Whether or not Mr McCain would continue the policies of President Bush (and much of the evidence suggests that his would be a Bush presidency on steroids), he would keep in power the coalition of interests that the Republican Party represents: the energy and military-industrial lobbies, the religious conservatives, the anti-environment interests and the neoconservative think-tanks. These groups - which have gained enormous influence, both financially and intellectually, under President Bush - are as responsible for the blunders of the Bush Administration as Mr Bush himself, arguably more so, given the President's notorious lack of interest in the details of any of his own policies.

If a Republican is again elected president, these same centres of power will continue to dominate Washington. However many wars they encouraged, however high the price of oil rose, however many tax dollars were redistributed in their favour, the neoconservatives and Pentagon contractors and religious fundamentalists and oil and Wall Street lobbies would conclude that there would be no political price to pay for failure. They would be justified in concluding that there is no longer any democratic check on their ambitions.

It is only by ejecting the Republicans from the White House that American voters can send the message that they are still in charge of their country and that gross government incompetence will not go unpunished. Accountability - not personality or rhetoric or colour or age or gender - should be the overriding issue in this election.....

You could give 300 families $20,000 in lieu of having this Invesco stadium show in Denver.  

If Democratic principles count so much, the money would have been better spent with the 300 families.  

The right will attack with the usual "tax and spend, tax and spend!" rhetoric.  If Obama has clear plans and priorities for the laundry list, it will be a little bit more difficult for the "fiscally irresponsible" charges to stick, I think.

Otherwise, I'd have to go where everyone else did...  

WSJ reporting is a much different story but the editorial page are a bunch of nutjobs.

Yes, it was a very good political speech.  I wrote something two threads ago about this mentioning the New Deal, Fair Deal and Great Society, HRC and Obama but won't repeat it here.  Suffice it to say, my problem with Obama is I don't feel he will deliver on what he said in that speech (which if not for HRC would not have been given this evening) and I don't feel he has the inner will or resolve to fight with a Dem stick the rabid Republicans represented by the WSJ Editorial page.  

I've been a Dem for over twenty years, have never voted Republican and will not, nay, cannot vote for McCain.  But, I am still not convinced Obama will deliver.  I still don't trust him and time is running out.

1.  Not liberal enough (per topic).

2.  Will be embarrassed by Hillary delegates.

3.  Clintons will not give wholehearted support.

4.  Not tough enough.

5.  Can't recover from sagging polls.

6.  Can't name a VP as good as Hillary.

7.  Not specific enough on policies.

8.  Stadium rally bad idea.

9.  Etc.

And while we have no polls to prove it, our guess is that more than a few white Americans would welcome an Obama victory in November in part as a way to put the battles over racial grievance and preference further into the background of American public life.

The limit for criticism of the ticket is entirely within Jeralyn's purview, of course, but as soon as I saw that post I thought we'd see an influx of the 'dancing on graves' comments (excellent summary btw), given the traffic over the past couple weeks, and we did, on that very thread, including, yes, an accusation that any Clinton supporter who didn't support Obama was racist.  "tinged with racism" is the phrase used, I think.  Also, the much-discussed accusation that anyone not supporting Obama is responsible for McCain armageddon popped up, with 3 comments by the same person.

So while 4 comments a day are allowed for disagreement, the fact that any sort of support for the ticket, even grave-dancing, accusation of racism support is allowed but can't be answered bc of comment limits results in a de facto, although not de jure, constraint.

Those critical of the ticket