Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Opinion

Michael Barone

Why John McCain Continues to Trail Barack Obama in Pennsylvania

October 27, 2008 04:51 PM ET | Michael Barone | Permanent Link | Print

Reader Comments

yes!!!!!!!

cant wait till obama wins i am so happy

Claiming that Obama will destroy wealth is more than a little misleading

Obama will have a net positive effect on the wealth of these people, despite raised taxes. Why? Because his economic policies don't suck.

The reality is that under Bush, while he cut taxes, the dollar devalued massively - comparing it to the Euro is very revealing. The reason for this massive drop is huge deficit spending - we've simply printed more money to pay our debts. This is a sort of "hidden tax" on everyone, rich AND poor, and while it doesn't show up on your tax sheets you pay it nonetheless. Its an awful way of doing business, and yet, people hardly notice it at all. They think gas prices are high, but really, the dollar is low - gas certainly increased in price, but not by as much as Americans believe it did.

Obama's policies will increase our wealth, not decrease it, even though he'll increase taxes on the wealthy, because his programs will aid in the creation of wealth. John McCain will continue the US down the path of Bush, towards being a third world country.

Objectivity!

"The irony here is that voters motivated by anger at the decline in their wealth seem about to elect a president who has promised to embark on wealth-destroying policies."

Love that objectivity! I'll return the favor: Barone is a spastic Faux News hack.

Senator Obama

Senator Obama is a man of prodigious intelligence, demonstrates calm and poised in times of crisis. He understands the common person because he was once, born and raised not from affluence but from a simple background but diverse in in culture and education. During the campaign when Mccain/Palin threw mud at him, he never wavered or lose his composure but instead reacted intelligently and maturely as a leader should be. To quote one of the news media :"It is Obama's caharacter and temperamentthat come to fore.It is his steadiness. His maturity". In short - he inspires me.

Obama and new senators or Palin and same Bush crew?

Give me one strong reason why I should not be worried about having Sarah Palin, and other “experienced” Republicans in charge of the White House for another 4 years.

Obama and new senators or Palin and same Bush crew?

Give me one strong reason why I should not be worried about having Sarah Palin, and other “experienced” Republicans in charge of the White House for another 4 years.

What is worse Obama and new senators or Palin and same Bush crew?

The Fixed News crowd

Michael Moron, oppps Barone, of Finex News. Need I say more? I don't think so.

hahahahaha

Don't be sad. Conservatism doesn't work and the internet helped all of us young marginalized voters realize how horribly the boomers have destroyed this nation. Welcome to the 21st century: a time of French style social democracy, free love, gay rights, and general global decline. Life in a declining imperial place can be awesome. Take the continental capitals where the standard of living is far higher than ours. It's gonna be awesome you'll all love it. Walking to cafes, smaller portions, no more cars, selling your suburban homes and moving apartments. Many of you will be able to cultivate some style before you die. Don't fight it and don't get mad. You had it, you broke it. Your time is passing. Whether we break it worse or fix it completely its ours now and there is nothing you can do about it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

AAAAHH (sorry I'm loving this)

Doublethink

"The irony here is that voters motivated by anger at the decline in their wealth seem about to elect a president who has promised to embark on wealth-destroying policies."

Wow, welcome to the world of Barone Doublethink.

Bush's economic policies have reduced real income for the middle class.

The gap between the top income levels and the bottom 80% is larger now than ever before in US history.

The income gap between the rich and the rest of the population is widening. In 22 states, the top fifth of families made more than seven times what the poorest fifth took home, according to the report. In the late 1980s, only one state - Louisiana - had such a spread. Meanwhile, in more than two-thirds of the country, the wealthiest saw their income grow more than twice as fast as the middle-class over the past two decades.

If you look at the last century of American politics, it's been bottom-up economic policy that has truly increased the wealth and well-being of the middle class, not "trickle-down" voodoo.

Unlike what happened during the economic boom of the 1990s, lower- and middle-class families did not share in the prosperity of recent years. In fact, the United States has had its longest jobless recovery and slowest rate of payroll growth during this decade.

I find it highly amusing to hear conservatives like Michael Barone tell me how I'd be voting against my own self-interest if I vote Democrat. Sort of like how kids are taught that Santa Claus is watching to keep them in line.

"Democrats like to pose as the party of the ordinary guy, but the Obama candidacy appeals most strongly to the racially distinctive and the educational elite."

I understand the "racially distinctive" part - you mean anyone who isn't white. It's amazing that you can pack so much obvious bigotry into such an innocuous-sounding phrase. "Racially distinctive" - it almost sounds like something to be proud of, and not the mark of shame that the rest of the sentence shows it to be. Because the unspoken implication here, naturally, is that those who are racially indistinctive - the "ordinary" - are white people (white males, to be specific, because you're talking about ordinary guys, not women). I'm interested to know just when it became impossible to be ordinary without being white. Does this mean that multi-racial people have to pass some sort of test? Senator Obama himself is multi-racial, and you would obviously class him as "distinctive" - not because of his accomplishments or his viewpoints, but because his skin is darker than the "ordinary guy's" skin. But someone who was, say, half-Arab and half-English: as long as that person looked "ordinary," and was a man, would you allow him to be an "ordinary guy?" Or would his Arab ancestry force him into your "racially distinctive" category, and make his viewpoints and his vote forever worthless because it was not "ordinary"

So that much, sadly, is very clear. But I'm baffled by your term "educational elite." In a time when more and more young people are dropping out of high school without their diploma, without even a plan to get a GED, what does such a sneering term even mean? Wealth is a huge indicator of educational mobility - the richer your family, the more likely it is that you will pursue degrees after high school - but it goes the other way, too; and there are millions of people in this country who have fought tooth and nail to get their college degrees, so they might have a chance to make more money than their parents did. Are you saying that people who take out loans and apply for scholarships, who have part-time jobs waiting tables and stocking shelves at the university libraries, in order to scrape together enough money to pay for college are somehow... what, exactly? Less worthy of representation? Less worthy of the attention of a national party?

Education used to be something that every American took pride in. It was a mark of honor to graduate from high school, it was a matter of pride to receive a college degree. For you to say that anyone who accomplishes these goals - particularly those who went to any length necessary in order to achieve them - is somehow less than an "ordinary guy" in America, is insulting - and deeply stupid.

The next time you want to write a bigoted rant against the blacks and "intelligentsia" that are ruining your concept of America, please do us all a favor and stop hiding behind coy phrases.

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Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. He has written for many publications—including the Economist and the New York Times.

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