, but it's not there at all any more.

[Declan]

more extreme lunacies of leftists, Marxists, socialists, or call-them-what-you-will in power.

Wide ranging scatter gun there Hardy but by "sparing ourselves" from them we've landed ourselves with a shower of muppets. Now whether they did more or less damage than the alternative is another debate entirely. A bit like Christianity I suppose in that it s never been tried!!
As BB said Higgins did raise some genuine concerns and then one of govts response was to call turkish workers "kebabs" etc.  I think he's missed from the Dail

AZ agree with you on the concerns re the foreign policy stuff alright but I'm  a bit of a political junkie and the internal stuff is fascinating as well. I think the fact that both Dems and GOP are basically just serving the same group of corporate paymasters leaves it open for a "third" way to coin a phrase and I still can't understand why that hasn't happened.

Anyway Neil Young is a better soprano than Dylan.