Politics

Re: Silly debate in some ways

Issywise — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:25:43 GMT

Your effort is appreciated, but I won't be voting for either Clinton or Obama. They both went along with vote voiding. Nothing they can do or stand for speaks as loudly as standing by and cooperating with the disenfranchisement of millions of not only fellow Americans but fellow members of their own party.

This year the Democratic Party became the 2d biggest disenfranchiser in American history behind only Jim Crow. I can't vote for anybody who was a part of that. I can't believe any lifiting thing somebody who condones that says.

You know, I've reach point in my life where I have to believe in something and I can't ignore the obvious evidence when would-be leaders don't believe in anything but their own self-promotion.

If they go along vote voiding, what won't they do?

Re: Silly debate in some ways

Ricossa Granno — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:07:06 GMT

Here is a little reminder in detail of the Clinton years . . .

www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/impeachments/clinton.htm

It is done very well...

Please ask your self, and think about this country. If the "Wife of State" should be elected from the same household the Husband of State was President over? etc.

Re: Silly debate in some ways

Ricossa Granno — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:00:23 GMT

I agree you have to look at the individual these days . . .
I think the Dems have to hold onto Obama . . .

Hillary,??

Have you ever checked into the Vince Foster years where Hillary was involved?
There's that whole thing of a person committing suicide usually never has the gun left in his hands due to the involuntary muscles giving throw to the weapon etc.
Well it should be a little odd Vince was left handed and it was found in his right hand . . .

Pretty high ranking official --lot's of
incriminating "Badstuff" got lifted from his office by Billary's people
etc. etc.
Ever Heard of Travelgate? Whitewater? Impeachment?

I think two people from the same household should not be elected-able . . .

Two many carcasses left behind . . .

I saw a little background on the Clinton years in the White House.

I think anyone from the Clinton family makes it much less of a "White House" in a clean sense of the word . . .

Obama is your man . . . Trust me on this one . . .

Hillary is more of a scammer as she try's to weasel Her way back to the White House dinner parties . . .

Mrs Clinton new about Mr. Clinton . . .

Re: Silly debate in some ways

Issywise — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:40:53 GMT

I felt the same way as you until the Democrats started voiding votes, halving and doubling votes, holding caucuses as primaries ended to dilute votes and giving 800 party officials a say independent of voters.

Now I can't support that clown pile any more than I supported the GOP before.

Now I have to actually look at the candidates individually and make up my mind. It's un-American!

Re: Silly debate in some ways

Issywise — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:21:36 GMT

You briefly hit on an important point: The quickest way to loose our freedom is to allow government to control internal operations of political associations. But, use of elections to determine candidate selection is a public activity already and appropriately governed by literally thousands of state and federal laws. The parties already cannot adopt rules that discriminate based on race, age, national origin or religion. Why should they be allowed to do it by whole states full of Americans? Votes are cast by individuals--that is the whole point. That's why grouping them and disenfranchising in mass should be so personally offensive to believers in democracy.

I would add to the laws a requirement that the parties treat every primary vote on a one-person one-vote basis. it is consistent with the anti-discrimination laws that also serve the American value that every American voter is personally important as part of his national heritage..

The party committees could decide not to hold primaries--to choose nominees by contests to see who can best imitate Joan Baez, for all I care. But, if they use public elections they should have to accept one-person one-vote along with all the other expressions of the value that in America individuals are both equal and of consequence.

You distinguish our recent disenfranchisement of millions of Americans from those in the Soviet Union and Iran because our disenfranchisements followed actions by "freely elected representatives."

In the Soviet Union and Iran, people could and can have all their political rights on the condition that they endorse the desires and actions of those in power. It is a choice they have as individuals. Run afoul of the desires of those in power or oppose the actions of those in power and you loose your electoral voice.

A majority of the voters in Florida and Michigan exercised their right to set election dates at variance with the desires of the DNC and RNC though their legislatures. They were then stripped of their right to participate on a statewide basis. In fact, some Florida voters personally agreed with the DNC and the RNC, but were disenfranchised nonetheless.

That the "punishment" of disenfranchisement was administered in a group mass manner rather than having it done in a discrete one-by-one manner doesn't seem a distinction of redeeming importance.

The reason for all the disenfranchisements--Soviet, Iranian and American is the same---retaining power for officials.

On another dimension, you might imply that what happened this year is different from Jim Crow's disenfranchisements because Jim Crow was motivated by race hatred while this year's disenfranchisements arose as ad hoc reactions to events disliked by party officials.

In making that distinctions you must concede that this year's "violated" rules had the purpose of protecting the parties' power to "set the schedule" for state primary elections--the very principle the people of Florida and Michigan contested. In other words, the dispute was over who'd exercise a power.

The history of Jim Crow is does not support the distinction you might imply. Jim Crow allowed African-Americans to vote in the numbers and in the locales where control of power by Whites could be maintained with the least effective disenfranchisement. Where there were few Blacks, they were allowed to vote. Where there was a majority of Blacks, none were allowed to vote. The decision and mechanics of who got to vote was determined by the need to control power--a picture indistinguishable in its operation from what the parties have done this year.

Furthermore, you might suggest this year's disenfranchisements are a once only thing while Jim Crow was longterm. How do you know? If you accept the principle that millions of votes can be voided by party officials when the officials feel the need to disenfranchise in order to preserve their own supposed powers, what's to say that they won't feel the same need in the next election cycle and the next and the next; just as Jim Crow officials felt the need to disenfranchise for decades.

What if the party official used the power only every other election, or every third election? Does that make it acceptable while Jim Crow wasn't?

You say, "The rules are in place for a reason: to preserve the tradition of the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire"

Which is exactly the tradition that Florida and Michigan acted to end after a third of a century of their citizens not mattering.

Do you think Iowa and New Hampshire's primacy justifies a third of a century of rendered meaningless the votes in Florida and other states? Do you think it justifies mass disenfranchisement reaching to the millions in America?

How do you square all that with the American democratic sensibility that every voter should matter and matter equally?

Consider also that even after the DNC announced the votes wouldn't count, more Floridian Democrats performed the sacred civic ceremony of voting than the total of all votes cast in both Iowa and New Hampshire. They took the slap in the face and still acted like they should matter.

You say "common sense" and fear of electoral chaos justify the disenfranchisement of millions of your fellow Americans.'
I respond that common sense suggests that counting votes be the inviolable foundation of a democratic system for choosing national leaders and that no official should again have the power to commit mass disenfranchisements. It isn't about rules, it is about democracy--everyday voting people controlling who governs the nation. Voters should chose the leaders, leaders shouldn't get to chose the voters.

I also respond that chaos can be just as well managed with inviolate respect for individual votes as it is managed under a system where official get to choose whose vote will count. It isn't necessary to empower officials to void votes to preserve order.

You ask, "If there are no consequences to breaking the rules, then what point is there in having the rules?" There is a sensibility in the military, where following rules can be a life and death matter, that an officer never gives an order that he or she knows will not be obeyed.

The party committees knew the legislatures are in legal control of primary dates when they made their threat to disenfranchise. They knew that people of Florida and Michigan were demanding their legislators move the dates. That is, indeed, why the party committees made the threat. The party committees expected to get their way by intimidation, even though the legal power to control primary dates rested elsewhere.

Whose the bad guy here--the legislatures responding to public will by exercising their legal prerogatives or the party committees who assert a power that is universally denied by the law itself.

Who resorted to disenfranchisement of millions of individuals to teach a collective lesson that their self-assumed prerogatives must be respected?

You ask what point is there to having rules if they are going to be flouted? None whatsoever if the only way you can enforce them is to take peoples' votes away. The means for enforcement is exponentially more evil than any good meant to be protected.

You are content to have the old system--with New Hampshire and Iowa holding an anti-democratic primacy in the selection of our presidents. Who made you king? Why should the DNC and RNC get to decide one American will matter more than another.

You value something called "retail politics" over having every American experience the ideal that he matters and matters equally in our democracy. Your and my values are different.

You ask what alternative schedule I personally suggest: I've already told you, one where every vote is always counted, one where no official gets to tell any American that you've got to matter less than another.

For my preference, one where Iowa and New Hampshire's importance is proportional only to their population. I'd strip the bastards of the very inflated importance that deluded them into celebrating when other Americans were disenfranchised earlier this year.

If "punishment" was any more relevant in this context than it was with Michigan and Florida, the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire have earned it by their arrogant flouting of other American's equality. But punishment doesn't fit here any more than it justifies disenfranchisement elsewhere. What's right is that all Americans matter equally; what is proper is that every American hopes that all other Americans share in their equal ability to participate in our democracy.

Am I right?

I'd like to see Americans actually believe that democracy actually works in the real world.

We are too cynical for our own good.

Re: Silly debate in some ways

Issywise — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:01:38 GMT

You insult me!

I didn't want the court to do something stupid. I didn't want the court to do something racially prejudiced, no matter how fancy it was dressed-up. I didn't want the court to pretend it is "color blind" when it is anything but.

Roberts created a new racial distinction and put it in the Constitution. Before the opinion, government was free to remedy the effects of all kinds of discrimination in a rational way. Because of the opinion, there is a distinction between all other kinds of discrimination and racial discrimination and that distinction is that only in racial discrimination is remedy disabled by the amazing requirement that the relevant characteristic of the victims not be considered when fashioning a remedy.

There is one more distinction in the world and it is a racial distinction.

Even if you and I and everybody in Missoula Montana wanted him to do it, it wouldn't make it right. We would be wrong right along with him.

Re: Silly debate in some ways

EarlyBird — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:03:12 GMT

To the contrary, Roberts eliminated racial distinctions. He did what you and I wanted him to do.

Re: Silly debate in some ways

october271986 — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:54:03 GMT

The fundamental question is what right to the political parties have in determining their own processes? As you say, the parties get considerable public benefits. On the other hand, they are still not public entities. The bottom line: they are allowed to set their own rules.

The representatives of the people of Michigan and Florida made a decision fully knowing the consequences: they could move their primaries and be stripped of their delegates or they could leave their primary as scheduled and hoped that the races wouldn't be over by then. Unlike the citizens of the Soviet Union or Iran or black people under Jim Crow, the vote were taken away because of the actions of freely elected representatives. That is the difference between the situation in the Democratic party and that of corrupted states.

Michigan and Florida could have held their primaries any time after Feb 5. Moving them to January 15 was excessive and motivated not be a desire to merely "count" but to count more. When I looked at the primary schedule this fall (to work out an advertising sponsorship of the primary coverage on an cable network) I figured February would be a key month as the primaries went from Super Tuesday to the Texas and Ohio contests in May. As a political lay person, it appears I have more sense than the legislators of Florida and Michigan.

The rules are in place for a reason: to preserve the tradition of the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire and to prevent the chaos of states moving their contests in a never ending game of leapfrog. The party leaders took action not only to preserve there power, but because commonsense called for action. If there are no consequences to breaking the rules, then what point is there in having the rules? The disenfranchisement of the Michigan and Florida voters - who will get a great deal of attention in the general election - was unfortunate, but necessary.

I don't think that Iowa and NH have the outsize influence that the conventional wisdom says they do. Plus, the retail style politics that happens in those campaigns would be impossible under an alternative schedule. By the way, what alternative schedule and solution do you offer?

Re: Silly debate in some ways

Issywise — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:37:00 GMT

I agree with everything you've said.

I still think that building selective treatment of a class of individuals into the Constitution (victims of racial discrimination) is a bad idea. It is counter equal protection under the law and inconsistent with the direction the law should be going.

It also would have kept my classmates out of post graduate school even though, in my opinion, they had as good or better right to be there than anybody else.

But then, I knew them didn't I. That's kind of the point--the solutions should run to individual Americans as much as possible and not by blind application of classes.

Roberts created a new class. It is a very bad opinion.

Re: Silly debate in some ways

EarlyBird — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:13:24 GMT

Issy, I believe things like affirmative action and other programs focused on black people in particular were big necessary doses of medicine for a big disease.

I won't for a second say that racism is dead and buried, not by a long shot. A white guy like me married to a black woman knows better. But certainly a lot of that disease has been ameliorated.

So now, a lot of people, including black Americans, have seen that the medicine may in and of itself be part of the problem. You don't keep providing massive doses of chemo when the cancer is in remission or under control, to keep the medical analogy going. What happens then is that you insult the whole body too much.

We may be at that time when simply demanding an equal playing field may be enough. So many of the legs up that were given to black Americans became devastating crutches for the most vulnerable, poor black Americans. Most of black America shot into the stable middle class. Too many of them were actually hurt by the help.

Remember, these programs, affirmative action and the like, were never supposed to be permanent, and the goal was never perfect racial harmony. Let's not pursue utopia. By doing so we end up seeing every racial divide as some enormous chasm.

A lot of smart and decent people have looked up and said, "Hey, in 2008 can we address discrimination of a particular group with programs that are fair to all people?" Maybe for instance, the common deminator is poverty and single motherhood, ills which befall any and all groups. Can we focus on that, rather than race, and get the job done for all races including those we believe are most discriminated against?

At some point we have to fashion color blind remedies or we'll never get beyond color.

Re: Silly debate in some ways

Issywise — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:58:40 GMT

EarlyBird:

We'll have to disagree about disabling the government's ability to remedy the consequences of past government racism by mandated ignorance of the race of victims when fashioning remedies.

It is a self-blinding that we don't do with any other victims. It is racial discrimination itself--dressed with the reassuring deceptive label "color blindness." If a rule only applies to people of one color, it doesn't matter what you call it, it is racial discrimination.

Nobody else gets the treatment, only Black victims of discrimination get that treatment. It guts Brown.

What is special about racial discrimination that remedies to it should be tied down in ways we don't apply to any other kind of discrimination?

The Robert's doctrine is an irrational disengagement of the power of human reason: Where else do we say, "Yes, there is a problem, but we're going to close our eyes before we fashion a solution?"

What about "our times" justifies this new discrimination to preserve the effects of old discrimination?

You say the Roberts doctrine "...gets the government out of the business of favoring certain groups as a remedy for past and existing racism and discrimination." But the process of favoring and disfavoring certain groups is on-going today. It is ongoing today. It is ongoing outside the small sphere of of remedies and courts.

Do you doubt as a matter of fact that the consequences of racist government policy continue to exist today? Do you think the consequences of racial discrimination in the past are in the past, so that no American is disadvantaged today because of his race?

Why should the Constitution deny the vital information of the relevant characteristic of the victim of the process of fashioning any remedies? Why should the Constitution do this only in the case of the victims of racial discrimination.

The information is denied by the Constitution no where else. What is it about "our times" that makes Constitutionally mandated ignorance of a victim's race necessary when remedying racial discrimination?

Race and only race during remedy efforts is so affected by the Constitution.

I went to a post graduate school where the application to admission rate was something like 10 or 20 to 1. A small group of spaces were set aside for Americans who'd been educated in poor public schools because of the national tradition of racism. It wasn't their fault that they'd been born where they were born to the families they'd been born into. They had been born with all the rights and hopes of all other Americans and yet were condemned by the circumstances of their race and birth to disadvantages that courts had found, before they were born, were the result of racist government behavior.

They'd gone to their poor public schools and pushed on to college. They'd shown enough promise in college that they were given the opportunity to enroll in the post graduate school even though their pure performance measures were not up to the 1 in 10 or 20 standards applied to the rest of us.

At first, they stuck out like a sore thumb. They didn't know some very basic things all the rest of us had picked in primary or secondary school. They'd had crappy schools. But, by half way through the program--a year and a half, they'd completely caught up and were indistinguishable by all measures from the rest of us. They were, in fact, qualified to be with us and their being with us enhanced our educational experience. It also offered promise to kids being born today in the still unremedied circumstances my colleagues had been born in.

By the "color blind" only during the remedy process, while the still function harming process was anything but "color blind in its creation, these Americans would have been denied good primary and secondary educations and despite their promising performance in college, denied admittance to post graduate studies that they were vested by God with the means to master as well as any of us more advantaged enrollees.

You call that justice "in our times?"

What Roberts is saying is that after the harm has been done, after you've come to the government for a remedy, the government--as a matter of new constitutional mandate, must not consider your skin color in fashioning a remedy though it was your skin color that provoked the illegal discrimination in the first place. The government can consider anything else about a victim when fashioning a remedy, but not his skin color.

What makes you think "our times" make this new racial discrimination an appropriate government response to existing racial discrimination? Closing our eyes is never a good idea. Ignoring a problem is also never a good idea--including during "our times."

We do disagree.

Having said all of this, let me anticipate an argument: To say something is not an appropriate constitutional doctrine is not to say that every effort made to remedy a problem is a good idea. The legislatures are supposed to try and modify solutions to problems on an ongoing basis.

What's happened here is that that process has been abandoned and the whole matter has been booted to Judge Roberts who has decided the government must keep all hands off the problem.

Just because you don't think some solutions tried were wise, shouldn't mean we are barred by the Constitution from trying any.

Re: Silly debate in some ways

Issywise — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:58:25 GMT

"One of my (many) character flaws is uncontrollable sneering when people compare even our goofiest voting practices with third-world snotlockers."

Yeah, there is nothing like a Arab national lecturing an American on the failures of our democratic system--this seems to be a fate assigned to me of late.

I went to college in the late '60s. For four years, I held my tongue while a overwhelming majority of my colleagues--at least those who talked about such things, self-righteously lectured me on the failings of American democracy. I didn't open my mouth for fear of what I'd let loose.

Now, through some kind of Greek play interaction of the gods, I write posts like those above. I've become what I hated most forty years ago.

Of course, all those Utopians who used lecture me forty years ago are now appliance corporation executives and investment bankers, so maybe I'm caught in some kind of natural balancing conducted by the cosmic ether itself.

Somehow it is reassuring to me that, at the time Lake Erie caught fire and burned for three days near Cleveland during my college years, scientist thought it would take millenia for the lake to recover as much as it actually did in about ten years when the pollution sill cocks were shut off.

Re: Silly debate in some ways

Issywise — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:44:09 GMT

Thoughtful post, I manifestly "am not," as you say. You are wise to bring the Republican Party into the discussion. It also voided votes--if only by half. Its officials may be politically more astute, but they are not characteristically better democratic citizens. Voiding is voiding. It should never happen--not whole, not in part. The political system should be organized around the fundamental of counting votes, rather than having vote counting as an expendable appurtenance subject to the discretion of a party committee.

I think my point is wholly valid. You say

"Where you get a little crazy, Issywise (no heeznot), is in comparing this machinery to Stalin and Iran or Jim Crow."

To which I respond, of course, there are apparently distinguishing differences in the motivations behind communism, Jim Crowism and what has happened in this years primaries. Communism is totalitarian and contemptuous of democracy. Jim Crow was fundamentally based on race hate.

But the distinguishing differences aren't so relevant in the effect they have on votes on election day. Both the communists and the Jim Crowers voided votes for the same purpose as the parties had this year---maintaining their power. If the votes wouldn't have threatened their power, all three groups would have counted the votes. After reforms imposed democracy on Soviet communists and American Southern racists, both showed the capacity to function within a democratic system and still pursue their hateful purposes.

In all three cases--communism, Jim Crow and American political parties in 2008, at the moment individual voters were told they didn't matter, it was done in service to the preservation of power held by officials who didn't want power to flow to voters. In the case of the parties this year, the contested power was the power to set the schedules for presidential primaries.

Sure there is a difference between race hate, totalitarian communism and voiding votes just to enforce a party's power to decide what primaries will matter, but not so much a difference: In all three cases, party officials enforce their will by denying the right of voters to participate in decision-making. The evil of vote voiding is the same in every case.

You ask, ..how do you maintain the "retail" style of politics that brings candidates to states like NH and Iowa and South Carolina, while ensuring that all votes matter?"

The parties don't. They most certainly don't void votes to enforce their preference for any state's ascendancy over others.

The system of the parties deciding which primary voters will be most important is dead. It died when Floridians and Michiganians noticed that the parties' decisions had left them not mattering for a third of a century. That's too long for such a system to be defensible. Again, 49 year old Floridians have never cast a primary vote that mattered. George Wallace was on the ballot the last time a Florida voter mattered in a presidential primary. Is that justified by something that Iowa and New Hampshire have?

Primaries are American elections, conducted under law-- thousand of laws that ensure against corruption. They cost tens of millions of tax dollar to run. The states operate them with the help of tens of thousands of volunteers. The parties benefit by free publicity and by having the cloak of democratic credibility placed on them by all this public effort.

Americans perform a secular sacrament when they cast their vote--reassuring themselves that in America the individual matters and any one of us has the power to change the world for the better. These are core American values that we pound into our children's attitudes.

The preference for ad infinitum special importance for New Hampshire and Iowa, enforced by the disenfranchisements of millions of other voters, flies the face of these core American democratic values. We are all supposed to count and count equally.

Americans won't stand in line not mattering indefinitely. The day has come where that expectation in primary scheduling cannot be continued.

As a matter of law, state legislatures control when elections will be held in their states. The parties can't change that. Michigan's and Florida's voters won't be any more willing to follow party orders in 2012 than they were this year. If the DNC had thought it through, they'd have figured out that "punishment" would ensure defiance from a whole states full of disenfranchised Americans. We're not sheep and they are most certainly not politically astute.

Should the parties disenfranchise (partial or whole) all the citizens in those states again in 2012? What do you think the chances are that other states will join the "rush to the front" in 2012?

If we are going to have a rational system (and we most certainly haven't had one yet) Congress is going to have to act to organize the primaries or the state governments themselves--accountable to voters as they are, unlike the party committees, will have to collectively displace the party committees from the scheduling. The party committees have proven themselves too incompetent and too devoid of basic American values to be left in control.

You likely fear an ad hoc jumble. I think that would be an improvement over vote voiding.

Congress and the state legislatures should also enact laws extending one-person one-vote to primaries. Party operatives should deprived of their vote altering playgrounds.

I don't know that we loose a thing by displacing Iowa and New Hampshire from their "traditional" perches. You assume the smallness of those chosen states serves to produce better national candidate selections. It is just as reasonable to assume that their homogeneity and their very atypical smallness obstructs the selection of the best possible national candidates. A preference for the few deciding for the many--especially when elections are involved, should have to overcome a presumption against it.

Personally, I'm tired of hearing the voters in New Hampshire and Iowa crow about how important they are. Their enhanced importance is paid for by other voters who don't matter at all. I have nothing but contempt for the voters in New Hampshire and Iowa who celebrated the disenfranchisements of Michigan and Florida voters. They were celebrating the protection of their own primacy through the disenfranchisement of other Americans. They are scum. They are akin to the Soviet party members who supported Stalin. They are the moral equivalent of the"well-meaning" Whites of the Jim Crow South who didn't wish evil on "darkies," but knew it was best for the "darkies" that they didn't matter on election day.

So your distinction seems not to be such as big a difference after all. I don't think I went a "little crazy" at all. I think I got it exactly right--uncomfortably right: vote voiding is the reality that should be focused on. Focusing on the assumed motives of the voiders doesn't really change the reality.

Re: Silly debate in some ways

MadHat — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:41:46 GMT

Yep, I totally agree with 'think for yourself'! Pat Buchanan announced on CNBC one evening that if "you think George Bush is hawkish, you haven't seen anything yet. John McCain makes Bush look like Gandhi! " Last time I looked, Buchanan's party label has never been close to Dem. If you believe that Bush3-McCain policies of ongoing indefinite war vs Islamoterrorism IS the defining issue of the 21st century, how can you vote otherwise? Do keep in mind that it threatens to bankrupt us financially(as befell the Soviet Union in Afghanistan) in addition to continuing to erode our moral leadership authority across the globe, while giving jihadists (crazy though you think they may be) even more 'hateful' evidence of our "evil infidel" intent. I'll vote Dem, but not because of the label, thanks:)

I do support your right to choose, but could you please get McCain to at least raise some tax $ from corps and most wealthy individs to pay for 'his war' which a majority of Americans are against? And while you're at it, can't we get him to come 100% out against torture and unlimited Presidential authority to: a) eavesdrop on both your and my phone conversations and emails b) redefine the Geneva convention as he sees fit, including possibly declaring either you or I an "enemy combatant" and throwing us in jail or Guantanamo or worse without even the right to a lawyer? and,,,,, It's fun to actually talk about issues instead of rhetoric, thx:)

Re: Silly debate in some ways

pwoxby — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:20:58 GMT

"Given that McCain is a moderate Republican..."

It is not a given that McCain is a moderate Republican. On most issues he toes the Republican party line as laid down by George W. Bush. McCain represents Bush's third term.

Obama 08!